(α) This contest exposes an absolute catastrophe, and is the essential deed of the gods, by virtue of which the fundamental distinction between the old and new gods is first made visible. Consequently we ought not to point to the war, which exposes this distinction as a mythical story in the same way we should point to any other myth; rather we should regard it as the mythos, which in fact punctuates a great moment of transition, and expresses the creation of the later theogony.
(β) The result of this violent strife among the gods is the ruin of the Titans, the unique victory of the new gods, whoforthwith receive in their assured dominion a plenitude of gifts in every direction from the imagination. The Titans, on the other hand, are banished, and compelled to huddle in the hollows of the Earth, or, like Oceanos, dally on the dark skirts of the clear, joyful world, or still endure many grievous punishments. Prometheus, for example, is fettered on the Scythian mountains, where an eagle insatiable devours the liver that ever renews itself. In like manner an infinite and inexhaustible thirst torments Tantalus in the lower world, and Sisyphus is for ever constrained to roll up hill in vain the rock that for ever rolls back again. These punishments are, in truth, the false type of infinity, the yearning of the indefinite aspiration or the unsatisfied craving of natural desires, which in their eternal repetition fail to discover rest or final satisfaction. For the truly godlike intuition of the Greeks regarded the mere extension into space and the region of the indefinite, not, as some modern votaries of such longings do, as the highest attainment of mankind, but as a damnation which it relegates to Tartarus.
(γ) If we ask ourselves in a general way, what from this point must for classical art fall into the background, failing, that is, to have any right to figure as its final form and adequate content, we shall find at the earliest point of departure the elements of Nature. With them disappear from the world of the new gods all that is gloomy[170], fantastical, void of clarity, every wild confusion between Nature and Spirit, between significances essentially substantive and the accidental incidents of externality. In a world such as this the creations of an unrestricted imagination, which has not yet for its principle the measure of spiritual proportion, have no place, and are compelled and justly so to vanish before the clear light of day. We may furbish up the monstrous Cabeiri[171], the Corybantes, these representatives of procreative force as much as we choose, yet for all that such presentations in every trait of them—to say nothing of the ancient Baubo, whom Goethe sets careering over the Blocksberg onan old sow—belong to a greater or less degree to the twilight of consciousness. Only that which is spiritual imperatively demands the light; and that which does not reveal itself and in itself expound its own interpretation is the unspiritual, which fades again once more into Night and obscurity. That which is of Spirit on the contrary reveals itself, and purifies itself, by itself defining its external form, from the caprice of the imagination, the flood of obstructing shapes, and the otherwise perturbed accessories of symbolical sense.
For the same reasons we now find that human activity, in so far as it is limited merely to Nature's wants and their satisfaction, falls into the background. That old right, Themis, Dike and the rest, as one not determinate through laws which originate in self-conscious Spirit, loses its unimpaired validity, and in the same way, if conversely, that which is purely local, albeit there is still room left for its play, passes by incorporation into the universal figures of the gods; in which we may still trace the lingering vestiges that remain of it. For as in the Trojan war the Greeks fought and conquered asonepeople, so, too, the Homeric gods, who already have their conflict with the Titans behind them in the past, are one essentially secure and defined god-world, a world which is yet further with ever-increasing fulness made definite and unassailable by later poetry and the plastic arts. This invincible consistency[172]is in its relation to the content of the Greek world of gods Spirit and only Spirit; but not Spirit in its abstract ideality, but as identified with its external and adequate existence, just as with Plato soul and body, as in union brought into one nature and in this consolidation from one piece, is at once the Divine and Eternal.
Despite, then, the victory of the new gods that which came before them still remains in the classical type of art partly preserved and revered in the original form in which we have already recognized it, partly under a transmuted mode. It is only the limited Jewish national god which is unable to tolerate other gods in its company for the reason that it purports astheone god to include everything, although in regard to the definition of its form it fails to pass beyond its exclusiveness wherein the god is merely the God of His own people. Such a god manifests his universality in fact only through his creation of Nature and as Lord of the heavens and the earth. For the rest he remains the god of Abraham, who led his people Israel out of Egypt, gave them laws on Sinai, and divided the land of Canaan among the Jews. And through this narrow identification of him with the Jewish nation he is in a quite peculiar way the god of this folk; and consequently, speaking generally, neither stands in positive consonance with Nature, nor appears truly as absolute Spirit referable back from his determinate character and objectivity to his universality. Consequently this austere, national god is so jealous, and ordains in his jealousy that men shall see elsewhere merely false idols. The Greeks, on the contrary, discovered their gods among other nations and accepted what was foreign among themselves. For the god of classical art has spiritual and bodily individuality and is for this reason not the one and only one, but merely aparticulargodhead, which, as everything else that shares particularity, has a circle of particularity which surrounds it or in opposition to it as its Other, from which it is the result, and which is qualified to preserve its validity and worth. The process here is analogous to that of the particular divisions of Nature. Although the world of vegetation is the truth of the geological image of Nature, the animal again the higher truth of the vegetable, yet the mountains and the flooded land persist as the solid basis of trees, shrubs, and flowers, which in their turn do not lose their existence alongside the world of animals.
(a) The earliest form under which among the Greeks wecome upon this ancient residue, are theMysteries.The Greek Mysteries were nothing secret in the sense that the Greek nation was not in a general way aware of their content. On the contrary, the majority of the Athenians and a large number of foreigners were among the initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries; but they were not permitted to speak of that in which they had been instructed through initiation. In our own times people have been at great pains to discover more nearly the type of conceptions which prevailed in these mysteries, and to investigate the kind of religious services which were used in their celebration. It appears, however, that on the whole there was no extensive wisdom or profound knowledge concealed in the Mysteries. They merely preserved the old traditions, the basis, that is, of what was latterly reconstructed by the genuine type of art, and consequently, so far from containing the true, higher, and more valuable content, rather unfolded that which was of less significance and of inferior rank. Whatever it was, this holiness was not clearly expressed in the mysteries, but merely handed down in its symbolical features. And in fact this character of secrecy and reticence is bound up with the old telluric, sidereal, and Titanic deposit; Spirit alone is the revealed and the self-revealer. Consonant, too, with this it is the symbolical mode of expression which constitutes the other aspect of secrecy in the mysteries, because in symbolism the interpretation remains obscure, and contains a something other than the external image, which it purports to display, in fact offers to the view. In this sense, for example, the mysteries of Demeter and Bacchus were, it is true, spiritually interpreted, and contained a profounder sense. The form of the same remained quite externally isolate from this content, so that it was impossible clearly to disengage it from it. Consequently the Mysteries had very little influence over art; for though we are told of Aeschylus, that he willfully betrayed something which attached to the Demeter mysteries, this merely amounts to an assertion on his part that Artemis had been the daughter of Ceres, which is not very profound wisdom after all.
