However much, therefore, even the principal forces of the world, as the totality of Nature and Spirit, are reproduced in Greek mythology, this aggregation, quite as much in the interests of the universal Divine as in those of the individuality of particular gods, cannot assert itself as asystematicwhole. If this were not so, instead ofindividualcharacters the gods would approximate rather to allegorical beings, and instead of beingdivinepersonalities would be characters wholly limited to finite and abstract modes.
(c) When we consequently consider the circle of the Greek divinities—that is all within the range of the so-called presiding divinities—more nearly according to their fundamental character, inquiring how that character appears firmly delineated by sculpture in its most general and at the same time sensuously concrete presentment, we find no doubt the essential distinctions and their totality explicitly set before us, but also in their detail also ever again obliterated, and the severity of the execution tempered to a result which is inconsistent with either their beauty or their individuality. So for example Zeus bears in his hands the dominion over gods and men, without, however, thereby essentially endangering the free independence of the other gods. He is the supreme god; his power, however, does not absorb that of the others. We find in the conception of him no doubt an association with the heavens, with lightning and thunder, and the generative vitality of Nature; but he is yet more truly the might of the State, of the order of fact which is conformable to law, the binding nexus in contracts, oaths, and hospitality, and generally the substantial bond that gives subsistence to the human condition, whether in its practical or ethical aspect, the potency, in short, both of knowledge and spirit. The dominion of his brothers is directed toward the sea or the lower world. Apollo is known as the god of knowledge, as the mouthpiece and fair presentment of spiritual interests, as the teacher of theMuses. "Know thyself" is the inscription over his temple at Delphi, a behest which is not so much concerned with the failings and defects, as the essential import of spirit, that is with art and the truth of consciousness. Subtlety and eloquence, mediation in fact generally as we also find it in subordinate spheres, which, albeit immoral elements are therein commingled, nevertheless are appurtenant to the complete range of spiritual life—such is the most important province of the activity of Hermes, who also leads the shades of the dead to the underworld. The might of war is what mainly distinguishes Ares. Hephaestos is conspicuously capable in the technical crafts. The enthusiasm which still carries with it a natural element, the strong emotions which wine, sport, and dramatic performances naturally produce are the native province of Dionysos. The spheres allotted to the feminine divinities very much correspond to the above series. In Here the ethical bond of marriage is the most dominant trait. Ceres is the instructress and developer of agriculture, and as such has presented mankind with both those adjuncts to its cultivation, that is to say, first, the care for the nurture of natural products, which satisfy man's immediate wants, and, secondly, the spiritual accessories of property, marriage, right, the beginnings of civilization and moral order. In the same way Athene is the representative of moderation, good sense[194], legality, the power of wisdom, technical capacity in the arts and courageousness, and comprises within her intelligent and warlike maidenhood the concrete spirit of the folk, the free and substantive spirit which uniquely belongs to the Athenian state, and places the same before us in positive shape as sovereign and godlike power to be revered. Artemis on the contrary, wholly distinct from the Ephesian Diana, possesses the more inflexible independence of maiden modesty for her most essential characteristic. She loves the chase, and is generally not so much the quietly pensive, as the severe and eager-striving maiden. Aphrodite, together with the charming Cupid, who in his descent from the ancient Titan Eros became a boy, is the interpreter of all that the attractions and sexual passion effect in our humanity. This, then, is the kind of content of the spiritually informed individualgods. In so far as we are concerned with their external representation we can only repeat that sculpture is the most important art in this respect, and it is carried to the point of this detail of their particularity. If, however, it is permitted to express that individuality in its more specific determination, it at once passes beyond its primary severe loftiness, although even in that case it unites the variety and wealth of such individuality underonemode of definition, namely that which we distinguish as character, and establishes this character in its more simple clarity for the envisagement of the senses, in other words for the completest and most final determination of the external presentment of these divinities. For the imagination always remains relatively to the external and real existence less distinct, when it elaborates, as it also does, as poetry the same content in a number of tales, occurrences, and events which concern the gods. For this reason sculpture is on the one hand more ideal, while on the other it individualizes the character of the gods in perfectly clear human outlines, and perfects the anthropomorphism of the classic Ideal. As this presentation of the Ideal in its mode of externality, entirely adequate as it unquestionably is to the essentially ideal content it declares, these figures of Greek sculpture are the Ideals in their absolutely explicit realization; they are the self-subsistent, eternal forms, the centre of the plastic beauty of classical art, whose type persists as the foundation, even there too, where these figures step forth on the planes of definite activity, and appear as affected by the revolutions of particular events.
Individuality and its representation is, however, unable to acquiesce in that which is still an ever relative and abstract articulation of character. A star is exhaustively summarized in the simple laws that control it. A few definite traits may sufficiently characterize the external formation of the world of rocks; but already in the vegetable world we are aware of an infinite variety of manifold structure, transition, interfusion, and anomaly. Animal organizations are distinguished by a still greater range of difference,and constantly shifting interaction with the external environment to which they are related. And finally, as we rise to the spiritual realm and its manifestation, we are conscious of a yet more infinitely embracing multiplicity, both of its internal and external existence. Inasmuch, then, as the classic Ideal does not rest content with purely self-possessed individuality, but is further concerned to place the same in motion, to bring the same into relation with something else, and to exhibit it as active in such relation—for these reasons the character of the gods does not rest stationary in the possession of what itself is an essentially still substantive determination, but secures further particular traits of wider extension. The self-exclusive movement in the direction of external existence, and the change which is inseparable from it supplies the more intimate traits that constitute the singularity of any particular god, as is meet and fit and withal necessary to complete a living personality. The accidental nature of these particular traits is, however, associated at the same time with such a type ofsingularity, traits, that is, we are no longer able to refer back to the universal aspect of the substantive significance. For this reason this particular aspect of the separate divinities approximates to something positive, which can consequently also merely stand about it and continue to resound as an external accessory.
(a) We are therefore at once confronted with the question: "From what source is thematerialsecured for this mode of the appearance of singularity, and in what manner is this forward process of particularization maintained?" For the ordinary individual man, for his character out of which he brings his actions to a conclusion, for the events in which he is involved, for the destiny which awaits him, this closest and more positive material is supplied by his external conditions, such as the date of his birth, the situation he inherits, parents, education, environment, temporal relations, the entire province, that is, of the conditions of his life as they affect his spiritual nature or bodily existence. The present world contains this material, and the records of life furnished by different individuals are from this point of view characterized by every conceivable difference. It is another matter altogether, however, with the free shapes ofgodlike individuality, which possess no determinate existence in the concrete world of Nature, but have their birth in the cradle of the imagination. For this very reason it is an obvious assumption that poets and artists, who, speaking in general terms, have created the Ideal out of their free spiritual bounty, have merely borrowed the material for these accidental particular traits from the caprice of their own innate powers of imagination. This assumption is, however, false. For we assigned in general terms to classical art, the position that its construction in the first instance is, by means of the reaction active in its opposition to the assumptions necessarily requisite to its own peculiar province, carried forward to that which as genuine Ideal it is. It is from these presuppositions as their source that the specific traits of particularity are to be looked for, which supply to the gods their closer individual vitality. The fundamental features of these assumptions have already been submitted, and we have only here to remind our readers shortly of what has been already advanced.
