Other theogonies such as the Scandinavian and the Greek are very similar in type to the Hindoo. The principal feature of them all is this of physical generation and production; but not one of them plunges so headlong into the subject or in general displays such caprice and impropriety in the images of its invention as the Hindoo. The theogony of Hesiod is in particular far more intelligible and succinct, so that at least one knows where one is, and is clear as to the general significance; and this is so because the impression is far more pronounced that the form and external embodiment of the myth is set forth by the narrator as something external. The mythos starts in this case[54]with Chaos, Erebos, Eros, and Gaia. The Earth (Gaia) brings forth Uranos of her own accord, and then is mother by him of the mountains, sea, and so forth, also of Cronos and theCyclops, Centimani[55], whom Uranos, however, shortly after birth incarcerates in Tartaros. Gaia thereupon induces Cronos to castrate Uranos. The deed is accomplished. And from the blood that falls on the Earth spring to life the Erinnyes and the Giants. The castrated member is caught by the sea, and from the sea's foam arises Cytherea. In all this description the outlines are more clearly and decisively drawn. And we are thereby carried beyond the circle of mere gods of Nature.
3. If we endeavour now to seize some point where the transition is emphasized to the stage of real symbolism, we shall find the same already in the first beginnings of Hindoo imagination. That is to say, however preoccupied the Hindoo imagination may be in its efforts to contort the sensuous phenomenon into a plurality of Divinities, a preoccupation which no other people has displayed with anything like the same exhaustless scope and countless transformations, yet from another point of view in many of its visions and narratives it remains throughout constant to that spiritual abstraction of a God supreme over all, in contrast with whom the particular, sensuous, and phenomenal is undivine, inadequate, and consequently is apprehended as something negative, something which has finally to be cancelled. For, as we have from the first noticed, it is precisely this continual involution of one side on the other which constitutes the fundamental type of the Hindoo imagination, and makes it for ever incapable of finding a true principle of reconciliation. The art is consequently never tired of representing, in every imaginable way, the surrender of the sensuous and the power of spiritual abstraction and self-absorption. Of this kind are the representations of toilsome mortifications and profound meditations, of which not merely the most ancient epical poems, such as the "Râmâyana" and the "Mahâbhârata," but also many other works of art furnish most important examples. No doubt many of these self-chastisements are undergone on grounds of ambition, or at least with a view to definite objects, which do conduct the devotee to the highest and most final union with Brahman, and to the mortification ofeverything carnal and finite. An object of this kind is the endeavour to secure the power of a Brahmin; but even in this there is always the fact present to consciousness that the expiation and the continuance of a meditation that is ever more and more diverted from the objects of sense will raise the devotee over his birth-place in a particular caste, no less than help him resist the power of Nature and the gods of Nature. For this reason, that prince of Divinities of this class, Indras, opposes most signally strenuous aspirants, and strives to entice them away; or, in the case where all his seductions fail, he invokes assistance from the supreme gods lest the entire heaven fall into confusion.
In the representation of mortifications of this kind and the several kinds and grades according to which they are ranked, Hindoo art is almost as fertile in its invention as in its system of Divinities, and it pursues the theme with the most thorough earnestness.
This, then, is the point from which we may now extend our survey in a forward direction.
In the case of symbolical, no less than that of Fine Art, it is necessary that the significance which it seeks to embody should not merely be set forth, as is the case in Hindoo art, from the first immediate unity of the same with its objective existence, such as obtains before any severation or distinction has as yet been emphasized, but that this significance should itself be independent andfreefrom theimmediatesensuous content. This deliverance can only so far assert itself as the sensuous and natural medium is both grasped and envisaged as itself essentially negative, as that which has to be and has been absorbed. It is a further requirement, moreover, that the negativity, which is successful in making its appearance as the passing off and the self-dissolution of the Natural, should be accepted and receive embodiment as theabsolute importof the object generally, as a phase, that is to say, of the Divine. But with a fulfilment of such claims we are already beyond the limits of Hindoo art. It is true that the consciousness of thisnegative side is not wholly absent from the Hindoo imagination. Sivas is the destroyer no less than the producer. Indras dies, nay, more, the Destroyer Time, personified as Kâla the terrible giant, confounds the entire universe and all gods, even Trimûrtis, who passes away at the same time in Brahman, just as the individual in his self-identification with the highest form of Divinity suffers his Ego and all his wisdom and will to vanish away. In these conceptions, however, the negative element is in part merely a transformation and change, in part only an abstraction, which allows all definition to drop away, in order that it may thrust its path to an indefinite and consequently vacuous and content-less universality. The substance of the Divine on the other hand persists through change of form, passage over and advance to a system of many Deities, and the abrogation of that system once more in the one highest form of God unalterably one and the same. It is not that conception of the one God, which itself essentially possesses, as this unity, the negative aspect as its own determination, both necessary and appropriate to its own essential notion. In an analogous way the destructive and hurtful element is placed according to the Parsee view of existenceoutsidethe personality of Ormuzd in Ahriman, and consequently only makes a contradiction and conflict manifest belonging under no form of relation to Ormuzd, as a distinct phase of his own substance.
