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Title: The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4)

Author: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Translator: Francis Plumptre Beresford Osmaston

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART, VOLUME 2 (OF 4) ***

THE PHILOSOPHY OF
FINE ART
BY

G. W. F. HEGEL
TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES, BY

F. P. B. OSMASTON, B.A.
AUTHOR OF "THE ART AND GENIUS OF TINTORET," "AN ESSAY
ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY," AND OTHER WORKS

VOL II

LONDON

G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.

1920

CONTENTS OF VOL. II

SECOND PART
INTRODUCTION

[Evolution of the Ideal in the Particular Types of Fine Art, namely, the
Symbolic, the Classical, and the Romantic. Symbolic Art seeks after
that unity of ideal significance and external form, which Classical art
in its representation of substantive individuality succeeds in securing
to sensuous perception, and which Romantic art passes beyond, owing
to its excessive insistence on the claims of Spirit]

SUBSECTION I

THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION

OF THE SYMBOL GENERALLY

[1. Symbol as a sign simply in language, colours, etc. 8
2. Not a mere sign to represent something else, but a significant fact
which presents the idea or quality it symbolizes 9
3. Thing symbolized must have other qualities than that accepted as
symbol. Term symbol necessarily open to ambiguity 10
(a) Ambiguity in particular case whether the concrete fact is set before
us as a symbol. Difference between a symbol and a simile. Illustrations
10

(b) Ambiguity extends to-entire worlds of Art, e.g, Oriental art. Two
theories with regard to mythos discussed and contrasted 14
(c) The problems of mythology in the present treatise limited to the
question, "How far symbolism is entitled to rank as a form of Art?"
Will only consider symbol in so far as it belongs to Art in its own right
and itself proceeds from the notion of the Ideal, the unfolding of which
it commences] 19
DIVISION OF SUBJECT

[1. The artistic consciousness originates in wonder. The effects that
result from such a state. Art the first interpreter of the religious
consciousness. Conceptions envisaged in plastic forms of natural
objects 23
2. The final aim of symbolic art is classical art. Here it is dissolved.
The Sublime lies between the two extremes 26
3. The stages of symbolical art classified according to their
subdivisions in the chapters of this. Second Part of the entire treatise]
29

CHAPTER I

UNCONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM

A. Unity of Significance and Form in its immediacy 36
1. The religion of Zoroaster 37
2. No true symbolical significance in the above 42
3. Equally destitute of an artistic character 44
B. Fantastic Symbolism 47
1. The Hindoo conception of Brahmâ 50
2. Sensuousness, measurelessness, and personifying activity of Hindoo
imagination 51
3. Conception of purification and penance 64
C. Genuine Symbolism 65
1. Nature no longer accepted in its immediate sensuous existence as
adequate to the significance. Art and general outlook of ancient Egypt
75

[(a) The inward import held independent of immediate existence in the
embalmed corpse 76
(b) Doctrine of immortality of the soul as held by Egyptians 76
(c) Superterranean and subterranean modes of Egyptian art. The
Pyramids] 77
2. Worship of animals, as the vision of a secreted soul. Symbolical and
non-symbolical aspects of this cult 78
3. Works of Egyptian art are objective riddles. The Sphinx symbolic of
the genius of Egypt. Memnons, Isis, and Osiris 79

CHAPTER II

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SUBLIME

A. Pantheism of Art 89
1. Hindoo poetry 90

2. Persian and Mohammedan poetry. Modern reflections of such poetry
as in Goethe 92
3. Christian Mysticism 97
B. The Art of the Sublime 97
1. God as Creator and Lord of a subject World. He is Creator, not
Generator. His Dwelling not in Nature 100
2. Nature and the human form cut off from the Divine (entgöttert) 101
3. Nullity of objective fact a source of the enhanced self-respect of
man. Man's finiteness and immeasurable transcendency of God. No
place for immortality. The Law 103

CHAPTER III

THE CONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM OF THE COMPARATIVE TYPE OF ART

A. Modes of Comparison originating from the side of externality 110
1. The Fable. Aesop 113
2. The Parable, Proverb, and Apologue 122
3. The Metamorphosis 125
B. Comparisons, which in their imaginative presentation originate in
the Significance 128
1. The Riddle 130
2. The Allegory 132
3. The Metaphor, Image, and Simile 137
C. The Disappearance of the Symbolic Type of Art 161
1. The Didactic Poem 163
2. Descriptive Poetry 165
3. Relation of both aspects of internal feeling and external object in the
ancient Epigram 165

SUBSECTION II

THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION

THE CLASSICAL TYPE IN GENERAL

1. Self-subsistency of the Classical type viewed as the interfusion of
the spiritual and its natural form 175
[(a) No return of the ideal principle upon itself. No separation of
opposed aspects of inward and external 175
(b) Symbolism absent from this type except incidentally 176
(c) Reproach of anthropomorphism] 179
2. Greek art as the realized existence of the classical type 181
3. Position of the creative artist under such a type 183
[(a) His freedom no result of a restless process of fermentation.
Receives his material as something assured in history or belief 183
(b) His plastic purpose is clearly defined 184
(c) High level of technical ability 185
Classification of subject-matter] 186

CHAPTER I

THE FORMATIVE PROCESS OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART

Introduction and Division of subject 189
1. The Degradation of Animalism as such 191
(a) The sacrifice of animals. How regarded by the Greeks 192
(b) The Chase, or examples of such in heroic times 194
(c) Tales of metamorphosis. Illustrations both from Greek and
Egyptian traditions 194