(α) It is the symbolical natural religions which constitute in the first instance the abundant source which supplies Greek mythology with the primary substratum that we find then modified within it. But inasmuch as the traits that are borrowed from such a source have to be distributed among gods that are represented as individuals possessing the life of Spirit, they inevitably lose the essential feature of their character, in which they passed as symbolical; they have now no longer to retain a significance, which would differ from that which the individual himself presents and makes visible. The previous symbolical content becomes now, therefore, converted into the content of a divine subject itself, and for the reason that it implies no substantive relation of the god, but is merely an incidental feature, material of this sort falls together into an external tale, some deed or event, which is ascribed to the gods in this or that particular situation. Consequently we find under this head all the symbolical traditions of the earlier sacred poems, which receive, under the modified shape of actions proper to a truly self-conscious individuality, the form of human events and histories, which purport to be accomplished in concert with the gods, and are not merely the inventions ofpoets as the mood dictates. When Homer tells us, for instance, that the gods went off on a journey to feast for twelve days among the blameless Ethiopians, such would be a poor enough example of inventiveness regarded as the poet's invention alone. It is much the same with the tale of the birth of Zeus. Kronos, we are told, had devoured all his sons; for this reason Rhea, his spouse, when she was big with her youngest child Zeus, went off to Crete, where she brought forth her son, presenting to Kronos a stone to devour instead of her child, whom she swaddled in fur. Later on Kronos brought up again all his children, his daughters, and along with them Poseidon. This story, regarded as mere invention, would be foolish enough. The remnants of symbolical significance still peer, however, through it, albeit on account of their having lost their original character, they come down to us in the guise of external history. The history of Ceres and Proserpina is on similar lines. Here we have the ancient symbolic significance of the disappearance and budding forth of the seed of corn. The myth presents this to us under the image as though Proserpina played one day in a valley with flowers, and plucked the fragrant narcissus, which from one root opened in a hundred blossoms. Then the Earth thunders; Pluto ascends from the depths, lifts the lamenting maiden into his golden car, and bears her off to the underworld. Thereon Ceres wandered over the Earth for a long time vainly stricken with a mother's sorrow. Finally Proserpina returned to the upper world; Zeus, however, had only suffered her to do this subject to the command that she must never partake of the food of the gods. Unfortunately she had on one occasion tasted a pomegranate, and was therefore only able to remain in the upper world during spring and summer. In this tale, too, we find that the symbolical content has not been retained, but has been converted into a human event, which suffers only the more general sense to penetrate through many external traits. In the same way the supplementary names of the gods point frequently to symbolical ground-strata of a similar character, from which, however, the symbolical form has vanished, and which only serve now to give individuality a more complete characterization.
(β) Local conditions supply a further source for the positive particularities of individual divinities, no less by presenting us with the origin of the conceptions of godhead, than by pointing to the modes under which their services were originally obtained and secured, and the particular places which were in a special sense devoted to their worship.
(αα) Although, however, the demonstration of the Ideal and its universal beauty is exalted over the particular locality and its unique claims for recognition, and, moreover, has drawn together the specific external aspects in the more general range of the artistic imagination into one comprehensive picture which is throughout adequate to the substantive significance, yet for all that, when the art of sculpture associates the gods, regarded as individuals, with isolated relations and conditions, these particular traits and local colours come frequently also to the fore, in order to reproduce something of that individuality, although it is only thus more defined in its external aspect. An illustration of this is the way Pausanias adduces a mass of ideas, images, pictures, and myths, which he met with in temples, public places, temple treasuries, in any place where anything of importance was to be found or otherwise was in the range of his experience. In the same way and on the same lines the ancient traditions and local suggestions which have been borrowed from foreign sources run along with the home ones in Greek myth; and to all of them more or less a relation has been attached which unites them to the history, creation, and foundations of States, more particularly by means of colonization. Forasmuch, however, as this many-sided and specific material in the universality of the gods has lost its original significance, we necessarily come across stories, which in their motley and intricate character fail to convey any meaning whatever. As an example we may instance the case where Aeschylus in his "Prometheus" presents to us the wanderings of Io in all their severity and external garb without admitting the least suggestion of an ethical or traditional story, or a natural significance. We find just the same difficulty when we approach the stories of Perseus, Dionysos, and others. The most varied and confused kind of material is also runinto the tales about Hercules, which forthwith, in such tales, assume an entirely human aspect under the guise of chance events, exploits, passions, misfortunes, and other untoward occurrences.
(ββ) In addition to all this the eternal powers of classical art are the universal constituents of the actual embodiment of the existence and actions of Greekhumanity, from whose national origins consequently in their earliest form, that is, out of the heroic times and other traditions, still a very considerable residue of detail remains appendant to the gods even in later days. In this way, too, many characteristic features in the intricate tales of their gods unquestionably must be referred to historic personages, heroes, older folk-races, natural facts and circumstances attributable to wars, battles, and other matters of a public character. And just as the family and the distinction of clans is the point of departure of the State, the Greeks possessed also their family gods, penates, clan-gods, and furthermore the guardian divinities of particular cities and states. In this excessive leaning towards the point of view of history the thesis, however, is apt to be maintained that the origin of the Greek gods generally is deducible from such historical facts, heroes, and earlier kings. This is a plausible but none the less superficial view. Heyne quite in recent times has also given currency to it. In a way analogous to this a Frenchman, by name Nicholas Fréret, has, for example, accepted the quarrels of different priestly guilds as the general principle underlying the war of the gods. That such a historical phase in the life of a people may contribute something, that definite clans may have given some effect to their peculiar notions of deity, that likewise different local aspects may have afforded further matter in the process of divine individualization—all this may be admitted, no doubt. The real origin of the gods is for all that not to be traced to such external material of history, but resides in the spiritual potencies of Life, under the guise of which they were conceived. We are consequently only entitled to accept the more extensive play of all that is positive, local, and historical, in so far as it makes more definite the formal presentation of each particular individuality.
