Chapter 5

[37]Bedeutung.

[38]What Hegel means is that calling an aspect of sense bodily or natural itself implies a distinction from that which is spiritual, or only cognized by mind, and this distinction is not present to the earliest human cognition of Divine reality.

[39]Das Lichtreine.

[40]Except in the conceptions of the Hebrew prophets this is only true subject to qualification even of the God of Israel. For he was evidently associated with the thunder, to take but one case—the deliverance of the tables of stone on Sinai.

[41]Phantasiemay often be translated by the word imagination, but here the element of caprice and dependence on sensuous image rather than creative impulse directed by a principle of selection is to be emphasized.

[42]Ein Taumel,i.e., the dance as of intoxication.

[43]This is obviously a difficult passage to follow. The main thing to remember is that Hegel is here describing the movement of a dialectical process, that is the purely objective, rather than the point of view of personal or even national experience. Such vivid expressions asTaumelandschamlos hineinrückenremind one of the Platonic dialectic.

[44]Hegel's editor has Brahman here, but according to a passage lower down (p. 59) it should rather be Brahmâ.

[45]Hinaufschrauben, lit., a screwing up to—a screwing that in fact crews the head off.

[46]Verdumpfens.Either Hegel wroteVerdummens, or more probablyVerdampfens.The idea of "becoming mouldy" makes no sense.

[47]This I think is the sense, though Hegel expresses it by using words such asdas Personificieren und Vermenschlichen, and lower downdas Subjektiviren.But previously he has rather contrasted that false kind of personification which seeks for the significant in the expression of the subject, his deeds and acts, rather than in grasping the motive centre of personality, the subjective principle itself, and it appears more intelligible in a passage, which is sufficiently hard to follow in any ease, to preserve that contrast.

[48]There is apparently only one ring and sceptre, but the words used are capable of the interpretation that would attach one for each of the hands.

[49]Hegel cites Wilson's Lexicon,s.v.2.

[50]Dem Rhythmus nach, that is, the Hindoo conception is entirely superficial, and expresses rather a rhythmic order than a profound spiritual truth which this number expresses, a truth which as Hegel has previously observed may be expressed under other determinations than the numerical.

[51]Unstätigkeit, instability, flightiness, detachment from a fundamental principle.

[52]That is Brahmâ apparently.

[53]The order of the words would strictly mean that the sons were in the pitchers and it is quite possible that this is the meaning.

[54]That is, in Greek cosmogony.

[55]What:Centimanenrefers to I do not know, possibly a name for Arges, Ceropes, and Brontes.

[56]The sense is "which is not merely (to take the obvious case of opposition which is, however,notthe one here described) totally outside the Absolute and incidental to," etc. Hegel's words would admit of the interpretation that this was part of the conception he is describing. But this is obviously not so, for, in that case, the negative would be ascribed to both the Absolute and the "other God."

[57]Ist Unterscheiden, is that which involves differentiation. To posit a quality is to distinguish from other qualities. A fundamental, aspect of Hegelian logic.

[58]Glied, part of one organic totality.

[59]Hegel uses an expression somewhat similar to Milton's "Among the faithless faithful only he."Den Bisherigenrefers primarily, of course, to the Persian and Hindoo peoples.

[60]Wie des Innern überhaupt,i.e., the Inward with its significance as the Absolute.

[61]In seiner Abgeschiedenheit vom Leben. In other words the corpse was preserved as still the only appropriate external form of Life. Though Hegel separates the two aspects of Egyptian belief they were necessary concomitants of each other.

[62]I have translatedInneremhere by "soul," but it expresses of course too much if taken strictly in its most personal sense.

[63]Aberglaube, not "superstition" so much as belief that is intuitive, not rationally deduced. The emphasis is onahnt.

[64]Hegel puts it in the rather obscure and contradictory way that the human figure is represented as "stillhavingthe most unique form of subjective intensity (Das eigenste Innre der Subjectivität) outside it."

[65]That is, the mythological history of the God.

[66]Lit., "Which alone is able to apply itself (that is, to the work of interpretation) in a variety of directions."

The perspicuity that has no riddles to expound, which is the object of symbolic art and veritably the mark of Spirit self-clothed to the perfect measure of its own substance, can only be attained on condition that first and foremost the significance be presented to consciousness distinct and separate from all the phenomena of external existence. To the union of both immediately envisaged we have traced the absence of art among the ancient Parsees. The contradiction involved in their severation, followed by the association which it then stimulated under the mode of immediacy, was the source of the fantastic type of Hindoo symbolism. Finally, we have seen that in Egypt, too, the free and unfettered recognition of the Inward principle and a significance essentially independent from the phenomenon was lacking; and this resulted in the mystery and obscurity of a symbolism still more complete.