2. The Contest between the older and later Dynasties of Gods 201
(a) The oracles whereby the gods attest their presence through natural
existences 205
(b) The ancient gods in contradistinction from the new 208
[(α) The Titan natural potences included among the older régime 208
(β) They are the powers of Earth and the stars 208 without spiritual or
ethical content. Prometheus. The Erinnyes 209
(γ) The order of these gods is a succession] 215
(c) The conquest of the older régime of gods 217
3. The Positive Conservation of the conditions set up by Negation 220
(a) The Mysteries 220
(b) Preservation of old régime still more obvious in artistic creations.
Illustrations from Greek poetry 221
(c) The Nature-basis of the later gods. Nature not in itself divine to the
Greek. Illustrations of both points of view 223

CHAPTER II

THE IDEAL OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART

Introduction and Division of subject-matter 229
1. The Ideal of Classical Art generally 230
(a) The Classical Ideal is a creation of free artistic activity, though it
reposes on earlier historical elements 230
[(α) The Greek gods are neither the appearance of mere external
Nature, nor the abstraction from one Godhead 232
(β) The Greek artist is a poet. But his productive power is concretely
spiritual, not merely capricious 233
(γ) The relation of the Greek gods to human life. Illustrations from
Homer, etc.] 233

(b) What is the type of the new gods of Greek art? 235
[(α) Their concentrated individuality, or substantive characterization
236

(β) Their beauty not merely spiritual, but also plastic 237
(γ) Removal of them from all that is purely finite into a sphere of lofty
blessedness exalted above mere sensuous shape] 238
(c) The nature of the external representation. Sculpture, in its secure
self-possession, most suited as the medium 241
2. The Sphere or Cycle of the Individual Gods 242
(a) What is called the "divine Universum" is here broken up into
particular deities 242
(b) Absence of an articulate system 243
(c) The general character of their distinguishing attributes 244
3. The particular Individuality of the Gods 246
(a) The appropriate material for such individualization
[(α) The natural religions of symbolism a primary source. Illustrations
247

(β) That of local conditions 250
(γ) That of the world of concrete fact. Illustrations from Homer, etc.]
254

(b) Retention of a fundamental ethical basis 258
(c) Advance in the direction of grace and charm 259

CHAPTER III

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE

1. Fate or Destiny 261
2. Dissolution through the nature of the anthropomorphism of the gods
263

[(a) Absence or defect of the principle of subjectivity as here asserted
263

(b) The transition to Christian conceptions only found in more modern
art. The prosaic art of the Aufklärung. Illustrations 266
(c) The dissolution of classical art in its own province] 270
3. Satire 273
(a) Distinction between the dissolution of classical and symbolic art
274

(b) The Satire 276
(c) The Roman world as the basis of the satire with illustrations ancient
and modern 277

SUBSECTION III

THE ROMANTIC TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION OF THE ROMANTIC IN GENERAL

1. The Principle of inward Subjectivity 282
2. The steps in the Evolution of the content and form of the Romantic
Principle 283
[(a) Point of departure deduced from the Absolute viewed as the
determinate existence of a self-knowing subject of thought and
volition. Man viewed as self-possessed Divine. History of Christ 286
(b) This process of self-recognition and reconcilement viewed as a
process in which strain and conflict arise. Death as viewed by
Christian and Greek art contrasted 287
(c) The finite aspect of subjective life in the secular interests, the
passions, collisions, and suffering, or enjoyment of the earthly life] 290
3. The romantic mode of exposition in relation to its content 291
(a) The content of romantic viewed relatively to the Divine extremely
restricted. Nature divested of its association, symbolic or otherwise,

with Divinity 291
(b) Religion the premiss of romantic art in a far more enhanced degree
than in symbolic art. Influence of the romantic principle on the
medium adopted 293
(c) Two worlds covered by the romantic principle, viz., the soul-
kingdom of Spirit reconciled therein, and the realm of external Nature
from which even the aspect of ugliness is not excluded. Latter world
only portrayed in so far as soul finds a home therein] 293
Division of subject-matter 295

CHAPTER I

THE RELIGIOUS DOMAIN OF ROMANTIC ART

1. The Redemption history of Christ 302
(a) The principle of Love as paramount in this religious sphere. How
far Art in such a sphere is a superfluity 303
(b) From a certain aspect the appearance of Art is necessary 303
(c) The aspect of contingency in the particularity of an individual
Person as such Divine 304
[(α) The presentment by artists of the exterior personality of Christ 304
(β) The conflict inherent in the religious growth, viewed as a process,
though determining that process universally, is concentrated in the
history of one person in the first instance 306
(γ) The feature of death only regarded here as a point of transition to
self-reconcilement] 308
2. Religious Love 309
(a) Conception of the Absolute as Love 309
(b) Form of Love as self-concentrated emotion. Affiliation of such
with sensuous presentment 310
(c) Love as the Ideal of romantic art 310

[(α) Christ as Divine Love 311
(β) Form most compatible with Art the love of mother. Mary, mother
of Jesus 311
(γ) Love of Christ's disciples and the Christian community] 313
3. The Spirit of the Community 313
(a) The Martyrs 315
(b) Penance and conversion within the soul 320
(c) Miracles and Legends 323

CHAPTER II

CHIVALRY

Introduction 325
1. Honour 332
(a) Notion of same. Contrast between Greek and modern art in this
respect 332
(b) Vulnerability of same 335
(c) Reparation demanded. Honour a mode of self-subsistency which is
self-reflective 336
2. Love 337
(a) Fundamental conception of. Illustrations from poetry 337
(b) Collisions of the same 341
[(α) That between honour and love 341
(β) That between the supreme spiritual forces of state, family, etc., and
love 342
(γ) Opposition between love and external conditions in the prose of life
and the prejudice of others] 342
(c) Limitation of contingency inherent in the conception itself 343

3. Fidelity 345
(a) Loyalty of service 346
(b) The nature of its co-ordination with a social order either in the
world of Chivalry or the modern 347
(c) Nature of its collisions. Illustrations. The "Cid," etc. 348