(b) But,secondly, we find that the reverence and preservation of the oldrégimeis yet more clearly indicated in actual artistic representation. We have already referred toPrometheus as the chastised Titan who appears in the stage immediately prior to that of genuine art. We meet with him however again as delivered. For as the Earth and as the Sun, so also the fire, which Prometheus brought down to men, that is, the eating of flesh, which he taught them, is an essential feature of human life, a necessary condition for the satisfaction of their needs; and consequently Prometheus is honoured with an enduring recognition[173]. In the Oedipus Colonos of Sophocles we have the words:
χῶÏoÏ‚ μὲν ἱεÏὸς πᾶς ὅδ ἔστ· ἔχει δΠνινσεμνὸς Î oσειδῶν· á¼Î½ δ' ὠπoÏφόÏoÏ‚ θeὸςTιτὰν Î Ïoμηθὲυς[174]
and the scholiast adds that Prometheus was revered in the Academy along with Athene, as Hephaestos was, and a temple was shown in a grove of the goddess, and an ancient pedestal near the entrance, where there was not only an image of Hephaestos, but also one of Prometheus. Prometheus, however, according to the statement of Lysimachides, was represented as primary and more ancient, and he held in his hand a sceptre; Hephaestos as the younger and in the second place, and the altar on the pedestal was shared by both. Prometheus, then, according to the tale, was not obliged to endure his chastisement for ever, but was released from his fetters by Hercules. In this story of his liberation we come across certain remarkable traits. In other words, Prometheus is delivered from his agony because he informs Zeus of the danger which threatens his empire at the hands of the thirteenth descendant. This descendant is Hercules, to whom, we may add in illustration, Poseidon exclaims in the "Birds" of Aristophanes[175], "he will do himself an injury, if he strike a bargain with reference to the transference of the divine headship, for all that Zeus leaves behind him on his decease will most assuredly take place." And, in fact, Hercules is the only man who passed over into Olympus, became a god after being a man, and stands higher thanPrometheus, who remained a Titan. Moreover, the overturning of the old race of tyrants is intimately connected with the name of Hercules and the Heraklidae. The Heraklidae break up the power of the old dynasties and royal houses, in which we may remark the selfish desire of personal aggrandizement and lawlessness no less than disregard for their subjects admitted no judicial restraint, and consequently was responsible for the grossest cruelties. Hercules, though himself in the service of a superior lord, overcame the savagery of this despotism.
In a similar way we may, to linger once more for a moment by the illustrations we adduced on a former page, recall again to our readers the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The conflict between Apollo and the Eumenides is to be settled by the intervention of the Areopagus. In other words, a human tribunal, as a whole, at whose head stands Athene, stands forth as the concrete spirit of the folk, and is as such to terminate the collision. The judges, however, give an equal number of votes for condemnation and acquittal, having an equal reverence both for the Eumenides and Apollo; the white pebble of Athene, however, decides the conflict in favour of Apollo. The Eumenides break out in indignation against this decision of Athene; she, however, allays their wrath by promising them worship and altars in the famous grove of Colonos. What the Eumenides have to give in return to her people is a protection against the evils[176]which result from the elements ofNature, the earth, the heavens, the sea, and the winds; they have further to ward off unfruitfulness in the fields, the failure of living seed, and misbirths in all else that is procreated. Pallas, on her part, takes beneath her protection the strife of wars and sacred contests. Ina similar way Sophocles[177], in his "Antigone," not only makes Antigone suffer and die, but to a like extent we find that Kreon is punished by the loss of his wife and the death of Haemon, both of whom perish through the death of Antigone.
(c)Thirdly, the ancient gods do not merely preserve theirplace in juxtaposition to the new, but, what is of more importance, the natural basis itself is maintained by the new gods, and receives, continuing to made its echo sound in them, if in conformity with the spiritual individuality of classical art, a reverential acceptance.
(α) And for this reason people are not unfrequently led into the error of conceiving the Greek gods, in respect to their human character and form, as mereallegoriesof such natural elements. This is not so. In this sense we frequently hear it stated that Helios is the god of the sun, Diana the goddess of the moon, or Neptune the god of the sea. Such a separation, however, between the natural element, as content, and the humanly shaped personification, as form, no less than the external association of both, regarded merely as the masterdom of the god over the natural fact, as we are accustomed to it in the Old Testament, is quite inapplicable to Greek conceptions. We never find among the Greeks such an expression as ὠθεὸς τoῦ ἡλίoυ, τῆς θαλάσσης, and so forth, though it is quite certain they would have used with others such an expression for the relation in question, had it been compatible with their point of view. Helios is the sun as god.
(β) We must, however, at once insist on the further fact that the Greeks never regarded mere Nature as itself divine. On the contrary, they retained the definite conception that what was purely natural was not divine. This is partly contained, if unexpressed, in what their gods actually are, in part also it is expressly stated so by themselves. Plutarch, for example, in his essay upon Isis and Osiris, refers incidentally to the modes of interpretation current of myths and divinities. Osiris and Isis belong to the Egyptian theogony, and had yet more of the natural element for their content than the Greek gods, who correspond to them; they merely express the longing and conflict to escape out of the circle of Nature to that of Spirit. In later times they were very highly honoured in Rome, and the mysteries allied with them were of great importance. Yet for all that it is Plutarch's view that it would be an interpretation beneath the level of the subject to think of explaining them as sun, earth, or water. Only that which in the sun, Earth, and so forth, is without measure or co-ordination,defective or superfluous, can strictly be referred to the natural elements, and all that is good and conformable to order is as exclusively a work of Isis, and the rational principle, the λόγoς, a work of Osiris. It is not, therefore, the natural as such which is adduced as the substantive content of these gods, but the spiritual principle, the universal, λόγoς, reason, conformity to law.
By virtue of this insight into the spiritual nature of the gods, the more definite elements of Nature, then, had also among the Greeks been differentiated from the later gods. We have, it is true, grown accustomed to associate Helios and Selene, to take two examples, with Apollo and Diana: in Homer, however, they are presented as distinct. The same remark applies to Oceanos and others.
(γ) But in thethirdplace an echo still lingers in the new gods of the natural powers, whose operative energies themselves belong to the spiritual individuality of the gods. We have already indicated, at an earlier stage, the basis of this positive connection of the spiritual and natural in the ideal of classical art, and may limit our observations here to a few illustrations.