The first decisive act of purification, or, in other words, express separation of the essential substance[67]from the sensuous present, that is from the empirical facts of external appearance, we must accordingly seek for in the Sublime, which exalts the Absolute above every form of immediate existence, and thereby effects that initiatory mode of its abstract liberation which is the basis of the spiritual content. As Spirit in its concreteness the significance is not yet apprehended; but it is, however, conceived as an Inwardness essentially existent, reposing on its own resources, and of such a nature that purely finite phenomena are alone inadequate to express its truth.

Kant has raised a very interesting distinction between the idea of the sublime and the beautiful; and indeed all that he discusses in the first part of his critique of the Judgment from the twentieth section to the end—in spite of its considerable prolixity and its reduction of every form of determination to a fundamentally subjective principle, whether it be the content of feeling, imagination, or reason—still possesses a real interest. We may in fact recognize this very reduction on the ground of its general principle of relation to be just[68]; in other words, to borrow Kant's own expressions, if the matter of our consideration is primarily the Sublime in Nature, it is not in any fact of Nature, but only in the content of our emotional life that such a Sublime is to be discovered, and, further, only in so far as we are conscious of a Nature peculiar to ourselves which involves the added assumption of one that lies outside of us. The statement of Kant is to be taken in this sense where he says: "The true sublime cannot be enclosed in any sensuous form; it is only referable to the ideas of reason, which, albeit no truly adequate representation can be given them, are excited and awakened to life within the human soul by just this very incompatibility of the permissibly sensuous representation with its object[69]." The sublime is, in short, generally the attempt to express the infinite, without being able to find an object in the realm of phenomenal existence such as is clearly fitted for its representation. The infinite, for the very reason that it is posited independently as invisible and formless significance in contrast to the complex manifold of objective fact, and is conceived under the mode of inwardness, so long as it remains infinite remains indefinable in speech and sublimely unaffected by every expression of the finite categories.

The earliest content, then, which the significance secures at this stage consists in this, that in contrast to the totalityof the phenomenal it is the essentially substantiveOne, which itself being pure Thought is only present to thought in its purity. Consequently it is no longer possible to inform this substance under the mode of externality, and to that extent all real symbolical character disappears. If, however, an attempt is made to envisage this essential unity for sense-perception, such is only possible under a mode of relation according to which, while retaining its substantive character, it is further apprehended as the creative force of everything external, in which it therefore discovers a means of revelation and appearance, and with which it is accordingly joined in a positive relation. At the same time it is an essential feature in the expressed content of this relation that this substance is asserted above all particular phenomena as such, no less than above their united manifold; from which it then follows as a still more consequential result that the positive relation is deposed for one that isnegative; and the negative consists in this that a purification of the substance is thus effected from the phenomenal taken as any particular thing, that is, in other words, that which is also not appropriate to it and which vanishes within it.

This mode of giving form, which is annihilated by the very thing which it would set forth, so that it comes about that the exposition of content affirms itself as that which renders the exposition null and void is in fact theSublime.We have therefore not, as we found to be the view of Kant, to refer the Sublime exclusively to the subjective content of the soul, and the ideas of reason which belong to it, but rather form our conception of it as having its fundamental source in the significance represented, in other words the one absolute substance. We must, then, further deduce our classification of the art-type of the Sublime from this twofold relation of the substantive unity regarded as significance to the phenomenal world.

The characteristic which is held in common by both aspects of this relation, whether we view it positively or negatively, consists in this that the substance is posited above the particular appearance, in which it is assumed to have found a representation, although it can only be declared thereby under the form of a relation to the phenomenal in its general terms, for the reason that as substance andultimate essence it is itself essentially without form and out of the reach of concrete external existence. We may describepantheisticart as the first or affirmative mode of conception at this stage, a type of conception which we come across partly in India, and also to some extent in the liberal atmosphere and mysticism of the more modern poets of Persian Mohammedanism, and finally in the still profounder intensity of thought and emotion which characterizes it when it reappears in western Christianity.

Generally, defined substance is cognized at this stage as immanent in all its created accidents, which for this reason are not as yet deposed to a mere relation of service, viewed simply, that is, as an ornament of glory to the Absolute, but are affirmatively conserved by virtue of the indwelling substance; and this is so albeit it is the One and the Divine alone which is set forth and exalted in all particularity. By this means the poet, who contemplates and reveres this unity in all things, and sinks his own individuality, no less than every other object in this contemplation, is able to maintain a positive relation to the substance, with which he associates all other objects.

