Chapter 14

[224]Nicht aufnehmend.Not ready to absorb extraneous matter.

[225]This of course is an opinion which may be strongly contested in its application to particular artists.

[226]Hegel means not so much the history in which the whole totality of events is comprised as that aspect of human history which declares its universal significance as infinite spirit.

[227]That is, of self-consciousness in all that it implies—the personality of Christ, for example.

[228]Hegel does not further dwell upon this relativity. But the next paragraph explains what is really in his mind. The important question, however, how far such events are worthy of credence as objective history, to say nothing of the inadequacy of their artistic presentation, one cannot but feel is deliberately evaded. What Hegel would say no doubt was that the bare historical aspect was only of relative importance. The main question was their significance in the spiritual process. It is in this direction that much of our noblest modern thought finds a certain indissoluble unreality of statement.

[229]That is in Christ.

[230]Gleichkeit.Equality, reciprocity.

[231]We are reminded of our treasures in Christian art such as the Virgin and Child in Tintoret's "Flight into Egypt," Rafael's San, Sisto Madonna and the rest.

[232]In other words as regarded at a later date by the Church.

[233]This statement hardly does justice to the profound idealism of the epistles of St. Paul.

[234]Perhaps "the infinite form of subjectivity" is better. He means "the infinite form of individual self-consciousness."

[235]That is, characterized by personality.

[236]Geschichte.Life as an evolved Process.

[237]Compare the poem of Meredith, "Theodolinda," in his ballads of the Tragic Life. It is, in another aspect, that iron crown which that thoughtful contemporary writer, Mr. H. W. Nevinson, refers to in his Essays on Rebellion.

[238]The elimination even of sympathy with such fanaticism where it is quite sincere, a rare case no doubt, seems severe. The best illustration in modern literature I know of the principle "all or nothing," is Ibsen's great drama "Brandt." Readers of Carlyle will doubtless recall from "Past and Present" and elsewhere that prophet's repeated denunciations of the craze for personal happiness.

[239]Byintellectuellen BefriedigungHegel does not mean "intellectual" in a good sense, but merely that the man imagines his happiness in his mind rather than feels it through the senses. The psychology of religious ecstasy, however, is a rather involved problem.

[240]This analysis is rather surprising. Did Hegel, the robust Swabian, really think the above the finest type of art's presentations of the Magdalene? Does it not lean very closely to that soft sentimentalism which a Carlo Dolci gives us in its decadence? At any rate the idea that the Magdalene was not really a sinner flatly contradicts the original references to her in the gospels, and to my mind at any rate seems from the artistic point of view also to destroy half the rare beauty of her repentance. The principle of such an interpretation is surely the entirely pagan one, whether Greek or French, that a great passion is its own justification quite irrespective of moral considerations. She is the historical impersonation of the frailty of a love too dependent on the senses, not of one in which either nobility of bearing or extreme selflessness is conspicuous. Hegel's analysis may be true enough of certain pictures—but do they really present us the ideal; most assuredly not.

The principle of the essentially infinite subjective consciousness possesses for the content of faith and art in the first instance, as we have already discovered, the Absolute itself, in other words the Spirit of God as it is mediated and reconciled with the conscious spirit of man and thereby is first itself independently free. This romantic mysticism in its self-limitation to the sense of blessedness in the Absolute Presence remains a mode of spiritual inwardness which is abstract, because it confronts the things of the world in opposition and rejects the same. Faith is, in an abstraction of this kind, alienated from life, from the concrete reality of human existence, removed from the positive relations of mankind to one another, who only know and love each other in faith, and for the sake of their belief as completely bound together in yet a third association, namely, the spirit of the Christ community. This association is alone the clear spring in which the image of that blessedness is reflected, without it being necessary for man to look his brother first in the face, to enter into any direct relation with another, or to experience the unity of love, of trust, of confidence, of mutual aims and actions in contact with the living concrete presence. That which constitutes the hope and yearning of the inner life man here, in this sense of exclusive religious intimacy, can only discover as actual life in the kingdom of God, in the society of the Church. He has not as yet[241]withdrawn this single identity in a third factor from his conscious life in order that he may possess all that he is really himself in his entire spiritual concreteness no less before hiseyes directly in the knowledge and volition of that other whole. The collective religious content, it is true, assumes the mode of real existence, but it is still an existence which is located in the ideal world of an imagination which consumes the expanding boundaries of actual life. It is still far away from attempting to satisfy its own life also in that abundance which it receives from the world and its realization in the world as the higher demand in the medium of life itself.

