Chapter 9

[121]The central point, that is, in the entire evolution of the types of art, classical art being intermediate between symbolic and romantic art and in a certain sense marking a point of culmination.

[122]Zu ihrem Inneren,i. e., that which unites it as a whole rather than is the purely external form. The Inward of man is the notion of man, not the mere fact that he has a head and arms, etc.

[123]The "Nature-existence," as Hegel calls it.

[124]Die Natur ist freilich heraus.Nature is there explicitly before us, but not all that is implied in Nature is made explicit in the material world.

[125]Sinnlichkeitslos, "senseless" as devoid of or abstracted from all sense.

[126]Auf ihr festes Maas zurÃ¼ckgefÃ¼hrt.To their own proper standard or measure that strictly applies to them.

[127]I think this must be the meaning ofnÃ¼tzlichhere. But the passage is not an easy one.

[128]That is, the comparative type of art discussed at the conclusion of the preceding section.

[129]That is, the Inward or ideal principle and the natural externality.

[130]SelbststÃ¤ndigkeit.Self-consistency or independence are perhaps better words here.

[131]That is, I suppose, the causal necessity as part of natural evolution.

[132]Bis zur zeitlichen gÃ¤nzlichen Ã„uÃŸerlichkeit.

[133]These words contain no doubt the epitome of Hegel's "Philosophy of Religion" and are involved in its difficulties. The reference to the historical facts of Christianity under ideal conceptions is obvious. I have translated the wordsdas Moment des NatÃ¼rlichen...zwar vorhanden seynas a phasal moment of "a process," but I am well aware that no mere amplification of this sort can in itself make the words clear.

[134]Das Freie.

[135]Des besonnenen Menschen,i.e., the man of clear intelligence, sound sense, as we say.

[136]The wordsdieser Gehalt ist selber nur der Erstewould seem to refer back to the expressionsKeine Erste und somit natÃ¼rliche Einheit.But the sense is not very clear.

[137]Deren Gattungen,their specific types.

[138]EntgÃ¶ttertâ€”a mode from which the Divine is removed.

In the notion of free Spirit is contained immediately that aspect of the process of intelligence we may describe as self-introspection, return upon the self, of being explicit as an object existing for the self and in a determinate place, although this penetration into the realm of subjectivity, as we have already observed, does not either necessarily proceed to the length of making the subject essentially self-substantive in its negative aspect as against all that is concrete in Spirit and presented us as the stability of Nature, nor to that absolute reconciliation which constitutes, the freedom of the infinite subjectivity in truth. With the freedom of Spirit, however, in whatever form it may appear, is generally associated the elimination of that which is purely natural, regarded as that which is the Other in contrast to Spirit. Spirit must in the first instance essentially withdraw itself from Nature, uplift itself over, her boundaries and overcome them, ere it can prevail with unfettered movement within those bounds as within an element that is opposed to it, and can build itself up in a positive mode of existence truly indicative of its own freedom. If we further ask for a closer definition of the object through the transcendence of which Spirit attains to its self-substantive form in classical art we shall find this object is not Nature merely as such, but rather a Nature that is already throughout suffused with the significations of Spirit, in other words the symbolic type of art, which made use of the immediately natural form as a means of expressing the Absolute, its artistic consciousness either seeing in animals and so forth the presence of gods, or striving vainly under false modes toward the true unity of the spiritual and the natural. It is through the removal and reformation of this defective association that the Idealfor the first time presents itself as the Ideal, and is forced to develop consequently this process of transcendence within its own sphere as a phase of its own necessary evolution. Such a consideration at once enables us to dispose of the question whether the Greeks received this religion from extraneous sources or no. We have already seen that subordinate conceptions are necessarily presupposed in the very notion of classical art. These, in so far as they in truth appear and are presented as factors of human history, are, as opposed to the higher form, which strives to pass beyond them, the actual starting-point of the new self-evolving art. And this is so, though in the particular case of Greek mythology there is not throughout historical evidence for these preliminary data. The relation, however, of the Greek spirit to these presupposed data is essentially a relation of construction and in the first instance of transformation. If this were not so the conceptions and forms of the same had remained as they were. It is true that Herodotus says, in a passage already cited, of Homer and Hesiod, that they had created their gods for the Greeks, but he also speaks expressly of particular gods, how this or that one was Egyptian or some other form: the poetic activity does not therefore exclude the reception of material from other sources, but merely suggests an essential transformation. For the Greeks possessed mythological conceptions before the time in which Herodotus places those original poets.

If we inquire further into the more obvious aspects of this necessary transformation of that which is undoubtedly involved with, but at first still alien from, the Ideal, we find it set before us in naÃ¯ve form as content of mythology itself. The main fact of Greek theology is this, that it creates itself and constitutes itself from that which has gone before, which takes its place in the origins and process of its own generic history. Incidental to this origination, in so far as the gods are taken to be spiritual individualities in determinate bodily shape, we find, on the one hand, that Spirit, instead of giving visibility to its essence in that which is purely vital and animal, regards life rather as an attribute which is insufficient[139], as its unhappiness and death, and, onthe other, that it is in the living thing that it triumphs over the elements of Nature and its confused reproduction. Conversely, however, it is equally necessary for the Ideal of the classic gods, not merely to stand over against Nature and its elemental powers as individual spirit in its finite and abstract seclusion, but to possess itself the elements of the universal natural life notionally as a phasal moment in the vital constitution of Spirit. As the essence of the gods is essentiallyuniversal, and in this very universality they are defined as individuals, it follows also that the aspect of their bodily presence must essentially include at the same time the natural as the essential and wide-reaching power of Nature, and as vital activity intertwined with spirituality itself.

In this respect we may differentiate the process of embodiment followed by the classical art-form under the following points of view.

Thefirstconcerns the degradation of that which is purely animal, and the removal of the same from the sphere of free and pure Beauty.

Thesecondmore important aspect is related to the elemental itself, in the first instance conceived as gods put before us as powers of Nature, through whose conquest alone the genuine race of gods can attain to undisputed mastery, that is in the war between the ancient and new gods. But this negative tendency becomes, then, in thethirdplace, after Spirit has secured its free right, to the same extent once again an affirmative force, and elemental Nature constitutes an aspect of godhead permeated with individualized spirituality in order to re-establish even the animal organism, though here only of an attributive and external sign. Following the above points of view we will now, if still at no great length, endeavour to emphasize the more definite traits, which here come under consideration.

