(c) It is, then,Mind(Spirit), which gives external realization in a particular form to the inward world of content which is of essential interest to it; and it is in close relation to this fact that we should consider the question, what precise significance we are to infer from the opposition above discussed between the Ideal andnaturalness.And first we must observe that from such a point of view the wordnaturalis not employed in the most genuine signification of the term. As a description of the external form imposed upon facts by mind it obviously is neither the immediate naturality we find in animal life, nor that presented in Nature's landscape. Rather its very form of determination, in so far, that is to say, as we see the mind here giving to itself an embodiment, will show us that it is an expression of mind, an expression moreover suffused with ideality. For this taking up into the mind, this plastic recreation of form on the part of mind is nothing less than idealization. It is sometimes remarked of the countenances of dead people that they take on themselves once more the lineaments of childhood. The obdurate expression of passion, custom and strife, the characteristic seal of their life of strenuous action, passes off, and the indeterminacy of the features of a child's face reappears. In life, however, all traits whatsoever, the entire presentment in fact, receive their characteristic expression from the world of soul; and in much the same way the different races and classes of mankind reflect the distinguishing features of their spiritual tendencies and activities in their external manifestation. In all such organizations that which is outward is visibly permeated with mind; and, by virtue of its energy, already confrontsmereNature as an idealized creation. Only a clear perception of this truth will enable us to sift this significant question of an opposition between Nature and the Ideal to the bottom. If we do notpossess this we shall find ourselves maintaining that the forms in which Spirit is visualized as a part of Nature have already lost in that real appearance, which is independent of art's imitative action, such an intrinsic completeness, beauty, and excellence, that it is quite impossible that there can be another and more exalted type of beauty, which presents itself as the Ideal in contradistinction to this immediate reality, and this all the more for the reason that art is unable entirely to attain even to that which is present in Nature herself. Or, if our thoughts lean to the opposite extreme, we shall look to art to supply us independently, in opposition to Nature's reality, with more ideal modes of representation. The polemics of Herr von Rumohr, which we have already criticized, are well worthy of attention in this connection. This writer, at any rate, whatever others may say who have the word Ideal so frequently on their lips in depreciation of the vulgarity of Nature, refers to the Idea and the Ideal in phrases of respect and contempt with absolute impartiality.
The real truth of the matter is rather this. There is in the spiritual world, both outwardly and inwardly regarded, a Nature of vulgar type, which testifies to its meanness outwardly for the simple reason that its inward content is mean, that is to say, when all that it can realize externally in its activities are the aims of envy, jealousy, and avarice in every detail of sensuous life. Such a poverty-stricken Nature can no doubt form part of the subject-matter of art, and has been treated as such. When this is the case, however, as we have already explained, it is not the subject-matter, but wholly the artistic handling of it, which creates an interest of any permanent character; and the artist will look in vain for sympathy in his subject, or rather the mere material of his subject from the true connoisseur. A particularly pertinent illustration of this type of art is the so-calledgenrepainting, which has not shown itself above accepting subjects of this character, the artistic treatment of which has been carried by the Dutch school to the extreme limit of perfection. It may, however, be as well to ask ourselves, first, what the precise contribution of the Dutch has been to thisgenre-painting, what, in short, is the nature of content their dainty pictures express, pictures which at least have asserted anextraordinary power of attraction and obviously cannot be shelved right away beneath the common stigma of vulgarity. We shall not improbably find, on closer examination, that the subject-matter of these pictures is not so contemptible as it is often taken to be[289].
The Dutch have selected the subject-matter of their artistic production out of their own substance, out of the actual presence of their daily life. To have once for all realized that presence even in art is no matter of reproach to them. To estimate the character of their artistic interest we must view them in close connection with the actual panorama of their own times. This is a problem of history. The Dutchman has in great measure himself created the ground wherein he lives and finds a home, and has been forced continuously to preserve and defend that home against the invasion of the sea. The citizens of the towns no less than the rural population have together, through courage, endurance, and bravery, repulsed the power of Spain in the hands of Philip II, son of Charles V, the sovereign of a world-wide empire, and in fighting their battle for civic freedom, they were fighting that of religious liberty. This staunch sense of citizenship, this passionate love of enterprise in the narrow limits of their fatherland, no less than abroad on the high seas, this careful and at the same time clean and dainty mode of life, together with the geniality and invincible self-respect which distinguishes them, all this is as much the fruit of their own actions as it is the general content of their artistic production. Such a content as this is no common material, though obviously it is not of the kind we must suppose we can approach with the supercilious superiority of critics for whom the exalted taste of courts and fine society is everything. From a sterling national self-consciousness of this sort Rembrandt painted his famous "Night-Watch" now in Amsterdam, Van Dyck so many of his portraits, Wouvermans so many of his battle-pieces; nor should even those reflections of rustic drinking-bouts, jovialities, and other scenes of merriment be wholly excluded from the category. And in illustration of its excellence we would point, by way ofcontrast, to a work in this year's exhibition, which, though not downright badgenre-painting, is much inferior to the handling by old Dutch masters of similar subject-matter, coming nowhere near to their freedom and joy of life. In this picture a housewife is seen entering an alehouse to give her husband a good scolding. Here we have just a scene of cantankerous and waspish human-kind and nothing more. These Dutchmen painted their folk very differently; whether we find them among their cups, at weddings or dances, feasting or drinking, nay, even when the matter proceeds to ribaldry and blows, liveliness and lustiness is the prevailing temper. Young maids and women laugh with the rest, and a feeling of free and abandoned merriment carries all before it. This intimate delight in all enjoyment justifiably human, which will even absorb itself wholly in animal life and crop up at times as mere satiety and grossness; this freshly awakened sense of freedom and life, fully grasped and embodied in composition and colour, is what constitutes the higher spiritual import[290]of these Dutch pictures.
