Chapter 13

[206]Throughout, of course, the German word translated in these paragraphs as mind or spirit isGeist.

[207]Absolute ideality may perhaps interpret the text more intelligibly.

[208]It is so because as self-identity it distinguishes itself from everything to which it is related.

[209]Das wirkliche Subjekt, Hegel means, of course, individual man.

[210]"Most intimate" would perhaps express the meaning more clearly.

[211]Hegel here gives expression to what is perhaps not wholly defensible logic, though it may be truly poetic mysticism.

[212]I would refer any reader who is inclined to gasp at this interpretation of Christian revelation to some useful remarks of Professor Bosanquet in his Preface to his translation, p. XXVIII.

[213]Die Ausbreitung dieses Selbstanschauens, In-sich-und-Bei-sich-seynsdes Geistes ist der Frieden.One of Hegel's terrors for the translator, though the sense is obvious enough.

[214]The analysis no doubt has its interest. But among other difficulties it is not easy to see how the argument, based as it is on rational grounds, makes for anything but annihilation. Death is a negation—it, according to the argument, puts an end to the "process"—what remains then is apparently the evanescence of the finite spirit. This reference to "happiness" assumes that conscious individual life continues, which is a merepelitio principii.If it continues the former dual aspect would seem to be implied in it. The analysis of the actual significance of death for Christendom and Greek paganism retains, of course, its validity.

[215]But surely in a sense personal life, if only limited to Earth's existence, may be, I do not say necessarily is, all the more valuable. This is an important aspect of the matter which is not here adequately answered, and it suggests a real grievance against the extravagant follies of a certain type of Christendom. The present feeling of the wisest minds of our own time will be inclined to regard a good deal of Hegel's remarks here as insufficient or lacking directness. One recalls those significant lines of a great writer but recently taken from us:Sensation is a gracious giftBut were it cramped in station,The prayer to have it cast adriftWould spout from all sensation.Hegel's point of view seems neither to be that of mysticism nor mere absorption.

Sensation is a gracious giftBut were it cramped in station,The prayer to have it cast adriftWould spout from all sensation.

Hegel's point of view seems neither to be that of mysticism nor mere absorption.

[216]"Odyssey," XI, vv. 481-91. But this illustration is at least evidence of the high value a Greek attached to life on Earth.

[217]True enough as an analysis of the Christian consciousness; but the difficulty above pointed out remains so far as the writer refers to a future life, which he sometimes appears to do, sometimes not. Conditions are assumed for human personality of which we can form no conception.

[218]He means it is the negation of that which is itself a negation, finite existence. The conclusion is of course, as above suggested, replete with difficulty.

[219]That is, I presume, the positive character of natural conditions; but it may mean its own "affirmative" relation.

[220]Auf die Innerlichkeit des Geistes.

[221]Reason or Spirit are perhaps preferable.

[222]The German words aredas Innerlicheanddie Innigkeit.

[223]This is obviously not wholly independent of form.

Inasmuch as romantic art, in the representation of the consciousness of absolute subjectivity, understanding this as the comprehension of all truth, the coalescence of mind with its essence—receives its substantive content in the satisfaction of soul-life, in other words the reconciliation of God with the world and therein with Himself, it follows that at this stage the Ideal for the first time is completely at home. For it was blessedness and self-subsistency, contentment, repose, and freedom which we declared as most fundamentally defining the Ideal. Of course, we cannot therefore on this account deduce the Ideal simply from the notion and reality of romantic art; but relatively to the classic Ideal the form it receives is entirely altered. This relation, already in general terms indicated, we must now before everything else establish in its fully concrete significance, in order to elucidate the fundamental type of the romantic mode of presentation. In the classical Ideal the Divine is in one aspect of it restricted to pure individuality; in another aspect the soul and spiritual blessedness of particular gods find their exclusive discharge through the physical medium; and as a third characteristic, for the reason that the inseparable unity of each individual both essentially and in its exterior form supplies the principle of the same, the negativity of the dismemberment implied in human life, that is the pain of both body and soul, sacrifice, and resignation are unable to appear as essentially pertinent to these godlike figures. The Divine of classical art falls, it is true, into an aggregation of gods, but there is no organic and essential self-division, no universally proclaimed essence such as we find in the particular presentment of man whetherin form and spirit, whether empirically or subjectively considered; and just as little has it confronting it, as being itself the Absolute in invisible form, a world of evil, sin, and ignorance, together with the task of resolving such contradictions in harmony, and only by thus growing on level terms with the very truth and divine out of this reconciliation. In the notion of the absolute subjectivity, on the contrary, this opposition between substantive universality and personality is inherent, an opposition, whose consummated mediation the subjective ideality perfects with its substance, exalting thereby the substantive presence to the articulate and absolute subject of self-knowledge and volition. But there is,secondly, appertinent to the reality of the subjective condition conceived as mind the profounder contradiction of a finite world, through whose abrogation as finite, and by whose resultant reconciliation with the Absolute the Infinite by virtue of its own absolute activity makes its proper being self-subsistent, and so for the first time exists as absolute Spirit. The appearance of this actuality on theterrain, and in the configuration of the human spirit receives consequently, in respect to itsbeauty, a totally different mode of relation to that presented by classical art. Greek beauty unfolds the inward aspect of spiritual individuality solely as it is envisaged by means of its bodily shape, actions, and events, wholly expressed in what is exterior, and living wholly therein. For romantic art, on the contrary, it is absolutely necessary that the soul, albeit envisaged in the exterior medium, should at the same time demonstrate its capacity of self-withdrawal from the tenement of the body and self-substantive life. The bodily frame can therefore now only express the inwardness of mind, in so far as it makes it plain that it is not in this material existence, but in itself, that the soul discovers its congruent reality. On account of this beauty is now no longer an idealization in respect to the objective form, but rather the ideal and essential configuration of the soul itself; it is in short a beauty of spiritual ideality, that is the specific mode of such, as every content is informed and elaborated within the temple of the subjective world, and without retaining the external medium in this its permeation with Spirit. For the reason, then, that by this means the interestdisappears, which consists in clarifying real existence to the point of our classical unity, and is concentrated in the contrary direction of wafting a new breath of beauty through the unseen content of the spiritual itself, art ceases to retain the old solicitude for what is exterior at all. It accepts the same directly as it may chance to find it, leaving it to take whatever form may happen to please it. The reconciliation with the Absolute is in the Romantic an act of the inward life, which no doubt is embodied externally, but which does not retain that exterior in its material realization as its essential content and object. We may observe that in close association with this indifference towards the idealizing union of soul and body, and in its relation to the external treatment of the more predominant individuality of a sitter, we find the art ofportraiture, which does not entirely erase particular traits and lines, as they are found in Nature, and her inevitable deficiencies—defects inseparable from finite effects—in order to replace them with something more adequate. Generally speaking even here there is a certain limit to the licence given to Nature in this respect; but to the general aspect of form in the first instance it is quite indifferent; and no attempt is made to exclude wholly from it the accidental impurities of finite and sensuous existence.