CHAPTER III

THE FORMAL SELF-STABILITY OF PARTICULAR INDIVIDUALITIES

Introduction 350
1. The Self-subsistence of individual Character 354
(a) The formal stability of character 355
(b) Character viewed as an inward but undisclosed totality.
Illustrations from Shakespeare 359
(c) The substantial interest in the display of such formal character.
Shakespeare's vulgar characters, and the geniality of their presentment
365

2. The Spirit of Adventure 367
(a) The contingent nature of ends and collisions 368
[(α) Christian Chivalry in its conflict with Moors, Arabs, and
Mohammedans. Crusades. Holy Grail 369
(β) The universal spirit of adventure in the personal experience of
individuals. Dante and the "Divine Comedy" 371
(γ) The contingency within the soul due to love, honour, and fidelity]
371

(b) The comic treatment of such contingency. Ariosto and Cervantes,
contrast between 372
(c) The spirit of the novel or romance 375
3. The Dissolution of the Romantic type 377

(a) The artistic imitation of what is directly presented by Nature 379
[(α) Naturalism in poetry. Diderot, Goethe, and Schiller 381
(β) Dutch genre painting 382
(γ) Interest in objects delineated related to artistic personality] 385
(b) Individual Humour 386
(c) The end of the romantic type of Art 388
[(α) Conditions under which it is possible for the artist to bring the
Absolute before the aesthetic sense 389
(β) The position of Art at the present day. Analogous position of
modern artist and dramatist 391
(γ) General review of previously evolved process of Art's typical
structure. What is possible for modern art and the conditions necessary.
Illustration of the terminus of romantic art with the nature of the
Epigram. Supreme function of Art] 394
INDEX

SECOND PART

EVOLUTION OF THE IDEAL IN THE PARTICULAR
TYPES OF FINE ART

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART

INTRODUCTION

All that has hitherto been the object of our examination in the first part of
this inquiry referred to the reality of the Idea of the beautiful as Ideal of art.
In whatever direction, however, we developed the notion of the ideal art-
product, we throughout applied to it a meaning of purely general
signification. But the idea of the beautiful implies a totality likewise of

essential differences, which as such must in veritable form assert
themselves. These differences we may broadly describe as the particular
modes of art, as the evolved content of that which is implied in the notion of
the Ideal, and which secures actual form through art. When, however, we
speak of these forms of art as of distinct species or grades[1] of the Ideal, we
do not accept the term in the ordinary usage of it as though we found here
in external guise particular classes of objects related to and modifying the
Ideal respectively as their common genus. Species in the sense used here
simply expresses the various and continuously expanding determination of
the idea of the beautiful and the Ideal of art itself. The universality of the
ideal representation is in the case posited not determined on the side of
external existence, but is assumed to be the closer determination of itself in
the explication of its own notion; or, in other words, it is the notion itself
which unfolds itself in a totality of particular types of art.
More closely regarded, then, the specific types of art have their origin, as
the unfolded realization of the Idea of the beautiful, in the very nature of the
Idea itself, which by means of them presses forward to real and concrete
appearance. Moreover, just in so far as it ceases to expand[2] in the abstract
determination or concrete fulness of any one of them, it manifests itself in
some other form of realized expression. For the Idea is only Idea in its
essential truth in so far as it proceeds in this self-evolution by means of its
own activity. And inasmuch as it is, as Ideal, immediate appearance, and
moreover with each mode thereof is still identical as the idea of the
beautiful, we find that in every particular phase which reveals the Ideal in
its process of self-explication we have another actual manifestation which is
immediately related to the essential characterization of those diverse types
of yet further expansion. It really is a matter of no consequence whether we
regard this process as a process of the Idea within its own substance, or that
of the form under which it attains determinate existence, inasmuch as both
aspects are immediately bound up with each other, and the perfecting of the
Idea as content, and the perfecting of its form are but two ways of
expressing the same process. Or, to put the matter in the reverse way, the
defects of a given form of art of this kind betray themselves as a defect of
the Idea, in so far as such defects give a limited significance to the essential
nature of the Idea in external form, and as such invest it with reality. When
we consequently compare such still inadequate forms of art with what most

obviously presents itself for comparison, that is, the true Ideal, we must be
careful not to use expressions commonly applicable to works of art that are
failures, which either express nothing at all, or have discovered an
incompetence to express what ought to have been expressed. Rather for
every form of the Idea there is a definite mode of appearance, which clothes
it precisely in one of those particular forms of art to which we have
adverted, adequate in every respect thereto, and the defective or perfected
character of which consists entirely in the relative truth or untruth of the
determinate form, under which and through which the Idea is actually
realized. For the content must first be clothed with reality and concreteness
before it can attain to the form wholly adequate to its essential truth. As we
have already indicated in the previous division of our subject-matter, we
have three fundamental forms or types of art to examine.
First, we have the symbolical. In this the Idea is still seeking for its true
artistic expression, because it is here still essentially abstract and
undetermined, and consequently has not mastered for itself the external
appearance adequate to its own substance, but rather finds itself in
unresolved opposition to the external objects in physical Nature and the
world of mankind. And inasmuch as in this crude relation to objective
existence it immediately surmises its own isolation, or is carried into some
form of concrete existence by means, of universal characteristics which are
void of all true definition, it vitiates and falsifies the actual forms of reality
which it has found, and which it seizes in a wholly capricious way[3]. And,
consequently, instead of being able to identify itself completely with the
object, it can only assert a kind of accord, or rather a still abstract reflection
of significance and figure, a mode of representation which, being neither
complete in its artistic fusion, nor capable of being completed, suffers the
object to emerge as reciprocally external, strange, and inadequate to itself as
it was before.
Secondly, we have the form in which the Idea, here in accordance with its
true notional activity, is carried beyond the abstraction and indeterminacy of
general characterization[4], is conscious of itself as free and infinite
subjectivity, and grasps that self-conscious life in its real existence as Spirit
(Mind). Spirit, as the free subject of consciousness, is self-determined
through its own resources, and even in this its conscious grasp of self-
determination possesses a form of externality adequate to express it, and