(αα) In Poseidon resides, as in Pontus and Oceanus, the might of the world-encircling sea, but his power and activity extends further. He built Ilium and was a shield of Athens. Generally he is revered as the founder of cities, in so far as the sea is the element of sea-faring, of commerce, and a bond between mankind. Apollo, in like manner, is the light of knowledge, of oracular speech, and preserves, moreover, a distant relation with Helios, as the natural light of the sun. Critics differ, no doubt—take Voss and Creuzer for examples—as to whether Apollo is referable to the sun. One may, however, in fact, assert that he both is and is not the sun, since he is not limited to its natural content, but is raised thereby to the significance of a spiritual import. It is impossible to escape the inevitable connection in which knowledge and light, the light of Nature and that of Spirit, if we regard their fundamental characteristics, stand relatively to one another. Light regarded as a element of Nature is that which manifests. Without our seeing Light itself it makes visible to us the illuminated objects around. By means of Light everything grows on the plane of contemplationfor something else. Spirit, that is the free light of consciousness, knowledge, and cognition, possesses just the same character of manifestation. The distinction, apart from the differences of the respective spheres, in which these two modes of manifestation reveal themselves, consists simply in this, that Spirit reveals itself, and in that which it brings us, or which it assimilates as content[178], remains constant to itself. Light, however, does not make itself apprehensible to itself, but, on the contrary, makes that which is other and external to itself apprehensible; and though, no doubt, we may say this is done from its own resources, yet it cannot, as the Spirit can, once more retire into itself. For this reason it does not win the higher unity which finds itself constant by itself in another. Just as, then, light and knowledge are closely associated, we find in Apollo, as spiritual god, still a recollection of the light of the sun. For this reason Homer, for example, ascribes the plague in the camp of the Greeks to Apollo, which, in such a locality is in the summer solstice ascribable to the operation of the sun. We may add that his deadly arrows have unquestionably a symbolical reference to the solar rays. In the external representation it is external signs which more closely determine under what specific interpretation the god shall be mainly accepted.
More particularly when we follow up the origins of the later gods we are able to recognize the natural element, which the gods of the classic ideal retain in themselves. This is a point which Creuzer in particular has made clear. For example, in the conception of Jupiter there are many features which indicate a solar source. The twelve labours of Hercules, the expedition, for example, in which he carries off the apples of the Hesperides, have relation both to the sun and the twelve months. At the root of the conception of Diana we have the distinct suggestion of the mother of Nature, just as the Ephesian Diana, for example, which floats between the old world and the new, has for her fundamental content Nature generally, procreation and nutrition; which latter feature is clearly indicated in a part of her external form, namely the breasts. If we consider the Greek Artemis, on the other hand, the huntress, whoslays wild animals, we find that in her humanly beautiful and maiden form and self-continency, this aspect falls entirely into the background, although the half moon and the arrows still distinctly recall to us Selene. To take Aphrodite in the same way, the more we follow her back to her original source in Asia the more she approaches a force of Nature. Once arrived in Greece, the spiritual and more individual aspect of her grace, charm, and love, passion is more emphasized, albeit here, too, the natural basis is by no means entirely absent. In the same way the productivity of Nature is, no doubt, the original cradle which gives us Ceres. Starting from that we proceed to the spiritual content, whose relations are developed from agriculture, property, etc. The source in Nature of the Muses is the murmur of the spring-water; and Zeus himself may be accepted under one aspect as the universal Power of Nature, and is revered as the Thunderer, as with Homer already thunder is the sign of misfortune or assistance, is, in short, an omen, and as such is relative to that which is human and spiritual. Juno, too, implies a natural association with the firmament of cloud and the heavenly sphere in which the gods move to and fro. So we are told, for example, that Zeus laid Hercules on the breast of Juno, and from the milk which spouted thereout flashed into being the Milky Way.
(ββ) Just as, then, in the later gods, from one point of view the universal elements of Nature are dethroned, while from another they are maintained, we have the same process repeated in that which is, more strictly speaking, animal, which we merely regarded in a former passage on the side of its degradation. We are now able to point out a more positive aspect under which such may be considered. Since, however, in the classic gods the symbolic mode of configuration is abolished, and they secure as their content the spirit that is self-luminous, the symbolicalsignificanceof animals must tend to pass away precisely in proportion as the animal form has taken to itself the right to mingle with the human under a mode naturally alien to it. It will therefore appear merely as a significant attribute, and is established in juxtaposition to the human form of the gods. Thus we find the eagle as attendant on Jupiter, the peacock on Juno, the doves as accompanying Aphrodite, the hound,Anubis, as watch-dog of the lower world, and so forth. If, therefore, there is still a symbolical aspect which attaches to the ideals of the spiritual gods, yet, if contrasted with the original significance, it will appear of little importance; and the natural significance, if strictly regarded, which previously constituted the essential content, will merely persist as a residue, and mere particular mode of externality, which, on account of its accidental character, more often than not has a grotesque appearance, for the reason that the former significance is no longer there. Inasmuch as the ideal content of these gods is that which partakes of Spirit and humanity, the externality pertinent to them approximates to ahumancontingency and weakness. In this connection we may once more recall to memory the numerous love affairs of Zeus. According to their original symbolic significance, they are related, as we already have seen, to the universal activity of generation, that is, the vitality of Nature. As the love affairs of Zeus, however, which, in so far as his marriage with Here is to be regarded as the permanent and substantive sexual relation, appear in the light of an infidelity towards his spouse, they have the complexion of accidental adventures, and exchange their symbolical sense for unconnected tales which possess the character of purely capricious invention.
With this degradation of the powers which are purely natural and of the animal aspect no less than of the abstract universality of spiritual relations, and with the re-acceptance of the same within the spiritual individuality, permeated and Suffused as it is with Nature, we leave behind us the origins of classical art which are stamped with necessity and are presupposed by its essence, inasmuch as it is on this path that the Ideal evolves itself by its own agency with that which it is according to its notion. This reality of the spiritual gods adequate to its notion carries us on to the genuine Ideals of the classical type of art, which, in contrast to the oldrégimewhich has been vanquished, represent immortality[179], for mortality generally resides in the incompatibility of the notion to its determinate existence.
[139]Als eine Unwürdigkeit. As something unworthy of the full notion of its gods.
[139]Als eine Unwürdigkeit. As something unworthy of the full notion of its gods.
[140]That is, the relegation of it to a position of inferiority.