We may adjoin a further quite sufficient reason for the imperative character of this radical definition of romantic art from another point of view. The classic Ideal, where we find it at the culminating point of its very truth, is self-exclusive, self-subsistent, retiring and not susceptible[224]in its nature, an orbed individual totality, which repels all else from itself. Its conformation is uniquely its own; its life is bound up in that and that exclusively, and it will harbour no affinity with what is purely empirical and contingent. Whoever, therefore, approaches an ideal such as this as spectator, is unable to appropriate its existence as an embodiment strictly akin to that of his own presence. The figures of the eternal gods, albeit human, do not belong to our mortality, for these gods have not themselves experienced the infirmities of finite existence, but are directly exalted above them. Their affinity with what is empirical and relative is interrupted. The infinite subjectivity, whatwe call the Absolute of romantic art, is on the contrary not absorbed in its presentment; it is rather carried into itsowndomain, and for this very reason retains such external aspect as it possesses not so muchfor itselfas for the contemplation of others, as, in short, an exterior presence which is freely offered for this purpose. This externality must further appear in the form of common fact, the human as our senses perceive it, since it is through that that God Himself descends to the level of finite and temporal existence, in order to mediate and reconcile the absolute antithesis, which is inherent in the notion of the Absolute. For this reason our empirical humanity also contains in its bodily presence an aspect, which unfolds to man a bond of affinity and kinship, by virtue whereof he is able to contemplate even his direct natural presence with assurance; and he can do so because the Divine incarnation does not, with the severity of the classical type, thrust on one side the particular and contingent, but presents to his vision that which he himself possesses, or that which he recognizes and loves in others around him. It is just this homeliness incidental to what we ordinarily meet with which attracts and enables romantic art to entrust itself to the external aspect of reality. Inasmuch, then, as the externality which is turned adrift is called upon, through this very abandonment, to suggest the beauty of soul, the lofty pretension of its spirituality and the sacred colour of the emotional life, so, too, at the same time, it is a condition of its doing so that it be absorbed itself within the ideal realm of mind and its absolute content, and that it appropriate the same.

To sum up finally what is implied in this act of surrender we may assert that it consists in the general conception, that in romantic art the infinite subjectivity does not abide in solitary self-sufficiency, as the Greek god did, living in the full perfection and blessedness of his self-exclusion; rather it moves out of itself in relation to somewhat else, which, however, is its own substance, in which it discovers itself again and continues all the time in union with itself. This condition of self-unity in some other that is yet its own is the real form of beauty appropriate to romantic art, the Ideal of the same, which receives for its mode and envisagement what is, in its essence, subjective ideality or inwardness,soul-life and its attendant emotions. The romantic Ideal expresses, therefore, the relation to another spiritual correlative, which is so closely associated with the ideal possessions of the first one, that it is only by virtue of this further one that the soul lives in the complete wealth of its own kingdom. This essential life of the soul in another is, when expressed in terms of emotion, the inwardness of love.

We may consequently affirmlaveto be the general content of the romantic, so far as the sphere of religion is concerned. Love, however, only receives its truly ideal configuration when it expresses thepositivereconcilement of Spirit in its immediacy. Before, however, we shall be in a position to examine this stage of the fairest and most ideal spiritual satisfaction, we must first pass in reviewthe process of negation, which the absolute Subject enters in overcoming the finiteness and immediacy of its human envisagement, a process which is divulged in the life, death, and suffering of God for the world and humanity, and its possible reconcilement with God. And, secondly, we have on the other side, humanity, which is called upon conversely on its own account to pass through the very same process in order to make actual the reconciliation which is implicitly contained in its nature. Midway within the steps of this process, in which thenegativeaspect of the sensuous and spiritual passage 011 to death and the grave constitutes the central act of achievement, we shall find that the expression ofaffirmativeblessedness is conspicuous, which in this sphere characterizes art's most beautiful creations. For the better division of this first chapter we may examine its subject-matter as it falls into three distinct heads of inquiry.

First, we have the redemption-history of Christ; the phasal moments of absolute Spirit presented in the person of God Himself, in so far as He becomes man, and takes to Himself an actual existence in the world of finitude and its concrete conditions, and in this to start with isolated existence gives visible shape to the Absolute itself.

Secondly, we shall consider love in its positive presentment as the feeling of reconciliation between the human and the Divine; in other words the Holy Family, the maternal love of Mary, the love of Christ and that of his disciples.

Thirdly, we have the community before us. Here it is the Spirit of God as present by virtue of the conversion of soul and the mortification of the natural and finite sense, in short, the return of man to God, a return in which penances and pains mediate in the first instance this union of God and man.