(γγ) Inasmuch as, further, the god passes into the sphereof the human imagination, and, still more important, is represented in real bodily shape, into close relations with which again man is placed by hiscultusin the activities of divine worship, a fresh material is here, too, presented by such relations for the extension of all that is positive and accidental. What animals have to be sacrificed to any god, what vestments the priesthood or the worshipper must appear in, what particular sequence must be adopted in any ceremonial—by all such matters the most varied and particular incidents are accumulated. For every activity of this kind implies an indefinite number of aspects and modes of arrangement, which may accidentally fall out in this way or that, but which, as appurtenant to a sacred rite, should be something settled, and not fixed by caprice, and which necessarily tend to pass into the sphere of symbolism. The colour of the vestments is an example of this; in the ritual of Bacchus we have the colour of wine, in like manner the doe-skin in which those initiated in the mysteries were enwrapped. The same thing applies to the drapery and attributes of the gods, the bow of Pythian Apollo, the whip, the staff, and numberless other accessories. Such things become, however, gradually a custom and nothing more; no one in the practice of the same thinks any longer of their birth history; and all that we now by dint of our research point out as their significance, has in the performance of them grown to something quite external, which mankind associates himself with on account of the immediate interest, that is, from mere sense of fun, delight in the present, devotion, or simply because it is just a custom and is so fixed for his active senses, and is done in like manner by others. As an example from our own life, when we see our German youth light the Johannis fire in summer time, or play antics elsewhere, and throw it at the windows, such is for us a purely formal custom, in which the original significance fades as much into the background as at the festal dances of Greek youths and maidens the revolutions of the dance do in their imitative (like the twists and turns of some labyrinth) significance of the spiral motions of the planets. Youth does not dance in order to entertain ideas of such things, but the interest limits itself naturally to the dancing and the tasteful and graceful festivity of its beautiful motion.The entire significance, which was created by the original stimulus, and of which the reproduction was for the imagination and sensuous perception of symbolical character, is throughout an imaginative conception, whose singular traits we suffer to pass from us like a fairy story, or as in historical narrative as external detail relative to Time and Space, and of which we can only say: "It is so," or, "Such is the tale," and so forth. The interest of art can consequently only consist in this, namely, that it borrow one aspect from the material which has passed into the condition of positive externality, and make the best of this one for an example, which sets the gods before us as concrete, living individuals, merely retaining a distant echo of any profounder significance.
This positive aspect is precisely that which endows the Greek gods with the charm of living humanity when the imagination elaborates it anew. It is by this latter process that what is otherwise merely of substantive import, or that of power, is thereby carried into the individual present, which, speaking in general terms, is concentrated to a point out of that which is truly explicit or independently actual, and which is external and accidental, and thereby the indefinite, which otherwise is always present in the conception of the gods, is limited in its range and filled out in its content. We are unable to attach any additional value to specific tales and particular traits of characterization, for this material, which, in its earlier stage is, when we look at its primary source, the symbolically significant, has now only remaining the task to perfect the spiritual individuality of the gods in their positive sensuous definition in contrast to the human and to attach to it by virtue of a material which, in respect to its content and envisagement, is undivine, the aspect of caprice and chance, characteristics inseparable from concrete individuality. Sculpture, in so far as it presents to our senses the pure ideals of the gods, and is concerned to set before us character and expression solely under the mode of living bodies, can least of all with clearness make visible the final result of individualization. It does nevertheless give real effect to it within the limits of its own province, as we may see, for example, in the different treatment of headdress, the mode in which the foldsor locks of hair are arranged in each particular case; and this is done not merely with a view to symbolical interpretation but in order to individualize. In this way Hercules has short locks, Zeus an abundant growth which rises above the forehead, Diana quite a different folding of the hair to that of Venus. Pallas, too, is distinguished by the Gorgo on the helmet, and the like result is obtained by means of weapons, girdle, fillets, bracelets, and all the variety of other external adornment.
(γ) We find as athirdand final source of the closer definition of divine personality the relation which this occupies to the concrete actual world and its numerous natural phenomena, human deeds and events. For however much we have seen that this spiritual individuality is in part respectively to their universal essence, and partly in respect to their particular singularity, the visible result of earlier natural foundations which have symbolical significance, yet it also persists, if regarded as a spiritually self-subsistent personality, in a relation of continuous, vitality with Nature and human existence. It is under this point of view, as we have already intimated at length, that we have before us the imaginative flow of the poet, an ever fertile source of particular tales, traits of character and exploits, such as are related us about the gods. The artistic aspect of this stage of the process consists in this, that the divine personalities are made to blend in a vital way with human affairs, and that the isolated nature of events are without exception conceived in association with the universality of the divine, just as we ourselves, for example, are wont to say, if in another sense, of course, that this or that eventuality comes from God. Even in the reality of everyday life, in the natural process of his existence, in his daily wants, fears, and hopes, the Greek took refuge in his gods. At first it was external accidents, which the priesthood accepted as omens, and interpreted relatively to his objects and circumstances. If distress and misfortune appeared, the priest had to explain the cause of the affliction, to recognize the anger and disposition of the gods, and to suggest the means by which the misfortune might be faced. The poets proceed yet further in their interpretations for this reason, namely, that they ascribe everything, which is related to a pathos universaland essential, that is, the moving force in human resolve and action, to the gods themselves and their activity; so that the activity of mankind appears likewise as the act of the gods, who fulfil their own counsels by means of their instrument, man. The material in these poetical expositions is taken from the circumstances of ordinary life, in respect to which the poet lays it down, whether this or that god has expressed his purpose in the event which he is expounding and asserted himself actively therein. For this reason poetry to an exceptional extent enlarges the range of many specific stories, which have the gods for their principal subject-matter. We may in this connection recall to our memories several examples which we have already used as illustrations when considering another aspect of our subject, namely, the relation of the universal powers to the practical pursuits of human personality. Homer places Achilles before us as the bravest among the Greeks before Troy. This pre-eminence of his hero he expresses by means of the statement that Achilles is invulnerable in every portion of his body with the single exception of his heel, which his mother was compelled to take hold of when she dipped him in the Styx. This tale has its origin in the imagination