[140]That is, the relegation of it to a position of inferiority.
[141]This is the German word. By genius I presume Hegel means "the familiar spirit" of a particular animal. Apparently this rather than "kind." "Iliad," II, 308; XII, 208.
[141]This is the German word. By genius I presume Hegel means "the familiar spirit" of a particular animal. Apparently this rather than "kind." "Iliad," II, 308; XII, 208.
[142]"Odyss." XIV, 414; XXIV, 215.
[142]"Odyss." XIV, 414; XXIV, 215.
[143]"Metam." I, vv. 150-243.
[143]"Metam." I, vv. 150-243.
[144]"Metam." VI, vv. 440-676.
[144]"Metam." VI, vv. 440-676.
[145]"Metam." I, vv. 451-567.
[145]"Metam." I, vv. 451-567.
[146]Ibid., IX, vv. 454-64.
[146]Ibid., IX, vv. 454-64.
[147]Ibid.,V, v. 302.
[147]Ibid.,V, v. 302.
[148]Ibid., vv. 319-31.
[148]Ibid., vv. 319-31.
[149]"Herod." II, 46.
[149]"Herod." II, 46.
[150]Creuzer, "Symb." I, 477.
[150]Creuzer, "Symb." I, 477.
[151]That is, the sphere of fauns as a part of Nature.
[151]That is, the sphere of fauns as a part of Nature.
[152]Praktisch.The contrast is between the philosophic contemplation and the world regarded as the sphere of human activity.
[152]Praktisch.The contrast is between the philosophic contemplation and the world regarded as the sphere of human activity.
[153]ByUmkehrHegel probably means a "return" in the direction of the art of the Sublime.
[153]ByUmkehrHegel probably means a "return" in the direction of the art of the Sublime.
[154]Einen bestimmten Kreis.The meaning seems to be that the circle of examples is here a clearly defined and limited one as contrasted with the vagueness of Oriental Pantheism.
[154]Einen bestimmten Kreis.The meaning seems to be that the circle of examples is here a clearly defined and limited one as contrasted with the vagueness of Oriental Pantheism.
[155]"Herod." II, 52.
[155]"Herod." II, 52.
[156]War ein entscheidendes Moment.That is, was part of the oracular reply.
[156]War ein entscheidendes Moment.That is, was part of the oracular reply.
[157]Both wording and punctuation of this sentence are at fault, but I give the sense no doubt intended.
[157]Both wording and punctuation of this sentence are at fault, but I give the sense no doubt intended.
[158]I am not sure what is referred to here byTelchinenandPätaken.
[158]I am not sure what is referred to here byTelchinenandPätaken.
[159]Das Ganze, means here, I think, the whole of Creation.
[159]Das Ganze, means here, I think, the whole of Creation.
[160]That is, took no further active interest in human life.
[160]That is, took no further active interest in human life.
[161]Politicus ex rec. Bekk. II, 2, p. 283; Steph. 274.
[161]Politicus ex rec. Bekk. II, 2, p. 283; Steph. 274.
[162]"Protag." I, 1, pp. 170-4; Steph. 320-3.
[162]"Protag." I, 1, pp. 170-4; Steph. 320-3.
[163]I have just above translatedSittewith the word "custom," that is, ethical custom. But the contrast here is, I think, between morality generally (sittlich) and juridical right (Rechtliche).
[163]I have just above translatedSittewith the word "custom," that is, ethical custom. But the contrast here is, I think, between morality generally (sittlich) and juridical right (Rechtliche).
[164]The argument of Hegel is ingenious. It must be admitted, however, that in several accounts of Prometheus, notably that of Aeschylus, Zeus is represented as hostile to human progress. And it is rather a strain on the facts to trace, in the case of Ceres, so much that is of an ethical colour to agriculture, and limit the use of fire simply to the crafts of Hephaestos, ignoring, that is to say, its domestic use altogether.
[164]The argument of Hegel is ingenious. It must be admitted, however, that in several accounts of Prometheus, notably that of Aeschylus, Zeus is represented as hostile to human progress. And it is rather a strain on the facts to trace, in the case of Ceres, so much that is of an ethical colour to agriculture, and limit the use of fire simply to the crafts of Hephaestos, ignoring, that is to say, its domestic use altogether.
[165]Der Sittlichkeit.
[165]Der Sittlichkeit.
[166]Gehaltvolle.That is, intrinsically sound and substantial.
[166]Gehaltvolle.That is, intrinsically sound and substantial.
[167]"Eum." vv. 206-9.
[167]"Eum." vv. 206-9.
[168]Soph., "Ant." v. 451: ἡ ξá½Î½oικoÏ‚ τῶν κάτω θεῶν Δἰκη.
[168]Soph., "Ant." v. 451: ἡ ξá½Î½oικoÏ‚ τῶν κάτω θεῶν Δἰκη.
[169]Umgestaltung.Remodelling, reorganization. Reformation in literal sense.
[169]Umgestaltung.Remodelling, reorganization. Reformation in literal sense.
[170]Trübe."Troubled" perhaps is better.
[170]Trübe."Troubled" perhaps is better.
[171]The Cabeiri were mystic Powers. Aeschylus wrote a drama under this title. The ancients differ greatly as to their origin and nature, Herodotus assumes an Egyptian origin.
[171]The Cabeiri were mystic Powers. Aeschylus wrote a drama under this title. The ancients differ greatly as to their origin and nature, Herodotus assumes an Egyptian origin.
[172]Festeis as a substantive a stronghold, and this may be Hegel's meaning, but I think he uses it here forFestigkeit, consistency, compact security.
[172]Festeis as a substantive a stronghold, and this may be Hegel's meaning, but I think he uses it here forFestigkeit, consistency, compact security.
[173]The sentence is not very clear. The sense is that Prometheus is honoured as the Earth and Sun are honoured by his assistance of human needs.
[173]The sentence is not very clear. The sense is that Prometheus is honoured as the Earth and Sun are honoured by his assistance of human needs.
[174]Vv. 54-6. "This entire spot is sacred; awful Poseidon holds it, and therein is the fire bringing god, the Titan Prometheus."
[174]Vv. 54-6. "This entire spot is sacred; awful Poseidon holds it, and therein is the fire bringing god, the Titan Prometheus."
[175]Vv. 1645-8.
[175]Vv. 1645-8.
[176]Vv. 901et seq.
[176]Vv. 901et seq.
[177]Hegel means that in the suffering of Kleon Sophocles treats the natural law of Antigone and the higher law of the king on the same terms.