The reconciliation of God with His own substance, history in its absolute significance, or, in one word, the process of realization, is made visible to our senses and assured to our minds by the revelation of God in the world. The content of this reconcilement as expressed in the most direct way is the coalescence in unity of the absolute essence of reality with the individual subject of human consciousness. An individual man is God and God is an individual man. In this truth is implied the fact that the human spiritintrinsically, that is, relatively to its notion and essence, is Spirit in truth; and every particular individual in virtue of the humanity he connotes possesses the infinite vocation no less than the infinite significance of being an object of God and in union with God. But along with this and of a like importance the obligation is imposed on man to realize this notion, which, in the first instance, he merely possesses under the implication of his nature. In other words, he has to place before himself and attain to this union with God as the seal of his existence. Only when he has thus consummated his proper destiny does he become essentially free and infinite Spirit. This he can only do in so far as that unity is itself the origination, the eternal ground-root of the human and Divine nature. The goal is here the explicit beginning of the process, namely, the presupposition for the religious consciousness exhibited in romantic art, that God is Himself man and flesh, that He has become this particular human individual, in whom the reconciliation consequently no longer remains as only implicit, so that it is merely to be inferred from itsnotionalexistence, but asserts itself inobjectiveexistence also before the perception of human sense as this particular and actually existing man. The importanceof this aspect ofparticularityconsists in this that it enables all other individuals to find in the same the picture of his own reconcilement with God; it is now no longer a mere possibility, but a fact which has on this very account appeared as really accomplished in this one person. Inasmuch, however, as this unity, conceived as the ideal reconciliation of opposed factors of one process, is no immediately unified mode of being, it is inevitable, in thesecondplace, that the process of Spirit as exemplified in thisoneindividual—the process, that is, by means of which consciousness is for the first time Spirit in Truth—should receive the form of its existence in the history of this very person. This history of Spirit attaining its consummation in one personal life consists simply in all that we have already adverted to; that is to say, the particular man casts on one side his singularity both in its bodily and spiritual presence, in other words he suffers and dies, but furthermore through the agony of death rises again out of death and ascends as glorified God, very and real Spirit, who now, it is true, has entered actual existence as this particular person, yet is with equal truth only very God as Spirit in His community.

(a) This history furnishes the fundamental material for the romantic art of the religious consciousness, in its attitude to which, however, art, taken simply as Art, is to some extent a superfluity. For the main thing here is spiritual conviction, the feeling and conception of this eternal truth, andthe faithwhich is essential evidence to itself of the truth, and becomes in consequence a vital possession of the ideality of that conception. In other words, faith in its developed condition consists in the immediate conviction that it has confronting soul, in the organic movement of this history, thetruthitself. If, however, the consciousness of truth is the main point of importance it follows that thebeautyof the artistic reflection and presentation is of incidental value to which we may be comparatively indifferent, for the truth is present to mind quite independently of art.

(b) From another point of view, however, the religious content comprises at the same time within its compass a certain aspect of this process, by virtue of which it not merely admits of artistic treatment, but, in a specific relation, admits of it asnecessary.In the religious conceptionof romantic art, as we have more than once explained it, it is an inseparable concomitant of the content that it carries anthropomorphism to the verge of an extreme; and this is so because it is precisely this content which possesses for its maincentrumthe complete coalescence of the Absolute and Divine with the human consciousness as a visible part of sensuous reality, in other words, as envisaged in the external bodily frame of man, and further, is compelled to represent the Divine in the form of individuality such as is associated with the deficiencies of Nature and the mode of finite phenomena. In this respect Art supplies to the consciousness which seeks to envisage the Divine manifestation, the definite presence of an individual and real human figure, a concrete image, moreover, of the exterior traits of events, in which the birth, life, sufferings, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ are more widely circulated to the glory of God; so that it is exclusively by Art that the real and visible presence of the Divine is for ever renewed over again in a permanent form.

(c) In so far as, in this Divine manifestation, an emphasis is laid on this, namely, that God is essentially a particular individual to the exclusion of others, and does not merely present to us the union of Divine and human consciousness in its universal significance, but rather as that of thisparticularman, to that extent, the very nature of the content makes it inevitable that all the features of contingency and particularity incidental to finite existence assert themselves, from which the beauty which characterized the consummation of the classic Ideal had purified itself. That which the free notion of beauty had removed from itself as unfitting, in other words, the non-ideal, is in the present case accepted as a necessary aspect, which actually originates in the movement of the content itself and is consequently made explicit.

(α) And it follows from this that when the person of Christ is selected for the object of art, as so frequently occurs, artists, no matter when or where, have taken the very worst course of all who create in their presentment of Christ an Ideal in the meaning and mode of the classical Ideal. Such heads or figures of Christ may no doubt display earnestness, repose, and ethical worth: but the true Christ presentmentshould rather possess on the one hand soul-intensity and pre-eminently spirituality in itswidestcomprehension, on the other, intimate personality andindividualdistinction. Both these contrasted aspects are inconsistent with that blissful repose in the sensuous environment of our humanity. To combine these twoterminiof artistic reproduction, expression and form, as above defined, is a matter of the greatest difficulty, and painters especially have almost always got themselves into difficulties when they diverged from the traditional type[225].

Earnestness and depth of consciousness should no doubt be prominent in the expression of such heads, but the specific features and lines both of countenance and figure ought as little to be of a simply ideal beauty as they are entitled to fall short in the direction of the commonplace and the ugly, or erroneously to aspire after the bare pretensions of the Sublime. The truest success in respect to the external figure will be found in a mean between the directness of Nature's detail and the ideal of beauty. Rightly to hit on this just mean is difficult. It is pre-eminently in this that the ability, taste, and genius of an artist will assert itself. And in general we may assert that in all artistic execution of this character—putting on one side entirely the different nature of the content, which is inseparable from religious faith—there is more scope offered for the exercise of the artist's private judgment than is the case when dealing with the classic Ideal. In classical art the artist seeks to present the spiritual and Divine immediately in the lines of the bodily shape itself, in the organism of the human figure; the lines of the human form, therefore, in this ideal divergence from what is ordinarily met with in finite existence, are fundamentally necessary to the interest. In the kind of art we are now discussing the configuration remains that of ordinary experience; its specific lines are up to a certain point unessential, detail, in short, that may indifferently be treated in divers ways and with greater artistic licence. The supreme interest, therefore, is concentrated, on the one hand, in the mode and manner whereby our artist makes that which is spiritual and ideal within the content underthe mode of Spirit itself shine forth through this envisagement of ordinary experience; and, on the other hand, in the individual discretion exercised in the execution, the technical means and shifts employed, by virtue of which he is able to impart to his creations the breath of spiritual life and to bring home this finer essence to our hearts and senses.