one in which the essential import of that consciousness can be united with
an explicit reality entirely appropriate. This second type of art, the classical,
is based upon such absolutely homogeneous unity of content and form. In
order, however, to make this unity complete the human spirit, in so far as it
makes itself the object of art, must not be taken as Spirit in the absolute
significance we refer to it, where it discovers its adequate subsistence
wholly in the spiritual resources of its own essential domain, but rather as a
still individualized spirit, and as such charged with a certain aspect of
isolation. In other words, the free individual which classical art unites to its
forms appears, it is true, as essentially universal, and consequently freed
from all the mere contingence and particularity both of the subjective world
of mind and the external world of Nature. But it is at the same time
permeated by a universality which is itself essentially individualized. For
the external form is necessarily both defined and singular by virtue of its
externality, which it is only capable of completely fusing with an artistic
content by representing that content as itself defined, and consequently of a
limited character; and, moreover, it is only Spirit that is thus particularized
which can pass into an objective shape and unite itself with the same in an
inseparable unity.
In this form Art has reached the fulness of its own notion to this extent,
namely, that the Idea, which is here spiritual individuality, brought into
immediate accord with itself in the form of its bodily presence, receives
from it a presentation so complete, that external existence is no longer able
to preserve its consistency as against the ideal significance which it serves
to express; or, to put it in the reverse way, the spiritual content is
exclusively manifested in the elaborated form within which Art clothes it
for sensuous perception, and thereby affirmatively asserts itself in the same.
Thirdly, we have the form in which the Idea of beauty grasps its own being
as absolute Spirit, Spirit, that is to say, in the full consciousness of its
untrammelled freedom. But for this very reason it is unable any more to
obtain complete realization in forms which are external; its true determinate
existence is now that which it possesses in itself as Spirit. That unity of the
life of Spirit and its external appearance which we find in classical art is
unbound, and it flees from the same once more into itself. It is this recoil
which presents to us the fundamental type of the romantic type of art. Here
we find, by reason of the free spirituality which pervades the content, such

content makes a more ideal demand upon expression than the mere
representation through an external or physical medium is able to supply; the
form on its external side sinks therefore to a relation of indifference; and in
the romantic form of art we consequently meet with a separation between
content and form as we previously found it in the symbolic form, with this
difference that it is now due to the subordination of matter to spiritual
expression rather than the predominance of externality over ideal
significance. It is in this way that symbolic art seeks after that perfected
unity of ideal significance and external form, which classical art in its
representation of substantive individuality succeeds in communicating to
sensuous perception, and which romantic art passes over and beyond
through its overwhelming insistence on the claims of Spirit.

[1] Art. Hegel takes the ordinary scientific sense to describe the meaning. The
word "type" would more truly express it.
[2] Für sich selber ist. That is, having arrived at one form of determination,
returns upon itself and throws off another form, just as the plant germ after
arriving at the leaf expands into the bud, and so on.
[3] That is, with no reference to intelligent principle.
[4] Allgemeiner Gedanken. Hegel means the bare generalizations or abstract
conceptions of thought.

SUBSECTION I

THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION

OF THE SYMBOL GENERALLY

Symbol, in the signification we here attach to the word, is not merely the
beginning of art from the point of view of its notional development, but
marks also its first appearance in history. We may consequently regard it as
only the forecourt of art, which is principally the possession of the East, and
through which, after a variety of transitional steps and mediating passages,
we are at last introduced to the genuine realization of the Ideal in the

classical type of art. We must therefore from the very first take care to
distinguish symbol where its unique characteristics provide it with an
independent sphere of its own, in which it determines the radical and
effective type of a certain form of art's exposition and presentment from
that kind of symbolic expression which amounts to no more than a purely
external aspect of form entirely without such independent significance. In
the latter sense we, in fact, come across it in the classical and romantic
forms of art just as certain aspects of symbolical art are not wholly without
the characteristic features of the classical Ideal, or present to us the origins
of romantic art. Such reciprocal interplay between the fundamental forms of
art attaches, however, merely to subsidiary images or isolated traits; it has
no power whatever to modify, still less to expunge, the animating principle
which essentially determines the character of the entire work of art.
In such cases where we find symbol elaborated in its entirely unique and
independent form it is as a general rule characterized by the quality of the
sublime, because its main impression is to show us the Idea still united to
measureless dimension rather than rounded in a free and self-defined
content; it would fain clothe itself with form, and yet is unable to secure in
the substantial appearances of the world a definite form which is entirely
adequate to express the abstractness and universality of its longing. On
account of this inability to attain its purpose the Idea passes over and
beyond the external existence which surrounds it instead of penetrating to
the core or completely making its home therein. And this flight beyond the
limits of the finite and visible world is precisely that which constitutes the
general character of the sublime.
But before we proceed further it will be convenient, by way of elucidating
the formal aspect of our subject, to explain at once, if in quite general terms,
what we understand by the expression symbol.
Generally speaking, symbol is some form of external existence immediately
presented to the senses, which, however, is not accepted for its own worth,
as it lies thus before us in its immediacy, but for the wider and more general
significance which it offers to our reflection. We may consequently
distinguish between two points of view equally applicable to the term; first,
the significance, and, secondly, the mode in which such significance is
expressed. The first is a conception of the mind, or an object which stands