Thesecondornegativecelebration of the Power and Glory of the one God is that genuine type of Sublimity which we find in Hebrew poetry. In this the positive immanence of the Absolute in the created phenomena is done away with, and in place thereof we have theonesubstance independently affirmed as sovereign Lord of the world, who subsists over against the universe of His creations, which are posited under a relation to this Supreme Being of essential and evanescent powerlessness. If under such a view any representation is attempted of the Power and Wisdom of this Unity under the form of the finite objects of Nature and human destinies, we find nothing here that resembles the Hindoo's distortion of such objects by the unlimited accretion to their measure. The Sublimity of God is rather brought home to our senses by means of a representation whose entire object is to show us that all that exists in definite guise, with all its splendour, embellishment and glory, is a loyal accident in His service, a show that vanishes before the Divine essence and consistency.

Anyone who makes use of the word pantheism nowadays exposes himself thereby to the grossest misunderstanding. For, to take but one aspect of the difficulty, this word "all" signifies generally in our modern acceptation of the term "all, and everything in its wholly empirical particularity." We have at once recalled to us, for example, this particular box with all its attributes, its specific colour, size, form and weight, or that particular house, book, animal, table, stool, oven, streak of cloud and so on, to the end of the list. When we consequently find the charge advanced by not a few of our modern theologians against philosophy, that it makes a God of everything in general, it is quite obvious that this "everything" is taken in the sense we have just adverted to, and this it is which is thus bodily thrust upon her shoulders. In one word the complaint which attaches to it is absolutely unwarranted. Such a conception of pantheism only exists in the heads of stupidity, and is not discoverable in any form of religion whatever, not even in those of the Iroquois and Esquimaux, to say nothing of any philosophy. The "Everything" in what has been termed pantheism is therefore neither this nor that particular thing, but rather "Everything" in the sense of the "All," that is the One substantive essence, which no doubt is immanent in particular things, but is cognized in abstraction from their singularity and its empirical reality, so that it is not the particular as such, but the universal animating essence or soul, or to adopt a more popular way of speaking, it is the true and the excellent, both equally a real presence in this particular thing, which are here affirmed and indicated.

This it is which constitutes the real meaning of pantheism, and we shall only have occasion now to employ the expression in this sense. It applies first and foremost to the Orient, whose type of conception is based on the thought of an absolute unity of Godhead and of everything else as subsisting in this Unity. As such Unity and All the Divine can only be presented to consciousness by means of the ever recurrent evanescence of the limited number of particular objects, in which its Presence is expressed. On the onehand we have here the Divine envisaged as immanent in the most diverse objects, whether it be life or death, mountain or sea, and with still closer intimacy no doubt as the most excellent and pre-eminent among and in all determinate existence. On the other hand, inasmuch as the One is this and again that other and that other beyond it, and in short is discharged into everything, all particular existence appears for that reason to be a thing which is cancelled and vanishes, for no particular is alone this One, but this One is this manifold of particulars which pass away before semi-perception, as such particulars into the universe which comprises them. For if the One is Life, it is also at another point Death, and is to that extent not merely life, so that it is neither as life nor the sun nor the sea that these or any other objective realities constitute the Divine and One. At the same time we do not find here, as in the genuine type of the Sublime, that the accidental is expressly posited in the negative relation of mere service. So far from this being so, substance is essentially identified with one particular and accidental existence, inasmuch as it is this One in everything. Conversely, however, this very particular, because it is equally subject to change, and the imagination does not restrict substance to one definite existence, but moves over every definition, letting it fall that it may advance to another, is thereby relegated in its turn to the accidental, over which the One is superposed in the sublimity thus conjoined with it.

Such a way of viewing existence therefore can only be expressed in art through poetry; the plastic arts are closed to it, inasmuch as they bring before the vision the definite and particular, which in their contrast to the substance present in the objects of Nature has to be given up in a determinate and persistent form. Where we find pantheism in its purity no plastic art is found as a mode of its presentation.