(β) With regard to the further aspect of the content we have already pointed out that it is referable to the history of the Absolute under the mode that the same is deducible from the notion of Spirit itself; a history which makes objective in the real world bodily and spiritual singularity as infused with its own essential and universal nature. For the reconciliation of our individual consciousness with God does not immediately appear as an original harmony, but rather as a harmony which only is modulated from infinite pain, from resignation, sacrifice, and the mortification of the finite, sensuous, and particular. We see here the finite and the infinite brought into unity; and this reconciliation only asserts itself in its true profundity, intimacy, and power by means of the grossness and severity of the contradiction which yearns for resolution. We may therefore without fear assert that the entire asperity and dissonance of the suffering, torture, and agony, which such a contradiction brings in its train, is inseparable from the very nature of spiritual life, whose final consolation constitutes here the content.

This process of Spirit is, if accepted frankly for all it implies and unfolds, the essence, the notion of Spirit absolutely. It consequently determines for conscious life thatuniversal history[226]which is for ever repeated in every individual consciousness. For it is nothing less or more than this consciousness as the universal mind or Spirit is explicated in the multiplicity of individual life, reality and existence. In the first instance, however, for the reason that the essential significance of the spiritual process is concentrated in that mode of reality which is purely individual, this universal history comes before us itself merely in the form ofoneperson, to which it is conjoined as its own, as the history,that is, of his birth, his suffering, death, and return from death; at the same time there is the further significance attached to this personal history, namely, that it is the history of universal and absolute Spirit itself.

The supreme turning-point of this life of God is the putting aside of individual existence as the life of aparticularman simply—the story of the Passion, the suffering on the Cross, the Calvary of Spirit, the agony of death. In so far as the content here comprises the fact that the external and bodily form—immediate existence in its personal mode—is, in the pain of its inherent contradiction, propounded in this aspect of negation in order that Spirit may secure its truth and its blessedness by the sacrifice of the sensuous and its individual singularity, to that extent we reach the extreme line of division between it as an artistic creation and the classic or plastic Ideal. From one point of view no doubt the earthly body and the frailty of human Nature is expressly exalted and honoured in the fact that it is God Himself who is made manifest within it. On the other hand, however, it is just this human and bodily side which is posited as negative, and declares itself in its pain. In the classic Ideal the undisturbed harmony in no way vanishes before the co-essential Spirit. The main incidents of that Passion, the mocking of Christ, the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross, the final death on the same in the agony of a torturing and tedious death, are wholly incompatible with the presentment of the Greek type of beauty. The lofty aspect in such situations as these is the essential holiness implied in them, the depth of the Spirit's inmost, the eternal significance of the agony in its relation to the spiritual process, the endurance and Divine repose.

The personal environment of this sublime figure is in part composed of friends and in part of enemies. The friends are throughout no ideal creations, but relatively to the notion[227], particular individualities typical of ordinary men, which the impulse of Spirit attaches to Christ: the enemies, on the other hand, by virtue of the fact that they place themselves in hostility to God, judge, mock, put to torture, and crucify Him, are presented to us as spiritually evil, andthis conception of their wickedness of heart and enmity to God brings in its train on its exterior side ugliness, grossness, barbarity, the rage and distortion of Spirit. In all these respects, in contrast with the classical beauty we have before us in such representations the non-beautiful as an inevitable concomitant.

(γ) The process of death, however, in the Divine nature is only to be regarded as a point of transition, by means of which the self-reconcilement of Spirit is effected; and the aspects of the Divine and human, the out and out universal and the phenomenal individuality, to mediate the division of which is the main object in view, are positively suffered to coalesce. This positive affirmation, which is the underlying root and origination of the process, is consequently also forced to exhibit itself in a like positive way. As emphatic situations in the Christ-history the resurrection and ascension supply conspicuously the very means to put that affirmation in the clearest light. In more isolated fashion we have over and above this for the same purpose those occasions in which Christ appears to His own as teacher. Here, however, plastic art is confronted with an exceptional situation of difficulty. For in a measure it is Spirit in its purity, which is to be presented in this very impalpable ideality, and in a measure, too, it is nothing less than absolute Spirit, which in the full pregnancy of its infinitude and universality is affirmatively propounded in union with an individual consciousness and exalted above immediate existence; and yet notwithstanding such preconceptions it has undertaken the task to envisage for sense in the bodily configuration of this person the entire expression of the infinite and innermost spiritual profundity which it refers to him[228].

Mind in its ultimate and most complete explication as reason is, as such, not the immediate object of art. Its highest and most essentially realized reconciliation can only find such satisfied consummation in the intellectual medium as such, that is to say, the ideal medium which is withdrawn from the reach of artistic expression; for absolute Truth stands on a higher level than the show of beauty, which is unable to break away from the sensuous and phenomenal. If, then, Spirit is to receive an existence asSpiritin its positive reconciliation through the medium of art, an existence which is apprehended not merely as ideal, in other words, as pure thought, but can befeltandenvisaged, it follows that the only mode left to us, which supplies this two-fold condition of spirituality on the one hand and of its capability of being conceived and presented by art on the other, is that of the inner realm of Spirit itself, what we understand by the soul and its emotional experience. And the condition of that kingdom which alone fully answers to the notion of free Spirit brought into peace and joy with itself isLove.

(a) In other words, if we look at the content, we shall see that its articulation is in its important features similar to the fundamental notion of absolute Spirit, the return of a reconciled presence from its Other to itself. This Other in the sense of the Other, in which Spirit continues by itself, can only be itself something spiritual, or rather a spiritual personality. The true essence of love consists in the surrender of the self-consciousness, in the forgetting oneself in another self, yet for all that to have and possess oneself for the first time in this very act of surrender and oblivion. This mediation of Spirit with itself and surcharge of its own to the unit of totality is the Absolute, not, however, of course, under the mode in which the Absolute coalesces with itself as merely singular and thereby finite individuality in another finite subject; rather the content of the spiritual individuality which is here self-mediated in another is the Absolute itself. It is, in short, Spirit which is only the knowledge and volition of its own substance as the Absolute by being in another, and which receives therewith the fruition of such knowledge.