On much the same grounds the beggar boys of Murillo, in the central gallery of the Munich collection, are excellent. Superficially regarded, the subject here, too, is of a vulgar character. The mother is scolding one of the youngsters, as he quickly munches a piece of bread; two others hard by, ragged and poor, are eating melons and grapes[291]. But in this very poverty of half-nakedness what gleams forth from the entire composition as the soul of that beggar life is its complete carelessness and spontaneity. No dancing dervish himself could give it us more frankly in its impression of entire health and jubilant vitality. This freedom from all external care, this inward liberty reflecting itself in that which is visible, is precisely that which the notion of the Ideal demands. There is in Paris a certain portrait of a boy by Raphael; the head leans propped at leisure on one arm, and gazes with such ecstasy of careless contentment into the open landscape that we are loth to turn away from a picture expressive of such health and exuberant animation. We receive a delight of very muchthe same nature from these lads of Murillo. It is obvious enough that neither their objects nor their interests aim high, but this is no result of stupidity; there they chaffer on God's earth with, we may almost say, the bliss and contentment of the Olympian gods themselves. They, too, have their business; but though we hear little about it they are a genuine sample of humanity, neither morose nor discontented with their lot. Feeling this ground-root in them of all sterling performance we can readily imagine that in favourable conditions youth such as this might be capable of most things. A composition of this kind is entirely on a different level from the one above mentioned of the scolding housewife, or two others we might also contrast with it, of a certain peasant mending his whip and a postillion sleeping on a straw pallet[292]. Such paintings ofgenreshould unquestionably be of small size; and, indeed, in their total impression on the sense, they must be made to appear of comparative insignificance, that we may not feel the character of their subject-matter and its presentment has received undue prominence. It would be intolerable to have such subjects painted life size as though the fulness of the reality were sufficiently attractive to claim our attention.
Such are the principles which should regulate our artistic treatment of and sympathy with that which it is usual to stigmatize as mean or vulgar in ordinary life.
There is, no doubt, plenty of material for art to appropriate of higher grade than the representation of animal spirits and downright citizenship in all their essentially insignificant detail. Man has clearly more serious interests and objects than these, interests which have unfolded as his own spirit has widened and deepened, and in harmony with which it is his truest interest to remain. An art will take highest rank which sets before itself the task of giving adequate representation to this more vital, or at least more profound, content. And here at once we are confronted with the old question, what is the source which will supply us with the forms most fitting to such creations of mind. On the one side theorists maintain the opinion that, inasmuch as the artist creates these lofty ideas, which he desiresto clothe in artistic form, he must, also supply their artistic forms, create, for example, from his imagination the ideal figures of Greek gods, Christ, his apostles, saints, and so on. In strenuous opposition to this view Herr von Rumohr has entered the lists. This writer is of opinion that art is on a false track in supposing that the artist discovers the forms of his production in himself rather than in Nature, and it is under this conviction that he has reviewed the masterpieces both of Italian and Dutch painters. On this head he finds it a matter of censure ("Italian Investigations," i, p. 105) "that the theory of art, during the sixty years which have elapsed, should be at the pains to prove that it is an object, or rather the main object, of art to improve upon creation as it is particularised, and by doing so to substitute forms which have no particular relation to anything, which would ape Nature's creation by going several points beyond her, and release mortal man from all responsibility for the fact that Nature has not known how to make her appearance more beautiful." And consistently with such a point of view he further advises the artist "to have nothing to do with the gigantic task of attempting to ennoble or elucidate the natural form, or attempt any such exalted function of the human Spirit under what name soever it may be written down in works upon art" (ibid.p. 63). He is, in short, wholly convinced that, however exalted and spiritual[293]the subject to be treated may be, completely adequate forms are to be found in Nature as immediately perceived, and consequently maintains (p. 83), "that the exposition of Art, even in the case of subject-matter as highlyspiritualas it is possible to conceive, is never indebted to a symbolism capriciously created by man[294], but depends wholly for its consistency upon what is presented as significant by Nature in organic form." No doubt in advancing this Herr von Rumohr has particularly under review the ideal types of antique art as they are expounded by Winckelmann. It is for all that the abiding service of Winckelmann to have pointed out and set forth in harmonious relation these very types, although he may doubtless have, committed errors of judgment with regard to particular masterpieces while carryingthrough the same. As a possible example of such an oversight Herr von Rumohr thinks he has made out (p. 115) that the increase of length in the lower half of the body, which Winckelmann has characterized as an ideal feature of the antique, is really borrowed from Roman statuary. And naturally enough, as an opponent of the Ideal, improves the occasion by insisting that the artist should unreservedly take Nature into his confidence in the study of form. Here, and here alone, he will find the presence of true beauty. To quote this writer once more it is affirmed (p. 144), "that the beauty of most importance depends on a symbolic of forms rooted in Nature rather than human caprice, a beauty through which these forms are nourished into their characteristic and symbolic relations, in the vision of which we necessarily have brought back to our memory definite images and conceptions, and are made more definitely conscious of previously dormant feeling.[295]" I And so finally it appears that in this writer's view (p. 105) "a mysterious trait of our spiritual life, what many would perhaps call Idea, seems to bind together the artist and the appearances of Nature, in which latter he is constantly and continuously learning to recognize the true character of his own artistic purpose[296], and to find himself in a position through them to give expression to it."
There can be no question, of course, that ideal art has no business at all with "a symbolism capriciously created;" and, if it really is the case that these ideal types of the ancients have been composed only to reduce the veritable forms of Nature to false and empty abstraction, we may freely admit that Herr von Rumohr is justified in his most trenchant opposition.
For our own part we would emphasize the points of fundamental importance to be grasped in this antithesis between the ideal of art and Nature as follows:
The forms which are borrowed from immediate Nature to determine an ideal content must be assumed to be thustaken symbolically in the usual sense of the term, namely, that they are not thus immediately significant in themselves, but only as the external embodiment of that which is inward and spiritual, the content, in fact, they express. It is only Spirit, even in the reality which they possess outside the limits of art, which constitutes their ideality in its contrast with that they entirely owe to Nature simply as such, and which is unable to reveal to us what is essentially mind. It is the object of art, on its more noble plane, to give external shape to the inward content of Spirit. This content we discover in the conscious life of men realized in the world. As such it possesses—we include with it our conscious human experience generally—an external semblance directly presented in and through which it finds expression. So much may readily be conceded. At the same time from a philosophical point of view it is simply futile to inquire whether we ought to look to the direct facts of Nature alone for objects and physiognomical traits of beauty and expression to serve as entirely adequate materials for art's representation, shall we say, of the majesty, repose, and power of a Jupiter or of a Juno, Venus, Peter, Christ, Madonna, or any other divinity, or saint. Arguments may be supported on either side, and the question can only remain finally undecided, being wholly empirical. For the only sufficient way of deciding the matter would be to contrast what is borrowed with the realities it purports to represent, and this, in the assumed case of the Greek gods, might be matter of some difficulty; and, to take the present day, one man will see traits of beauty in their perfection where another a thousand times more acute will see nothing. But over and above such considerations we must observe that the mere beauty of form will never give us that we have named the Ideal, inasmuch as the individuality of the content is a constituent part of it, and therein form is necessarily included. A human face, for example, may be both regular and beautiful in its outlines and yet remain cold and devoid of all expression. The ideal figures of the Greek gods are, on the contrary, true individualizations; the universality of their ideal conception does not exclude the characteristic determination which belongs to each of them. And the vitality of the Ideal consists just in this, that this determinate andfundamental spiritual significance, which it is the function of art to exhibit, should wholly transfuse by appropriate artistic treatment all the particular aspects of the external embodiment, such as composition, pose, motion, physiognomy, and configuration of limbs, so that nothing empty or insignificant should be left, but the entire work should reflect that ideal significance. All that we have learned from Greek sculpture in recent times of a quality which, in fact, emanates from the school of Pheidias, is characterized by nothing so much as this penetrative vitality. The Ideal is preserved in all its severity without any lapse in the direction of mere grace, softness, elegance, and exuberance, yet retains the form in close relation to the ideal significance which should be embodied throughout the whole. This supreme vitality is the distinguishing mark of the great artist.