The actual point in the advance which we have now to make consists, therefore, in this that, on the one hand, the negative aspect, fixed by consciousness in an independent relation as the Absolute, is, however, on the other, merely regarded as a phase of the Divine, as a phase, however, which is not only as outside the true Absolute incidental to another Godhead[56], but is to be so ascribed to the Absolute, that the true God appears as a process in which He negatesHimself, and thereby contains thisnegative element as an inherent self-determination of His own substance.
Through this enlarged conception the Absolute is for the first time essentiallyconcrete, that is self-determination, and thereby essential unity, whose particular antitheses, as parts of a process, appear to consciousness as the different determinations of one and the same God. For the necessity of giving essential definition to the absolute significance is just that which at this stage it is felt to be of first importance to satisfy. All the significances up to this point persisted by virtue of their abstract character as absolutely undefined and consequently void of content, or were merged, when in a converse direction they tended to clear distinction, immediately in the Being of Nature, or fell into a conflict in respect to their configuration which gave them no repose and reconciliation. This twofold defect we have now to remove, both by showing the advance of Thought regarded as itself an ideal process, and by illustrating that advance by means of particular facts of the mind and institutions of nations on the objective plane of history.
And in thefirstplace we may observe a more intimate bond of association is set up between the Inward and Outward aspect of consciousness in the increased recognition that every determination of the Absolute is already essentially an inchoate movement in the direction of expression. For every determination is essentially distinction[57]. The External, however, is as such always defined and distinct, and consequently there is thus an aspect immediately presented, according to which the External is manifested in a form more adequate to the significance than was possible under the modes of conception as yet examined. The first definition, however, and essential negation of the Absolute inevitably falls short of the free self-determination of Spirit asSpirit.It is merely the immediate negation of itself. This immediate and consequently natural negation in its most comprehensive form of statement isDeath.The Absolute is consequently apprehended now in a way that it is compelled to submit itself to this form of negation as a part ofthe essential determination of its own notion, in other words it is obliged to enter the path of extinction, and we observe consequently the glorification of Death and grief in the first instance made present to the national consciousness as the death of the dying sensuous material. The death of Nature is cognized as a necessary part[58]of the life of the Absolute. The Absolute, however, on the one hand, in order to be subject to this phase of Death, must be posited already as determinate existence; and, equally from another point of view, must not be suffered to remain in the annihilation of Death, but must be held tore-establishitself in an essentially positive unity on a yet higher plane of existence. Death is consequently not accepted here as constituting the entire significance, but merely one aspect of the same. And though no doubt the Absolute is in one sense viewed as a cessation of its immediate existence, a passage over and beyond and a passing away, yet it is quite as much in the reverse sense conceived as a return upon itself, as a resurrection, as an eternal process of Divine realization rendered possible by virtue of this evolutional principle of negation. For Death is capable of a twofold meaning. Under the first it is the immediate passing away of the natural; under the second Death is the extinction of the exclusively natural and thereby the birth of a higher type, that is, spiritual, from which the merely natural falls away in the sense, that Spirit possesses in itself this phase as an essential phase of its own substance.
For this reason,secondly, the form of Nature can no longer be accepted in the immediacy of sensuous existence as adequate to the significance referred to it, because the significance of the External consists just in this, that it must die in the form of its real existence and rise again.