(b) More closely regarded this content as love has the form of self-concentrated emotion, which, instead of making its content more explicit, that is to say, presenting it to consciousness in its definite terms and universality, rather converges the infinite breadth of the same directly to one focus in the clear profundity of the soul, without further unfolding in other directions for the imagination the wealth which it essentially includes. By this means a content of equal significance, which would be inconformable to artistic presentation, is fresh from the mint of its pure and ideal universality, is none the less capable of being the subject-matter of art in this individual existence of subjective emotion; for while under a mode such as this it is not on the one hand compelled to accept an articulation of perfect clarity by reason of its still undisclosed depth, which is the obvious characteristic of soul-life, yet on the other hand it receives under this mode a medium that it is possible for art to make use of. For soul-life, heart, feeling, however self-contained and spiritual they may remain, have none the less a bond of affiliation with the sensuous and material, so that they are able also on the outside show of things through the bodily members themselves, through a look, the facial expression, or in a still more spiritual way through the voice tones or a word to disclose the inmost life and existence of Spirit. But this exterior medium is in such a case only acceptable in so far as it strictly expresses this most intimate life of soul in ways that reflect the inward nature of the soul itself.

(c) We defined the notion of the Ideal to be the reconciliation of the inward life with its reality; we may now in like manner point to the emotion of love asthe Idealof romantic art in the sphere of the religious consciousness. It isspiritualbeauty in its pure emanation. The classic Ideal also exhibited the mediation and reconcilement of Spirit with its Other. But here the opposing factor of Spirit was the exterior medium suffused with that Spirit, it was its bodily organism. In love, on the contrary, the opposing presence of that which is spiritual is not the phenomenon of Nature, but a spiritual consciousness itself, another subject of such; and the realization of Spirit is consequently effected by Spirit itself in its own kingdom, in that medium which is uniquely its own. It follows from this that love inthis its positive self-fruition and essentially tranquillized and blessed realization is ideal, but before everything elsespiritualbeauty, which can only be expressed for the sake of the ideal virtue it possesses and further only in and as a part of the inmost shrine of the soul. For that Spirit, which is present inspiritto itself and is immediately aware of its own, which withal possesses what is spiritual for the substance and bottom of its very existence, abides in intimacy with itself, and, best definition of all, is the inward being of Love.

(α) God is Love; and consequently it is this most profound essence which, in this form native to artistic presentation, is thus apprehended and presented in the person of Christ. Christ is, however,Divine lovein the sense that from one aspect of it declares God Himself as its object, that is, God in the mode of His invisible essence, and from another it as truly reveals humanity under the seal of its redemption; and for this reason it is not so much in Him[229]that the passage of one individual into another particular individual is made manifest in His love, as the fact that we have here theideaof Love itself in its universality, in other words, the Absolute, the spirit of Truth in the medium and mode of emotion. With the universality of its object the expression of Love is also universalized in pursuance of which the purely individual concentration of heart and soul is not made the important point, just as among the Greeks in the ancient Titan Eros and Venus Urania we find, though, of course, in an entirely different connection, that it is the universal idea rather than the individual side of personal form and feeling which is the factor emphasized. Only when Christ is, in the presentation of romantic art, rather conceived as at the same time the isolate self-absorbed personality himself, is the expression of love clothed in the form of individual inwardness, and even then it is, of course, always exalted and uplifted by the universality of the content.

(β) The kind of love, however, which in this sphere of art is most within its reach and is generally the most successful object of the romantic and religious imagination, is the love of Mary, the mother's love. It stands closest to Nature's reality, is very human, and yet entirely spiritual, without either the interest or the egotism of sensual desire, not sensuousand yet present inward bliss in its absolute condition of fruition. It is a love that has no longing in it, not friendship, for friendship, albeit also so rich in soul quality, requires a substantive content, an essential material as the associating object. A mother's love, on the contrary, possesses without any mutuality[230]of aim or interests an immediate basis in the natural maternal bond. But in this particular case the mother's love is just as little restricted to the purely natural affiliation. Mary possesses in the child which she has carried under her heart and borne with travail the perfected knowledge and feeling of her very self, and this selfsame child, the blood of her blood, is also in equal degree exalted above her, and yet for all that she is conscious that this higher belongs to herself, and is precisely that she gains in her act of self-oblivion and possession. The natural intimacy of the mother's love is absolutely spiritualized, it receives for its very embodiment the Divine; but this spiritual coherence remains lowly and unaware, permeated in a wonderful manner with the unity of Nature and the emotion of womanhood. It is theblessedmother's love, and pertains only to theonemother, who first was recipient of its joy[231]. It is quite true that even this love is not without its pain, but the pain is merely the grief of loss, the lament over the suffering, dying, and dead son, and, as we shall find it at a later stage[232], has nothing to do with the injustice and torture suffered from a force without, or with the infinite conflict with sin, still less with agonies and pangs that arise in the soul. The inwardness of soul such as we have analysed is the beauty of Spirit, the Ideal, the human identification of man with God, with Spirit, with Truth; oblivion in its pure selflessness, the surrender of the ego, which, however, in this surrender, is from beginning to end at unity with that in which it is absorbed, and it is in this coalescence that the feeling of blessedness is consummated.

Under such a fair aspect we have maternal love embodied in romantic art, and it is at the same time a picture of Spirititself, because Spirit is only apprehensible by art in the form of feeling; and the feeling of that union of the individual with God in its most original, most real, and most vivid form is only present in the mother's love of the Madonna. It must inevitably form the subject-matter of art, if in the representation of this, the sphere of the religious imagination, the Ideal, the affirmative reconciliation in its joy is not to fall short of its aim. There has consequently been a time when the maternal love of the Blessed Virgin has been placed as the highest and holiest of Earth's possessions, and as such has been revered and presented to mankind. When, however, Spirit is brought before the human consciousness in its own native element, separated, that is, from all underlying emotion, the free mediation of Spirit that is built up on such a foundation can alone be regarded as the free road to Truth; and consequently we find that in Protestantism, as contrasted to this worship of Mary whether in art or belief, it is the Holy Spirit, and the inmost mediation of Spirit which has become the loftier truth.