[177]Hegel means that in the suffering of Kleon Sophocles treats the natural law of Antigone and the higher law of the king on the same terms.
[178]Lit., "what is made for it,"e.g., the detail of objective experience.
[178]Lit., "what is made for it,"e.g., the detail of objective experience.
[179]Unvergänglichkeit.Hegel no doubt refers to the epithet always applied by Homer and other, Greek poets to the gods of Olympus, immortal.
[179]Unvergänglichkeit.Hegel no doubt refers to the epithet always applied by Homer and other, Greek poets to the gods of Olympus, immortal.
We have already seen what the essence of the Ideal is in our general consideration of the beauty of art. Here we are to take it merely in the special sense appropriate to theclassicIdeal, whose notion has already presented itself in its general features in its association with the notion of theclassicalart-type. For the Ideal, of which we have now to speak, consists simply in this, that classical art in very truth attains to and sets before us that which exposes its most intimate notion. As content it grasps on this particular plane the spiritual, in so far as this Spirit attracts Nature and her powers to its own appropriate realm, and sets itself before us in exposition not as mere inwardness and dominion over Nature, but furthermore accepts as its proper form, human shape, deed, and action, through which the spiritual shines forth clearly in perfect freedom, and the form penetrates with its life into the sensuous material not merely as into a mode of externality symbolically significant, but as actually into a determinate existence, which is the adequate existence of Spirit.
We may divide up, then, the present chapter into the following sections:
We have in thefirstplace to consider thegeneralcharacter of the classic Ideal, which possesses what is pertinent to humanity in its form no less than its content, and elaborates both sides in the completest consistency one with the other.Secondly, however, forasmuch as here the human is absorbed wholly into the bodily shape and external appearance, it becomes thedefiniteexternal shape, which in its conformity is merely a defined content. Since, therefore, we have the Ideal before us at the same time asparticularity,there arises a definite number ofparticulargods and powers in the shape of human existence.Thirdly, this particularity does not persist in the abstraction ofonetype of definition, whose essential character would constitute the entire content and the one-sided principle for its representation; but rather it is quite as much essentially a totality and theindividualunity and congruity which is applicable to such. Without this repletion such particularity would remain cold and empty; the vitality of Life would fail it, a contingency which is impossible to the Ideal in any relation whatever.
We have now to consider more narrowly the Ideal of classical art according to these three aspects of universality, particularity, and individual singularity.
The questions which arise relatively to the origins of the Greek gods, in so far as the real centre for ideal reproduction results from them, we have already touched upon, and seen that they belong to the elaborated tradition of art. The modification that is incidental to that treatment can only proceed by means of the twofold degradation, on the one hand, of the universal powers of Nature and their personification, and, on the other, of the animal constituents and its form, in order that thereby it may win the spiritual as its true determinate substance, and also the human mode of appearance as its true form.
(a) We have described how the classical Ideal first really becomes actual through such a remodelling of that which came before the earliest aspect of it. Along with this we have above all to draw attention to just this fact, that it is generated from mind (Spirit), and consequently has originated in the most intimate and personal resources of the poets and artists, who brought it into the presence of conscious life with the aid of a thoughtful consideration as clear as it was unfettered and with the distinct object of artistic production. In opposition to this creation we have, however, apparently the fact that Greek mythology reposes on earlier traditions, and contains distinct references to foreign, that is Oriental, matter. Herodotus, for example, although specifically asserting in the passage already cited that Homer and Hesiodcreated for the Greeks their gods, nevertheless in other passages associates closely these very Greek gods with other divinities such as those of Egypt. For in the second book[180]he expressly narrates that Melampus gave the name of Dionysos to the Greeks, further introduced the Phallus and the entire sacrificial festival, adding, however, this discrepant detail, that Melampus had learnt the religious service from the Tyrian Kadmus and the Phoenicians, who came with Kadmus to Boeotia. These contradictory statements have roused interest in our own times, more particularly as associated with Creuzer's researches, who endeavours to discover in Homer, for example, ancient mysteries and the sources which flowed in together towards Greece, whether they be Asiatic, Pelasgian, Dodonian, Thracian, Samothracian, Phrygian, Indian, Buddhistic, Phoenician, Egyptian, or Orphic, to say nothing of the infinitely varied peculiarities of specific localities and other details. No doubt it appears at first sight wholly inconsistent with these many sources of tradition that those poets should have supplied either the names or the substantial form of the gods. It is possible, however, to harmonize entirely both factors, tradition, and individual creation. The tradition comes first; it is the point of departure, which hands down the mere ingredients; but for all that it does not contribute the real content and the genuine form of the gods. This substantive presence is the product of the genius of those poets, who discovered by a process of free elaboration the true substantive form of these very gods and are consequently in fact become the creators of that mythology which awakes our admiration of Greek art. Yet for this reason the Homeric gods, in one aspect of them, are not to be taken as the result merely of the poetic phantasy, or nothing more than capricious invention. They have their roots in the genius and beliefs of the Greek folk and the religious basis of that nation. They are the absolute potencies and powers, the highest stretch of the Greek conception, the central point of the beautiful regarded universally, presented, so to speak, by the Muses themselves to the poet.
In this free handling, then, the artist takes up an entirely different position from that he occupies in the East. TheHindoo poets and sages have also to begin with material ready to work upon, such as the elements of Nature, the heavens, animals, streams, and so forth, or the pure abstraction of the formless and contentless Brahman. Their enthusiasm, however, is a confusion of the ideal character[181]of the subjectivity which accepts the difficult task of elaborating such an external material to it, an enthusiasm which, in the unmeasured expansion of its imagination, which excludes every secure and absolute[182]direction, is unable to mould its creations conformably to genuine freedom of expression and beauty, and remains the slave of that material in uncontrolled and roving productive activity. It resembles, in fact, a master-builder who has no firm foundation beneath him. Ancient ruins of half dismantled walls, mounds, and projecting rocks fetter him, quite apart from the particular aims according to which he desires to construct his building; and he can only create a wild, inharmonious, and fantastical fabric. In other words, that which he produces is not the result of his imagination freely acting under its own plastic genius. Conversely the Hebrew poets present us with revelations which, it is said, they deliver as the Lord's voice, so that here again the creative source is an enthusiasm not fully self-conscious; it is separated, that is, and distinct from individuality and the productive genius of the artist, as in the wisdom of the Sublime generally it is the abstract and eternal, essentially in its relation to something other than it and external, which is consciously or imaginatively conceived.