of the poet who thus interprets the external fact. If we accept this bluntly as though an actual fact purported to be expressed therein which the ancients would have believed in the same sense that we believe in any fact on the evidence of our senses such a conclusion is a very crude one indeed. It in short amounts to this, that Homer no less than all the Greeks and Alexander with them who admired Achilles and praised his fortunes, which were the main theme of the song of Homer, were simpletons. Such a glorification must inevitably carry such a consequence if the reflection is to hold good that the bravery of Achilles was no difficult matter since he was aware of his invulnerability. But the bravery is, in truth, thereby in no way abridged, because he is equally aware of his early death, and notwithstanding never evades danger, however it may arise. The like relation is put before us in a very different way in the "Niebelungenlied." In that the horned Siegfried is likewise invulnerable, but he has also in addition to this his cap which makes him invisible. When he assists King Gunther thus invisible in the fight of thelatter with Brunhilde it becomes simply an affair of barbaric sorcery which does not enhance very much our opinion either of the bravery of Siegfried or King Gunther. No doubt in Homer the gods frequently lend assistance to particular heroes; but the gods merely appear on such occasions as the universal concept of that which man as an individual himself is and carries out, and to carry out which he must actively employ the entire strength of his heroic endowment. If it had been otherwise the gods would have only found it necessary to decimateen massethe Trojan host in battle in order to complete at once the triumph of the Greeks. Homer gives us a picture just the reverse of this when he describes the main fight as essentially a contest between individuals, and it is only when the press and medley in general, when the entire mass of combatants, the collective heart of the host clashes in fury, that Ares at length storms over the field and gods war against gods. And this is not only generally fine and splendid as an enhancement of the effect, but we may find in it the profounder significance that Homer recognizes the particular heroes in what is singular and exceptional and the universal potencies and forces in the collective effect and the general aspect. In another connection Homer permits Apollo to appear on the scene, when the moment arrives which is fatal to Patroclus who is bearing the invincible armour of Achilles[195]. Three times had Patroclus plunged into the crowded host of the Trojans, mighty as Ares, and three times he had already slain nine men. When he stormed there for the fourth time then it was that the god, enveloped in obscure night, made toward him among the medley and smote him on the back and the shoulders, tore away from him his helmet, so that it rolled on the ground, and rang out sharply as it struck the hoofs of the chargers; and the plumes of it were besmirched with blood and dust, which none ever wot of before. Apollo also breaks the brazen spear in his hands, the shield drops from his shoulders, and his armour is loosened on him by the god. This interference of Apollo we may accept as the poetic explanation of the circumstance, that it is exhaustion no less than natural death which seizes upon and subdues Patroclus in the turmoil and heat of battle at the fourth encounter.Then it was that Euphorbus was able to thrust his spear into his back between the shoulders. Yet one more time Patroclus endeavoured to withdraw from the battle; but Hector had already hastened to meet him, and thrust his spear deep into his side. Then Hector rejoiced and mocked the sinking hero. But Patroclus, speaking in low tones, replied that it was Zeus and Apollo who had mastered him, and withal with no trouble, because they had taken his weapons from off his shoulders. "Twenty men such as thou art," he exclaims, "I could have laid low with my spear, but I am slain by fateful necessity and the hand of Apollo. Thou, Euphorbus, hast but slain me the second time, and thou, Hector, but the third." Here, too, we may remark that the appearance of the gods simply points to the fact that Patroclus, albeit protected by the armour of Achilles, becomes faint, confounded, and despite of it slain. And this is not by any means a superstitious freak or empty play of the imagination, or rather a statement which amounts to this[196], that Hector's fame will be detracted from by this interposition of Apollo, and that even Apollo does not play in the entire affair a part which entirely redounds to his honour, since we necessarily take into account the might of the god—speculations of this kind merely betray a superstition of the prosaic mind as destitute of taste as it is devoid of reason. For in every case where Homer explains specific events by means of such appearances of the gods the gods use that which is already immanent in the conscious life of men, the power, that is, of their own passion and observation, or the potentialities of the general condition in which the man is placed, the force and the foundation of that which befalls and happens to anyone as a consequence of such conditions If it is true that at times traits that are wholly external and absolutely positive assert themselves in the appearance of the gods these in their turn have a comic aspect; as in the case when the lame Hephaestos goes round as cup-bearer. And generally we may say that Homer never treats the reality of such appearances from first to last seriously. At one time we see the gods in action, at anotherthey occupy a station of complete tranquillity. The Greeks were fully conscious that it was the poets who were responsible for such apparitions; and if they believed in them their belief was connected directly with that spiritual aspect which is equally the possession of mankind, forasmuch as it is the universal, the very active and motive principle in the events thus presented. From whatever point of view, therefore, we consider the matter it is clear that it is totally unnecessary to import superstition either in our own views or in those of the Greeks before we can enjoy such poetical representations of their gods.
(b) Such, then, is the general character of the classical Ideal, whose broader development we shall have to consider more succinctly when we examine the particular arts. Here we have only to add the observation that to whatever extent either gods or men are carried in their positive opposition to the particular and external, yet in classical art the affirmative ethical substratum must assert itself as maintained. The subjectivity remains throughout in union with the substantive content of its powers. Just as in Greek art the natural element is preserved in harmony with the spiritual and is likewise subordinated to the ideal content, though it be as adequate existence, the inward heart of our humanity ever presents itself also in a thorough identity with the genuine objectivity of Spirit, in other words, with the essential content of what is moral and true. Regarded from this point of view, the classic Ideal is unaware of the separation of ideality from external presentment and of the rending of the subjective and consequently abstract individual caprice in its various objects and passions, and it is no less so, on the other hand, of the abstract universal as thereby created. The foundations of character must, consequently, always be the substantive, and what is bad, sinful and evil in the self-housed dwelling of subjectivity is excluded from classical representations. And above all else the harshness, wickedness, meanness, and hideousness which finds a place in romantic art, will be wholly alien to it. It is true, we find many instances of transgression, matricide, patricide and other crimes against the love of family and piety treated as the subject-matter of Greek art; but they are not here regarded simply as atrocities, or, as a little while since itwas the fashion among ourselves, as brought about by the inscrutability of a so-called fatality which imports the appearance of a necessary result. Rather, if such transgressions are committed by mankind and in part ordered and defended by the gods themselves, such actions are on every occasion presented to us from some point of view at least in a light which declares a certain justification truly arising out of the subject-matter itself.