On the same ground,thirdly, the mere conflict between significance and form and that ferment of the imagination, which was the fantastic product of Hindoo conceptions, drop away. The significance is, it is true, even now not yet fully and with absolute clarity cognized in its pure unityfreefrom all sense-presented reality, so that it could be set forth in realcontrastwith the form of its actual embodiment; conversely, however, the form itself, this particular, object,that is, whether in its glorified shape of grandiosity or in any other more conspicuous form of caricature, as an image of animal life, a human personification, event or action, is not taken to envisage for immediate sense an adequate existence of the Absolute. This corrupt form of identity is already surpassed as fully to the extent that it still falls behind that other complete deliverance. And in the place of both of these extremes we have asserted that kind of representation, which we have above already described as thereal symbolical.On the one hand it is nowableto appear for the reason that the Inward, or that which is conceived as significance, is no longer something which merely, as in Hindoo conceptions, comes and passes away, at one moment is absorbed immediately in externality, at another is withdrawn from the same into the solitude of abstraction, but it begins to make itself independently secure against the mere reality of Nature. And on the other hand the symbol is now forced to seek some form of plastic shape. That is to say, although the significance, identical in every way with that which has hitherto obtained, possesses as a phasal condition of its content the negation of the Natural, yet the true Inward now for the first time shows a definite tendency to wrest its way from that Natural, and is consequently itself still swallowed up within the external mode of appearance, so that it is unable independently to be brought home to consciousness in its clear universality without having previously had to comply with the form of external reality.
Now the kind ofconfigurationwhich is implied by the notion of that which generally constitutes thefundamental significancein symbolism, may be described in the following terms, namely, we find in it that the definite forms of Nature, human activities and so forth, neither—to express one aspect of it—represent or signify merely themselves severally in their isolated natural characteristics, nor—to emphasize the other aspect—bring their immediate form to consciousness as the Divine actually visible to sense. They are rather employed tosuggestthat same Divine through qualities which they possess cognate with a significance of more comprehensive range. For this reason it is just that universal dialectic of Life, its origin, growth, collapse in andawakening from Death, which also in this connection supplies the appropriate content for the true symbolic type; and this is so because we find in almost every province of natural and spiritual life certain phenomena, which presuppose this process as the basis of their existence, and consequently can be utilized as means of giving a visible body to such significant aspects and of pointing by suggestion to the same, a real affinity being actually inherent between the two sides. Thus plants spring from their seed, sprout, grow, bring forth fruit; the fruit corrupts and produces fresh seed. In the same way the sun rises to a low elevation in winter; in Spring he mounts on high, until we have his meridian reached in summer; it is then that he pours forth his richest blessing or exerts the greatest destructive force; after that he inclines once more towards the horizon. The various stages of human life, too, childhood, youth, maturity, and old age, illustrate precisely the same universal process. But in a special sense specific localities such as the Nile-valley are adapted to the closer particularization in the direction indicated.
In so far, then, as that which is purely fantastic is displaced by these more fundamental traits of affinity and the more intimate applicability of the expression to the import it expresses there arises a thoughtful process of selection with reference to the comparative congruity or incongruity of the symbolizing forms, and the intoxicated eddy to and fro which prevailed is laid to rest in a more intelligent circumspection.
We consequently observe that a union more at one with itself reappears in the place of that which we found in the first stage of our process, subject, however, to this characteristic difference, that the identity of the significance with its objectively real existence is no longer one immediately envisaged, but one that isset upout of the difference and consequently not one previously discovered, rather we should say a mode of union that is theproduct of mind(Spirit). That which, in its most general terms, we call theInwardbegins at this point to assume the solidity of self-subsistence, to be conscious of itself; it seeks for its counterfeit in the objects of Nature, which on their part possess a similar reflection in the life and destinies of Spirit. Out ofthis eager movement to recognize the one side in the other, and by means of the external to bring for itself visibly to sense and the imaginative faculty the significance, as also to envisage by virtue of that Inward the significance of the external shapes through a union in which both sides are associated, we get that vast impulse of art which finds its satisfaction through means which are purely symbolical. Only when the Inward is free and is driven forward to make clear to the imaginative vision in real form what it essentially is, and to have before itself this very vision, moreover, in the form of an external work, do we find that the genuine impulse of art, and the particularly plastic arts, begins to be a living fact. Then it is that the necessity is felt to clothe the Inward with a form not merely previously discovered from the resources of spiritual activity, but rather one that is minted out of spirit (mind) for the first time. In the symbol, then, there is a second formcreated, which, however, is not independently valid for itself as its main purpose, but is rather employed to envisage the significance, and stands consequently in a dependent relation to the same.