wholly indifferent to any particular content, the latter is a form of sensuous
existence or a representation of some kind or other.
1. Symbol, then, is in the first place a sign. When we speak of the
significant and nothing more there is no necessary connection between the
thing signified and its modus of expression whatever. This manner of its
expression, this sensuous thing or image, so far from being immediately
called up by that for which it is the sign, rather presents itself to the
imagination as a wholly foreign content to it, by no means necessarily
associated with it in a unique way. So, for example, in language tones are
signs of specific conditions of idea or emotion. By far the greater number of
the tones of any language are, however, associated with the ideas, which are
thereby expressed entirely by chance, so far as the content of those ideas is
concerned, even though the history of the development of language may
show us that the original connection between the two was of a different
nature, and that an essential element in the difference between one language
and another consists in this, that the same idea is expressed through a
different sound. Another example of such bare signs are colours[5], which
we used in cockades or flags in order to express the nationality of an
individual or vessel. Such colours by themselves alone carry no particular
quality which can be immediately related to the thing they signify, that is,
the nation which they represent. In a sense such as this, where the bond
between the signification and the sign is one of indifference, symbol must
not be understood when we connect the expression with art. For art consists
precisely in the reciprocal relation, affinity, and substantive fusion of
significance and form.
2. We must consequently interpret sign in a different sense when we speak
of it as equivalent to symbol. The lion is, for example, a symbol of
magnanimity, the fox symbolizes cunning, the circle eternity, the triangle
the Triune God. Here we find that the lion and the fox themselves possess
the qualities whose import they serve to express. In the same way the circle
points beyond the mere indefinite extension, or the capriciously fixed limit
of a straight line, or any other line that does not return upon itself, and
which at the same time is suitable as the expression of a definite period of
time; and the triangle regarded as a totality possesses the same number of
sides and angles as is involved in the idea of God, when the determinations

under which the religious consciousness defines the Supreme Being are
expressed numerically.
In the latter forms of symbol therefore the objects presented to the senses
have already in their own existence that significance, to represent and
express which they are used; symbol as employed in this expanded sense is
consequently no purely indifferent mark for something other than itself, but
a significant fact which in its own external form already presents the
content of the idea which it symbolizes. At the same time it is not the
concrete thing it is itself, which it should bring before the imagination, but
simply that general quality of significance which attaches to it.
3. We would, thirdly, draw attention to the fact that although symbol may
not, as is the case with the purely external and formal sign, be wholly
inadequate to the significance derived from it, yet, in order that it may
retain its character as symbol, it must on the other hand present an aspect
which is strange to it. In other words, though the content which is
significant, and the form which is used to typify it in respect to a single
quality, unite in agreement, none the less the symbolical form must possess
at the same time still other qualities entirely independent of that one which
is shared by it, and is once for all marked as significant, just as the
content[6] need not necessarily be a bare abstract quality such as strength or
cunning, but rather a concrete substance, which on its side, too, possesses a
variety of characteristics which distinguish it from the primary quality in
which its symbolic character consists, and in the same way, but to a still
greater degree, from everything else that characterizes the symbolical form.
The lion, for example, possesses other qualities than mere strength, the fox
than mere cunning, and the apprehension of God is not necessarily bound
up with conceptions which imply number. The content, therefore, as thus
viewed, is also placed in a relation of indifference to the symbolical form,
which represents it, and the abstract quality which it typifies may quite
possibly be present in countless other existing objects. In the same way a
content which is thus varied in its composition may possess many qualities,
to symbolize any of which other forms will equally serve where a similar
correspondence with such is apparent. The same reasoning is also
applicable to the external object in which any particular content[7] is
symbolically expressed. Such an object, in its concrete natural existence,
possesses a number of characteristics for all of which it may stand as the

symbol. The most obvious symbol for strength is unquestionably the lion,
but the ox and the horn of the ox may equally serve as such, and from other
points of view the ox possesses many other qualities as significant. But few
objects, if any, have been brought home to the imagination with such a
prodigal wealth of symbolic form and imagery as that of the Supreme
Being. We may conclude, then, from the above remarks that the use of the
term symbol is necessarily[8] and essentially open to ambiguity.
(a) For, in the first place, no sooner do we look for some symbol than the
doubt almost invariably arises whether a particular form is to be accepted
as a symbol or no; and this is so, though we set on one side the further
ambiguity with reference to the particular nature of the content, which a
given form under all the variety of its aspects may be held to symbolize,
many of which may be employed symbolically through associating links
that do not appear on the surface[9].
Now what a symbol primarily offers us is generally speaking a form, an
image, which of itself is the presentment of an immediate fact. Such
immediate existence, or its image, a lion for example, an eagle, or a
particular colour, stands there before us as it is, a valid existing fact. The
question consequently arises whether a lion, whose image is set before us,
merely is set there to express the natural fact, or whether in addition to this
it carries a further significance, that is the more abstract connotation of
mere strength, or the more concrete one of a hero or a period of the year,
husbandry and anything else we choose to infer from it; whether in fact, as
we say, the image is to be taken literally, or with a further ideal significance,
or possibly only with the latter. The last case finds its illustration in
symbolical expressions of speech and particular words such as
comprehension, conclusion[10] and others of the same kind. When such
signify mental activities we have simply set before us the immediate import
of a mental activity and no more without any recall to our memory of the
material acts, which originally were implied in the meaning of these words.
When on the contrary the picture of a lion is presented us we have not
merely the significance to consider which it may bear as symbol, but also
the bodily shape and presence of the king of beasts before our eyes. An
ambiguity of this nature can only fully disappear when the sense attached to
both aspects, namely, symbolical import, and its external form, is expressly
stated, and we learn by this means the exact relation which exists between