It follows that the soul which found its initial consummation in the simple feeling of Divine blessedness must step forth from this heavenly kingdom peculiar to thereligioussphere, must undertake the effort of self-introspection and assimilate a content which is, as vitally present, adequate to the demands of the individual consciousness in its fullest extension. And in this process that which was before areligiouscoalescence of soul is changed to one ofseculartype. Christ indeed said; "Ye must leave father and mother, and follow Me." And in the like spirit: "Brother shall hate brother; men shall crucify you and persecute you." But as soon as the kingdom of God has secured a foothold in the world, and is actively employed in transfusing with its spirit and illumining the aims and interests of that world; when father, mother, and brother are already numbered in the community, then the things of the world on their side commence to assert their just claim to recognition and furtherance. If this claim is not merely fought for but vindicated then also the negative attitude of the religious spirit, which was at first exclusively hostile to all that was merely human, vanishes; the spirit of man enlarges, it explores the full scope of its actual presence, and unfolds its heart in the entire world of reality[242]. The fundamental principle suffers no alteration; the substantive and infinite self-consciousness merely directs its attention to another province of its own kingdom. We may perhaps define this transition in the statement that the individual singularity is now as such singularity independent of its mediation with God and self-subsistently free. For precisely in that mediation, whereby it divested itself of its purely finite limitation and natural life, it has passed over the path of mere negation, and reappearsafter having thus secured an essentiallyaffirmativeposition, in the condition of a consciousness that is free and as such makes the demand that it shall, in virtue of its own infinitude, though the infinitude is here only in the first instance one of pure form, secure complete recognition both for itself and others. In this the religious mode of the individual consciousness is reposed the entire spiritual wealth of the infinite soul, which it has hitherto filled up with God. If we, however, made the inquiry, of what material the heart of man is suffused in this its inward repletion, such a content merely concerns the infinite relation of the subjective consciousness in its active self-relation; it is simply replete with its own formal medium, that is, as essentially infinite singularity without further and more concrete expansion and significance as a content of interests, aims, and actions which is itself essentially objective and substantive[243]. If we further examine the matter, however, more closely we shall see there are in the mainthreeemotions, which in their independence rise up in the individual soul to the level of this infinite mode, namely personalhonour, love, andfidelity.They are not so much moral qualities and virtues as simply modes which inform the intimate presence of the individual soul when fulfilled with its own self-relation as such is recognized by romance. For the personal self-subsistency for whichhonourcontends does not assert itself as intrepitude on behalf of a communal weal, and the repute of thoroughness in relation to it and integrity of private life. On the contrary it contends simply for the recognition and formal inviolability of the individual person. The same principle applies tolove, which forms the central subject-matter of this sphere. It is merely the adventitious passion of one individual for another; and however much it may expand under the wand of imagination or may be deepened by excess of emotion, it is for all that neither the ethical relation of marriage or family.Fidelitypossesses no doubt more theappearance of a moral character, inasmuch as it does not merely will its own but holds fast to something higher, something shared with itself, surrenders itself to another's will, whether it be the wish or behest of a master, and thereby renounces the personal desire and independence of its own particular volition. But the feeling of loyalty does not concern the objective interest of the social weal in its independent form, that is, in the concrete freedom of the developed state life, but associates itself merely with thepersonof a master, who, in his own fashion, acts with independence, or concentrates himself in more general relations and is active on their behalf[244]. These three modes of feeling taken together and as they reciprocally affect one another constitute with the exception of the religious relation, which also has its part to play here, the principal content ofchivalry, and furnish the necessary steps of advance from the principle of purely religious enthusiasm to the entrance of the individual soul into the concrete social life of the world, in the kingdom of which romantic art now secures a platform on which it can from its own resources work out its independence, and at the same time embody a freer type of beauty. It stands here, so to speak, in the free room midway between the absolute content of the independently stable religious conceptions and the varied particularity and restricted boundaries of the finite world. Among the various arts it is pre-eminently poetry which has shown itself most qualified to master such a material, its modes of expression being directed to the life of the soul as wholly occupied with its own domain and as realized in its aims and events.

Inasmuch as we now have before us a material which man takes possession of in his own spiritual life, or rather, from the world of his pure humanity, we might at first suppose that romantic art occupied the same ground as that of classic art. This, therefore, is an excellent opportunity for placingthem together both in comparison and contrast. We have already defined classical art the Ideal of humanity certified as true in its objective self-subsistence. Its imaginative vitality requires as its core a content which is substantive in type and excludes an ethical pathos. The Homeric poems, the tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus, are in the main concerned with interests of an absolutely factual content, an austere treatment of the passions reflected therein, a solid style of speech and execution in conformity with the nature of the ideas expressed, and above this domain of heroes and other figures which alone are in their individual self-concentration at home in such an atmosphere of pathos we have the realm of the gods at a still more advanced stage of objective presentment. Even in the case where art, in more introspective fashion, is occupied with the infinite experiments of sculpture, bas-reliefs and similar forms, or the later elegies, epigrams, and other diversions of lyrical poetry, we still have the same type before us, that is to say, the type which portrays the object more or less as it finds it, and obedient to the claim that it already has secured its constructive presentment. We have, in short, represented figures of the imagination already established and defined in their characterization such as Venus, Bacchus, or the Muses. It is just the same with the later epigrams, where we get the description of a material already to hand or, as in the case of Meleager, a posy of well-known flowers, bound together with the cords of exquisite feeling and taste. It is, in short, an exhilarating mode of activity carried on in a wealthily furnished house overflowing in its stores with every kind of bounty, image and provision for every conceivable object. The poet and the artist is simply the magician, who wafts them into use, collects and groups them.