It were possible to apprehend the above relation in such a way as though the significance were that point from which the artistic consciousness starts on its journey, and that only after having found this it begins to look round for means to express its universal conceptions through external phenomena cognate in their affinity to such conceptions. This, however, is not the way that real symbolic art proceeds. For its characteristic distinction consists in this, that its penetration fails as yet to grasp the significances in their independent consistency, independent, that is, from every mode of externality. For this reason its point of departure is rather from that which is immediately presented and its concrete existence in Nature and Spirit. This it thereupon, in the first instance, expands to the measure of the universality of such significances, whose determination such objective real existence contains only under more restricted conditions, adding this wider range in order that it may create a form from Spirit, which is to make that universality visible to consciousness in this particular reality when once it is set forth clearly before perception. Regardedas symbolical forms, therefore, the images of art have not as yet attained a form truly adequate to Spirit, inasmuch as Spirit itself is not as yet at this stage essentially clear and thereby free Spirit; but we have at least here embodiments, which essentially proclaim the fact to us, that they are not merely selected to represent simply themselves, but are intended to point to significances of profounder intension and more—comprehensive range. That which is purely natural and sensuous asserts itself as fact and nothing beside; the symbolical work of art, however, whether it be the phenomena of Nature or the human figure that it makes visible to the eye, points at the same time over and outside such facts to something further, which, however, must possess an intimate root of affinity with the images that are thus displayed, and an essential bond of relation with them. This association between the concrete form and its universal significance may conceivably be present in many different ways. At one time the emphasis will be laid on the external aspect, and it will consequently be more obscure; at another, however, the basis of affinity will be more pronounced as in the case when the universality, which is to be symbolized, constitutes, in fact, the essential content of the concrete phenomenon. In this case naturally it is a much simpler matter to grasp the symbolic character of the object.
The most abstract mode of expression in this respect isnumber, which, however, it is only possible to use as an indication of a further meaning beyond that it ordinarily elucidates when this significance is itself, essentially numerical. The numbers seven and twelve are frequently met with in Egyptian architecture, because seven is the number of the planets, and twelve is that of the lunar revolutions or the number of feet that the water of the Nile must necessarily rise in order to fructify the land. Such a number is then regarded as sacred in so far as it is present as a determinant in the great elementary relations, which are revered as forces in the whole life of Nature. Twelve steps or seven pillars are to this extent symbolical. The same kind of numerical symbolism has an extensive influence upon the form of widely famous mythologies. The twelve labours of Hercules, for example, appear to contain a referenceto the twelve months of the year; for if Hercules under one aspect of the myth is no doubt presented to us as the thoroughly human impersonation of a hero, in another he unquestionably indicates a significance of Nature under a symbolized form, and, in fact, is a personification of the course of the sun.
In a further and more complete sense symbolical configurations of space, labyrinthine passages, and such like carry a symbolical image of the course of the planets, just as dances, too, in virtue of their complex evolutions symbolically express the motion of the great elementary bodies.
And further, on a higher plane, the bodies of animals are utilized as symbols, but most succinctly of all the human figure, which, even at this stage, as we shall see later on, appears to be elaborated in modes more compatible with its intrinsic worth for the reason that even now Spirit in general makes a real movement to embody itself from out the mere swaddling clothes of Nature in a shape more adequate to its own self-subsistent personality. Such, then, constitutes our general concept of the true form of symbolism and the necessity under which art labours to express the same. And in order that we may discuss the more concrete exemplifications of this type of symbolism, it will be necessary in dealing with this first plunge of Spirit into the wealth of its own resources to leave the East and direct our attention mainly on the West.
As a symbol of universal import to indicate the point of view where we now stand, we may perhaps first and foremost fix before our eyes the image of the Phoenix, which is its own funeral pile, yet ever is rejuvenated out of the flames of its death and rises from the ashes. Herodotus informs us (II, 73) that at least in representations he saw this bird in Egypt, and, in fact, it is theEgyptianpeople who also supply us with a focus for the type of symbolical art. Before, however, we proceed to the closer consideration of Egyptian art we will mention several other myths, which form, as it were, the passage to that national symbolism which we find most elaborate, no matter from what direction we approach it. Such are the myths of Adonis, that of his death, and the lament of Aphrodite over him, the funeralfestivals, etc., conceptions and rites which find their original home on the Syrian coast. The service of Cybele among the Phrygians possesses the same significance, which also finds its echo in the myths of Castor and Pollux, Ceres and Proserpina.