(γ)Thirdly, and in conclusion, the positive reconciliation of spiritual life is embodied in the feelings of Christ's own disciples, the women and friends who follow him. Such are for the most part characters who have personally taken on themselves the severity of the idea of Christianity, hand iii hand with their Divine friend, by virtue of the friendship, teaching, and sermons of Christ, without passing through the external and inward pangs of spiritual conversion, who have carried it forward, made themselves masters both of it and themselves, and in the depth of their hearts remain strong in the same. From such, no doubt, the immediate unity and intimacy of that mother's love in a measure vanishes; but they still possess as the bond which unites them the presence of Christ, the common service to a great life which they share, and the direct impulse of Spirit[233].

In making our passage over to a concluding stage of the subject under discussion we can hardly do better than associate it with that which we have already touched upon in connectionwith the history of Christ. The immediate existence of Christ, as this particular man, who is God, is assumed to be wiped out, in other words, the truth itself asserts itself that in the manifestation of God as man, the true reality of God thus envisaged is not immediate sensuous existence but Spirit. The reality of the Absolute regarded as infinite subjectivity[234]is simply Spirit itself; God is in knowledge, in the element of the inner life, and only there. This absolute existence of God, as absolutely ideal to the same extent as it is subjective[235]universality, does not therefore admit of the limitations of this particular individual, who has in the story of his life made manifest the reconciliation between the Divine and human self-consciousness, but on the contrary is enlarged to the full measure of the human consciousness which is reconciled to God, that is, in general terms to ourhumanity, which exists as an aggregate of many individuals. In his independence, however, taken, that is, as a specific personality, man is not under any immediate mode the Divine, but on the contrary finite and human, which only in so far as it really propounds itself as a negation, which it essentially is, and thereby annuls itself in this negative aspect, can attain to the reconcilement with God. It is only by virtue of this deliverance from the frailty of finitude that our humanity declares itself as the vehicle of the existence of the absolute Spirit, as the spirit of the community, in which the union of the human and Divine Spirit within the bounds of human reality itself, in the sense of its realized mediation, carries into fulfilment what essentially, if we look at it in the light of the notion of Spirit, it is from the first in that very union.

The principal modes which are of importance in respect to this new content of romantic art may be distinguished as follows:

The individual, who in his separation from God lives in a condition of sinfulness and conflict with the immediacy and frailty of finite existence, possesses the eternal destiny to come into reconciliation with himself and God. Inasmuch, however, as we find that in the redemption-history of Christ the negative relation of immediate singularity is affirmed anddeclared an essential feature in the spiritual process, so, too, every particular individual is only through a conversion from the natural state and his finite personality uplifted to the free condition and into the peace of God.

This abrogation of finitude asserts itself in a threefold manner as follows:

First, as the repetition inactual lifeof the history of the Passion, a repetition of real bodily suffering—martyrdom.

Secondly, the above conversion is removed to theinmostlife of soul, as spiritual mediation by means of repentance, penance, and conversion.

Thirdly, and finally the manifestation of the Divine is so conceived in the world of Nature's reality that the ordinary course of Nature and the natural mode of occurrences as they otherwise take place is arrested, in order to display the might and presence of the Divine. Wonder or miracle is consequently the form of presentation.

(a)The Martyrs

The earliest mode under which the spirit of the community makes itself actively present in the human consciousness is effected when man forms a mirror in himself of the Divine process and so makes himself a new form of existence for the eternal Life[236]of God. Here we find once more that the expression of that immediate and positive reconciliation disappears, inasmuch as man can only attain to this by abrogating his finite existence. Everything, therefore, that was of central importance in the first stage returns to us again here only in an aggravated degree, because the incompatibility and unworthiness of our humanity is here presupposed, and to remedy this defect is assumed to be man's supreme and unique duty.

(α) The specific content of this phase is consequently the endurance of torments, and along with such the individual's willing renunciation, sacrifice, and self-imposed renunciation with the express aim of arousing sufferings, tortures, and anguish of every kind in order that Spirit may reveal itself therein, and feel itself in union with the fruition andblessedness of its heaven[237]. The negative aspect of pain is an object in itself for the true martyr, and the greatness of the revelation is such that it can treat with indifference the awful aspect of that which man has thus suffered, and the dreadful nature of that to which he submits himself. The first thing, then, which will be brought beneath the ruthless mace of negation in order that the individual who still experiences this drought of the soul may wean himself from the world and become sanctified, will be hisnaturalexistence, his life, the satisfaction of the most essential necessaries of his bodily existence. The main subject-matter therefore of the type we are now dealing with will be torments of the body, sufferings which have been perpetrated on the believer either by his enemies and persecutors out of hatred and persecution, or have been deliberately accepted by himself on principle by way of expiation. In both cases the individual accepts them in the full fanaticism of his readiness to endure, not, that is to say, as an injustice to himself, but as a blessing through which alone he is enabled to break down the walls of what he feels to be his sinful flesh, heart, and soul, and so obtain reconcilement with his God.

In so far, however, as this conversion of the soul can only manifest itself in such situations, in atrocities and awful treatment of the bodily frame the beauty of the presentation of such subjects may be very readily impaired; and, in fact, we may say that the treatment of all subjects of this kind is a perilous undertaking for art. For, on the one hand, it is obvious that individuals here, impressed as they are wholly with the hall-mark of finite existence, and its inevitable blemishes and defects, will have to be represented in an entirely different atmosphere from that we claimed for the history of Christ's Passion; and, from a further point of view, we unfortunately meet with unheard of agonies and horrors in such cases, distortion, and dislocation of limbs, bodily torments, scaffolds, decapitation, burning or roasting in oil, flaying alive, and every other sortof frightful, repugnant, and loathsome abuse of the body, such as lie much too remote from beauty for any sane art to think of selecting them for its subject-matter. The artistic dexterity of the artist may, in such cases, no doubt, so far as execution is concerned, be of the highest class; but, at best, such manual dexterity will merely possess a personal interest, we may indeed find before us the technique of an admirable painter; but it will be equally obvious that all his efforts have been unable to produce out of such material a harmonious work of art.