It is wholly different in romantic poetry. In so far as it is of the world worldly, and is not directly associated with the story of our Lord, the virtues and objects of its heroism are not those of the Greek heroes, whose type of morality Christendom in its early days simply regarded as a brilliant enormity. Greek morality presupposes the presence of humanity in its complete configuration, in which the volition then and there as it ought to act conformably to its essentialnotion of independence has received a definite content and the actual conditions of freedom imperatively valid such as belong to that content. Such are the relations of parents and children, married persons, or of citizens of city or State in the realized liberty of such. Now inasmuch as this objective content of human affairs belongs to theevolutionof man's spirit on the basis of Nature cognized and insured as actual fact, it is unable any longer to satisfy that self-absorbed introspection of the religious life, which seeks to destroy the natural aspect of human life, and must deviate considerably from the virtue of humility which opposes it, and the surrender of human freedom and its staunch self-dependence. The virtues of Christian piety simply prove the death of such a world-attitude if held in their extreme of abstraction, and only make the individual free, when he absolutely denies the human part of him. The individual freedom of our present sphere is no doubt no longer conditioned by mere endurance and self-sacrifice but essentially positive in the world arena; that infinite self-relation of the individual has, however, as we have already discovered, the inward realm of the soul as its content and only that, the subjective soul, that is, whose movement is in its own peculiar medium, as the secular ground of its own domain. In this connection poetry does not draw from any objective material already presented it, no mythology, for instance, no imaginative pictures and embodiments, which already lie ready waiting for its expression. It stands there wholly free, without any extraneous matter, purely creative and productive. It is free as a bird that sings straight from its breast. It follows, then, if this subjective activity proceeds also from a noble will and a profound soul, we shall merely have in its workings and relations and existence the evidence of caprice and contingency, for the reason that freedom and its aims proceed, relatively to a content which is throughout immaterial, from internal self-reflection. And, consequently, we do not find so much in individuals a particular pathos in the Greek conception of the term and a vital self-subsistency of character associated with it by the closest bonds, as that which is simply a grade of heroic conception in its connection with love, honour, bravery, and fidelity; a grade into which it is mainly the nobility or depravity of soul which imports the distinguishingfeatures. The characteristic trait, however, which the heroes of the Middle Ages possess in common with those of antiquity is that ofbravery.Yet even this receives a totally different complexion. It is not so much a natural courage, which reposes on the character that is sane and sound, and flows forth from the growth of an unimpaired robustness of body and will, assisting the execution of objective interests. Rather it is the outcome of the secret wealth of the soul, its honour and chivalry, and is in the main a creation of the phantasy, which undertakes adventures that have their origin in individual caprice and the chance intricacies of external circumstance or the impulses of mystical piety, and we may add generally the personal attitude of the individual.

This romantic type of art finds a home, then, in two hemispheres, in the Western world as this penetration into the more intimate shrine of Spirit, in the Eastern this its first expansion of the self-absorbed consciousness as it frees itself from the finite environment. In the West poetry reposes on a soul which is withdrawn upon its resources, which has become the centre of its activity, yet possesses this flavour of secularly merely as one part of its complexion, as one aspect, over which is superposed a yet loftier world of belief. In the East it is the Arab above all, who as a solitary,[245]who in the first instance has nothing before his eyes but his dried-up desert and his heavens, stands forth in the full strength of life as the proclaimer of the splendour and primary extension of the world of Nature, and thereby still preserves at the same time the freedom of his soul. And generally we may say that in the Orient it is the Mohammedan religion, which has cleared the ground, made an end of all idolatry in the service of finite things or the imagination, and given the soul at the same time the personal freedom, which wholly floods the same, so that the secularity does not here only constitute another province, but runs beyond it into the universal licence, where heart and mind, without ascribing any objective reality to God, find their reconciliation in the jubilant lust of living just like beggars by throwing the glory of their fancy on the objects around them: enjoy their loves and are happy, blessed, and contented.

The motive of honour was unknown to ancient classic art. In the "Iliad" it is quite true that the wrath of Achilles constitutes both the content and the motive principle, so that the entire series of events is dependent upon it; but what we moderns understand by the term honour is not grasped here at all. Achilles believes himself to be insulted to all intents and purposes only in the fact that the share in the booty which he considers justly to belong to him and the reward of his personal merits, hisγέρας, has been taken away by Agamemnon. The insult here has a direct reference to something actual, a bounty, in which no doubt a privilege, a recognition of fame and bravery was reposed, and Achilles is enraged because Agamemnon meets him unworthily and lets the Greeks know that they are not to pay any attention to him. An insult of this kind is not driven home to the real centre of personality in its abstract purity; in fact Achilles expresses himself satisfied with the restitution of the abducted slave and the addition of other goods and bounties, and Agamemnon finally makes this reparation although from our point of view they have both insulted one another in the grossest fashion. Maledictions of this kind, however, have only made them angry; and, after all, the particular insult, which has reference to a matter of fact, is done away with in the same matter of fact fashion.

(a) The honour of romance is, on the contrary, of another kind. Insult has no reference here to the factual values of real things, property, status, obligation, etc., but to personality simply, and its idea of its own importance, the work which the individual claims as his right. This worth is in the cases we are now discussing of an infinite significance equal to that of personality itself. In honour, therefore, man possesses the earliest positive consciousness of his infinite spiritual medium, independent of the content. What the individual has, what in him something peculiar creates, after the loss of which it may yet subsist precisely as it did before—in this elusive something the absolute validity of the entire subjective life is reposed and apprehended in it both for itself and others. The determining measure of honour therefore does not depend on what the individual really is,but on what is contained in this personal self-regard. This regard, however, raises all particularity to the level of the universal conception that the personal core in its full significance resides in this particularity which it claims as its own. Honour is merely an outward show it is sometimes said. No doubt this is so: but from our present point of view we must, if we look at it more narrowly, accept it as the appearance and reappearance of the personal medium self-reflected, which as the semblance of an entity essentially infinite is itself infinite. And through this infinitude it is just this show or semblance of honour which is the real existence of the individual, its highest actuality; and every particular quality, into which honour is reflected and appropriates as its own is by virtue of this show exalted itself to an infinite worth. This type of honour constitutes a fundamental determinant in the romantic world, and presupposes that man has not merely passed beyond the limits of purely religious conception and inward life, but actually entered the arena of the great world and makes itself vital in the material of the same simply by virtue of the pure medium of its personal self-subsistence and absolute intension[246].