them. In that case, however, the concrete fact which is set before us ceases
to be a symbol in the real meaning of the term, and becomes simply an
image, the relation of which to significance is expressed by the well-known
form of comparison, namely, simile. In the simile, that is to say, both factors
are immediately presented to us, the general conception and its concrete
image. When on the contrary reflection has not proceeded so far as to hold
general conceptions in assured independence, and consequently to set them
forth by themselves, in that case we find that the sensuous image to which
they are cognate, and in which a significance of more general[11] import is
able to find its expression is not yet conceived as separate from such a
significance, but both are still immediately held together in unity. And this
it is which, as we shall see more closely as we proceed, constitutes the
distinction between symbol and comparison. An illustration of the latter
kind may be found in that exclamation of Karl Moor, as he gazes on the
setting sun: "Thus dies a hero!" Here we see that the ideal significance is
expressly separated from the sensuous impression while at the same time it
is associated with the picture. In other cases, it is true even of similes this
act of separation in relation is not so clearly marked, and the association
appears to be more immediate; in such cases it must already appear
manifest from the general content of the narrative, from the position
assigned to the picture, or other circumstances, that viewed as merely a
statement of fact, such an image is not justified, but that some special
significance or other, which cannot fail to arrest our attention, is intended
by it. When, for example, Luther says:
A steadfast stronghold is our God.
or we read:
In den Ocean schifft mit tausend Masten der Jungling,
Still auf geretteten Boot treibt in den Hafen der Greis[12].
we can have no doubt whatever upon the implied significance, whether it be
of a protection suggested by "stronghold," the world of hopes and life-plans
symbolized in the picture of the ocean and the thousand masts; or the
narrowed aims and possessions with the assured plot of ground at the end,
which is reflected from the boat and the haven. In the same way when we
read in the Old Testament: "May God break their teeth in their mouth, may
the Lord shatter the hindermost teeth of the young lions," it is obvious that

neither the words "mouth," "teeth," nor "hindermost teeth of the young
lions" are used in the literal sense, but are utilized as images and sensuous
ideas, which carry a significance only present to the mind, and that such
significance is all that matters.
This ambiguity, then, is all the more conspicuous in the case of symbolical
representation for the reason that an image, which carries a particular
significance, only receives the descriptive name of symbol when such
significance ceases to be expressly marked by itself, or is otherwise clearly
emphasized as it is in the case of the simile. No doubt the ambiguity of the
genuine symbol is to this extent removed in that by virtue of this very
uncertainty the fusion of the sensuous image and its significance becomes a
matter more or less of convention and custom, a feature which is
indispensably necessary in the case where mere signs are used, while on the
other hand the simile asserts itself as something individual, discovered on
the spur of the moment to assist the meaning, and is independently clear,
because it emphasizes the significance alongside of that independence. At
the same time, though no doubt the symbol may be clear enough to those
who are habituated to its use, and whose imaginative life is at home in such
a conventional atmosphere, it is a very different matter with all who are
outside this native circle, or for whom it is now a thing of the Past; for such
it is only the immediate sensuous representation which is in the first
instance seized, and it remains for these in every way a question of doubt,
whether they are to rest satisfied with that which lies openly before their
eyes, or are to accept these as indicators to yet further imagery or ideas.
When, for example, we gaze in Christian churches upon the triangle in
some conspicuous position on the walls, we at once recognize that the
intention is not to place before the view this geometrical figure simply as
such, but rather to draw our attention to its spiritual significance. If,
however, we were to find it elsewhere we should probably feel equally
certain that such a figure had no reference whatever, either as sign or
symbol, to the Trinity. On the other hand a folk strange to the ideas which
have grown up in Christian countries might easily feel doubts in both cases,
and it is by no means easy for ourselves to determine with equal certainty in
all cases, whether a figure of this kind is to be understood as presenting us
with its literal or symbolical interpretation.

(b) Moreover this ambiguity does not merely apply to isolated cases, but
extends to vast areas of the entire domain of art, to the content of an almost
unlimited material open to our inspection, to the content in full of all that
Oriental art has ever produced. For this reason, as we enter for the first time
the world of ancient Persian, Indian, or Egyptian figures and imaginative
conceptions we experience a certain feeling of uncanniness, we wander at
any rate in a world of problems. These fantastic images do not at once
respond to our own world; we are neither pleased nor satisfied with the
immediate impression they produce on us; rather we are instinctively
carried forward by it to probe yet further into their significance, and to
inquire what wider and profounder truths may lie concealed behind such
representations. In other productions of the same kind it is apparent at the
first glance that they are, just like so many fairy tales of children, merely an
interplay of pictorial fancy, a strange texture of curiosities woven together
at haphazard. For children delight in just such an even surface of pictures, a
play of the fancy which makes no demand on effort or intelligence, but is
simply a collection tumbled together. Nations on the contrary, even in their
childhood, require as the food of their imaginative life a more essential
content; and this is just what in fact we find in the figures of Indian and
Egyptian art, although the interpretation of such problematical pictures is
only dimly suggested, and we experience great difficulty in deciphering it.
Even in the province of classical art we meet now and again with a like
uncertainty, though it is the essence of classical art to be throughout clear
and intelligible on its own surface without the use of symbolism of any
kind. And this clarity of classical art consists in this that it comprehends the
true content of Art, in other words substantive[13] subjectivity, and thereby
discovers at the same time the true form, which essentially expresses
nothing less than this genuine content, so that what it appears to mind, the
significance that is of it is just that, which is veritably expressed in the
external form, both the ideal aspect and the plastic shape being entirely
adequate to each other; in symbolical art, the simile, and other forms of that
kind, the image always brings before perception something in addition to
that significance, for which it merely serves as the picture. At the same time
classical art, too, presents us with an aspect of ambiguity. In considering the
mythological phantasies of antique art it is frequently a matter most difficult
to decide, whether we do rightly in taking such plastic figures simply for
what they are, contenting ourselves with mere wonder over the wealth and