We may call a typical significance of this kind, in contrast to the particularity of the external world, essentially abstract. This is pre-eminently the case in sculpture and painting, arts which illuminate but a momentary state, without proceeding to such a varied development of exposition as we find, for example, in that where Homer is able to depict the character of Achilles as mild and courteous no less than severe and terrible, to say nothing of all his other characteristics. No doubt it is possible to find such a significance expressed in purely immediate reality. There are, for instance, few countenances which cannot reflect the moods of piety, devotion, and cheerfulness; but such faces also express countless other moods which either are quite inappropriate to that ideal significance, or are only indirectly related to it. For this reason it is by virtue of its particular realization that a portrait acquaints us of the fact that it is a portrait. In many old German and Flemish pictures we find the patron of the picture included in the composition with his entire family of sons and daughters. All are necessarily painted as though taken in an act of devotion, and this spirit illuminates every countenance; but at the same time we have quite as clearly set before us in the men stalwart warriors, men of vigorous action, disciplined on the strenuous field of life and commerce, and in the women dames of an equally doughty life-experience. If we compare with suchfaces—and we may restrict our comparison wholly to these very pictures, which are famous for their close approach to Nature in their delineation of physiognomy—those of the Virgin Mary, and the saints and apostles who surround her, we shall find in these latter one preponderating expression; and all the physical lineaments, whether we look at build of bone, structure, or muscle, traits of that express motion or repose, are concentrated upon this one artistic effect. That which is felt to be appropriate to the one class and not to the other exactly differentiates the distinction between the genuine Ideal and mere portraiture.
Some may imagine it possible for the artist to compose the ideal content of genuine types by a process of sifting and selection from the facts of immediate Nature, or quite possibly from the various physiognomies and compositions which collections of engravings from the copper-plate or the wood may furnish. But a process such as this of mere collection and sifting is not the end of the matter. An artist must maintain the creative impulse alert throughout. He must himself, in the strength of his own imagination, already impregnated with the knowledge of appropriate form and made vital with profound experience and emotion, give such an embodiment to the significance, which is the inspiring motive of the work, as will make it appear throughout as metal cast at one time and is one state of fusion.
To comprehend the Ideal in its intrinsic significance, that is to say, according to its fundamental notion, was a comparatively easy task. But the beauty of art, in so far as it is the Idea, is not to be restricted to the purely universal standpoint of its notional concept; even as so comprehended it must necessarily include within it determination and particularity, and is compelled to take definite embodiment as external reality. The question consequently arises in what way is the Ideal able still to assert itself in this process of objectification in the medium of external things and their finitude, and despite all that is antagonistic to ideality; and as a corollary to this we have to inquirehow finite and determinate existence is enabled to attach to itself the ideality of the beauty of all art.
We propose to regulate this inquiry with the following division of our subject matter.
First, the determination of the Ideal in its simplest terms.
Secondly, the determination of it, in so far as it proceeds by virtue of its particularity to a condition ofdiscordant partswithin itself and to their resolution, a condition we may generally, define asaction[297].
Thirdly, the determination of the Ideal from the point of view of it as anexternal object.
I. THE IDEAL DEFINITION AS SUCH
1. We have already observed that it is the function of art to make the Divine the focus or centre of its entire exposition. It is, however, only possible for thought in its pure medium, that is to say, apart from all the sensuous material of the figurative imagination, to comprehend the Divine in its essential significance ofunityanduniversality.To attempt to do otherwise, by imagining a picture of God more readily grasped by the perception of the senses, is, as we know, forbidden both Jews and Mahommedans. This cuts away the ground of the figurative arts, which absolutely require form as their medium in all its concreteness of actual life; and we have only lyrical poetry left us to celebrate in its exaltation the praise of His power and glory.
2. Considered, however, from the reverse point of view, we must equally assert that however much unity and universality are predicable of the Divine, He is in His essential substance determined, and, so far as He withdraws Himself from the pure quality, of such predicates in their abstraction, is thereby an object for the figurative sense and external perception. If the Divine is consequently apprehended and figuratively embodied for us through the forms of the imagination, we are at once confronted with a possible variety in such determination; and it is at this point that the actual realm of ideal art finds its commencement. For, in thefirstplace, the one Divine substance disunites andbreaks itself up into a multiplicity of self-subsistent gods, such as we find presented by the polytheistic system of Grecian art; and even in the religious consciousness of Christianity God is, in opposition to His purely spiritual unity, immediately revealed on Earth and in the world-process as man. And,secondly, the Divine, regarded generally in its determinate appearance and reality, is both present and realized in emotional feeling, will, and the education[298]of mankind. For this reason and in this sphere men who are filled with the Spirit of God, saints, martyrs, and, in short, all who share in the religious life, are equally the appropriate subject of ideal art. With this principle of the individuality of the Divine and its determinate existence realized necessarily in the world-process, we are face to face with—and this is thethirdpoint to be considered—the particularity of human existence. For the entire world of human emotion, with all that stirs it most profoundly—and what a power is implied in that open sea of feeling and passion, everything of deepest interest to the human heart—this entire content is nothing less than its exposition and expression. If it is true, then, that the Divine in its purest essence of reason is only the object of the thinking consciousness, it is equally true that Spirit, which takes to itself an actively bodily presence, so far, that is to say, and only so far as we find it reverberate in the heart of humanity, all this lies within the sphere of art. Once admit this, and we must admit the content of particular interests and actions, specific characters, and momentary situations, in short, the entire process of development in the external order; and it becomes of first importance to indicate under a general principle in what the relation between the Ideal and this positive determination consists.