Thecontentof honour may be of the most varied kind. For everything that I am, do, or is done to me by others affects my honour. We may consequently reckon within its boundaries the out and out substantive itself, loyalty towards princes, fatherland, a man's profession, fulfilment of obligations, marital fidelity, integrity in business affairs and conscientiousness in scientific research. For the point of view of honour, however, all these essentially valid and veritable relations are neither sanctioned nor recognized in and through themselves, but only so far as the individual reposes in them his personal relation and makes them thereby matters affecting his honour. A man of honour consequently always thinks first of all about himself, and the question for him is not if anything is on principle right or not, but whether it is the right thing for him to do, whether it becomes him then as a man of honour to make himself master in it and to stand by it. And consequently he may also perpetratethe worst actions and still be a man of honour. He creates at the same time objects at will, imagines himself of a specific character, and appropriates to himself, both as he sees himself and is seen by others, that which in the natural order of things has nothing to do with him at all. Even then it is not the natural fact, but the personal view of it which places difficulties and devolutions in the path, because it has become an affair of honour to maintain that character. So, to take an example, Donna Diana conceives it to be derogatory to her honour to confess in any way the love she feels, because she has pledged herself not to listen to love. In general we may say, then, that the content of love is at the mercy of accident, because its validity depends purely on the personal attitude, and is not directed by that which is the essential mode of the inner life itself. For this reason we may observe that in romantic representations on the one hand that which is on principle justifiable is expressed as thelawof honour, the individual associating with the consciousness of right at the same time the infinite self-conscious unit of his personality. What is then expressed by the statement that honour makes such and such a demand, or forbids it, is this that the entire personal attitude of consciousness implants itself within the content of such a demand or prohibition so that no trespass in any transaction can fail to attract its attention without a repair and restoration being effected; and we may add the individual is unable to attend to any other content. Conversely, however, honour may resolve itself into something wholly formal and contentless, in so far as it contains nothing but the shell of the Ego, which is formally infinite, or only accepts an entirely bad content as obligatory upon it. In this case, more particularly in dramatic representations, honour remains but a wholly frosty and unvitalized object: its aims express no longer an essential content but simply an abstract form of consciousness. But it is only an essentially substantive content which possesses the contingency of law, and is capable of explication in its multifold environment, and can be apprehended in its imperative sequence of consequences. This defect in profound content especially rises to the surface when casuistry of reflection includes within the embrace of honour matter which is purely accidental andinsignificant which the individual comes in contact with. There is never a lack of material, because this casuistical tendency analyses with great subtlety in its modes of distinction, and many aspects may be elicited and made the subject of honour which in themselves are quite unimportant Above all the Spaniards have elaborated this casuistry of reflection over matters of honour in their dramatic poetry, and made their particular heroes of honour deduce all their consequences in their speeches. In this way the fidelity of the married woman may form a subject of investigation into the minutest details, and the mere suspicion of another, nay, the possibility of such even when the husband is aware that the suspicion is false may be an affair of honour. If this leads to collisions we can derive no real satisfaction from the process, because we have nothing of material moment to arrest us, and consequently instead of the resolution of an antagonism which is causally inevitable we can only extract from it a painfully contracted feeling. Also in French plays we frequently find that it is an honour which is barren, that is entirely abstract, which is made the essential fulcrum of interest Still more extreme is this essentially frostlike and lifeless type of it apparent in the drama "Alarcos" of Herr Friedrich von Schlegel. The hero here murders his noble and loving wife. And we ask why. Simply for honour's sake; and this honour consists in this that he may marry the king's daughter, for whom he entertains no affection, and thus become the king's son-in-law. Such a pattern is of course contemptible and an ignoble conception which merely prides itself as something lofty and of infinite intension.

(b) Inasmuch, then, as honour is not only a semblance in me myself, but must also exist in the mind and recognition ofanother, which again on its part makes a claim to a similar honourable recognition, honour is the extreme embodiment ofvulnerability.For it is purely a matter of personal caprice how far I choose to extend the claim and to what material I care to relate it. The smallest offence may be in this respect of significance; and inasmuch as man is placed relatively to concrete reality in the most manifold relations with a thousand things, and is able to extend practically without limit the sphere of that which he conceives to affecthim, and to which he is placed in the relation of honour it follows that when we come to deal with the independence of mankind and the obstinate isolation of their units, aspects for which the principle of honour is in the main responsible, there is no end to the strife and contention to which they give rise. Moreover, in the case of insult also no less than in that of honour generally, the important matter is not the content, in which I necessarily feel myself insulted; for that which is negated has reference to the personality which has appropriated such a content as its own, and now conceives itself as this ideal centrum of infinity attacked.

(c) For such reasons every insult to honour is regarded as essentially of an infinite significance. It can consequently only be repaired by means which possess that character. No doubt we may have many degrees of insult, and as many modes of satisfaction; what however at the stage we are now considering any man may take as an insult, how far he will feel himself as insulted and claim satisfaction therefore, such considerations depend once more wholly on the personal caprice of the particular person, which is justified in pursuing its object to the utmost point of scrupulosity and outraged feeling. In this process of satisfaction, which is here claimed, it is essential that the man who delivers the insult no less than he who receives it should be recognized as a man of honour. For the latter requires the free recognition of his honour from the former; but in order to have honour in his eyes and through his action that man must appear to the recipient of insult as a man of honour, in other words he must substantiate by virtue of his personality the infinite character of the insult which he has laid upon the outraged man and despite his personal enmity that is thereby directed against him.