Among the Indians and Egyptians, among Asiatics generally we find animalism, or at any rate specific kindsof animals regarded as sacred and worshipped, because in them the Divine itself is taken to be visible to sense. The animal form is consequently also a main feature of their artistic representations, albeit they are in addition merely used as symbolic and in association with human forms, in the stage previous to that where we find the human, and only the human, apprehended by consciousness as that which is alone true. It is only in virtue of the self-consciousness of the spiritual that the respect for the obscure and gloomy ideality of animal life disappears. This has already taken place among the ancient Hebrews who regard, as we have already observed, the whole of Nature neither as symbol nor as the presence of God, and attach to external objects merely the powers and vitality which in fact dwell within them. At the same time there still remains even among them, if in accidental fashion, at least a vestige of reverence for the living thing as such. We may illustrate this with the fact that Moses forbids the use of animal blood as food for the reason that life is centred in the blood. Man, however, is really under a necessity to eat that which is his natural food. The next step which we must draw attention to in this passage to classical art consists in lowering the high worth and position of what is animal, and making this degradation itself the content of religious conceptions and artistic productions. And illustrative of this we find abundant examples from which I shall merely offer the following selections.

(a) We find that among the Greeks certain animals appear conspicuous among others, as the snake, for example, is presented us in the sacrifices of Homer as an exceptionally beloved genius[141], and before all others it is this species which is offered to one god, while others are appropriated to some other. We find, further that the hare, which runs across the way, birds observed in their flight to right hand or left, and entrails are investigated as fruitful in prophetic significance. All this, it is true, indicates a real reverence for the animal type, since the gods communicate through them and speak to men by means of omens. If we look atthe heart of the matter, however, we shall find these to be merely isolated revelations, suggestive of superstition no doubt, but merely momentary hints of the Divine. On the other hand, it is an important fact that animals are sacrificed and the sacrificial flesh eaten. Among the Indians sacred animals are on the contrary preserved alive as such, and taken care of, and among the Egyptians they are even preserved after their death. For the Greek it is the sacrifice which is sacred. In the sacrifice man demonstrates that he is willing to give up a consecrated thing to his gods, and to deprive himself wholly of the use of the same. And in this connection we may observe a characteristic trait in the Greek rite, among which people the sacrifice was observed as at the same time a hospitable feast[142], only a part of the same being dedicate to the gods, that is, the portion which it was assumed they alone could enjoy, while the Greek himself retained and feasted upon the flesh. Out of this circumstance originated a mythical tale in Greece. The ancient Greeks, it is said, sacrificed with the greatest solemnity to the gods, and suffered the entirety of the sacrificial animal to be consumed in the flames. Not even the poorer suppliants dared contest this great waste. So Prometheus endeavoured to obtain by request from Zeus, that they were merely under an obligation to sacrifice a portion, and could devote the remainder to their own uses. He slew two oxen, burnt the liver of both, converted, however, all the bones into one, the flesh into the remaining hide of the animals, and presented Zeus the choice. Zeus, deceived by appearances, selected the bones because they were a larger portion and left the flesh in this way for human consumption. For this reason, when the flesh of sacrificial animals was consumed, the remaining portions, which were devoted to the gods, were burnt up in the same fire. Zeus, however, took away fire from men because by so doing he made it impossible for them to celebrate their feast. Little help the ruse gave him. Prometheus robbed him of the fire and in the excess of his joy flew back faster than he sped thither; for which cause, so the tale goes, the bringer of good news invariably brings "speed" with him. In this way the Greeks have directed attention to this progress in human cultureand preserved and reclothed the same in myth for the mind.

(b) We may connect with the above as a similar example of a yet further degradation of animalism the traditions of famoushuntings, such as we find ascribed to heroes, and handed down as sacred to grateful memory. In these the slaying of animals which appear as injurious foes, such as the strangling of the Numean lion by Heracles, the slaying of the Lernean hydra, the hunting of the Caledonian boar are set forth as something famous, by means of which the heroes contended for godlike rank, whereas the Hindoos punished with death as a crime the slaughter of certain animals. Unquestionably there is a further interplay of symbolism in deeds of this kind or they lie at the base of them. In the case of Hercules there is the fact of the sun and its course, so that such heroic actions supply an essential aspect of symbolical interpretation. These myths are, however, at the same time accepted in their express significance as beneficial hunts and were consciously recognized as such by the Greeks. We must here again in a similar relation recall certain fables of Aesop, especially those already referred to of the dung beetle. The dung beetle, that primitive Egyptian symbol, in whose balls of dung the Egyptians or the interpreters of their religious conceptions saw the world balls, comes in Aesop again before Jupiter, and with the important change that the eagle does not respect his protector the hare. Aristophanes, on the other hand, has wholly made fun of him.

(c)Thirdly, the degradation of the animal is directly indicated in many of the tales of metamorphosis as Ovid has delineated them for us in detail with grace and talent and fine traits of feeling and intuition, but also composed in a rambling way without their great and commanding ideal significance, treating them merely as the sport of mythos and external fact and failing to recognize a deeper significance. Such a deeper significance is, however, there, and we will consequently, now we mention the subject, make further allusion to it. For the most part the particular narratives are if we look at this material, quaint and primitive, not so much on account of the depraved condition of the culture, but rather, as in the Nibelungenlied, on account of the condition of a still raw nature. As far as the thirteenthbook, according to their content, they are older than the Homeric tales; add to this they are a medley of cosmogony and heterogeneous elements of Phoenician, Phrygian, Egyptian symbolism, treated no doubt in a human way, but in such wise that the uncouth stock still remains, whereas the metamorphoses which enumerate tales of a later period subsequent to the Trojan war, although their material is also borrowed from fabulous times, clash awkwardly with the names of Ajax and Aeneas.

(Î±) Generally speaking, we may regard the metamorphoses as a contrast to the conception and worship implied in animalism. Looked at from the ethical side of Spirit they include essentially the negative attitude toward Nature, making the animal and other inorganic forms a phase of human degradation. Consequently, if among the Egyptians the gods of Nature's elements are exalted and made vital in animals, here conversely, as we have already intimated, the natural form appears before us as an easier or difficult lapse and a monstrous crime, as the existence of an ungod-like, unfortunate thing, and as the embodiment of pain, in which the human is no longer able to remain self-contained. For this reason they have not the significance of the migration of souls in the Egyptian sense of that expression; this is a migration which does not imply guilt, but rather is on the contrary, if we take the case of the passage of the human soul into the animal, regarded as an exaltation.