As the essence of such significance we find in the above quoted examples, before everything else, that phasal condition of negation we have already alluded to, the death, that is, of the natural regarded as a basic and absolute condition of the Divine process, emphasized as such, and made visible in its independence. It is in this sense that we can explain the funeral festivals that celebrate the death of the god, the excessive lamentations over his loss, which is once more made good through his rediscovery, resurrection, and rejuvenescence, making it possible for the festivals of joy to follow. This universal significance contains further its more definite relation to Nature. In winter the sun loses his force, while in spring he returns once more, and with that Nature regains her youth, she dies and is reborn. In examples such as these the Divine, personified as a human event, discovers its significance in the life of Nature, which then from a further point of view becomes a symbol for the essential character of the negative condition generally, in spiritual things no less than natural.
It is inEgypt, however, that we have to look for the perfect example of symbolical representation in its systematic elaboration of characteristic content and form. Egypt is the land of symbol, which proposes to itself the spiritual problem of the self-interpretation of Spirit, without being able successfully to solve it. The problems remain without an answer; and such solution as we are able to supply consists therefore merely in this, that we grasp these riddles of Egyptian art and its symbolical productions as this very problem which Egypt propounds for herself but is unable to solve. For the reason that we find that Spirit here still endeavours in the external objects of sense, from which again it strains to free itself, and further labours with unwearied assiduity, to evolve from itself its essential substance by means of natural phenomena no less than to embody the same in the form of spirit for thevision of the senses,rather than as the pure content of mind, this Egyptian people may, in contrast to all the instances previously examined, be described as the nation Art claims for herself[59]. Its works of art, however, remain full of mystery and silence, without music or motion; and this is so because Spirit here has not yet truly found its own life, nor has learned how to utter the clear and luminous speech of mind. In the unsatisfied stress and impulse, to bring before the vision through her art, albeit in so voiceless a way, this wrestle of herself with herself, to give shape to the Inward of her life, but only to become conscious of her own Inward, no less than that which universally prevails[60], through external forms which are cognate with it—we have in a sentence the characterization of Egypt. The people of this wonderful land was not merely agricultural, but also constructive, a folk which tossed up the soil in every direction, delved lakes and canals, and exercised their artistic instincts not merely in giving visible shape to buildings of enormous solidity, but in carrying works themselves of vast dimension to a like extent into the bowels of the earth. To erect buildings of this kind was, as we have long ago learned from Herodotus, a principal occupation of this people, and one of the chief exploits of their kings. The buildings of the Hindoo race are also unquestionably of colossal size; we shall, however, find nowhere else a variety which can compare with that of Egypt.
1. Reviewing now the general conceptions of Egyptian art with a closer attention to particular aspects of it, we may in the first place define the fundamental principle of so much of it as follows, that we find here the Inward is securely held in its independent opposition to the immediacy of external existence. And what is more, this Inward is conceived as the negation of Life, in other words the dead thing, not as the abstract negation of the evil and hurtful thing, such as Ahriman in contrast to Ormuzd, but as form essentially substantive.
(a) To illustrate this thought further, the Hindoo merely subtilizes his life to the most empty of abstractions, that is in result one that therewith negates every form of concrete content. Such a Brahm-becoming process is not to be found in Egypt; rather we find here that the invisible possesses a fuller significance; the corpse secures the content of the living body itself, which, however, as torn away from immediate existence, in its retirement from actual life[61], still possesses its relation to that which is alive, and in this concrete form is maintained as self-subsistent. It is a well-known fact that the Egyptians embalmed and revered cats, dogs, hawks, ichneumons, bears, and wolves (Herod., II, 67), but most of all the dead human body (Herod., II, 86-90). By them the honour paid to the dead is not that of burial, but its preservation from age to age as a corpse.
(b) And moreover we may observe that the Egyptians do not merely remain constant to this immediate and still wholly natural permanency of the dead. That which is preserved in its physical or natural aspect is also conceived to endure in a form present to the imagination. Herodotus informs us that the Egyptians were the first who held the doctrine that the human soul is immortal. We consequently find that they are the first who present to us a more exalted mode of this resolution of the natural and spiritual, a mode that is to say, under which it is not merely the natural body which secures an independent self-subsistence.