(β) For these reasons it will be necessary that the artistic presentation of this negative process should emphasize another aspect of it, which stands out thereby above this agony of the body and soul, and establishes in relief the positive presence of reconciliation. This is just that essential reconcilement of Spirit which is finally won as the result sought for of the pain suffered. Under an aspect such as this the martyrs may be depicted as the guardians of the Divine in conflict with the grossness of material force and barbarism of unbelief. For the sake of their heavenly treasure they endure pain and death, and this courage, steadfastness, endurance, and consolation must consequently, with equal truth, appear upon them. And yet for all that this intimate possession of their faith and love in its spiritual beauty is no sanity of soul which brings to them a sense of the sanity of their body; rather it is a sense of inward life, which has worked its way through their pain itself, or at least is made manifest in their suffering, and which, even in the moment of their ecstasy, retains the experience of pain as an essential condition of their beatitude. The art of painting has, in particular, made this attitude of saintly humiliation the object of its efforts. What this art mainly should strive after here is to delineate the bliss of such torments in the pure and simple lines of the countenance and its expression, as contrasted with the offensive laceration of the flesh; and to present such an ecstasy as may reflect the surrender and victory over pain, the fruition, in short, of the Divine Presence in the temple of the soul. If, on the contrary, the art of sculpture seeks to give a visible form to such a content, it will inevitably find itself less qualified to depict this ecstasy of soul-life at this strainof its intensity with such a concentrated power, and will consequently be compelled to emphasize that aspect of pain and laceration in so far as it declares itself in its full force on the bodily frame.

(γ)Thirdly, it is to be observed that in the kind of examples with which we are now dealing it is not merely the existence of Nature and immediate finite conditions which is affected by this attitude of self-abnegation and endurance, but the impulse of the soul is transported by such feelings to an extreme point of this heavenly rapture to such an extent, in fact, that what is merely human and of the world, even when it is essentially beyond reproach on ethical or rational grounds, is none the less thrust behind and scorned. In other words, just in proportion as the Spirit, which here makes vivid to itself the idea of its conversion, is in the first instance deficient in an educated sense, to that extent it will with so much the more uncontrollable and logical frenzy—the entire force of its piety being concentrated on this one object—turn its back on everything which as finite opposes this bare and abstract infinitude of its religious fanaticism, that is to say, on every definite human emotion, all the manifold ethical impulses, relations, and obligations of the heart. For the moral life of the family, the bonds of friendship, of blood, of love, of the State, and a man's calling, every one of them belong to the things of the world; and all that is of the world, in so far as it is not as yet suffused with the absolute conceptions of faith and developed in unity and harmony with the same, appears to this form of abstract spiritual intensity of the soul of faith so far from being something acceptable to its emotional life and sense of obligation, that it is, on the contrary, a thing of no worth at all, and therefore both hostile and hurtful to its religious state. The moral organism of the human world is consequently not as yet respected, because its significant features and duties are not as yet recognized as necessary, integrated members in the concatenation of an essentially rational reality, in which nothing, it is true, ought to assert itself in a one-sided and independent isolation, yet, none the less, as an essential factor in the organic process, must be maintained as such and not be sacrificed. In this respect the religious reconciliation remainsitselfone-sided, and declares itself in the truly simple heart as an intensity of belief which is deficient in comprehensiveness, that is, as the piety of the self-secluded soul, which has not yet attained in its growth to the fully expanded self-reliance of maturity, and to conviction based on genuine insight and circumspection. When the force of a soul deficient in these qualities maintains its opposition to the world which is thus treated in a purely negative way, and forcefully breaks loose from all human ties, even though they may originally be the very closest, we can only characterize such conduct as the rawness of Spirit and a barbaric result of the power of abstraction, which is simply repulsive. So we may say that though from the point of view of the religious consciousness, as we find it to-day, it is indeed possible to honour, and to honour highly, this opening germ of religiosity in such representations, if, however, such a pious tendency proceeds to such lengths that we find it advancing to lay siege to what is both essentially rational and moral, then, so far from sympathizing with such a fanaticism of sanctity, we can only protest that a kind of abnegation such as this, which casts off from itself, shatters and treads upon that which is independently justifiable, and even sacred, appears to us both immoral in itself and subversive of the very type of religion it represents. There are many legends, tales, and poems which deal with this extreme form of the pious craze. We have, for example, the tale of a man who, though full of tenderness for his wife and family, and, moreover, beloved by all his friends, leaves his home and makes a pilgrimage. When at last he returns home in the guise of a beggar he refuses to disclose his identity. Alms are given him, and out of compassion a permanent lodging provided under the stairs. In this plight he lives for twenty years; he sees the grief of his family on his account, and only declares who he is on his death-bed. This kind of thing, which we are asked to revere as sanctity, is, of course, merely the egotism of a fanatic which revolts us. This long endurance of renunciation may remind us of the distrait nature of those penances, which the Hindoos voluntarily impose on themselves on religious grounds. But the endurance of the Hindoo has a very different significance. In that case a man deliberately places himself in acondition of vacuum and unconsciousness; in the case which we are now considering thepain, and the deliberate consciousness and feeling of the same is the real object, which it is assumed will be attained with just so much more purity as the suffering is associated with the consciousness of the value of and devotion to the severities which are accepted, and is, moreover, united with a vision for ever concentrated on the renunciation thus made. The richer the heart which takes on itself the burden of such ordeals, the nobler the content of its own possessions, and yet withal believes that it is bound to condemn them as of no merit, just so much the more difficult grows the task of reconciliation, and the more prone it is to bring about the most terrible convulsions and the most raving distraction. Indeed, to our vision, it is clear enough that a soul such as this, which is only at home in a world which, however full of ideas, is not the world of common experience, and which consequently only feels its grasp slipping from the stable and paramount centres of activity and aims of this our actual world, ay, and although it be with heart and soul held in and associated with that world, yet regards all that is moral there simply as something which contradicts its absolute destination—we can only say that such a soul, both in its self-inflicted sufferings and its renunciations, is from the rational point of view simply mad, so mad that we can neither feel any profound compassion for it, nor propose any means of liberation. What is lamentably lacking to a mode of life of this kind is an object of real substance and valid significance; what it proposes to secure is an aim wholly personal, an object sought for by the individual for himself alone, for the salvation of his own soul, for his own blessedness. Few are likely to concern themselves very deeply whether an individual, at any rate one of this type, is or ever will be happy[238].