As a whole, however, this is no severely exclusive circle of myths, however different the objects of Nature may be, into which that which is spiritual is banished. A few examples will sufficiently elucidate the point.

Among the Egyptians the wolf plays a part of great importance, as, for example, in the case where Osiris appears as beneficent protector of his son Horus in the latter's conflict with Typhon, and in a whole series of Egyptian coins is represented as the assister of Horus. And speaking generally the association of the wolf and the sun-god is a primitive one. In the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, on the other hand, the conversion of Lycaon into the form of a wolf is presented us as a punishment for his impiety. After the subjugation of the giants, we are told[143], and after the annihilation of theirbodily shapes the Earth, warmed by the blood of its sons which had been scattered in all directions, revitalized the warm blood, and, in order that no vestige of the former wild stock should remain, brought into being a race of men. Yet for all that was this after-birth contemptuous of the gods, eager for savage deeds and murder. Then Jupiter called the gods into conclave with a view to destroy this mortal race. He informed them how Lycaon had cunningly formed stratagems against himself, the wielder of the lightning and their sovereign lord. When, such is the story, the worthlessness of the times was apparent to him, he descended from Olympus, and came to Arcadia. "I furnished signs," the narration continues, "that a god had drawn nigh and the people began to supplicate." First, to make merry over these pious prayers was Lycaon, who forthwith cried out: "I will make experiment whether this indeed be a god or mortality, and the truth shall not remain in doubt." "He made preparation," continued Jupiter, "to slay me when oppressed with slumber; he was possessed with the passion for discovering the truth. And not contented with this, he made an incision with his sword in the throat of a goat of Molassian pedigree and boiled as to one part the only partially dead members; and as to the rest baked them on the fire, and placed both portions before me to eat. Wherefore I, with avenging flame, have laid his homestead in ashes. Affrighted he fled forth from thence, and when he reached the silent field he broke forth: in howls and strove in vain to utter speech. With rage in his jaws and in the eagerness of his animal lust for murder he turned against the cattle, and rejoices even now in their blood; his garments have become the hairy hide, and his arms have turned into thighs. He is a wolf, and preserves the signs of the primitive shape."

The tale of Procne, who was changed into a swallow, sets before us the gravity of the committed abomination with a like emphasis. When, so the tale runs[144], Procne begs of her husband, Tereusâ€”she happened at the time to stand in his favourâ€”that he will, forthwith let her go to see her sister or suffer her sister to visit her, Tereus hastens to launch his vessel on the sea and quickly reaches the harbour of Piraeus with his seamanship. He, however, barely catches sight of Philomelabefore he is violently enamoured of her. At his departure Pandion, the father, binds him on oath to protect her with the love of a father, and to send back as soon as possible the alleviation of his old age. The voyage, however, is hardly over when the barbarous man deprives herâ€”pale, trembling, already fearful of the worst, and beseeching with tears to know where her sister isâ€”of liberty, and as twin-consort forces her to be his concubine along with her sister. Overcome with anger and thrusting all sense of shame on one side, Philomela threatens of her own accord to betray the deed. Tereus on this draws his sword, seizes and binds her and cuts off her tongue, informs, however, his wife by way of evasion of the death of her sister. Thereupon the sorrowing Procne tears off the fine linen from her shoulders and puts on mourning apparel; she raises an empty tomb and in a mode somewhat out of place, as it happens, laments the lamentable fate of her sister. How then does Philomela meet this? A prisoner, robbed of all speech, of her voice, she bethinks her of craft. With threads of purple she works the news of the crime upon a white texture, and sends the raiment secretly to Procne. The wife reads the heartrending news of her sister; she neither speaks nor weeps; she lives wholly in the image of revenge. It was the time of the festival of Bacchus. Driven forth by the furies of her passionate grief she forces her way to her sister; she tears her from her chamber and carries her off with her away. Then in her own house, while she still is in doubt what terrible act of vengeance she shall exact on Tereus, Itys appears before his mother. She stares upon him with eyes of wildness. How like he is to his father! No further word she utters, but consummates at once the doleful deed. They slay the boy and serve him on his father's table, who partakes eagerly of his own flesh and blood. He then calls for his son, and Procne exclaims that he carries within him that which he calls for; and, as he still looks about him and seeks after him and again asks and calls for him, Philomela sets before his face the bloody head. Then he breaks away from table with an awful cry of anguish, and weeps and calls himself his son's sepulchre, and forthwith makes after the daughters of Pandion with the naked steel. But now supplied with wings they float away from thence, the one intothe forest, the other into the roof; and Tereus also, despite all the energy of his sorrow and desire of revenge, is changed into the bird which rears on its crest the comb of feathers, and carries a beak of immoderate projection. The name of the bird is the hoopoe.

On the other hand, we have changes which proceed from a guilt of less significance. As examples, there is Cygnus who became a swan, and Daphne, the first love of Apollo[145], who was changed into the laurel, Clyde into the heliotrope, Narcissus, who despised in his vanity maidens, and sees himself in the watery mirror, and Biblis[146], who was enamoured of her brother, and is, when he scorns her, changed into the spring which even now bears her name and flows beneath the shading oak.

However, we must not lose ourselves in further digression through particular examples, and I will merely, by way of passage, and the one further reference to the change of the Pierides, who, according to Ovid[147], were the daughters of Pieros and challenged the Muses to a match of rivalry. For ourselves the distinction of importance is the nature of the songs which the combatants sang respectively. The Pierides celebrate the battles of the gods[148]and honour the giants unduly while they depreciate the deeds of the great gods. Rising up from the depths of Earth, Typhoeus filled heaven with fear; in a body the gods take flight from thence until, wearied out, they rest on Egyptian soil. But here, too, so sang the Pierides, Typhoeus arrives, and the high gods are fain to hide themselves in illusive shapes. Jupiter was leader of the army, and for this reason, so ran their refrain, the Lybian Ammon to this day is figured with crooked horns; and in like manner the scion of Semele is changed into a ram, the sister of Phoebus into a cat, Juno into a snow-white cow, Venus is concealed in a fish, Mercury in the feathers of Ibis.