charm, which this happy play of imaginative vigour offers us, for the reason
of course that mythology is generally accepted as nothing but an idle
collection of fairy tales, or whether on the contrary we have still to seek for
a significance of wider range and greater depth. We shall feel the insistence
of such a doubt in exceptional force where the content of these fables refers
directly to the life and activity of the Divine, in cases, that is, where the
stories handed down to us can only be regarded as utterly unworthy of the
Supreme Being, indicative of an invention as entirely inadequate as it is in
the worst possible taste. When we read, for example, the twelve labours of
Hercules, or, to take a stronger case, are informed that Zeus hurled
Hephaestus from Olympus on to the island of Lemnos, with the result that
Vulcan remained lame ever after, we are no doubt ready to believe that the
entire story is nothing but a fairy tale of the imagination. It is just as
possible to believe that all the love affairs of Zeus are mere freaks of a
prodigal fancy. But, on the other hand, for the very reason that such stories
are told about the Supreme Divinity, it is quite equally credible that
meaning of more universal import is hidden under that which such myths
immediately transmit to us.
With regard to such facts as those above stated, there are two theories
current of exceptional importance and contradictory to each other. The one
accepts mythology as a collection of stories of purely external significance,
which as such could not fail to be unworthy presentations of the Divine
nature, though able, when regarded apart from such associations, to reveal
to us much that is finely conceived, delightful, interesting, nay, even of
great beauty. They offer us, however, no ground whatever for attempting to
enlarge their significance. In this view mythology is in the form in which it
is presented purely historical: under one aspect, that is, treating it as art, in
its shapes, pictures, gods, together with all the practical activities and events
it describes, it is amply self-sufficient, or rather by the way it brings before
us that which is significant supplies its own elucidation; from another point
of view, that is to say, its origin in history, we have to regard it as built up
from local claims, no less than the chance caprice of priest, artist, and poet,
the facts of history, foreign legends and traditions. The theory which is
opposed to the above is unable to rest satisfied with the purely external husk
of mythological form and narration, and insists on discovering beneath it a
meaning of more universal and profounder import, to master which, as it
breaks upon the surface, it conceives to be the main object of mythological

inquiry regarded as the scientific examination of the mythos. In this view
mythology must necessarily be apprehended as bound up with symbolism.
And by symbolism all that is meant here is just this, that however bizarre,
ridiculous, grotesque such myths appear to be, however much the
adventitious caprice of a plastic imagination may contribute to their form,
they are essentially a birth of Spirit; and in spite of it all contain in them
significant ideas, that is, thoughts of universal significance upon the nature
of God; they are, in short, Philosophemes.[14] In this latter sense the recent
work of Creuzer on symbolism is particularly noteworthy; this writer has
once more taken up the review of the mythological conceptions of the
ancient world, not, as is so frequently the fashion, from the external and
prosaic standpoint, or simply with the object of determining this artistic
merit, but rather expressly to elucidate the intrinsic rationality of their
substance. Such an inquiry proceeds from the presupposition that myths and
fabulous tales have their origin in the human spirit, which is capable, no
doubt, of playing freely with its notions of gods, but in its religious interest
marks the point where it enters a more exalted sphere, in which reason itself
is the discoverer of form, albeit it is charged with the defect of being unable
at this early stage to exhibit the core from which it grows with
commensurate power. And this assumption is essentially just. Religion
discovers its fountain-head in Spirit, which seeks after its truth, dimly
discovers it, bringing the same to consciousness by means of any form,
which displays an affinity with this form of truth, be it a form of narrower
or wider borders. But once grant that it is reason which seeks after such
forms, and the necessity is obvious to recognize the work of reason. Such a
recognition is alone truly worthy of human inquiry. Whoever shelves this
problem makes himself master of nothing but a motley show of unrelated
learning. If we, on the other hand, probe into, the truth of mythological
conceptions as it presents itself to mind, without at the same time excluding
from our grasp that other aspect of them, that is, the haphazard caprice
therein exercised by the imagination, and all the external influences, local
or otherwise, which have contributed to this creation, we shall then be in a
position to justify the various systems of mythology. To justify the work of
man in the imagery and forms that are the product of his spirit is a noble
enterprise, of rarer worth than the mere heaping together of the external
facts of history. The objection has no doubt been pressed against Creuzer
that here, treading in the steps of the new Platonists[15], the wider

significance he elucidates from the myths is a creation he attaches to them
himself; that, in short, he discovers conceptions in them which are not
merely without any historical basis to uphold them, but which it can be
positively shown he must have first introduced before he could have found
them; in other words it is asserted that neither the people of such times nor
the poets or priests—although from another point of view emphasis is
frequently laid on the occult wisdom of the priesthood—could have
possessed any knowledge of such ideas, which would have been wholly
incompatible with the prevailing culture. Such objections, of course, are
entitled to their full weight. These peoples, poets, and priests have not, in
fact, been conscious of universal conceptions in the particular form of
universality which the human mind now discovers at the root of their
mythological ideas, in the sense that they could have deliberately clothed
such conceptions in the forms of symbolism. And as a matter of fact this is
never maintained even by Creuzer. But however true it may be that the
reflections of the ancient world over its mythology were entirely different
from those of the modern, we are by no means therefore entitled to
conclude that the conceptions of its mythology are not essentially
symbolical, and as such must be fully accepted; rather our inference should
be that in the times when these peoples created the poetry of their myths,
from the midst of a life itself steeped in poetry, they would instinctively
bring home to consciousness all that was most spiritual and profound in that
life in the forms of the imagination rather than that of reflection, and fail to
separate conceptions which were more universal or abstract from the
concrete creations of their phantasy. That this really was the case is a fact
which we have in this inquiry to accept as fundamentally established; we
may, nevertheless, be equally prepared to admit that, in such a form of
interpretation as the symbolical, theories are apt to slip in which are merely
the product of artifice and ingenuity, much as is the case with etymological
science.
(c) At the same time, however much we may find ourselves in general
agreement with the view that mythology, with its tales of the gods and its
circumstantial pictures of a persistently poetic imagination, includes within
its borders a content, that is to say rational and profound religious
conceptions, it is still open to us to ask in our examination of the symbolical
form of art whether for the same reason all mythology and art is to be
interpreted in a symbolical sense, in accordance with that typical assertion