In classical art artists and poets are, it is true, also prophets and teachers, who declare and reveal to mankind the nature of the Absolute and Divine. But we must emphasize here the following distinctions:
(α) In thefirstplace the content of their gods is neither that appearance of Nature which is external to humanity nor the mere abstraction of one Godhead, whereby merely a superficial formulation or an inwardness that is without content is preserved. Their content is, on the contrary, deduced from human life and existence, and for this reason is that which is peculiar to the human breast; a content, inshort, with which man himself can freely coalesce as at home with himself, while that which he thus produces is the fairest product of his own activity.
(β)Secondly, these artists are at the same timepoets, that is, men of creative talent who work the aforesaid material and its content into a free and substantially independent form. As thus regarded Greek artists are in all essential respects creative poets. They have brought together all the varied original ingredients into the melting-pot, but they have produced thereby no mere broth, such as might come from a witches' cauldron; rather they did away with all that is troubled, purely natural, unclean, foreign, and without rational measure in the pure flame of this more profound spirit; they made all glow together and permitted the form to appear at last purified, albeit it still retained a distant accord with the ruder material from which it was fashioned. What mainly concerned them in this work consisted partly in the winnowing away of all that was in their inherited material destitute of form and beauty, distorted and symbolical, and partly in the prominence they gave to what was really spiritual, which they set themselves to render under modes of individuality, and in the interest of which they had to discover gradually the external appearance most appropriate. Here for the first time we find that it is the human form and human actions and events, not merely made use of under the mode of personification, which, as we have already seen, necessarily stand forth as the uniquely adequate reality. No doubt the artist discovers these forms, too, in the real world; but he has at the same time to eradicate all that is accidental and incongruent in them, before they are entitled to appear as commensurable with that humanity, which, as essentially apprehended, shall offer to us the image of the eternal powers and gods. And this is what we call the free and spiritual, and not merely capricious production of the artist.
(γ) And,thirdly, for the reason that the gods are not merely stable existences in their own world, but also are active within the concrete reality of Nature and human, events, the poet is further concerned to recognize the presence and activity of the gods in this relation to human, fact, to interpret, that is, the particularity of natural event andhuman actions and destiny wherein the divine powers are apparently interfused, and to share thus the duties of the priest and the seer. We, from the point of view of our everyday prosaic reflection, explain the phenomena of Nature according to universal laws and forces, and interpret the actions of mankind as the product of their subjective intentions and self-proposed aims. The Greek poets, however, have their eyes everywhere directed toward the Divine, and create, by giving to human activities the loftier colour and habit of divine actions, and by means of such interpretation, the various aspects under which the power of the gods is made visible. For a number of such interpretations results in a number of actions, in which we are made aware of the character of this or that god. We have but to open, for example, the Homeric poems, and we shall scarcely meet with a single event of importance which is not more closely elucidated as proceeding from the volition or actual assistance of the gods. These expositions are, in fact, the insight, the independently created belief, the intuitive conceptions of the poet, just as Homer often, too, gives expression to them in his own name, and in part also places such in the mouth of his characters, whether priest or hero. Quite at the opening of the "Iliad," for example, he has himself explained the pestilence in the Greek camp as the result of the indignation of Apollo over Agamemnon, who refused to release to Chryses his daughters[183]; and, in a passage that follows, he makes Calchas transmit this very interpretation to the Greeks[184].
In a similar way Homer informs us in the concluding canto of the "Odyssey"—on the occasion when Hermes conducted the shades of the inanimate suitors to the meadows of Asphodel, and they find there Achilles and the other deceased heroes, who fought before Troy, and finally, too, Agamemnon joins them—how the last-mentioned describes the death of Achilles[185]:
"The whole day long had the Greeks fought; and when at last Zeus separated the combatants, they carried the noble body to the ships, and washed it, weeping often the while, and embalmed it. Then there arose a divine uproar on thesea, and the affrighted Achaeans would have been flung headlong into their hollow ships, had not an aged and much knowing man, Nestor to wit, restrained them, whose advice had also proved the wisest on former occasion." Nestor then interprets for them the phenomenon in the following terms: "Themother[186]comes forth from the sea with the immortal sea-goddesses, in order to meet her deceased son. And the great-hearted Achaeans at this word let their fear depart from them." That is to say, they knew then of what kind it was—of human origin—the mother in her grief comes toward him; what they shall see and hear is that which finds its response in themselves. Achilles is her son, she is herself full of grief. And in this vein Agamemnon, turning towards Achilles, continues his narrative with a description of the universal sorrow: "And around thee stood the daughters of the ancient of the sea, lamenting, and they robed themselves in ambrosial garments; and the Muses also, the nine in conclave, wailed by turns in beautiful song; and there was I ween no man of the Argives to be seen without tears, so greatly did the clear-toned song move all."
It is, however, another divine apparition in the "Odyssey" which has always in this connection most particularly fascinated me in my study of it. Odysseus in his sea-wanderings, insulted among the Phaeacians during the sports over which Euryalos presides, because he refused to take part in the rival throwing of the discus, makes answer indignantly with dark looks and hard words. He then stands up, seizes a disk, larger and heavier than the rest, and hurls it far and away over the mark. One of the Phaeacians marks down the throw and calls out: "Even a blind man could see the stone; it does not lie within the medley of the rest, but far beyond. Thou hast nothing to fear in this contest; there is no Phaeacian who will reach or surpass such a throw as thine is. So he spake; but the much-enduring divine Odysseus rejoiced to see a well-disposed friend in the lists." And this word, this friendly nod of the Phaeacian Homer interprets as the friendly apparition of Athene.
(b) Of what kind, then, we may further ask, are theproductsof this classical mode of artistic activity, of what type are the new gods of Greek art?
(α) It is their concentrated individuality which presents to us the most general and at the same time most complete idea of their intrinsic character, in so far, that is, as this individuality is brought together out of the variety of accidental traits, isolated actions, and events into the one focus of their simple and self-exclusive unity.
(αα) What appeals to us in these gods is first of all the spiritual andsubstantiveindividuality, which, withdrawn into itself as it is out of the motley show of the particular medium of necessity, and, the many-purposed unrest of the finite condition, reposes on its own inviolable universality, as on an eternal and intelligible foundation. It is only thus that the gods appear as the imperishable powers, whose untroubled rule is made visible to us not in the particular event in its evolution with somewhat else and external to it, but freely in its own unchangeableness and intrinsic worth.