It is, then, a fundamental determinant in the general principle of honour that no one through his actions can give to any one a right over himself; and consequently all that he has done and may have initiated will be regarded both previous to its commencement and after its conclusion as unalterably affiliated to infinity, and will be accepted and treated under such a qualitative relation.

Moreover, since honour, in its conflicts and its satisfaction in this respect, depends on personal independence, which isconscious of itself as subject to no limitation, but acts directly from its own resources, we find a fact recur to our attention, which we previously observed fundamentally characterized the heroic figures of the Ideal, namely the self-subsistence of individuality. In honour, however, we have not merely the secure self-dependence and action from personal resources, but this self-subsistence is in this case united withthe idea of itself; and it is just this preconception which constitutes the real content of honour in the sense that it perceives what is its own in that which is presented exterior to it, and envisages itself therein to the full extent of its personal life. Honour is consequently a self-subsistence, which is aself reflection, and possesses in such a reflection its exclusive essence, and moreover leaves it wholly to accident whether its content be that which is essentially moral and necessary, or contingent and insignificant.

The second emotional source which plays a predominant part in the productions of romantic art islove.

(a) We have found in honour that the individual conscious life, as it prefigures itself in its absoluteindependence, forms the fundamental determinant; in a similar way the highest attitude of love is thesurrenderof the personal life to some object of the opposed sex, a sacrifice of its independent consciousness and its personal isolation, which for the first time in the consciousness of another, is aware emotionally that it has thoroughly brought home to itself its own self-knowledge. In this respect we may contrast love and honour. Conversely, however, we are entitled to regard love as therealizationof that which was already inherent in honour, in so far as honour claims recognition[247]that it should be received in another as the infinite significance of personality. This recognition is only true and complete when it is not merely my personality in the abstract, or in a concrete and consequently restricted case, is respected by another, but when I, in the' entire significance of my personal resources, with everything this either emphasizes or includes, as this particular person in all my past, present, and futurerelations, both penetrate the conscious life of another, and, in fact, constitute the object of his real volition and knowledge, his effort and his property. In this respect it is this same inward infinitude of the individual which makes love of such importance to romantic art, an importance which is materially enhanced by the exalted character of the wealth which the notion of love itself carries.

More closely, then, love does not subsist, as may frequently happen in the case of honour, upon the subject-matter of the mind and the casuistry of reflection, but originates in the emotions, and for the reason that here the distinctions of sex play an important part, possesses at the same time for its basis natural conditions as already related to spirit life. This basis is, however, only present in the sense that the individual comes into relation with such conditions by way of his soul-life, that essentially infinite aspect of himself.

This state of a man's losing his own consciousness in another, this appearance of disinterestedness and unselfishness, by virtue of which a man first really finds himself and comes to himself—this oblivion of his own, so that the lover no longer exists, or is careful for himself, but discovers the roots of that life in another, and yet only comes into the full enjoyment of himself in that other is what gives us the infinite relation of love; and we must look for beauty mainly in so far as this feeling does not persist as mere impulse and emotion, but through the imagination makes its world conform to such a condition, exalts everything which otherwise belongs by virtue of its interest, circumstances, and objects to real existence and life, into an adornment of this feeling, bears away all else into the charmed circle, and only attaches a value to it in this relation. More particularly it is in female characters that love appears in most beautiful guise because this sacrifice, this surrender, is with them as the culmination of everything else. It is these qualities, in fact, which concentrate and extend life in its spiritual breadth and reality to the wealth of this emotion, which alone discover within it a stay for existence, and if any misfortune sweeps across the path, vanish like a light which is extinguished by the first rude breath[248]. In this personal andintimate sense of feeling love is not presented in classical art, and only appears as a feature of quite secondary importance for the representation, or is only conspicuous under its aspect of physical enjoyment. In Homer, either we find it is not emphasized at all, or love appears in its most respected type as wedded love in the sphere of the domestic state, exemplified in the figure of Penelope, or as solicitude of wife and mother, exemplified in the case of Andromache, or in other ethical relations of a similar character. The tie, on the other hand, which unites Paris to Helen is recognized as immoral, and the cause of the horror and fatal course of the Trojan war. The love, too, of Achilles for Briseis has little depth of sentiment or spiritual flavour, for Briseis is a slave entirely at his disposition. In the odes of Sappho it is true that the language of love receives the dramatic emphasis of lyrical enthusiasm; yet it is rather the insinuating and devouring flame of the blood which is here expressed than the profound emotion of the singer's heart and soul. From another aspect we find in the short and charming odes of Anacreon a wider and more jovial sense of enjoyment, which sports with delight on the immediate sense of enjoyment as over something to be simply accepted as it falls without troubling itself with infinite heartaches, without this overmastering of the entire life or the pious submission of a burdened, yearning, and yielding soul; in this type the point of infinite importance whether it is precisely this or that girl which you possess is as absolutely disregarded as the monkish notion that you should shun maidenhood altogether. The lofty tragedy of the ancients does not recognize the passion of love in its romantic significance. Pre-eminently in the case of both Aeschylus and Sophocles we find that it makes no pretension to contribute to the main interest of the drama. For although Antigone is the accepted lover of Haemon, and Haemon claims her before his father, nay, goes to the length of committing suicide because he is unable to deliver her,yet it is the external aspects of the case rather than the power of his own personal passion, which, we may also note, is not that of a modern lover, which he emphasizes before Creon. As a more essential type of pathos love is treated by Euripides in the "Phaedra." But here, too, it rather makes itself felt as a criminal aberration of the blood, as a passion of the senses, initiated by Aphrodite, who is desirous of slaying Hippolytus, because he refuses to sacrifice to her. In the same way we have, no doubt, in the Medicean Aphrodite a plastic figure of love, whose exquisite pose and lovely elaboration of bodily form is quite consummate; but any profound expression of soul-life such as romantic art demands is wholly absent. On the other hand, the immortality of Petrarca, although he himself treated his sonnets in the light of recreation, and it was rather through his Latin poems and other works that he appealed to posterity, is due to this very love of the fancy which, under an Italian sky, joined sisterly hands with religion in the medium of a somewhat artificial outpouring of the heart. Dante's exaltation, too, originated in his love for Beatrice, which was transfigured in his soul to the white fervour of religious ecstasy, while the courage and boldness of his genius created energetically a religious outlook on the world, in which he dared, an attempt impossible without such gifts, to constitute himself the judge of mankind, and to apportion to individuals hell, purgatory, or paradise. In contrast to an exaltation of this kind love is placed before us by Boccaccio in those romances of his, in which he brings before our eyes the morals and life of his country, partly in all its impetuosity of passion, partly, too, in the spirit of frivolity without any ethical aim whatever. In the songs of the German Minnesingers we find a type of love, sensitive, tender, without much generosity of imagination, sportive, melancholy, and monotonous. Among the Spaniards it is copious in imaginative expression, chivalrous, somewhat casuistical in its discovery and defence of rights and duties, so far as they relate to private affairs of honour; and in this respect also possesses all the richest splendour of enthusiasm. In contrast to this among Frenchmen of more modern times love is more an affair of gallantry with a distinct bias toward vanity, an artificial state of feeling converted to the uses of poetry witha kind of sophistry of the senses often marked with the finest wit, at one time expressing a kind of sensuous enjoyment which is devoid of passion, at another a passion that brings with it no enjoyment, a sublimated condition of feeling and sensibility which feeds upon the maxims of reflection. But I must here break off these general indications which our subject does not permit me now to carry further.