Here we find therefore the gods suffer reproach in their change to animal form. Although their translation is not presented as a punishment for a wrong or a crime, it is their cowardice which is held forth to us as the reason of this self-imposed metamorphosis. Calliope, on the other hand, exalts in song the good deeds and history of Ceres. Ceres was the first, so ran the strain, to scour through thefields with the crook-backed ploughshare; first was she to give fruits and fruitful means of nourishment to the ploughed fields. First was she to lay down laws for our guidance; we are collectively but a gift of her wisdom. "Ah," she exclaims, "my task is to celebrate her, and yet how shall I tune my strain worthy of such a goddess! Assuredly the goddess is worthy of the singer's best." When she has finished, the Pierides adjudge themselves victors in the contest: but even as they endeavour to speak, and with loud cries, so Ovid informs us (v. 670), are flourishing about with their hands, they perceive their nails passing away into feathers, their arms become covered with down, while each is aware that the mouth of the other is closing up into the stiff bill of a bird: and while they are all for deploring their lot, they are carried up on the waves of their wings, they float away, the screamers of the woods, and as waifs of the air. And even unto this day, adds our poet, they still retain their own glibness of tongue and excited chatter, and infinite desire to gossip. In this way we find again also here that metamorphosis is presented us as punishment, and, what is more, is presented, as is so frequently the case with such stories, as punishment due to religious impiety.

(Î²) If we consider further examples of still well recognized metamorphoses of men and gods into animals, we shall find that, although they do not directly imply any transgression as the cause of such a change, as, for example, in the case where Circe possessed the power to change men into animals, yet, for all that, the animal condition is at least indicative of a misfortune and a humiliation, such as brings no honour even to the person who makes such a change subservient to private ends. Circe was quite a subordinate, obscure type of goddess, and her power appears as mere witchery, and Mercury assists Odysseus, when the latter contrives to free his comrades from the spell. Of much the same kind are the many shapes which Zeus takes upon himself, as, for example, when he is changed into a bull in his quest of Europa, or when he approaches Leda in the form of a swan, or fructifies the Danae in a shower of gold. In all these cases the object is one of deception, directed by purposes of an inferior, that is to say, notspiritual, but purely natural quality, purposes which the ever constant jealousy of Juno render unavoidable. The conception of a universal procreative life of Nature, which in many of the more ancient mythologies constituted the leading motive, is imaginatively reproduced in separate poetical tales about the easily enamoured disposition of the father of gods and men, exploits, however, which he does not carry through in his own or, for the most part, in human shape, but expressly either in the shape of animals, or some other embodiment of Nature.

(Î³) And, lastly, we may add to our list those hybrid forms, combining both humanity and animalism, which are also not excluded from Greek art, though the animality is here accepted as something that degrades, is unspiritual. Among the Egyptians, for example, the he-goat, Mendes, was revered[149], and, according to the opinion of Jablouski[150], in the sense of the procreative power of Nature, generally speaking, as that of the sun, and to such an outrageous excess that, according to Pindar, even women sacrificed themselves to these creatures. Among the Greeks, Pan, on the contrary, personifies the mysterious sense of the divine presence, and later in the shape of fauns, satyrs, and Pan-like figures, the goat shape only appeared in a subordinate way, such as in the feet, and in the most beautiful representations was perhaps limited to the pointed ears and little horns. The rest of the figure is shaped in human guise, and the animal suggestion thrust back upon the barest detail. Yet, for all that, fauns were not recognized among the Greeks as gods of any important rank or spiritual forces; their fundamental characteristic remained that of a sensuous, uncontrolled joviality. It is true that they are also artistically represented with an expression of profounder significance, as, for instance, that fine example of one in Munich, which holds the youthful Bacchus in his arms, and gazes down on him with a smile which is brimming over with love and tenderness. He is not to be taken as the father of Bacchus, but merely the foster-parent, and we find given him here the beautiful feeling of joy in the innocence of the child, such as that which, in the maternal devotion of Mary for the Christ babe, is exalted in romantic art to solofty a level of contemplation. Among the Greeks, however, this most charming love still belongs to the subordinate sphere of fauns in order to indicate that its origin is traceable from animal, that is natural, life, and consequently is entitled to rank with such a sphere[151].

Mediate shapes of a similar kind are the centaurs, in which we may also observe that the Nature-aspect of sensuality and desire is also supremely prominent to the suppression of the spiritual side. Cheiron, no doubt, is of a more noble type, a clever physician, and the tutor of Achilles; but this instructiverÃ´le, as the teacher of a child, is not appropriate to godhead strictly, but is to be related with human ability and cleverness.

In this manner the relation of the animal shape receives a modification in classical art from whatever point of view we regard it. Its prevailing employment is to indicate that which is evil, bad, inferior, merely natural and unspiritual, whereas, outside Greece it was the expression of the positive and absolute.

The second grade of more elevated rank we may contrast with the degradation of the animal condition consists in this, that the genuine gods of classical art, inasmuch as they possess for their content a free self-consciousness, which we may define as the power of spiritual individuality reposing on its own resources, are also able to be represented as subjects of knowledge and volition, that is as spiritual potences. For this reason thehumanity, in the bodily form of which they are presented us, is not, as one may say, a mere form, which is girt about this content by virtue of the imagination under a mode of purely external validity, but is rooted in the significance, content, and ideal substance itself. The divine, however, generally speaking, is essentially to be apprehended us unity of the natural and spiritual; both sides are involved in the conception of the Absolute; and itis merely the different mode, under which this harmony is conceived, which constitutes from our present point of view the respective grades of the various forms of art and historic religions. According to our own Christian way of looking at it, God is the creator and lord of Nature and the spiritual world, and therewith, no doubt, exempted from the immediate and determinate existence of Nature, for the reason that, before all else, he is very God as the taking back into Himself of his own fulness, that is as absolute and self-dependent Spirit; it is only the finite and human spirit which stands in opposition to Nature as a limit and a bound, a limitation which such only thereby overcomes in his determinate existence, and exalts himself intrinsically to the grade of infinity in so far as he grasps Nature contemplatively in thought, and in the actual world[152]consummates the harmony between spiritual idea, reason, the Good and Nature. This infinite actualization is, however, God, in so far as the lordship over Nature is strictly due to Him, and He Himself is conceived as explicit in this infinite activity, and the knowledge and volition of such realization.