(b)The inward Penance and Conversion

The kind of representation, in the same general class of cases which we shall now contrast with the one above examined, turns aside from the extremity of merely bodily suffering, as it is also from a further point of view more indifferent to the purely negative impulse directed against what is essentially just and right in the actual conditions of the world; the material of such representations consequently, both in respect to its content and its form, opens up a ground which is more conformable with ideal art. And this ground is the conversion of theinnerlife of the soul, which only here seeks to express itself in itsspiritualpain, and its change of heart. Here, therefore, we find in the first place that we have no more of those ever repeated horrors and barbarities of pain inflicted on man's poor body: and, secondly, that which we have referred to as the barbarian religiosity of the soul no longer holds fast to its antagonism as against the purely ethical aspects of humanity in order to trample under iron foot in the abstraction of its purely conceptive satisfaction[239], and in the pain of an absolute renunciation that other kind of sensuous enjoyment; for the most part its attention is now solely directed against what is in fact sinful, criminal, and evil in human Nature. We find here a lofty assurance that faith, this spiritual impulse towards God, is capable of converting the past action, even though it be a sin or a crime, into something alien to the man who perpetrated it, washing it away in fact. This withdrawal out of evil, that wholly negative condition, which is realized in the individual by the subjective volition and spirit at once scorning and confounding itself under its former state of evil—this return to the positive which is now self-established as the only real in contrast to the former state of sinfulness, is the truly infinite content of religious love, the presence and actuality of absolute Spirit in the individual soul itself. The feeling of the stability and endurability of the personal existence, which through God, to which it addresses itself, triumphs over evil, and in so far as it is thus mediated withHim is aware of itself as one with Him, produces as its effect the fruition and blessedness of contemplating God, it is true, in the first instance as the absolute Other in His opposition to the sin inherent in finite existence, but further of knowing this Infinite Presence as identical with me as this particular person, of knowing, in short, that I carry this self-consciousness of God, as the seat of my own personality, that is to say, my own self-consciousness, as certainly as I carry the sense of my own self-identity. Such a revolution takes place no doubt entirely within the shrine of the soul, and belongs, therefore, rather to religion than art: for the reason, however, that it is the intimate movement of the soul, which pre-eminently makes itself master of this act of conversion, and also is able to throw a gleam of light through the external embodiment, a plastic art such as painting can also claim to make visible the history of such conversions. If it attempts, however, to depict the entire course of events which belong to such a transition, much that is very far from being beautiful may readily appear in the result, because in such a case both that which is sinful and repulsive requires to be depicted, as, for example, in the story of the prodigal son. Painting, therefore, achieves its greatest success when it concentrates the act of conversion intoonepicture where that is the prevailing motive, and pays little or no attention to the previous course of events. The ordinary presentations of Mary Magdelene may be noted as an admirable example of this kind of work, and particularly in the hands of the old Italian masters has been treated in a way both excellent in itself and throughout consistently with fine Art. She is depicted here both in the characterization of her soul and her external presence as thefair sinner, in whom the sin no less than the sanctity is intended to exercise a sort of fascination on the spectator. But at the same time neither sin nor sanctity are treated with any great intensity. She is forgiven much because she has loved much, and her forgiveness is in a measure the portion both of her love and her beauty. And what affects us most of all in this picture is this, that she makes for herself a conscience as it were out of her love, and robed in the beauty of her sensitive soul pours forth her sorrow in a flood of tears. We are not led to feel that the fact that she has loved so much is her error, but rather thather fair and fascinating folly is this, namely, that shebelievesherself to be a sinner,[240]for her exquisitely sensitive beauty only leaves us the impression that in her love she is both noble and profound.

(c)Miracles and Legends

The final aspect, which is closely associated with the two above considered, and is frequently asserted as a concomitant of both, is that of miracle. It plays in fact an important part throughout this stage of our inquiry. In this connection we may define miracle as the conversion-history of the immediate existence of Nature. Such reality lies before us as a commonplace, contingent existence. This finite substance is touched by the hand of God, which, in so far as it strikes upon what is purely external and particular, breaks it up, transmutes it into something entirely different, interrupting what in ordinary parlance we call the natural course of things. To bring before us the soul arrested by such inexplicable phenomena, in which it imagines it recognizes the presence of the Divine, vanquished, in short, in its ordinary view of finite events, this is the main subject-matter of a host of legends. In fact, however, the Divine can only touch and dominate Nature as Reason, that is, in the unalterable laws of Nature herself, as implanted therein by God, and the Divine has no occasion to exploit Himself in the supreme sense of this term in particular circumstances and modes of causation which run contrary to these laws of Nature, for it is only the eternal laws and determinations of reason which apply in any real sense to Nature. Fromanother point of view legends frequently carry with them quite unnecessarily an amount of matter which is abstruse, out of taste, senseless, and ridiculous, inasmuch as the intention is that both intellect and heart should be stimulated to believe in the presence and activity of God by precisely those things which are essentially irrational, false, and heathenish. The consequent emotion, piety, and conversion of the soul may even then awake our interest, but in that case it is only on theoneside, namely, that of the soul: so soon as that enters into relation with somewhat else outside it, and the idea is that this external correlative shall effect the conversion of the heart, then we inevitably require that such should not be wholly a meaningless and irrational sequence of events.

Such, then, would be the fundamental divisions of the substantive content at this particular stage of our inquiry, regarding that content as the self-subsistent Nature of God, or in its aspect as a spiritual process, through which and in which He is Spirit. We have here the absolute object, which art neither creates nor reveals out of itself, but which it has received from religion which it approaches with the conviction that it isessentiallytrue that it may express and represent the same conformably to its modes. It is the content of the believing, yearning soul, which is intrinsically the infinite totality itself, so that for it the external medium remains to a more or less degree outside it, or a matter of indifference, and is unable to be brought completely into harmony with that inner life. And for this reason it frequently presents a repellent material which art finds itself unable wholly to subdue to its aims.

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