(ββ) Conversely, however, they are not by any means the bare abstraction of spiritual generalities, and thereby so-called general Ideals, but in so far as they are individuals they appear as one Ideal, an essentially of itself determinate existence, and consequently one that is defined, in other words one that as Spirit possessescharacterization.Without character we can have no individuality. From this point of view we find, as we have already indicated previously, that there is at the root of these spiritual gods a definite natural force, with which a definite ethical consistency[187]is blended, such as imposes on every particular god distinct bounds to the sphere of his activity. The manifold aspects and traits which are forthcoming by reason of this characterization as particular persons, being in this way concentrated in the point of a true self-identity, constitute the characters of the gods.
(γγ) In the true Ideal, however, this definition ought just as little to terminate in the blunt restriction of pureone sidedness, but must at the same time appear as withdrawn into the universality of the godhead. In just such a way, then, every god, by carrying in his own person this defined character as divine and as bound up with that as universal individuality, is in part of a definite type, and in part is all in all, and floats, as it were, precisely midway between mere universality and equally abstract singularity. And this iswhat gives to the genuine Ideal of classical art its infinite security and repose, its untroubled blessedness and unimpaired freedom.
(β) Add to this that as beauty of classical art the essentially self-articulate divine character is not only spiritual, but fully as much plastic form which appears externally in its bodily presence to the eye no less than to the mind.
(αα) This beauty, inasmuch as it possesses not merely the natural or animal aspect in its spiritual personification, but includes as its content that which is spiritual in its adequate mode of existence, can only take up what issymbolicalin its incidental aspect and under those relations in which it appears as purely natural. Its real external expression is the form that is peculiar to mind and only mind, in so far as its ideal character reveals itself as existent truth, and pours itself wholly through that form.
(ββ) From another point of view classical beauty is debarred from giving expression to theSublime.For it is only the abstract universal, which attaches to itself no inclusion such as is self-defined, but merely a negative determinacy relatively to particularity in general, and along with this is resolute in its antagonism to every form of embodiment which presents us with the aspect of the Sublime. Classical beauty, on the contrary, carries spiritual individuality into the very heart of what is at the same time its natural existence, and elucidates the ideal content wholly in the material of its external appearance.
(γγ) For this very reason, however, it is essential that the external form quite as much as the spiritual, which creates for itself therein its home and dwelling, should be liberated from all dependence on Nature and derangement, all finitude, all that is of fleeting character, all that is exclusively concerned with the sensuous presence, and should purify and exalt that definition of it which discloses affinity with the determinate character of the god into free commerce with the universal forms of the human figure. The stainless externality alone, from which every hint of weakness and relativity has been removed, and every flick of capricious particularity wiped off, is able to represent the Spirit's ideality, which should sink itself in it and secure an embodiment from it.
(γ) For the reason, however, that the gods are forced once more from the defined limits of character into the universal wave, the self-subsistency of Spirit as repose on itself, and as the security of itself in its external form has to discover a real reflection also in its manifestation.
(αα) Consequently we observe in the concrete individuality of the gods—when we have before us the genuine classic Ideal, on equal terms with all else—this nobility and loftiness of Spirit, in which, despite the entire absorption within the bodily and sensuous presence, we are made conscious of the absolute removal of all the indigence of what is wholly finite. Pure self-absorption[188]and the abstract liberation from every kind of determinacy is the highway to the Ideal of the Sublime. The classical Ideal, on the contrary, is made visible in an existence which entirely is its own, that is, the specific manifestation of Spirit itself; yet for all that we shall find that here, too, the Sublimity of the same is blended with the beauty, and that the one aspect passes over immediately into the other. And this it is which constitutes the expression of loftiness in these figures of the gods, making inevitable the Sublime of classical beauty. An immortal seriousness[189]makes its throne on the forehead of these gods, and is poured forth over their entire presentment.
(ββ) In their beauty these gods appear, therefore, as exalted over their individual bodily shape; we have consequently a kind contradiction or contention between their lofty blessedness, which is, in fact, their spiritual self-exclusiveness and their beauty, which pertains to their external bodily presence. Spirit appears wholly lost in its external form, and yet for all that appears quite as much absorbed in itself from out that form. It is precisely as though we had the moving to and fro of an immortal god among mortal men.
In this relation the Greek gods make on us an impression which, despite all difference, resembles that which the bust of Goethe by Rauch made upon me when I first saw it. Many will have doubtless seen it, the high brow, the powerful, commanding nose, the free eye, the round chin, the affable, finely-cut lips, the pose of the head, so suggestive of genius, with its glance a bit on one side and uplifted: addto this the entire fulness and breadth of an emotional and genial humanity, and further, those carefully articulated muscles of the forehead, of the entire countenance, of all that gives evidence of passion and emotion; and in all this house of Life, the repose, stillness, and loftiness of advanced age; and we may add withal the fading ebb of the lips, which retreat back into the teethless mouth, the slackness of the neck and cheeks, whereby the bridge of the nose appears yet more dominant, and the reach of the forehead yet more towering. The force of this firmly set figure, which to an extraordinary degree brings before us the notion of immutability, appears all the more so in the loose environment which surrounds it[190], just as the sublime head and form of the Oriental in his wide turban, but flapping over-garment and trailing slippers. It is the secure, powerful, timeless spirit, which, in the mask of encircling mortality, is just ready to let this husk fall away, and yet suffers it to linger around it freely and without restraint.
In much the same way the gods appear to us in their aspect of lofty freedom and spiritual repose to be exalted over their bodily presence, so that they seem to feel their form, their limbs, despite all the beauty that is there, as at the same time a superfluous appanage. And yet withal the entire presentment is suffused with vitality, identical with their spiritual being, inseparable, without the disunion of what is essentially subsistent, and those parts which are more loosely put together, the spirit in short neither escaping nor coming forth from the body, but both firmly moulded together into a whole, out of which, and in no other way, the self-absorption of Spirit looks forth in silence in its amazing and secure self-possession.