The immortality of the soul is a conception which borders closely upon the freedom of Spirit. The Ego is here apprehended as removed from the purely natural mode of its existence, reposing on its own substance. This knowledge of itself, however, is the principle of freedom. No doubt we are not justified in asserting that the Egyptians grasped the notion of spiritual freedom in its profoundest sense. We must not imagine that their belief in the immortality of the soul is identical with our own form of that belief; but they already possessed the power to retain securely that which was separated from Life under a formof existence visible only to the imagination, no less than one in which it was identical with the bodily material. They have thereby made possible the passage to the full emancipation of Spirit, albeit it was but the threshold of the temple of freedom that they passed over. This fundamental conception of theirs is further expanded to a unified and substantial Kingdom of the Departed set up in contrast to the immediate presence of the real. A Court of Justice of the Dead is held in this invisible state over which Osiris as Amenthes presides. One of similar character is also instituted in the sphere of immediate reality, justice being executed even among men over the dead, and after the decease of a king every one was entitled to submit his grievances to that court.
(c) If we now proceed to inquire what is thesymbolicalform of art, which is given to such conceptions, we must look for this among the characteristic features of Egyptian architecture. The form of this architecture is twofold; there is one type that is superterraneous, while the other is subterraneous.
On the one hand we find underground labyrinths, gorgeous and extensive excavations, passages half a mile in length, dwellings covered with hieroglyphics elaborated with every possible care. On the other we have piled above their level those amazing constructions among which we may first and foremost reckon thepyramids. For centuries men have ventilated various notions as to the precise meaning and significance of these pyramids. It is now, however, assured beyond dispute that they are nothing more or less than the enclosures of the graves of kings or sacred animals, such as the Apis, the Cat, or the Ibis. In this way we have before our eyes in the pyramids the simple prototype of symbolical art. They are enormous crystals which secrete an Inward within them; and they so enclose an external form which is the product of art, that we are at the same time made aware they stand there for this very Inward in its severation from the mere actuality of Nature, and that their entire significance depends on that relation. But this kingdom of Death and the Invisible, which here constitutes the significance, possesses merely the one and, what is more, the formal aspect appropriate to the true typeof art, that is its dissociation from immediate existence; it is for this reason primarily but a Hades, not yet a Life, which, although raised above sensuous existence as such, is none the less at the same time essentially a defined existence, and thereby intrinsically free and living Spirit. Consequently the embodiment for such an Inward still remains in relation to the determinacy of the same's content quite as much a wholly external form and envelopment. Such an external environment, in which an Inward reposes under a veil, are the pyramids.
2. In so far, then, as the Inward can be generally envisaged as an external object to immediate perception, the Egyptians in their relation to the aspect opposed to this externality have come to worship a Divine existence in living animals, such as the bull, the cat, and various others. That which is alive is on a higher plane than the purely inorganic object, inasmuch as the living organism possesses an Inward, to which the external shape points, which, however, persists as an Inward and consequently a realm of mystery. This sacred cult of animals must consequently be understood as the vision of a secreted soul[62], which as Life is a power superior to that which is merely external. To us no doubt it can only appear as a repugnant fact that animals, dogs and cats, are held sacred instead of that which is truly spiritual.
This worship, moreover, has nothing symbolical in it viewed simply as such; for it is the actual living animal, Apis or the like, which is here itself revered as the existence of God. The Egyptians, however, have used the shapes of animals in a symbolical way. In that case they are no longer valid, simply for what they are, but it is further assumed that they express a more universal import. We find the most ingenuous illustration of this in the use of animal masks, which we find more particularly under representations of embalming, at which process certain individuals, who take an active part, either in opening the corpse or removing the intestines, are depicted wearing such masks. It is obvious that the animal's head is not taken to present the animal itself, but a significance at the same time distinct from itand more universal. The forms of animals are also utilized in other ways than this in admixture with the human form. Human figures are to be found with heads of lions, which have been interpreted as images of Minerva; then there are heads of the hawk, and in the heads of Ammon we find the horns still retained. Examples such as the above obviously imply symbolical relations. In a like sense the hieroglyphical writing of the Egyptians is in great measure symbolical, for it either endeavours to make its meaning comprehensible through the images of real objects which do not stand for themselves, but a universality which is cognate with them, or, as is still more frequently the case, in the so-called phonetic aspect of this style of writing, it signifies particular letters by means of the specific mark of some external object, whose initial letter possesses in speech the same tone as that which it is the intention to express.