1. Once more we may adduce, as a first example of such pantheistic poetry, the literature of the Hindoos, which along with its fantastic symbolism has also elaborated the type of art under discussion with distinction. In other words the Hindoo race, as we have seen, proceed in their conceptions from the point of most abstract universality and unity, which is then carried forward to the specificshaping of gods such as Trimûrtis, Indras, and the rest. This process of definition, however, is not adhered to with constancy; but to a like extent is suffered once more to break up, so that we find inferior gods are absorbed in superior gods, and the highest of all in Brahman. From this it is sufficiently obvious that this Universal constitutes the one persistent and unalterable basis of all. And if, as we freely admit, the Hindoos evince the twofold impulse in their poetry, namely, either to exaggerate the particular existence, in order that it may appear to the senses compatible with the significance of the Absolute, or, in the converse case, to suffer every form of definition to pass as mere negation when contrasted with the one abstraction of Being, yet at the same time there is another aspect of their literature, in which we also find artistic representation under the purer mode of imaginative pantheism we have just described, a mode in which the immanence of the Divine is exalted above all particular existence in which it is presented to sense and which as such disappears. We may no doubt be rather inclined to recognize in this later mode of conception a certain similarity with that type of the immediate unity of pure thought which we found to be characteristic of the religious consciousness of the Parsees. Among the Parsees, however, the One and Excellent is conserved in its independence as itself a fact of Nature, that is, Light. With the Hindoos, on the contrary, the One, or Brahman, is merely the formless One; and this it is which in its transformations through the infinite variety of the phenomenal world, first gives rise to the pantheistic mode of representation. So we read ofKrishna(Bhagavad-Gita, Lect. VII, II. 4et seq.): "Earth, water and wind, air and fire, reason and egoity are the eight pieces of my essential force; yet knowest thou somewhat more in me, a more exalted essence, which animates the earthly and supports the world. In it all existences have their origin. Ay, verily, thou knowest I am the origin of the entire universe as also its annihilation. Aught higher than myself is not; in me is this All conjoined together, as a chaplet of pearls on a thread. I am the taste of sweetness in all that flows; I am the splendour in the sun and moon, the mystic Word in the sacred writings, manhood in man, the clean savour in theEarth, brightness in flame, in all Being Life, meditation in all who repent. In that which has Life the Power of Life, in the wise Wisdom, in the glorious Glory. Everything that is true of its kind, and everything that is specious and obscure proceeds out of me. I am not in them, but they are in me. Through the illusion of these three qualities all the world is made foolish, and knows me not who am unalterable. Moreover also the Divine illusion, even Mâya, is my own illusion, which is hard indeed to surpass, albeit all who follow after me step over this illusion." In this passage we have indicated in the most striking terms just such a substantive unity as the one above discussed, not merely from the point of view of its immanence in immediate sense, but also from that of its advance beyond and over all singularity.

In a similar mannerKrishnaaffirms of himself that He is the most Excellent among all the different forms of existence (Lect. X, 21): "Among the star's I am the radiant sun, among the human signs the moon, among the sacred Books the Book of Hymns, among the senses the spiritual, Meru among the tops of the mountains, the lion among animals, the vowel A among all letters, among the seasons of the year the blooming spring-time, etc."

This enumeration, however, of superlative excellence, and we may add the description of that which is merely a change of forms, among which it is always one and the same thing that is envisaged, despite any superficial appearance such may give us at first of a prodigal imagination, is none the less, by reason of this very equality of content, extremely monotonous and in general empty and tedious.

2. Under a higher mode and in a freer manner from the subjective point of view we find,secondly, oriental pantheism is elaborated in Mohammedanism more particularly among thePersians.

And here we are confronted with a relation of some singularity when we direct our attention expressly to the point of view of the individual poet.

(a) To explain this more fully we would point out that so long as the poet yearns to behold the Divine in everything, and really so beholds it, he also surrenders his own personality; but, while doing so, he realizes quite as vividly the immanence of the Divine in his spiritual world thusexpanded and delivered; and consequently there grows up within him that joyful ardour of the soul, that liberal happiness, that revel of bliss, which is so peculiar to the Oriental, who in freeing himself from his own particularity seems wholly to sink himself in the Eternal and Absolute, and henceforth to know and feel the image and presence of the Divine in all things. Such a self-absorption in the Divine, such an intoxicated life of bliss in God borders closely on mysticism. Under this aspect no volume is more famous than the Oschelaleddin-Rumi, of which Rückert, with the help of his marvellous powers of expression, which enable him to make light of both words and rhymes with all the wealth and freedom of the phantasy that comes so natural to the Persian poet, has supplied us with the fairest examples. Love to God, with whom man identifies himself in most boundless surrender, beholding Him as the One through every part of His Universe, with whom and to whom every and each thing is related and referred—this it is that gives us the focus of this type of thought, a centre which radiates in every direction.