(γγ) For the reason, then, that the contention we have indicated is present, without appearing, however, as a difference or separation of the ideal spirituality from its external form, the negative which is therein contained, is for this very reason immanent in this inseparable totality and is thereby expressed. This is within the sphere of this spiritual loftiness the breath and atmosphere of melancholy, which men of genius have felt in the godlike figures of antique arteven where the beauty of the external presentment is consummate. The repose of divine blessedness[191]is unable to split itself up into the passions of joy, pleasure, and satisfaction, and thepeaceof immortality stands aloof from the smile of self-satisfaction and genial contentedness. Contentment is the emotion of the agreement of our singular subjectivity with the condition of that environment which is defined for or given to us or brought about through our own agency. Napoleon, for example, never expressed more thorough contentment than when he happened to obtain some success at the cost of making all the world discontented. For contentment is only the approval of my own being, action, and engagements, and the extreme of it is readily recognizable in that state of feeling of the Philistine to which every man of practical ability necessarily extends it. This feeling and its expression is, however, no expression appropriate to the prefigured immortal gods. Free and perfected beauty is not satisfied with joining the concordant temper of a particular finite existence; rather its individuality, in its aspect as Spirit no less than in that of form, albeit it is self-defined with characterization, only finds itself fully in union with its true nature when it is at the same time free universality and spirituality in repose upon itself. This universality is just that which people are wont to point to as the frigidity of the Greek gods. They are only cold, however, to our modern intimacy with the temporal. Independently regarded they possess warmth and life; that peaceful blessedness, which is reflected in their external presentment, is essentially an abstraction from particularity, a mode of being indifferent to the Past, a surrender of that which is external, a giving up which, albeit neither full of trouble nor pain, is for all that a giving up of what is earthly and evanescent, just as their cheerfulness of spirit looks far away and over death, the grave, loss and temporality, and for the very reason that it is profound inherently contains this negative we are discussing. And the more this earnestness and spiritual freedom is prominent in the vision of these godlike figures the more we feel the contrast between this loftiness and the determinate corporality in which theyare enclosed. The blessed gods mourn quite as much over their blessedness as their bodily environment. In the letters of their form we read the destiny which lies before them, and whose development, as actual manifestation of that contradiction between this very loftiness and that particularity, spirituality, and sensuous existence classical art itself sets face to face with its final overthrow.
(c) If we ask ourselves, then,thirdly, what is the nature of the external representation, which is adequate to this notion of the classic Ideal we have just indicated, we shall find in this connection, too, that the essential points of view have already in our general consideration of the Ideal been furnished us with considerable detail. We have consequently here only further to remark, that in the genuine classic Ideal the spiritual individuality of the gods is not conceived in their relation to something else, or brought about by virtue of their particularity in conflict, and battle, but rather is made visible in their eternal self-tranquillity, in this painfulness of the godlike peace itself. The determinate character is not, therefore, made active in the way that it stimulated the gods to the sense of particular emotions and passions, or compelled them to adopt specific aims of conduct. On the contrary, it is precisely out of that collision and development, nay, out of that very relation to the finite and all that is essentially discordant that they are brought back to that condition of pure self-absorption. This repose in its most austere severity, not inflexible, cold, or dead, but sensitive and immutable, is the highest and most adequate form of representation for the classic gods. When they make their appearance consequently in specific situations, it is not necessary that there should be conditions or actions which give rise to conflicts, but rather such which, as themselves harmless, so, too, leave the gods in a like condition. It is, therefore, sculpture which among the arts is above all adapted to portray the classic Ideal in its simple self-possession, in which what is rather the universal divinity receives more obvious emphasis than the particular character. Chiefly it is the more ancient and more austere type of sculpture which maintains its firm hold of this aspect of the Ideal, and only in the later forms we find a movement towards increased dramatic vividness of situations and characterization.Poetry, on the contrary, ranges the gods in vigorous action, that is, in an attitude of negation to a definite mode of life, and brings them thereby into conflict and strife. The repose of plastic art, where it remains in the sphere which is uniquely its own, can only express the aforesaid negative phase of spirit face to face with particular facts in that serious strain of melancholy, which we have already attempted to define more nearly.
As individuality in visible form, represented under the mode of immediate existence, and withal both definite and particular, godhead necessarily is divided into a number of figures. In other words, Polytheism is unquestionably essential as the principle of classical art, and it would be the undertaking of a fool to think of embodying the one God of the Sublime and of Pantheism or the absolute religion, which comprehends God purely as Spirit and essential personality, in the plastic type of beauty, or to entertain the idea that the classical forms could have arisen among the Jews, Mohammedans, or Christians, as adapted to the content of their religious beliefs, from their own original views of the world, as they did in the case of the Greeks.
(a) In this multiplicity the divine universe[192]at this stage is broken up into a sphere of particular gods, of which each individual stands by himself alone in contrast to all the others. These individualities are not, however, of the kind that they can be taken merely as allegorical presentations of universal qualities, as if Apollo, for example, were the god of wisdom, Zeus of dominion. Zeus is also quite as much wisdom, and in the "Eumenides" Apollo, as we have seen, protects Orestes, the son and the royal son to boot, whom he himself has stimulated to an act of vengeance. The sphere of the Greek gods is a multiplicity of individuals, of which every particular god, albeit also in the specific character of a particular person, is at the same time a self-exclusive totality, which itself possesses essentially also the quality of another god. For every such presentment, viewed asdivine, is always, too, a whole. It is only by this means that the divine personalities of Greek religion include an abundance of traits; and although their blessedness consists in their universal and spiritual self-repose no less than in their abstraction from the direct movement which Time is for ever defeating in the sphere of the disintegrating manifold of natural fact and condition, yet for all that they possess the power in a like degree to assert themselves as energetic and active in many of its aspects. They are neither the abstract particular nor the abstract universal, but the universal which is the source of particularity.
(b) On account of this type of individuality, however, Greek polytheism is unable to make up an essentially systematic and self-integrated totality. At the first glance, it is true, it appears imperative to require of the Olympus of the gods, that the numerous gods that are there assembled, should, as thus collected together, and if their separable unities have real truth in them, and their content is to be classic in the true sense, also express essentially the totality of the Idea, should exhaust the entire sphere of the necessary forces of Nature and Spirit, and give to themselves therefore constructive completeness, in other words, manifest themselves as subject to a principle of necessity. This demand, however, would be liable from the first to the qualification that those forces present in the emotions and, generally speaking, assertive in the sphere of spiritual life in the absolute significance[193]which becomes operative first in the later and higher religion, must remain excluded from the sphere of the classic gods, so that the range of content, the particular aspects of which succeed in making an appearance in Greek mythology, would be already thereby curtailed. Moreover, apart from this, we have also on the one hand, necessarily introduced by virtue of the essentially varied character of this individuality, the accidental incidents of a definition, which avoids the rigorous articulation of the differences inherent in the notion, and does not suffer these divinities to maintain the abstraction of merelyonemode of determination. And, on the other hand, the universality, inthe elemental medium of which the divine personalities secure their blessed state, abolishes any hard and fast particularity, and the loftiness of the eternal powers exalts itself jubilant over the cold seriousness of finite fact, wherein, if this inconsequence did not prevail, the divine presences would be evolved through the medium of their limitations.