3. And generally it is the fact that in Egypt pretty nearly every conformation is symbolical and hieroglyphical, expressing not itself but indicative of something more, with which it possesses affinity, or in other words a cognate relation. The truest forms of the symbol, however, are only completely illustrated in such cases where we find that this relation is of a more profound and fundamental character than those we have just adverted to. We will now briefly enumerate a few constantly recurring examples of this more important type of affiliation.
(a) Precisely as Egyptian belief[63]surmises a mysterious Inwardness of content in the animal form, we find the human figure represented in such a way that the most characteristic intension[64]of subjectivity is still asserted through an external relation, and consequently is unable to unfold into the freedom of Beauty. Particularly remarkable in this respect are those colossal figures ofMemnonwhich, reposing on themselves, motionless, with arms glued to the body, feet close together, inflexible, stiff and lifeless, are set up face to face with the sun, waiting for his ray to strike them,animate them, and make them resonant. Herodotus, at any rate, informs us that these Memnonic figures emitted a musical note on the sun's rising. The higher criticism has no doubt expressed itself as sceptical on the latter point; the fact, however, of a distinct note has recently been once more established both by Frenchmen and Englishmen; and though it appears that this echo is no result of previous mechanical ingenuity, we have an explanation of it in the fact that, as sometimes happens with minerals which make a crackling noise in water, the tone of these images of stone is actually produced by the collective action of the dew, the morning cool, and the subsequent impact of the sun's rays, to the extent, that is, that tiny fractures appear in the stone which then again disappear. In any case we may attribute to these colossal shapes the symbolical import, that they do not possess the spiritual principle of Life free in themselves, and consequently require that their animation should be brought to them externally by Light, which alone is able to unbar the music of their life, instead of having the power to accept the same from that real soul of Inwardness, which essentially carries with it measure and beauty. In contrast to them the human voice is the echo of personal feeling and the soul's self, without any external stimulant, just as the height of human art generally consists in the fact that the Inward of Spirit supplies the form thereof from its own substance. The Inward or soul of the human form is in Egypt still a mute, and in its animation it is the relation to external nature which alone commands attention.
(b) A further type of symbolical conception is to be found in Isis and Osiris. Osiris is an object of procreation and birth, and is done to death by Typhon. Isis seeks for the scattered members, finds, collects, and buries them. This mythos of the god has, then, in the first place as its content purelynatural significance.From one point of view, that is to say, Osiris is the sun, and his life-history stands as symbolic for his yearly course; from another, however, he signifies the rise and fall of the Nile, which is necessarily the source of all fruitfulness in Egypt. For in Egypt there may not be a drop of rain for years together, and it is the Nile which primarily waters the land by its floods. In winter time it flows but a shallow stream within its bed; then,however, with the summer-solstice ("Herod.," II, 19) it begins for a hundred days to rise, pours over its banks and streams far and wide over the land. Finally the water dries up beneath the sun's heat and the scorching desert winds, and once more retires to its course. Under such conditions the tillage of the soil is carried out with ease; the most luxurious vegetation springs up. Everything buds and ripens. The sun and Nile, and the way both of them become weak or strong, these are the conspicuous forces of Nature in this land, which the Egyptian has symbolically depicted under a human form in the myths of Isis and Osiris. To this type of symbolism, too, belongs the symbolical representation of the zodiac, which is associated with the year's course, just as the number of the twelve gods is bound up with the months. Conversely, however, Osiris typifies under another aspect the entirelyhuman.He is held sacred as the founder of agriculture, of the division of the soil, property and laws, and his worship is consequently to an equal extent related to human activities, which are connected in the closest manner with ethical and judicial functions.