(b) More closely looked at the secular interest may be treated under two general divisions. We have on the one side secularity as actually organized, such as family life, the tie of citizenship and politics, law, justice, morality, and the rest; and in opposition to this[249]independent and assured existence love springs up in noble and impetuous spirits; this world-religion of hearts, which at one time we find joining hands with religion in every respect, while at another it supersedes it, forgets it, and by constituting itself the single essential, or rather the unique and supreme condition of life, is not only prepared to renounce all else, and to fly for refuge to a desert with the beloved, but proceeds in this extremity of its passion, which we can only exclude from the domain of beauty, to sacrifice all the worth of humanity in a manner at once servile, degrading, and despicable. An example of this we have in "Kätchen von Heilbronn." On account of this cataclysm of life's essential interests the objects of love cannot be realized withoutcollisionsin the theatre of the world. For despite of love the general conditions of life make their demand and assert their claims and the despotism of love's passion is unable to maintain itself against them with impunity.

(α) The first and most frequently exemplified type of collision we may draw attention to is that betweenhonourandlove.In other words, honour possesses just as love possesses in its own right this infinitude of claim, and may accept a content, which may confront love as a positive obstacle in its path. The obligations of honour may require the sacrifice of love. From a certain point of view it would be, for example, dishonourable for a man of high rank to wed one of the lower classes. The distinction between class and class is a necessary fact of natural condition as ordinarilypresented[250]. And so long as our secular life has not been emancipated through the infinite notion of true freedom, whatever may be the class or profession from which that life in the particular individual and his free choice takes its rise, to that extent it will always be Nature, that is, the birth condition, which to a greater or less degree will, on the one hand, determine the social position; and, on the other, these distinctions of status, as they thus originate, and quite independently of general grounds of honour, in so far as social position is made an affair of honour, will maintain themselves as of absolute and infinite stability.

(β) Quite apart, however, from questions of honour we must add as a further example of collision that the eternal andsubstantivepowers themselves, the interests of the State, love of country, family obligations, and the rest, come into conflict with love and preclude its realization. Particularly in modern representations, in which the objective conditions of life have been already elaborated in all their available stringency, this is a favourite type of collision. Love is in such cases, as itself an important right of the personal soul, either set forth in opposition to other rights and duties, or despite of its own recognition of such it enters upon a conflict with them reliant upon itself and with the power of its private passion. The "Maid of Orleans"[251]is an example of a drama which rests upon a collision of this kind.

(γ) And in thethirdcase we may find in a general way thatexternalcondition and its impediments oppose obstacles in the path of love. Such are the ordinary course of events, the prose of ordinary existence, misfortunes, passion, prejudice, follies, the selfishness of others, occurrences of every conceivable complexity and kind. Much will here present itself that is hateful, terrible, and mean, for it is mainly the evil, ruthless, and savage aspects of other forms of human passion which work contrary to the tender spiritual beauty of love. More particularly in later times we frequently come across external collisions of this sort in dramas, narratives, and romances, works whose main interest centres in a sympathyfor the sufferings, expectations, and ruined prospects of unhappy lovers and affect or satisfy us by means of their bad or happy endings, or merely provide entertainment. This type of conflict, however, on the ground that it merely depends upon accidental matters, is a subordinate one.