In the religions of strictly symbolic art, on the contrary, as we have traced already, the union of the Inward and Ideal with Nature was an immediate association, which consequently made use of Nature both as regards its substance and form as its fundamental mode of determination. In this sense the sun, the Nile, the sea, the Earth, the natural processes of birth, death, procreation, and reproduction, in short, all the varied changes of the universal life of Nature were revered as divine existence and life. These Nature-forces, however, were even in symbolic art personified, and consequently set up in contrast to the spiritual. If, however, and nothing less than this is the requirement of classical art, the gods are to be spiritual individualities in harmony with Nature, mere personification is a conception insufficient for this result. For personification, in the case that its content is a purely universal force and activity of Nature, persists as a mere form, unable to penetrate to the constituting substance, and can neither give existence to the spiritual content in the same, nor its individuality. We findtherefore necessarily in classical art a change of front[153], to the effect that, in conformity with the degradation of the animal aspect we have just been considering, the universal power of Nature also in one aspect of it suffers humiliation, and the spiritual is proportionally exalted in contrast to it. And by this means we find that it is the principle ofsubjectivity, rather than mere personification, which becomes the main mode of definition. From another point of view, however, the gods of classical art do not cease to be potences of Nature, because God here has not yet come to be represented as essentially absolute and free spirituality. In the relation of a merely created and ministrant creature to a lord and creator separated from it, Nature stands, however, albeit deified, either as we have it in the art of the Sublimeâ€”conceived as an essentially abstract, that is purely ideal masterdom of one supreme substance, orâ€”as in the case of Christianityâ€”exalted as concrete Spirit to absolute freedom within the pure element of spiritual existence and personal actuality. Neither of these examples falls in with the point of view of classical art. God here is not asyetlord of Nature, for the reason that he does not as yet possess absolute spirituality either if regarded relatively to what is contained in Him, or to the mode under which He is apprehended. He is no longer lord of Nature, because the sublime relation of the deified natural thing and human individuality has ceased, and taken upon itself the limitations of beauty, in which their just due must be rendered for art's representation without any tittle of loss to both aspects, the universal and the individual, the spiritual and the natural. Consequently in the god of classical art the nature-potency is preserved, but is conceived as such not in the sense of the universal and all-embracing Nature, but as the definable, and consequently limited activity of the sun, sea, and so on, generally speaking, as a particular natural potency, which is made visible as spiritual individuality, and possesses this spiritual individuality as its essential being.

For the reason, then, as we have already made clear, that the classical Ideal is not immediately present, but first makes its appearance through the process in which thatwhich is negative to the formative content of spirit is resolved, this transformation and building up into new forms of that which is raw, unbeautiful, wild, grotesque, purely natural, or fantastic, which originated in earlier religious conceptions and views of art, will be a leading interest in Greek mythology, and consequently will necessarily reproduce a readily defined sphere[154]of particular significances.

In proceeding further to examine this fundamental aspect of our present subject I must at once give utterance to the preliminary caution that the historic investigation of the varied and multifold conceptions of Greek mythology lies outside our present task. All we are concerned to inquire into here are the essential phasal steps of this process of reconstruction, in so far as the same notify themselves as phases of universal import in the new artistic configuration and its content. As for that infinite mass of particular myths, narrations, histories, things referable to a local origin and symbolism, which collectively still assert their predominance in the world of later gods, and incidentally appear in artistic production, but for all that do not belong to the vital point of interest to which our own effort is directedâ€”we must necessarily leave all this broad field of material on one side, and can merely refer to an example or two by way of illustration. Speaking generally we may compare this road, on which we now move forwards, to the course of the history of sculpture. For inasmuch as sculpture places before the observation of sense the gods in their real form it constitutes the peculiarcentrumof classical art, albeit also the better to make it wholly understood poetry expresses itself upon gods and mankind, or passes in review the worlds of gods and men in their activity and movement in direct contrast to that objectivity self-contained in repose. Just as, then, in sculpture the moment of all importance in the beginning is the transformation of the formless, the stone or block of wood that has fallen from heaven (Î´Î¹oÏ€ÎµÏ„á½´Ï‚)â€”as the the great goddess of Pessinus in Asia Minor actually was, which the Romans directed by means of a solemn embassy to be transferred to Romeâ€”into the humanform and so makes the statue, so too we have here to make a beginning from the formless, uncouth powers of Nature, and while doing so merely to indicate the stages, in their passage through which they are exalted into spiritual individuality and are finally concentrated in shapes of fixity.

We may in this connection distinguish three separable aspects as of most importance.

Thefirst, which arrests our attention, are theoraclesin which the knowledge and volition of gods, still under a formless mode, gives witness to their presence through natural existences.

Thesecondpoint of view to be noted is concerned with the universal forms of Nature, no less than the abstractions of Right and so forth, which lie at the root of the genuine spiritual and individual deities, which are, so to speak, their birth-cradles and furnish us with the necessary conditions of their origin and activity: they are the old gods in contradistinction to the new.

Thirdly, and finally, we are made aware of the essentially necessary progress to the Ideal in the fact that the primarily superficial personifications of the activities of Nature and the most abstract spiritual conditions are contested and thrust from their prominence as something essentially subordinate and negative and, by virtue of this debasement the self-sufficient spiritual individuality and its human form and action, is suffered to attain an unchallenged masterdom. This revolution, which constitutes the real central position in the historical origins of the classic gods, is in Greek mythology placed before our imagination in the conflictâ€”a mode of presentation as naÃ¯ve as it is astonishingly directâ€”between the old and new gods, in the headlong fall of the Titans, and in the victory which the divine race of Zeus secures.

(a) To take, then, first in order theoracles, it will not be necessary for us now to dilate on them to any considerable extent. The essential point which concerns us here is merely due to this fact, that in classical art the phenomena of Nature are no longer revered as suchâ€”in the way that the Parsees, for example, pray to naphthetic regions or fire, or as among the Egyptians, gods remain inscrutable, mysterious, and mute riddlesâ€”but that the gods, being themselvessubjects of knowledge and volition, do verily give to man by means of natural phenomena indications of their wisdom. In this sense the ancient Hellenes made inquiry at the oracle of Dodona[155], whether they should accept the names of gods, which have come to them from barbarians, and the oracle replied: "Use them."

(Î±) The signs by means of which the gods thus made their revelations are for the most part of the simplest description. At Dodona such were the rustle and whisper of the sacred oak, the murmur of the spring, the tones of the brazen vessel, which the wind made thus to reverberate. In like manner at Delos it was the laurel which rustled and at Delphi, too, the sound of the wind on the brazen tripod was full of significance[156]. Over and above, however, such immediately natural sounds man is also the voice-piece of the oracle in so far as he is rendered deaf to and whirled away from the alert commonsense of his ordinary mind to a natural condition of enthusiasm; as, for example, the Pythia at Delphi was wont, stupefied by exhalations, to deliver the oracular words, or in the cave of Trophonius the inquirer of the oracle met with faces, from the interpretation of which an answer was delivered him.