3. In conformity with what we have already advanced it is clear that here, too, the Ideal will be most purely manifested in the representation—whether it be of gods, Christ, apostles, saints, or any other type of devout persons—which brings most clearly before us the qualities of beatified repose and satisfaction, a peace undisturbed with that which is earthly, and subject to the storms of life's manifoldedcomplexities, struggles, and contradictions. We are therefore not surprised to find that both the arts of sculpture and painting have been peculiarly fitted to incorporate under ideal form not merely the ancient gods, but Christ as saviour of the world, and individual apostles and saints. That which is the most essential truth in actual life is concentrated to a focus on itself in the determinate embodiment of art, rather than continually forced from its serenity through dependence upon finite conditions. This essential concentration is not destitute of particularity, but the divergent separation, which is a feature of the external and finite state, is purified to one simple definition, so that it appears as though all traces of external influence and the relation thus created were overcome. This deedless and infinite self-repose, this "taking a rest," as we find it, for example, in certain statues of Hercules, is just what constitutes the significance of the Ideal. If the gods are represented in contact with the process of Nature, they must still carry with them their immortal and unapproachable majesty. Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Mars, and their like are, it is true, definite personalities, but they are at the same time unyielding potentates and powers, which preserve within them their self-subsistent liberty, even when they are actively related to the world. And for this reason it is not merely that a specific particularity must characterize the determinacy of the Ideal, but spiritual freedom must be manifested thereby as totality, and in this state of repose suggest the potency of unfettered freedom of action. If we turn now from the gods to the less exalted plane of temporal existence and human life, we shall find the Ideal active in its representation of the substantial content of such humanity, and its dominant repression of wholly subjective particularity. By this we mean that all that is entirely isolate in feeling and action is wrested from the element of contingency, and particularity is represented in its concreteness, that is to say in its wider bond of relation with what most truly and intimately belongs to its life. When, for instance, we speak of the nobility, excellence, or perfection in particular men, we assert in so many words that the substantial core of what is spiritual, ethical, and divine has announced itself as prevailing in the individual, and man has submerged his active life, hisvolitions, his interests, and passions wholly in this substantive basis, that he may thereby give full satisfaction to the most authentic necessities of his soul.
At the same time, however much in the case of the Ideal the determination of Spirit and its external presence appears to be absorbed in the simple self-relation, the principle ofdevelopmentis likewise directly associated with the particularity unfolded[299]in determinate existence, and along with this in that relation to environment which necessitates both the opposition and conflict of clashing forces. This fact necessitates a closer examination of the determination of the Ideal regarded in this very aspect of differentiation and process, an aspect which we may in a general way define asaction.
II. THE ACTION
The gracious innocence of beatific enjoyment, the inactive repose, the majesty of power in self-reliant tranquillity, as also the concentrated compactness generally of that which is most substantial in a given content—all these are essentially ideal modes of determination. That which is inward, however, and spiritual is in an equal degree active movement and development. One-sidedness and division are inseparable from development. Spirit that is wholly itself and a totality will, expanding into all particularity, step forth out of its repose, in despite of all satisfaction therein, and involve itself in the contradictions of the broken and confused medley of earthly existence, and is by so doing unable in this divided world to withdraw itself from the ill-fortune and ill-health that clings to finite existence.
Even the immortal gods of Polytheism do not dwell in eternal peace, but take sides in mighty conflicts wherein contending passions and interests are roused, being subject themselves to Destiny; nay, more, even the God of Christians is, not delivered from a passage of humiliation endured through suffering and shame of death, is not spared the bitterness of soul, which perforce cried aloud: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me." And the mother of Christ experienced an agony of the same poignant character,and human life in every direction is a life of struggle, battle, and pain. For greatness and force of character is evolved in the greatness and force of contending elements, out of which Spirit concentrates itself again and again upon its unity. The intensity and depth of subjectivity is only the more emphasized, the more unbroken and unexampled the resistance of circumstances to its unity grows, and the more irreconcilable the contradictions appear under which it has to preserve its own self-centred equilibrium. In this development and through this alone the might of the Idea and the Ideal is preserved, for power consists precisely in this self-preservation through a process of self-negation.
Inasmuch as it is the fact, then, that the particularity of the Ideal passes into a relation with the external world through such development, and by so doing is made partaker in a world, which, so far from manifesting the ideally free association of the notion and its external reality, presents an existence which is just that which it ought not to be, in apprehending the true nature of this relation we have to consider how far the determinations which affect the Ideal either in themselves contain immediately the principle of Ideality, or are to a more or less degree susceptible of it.
In this connection we would direct attention to three fundamental points of view.
In thefirstplace we have theactual conditionof theworld generally, which is assumed as involved in individual action and its specific character.Secondly, we have theparticularityof condition, the determination of which introduces difference and tension within the substantive unity, which is the motive-spring of the action, in other words thesituation.
Thirdly, we have to consider the situation from the side of subjectivity, and furthermore the reaction by virtue of which the conflict and resolution of the element of difference is expressly asserted, in other words, theactionin its strict sense.
1. The universal World-condition
The ideal subjectivity is as such essentially a personal relation, a relation, that is to say, of self to every aspect of motion or activity, in which the self has to assert or perfectits own substance. And to effect this a world environment is necessary as the universal ground of its realization. When in reference to this we speak ofconditionwe understand by this the universally prevailing mode, under which, within the sphere of spiritual reality, that which is thesubstantiveand essentially coalescing fabric of the same is present. In this sense we refer to aconditionof education, the sciences, the religious sense, or even of finance, administration of justice, family life, and similar examples. All these objects of reference are, however, merely aspects of one and the same spiritual content, which is thus in and through them rendered explicit and real. In further considering the general condition of the world as the universal mode of the reality of Spirit it will be necessary to pursue our examination from the point of view of theWill.It is through the exercise of volition that Spirit generally unites itself to-determinate existence; and the substantialnexiwhich are immediately present in reality betray themselves in the specific modes in which the determinations of Will, ethical and legal conceptions, and, indeed, all that belongs to that which we are accustomed, in a general way, to define as justice, actively asserts itself.
The question consequently arises how such a universal condition must be characterized in order that it may appear adequate to the individuality of the Ideal.
(a) Pursuant to the foregoing considerations we may, to begin with, emphasize the following points:
(α) The Ideal is essential unity; not a purely formal and external unity, but the immanent unity of the content in itself. This substantive repose on its own resources we have already characterized as the self-sufficiency, rest, and beatitude of the Ideal. We will, in direct relation to the plane of discussion we have now reached, develop this characteristic ofself-subsistency[300], making it a primary demand of our argument that what we have termed the general condition of the world appear in such a self-subsistent form as will enable it to accept the embodiment of the Ideal.