(b) And, further, while in the true type of the sublime, as will appear shortly, the most excellent objects and the most glorious shapes are employed merely as the ornament of God, and as servants to celebrate the splendour and majesty of the One, being set before our eyes to do Him honour as Lord of all creation, in pantheism, on the contrary, it is the immanence of the Divine in external fact which exalts the determinate existence itself of the world, Nature, and humanity to its own self-substantial glory. The identical Life of Spirit in the phenomena of Nature and all human relations animates and spiritualizes the same in their own nature, and is further the source of that characteristic attitude of subjective feeling in the soul of the poet toward the objects he celebrates in his song. Suffused with the animating influx of this glory the soul is essentially serene, independent, free, secure in its comprehension and greatness; and in this positive identification of itself with such qualities it penetrates imaginatively with its life into the very heart of objective existence, sharing the restful unity that it finds there, and grows up in most blissful, most blithesome intimacy with the natural world and its munificence, withthe drinking-booth no less than the beloved, and, in short, all that is held worthy of praise or affection. We find, no doubt, the same kind of self-absorption in the romantic temperament of the West. Generally speaking, however, and more particularly in the North, it is not so gladsome, spontaneous, or free from yearning; or, at least, it remains more exclusively shut up in itself, and is consequently selfish and sentimental. A spiritual mood of this type, in its depression and gloom, finds its most forceful outlet in the popular songs of barbarous peoples. The spontaneous and joyful emotional atmosphere is, on the contrary, congenial to the East, and particularly characteristic of the Mohammedan Persians, who openly and gladly surrender themselves with all their soul to the Divine influence, and indeed to everything that appears to merit such devotion, while they do not fail to retain the freedom of independence in such surrender, and consciously to preserve the same in their attitude to the world and all that surrounds them. We may, in fact, observe in the ardour of this passion, the most expansive ecstasy and parrhesia[70]of the emotional life, through which, in its inexhaustible wealth of gorgeous and splendid images, one emphatic note of joy, beauty, and happiness rings again and again. If the Oriental suffers or is unfortunate he takes his reverses as the unalterable fiat of Destiny, and falls back upon the strength of his own resources without any increase of depression, sensitiveness, or vexation of spirit. In the poetry of Hafis we hear often enough of the lover's woes and laments[71], as of many another kind, but our poet persists through grief, no less than in happiness, as free of care as ever. This is the mood of that sometime refrain:

For thanks, in that the present glowOf friendship circles thee,Light strong the taper e'en in woe,And joyful be.

The taper teaches us both to laugh and to weep; it laughs through the flame of shining merriment, albeit it melts at the same time in hot tears; in the act of consumption it spreads wide the brightness of joviality. This is also the general character throughout of this type of poetry.

Among the objects frequently referred to in Persian poetry we may mention flowers and jewels, and, above all, the rose and the nightingale. It is a matter of frequent occurrence to represent the nightingale as bridegroom of the rose. This gift of personality to the rose and love to the nightingale may be abundantly illustrated from Hafis. "Out of gratefulness, O rose," he sings, "that thou art the sultana of Beauty, see to it that thou settest not a proud face to the love of the nightingale." The poet himself speaks of the nightingale of his own soul. When we of the West, on the contrary, refer in our poetry to roses, nightingales, or wine, and such matters, we do so in a wise much nearer to prose. The rose merely serves us for ornament, as in the expression, among others, "garlanded with roses." If we listen to the nightingale it is but to follow the bird with our own emotions; we think of the grape-juice, and call it "the breaker of our cares." Among the Persians, however, the rose is no mere image or ornament, no symbol, but itself appears to the poet as possessed with a soul, as loving bride, and he transpierces with his spirit the rose's very heart. Precisely the same character of a gorgeous Pantheism is still impressed on the most modern Persian poems. Herr von Hammer, for instance, has given us a description of a poem which was forwarded, among other gifts of the Shah, to the Emperor Francis in the year 1819. It contains an account of the exploits of the Shah in 33,000 distiches, who made a present of his own name to the Court poet in question.

(c) Goethe, too—here in contrast with the more perturbed atmosphere and the concentrated emotion of the poetry of his youth—was carried away in advanced age by the breadth of this careless and blithesome spirit; and though already a veteran, swept through by the breath of the East, dedicated the evening glow of his poetic passion, in a flood of extraordinary fervour to this freedom of emotion which, evenwhere controversy is the sub ect-matter, still retains the beauty of its careless temper. The songs of his Westöstlicher Divan, are by no means the mere play of trivial social urbanities, but originate in a precisely similar spirit of free and unrestrained emotion. In a song of his to Suleica they are thus described by himself:

Pearls from the poet,Thine is the treasure,Thine was the big swellOf passion tumultuous,Which strewed them on desolateStrand of his life.Gold-tips I call it,Pierced with bright jewels,Tenderly conned o'erBy tapering fingers.

"Take them," he exclaims to his beloved:

Circle thy neck with them,Close, close to thy breast!These raindrops of AllahThe meek shell hath ripened.