(Î²) There is, however, another aspect which we should set alongside of the purely external sign. For in the oracles God is, it is true, accepted as He whoknows, and the oracle of most famed repute is dedicate to Apollo, the god of wisdom. The form, however, in which he reveals his will, remains the wholly indefinite voice of Nature, either a natural sound, that is, or the unconnected tones of words. In this obscurity of form the spiritual content is itself equally obscure and requiresinterpretationand explanation.

(Î³) This explanation, albeit it brings under a mode of spiritual life the deliverance of the god which in the first instance is presented purely in the form of Nature's own voice, remains despite this fact obscure and equivocal. For the god is in his knowledge and volition concrete universality. And of the same type also must the advice or command unavoidably be which the oracle declares. The universal, however,is not one-sided and abstract, but as concrete universal contains the one side no less than the other. Inasmuch, then, as man stands over against the knowing god as one unknowing he accepts the oracular word itself in ignorance. In other words, the concrete universality of the same is not open to his intelligence, and he can merely select from the equivocal word of the god, assuming that he decides to act upon it,oneaspect thereof, for the reason that every action under particular circumstances is unavoidablydefinite, only, that is to say, giving a decisive impulse inonedirection and shutting off another. His action is barely accomplished, and the deedâ€”which consequently has become his own and for which he must now be answerableâ€”really carried through when he finds a collision confronting him. All in a moment he is aware that the other side, which lay already folded in the oracular sentence, is turned against himself and the fatality of his deed, his knowledge and will notwithstanding, has him in the toils; a fatality which he may not know, but of which we must suppose the gods are aware. Conversely again the gods are determinate potencies and their expressed will, when it carries this character of essential determinacy, as, for example, the bidding of Apollo, which drives Orestes forward to his revenge, brings about a collision of forces in the selfsame way. For the reason, then, that in one aspect of it the form, which the spiritual knowledge of the god assumes in the oracle, is the wholly undefined external expression or the abstract ideality of the word, and the form itself through the equivocal sense it contains includes the possibility of discord, we find that in classical art it is not sculpture, but poetry, and pre-eminently dramatic poetry, in which oracles contribute their share of the content and are of importance. Inclassicalart, however, they do essentially maintain a place, because in it human individuality has not forced its way to the full height of spiritual attainment, where the subject draws the determination of his actions without infringement from his own resources. What we in our modern sense of the term call conscience, has not as here secured its rightful place. The Greek acts often, it is true, at the beck of his passion, bad no less than good; the genuine pathos, however, which is here held to quicken him, and does in fact so quicken him, proceeds from the gods,whose content and might is the universal of such a pathos; and the heroes are either immediately instinct with the same, or they interrogate oracles for advice, when the gods do not present themselves openly to their vision, by way of quickening the deed to be done.

(b) Moreover, as in the oracle thecontentis to be found in the gods thatknowandwillywhile the form of the external phenomenon is the external which is abstract and a part ofNature, from the other point of view that which isnatural, if we look at it relatively to its universal forces and the activities which belong to these, becomes thecontent, from out of which the independent individuality has first to force its way up, and receives as its original form merely the formal and superficial personification. The thrusting back of these purely natural forces, the opposition and contention through which they are overcome is just the significant centre, for which we are indebted primarily to classical art, and which we must consequently submit to a closer examination.

(Î±) The first thing we would remark in this connection is attributable to the circumstance that we are not here concernedâ€”as in that view of the world which belongs to the Sublime, or in part even that appropriate to Hindoo doctrinesâ€”with God already essentially devoid of any relation to sense, when regarded as the starting point of all creation, but rather with that in which Nature's gods, and we may add in the first instance the more universal forces of Nature such as Chaos, Tartarus, Erebus, the entire savage and subterranean substance, and, furthermore, Uranos, Gaia, the Titan Eros, Kronos, and the rest, supply the beginning[157]. It is from out of these, then, that the better defined powers, such as Helios, Oceanos, and others like them first have their being; while they, in their turn, become the natural cradle for the later spiritual and individualized divinities. We find, therefore, again here another theogony and cosmogony which is the work of the imagination, whose earliest gods, however, still remain for the observer under one aspect of an undefined character, or vaguely extend beyond all reasonable limit; and, if viewedfrom another standpoint, still carry with them much that is essentially symbolical.

(Î²) The more detailed distinctions among these Titan potencies may be thus indicated:

(Î±Î±) First, we have those powers of the Earth and the stars, without spiritual and ethical content, consequently dissolute, a raw, savage race, gigantic and formless, as though they were scions of Hindoo or Egyptian imagination. They are to be classed with other individualities of Nature such as Brontes, Steropes, and again with the hundred-handed Kottos, Briareus, and Gyges, the giants and the rest standing in the first instance beneath the lordship of Uranos, then of Kronos, that chief of the Titans, who obviously is a kind of personifiedTime, devouring all his children, just as Time eventually annihilates everything that it has brought to birth. This myth is not without a symbolical significance. For the life of Nature is, in fact, subjugate to Time, and brings only the Past into existence, just as in the same way the prehistoric times of some people, which is only one nation, one stock, yet constitutes no genuine State, and pursues no definite objects essentially made clear to itself, becomes the sport of the power of a Time, which is destitute of history. We touch solid ground for the first time when we come to law, morality, and the State, something permanent which remains though races pass away, as it is said that the Muses give permanence and a defence to everything, which, as the life of Nature and present action, had only vanished swept away with Time.