(c) Despite this substantive foundation we have seen the general elaboration of the gods of classical art manifest itself out of the repose of the Ideal within the variety of the individual and external embodiment, in all the detail of events, occurrences, and actions, which become ever and ever more human. By this means classical art finally, if we consider its content, carries yet further the process ofarticulatingthe accidental individualization, when we consider it as a mode of making the samepleasurableand attractive. In other words that which pleases is the elaboration of the particular aspect of the external phenomenon at every point of the same; by this means the work of art no longer arrests the spectator merely in its connection with his own concrete soul-life, but also contains many affiliating links with the finite aspect of his subjectivity. For it is precisely in the finiteness of the art-creation that the closer association subsists with that aspect of the individual which is itself finite, and which rediscovers itself once more with satisfaction in every respect as mobile and stable existence in the art-product. The seriousness of the gods becomes a grace, which does not agitate with violence or lift a man over his ordinary existence, but suffers him to persist there tranquil, and simply claims to bring him content. Just as we generally find that the imagination when it masters religious conceptions, and endows them with a form appropriate to its notions of beauty, has a tendency to make the earnest character of devotion disappear, and in this respect destroys religion strictly as religion; so, too, this very process moves forward at the stage we are discussing for the most part by the addition of that which is agreeable and pleases. For it is not by any means the substantial aspect, the significance of the gods, or their universal character, which is evolved by virtue of what delights. Rather it isthe finite side, their sensuous existence and subjective inward life, which purports to awake interest and provide satisfaction. The more, therefore, the charm of the existence reproduced is the dominant factor in its beauty to that extent the gracefulness is disentwined from the embrace of the universal and removed from the content, through which alone the profounder penetration could rest satisfied.
The transition to another province of the forms of art is closely united with this externality and articulate definition. For under the mode of externality reposes the manifold of the finite condition; a manifold which, so soon as it secures a free field, asserts itself finally in opposition to the spiritual Idea, its universality and truth, and begins to rouse up the dissatisfaction of thought in a reality which is no longer adequate to express it.
[180]Chapter XLIX.
[180]Chapter XLIX.
[181]I presume this is the sense of that difficult worddes Innerenhere.
[181]I presume this is the sense of that difficult worddes Innerenhere.
[182]By "absolute" I presume Hegel means here absolute in the sense of predominant, masterful—activity such as the Greek artist possessed.
[182]By "absolute" I presume Hegel means here absolute in the sense of predominant, masterful—activity such as the Greek artist possessed.
[183]"Iliad," I, vv. 9-12.
[183]"Iliad," I, vv. 9-12.
[184]Ibid.vv. 94-100.
[184]Ibid.vv. 94-100.
[185]"Odyssey," XXIV, vv. 41-63.
[185]"Odyssey," XXIV, vv. 41-63.
[186]That is, Thetis.
[186]That is, Thetis.
[187]Bestimmte sittliche Substanz.
[187]Bestimmte sittliche Substanz.
[188]Das reine Insichseyn.
[188]Das reine Insichseyn.
[189]Ein ewiger Ernst.
[189]Ein ewiger Ernst.
[190]I presume this refers to some drapery or curtains round the bust as exhibited.
[190]I presume this refers to some drapery or curtains round the bust as exhibited.
[191]This is the meaning ofHeiterkeithere rather than "cheerfulness," thoughSeligkeitis the usual word.
[191]This is the meaning ofHeiterkeithere rather than "cheerfulness," thoughSeligkeitis the usual word.
[192]Göttliche Universum.A rather curious expression for, I presume, the ideal totality of the Divine Being.
[192]Göttliche Universum.A rather curious expression for, I presume, the ideal totality of the Divine Being.
[193]Der geistigen absoluten Innerlichkeit.Lit., "the spiritual and absolute mode of the inward life." He refers, of course, to Christianity, with its life of the pure in heart and the pure reason.
[193]Der geistigen absoluten Innerlichkeit.Lit., "the spiritual and absolute mode of the inward life." He refers, of course, to Christianity, with its life of the pure in heart and the pure reason.
[194]Besonnenheit.
[194]Besonnenheit.
[195]"Iliad," XVI, vv. 783-849.
[195]"Iliad," XVI, vv. 783-849.
[196]I very much doubt whether the wordsSondern das Gerede alleincan have this meaning, but the obvious meaning, "but only the gossip," hardly makes sense. I think the sentence requires revision.
[196]I very much doubt whether the wordsSondern das Gerede alleincan have this meaning, but the obvious meaning, "but only the gossip," hardly makes sense. I think the sentence requires revision.
The gods of classical art contain in themselves the germ of their overthrow; consequently, when this fatal defect which they include is brought to consciousness through the elaboration of art itself, they bring about the dissolution of the classical Ideal at the same time. We established as the principle of this, so far as we have here to deal with it, that kind of spiritual individuality which secures in every respect an adequate expression in bodily or external existence immediate to our senses. This individuality was enclosed within a complex of divine personalities, whose definition is not essentially and withal from the first given up to the contingent condition in which the everlasting gods receive the appearance of dissolution for man's conscious life no less than for his artistic creation.
It is true that sculpture in its complete plastic perfection accepts the gods as substantive potencies, and endows them with a form in whose beauty they in the first instance repose in security, for the reason that the accidental character, of their external envisagement is to the least extent emphasized. Theirmultiplicityanddistinctiondoes in fact, however, constitute this element of contingency, and thought annuls this in the determinate conception ofonedivinity, through whose inevitable power they are mutually at war with and to the detriment of each other. For however universal the power of every particular god is conceived as specific individuality, such is of a restricted range. Add tothis the fact that the gods do not continue in their eternal repose; they are self-determined relatively to particular aims in actual movement through their being drawn hither and thither by the pre-existing conditions and collisions of concrete reality, in order at one time to afford assistance and at another to obstruct or destroy. These isolated relations in which the gods as active individuals participate contain within them an element of contingency, which impairs the substantive nature of the divine, however much the same may persist as the predominant substratum, and involves the gods in the contradictions and conflicts of a limited finitude. By reason of this finiteness immanent in the gods themselves they fall into contradiction with the loftiness, worth, and beauty of their existence, through which, too, they are eventually brought down to the level of mere caprice and chance. The genuine Ideal evades the complete appearance of this contradiction simply and in so far as—this is preeminently the case in true sculpture and its particular creations as we find them in temples—the divine personalities are represented as explicitly alone in the repose of blessedness, yet retain, as we have already above indicated, a certain aspect of lifelessness, somewhat aloof from all emotion, and withal that quiet characteristic of pathetic lament. It is just this mournfulness which exposes their fate by demonstrating that something of higher import stands above them, and the passage from the particularities of form to their comprehending unity is a necessary one. If, however, we fix our attention on the type and configuration of this loftier unity we shall find that it is, as contrasted with the individuality and relative determination of the gods, the essentially abstract and formless—the necessity, the fate, which under this mode of abstraction the higher can only in general terms be, and which constrains both gods and men, while remaining in itself incomprehensible and inconceivable. Fate is not as yet absolute and self-subsistent end, and thereby at the same time subjective, personal, divine purpose, but merely the one and universal Power which transcends the particularity of the different gods, and consequently is unable to be presented itself as individual entity; because otherwise it would simply appear as one among many individuals, and would stand above them. For this reason itremains without form and individuality, and is in this abstraction merely necessity and nothing more; with which gods no less than men, when they differentiate themselves as separate from one another, contend. And thus they give effect to their individual power condemned though it be to limitations, and would fain exalt themselves over the bounds and warrant of Fate, though they are, in fact, its subjects, and are forced to hearken to all that unalterably befalls them.