(c) No doubt love, from whatever of these points of view you choose to regard it, possesses a lofty quality, in so far as it does not merely remain an impulse of sex-attraction, but emphasizes the bounty of a really rich, beautiful, and noble soul, and is a living, active, courageous, and disinterested bond of union between one person and another. But romantic love is also not without itslimitation.That which disappears from its content is the essentially realizeduniversality.[252]It is merely thepersonalfeeling of one particular individual, which does not attest itself as fulfilled with interest of eternal import and the actual content of organic human life, as made up of family, political aims, one's own country, obligations of profession, status, freedom, and religion, but merely with the personal consideration which is intent upon receiving again such private feeling as reflected back from some one else. Such a content of what is itself still but a formal mode of spiritual life does not correspond in full truth to the totality, which the essentially complete personality[253]ought to be. In the family, marriage, duty, and the State the personal feeling simply as such and the unity which issues from it with some particular person and no other is not the main point of interest. In the love of romance, however, all centres in the fact that this man or woman loves that woman or man andno one else.Yet it is precisely this fact that it is only this or that person, which is solely based upon personal idiosyncracy, in other words, the contingency of caprice.There is no lover who does not think his beloved, no maiden who does not fancy her lover, as the fairest and most supreme, to the exclusion of all others, although they may appear very ordinary mortals in the eyes of other folk. But in just this fact that all the world or, let us say, a large number, act thus exclusively, and will not make an exception in favour of the unique Aphrodite herself, but rather possess an Aphrodite of their own, and very easily somewhat more than Aphrodite, we can only very obviously conclude that there are many who pass for the same fairy Princess, as no doubt every one knows well enough, that there are a whole bevy of pretty or good and excellent girls in the world, all of whom, or let us hope the majority, will secure their own lovers, adorers, and husbands, to whom they doubtless appear as gifted in like manner with all the beauty and virtue of Christendom. To bestow in every case our preference on one, and only one, is obviously a wholly private affair of the heart and of the separate individuality of each person, and the incommensurable obstinacy in discovering as though by a law of necessity one's life and supremest sense of such in just that one individual is proof that it is a caprice no less infinite in its significance than it is inevitable. We have without question in this attitude the loftier freedom of the personal life and its absolute power of choice recognized, the power to be, not merely as we find in the "Phaedra" of Euripides, under the constraint of a pathos, a divinity; but in regard to the absolutely individual volition, from which such a liberty proceeds, such a choice appears at the same time to be a mere idiosyncrasy, an inflexibility of that which is wholly self-exclusive.

For this reason the collisions of love, more particularly when it is set in hostile opposition to substantive interests, retain an aspect of contingency and lack of authorization, because it is the personal life as such which confronts in opposition with a demand not independently justifiable that which for its own essential sake has a claim to recognition. The personalities in the lofty tragedy of the ancients such as Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Oedipus, Antigone, and Creon have, it is true, among other things a personal object; but the substantive thing, the pathos, which as the content of their action is the compelling force behind them,is of absolute authority, and for this very reason, is also itself essentially of universal interest. The destiny which affects them on account of their action does not therefore move us on the ground that it is a fate of misfortune, but because it is a misfortune which affects or redounds to their honour. In other words the pathos, which will not rest until it is satisfied, possesses an essentially necessary content. When the guilt of Clytemnestra, in this concrete case of it, receives no punishment, when the insult which Antigone receives as sister[254]is not removed, in both cases we have a substantial wrong. These sufferings of love, however, these shattered hopes, this being in love generally, these infinite pains experienced by lovers, this measureless happiness and bliss which such imagine, are no such essential interest but rather something that merely affects themselves. All men, it is true, should be sensitive to love and may claim satisfaction in this respect. But when a man fails to secure that object in some particular place, in precisely this or that association, under just these circumstances and in respect to one unique maiden we can admit no absolute wrong. There is nothing essentially inevitable in the fact that a man should capriciously select any particular young woman, and that we should interest ourselves consequently for that which is in the highest degree accidental, a caprice of his own conscious life, which carries with it no impersonal expansion or universal significance. We have here the source of that tendency to cool which we cannot help feeling in the representation of the passion of romantic love however that passion may be emphasized.

The third type of soul-life which is of importance to the romantic consciousness on the field of its activity in the world isfidelity.By fidelity in the sense we are now using it we do not mean either the permanent adherence to the avowal of love once given, nor yet the stability of friendship in the beautiful image of the same such as we have left us by the ancients in that of Achilles and Patroclus, or with yet more intimacy, that of Orestes and Pylades. Youth is pre-eminently both the soil and the occasion from whichfriendship of this latter type originates. Every man has to construct his path of life independently, to work out and sustain a given mode of realization. The time of youth, when individuals still live in an undefined atmosphere of external relations which they share, is the one in which they associate closely, and are bound together so nearly inonemode of thought, volition, and activity, that everything that any one of them undertakes becomes at the same time the undertaking of another. When men attain maturity this is no longer the case. The circumstantial life of the grown man pursues its independent course and will not admit of so close an affiliation with that of another that we can affirm of it that one cannot accomplish it without the other. Men make acquaintances and then separate; their interests and business are at one time disjoined, at another they coalesce; friendship, intimacy of mutual opinions, of principles, and the general trend of their life may remain; but this is not the friendship of youth, in which no individual unit either makes a decision or carries it into effect without inevitably making it a matter in which another is concerned. It is an essential principle at the very root of our life that in general every man must look after himself, must, in other words, prove by himself his capacity to confront the reality which affects him.