(Î²Î²) But, further, it is not only that the forces of Nature belong to this sphere of the old gods, but also the forces noted as earliest over the elements. In particular the first active agency upon metal through the force of what is still raw, and elementary Nature, that is air, water, fire, is of importance. We may mention in illustration the Corybantes, the Telchines, demons of both beneficent and evil influence, the Pataeci, pygmies, dwarfs, cunning in the woodman's craft, small, with big paunches.[158]

More prominent notice should be taken of Prometheus, as illustrating in the chief place a fundamental point of new departure. Prometheus is a Titan of exceptional type anddeserves exceptional attention. Together with his brother Epimetheus he appears in the first instance as favourable to the young gods; then he stands out as the benefactor of men, who in other respects have no defined relation with the new gods or the Titans. He brings fire to man, and thereby supplies them with the means of satisfying their needs and working the technical arts, which are no longer, however, regarded as natural products, and consequently it would appear do not stand in any closer association with Titan workmanship. For this interference Zeus punishes Prometheus until Hercules finally releases him from suffering. At the first glance there would appear to be nothing strictly Titanesque in these main features of the story; nay, it would not be difficult to point out an inconsequence in the fact that Prometheus, just as Ceres, is a benefactor of mankind, and is none the less numbered among the old Titanic potencies. If we look at the matter more closely, however, this inconsequence will at once disappear. In this connection several passages from Plato's works will help us sufficiently to clear the difficulty. There is the myth in which the guest-friend recites to the younger Socrates that in the time of Kronos men originated from the Earth, while the god, on his part, devoted his attention to the whole[159]. After this step a movement of opposite tendency sprang up, and the Earth was left to itself[160], so that now the beasts became savage, and mankind, whose means of nourishment and all their other needs had hitherto passed immediately into their hands, were left alone without advice or assistance. Well, according to this myth, it was in such a condition[161]that fire was brought to mankind by Prometheus, all other accessories of craftsmanship being communicated by Hephaestos and his companion in craftsmanship, Athene.

Here we have notified expressly a distinction between fire and the thing which artistic ability produces by working on the raw material; and only the gift of fire is ascribed to Prometheus. Plato narrates the myth of Prometheus at greater length in the "Protagoras." There we read[162]: "There wasonce a time when gods indeed existed, but mortal beings had not appeared. When the foreordained time of their birth also had come, the gods created them in the inward parts of the Earth, composing their substance of Earth and fire and that which is the union of both these elements. When the gods were desirous of bringing them into the light, they handed them over to Prometheus and Epimetheus to apportion and arrange the energies of each singly as was right. Epimetheus, however, requested of Prometheus that the apportionment might be left to him. After I have done this, quoth he, you may mark and express an opinion. Epimetheus, however, by a blunder apportioned everything worth having to the animal world, so that there was nothing left over for mankind; and when Prometheus made his inspection he found that though all other living things were wisely provided with all their needs mankind remained naked, unprotected, without covering or weapons. But already the appointed day had appeared in which it was necessary that man should pass from the bowels of the Earth into the light. In the embarrassment in which he was placed to procure some assistance for mankind Prometheus stole the wisdom that is shared by Hephaestos and Athene by taking fireâ€”for without fire it would be impossible to possess it or make it of useâ€”and made a present of this to men. Man now, it is true, possessed the wisdom necessary for the support of his life, but he was stillwithout political wisdom, for this was still lodged with Zeus. Entry, however, to the stronghold of Zeus was no longer permitted Prometheus, and apart from this the awful watchers of Zeus barred the way. He passed, however, secretly into the chamber which Hephaestos and Athene shared in the practice of their art, and having secured the forging-art of Hephaestos he pilfered that other art (the art of weaving) which was possessed by Athene and presented this to mankind. Out of these possessions the means of satisfying the needs of Life is provided for man (á¼Ï…Ï€oÏÎ¯Î± Ï„oá¿¦ Î²Î¯oÏ…)." Prometheus receives, however, as already narrated, punishment for the thefts he commits owing to the blunders of Epimetheus.

Plato further tells us in a passage which immediately follows the above that mankind was still destitute of the art of war for their protection against the animal world, which wasmerely a part of the art of politics, and consequently were collected into cities, and would have so outraged each other and finally broken up such asylums for the reason that they were without all political organization, that Zeus found it necessary to send down to them under the escort of Hermes Shame and Right.

In these passages the distinction between the immediate objects of life, which are related to physical comfort, that is, the provision for the satisfaction of the most primary necessaries and political organization, such as sets before itself as its object what is spiritual, custom, law, right of property, freedom, and communal existence is expressly emphasized. This principle of ethical life and right[163], Prometheus did not give to men, he merely taught them the cunning by means of which they might overcome natural objects and make them serviceable to their needs. Fire and the craftsmanship which makes use of fire have nothing ethical about them in themselves; and it is just the same with the art of weaving; in the first instance they are devoted to the exclusive service of private individuals, without coming into any relation with that which is shared in human existence or with Life in its public character. For the reason, then, that Prometheus was unable to furnish mankind with anything more spiritual or ethical, he also does not belong to the race of new gods, but to the Titans[164]. Hephaestos, it is true, also possessed fire and the particular crafts to which it is essential as an instrument for his field of activity, and is none the less accredited as a new god: but Zeus cast him from Olympus, and he continued to limp ever after. Just as little is it, therefore, an inconsequence when we find Ceres placed among the younger gods, who proved herself a benefactor of mankind just as Prometheus did. For that which Ceres taught was agriculture, with which at the same timeproperty, and yet more, marriage, social custom, and law stand in close association.

(Î³Î³) A third class of the ancient gods contains, it is true, neither personified potencies of Nature, as such, nor the might which next follows as lord over the particular elements of Nature in the service of the more subordinate human necessities, but is already contestant with that which is essentially in itself ideal, universal, and spiritual. What, however, is none the less lacking in the powers we have here to reckon with is spiritual individuality and its appropriate form and manifestation, so that they also more or less relatively to their operations keep a position which is more nearly akin to the necessity and essential being of Nature. In illustration of this type we may recall the conception of Nemesis, Dike, the Erinnyes, Eumenides, and Moirai. No doubt we find associated with these figures the determinate notions of right and justice; but this inevitable right, instead of being conceived and clothed in the essentially spiritual and substantive medium of social morality[165], remains either persistent in the universal abstract notion, or is related to the obscure right of that which is natural within the circle of spiritual connections, the love of kindred, for example, and its paramount claim, which does not appertain to Spirit in the open freedom of itself self-recognized; and consequently also does not appear as lawful right, but in opposition to this as the irreconcilable right of revenge.