For the reason, then, that the principle of self-determinate Necessity[197]does not appertain to the particular gods, does not supply in other words the content of their self-determination, and only floats over them as an undefined abstraction, the aspect of their insularity as individuals has consequently free play and is unable to escape from Destiny, is moreover at liberty to branch out into the external fabric of the human condition, into the finite consistency of anthropomorphism, possibilities which convert the gods into the reverse of that condition which truly constitutes the notion of what they are essentially and in virtue of their divine nature. The overthrow of these gods of beauty is consequently quite inevitably brought about for art through their own nature. The human consciousness is at last quite unable to find repose in them, and is fain compelled to take leave of them. And, moreover, if we look more closely we shall find that the mode and type of Greek anthropomorphism supplies us with a general example of how the gods vanish away from the faiths of religion no less than those of poetry.
(a) Spiritual individuality here makes its appearance in the human form, it is true, as Ideal; but for all that it is in the immediately visible, that is, the bodily presence, not within humanity in all its essential explication, under the mode in which it is conscious of itself in its own self-conscious world as distinct from God, while in the same breath it annuls the distinction, and is, by its own act, as one with God, essentially infinite and absolute self-consciousness.
(α) For this reason the plastic Ideal is unable to present itself as infinite self-conscious spirituality. These plastic shapes of beauty are not merely stone and bronze, but also the infinite form of subjective life vanishes from them in their content and expression. We may become as enthusiastic as we please over their beauty and art, but for all that ourenthusiasmis and remains something native to our own souls; it is not really at home in the objects which it thus contemplates, that is in the gods themselves. To complete the true totality a real reciprocity is required on this side also of the subjective, self-knowing unity and infinity; it is this, and only this, that unfolds our conception of a living God of knowledge, and of men who thus apprehend Him. If this totality is not also essentially and with adequacy conformable to the content and nature of the Absolute, then the Absolute will itself appear not as truly a subject of spiritual being, and its presentment will confront us merely in its objective form without the possession of self-conscious Spirit. It is quite true, no doubt, that the individuality of the gods retains the content of subjectivity, but merely under modes that are contingent, and in a process of development,' which moves independently outside that substantive repose and blessedness of the gods.
(β) On the other hand, the subjectivity which is opposed to the gods of plastic art is also not the form of conscious life which is essentially eternal and true. In other words, this latter is—as we shall see for ourselves more clearly in our consideration of the third type of art, the romantic—that which has before it the objectivity to which it is conformable under the mode of an essentially infinite and self-knowing God. Inasmuch, however, as the knowing subject, at the stage we are now discussing, does not consciously conceive itself as present in the perfections of these godlike figures, nor even in its contemplation of such objects is aware of itself as circumstantially objective, it is still wholly distinct and separate from its absolute object, and is consequently a purely contingent and finite subjectivity.
(γ) We might possibly suppose that the passage into a higher sphere of reality would have been emphasized by the imagination and art as a further war among the gods, in a way analogous, in fact, to the first transition from the symbolismof the gods of Nature to the spiritual Ideals of classical art. This is by no means the case. On the contrary, this translation is carried forward in a wholly different field, as a conflict brought home to consciousness between absolute reality and the present world. For this reason art, in its relation to the higher content, which it has to seize under new modes, occupies an entirely altered position. This new configuration does not assert its importance as revelation by means of Art, but is made manifest independently without it, and appears on the prosaic ground of controversial and rational discussion, and from thence is within the soul and its religious emotions, mainly by means of miracle, martyrdoms, and so on, carried into the world of subjective knowledge, together with a consciousness of the contradiction between all that is finite and the Absolute, which unfolds itself in actual history as the process of events toward a Present which is not merely imagined, but is thefactwe have before us. The Divine, God Himself, becomes flesh, is born, lives, suffers, dies, and rises from the dead. This is a content which heart did not discover, but which, quite apart from it, was a present fact, and which consequently it has not borrowed from its own domain, but merely supplies a form to it. That old transition and war of the gods, on the contrary, discovered its origins in the artistic or imaginative view of the world simply, which created its wisdom and plastic shapes from its inner life, and gave to astonished mankind his new gods. For this reason the classic gods also have only received their existence through the fiat of the imagination, and merely exist as such in stone and bronze, or in the world open to the senses, not, however, in flesh and blood, or in very and actual Spirit. The anthropomorphism of the Greek gods is therefore without real human existence, that of body no less than that of Spirit. It is Christianity which first introduces us to this reality in flesh and blood as the determinate existence, life, and activity of God Himself. Consequently this bodily form, this flesh, however much also the purely natural and sensuous is recognized as a negation therein, receives its due and honour, and that which partakes of anthropomorphism here is sanctified. Even as man originally was made in the image of God, God is animage of man; whoso beholdeth the Son beholdeth the Father, and whoso loveth the Son loveth the Father. In a word, God is acknowledged as present in the actual world. This new content, then, is not brought home to consciousness by means of the conceptions of art, but is presented from an exterior source as an actual occurrence, as the history of the God who became flesh. A transition such as this could not take its point of departure from Art; the contrast between the old and the new would have been too disparate. The God of revealed religion, in respect to content and form, is very God in truth, in contrast with whom all rivals would become mere creations of the imagination, whom it would be quite impossible to compare with Him on equal terms. The old and new gods of classical art, on the contrary, originate in both cases independently from the ground of the imagination. They have only such reality from the finite Spirit as enables them to be conceived and represented as potencies of Nature and Spirit; the contradiction and conflict they declare, is taken seriously. If, however, the transition from the Greek gods to the God of Christendom were portrayed in the first instance by Art, the representation of such a war of gods could not in this direct form be enforced in all seriousness.
(b) Consequently this strife and transition becomes also, in more recent times, primarily an accidental, isolated subject-matter of art, which can claim to create no true epoch, and has been able in this form to embody no fundamental phase in the line of the entire development of art. We will recall here in this connection, if incidentally, a few of the more famous examples of this nature. We frequently hear in more recent times the lament over the submergence of Greek art, and a yearning towards Greek gods and heroes is not infrequently the theme of our poets[198]. This lamentation is expressed emphatically as in direct opposition to Christendom; and though it is, no doubt, generally granted that it contains the higher truth, the qualification is added that, so far as art is concerned, the transition is only to be regretted. This is the theme of Schiller's "Gods ofGreece"; and it is worth our while, even in the present inquiry, to consider this poem, not merely as poetry in the beauty of its exposition, its musical rhythm, its vivid pictures, or in the charm of its regretful mood, which was the motive force in its creation, but also in order to examine the content. Schiller's pathos is always true, no less than poignant, and the result of profound reflection.