(αα) Now self-subsistency is an equivocal expression to start with. In ordinary parlance that which is essentiallysubstantial is called simply self-subsistent by virtue of the element of causation being implied within this substantiality; we are wont to use it in this sense when describing the intrinsically divine and absolute. But as retained in this universality of substance merely as such it is not declared as itself subjective, and consequently meets with its irresolvable contradiction in the particularity of concrete individuality. In this bare antithesis all true self-subsistency disappears.
(ββ) On the other hand, it is not uncommon to find such subsistency ascribed to purely formal individuality, consisting solely in its self-reliance upon the fixed determinacy of its subjective characteristics. This subjectivity, however, in so far as the actual content of life drops away from it, so that the forces and substances which lie without it acquire in themselves an independent stability, and as such confront the subject and the inward life as a content wholly unrelated, lapses through this, too, into unequivocable contradiction with the actual substantiality of determinate existence, and forfeits all claim to self-subsistency and freedom of content. True self-subsistence consists alone in the unity and interpenetration of both individuality and universality with each other. The universal acquires through the individual a concrete existence; the subjectivity of the particular thing discovers for the first time in the universal the unassailable basis and the most genuine form of its realized totality.
(γγ) Consequently in making this demand of the universal world-condition we must ask for a form of self-subsistency in the same sense, namely, that the substantially universal in such a condition must contain within itself as the vehicle of its self-subsistence the form of subjectivity. The most obvious presentment of this identity is that of thought. For if thought is, in one aspect of it, subjective, in another it possesses universality as the product of its inherent activity, and encloses both universality and subjectivity in unfettered unity. The universal of thought is, however, not that of art, whose object is the beautiful. And, indeed, apart from this distinction, particular individuality as confronted by thought in its natural envisagement, or form, no less than in its active effects and complete realization, stands in no necessary correspondence with the universality of thought. There is, for example, a clear distinctionbetween the subject apprehended in its concrete content of the actual world and that which is simply the thinking subject, or at least it is open to such a distinction. The same kind of cleavage affects the form of the universal itself. In other words the moment the universal begins to assert itself in distinction from its otherwise related reality by that act it has inobjectiveexistence separated itself from all the varied play of its phenomenal particularity, and, in opposition to the same, has already established an independent position assured and powerful.
In the Ideal, however, it is precisely the particular individuality which ought to persist in inseparable co-ordination with the substantive reality, and to the full extent that freedom and the self-subsistency of the subjective principle may attach to the Ideal the world-environment of conditions and relations should possess no essential objectivity independent of the individual in the subjective aspect above referred to or already presupposed. For the ideal individual is a self-enclosed totality, which already includes the objective principle, and it must not be permitted to have independent motion and development apart from the individuality of the subject; otherwise the subject falls back into a purely subordinate position in contrast to a world whose independence is already assured. Consequently the universal must indeed be actual in the individual as that which is in a unique sense its own, but not so as the property of the individual, as athinker, but as that of hischaracterandtemperament.To put the same truth in another way, what is required for this unity of the universal and individual in art as opposed to the mediation and differentiation of thought, is the form ofimmediacy; and the self-subsistency which we claim here is the form of immediate self-subsistency. With that, however, the element ofcontingencyis associated. That is to say, so long as the universal and effective[301]constituents of spiritual life, such as the self-subsistency of individuals exhibits, are only presented to us in the immediate guise of subjective feeling, temperament, and disposition of character, and debarred any other category of existence, such are thereby already given over to the contingency of volitionand its realization. All we have left us, then, is what is peculiar to each individual viewed as such and his sensuous experience. Such a possession of what is nothing more than personal idiosyncracy is unable to assert for itself any further potency or necessity; it appears simply as inclusion of content, fixed achievement and at the same time arbitrary commitment of the wholly self-dependent subject to the influence of feeling, disposition, energy, general ability, cunning, and talents, instead of carrying out its realization over and over again according to a principle of universal import and acknowledged stability.
This type of contingency, then, is the characteristic quality of the condition which we required for the ground upon which all the varied wealth of the Ideal is to appear.
(β) In order to make more clear the actual character of the reality which is most adapted to artistic treatment we will contrast it with that aspect of existence which is not so adapted.
(αα) We find this pre-eminently where the ethical notion, that is, justice and rational freedom, have already won for themselves and maintain a fixed position in the socialorderregulated bylaw, so that, even in the external world, it appears as a positive and necessary power, which is quite independent of the individuality and subjectivity of specific temperament and characters. This is the case in the life of theState, where that life is manifested in a form adequate to the true notion of citizenship. For obviously it is not every chance association of human beings, any more than every patriarchal community, that will fulfil the requisites of State-life. In the true State laws, customs, and rights, in so far as they constitute the determinations of freedom applicable to all, are of paramount force even in thisuniversaland abstract relation, and are not conditioned in their applicability by the chance requirements of any individual's idiosyncracy. As the consciousness of society has issued for itself commands and laws in a mode of statement of general application, in the same way these are externally valid as such universal fiat, which proceeds in the path of order thereby indicated, armed with powers of restraint and compulsion against any individual who may attempt to assert his caprice in an injurious opposition to such regulations.
(ββ) Such a condition at once assumes a dividing line between the universal ordinances of the regulative understanding and the immediate life, connoting by this latter term the unity in which all that is substantive and essential in morals and the conduct of justice only finds a form for its existence in the experience ofindividuals, their ethical feeling and opinion, that is to say, and thereby alone is exercised. In the civilized State right and justice, even religion and science, or, at any rate, provident interest in religious and scientific education, are subject topubliccontrol, which directs and co-ordinates the same.
(γγ) The position, then, that isolated individuals occupy in the State is one which contracts them within a fixed and organized order, and subordinates them thereto; and they stand in this relation for the reason that the character and disposition of each is not the only embodiment of ethical forces; but, if the State to which they belong is a genuine example, they are on the contrary compelled to regulate all the external detail of their actions, opinions, and feelings with a due regard to what is legally permissible, and to bring the same into line with it. This dependence upon the objective rationality of the State in its power of self-assertion above all subjective caprice may either be regarded as a mere subjection, inasmuch as laws and institutions possess, as the paramount power, a constraining force, or we may see in it merely the free recognition and acceptance of the reason that underlies such a necessity of fact, an acknowledgment through which the individual finds himself again in that objective order.