Poetry such as this is the product of an experience of the widest range, a sense which has held its own in many storms, a depth and also, too, a youth of the heart—in other words:

World of Life's own drift of forces,World, the wealth of whose wave-rollCaught afar the bulbul's passion,Won the song which shook the soul.

3. In this unity of pantheism, moreover, if emphasized in its relation topersonallife, which feels itself united with God thereby, and the Divine as this presence intuitively cognized, we have, speaking generally, that type ofmysticismwhich, under this more intimate mode, has also been elaborated in the pale of Christendom. We will adduce but one example, namely, that of Angelus Silecius, who, with the greatest audacity and depth of conception and emotional fervour, has expressed the essential presence ofGod in objective Nature, the union of the self with God, and the Divine with human personality, with an extraordinary power of mystical presentment. The more genuine type of Oriental pantheism, on the contrary, is inclined to insist more upon the vision of the One substance in all phenomena and the self-surrender of the individual, who thereby secures the most supreme expansion of conscious life no less than the bliss of absorption into all that is most noble and excellent by virtue of the absolute release from all finitude.

The One substance, however, which is here conceived as the real significance of the entire universe, is only truly posited assubstancewhere we find it suffered to retire into itself as pure Inwardness and substantive Power out of its presence and realization beneath the shifting forms of the phenomenal, and thereby isset forthin self-consistency as against all finitude. It is not till we come to this intuitive vision of the essence of God as absolutely Spiritual and apart from all image, and thus opposed to the things of the World and Nature, that the Spiritual is completely wrested from all that pertains to mere sense-perception and Nature, and delivered from determinate existence in the finite. While conversely, however, the absolute substance still maintains a relation to the phenomenal world from which it is reflected back upon itself. In this relation is now asserted thatnegativeaspect already adverted to, which consists in this, that the entire universe, despite all the fulness, power, and glory of its phenomenal contents, is expressly affirmed in its relation to substance as that which is essentially of a purely negative subsistence, a creation of God, subject to His power and service. The world is therefore envisaged as the revelation of God, and He is theGoodnesswhich permits the created thing that has no essential claim to exist, none the less to exist in relation to Himself, nay, further to have independent existence andthereby freely to conserve Him. This conservation on the part of the finitude, however, is without real substance, and in opposition to God the creature is here assumed to be that which passes away and is powerless, so that at the same time itsclaim to existence[72]is exhibited as a part of the goodness of the Creator, which not only veritably affirms the impotence of that which is essentially nothing apart from Himself, but thereby asserts His substance as the source of all Power. It is this relation, so far as it is set forth by art as the fundamental relation, both of content and form, which brings before us the art-type of the realSublime.The Beauty of the Ideal and Sublimity no doubt present features of contrast. In the Ideal the Inward transpierces external reality, whose inward essence it really is under the mode at least, that both aspects are adequate to each other, and consequently appear to be in perfect fusion with one another. In the Sublime, on the contrary, the external existence, in which substance is envisaged for sense, is deposed in its opposition to that substance, such deposition and vassalage constituting the only mode, by means of which the God who is in His own seclusion without form, and in His positive essence incapable of being expressed by aught that is of the world and finite, can be envisualized by artistic means. The Sublime pre-supposes the significance in the self-subsistence of One, in relation to which externality is defined as in subjection, in so far as that Inward substance fails to appear, but its transcendent character is so asserted, that in the end nothing can be represented save just this essential and active transcendency[73].

In the symbol the mode of theexternal formwas the main point emphasized. It must possess a significance, and yet fail completely to express it. In contrast to symbol of this kind and its obscure content we have now asignificancein the absolute sense of the term conjoined with its fullrecognition. A work of art is now the actual discharge of pure essence conceived as the intensive purport of everything, of an essence, however, which deliberately affirms that very incompatibility of form to significance, which was only implicitly present in the symbol, to be the actually transcendent significance of God Himself within the sphere of worldly existence, and above all that is contained therein.

It is a significance which is therefore sublime in the work of art, which is exclusively concerned to express the same as thus explicitly declared. We may no doubt with justice accept the description of "sacred," as applicable generally to symbolical art, in so far as it accepts the Divine as comprised in the content of its productions; but the art of the Sublime alone can make good its claim to the distinction without any deduction, for it is here alone that God receives all the honour. In this sphere, owing to the fundamental character of the significance implied, the content is generally of a more restricted nature than that we find in genuine symbolism, whose relation to the Spiritual is that of an effort and nothing more, and which in the continuously shifting nature of its relations to to the world offers such a wide field, either for transformations of that which is spiritual into natural images, or of that which is essentially material under accordant fusion with the Spirit.