To bring the view of the above nearer I will merely draw attention to one or two ideas bound up with it. Nemesis, for example, is the might to humiliate the exalted, and to cast down the man all too fortunate from his lofty seat, and consequently to restore equilibrium. The claim or right of equilibrium is the purely abstract and external right, which, it is true, certifies itself as operative in the range of spiritual circumstances, and conditions, without, however, making the ethical organization of the same the content of justice. Another aspect of importance attaches to this circumstance, that the right of the family-condition is apportioned by the ancient gods, in so far as these repose on a condition of Nature, and thereby are in antagonism with the public right and law of the community. We may adduce the Eumenidesof Aeschylus as the clearest illustration of this point. The direful maidens pursue Orestes on account of the murder of his mother, a murder which Apollo, the younger god, had directed, in order that Agamemnon, the slaughtered spouse and king, should not remain unavenged. The entire drama consequently is concentrated in a conflict between these divine Powers, which confront each other in person. On the one side we have the goddesses of revenge, the Eumenides; but they are called here the beneficent, and our ordinary conception of the Furies, into which we convert them, is set before us as rude and uncouth. For they possess an essential right thus to persecute, and are therefore not merely hateful, wild, and ferocious in the torments which they impose. The right, however, which they enforce as against Orestes is only the family-right in so far as this is rooted in the blood relation. The profoundest association of son and mother is the substantive fact which they represent. Apollo opposes to this natural ethical relation, rooted as it is already both on the physical side and in feeling, the right of the spouse and the chieftain who has been violated in respect to the highest right he can claim. This distinction is in the first instance brought to our notice in an external way since both parties are champions for morality within one and the same sphere, namely the family. The sterling[166]imagination of Aeschylus has, however, hereâ€”and we cannot sufficiently value it on this scoreâ€”discovered for us a contradiction, which is not by any means a superficial one, but of fundamental significance. That is to say, the relation of children to parents reposes on the unity of the natural nexus; the association of man and wife on the contrary must be accepted as marriage, which does not merely proceed from purely natural love, that is from the blood or natural affinity, but originates out of a conscious inclination, and for this reason belongs to the free ethical sphere of the self-conscious will. However much, therefore, marriage is bound up with love and feeling it is none the less to be distinguished from the purely natural emotion of love, because it also freely recognizes definite obligations quite independent of the same, which persist when that feeling of love may have ceased. The notion, in short, and the knowledgeof the substantiality of marital life is something later and more profound than the purely natural connection between mother and son, and constitutes the beginning of the State as the realization of the free and rational will. In like manner we shall find resident in the relation of prince to citizen the association of a similar political right, law, and the self-conscious freedom and spirituality of similar social aims. This is the reason why the Eumenides, the ancient goddesses, pursue Orestes with punishment, whereas Apolloâ€”the clear, knowing and self-consciously knowing ethical senseâ€”defends the right of the spouse and the chief, justly opposing the Eumenides: "If the crime of Clytemnestra were not scented out I should be in verity without honour and despised as nought by the consummator Here and the Councils of Zeus[167]."

Of still greater interest, albeit wholly involved in human feeling and action, is the contradiction which we have set before us in the "Antigone," one of the most sublime, and in every respect most consummate work of art human effort ever produced. Not a detail in this tragedy but is of consequence. The public law of the State and the instinctive family-love and duty towards a brother are here set in conflict. Antigone, the woman, is pathetically possessed by the interest of family; Kreon, the man, by the welfare of the community. Polynices, in war with his own father-city, had fallen before the gates of Thebes, and Kreon, the lord thereof, had by means of a public proclamation threatened everyone with death who should give this enemy of the city the right of burial. Antigone, however, refused to accept this command, which merely concerned the public weal, and, constrained by her pious devotion for her brother, carried out as sister the sacred duty of interment. In doing this she relied on the law of the gods. The gods, however, whom she thus revered, are theDei inferiof Hades[168], the instinctive Powers of feeling, Love and kinship, not the daylight gods of free and self-conscious, social, and political life.

(Î³) Thethirdpoint, which we would advert to in connection with the theogony of the outlook of artists in the classicperiod, has reference to the difference between individuals of the older gods relatively to their powers and the duration of their authority.

(Î±Î±) In the first place, the origin of these gods is a succession. From Chaos, according to Hesiod, proceeds Gaia, Uranos, and others, after that Kronos and his race, finally Zeus and his subjects. This succession appears in one aspect of it as a rise from the more abstract and formless to the more concrete and already fairly defined powers of Nature; in another as the beginnings of the superiority of the spiritual over the natural. Thus in his "Eumenides" Aeschylus makes the Pythia in the temple of Delphi begin with the words: "First of all I revere in my prayer her who first gave us oracles, Gaia, and after her Themis, who as second after her mother had her prophetic seat in this place." Pausanias, on the other hand, who also names the Earth first as giver of oracles, says that Daphne was ordained by her afterwards in the prophetic office. In another series again Pindar places Night in the first place, after her he makes Themis follow, then comes Phoebe, and finally he closes the succession with Phoebus. It would be of interest to analyse more closely these particular differences; such an inquiry, however, lies outside our present purpose.

(Î²Î²) This succession further, in addition to its aspect of being an extension into essentially profounder conceptions of godhead, possessing, that is, a fuller content, also appears as the degradation of the earlier and more abstract type within the range of the older race of gods itself. The primary and most ancient powers are robbed of their masterdom, just as we find Kronos dethroned Uranos, and the later representatives are set up in their place.

(Î³Î³) In this way the negative relation of the reformation[169], which we settled at once to be the essence of this first stage of the classic type of art, becomes the proper centre of the same. And it is so for the reason that personification is here the universal form, in which the gods are presented to the imagination, and the progressive movement comes into opposition with human and spiritual individuality. Andalthough this appears in the first instance still in a form indeterminate and formless, we necessarily find that the imagination presents this negative attitude of the younger gods against the more ancient under the image of conflict and war. The essential advance is, however, from Nature to Spirit, implying by the latter the true content and the real form appropriate to classical art. This progress and the conflicts by means of which we perceive that it is carried forward, belong no longer exclusively to the sphere of the old gods, but centre in the war through which the new gods lay the foundation of their enduring mastery over the ancient.

(c) The opposition between Nature and Spirit is in the nature of the case inevitable. For the notion of Spirit, as in very truth totality, is, as we have already seen,essentiallysimply this, to split itself in twain, that is into its intrinsic constituents as objectivity and as subject, in order that by means of this opposition it may emerge from Nature and confront the same forthwith free and jubilant as vanquisher and superior might. This fundamental phase, rooted in the very essence of Spirit, is consequently a material aspect in the conception which it supplies to itself of that nature. Regarded historically, that is on the plane of ordinary reality, this passage asserts itself as the reconstruction through progressive steps of the natural man into the condition where right, property, laws, constitution and political life are paramount. Regarded under a mode which relates this process to gods andsub specie eternitatisit becomes the conception of the victory over the natural Powers by means of the spiritual and individual Divinities.

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