But even in the latter case isolated individuals continue to remain as merely incidental facts, and apart from the organic reality of the State possess no real substantiality in themselves. For substantiality, in the sense we here use the term, is by no means only theparticularproperty of this or that individual, but a fullyexplicitreality[302], minted, as it were, in all aspects of it, and down to the merest detail in a mode universally applicable andnecessary.All that mere individuals can effect withvolitionandaccomplishmenteven in actions right, moral, and legal in themselves in the interestof and attendant upon the progress of the whole, remains and must always remain, in contrast with that whole, insignificant and a mere example. Their actions are always only an entirely partial realization of a single case; and, moreover, the realization of the same has no universal significance in the sense that the particular example of it is thereby of objective validity as law, or, as such law, makes its appearance. And for the same reason, to put the matter the other way, it is wholly unimportant whether the validity of right and justice is acknowledged by private individuals judging as individuals. The validity is a vital fact of State life which holds whether it be acknowledged or no. No doubt it is a matter of interest to the general public that every one should fall in with the order established and desire it; but the wishes of isolated individuals have no influence upon that interest in the sense that it is only by virtue of the assent of this or that person that right and a moral order is preserved. Such require no such isolated example of assent; and a breach of either is followed by punishment.
The subordinate position of private persons in the civilized State is finally emphasized in the fact that, whatever share any one may have in the general civic life, it is of a definite and in every case restricted character. In the real State work must have some relation to the general good[303], just as the active enterprise of the bourgeoisie in the commercial business is subdivided in the most varied way, so that the entire life of the State shall not appear as the concrete achievement of anysingleperson, or in general can be entrusted to the arbitrary wishes, enterprise, courage, resources, and discretion of such, but on account of the fact that it comprises activities and trades of countless complexity, and must be carried out by associations of business men at least as varied. The punishment of a criminal is no longer an affair of personal heroism or the virtue of anyoneindividual, but is throughout the entire process, in the investigation and discovery of the felonious act, in the pronouncement of judicial sentence and its execution, contributed to by different persons; nay, every important phase of such a process is in the same way subject to some kind of division of labour. To see that the laws are properly administered, then, is notwithin the special province of anyoneman, but results from an organized effort of great variety and the rules which direct it. Add to this every man who assists in such a process is bound to follow certain general principles which are laid down for his guidance, and all that is carried out under their direction is further subject to the criticism and control of yet higher officials.
(γ) In all such civic relations, then, we find that in a truly regulated State the public authority is not impressed with the imprimatur of any single person, but it is the general Will which prevails here in its universality, a condition under which the particular life of the individual has the appearance of vanishing or, at least, of becoming of a quite subsidiary importance. In a condition of things such as this the self-subsistency we were seeking for is out of the question. And for this reason we required for the free embodiment of individuality conditions which are precisely the reverse of this, in which the validity of the ethical principle derives its support from individuals, and only from individuals, men who make for themselves a great place in the arena of life through the activity of exceptional volitional power and the inherent greatness and effectiveness of their character. With such right is simply that which they choose to accept as such; and if that which is essentially moral is compromised by their action, there is no all-constraining public might which brings them to judgment and exacts punishment, but only the right of that inner voice of necessity, which accentuates itself as vital in particular character and through external circumstance and condition and only thus is actually existent. This is what differentiatespunishmentfromrevenge.The punishment exacted by law asserts the validity of the generally applicable and carefully defined right against the violation of that right, and makes use of the public power according to a definite process as its instrument, in other words, it employs a tribunal and a judge, an instrument to which personality is attached as something accidental. Even revenge may in a similar way find a justification; but such as it has is based entirely on thesubjective conscienceof those who deal with the criminal act, and, in pursuance of their ownprivateconvictions, avenge themselves on the unrighteous act and its perpetrator. The revengeof Orestes is, for example, justifiable; but he exacted it under the direction of the law which his own virtue prescribed, not as the execution of a judgment and a right. In the condition, then, that we claim as the most suitable for artistic treatment, that which is moral and just must be throughout personal, in the sense that its source is exclusively in the individual life, and it only is actual in such dependence. Moreover, to proceed with our contrasted conditions, in regulated States the external environment of man is made secure, and properly is protected, and he is only permitted to retain in absolute independence for himself his private views and opinions. But in that condition where the essential features of a State are not found the protection of life and property depends on the isolated energy and courage of each individual by himself, who is compelled to look after his own security and that of everything which belongs to him. Such a condition we are accustomed to identify with theheroic age.It is not, of course, our province here either to discuss or decide which of these two contrasted conditions of life is the worthier; suffice it to say that, so far as the Ideal of art is concerned, it is imperatively necessary that this hard and fixed line between the universal as an independent existence and individuality should be removed, however much this distinction may be necessary in other directions for the realization of human existence. The reason of this is that Art and its Ideal is just that universal, in so far as it may be presented to the perception of the senses, and by such presentment is permitted to enter into the variety and living forms of the world of objects.
(αα) What we were looking for, therefore, is supplied us by the heroic age, for it is here that virtue,ἀρετὴin the full sense of that Greek word, creates the root-basis of actions. In this connection it would appear that we must distinguish betweenἀρετὴandvirtusas understood by the Roman themselves. The Romans had already their State, Fatherland, and legal institutions, and as contrasted with the State, as the controlling object of all, they had surrendered personality. To be simply a citizen of Rome, to have one object for the imagination and for every other personal energy to centre itself upon, namely, the fatherland and its sovereign majesty, therein lies the earnestness and grit ofRoman virtue. Heroes, on the contrary, are individuals who undertake and accomplish a complete enterprise in consistent reliance upon their personal resources and initiative, and with whom it is consequently a purely arbitrary act of their own when they execute anything in accordance with the moral principle. This immediate unity, however, of what we may call the substantive import and individuality of inclination, impulse, and will is the characteristic of Greek virtue. According to this view personality is a law to itself without any further subjection to a law, judgment, and tribunal of independent subsistence. The Greek heroes make their appearance in an epoch anterior to legal enactment, or they are themselves the founders of States, so that right and social order, law and ethical custom, emanate from them, and persist as their own creation in an indefeasible relation to them. In this way Hercules was regarded so highly by the ancients themselves, and represents an Ideal of original and heroic virtue. His free and self-reliant virtue, with which he championed the right and battled against the monstrosities of men and Nature is not a prevailing characteristic of the age, but belongs to him as an exclusive and unique possession. And we may add he was not strictly a moral hero, as his reception of the fifty daughters of Thespius in one night[304]clearly shows us; neither would it appear from the tale about the Augaean stables is he pre-eminent for gentility. He is rather the general type of self-reliant strength and resource in its championship of right and justice, to exemplify which he elected summarily and from a free choice to undergo countless toils and labours. It is true that some of his deeds were carried out at the instigation of Eurystheus, but this submission is, after all, rather a formal association than a real one, no connection at least of legal validity or inevitable necessity through which the strength of his self-reliant personality was diverted from its independent course.