In the same way he is judge of the Dead, and secures as such a significance wholly released from the mere life of Nature, an import under which the symbolical tends to pass away for the reason that here the Inward and Spiritual is of itself content of the human form, which, under such a mode of relation, begins to conserve the Inward essentially belonging to it, one, that is, which through its external form signifies merely its own substance. This spiritual process, however, assumes again in equal measure as its content the external life of Nature, and, for example, in temples, number of steps, floors, and pillars, in labyrinths and their passages, windings and chambers, represents the same in an external manner. Osiris is thus quite as much the natural as he is the spiritual life in the different phases of his process[65]and its transformations; and his symbolical embodiments are partly symbolic of the elements of Nature; while again in part these changes of Nature are themselves merely symbols of spiritual activities and their various phases. For this reason, too, the human form persists here as no mere personification, such as we found to be the-case previously,because here the natural aspect, albeit from one point of view it appears as the real significance, yet from another is itself merely asserted as a symbol of the Spirit; and, generally speaking, at this stage of conception, where we find that the Inward struggles to come forth from the sense-vision of Nature, it is in a position of subordinance.
For the same reason we find here that the human figure already receives an entirely different type of elaboration, attesting thereby a real effort to penetrate the arcana of true Inwardness and Spirit, though this endeavour also fails as yet to attain its object, that is, the essential freedom of the Spiritual. And it is by reason of this very defect that the human figure remains before us with neither freedom nor serene clarity, colossal, brooding, petrified, legs, arms, and head glued straitened and tight to the rest of the body, without the grace or motion of Life. Thus it is that art is first ascribed to Daedalus, in that he loosed arms and feet from their fetters, and endowed the body with movement.
On account of this alternative aspect of symbolism above referred to symbolism in Egypt is, in addition to its other characteristics, a totality of symbols in the sense that what in one respect is asserted as significance is employed as symbol in a sphere cognate with it. This ambiguous association of a symbolism which makes significance and form intertwine, which is further actually typical or suggestive of much, and thereby is already concurrent with that inward subjective sense, which alone is capable of following such indications in a variety of directions[66], is the characteristic distinction of these images, albeit by reason of this ambiguity the difficulty of interpreting them is of course increased.
A significance of this type—attempts at deciphering which are unquestionably nowadays carried too far for the reason that pretty nearly every kind of form is virtually set before us as symbolical in some relation—may very possibly from the point of view of the Egyptians themselves have been clear and intelligible as significance. But, as we insisted at the very entrance of our inquiry, the appropriate motto for the interpretation of Egyptian symbolism isimplicite multum nihil explicite.There is a type of workmanship undertaken with the express endeavour that it shall carry its own interpretation on the forehead, but we only find there evidence of the effort; it stops short of the essential point of self-illumination. It is in this sense that we must fix our eyes on the works of Egyptian art. They contain riddles, the full solution of which is not merely withheld from ourselves, but was equally beyond the reach of the great majority of the artists who created them.
(c) The works of Egyptian art in their excessively mysterious symbolism are therefore riddles, let us rather say the objective riddle's self. And we may summarily define theSphinxas symbol of the real significance of the genius of Egypt. It stands as a symbol for symbolism itself. In countless numbers, set forth in rows of a hundred at a time, we come across these Sphinx-forms on Egyptian soil; they are hewn from the hardest stone, polished, covered with hieroglyphics, and in the vicinity of Cairo of such colossal dimensions that their lion-claws alone measure a man's height. Their animal bodies lie in repose, above which as bust a human body rears itself; now and again we find the head of a ram, but in the most common case it is that of a woman. Out of the obtuse strength and robustness of animality the spirit of man is fain to press forward, albeit still unable to attain the perfect representation of his own freedom, or a counterfeit of his body in motion; and this is inevitable, for he is still forced to remain blended in the company of that Other which confronts himself. This straining after self-conscious spirituality, which fails to grasp itself from the truth of its own substance in a form of external reality which is alone adequate to express it, and instead envisages and brings the same home to consciousness in that which is merely cognate with it, but also that which is equally foreign to it, is, in its general terms, the symbolical; and we find it here concentrated to a point as the riddle.
It is in this sense that the Sphinx in the Greek mythos, which itself again is open to symbolic interpretation, appears as the monster which propounds its riddle. The sphinx asked here the famous and problematical question: "Who is it, who walks in the morning on four legs, at noon upon two legs, and in the evening on three?" Oedipus discoveredthe simple answer that it was man himself, and hurled the sphinx from the rocks. The resolution of the symbol consists in the illumination of all that is implied in the significance of one word, Spirit, just as the famous Greek inscription cries out to mankind: "Know thyself." The light of consciousness is that clarity, which suffers its concrete content to shine all luminous through the form which is wholly adapted to unfold it, and in its positive form of existence simply reveals that which it is in truth.