(a) Fidelity in friendship and love, then, subsists solely between equals. The fidelity which we have now to consider is relative to a superior, one more highly placed, amaster.A fidelity of this type is to be found even among the ancients in that of servants to the family, the house of their lord. The most beautiful example of such a relation is supplied us by the swine-herd of Odysseus, who sweats by night and through tempest in order that he may look after his swine; who is full of anxiety on his master's account, to whom he finally gives loyal assistance against the suitors. Shakespeare offers us a picture of fidelity no less moving, though it is here shown entirely on the side of the feelings, in his "King Lear."[255]Lear asks Kent, "Dost thou know me, fellow?" And Kent replies: "No, sir; but you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master." This borders as close as possible on that whichwe would make clear as romantic fidelity. Fidelity at this stage is not the loyalty of slaves and churls, however true and pathetic such unquestionably may be, which is none the less devoid of the free independence of individuality and its unrestricted aims and actions, and is consequently of subordinate rank. What we, in short, have before us is the liege-service of chivalry, in which each vassal preserves intact his own free self-dependence as an essential element in the attitude of subordination to one of higher rank, whether lord, king, or emperor. This type of fidelity, however, is a principle of supreme importance in chivalry for the reason that it forms the fundamental bond of union in a common society and its social co-ordination at least in the original form of its appearance.

(b) The object which thus receives a fuller content and is made apparent in this new type of association between individuals is not, however, by any means patriotism regarding that as an objective and universal interest, but a bond merely with one person, the lord, and for this reason conditioned by private honour, personal advantage and opinion. In its fullest brilliancy we find fidelity of this kind in a surrounding world that is unregulated and uncouth, beyond the control of right and law. Within a lawless reality of this kind the most powerful and commanding spirits stand out as fixed points of attraction, as leaders and nobles, and the rest rally round them of their own free will. Such a condition is later on elaborated into a legalized co-ordination of fealty, in which every vassal has his own claim to rights and privilege. The fundamental principle, however, upon which the entire system reposes is in its primary origins free choice, no less in relation to the dependent vassal than to the conditions under which he remains faithful to his vassalage. For this reason the fidelity of chivalry is quite prepared to maintain property, right, and personal independence and honour, and is on this account not simply recognized as anobligationwhich may be enforced to the entire disregard of the private inclinations of the vassal however they may arise. Quite the contrary. Every subordinate unit only continues there and helps to establish the general social order so long as the same falls in with his own wishes, inclinations, and opinions.

(c) On this account fidelity and obedience to the feudal lord can very readily clash with private feelings, an exasperated sense of honour, sensitiveness to insult, love, and many other chance incidents of the personal or external life. It is consequently of a highly precarious character. A knight, for example, is loyal to his lord, but a friend of his happens to quarrel with him. He has now to choose between the two objects of his fidelity, and, chief of all, he has to consider himself, the claims of his personal honour and advantage. The most beautiful example of such a conflict we have in the "Cid." He remains as true to himself as he is to his king. If the king acts wisely he assists him with his arm's strength; if his feudal lord acts wrongly or the Cid feels touched on the point of honour this powerful support is withdrawn. The paladins of Charles the Great exhibit much the same attitude. It is a tie of chieftainship and obedience not unlike that which we have already observed between Zeus and the other gods. The superior lord commands, blusters, and scolds, but the independent and powerful individualities resist him precisely when and as they please. We find the most consistent and charming picture of the conditional and easy terms under which this bond is maintained in the "Reinecke Fuchs." Just as the magnates in this kingdom are most really true to their own aims and independence, we find that the German barons and knights in the Middle Ages were not at home when called upon to act for the sake of the general weal and their emperor; and it really looks as though our chief praise of the Middle Ages must consist in this that no man is in such a period justified in his own eyes or a man of honour, except in so far as he runs after his own inclinations, in other words, does precisely that which he is not suffered to do in a State which is organized on a rational basis.

In all these three stages of honour, love, and fidelity, we shall find the soil on which the self-subsistency of personality, the soul, is supported, an independence which, however, constantly unfolds in a wider and more affluent content, remaining in the same self-reconciled. Here stretches before us in romantic art the fairest strip of country which we can find anywhere outside the enclosure of religion in its strict sense, Its objects are concerned with that whichis simply human, a relation with which we can at least from one aspect of it, namely, that of personal freedom, absolutely sympathize, and we do not find here, as we do now and again in the religious field, both a material and modes of representation which clash with our modern notions. But at the same time we must add that our present subject matter may very frequently be brought into direct relation to religion so that religious interests are interwoven with those of the world of chivalry; as, for example, was the case in the adventures of the knights of the round table in their quest of the Holy Grail. In this interfusion we find not only much that is mystical and fantastical, but also much that is allegorical added to the poetry of chivalry. And conversely this secular sphere of the interests of love, honour, and fidelity may also be totally unconnected with the deepening of their content with religious aims and opinions, and only bring to view the earliest movement of soul-life in the secular aspect of its spiritual intensity. That which, however, drops away from the present levels is the repletion of this inner life with the concrete content of human conditions, characters, passions, and realized existence generally. In contrast to this variety the essentially infinite soul still remains abstract and formal, and has therefore in front of it the task, to accept as part of its own this further material with what it held before, and to exhibit the same in the forms congenial to artistic composition.

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