We find as nowhere else this art of the Sublime, as a mode of its original appearance, in the religious conceptions of the Hebrew race and their sacred poetry. We say poetry advisedly, because plastic art cannot possibly be in question here, where it is assumed that no image whatever is adequate to express the nature of the Divine, and that the part of poetry alone by means of the spoken or written word can be employed for such a purpose. A closer examination of this type of religious conception will secure to us the following points of view most worthy of our general attention.

1. If we look at the content of this poetry under the aspect of its most universal import, one of our first conclusions will be that God, as Lord of a world created to serve Him, is not conceived as incarnated in any form of the external, but rather as personality withdrawn from alldeterminate and worldly existence into the solitude of His pure Unity. For this reason that[74]which in genuine symbolism was still associated with supreme Unity, falls apart under the view we are considering into its twofold aspect, on one side the abstract subsistency of God, on the other the concrete existence of the world.

(a) Now God Himself as this pure self-subsistency of the One substance is essentially without form, and under this abstract conception cannot be brought closer to the envisagement of sense. That which therefore the imagination is able to seize at this stage is not the Divine content viewed under the aspect of its pure essence, inasmuch as this latter precludes the possibility of artistic representation under any form adequate to it whatever. The only content therefore that is left open to it is that of therelationof God to His created world.

(b) God is the creator of the universe. This is the purest expression of the Sublime itself. In other words we find that here for the first time all those fanciful conceptions ofgenerationand purely physicalprocreationof external fact by God disappear. Each and all give place to the thought of creation by virtue of spiritual power and activity. "God spake: Let there be Light, and there was Light." A sentence dong ago cited, as a striking illustration of the Sublime by Longinus. And such indeed it is. The Lord of all, the One substance, proceeds, it is true, under the mode of self-expression; but the type of this bringing forth is the purest, nay, a mode of expression, aetherial so to speak, and without material form, the Word that is to say, the medium of thought as the ideal Power, in conjunction with whose mandate that it shall exist, the existing thing is veritably and immediately posited under the relation of tacit obedience.

(c) Into this created world, however, God is not conceived to pass over as into His reality; rather He abides withdrawn behind Himself, albeit this opposition suppliesno secure ground for a logically developed dualism. For that which has been brought into being is His work, possesses no self-consistency as apart from Him. It is solely a witness toHisWisdom, Goodness, and Justice in general, just that and no more. The One is Lord over all; His dwelling is not in the facts of Nature. They are solely the accidents of His Greatness, without potency in themselves, which can indeed suffer the show of His essence to appear, but are unable to make the reality of it visible[75]. And this it is which constitutes the Sublime in its reference to the Divine.

2. Moreover, inasmuch as the one God is thus severed from the concreteness of the phenomenal world and posited in isolated fixity, while the externality of determinate existence is on its side defined and placed in subordination as the finite, both natural and human existence are now viewed under the novel aspect that they cannot be conceived as manifesting the Divine without at the same time making visible their essential finiteness.

(a) The most direct way of bringing home to ourselves the significance of the above contrasted relations may be expressed in the statement that here for the first time we have Nature and the human form set before uscut off from the Divine, prosaic fact in short. It is a Greek tale that when the heroes of the Argonautic Expedition passed in their ships through the straits of the Hellespont, the rocks which hitherto had crashed open and shut like shears suddenly came to a standstill rooted firmly for evermore in the ground. In a manner somewhat similar the process of the finite toward stability in intelligible definition, as contrasted with the infinite essence, moves onward in the sacred poetry of the Sublime, while in the conceptions of symbolism, where we have the finite overturned in the Divine and the latter quite as frequently thrust forth from its own substance into temporal existence, nothing is permitted to keep its due position. If we turn, for example, from ancient Hindoo poetry to the Old Testament we find ourselves at once in atotally different atmosphere, one in which we feel ourselves thoroughly at home, however much we may discover in the circumstances, events, actions, and characters an environment either alien or different to that in which we live. From a world of tumble and confusion we are transported to another, and have human figures presented to us, which appear as natural as those we see with our eyes, characters with the stable outlines of patriarchal life, which in the truth of their delineation stand so near that they receive an immediate assent from our intelligence.

(b) In a general view of existence such as the above which is able to grasp the natural process of life and to accept as valid the claim of natural laws,wonderfor the first time is a really active force. In Hindooism everything is a wonder and consequently is no longer wonderful. No wonder can enter a world where the intelligible connection of facts is invariably broken, where everything is wrested from its place and turned topsy-turvy. For the wonderful presupposes the rational sequence of events no less than the clear perceptions of ordinary consciousness which, when it meets with some example of causal effect produced by a higher law breaking the customary chain of events now for the first time notifies the exception as a wonder. Wonders of this kind, however, are no real or specific expression of the Sublime, for the reason that the ordinary course of natural phenomena is conceived as quite as much the product of the Will of God and evidence of Nature's submission as such interruption of the same.