It is perfectly true that the Christian religion contains, and may justly claim to accentuate, a certain phase of art; but in the due course of its development, at the time of the Aufklärung[199], it has also reached a point where we find that thought, or rather the Understanding[200], has driven into the background that element, which art pre-eminently requires, the actual human envisagement and revelation of God. For the human form and all that it expresses and declares, human events, actions, feeling, is the form under which art is forced to conceive and represent the content of Spirit. Inasmuch as the Understanding has converted God into a mere fact of thought, no longer crediting the appearance of His Spirit in concrete reality, and thus has alienated the God of Thought from all actual existence, this type of religious Illumination has necessarily accepted conceptions and requirements which are intolerable to Art. When, however, the Understanding is raised once more from the region of these abstractions into that of Reason, the need at once asserts itself for something more concrete, and withal for that kind of concreteness which Art itself unfolds. The period of the illuminating Understanding has, no doubt, possessed an art of its own, but only of very prosaic type, as we may even find it in Schiller, whose point of departure was precisely that of such a period of criticism; later on, however, owing to his realization how little reason, imagination, and passion were satisfied by the critical Understanding, he experienced a deep longing for art, in the fullest sense of the term, and primarily for the classical art of the Greeks and their gods, and general views of the world. It is from this kind of yearning, a reaction, in short, from the mere abstractions of the mind, that the poem referred tooriginated. According to the original draft of the poem, Schiller's attitude to Christianity is entirely polemical; afterwards he modified it considerably, no doubt realizing that itsanimuswas only directed against the critical aspect of the Illumination, which at a later time itself began to lose its importance. In the first instance he praises the Greek point of view as fortunate in that the whole of Nature was a thing of Life to it, and full of divinities. After that he reviews the Present and its prosaic conception of natural law, and the position man here takes relatively to God:
Diese traur'ge StilleKündigt sie mir meinen Schöpfer an?Finster wie er selbst ist seine Hülle,MeinEntsagen, was ihn feiern kann[201].
No doubt resignation is an essential characteristic in the evolution of the Christian life; but it is only in the monkish conception of it that it requires he should cut off from himself his soul, his emotions, the so-called impulses of his Nature, and should not incorporate his life in the moral, rational, actual world, the family and the State; and it does so precisely as the Illumination and its Deism, which presupposes that God is unknowable, imposes on mankind the extremest form of resignation, namely, that of abandoning all effort either to know or conceive Him. In any true exposition of Christian doctrine, resignation is, on the contrary, merely a phasal moment of mediation, a point of transition, in which that which is purely natural, sensuous, and in general terms finite, strips off this its incompatible nature in order to permit Spirit to attain the loftier freedom and reconciliation of its own possessions, a freedom and blessedness which was unknown to the Greeks. In Christianity as thus understood we are not entitled to speak of the celebration of the one God, of the bare seclusion of Himself, and the cutting ourselves adrift from an ungodly world, for it is precisely in this spiritual freedom and reconciliationof Spirit that God is immanent, and from this point of view the famous lines of Schiller:
Da die Göttes menschlicher noch waren,Waren Menschen göttlicher[202].
is absolutely false. We must for this very reason emphasize the later alteration made in the concluding lines which refer thus to the Greek gods:
Aus der Zeitfluh weggerissen schwebenSie gerettet auf des Pindus Höhn;Was unsterblich im Gesang soll leben,Muss im Leben untergehn[203].
These words support entirely the assertion we have made above that the Greek gods could only be localized in the mental conception and imagination; they were neither able to affirm such a position in the reality of life, nor satisfy in the long run finite spirit.
Of another sort is the opposition of Parny to Christianity—a poet named the French Tibullus on account of his successful elegies—which is conspicuous in a prolix poem of ten cantos, a kind of epic poem entitled "La Guerre des Dieux," as an attempt made to bring ridicule upon Christian conceptions in the interests of jest and comedy carried out in a tone of unrestrained frivolity, yet withal marked by good humour and considerable talent. The sallies of wit here are not, however, carried beyond the point of levity; we have few traces of the wanton disregard of things that are sacred and of the highest excellence such as marks the period of Frederick von Schlegel's "Lucinde." The Virgin Mary no doubt is treated very badly in this poem. The monks, Dominicans and Franciscans, yield to the seductions of wine and Bacchanals, and the nuns do much the same with Fauns, and the result is sufficiently shocking.Finally, however, the gods of the old world are vanquished and withdraw from Olympus to Parnassus.
As a concluding illustration Goethe in his "Bride of Corinth" has more profoundly depicted in a vivacious picture the banishment of love, not so much as the result of any true principle of Christianity as the misconceived interpretation of resignation and sacrifice. The poet here contrasts that false asceticism which seeks to condemn the determination of a woman to be wife and rates that enforced celibacy as something more holy than marriage with the natural feelings of mankind. Just as we find in Schiller the opposition between the Greek imagination and the critical abstractions of our modern Enlightenment, so we may detect here the Hellenistic ethical and sensuous justifications in the matter of love and marriage, placed in direct contrast to ideas which can only claim to belong to the Christian religion when regarded from a wholly one-sided and therefore incorrect point of view. With the greatest art a really horrible tone dominates the entire work; and the principal reason is this, that it remains quite uncertain whether the action has reference to a real maiden, or a dead one, a living reality or a ghost; and in the metre of the verse itself in an equally masterly way the threads of light foolery and seriousness are so interwoven as to make the uncanniness still more effective.
(c) Before, however, we attempt to gauge in its profundity the new type of art, whose opposition to the old does not come into the course of Art's development, so far, at least, as we here have undertaken to follow it along its fundamental lines, we must in the first instance make clear for ourselves that other transition in its earliest form, which attaches to antique art itself. The principle of this transition consists in this, that the Spirit whose individuality hitherto has been contemplated as in harmony with the true subsistency of Nature and human life, and which, in respect to its own life, volition, and acts, was consciously at home in that accord, begins now to withdraw itself into the infinite subjectivity of its essence, but instead of the true infinity is only able to secure a purely formal and indeed still finite return upon itself.