The Homeric heroes are of a similar type. No doubt they have their clan chieftain; but the associating bond is no fixed relation already determined by law, which enforces their submission; of their own free will it is that they followAgamemnon, who is no monarch in the modern sense of the term. Consequently every hero volunteers his own advice, the enraged Achilles acts independently for himself in his separation, and, speaking generally, each and all come and go, act, or take their leisure as they please. In much the same independent position, that is to say, united in no fixed organization, to which they are as individuals entirely subordinate, we find the heroes of Arabian poetry portrayed, and even the Shah-Rameh of Ferdusi furnishes us with similar examples. In latter-day Christendom the age of feudalism and knighthood supplies a fertile field for the free growth of heroic enterprise and the type of individuality which belongs to it. Of such are the heroes of the round table, no less than the heroic circle of which Charles the Great is the focus. Charles is, much like Agamemnon, surrounded with independent chieftains of heroic mould, a union which as such is powerless[305]. He is consequently always compelled to take counsel with them, however much each of them may be influenced by private passions; he may bluster like a very Olympian Jupiter, and none the less find himself and his undertakings suddenly left in the lurch while his confederates are off on some adventures of their own. The Cid is perhaps the most complete example of the type. He, too, is the ally of a confederacy, the dependent of a king, and is bound to render duty as vassal; but in opposition to this obligation he is pre-eminently influenced by the principle of honour, the purely personal consideration of his own glory, nobility, and reputation[306]. And so in this case also the king can only determine a fixed line of action and make war after consulting and obtaining the consent of his vassals. If this is not given they do not fight, and, moreover, a mere majority of votes is not sufficient to compel them. Every man is independent of his neighbour, and exercises his will and steers his own course as such.We find in the accounts given us of Saracen heroes an equally brilliant picture of self-reliant and still more inflexible personality. Even the Reinecke Fuchs fable is a fresh example of this state of things. Here, it is true, the lion is master and king, but the wolf and the bear sit in council. Even Reinecke and the rest do just what they like; and when there is a general outcry, the sly fellow either gets out of the mess with his story-telling, or manages to make some particular interest of king and queen work to his own advantage, and in his own cunning way talks over his sovereign somehow.
(ββ) Moreover, in much the same way that each individual example of this heroic type ofpersonalitypersists in immediate unity with all that he may will, act, and accomplish, a similar unity is further maintained in all the consequences which flow from such initiative. When we ourselves, on the contrary, act or estimate a particular action, we assume that only full responsibility can attach where the individual under consideration is in complete possession of the true nature of his action and its attendant circumstances. If the content of those surrounding conditions is otherwise than that which is present to the agent's consciousness in such a case a man nowadays will not take upon himself the burden of all that is implied in his action. He will thrust on one side that part of it which he would not have done had he known completely or not misconceived the circumstances, and he only accepts that which was fully under his cognisance and carried out with deliberate intention in conformity thereto. The heroic character makes no such distinction. He adheres simply to all the consequences and makes good his personal responsibility for the whole. Œdipus on his way to consult the oracle meets a certain man, quarrels with him and strikes him. In those days such an act was not a crime at all. He only returned a blow after being vigorously attacked. But the stranger was his father. Œdipus further marries a royal lady. His wife is his mother. Without knowing it he commits an act of shame. On learning the truth he acknowledges such enormities to their full extent, inflicts a punishment on himself as murderer of his father and a man of incest, and this although he was entirely ignorant of the true nature of these acts, or had any intention of doingthem. The self-reliant stubbornness and entirety of the heroic character refuses to parcel out responsibility and knows nothing of such distinctions as personal intention and the objective act and its consequences. In the evolution and ramification of an action as we moderns regard it these opposed points of view constantly recur, and guilt is thrown into the background as far as possible. No doubt our view of the matter is more in accordance withethical principle, in so far as the condition of a personal knowledge of the particular circumstances, or the consciousness of an object good in itself, in short, generally the intent of an act, is what materially assists us in our judgment. But in the heroic age, where we find the individual essentially indivisible and the objective act proceeding from himself as entirely his own, each person claims absolutely all that he may do, and refuses to surrender one jot or tittle of responsibility therefor.
To an extent equally minute the heroic figure is separated from the ethical whole, to which he belongs, and his self-consciousness is bound up wholly in substantial unity with that whole. According to the views in vogue now we draw a line of distinction as private individuals between objects which are wholly personal and those which affect the community. The individual acts in all that he does from his own private personality as distinct from others, and views even his actions rather as relative to this than as part of all that is farmed out by the organic whole to which he belongs. We consequently make a distinction between individuals and their families. Such is unknown in the heroic age. The guilt of ancestors adheres to their descendants, and an entire family will suffer for the original defaulter. Men inherit the fatality of guilt and transgression. A condemnation such as this appears to us unjust as an irrational subjection to a blind fate. With us the achievements of ancestors reflect no more honour on children and descendants than the punishments and crimes of such contaminate those that follow after them, and least of all is their private character thus affected; nay, modern opinion is already close to the view that the confiscation of family property is a punishment which violates the profounder conception of liberty. But in the ancient and more plastic totality the individualis not so isolated, but rather a member of his family and race. For this reason the character, action, and fortunes of the family continue to be the private affair of each member of it; and so far from denying the actions of his parents, each man voluntarily accepts them as his own; they live in him, and he is just that which his fathers were, suffered, or transgressed. This appears to us a hardship, but that which we replace it with, this standing alone on our own possessions[307], and the more subjective self-stability thus acquired is also from another point of view only the abstract self-sufficiency of each. The individuality of heroic times is none the less of a more ideal type, because it does not declare itself as satisfied with the mere form of freedom and infinity, but remains in unalterable and immediate unity with all that is most substantial in the relations of spirit which it of itself endows with living actuality. In such an individuality the substantial is immediately individual, and the individual thereby himself essentially substantive.