(c) We must rather look for the real Sublime in the fact that under this view the entire created world is limited in time and space, with no independent stability or consistency, and as such an adventitious product which exists solely to celebrate the praise of Almighty God.

3. This recognition of the nullity of objective fact and the exaltation and extolment of God are at this stage the source of man'sownself-respect, and in these he looks for his own consolation and satisfaction.

(a) In this connection the Psalms supply us with classical examples of the genuine Sublime, and are set forth as a precedent for all times of what our humanity at the highestpoint of its spiritual exultation has superbly expressed as the reflection of its religious consciousness. Nothing in the world can here make good its claim to independent subsistence, inasmuch as everything exists and subsists simply through the Power of God, and only exists as in duty bound to extol His mightiness no less than to acknowledge its own essential nothingness. In the imagination of pantheism, which mainly unfolded in the direction of material substance an infiniteextensionof range was most remarkable: what we most are amazed at here is the power of spiritual exaltation which suffers everything else to fall away that it may declare the unique Almightiness of God. An extraordinarily forceful illustration of this temper is the 104th Psalm, "The Light is Thy mantle which Thou wearest; Thou spreadest out the heavens like a carpet, etc." Light, heavens, clouds, the pinions of the winds, each and all are here nothing by themselves, merely an external vesture, the chariot or messenger in the service of God. A further expansion of the same idea is the extolment of the Wisdom of God, which has ordained all things. The springs, which leap from their sources, the waters, which flow between the hills, by the banks of which the birds of the air sit and carol among the branches; the grassy vine, which gladdens the heart of men and the cedars of Lebanon which the Lord hath planted; the sea, and its swarms without number; the whales which sport therein, all these hath the Lord made. And all that God has created He also preserves. "Thou hidest Thy Face, and they are affrighted; Thou takest their breath away and they are gone and become again as dust." The 90th Psalm, that prayer of Moses, the man of God, insists expressly on the nothingness of man, where we read: "Thou sufferest them to pass away like a brook; they are like as a sleep, even as the grass, which is soon withered, and in the evening is cut down and dried up. Thy scorn maketh us to pass away; Thou showest Thine anger and we are gone."

(b) Two ideas are therefore associated together with the Sublime, if viewed in its relation to the human soul, first, that of man's finiteness, and secondly, that of the insurmountable aloofness of God.

(α) For this reason the idea ofimmortalityis not to be found where this mode of conception obtains in its original purity; for this idea involves the assumption that the individual self, the soul, the spirit of man is essentially a self-subsistent entity. In the religion of the Sublime it is only the One that is apprehended as imperishable; opposed to that all else merely subsists and passes away, is neither essentially free nor infinite.

(β) And, further, on a similar ground man is conceived in his absoluteunworthinessbefore God; his exaltation consists in the fear of the Lord, in a trembling before His scorn. Over and over again, with a directness which tears aside every veil and opens the very depths, we have the cry of the soul to God depicted, the sorrow over the sense of its nothingness, increasing lament and groanings unutterable.

(γ) On the other hand if the individual persist in his finiteness of opposition to God, this deliberately willed persistence is wickedness, which asevilandsinbelongs only to the natural and human condition, and is conceived as remote from the One undifferentiated substance as pain and everything else that is essentially negative.

(c)Thirdly, however, within this very condition of spiritual nakedness, and, in despite of it, man secures a freer and more independent position. On the one hand out of the fundamental repose and constancy of God viewed in reference to His Will and the commands which that Will imposes upon humanity, arises theLaw; while under another point of view the wholly unambiguous distinction between that which is human and that which is Divine, between the finite and the Absolute, is implied in this type of human exaltation. Therewith the judgment upon good and evil, and the onus of decision in respect to either the one or the other is transferred to the individual soul itself. This relation to the Absolute, and the question it involves as to the fittingness or unfittingness of man over against the same presents, therefore, also an aspect, which applies to the individual himself, his own behaviour and action. In other words we may trace in man's rightful acts and his following of the Law a relation to God which is, side by side with the former one, an affirmative relation, a relation which has tobring generally the external condition of his existence, whether it be positive or negative, weal, enjoyment and satisfaction, or pain, unhappiness and oppression into union with the obedience of his heart or his stubbornness of spirit against the Law, and accept the same in the one case as favour and reward, in the other as trial and punishment.

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