If we look more closely at the concrete conditions whichcorrespond to the principle indicated, we shall see, we have already done so, that the Greek gods possess as their content the substantivemateriaeof real human life and action. Over and above the vision of the gods we have now the highest mode of determination, the universal interest and the end in determinate life, that is to say, presented at the same time as an existing fact. Just as it was essential to the spiritual configuration of Greek art to appear both as external and real, so, too, the spiritual growth of mankind in its absolute significance has elaborated itself in a reality that both externally appears and is real, with whose substance and universality the individual has put forward a claim to be in accordant fusion. This highest end was in Greece the life of the State, the collective body of citizens and their morality and living patriotism. Outside this supreme interest there was no other more lofty or true. The life of the State, however, as an external phenomenon of the world, fades into the Past, as do the conditions of the entire reality of the outside world. It is not difficult to demonstrate that a State under the type of such a freedom, so immediately identical with all its citizens, which as such already possess in their grasp the highest activity in all public transactions, is inevitably small and weak, and in part must prove suicidal to itself, in part fall into ruins in the natural course of the history of nations. In other words, by reason of this immediate coalescence of individual life with the universality of State-life, on the one hand we find that the peculiar idiosyncrasies of spiritual experience and its particular aspects as private life do not receive their full dues, nor do they receive sufficient opportunity for a development innocuous to society at large. Rather, as distinct from the concrete substance, into which it has not been accepted, such a nature remains simply the limited and natural egoism, which goes on its own way independently, pursues its interests however much they are alien to the true interest of the whole, and, consequently, is an instrument to the ruin of the State, against which, in the last resort, it strains to oppose its individual forces. On the other hand within the circle of this freedom itself the need of a higher personal liberty is roused, which not merely in the State, as the substantive totality, nor merelyin the accepted code of morals and law, but in the very soul of the man himself asserts its claim to exist, in so far as he is ready to give life to goodness and rectitude out of the wealth of his own nature and in the light of his own personal knowledge, and to recognize the same at its real worth. The individual subject demands of consciousness that it should be, in virtue of its claim as self-identity, a substantive whole. Consequently there arises in this freedom a new breach between the end of the State and that of the man's own personal welfare as essentially free himself. Such a conflict as this had already begun in the time of Socrates, while on the other side the vanity, self-seeking and unbridled character of democracy and demagogy corrupted the true State to such a degree that men like Plato and Xenophon experienced a loathing for the internal condition of their mother-city, where the direction of all public transactions lay in the hands of those who were either frivolous, or those who sought nothing but personal aims.
The spirit of this transition, therefore, depends in the first instance on the general line of severation between Spirit in its unfolded self-subsistency and external existence. The spiritual in this separation from its reality, in which it no longer finds itself reflected, is then the abstract mode of Spirit; it is not, however, the one Oriental god, but on the contrary the actual self-knowing conscious subject, which brings to the fore and retains within the clasp of its ideal subjectivity all that is universal in thought, truth, goodness, and morality, and possesses therein not so much the knowledge of a pre-existing reality as simply the content of its thoughts and convictions. This relation, in so far as it persists in this opposition, and sets up the two aspects of the same as purely opposites to one another, would be of an entirely prosaic character. We do not, however, at this stage as yet arrive at this point of bare prose. In other words it is true that on the one hand we have a consciousness present, which as self-secure, wills the Good, the fulfilment of its desires, conceives the reality of its notion in the virtue of its emotional life, much as we find it thus imaged in the ancient gods, morals, and laws. At the same time, however, this consciousness is split up in opposition to its existence as part of existing Life, in otherwords the actual political life of the time, the dissolution of the old modes of conception, the former type of patriotism and political wisdom, and adheres thereby unquestionably to that opposition between the inward life of soul and the real environment outside it. And the reason of this hesitancy is this that the bare conceptions of genuine ethical truth which it derives from its own inner world are unable to fully satisfy it; it consequently faces that which is exterior to this, to which it relates itself in a negative and hostile spirit with the object of changing it. This consciousness is, as already stated, on the one hand no doubt an inward and present content, which, self-determined and at the same time deliberately articulate, is concerned with a world that confronts it, to which this content is opposed, and which receives the task to depict this same reality in the semblance of the very traits of the corruption peculiar to that world, and which form such a contrast with its own ideas of goodness and truth. From another point of view this very contrast is cancelled by art itself. In other words, another type of art arises, in which the conflict of this opposition is not emphasized through the medium of mere thoughts, remaining thus in its disunion; but this reality in the very folly of its corruption is itself submitted to a mode of artistic presentation, which exposes it as self-destructive, and exposes it in such a way that it is precisely in and through this self-destructive process of what is of no weight that truth is enabled to assert itself upon this mirror as the secure and endurable power, and thereby all the force of a direct opposition to what is essentially true is removed from that side represented by folly and unreasonableness. This art is comedy, of the type Aristophanes dramatized for his fellow-citizens, connecting it closely with all that was essential in the world around him, and doing so with equanimity[204], in a mood of pure and hearty joviality.
We may, however, observe that this resolution of art, despite its adequacy, tends to disappear to this extent, that the contradictory antithesis persists in the form of itsopposition, and, consequently, instead of the poetic reconciliation aprosaic relation is imported, by means of which the classical type of art appears to be annulled, and the gods of plastic shape no less than the entire world of human beauty vanish with it. We have, then, now to look about us for a form of art, which is able to reclothe itself from the ruins of this overthrow in a loftier configuration and to extract the real significance which it implies. We discovered as the terminating point of symbolic art in the same way that the separation of pure form from its significance was emphasized in a variety of modes such as simile, fable, parable, riddle, and the like. Inasmuch as the severation above adverted to is causally responsible for the dissolution of that art-type, in a similar way the question arises what is the nature of the distinction between our present example of transition as contrasted with the previous one. The distinction is as follows:
(a) In the truly symbolic and comparative type of art the form and significance are from the very first, despite the affinity of their relationship, alien to one another; they are placed, however, in no mere negative, but rather in amicable relationship; for it is precisely the qualities and traits which are identical to or resemble each other on the two sides which assert themselves as the causal basis of their conjunction and comparison. Their persistent separation and hostility is consequently within the bounds of this union neither, relatively to the separated aspects, of ahostilecharacter, nor is a blending of the same, within essentially narrow limits, thereby removed from them. The Ideal of classical art, on the contrary, proceeds from the perfect interfusion of significance and form, the ideal individuality of spirit and its external conformation; and when the composite aspects which have been brought together in such a consummated unity are disrupted, this disruption takes place simply because they are unable any longer to cohere one with the other, and are absolutely compelled to start forth from their peaceful state of harmony in disunion and hostility.