(γγ) From considerations such as these we conclude that the ideal figures of art must be sought for in the age of mythos, that is to say, speaking generally, in past times, where we shall find the soil most congenial to their growth. If such material is taken from the age we live in, whose most native form, as we actually find it, is tightly shut off from the imagination, it matters not how we regard it, then the modifications which the poet can hardly avoid making in it will not readily escape the appearance of a purely artificial and intentional composition. The Past entirely belongs to memory, and memory perfects the infolding veil of character, events, and actions in the vesture of universality, through which the particular external or contingent detail is unable to penetrate. Many trifling circumstances and mediating conditions, many varied and isolated phases of activity, are inseparable from the actual existence of an action or a character: in the mirror of memory all these insignificant details are obliterated. In this liberation of his work from what is accidental in the external fact the artist has a freer hand for his artistic powers of composition, when dealing with that which is individual and particular in it, if the actions, histories, and characters are borrowed fromancient times. He has, it is true, also historical memories, out of which he must mould a content conformable to the universal; but the picture of the Past possesses, as already observed, an advantage, taken simply as a picture of greater universality, while the manifold texture of mediating condition and circumstance, interwoven as it is in the entire framework of finite existence which surrounds it, offers him material ample enough to prevent his hand obliterating the individuality, which is essential to his work of art. The more closely we consider it, the clearer will be our conclusion that a heroic age has the advantage over later and more civilized times in that the isolated character and personality generally in such an age does not as yet find what is substantive either in the sphere of ethical custom, or moral obligation opposed to itself in the necessary embodiment of legal institution, and thereby presents immediately to the poet all that the form of the Ideal requires. Shakespeare has, for example, selected much material for his tragedies from chronicles and earlier romances, framed upon a condition of life which has not as yet received the impression of a fully articulated social order, but in which the energy of individuals, as emphasized in personal resolve and achievement, is still the prevailing characteristic. His genuine historical dramas have, on the contrary, a vein of historical substance running through them in the strictest sense, and for this reason lean farther away from an ideal exposition, although here, too, both circumstances and actions are made to fall in with, or are removed to suit, the unyielding self-sufficiency and wilfulness of particular characters. No doubt this characteristic remains for the most part in their case a purely formal self-inclusion, whereas if we contrast it with the self-subsistency of heroic characters we find that here the essentialcontentof all such have proposed to accomplish is bound up therewith.
It is on account of this contrast that we should find a reason for repeating the general thesis in connection with the Ideal, to the effect that theIdyllicis exceptionally adapted for its expression, inasmuch as where that is presented the cleavage between what is determined by legal necessity and the living person is wholly absent. To this we must reply that, however simple and original idyllic situations may be,however far removed they may be from the artificial prose-existence of society, such simplicity, if we consider the nature of its content, has, in fact, too insignificant an interest to satisfy the most substantial and essential requirements of the Ideal. Material of this sort fails entirely to include the most weighty motives of heroic character such as Fatherland, moral and family problems, and their development; it is a kind of treatment which is apt to select as the very core of its subject such a fact as the loss of a single sheep or the falling in love of a girl. In this way the Idyllic not unfrequently becomes merely the resource and recreation of our hearts, to which poets such as Gessner, for example, will add their dose of sickly sweetness and sentimentalism. The idyllic aspect of the days we live in have, further, this defect, that thisnaïveté, this domesticated or rural atmosphere in the emotional aspect of love or the enjoyment of a good cup of coffee in the open and things of that sort are not likely to awake much interest, when we find in them nothing but the country parson flavour—find them cut off, that is to say, from all wider relations with the outside world, and not a trace of the profounder web of purposes with which that world is interwoven. It is precisely here that we have reason to admire the genius of Goethe, when he concentrated his poetic talent on material of this kind in his poem of "Hermann and Dorothea." It is true that he selects from the life of the Present a particular theme of very limited extension, but at the same time he unfolds before us as the background and atmosphere of the picture in which his characters are portrayed the great interests of the revolution and his own native country, and, in short, associates with a subject-matter necessarily narrow in its range facts of world-history of the widest and most potent significance.
Generally speaking, we shall find that the ills of life and its evil, war, battles, and revenge, are not excluded from the subject-matter of the Ideal, but are frequently the very source and substance of the heroic age and its myths, whose form grows all the wilder and sterner in proportion to the remoteness of such a period from a fully developed society of law and moral order. In the chivalrous adventures of knight-errantry we find the heroes of such tales themselvesoften enough sharing the savage and dissolute characteristics of the times, and in much the same way the martyrdom of the heroes of the Church presupposes a condition of ferocious cruelty around them. At bottom, however, the Christian ideal, which is based on the depth and inwardness of man's spiritual nature, stands in a relation of entire indifference to the external world.
We have demonstrated that the condition of particular centuries is more applicable to the Ideal; in the same way Art selects pre-eminently a particular class of society for the form under which the Ideal shall appear, the order, that is to say, ofprinces.And the selection is made not because art is necessarily aristocratic, or has any predilection for gentility[308], but simply on account of the perfection in which free will and its products may be exemplified imaginatively through the highly placed class. We have in the chorus of ancient tragedy the characteristics and universal background of general maxims, modes of imaginative thought, and emotion, before which the definite movements of the action proceed. In contrast to this appear the more clearly defined individualities of the personages immediately concerned in the action, men and women of authority, and belonging for the most part to royal families. On the other hand, the main impression forced upon us, when seeing representatives of a lower class carrying on pursuits which are of a narrower range, is one of subjection; and, indeed, in an artificial[309]state of society the freedom of action of such a class is fettered in every direction, and is necessarily involved with all its passions and interests in all the medley and despotic forces of external circumstance. It is, in fact, held closely behind the invincible power of the social order, which it is unable to come out of, and is an alien from the authority of the dominant order, even when that is asserted in accordancewith just principle. In this limitation of outlook through the hard conditions of life all real independence is wrecked. For this reason both the circumstances and characters which we find in such a sphere of life are more appropriate to the treatment of comedy, everybody being permitted in comedy to rate themselves as they please, and to lay claims to a self-sufficiency in all that they will and think, which is none the less immediately negatived by the spiritual no less than the external dependence of their lives. As a rule, such a false and second-hand self-subsistency must inevitably fall to pieces when confronted with the actual conditions of life and the distorted view which is formed of them. The force of circumstances is presented to the lower orders of society on a totally different level from that in which it acts upon rulers and princes. In Schiller's "Braut von Messina" Don Caesar is able to exclaim, and justly: "there stands no higher judge than myself!" And when he has to be punished he must himself give judgment and execute it. He is, in fact, subject to no external necessity of right and law, and even when punishment is the question is wholly dependent on himself. The characters in the Shakespearean drama do not entirely belong to the princely order and only partially are taken from mythical sources, but they are placed in the era of civil wars, in which the ties of social order and legislative enactment are either weakened or shattered, and they secure from such a condition the exceptional independence and self-sufficiency we are looking for.