of Friedrich von Schlegel, to the effect that we are bound to look for an
allegory in every artistic representation. The symbolical or allegorical is
then understood in the sense that a general conception[16] is assumed to
underlie every work of art as its motive principle and every mythological
form, by bringing the universal character of which into prominence it
should then be possible to expound the real significance of such a work or
imaginative creation. This mode of treatment is, moreover, very commonly
adopted in our own days. We find, for instance, in the more recent editions
of Dante a marked tendency to interpret every canto in an exclusively
allegorical sense, and no doubt the poetry of Dante contains many examples
of such allegories. In the same way Heyne's editions of the classical poets
evince the same disposition in their commentaries to elucidate the general
significance of every metaphorical expression by means of the abstract
conceptions of the understanding. Nor is this to be wondered at; for it is just
this faculty which is most ready to seize upon symbol and allegory, while at
the same time it separates the sensuous image from its significance, and by
so doing destroys the unity of the artistic form, an aspect over which it is, in
its zeal for a symbolical interpretation, which aims exclusively at setting the
universal characteristic as such in relief, wholly indifferent.
Such an extension of symbolism over every province of mythology and art
is by no means that which we have in view in our present consideration of
the symbolical form of art. It is not any part of our labours to ascertain to
what extent a symbolical or allegorical significance, in this enlarged use of
the term, is applicable to the forms of art. On the contrary we shall restrict
ourselves entirely to the question how far symbolism itself is entitled to
rank as a form of art; and the question is raised in order that we may finally
determine the precise relation which subsists between artistic significance
and artistic form in so far as such a relation is symbolical and stands in
contrast to other modes of artistic presentation, in particular those of the
classical and romantic art-forms. We must consequently endeavour before
everything else expressly to limit the field of our review to that portion
where we find the symbolical is independently portrayed in its essential
character and is open to our consideration as such, rather than attempt to
make a symbolical interpretation co-extensive with the entire domain of art.
And it is consistently with such a purpose that we have already subdivided
the Ideal of art under its respective symbolical, classical, and romantic
forms.

In the signification we give to the expression the symbolical disappears at
the point where we find that a free subjectivity rather than purely abstract
conceptions determines the content of the artistic product. In this case the
conscious subject is his own self-assured significance, his own self-
manifestation. All that he feels, conceives, does, and perfects, his qualities,
his actions, and his character, all this he actually is himself; the entire gamut
of his spiritual and sensuous manifestation has no further significance than
that of declaring his subjective unity, which, in this process of expansion
and development of its own wealth, brings before the eyes of all the man
himself as master over the entire field of objective reality thus presented to
him, the world in which he discovers his existence. Significance and
sensuous presentment, inward and outward reality, fact and picture, are here
no longer separate from each other, assert themselves here no longer as
merely cognate, the characteristic distinction of the symbolic relation, but
rather as a totality, in which the manifestation possesses no other reality, the
reality no other manifestation either outside of or alongside with itself. That
which declares itself and that which is declared is here posited[17] in its
concrete unity. In this sense the gods of Greece, in so far, that is to say, as
the art of Greece was able to represent them as free, self-subsistent, and
unique types of personality, are to be accepted from no symbolical point of
view, but as self-sufficient in their own persons. The actions of Zeus, for
example, of Apollo or Athene are actions appropriated by Art to themselves
and only themselves, and must not be allowed to stand for anything but the
might and passion of such personages. If we once attempt to abstract from
free individualities of this kind some general conception as the essential
core of their significance, setting it alongside their concrete particularity as
an interpretation of their entire and individual manifestation, we let fall or
annihilate all that we have failed to observe, and it is precisely all in these
figures which art seeks most to secure. For this reason artists have been
unable to take kindly to such symbolical interpretations of all works of art
and the mythological figures we find in them. For all that is left us in the
sphere of art we have just been considering which is really compatible with
an interpretation based on symbolism or allegory only affects subsidiary
aspects, and is for that reason expressly limited to the attribute and the
representative signs; the eagle, for example, stands by Zeus, an ox is the
companion of the evangelist Luke; the Egyptians, on the contrary, beheld in
the form of Apis the Divine itself.

The point so difficult to decide in connection with this manifestation of self-
conscious freedom, otherwise so appropriate to artistic presentment, is just
this, whether that which is placed before us as such a subject really
possesses a subjective individuality of the above quality, or only carries the
mere semblance of it in the form of a personified shadow[18]. In this latter
case personality is nothing but a superficial form, which fails to express its
vital substance in particular acts no less than bodily form, which would
otherwise enable it to penetrate through all that is external in its appearance
as its own possession, and instead of this still retains another inwardness for
the external reality as its significance, which is not either true personality or
subjective freedom. It is precisely at this point that we find the boundary
which includes or excludes symbolic art.
Our interest, then, in the consideration of the symbol consists in this, that
we recognize thereby that process within itself where we find the
beginnings of art, in so far as the same proceeds from the notion of that
Ideal which unfolds itself gradually as art in its truth, and while doing so
recognizes each stage of symbolical art as successive steps which conduct
us to the same consummation. However intimate the connection between
religion and art may be we are not here concerned to pass in review either
symbols or religion under the range which is co-extensive with the wider
signification of the word symbol or emblematical conceptions; we have
exclusively to consider that aspect of them, according to which they belong
to art in its own right, handing over their religious aspect to the historian of
mythology and symbolism.

DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT

In proceeding now to a closer determination of the several divisions of
symbolic art it will be necessary, in the first place, to fix the boundary lines
within which the development of the successive grades of this type moves
forward. Speaking generally, as we have already observed, the entire sphere
we have now to define is in principle a forecourt of art. We have here, in the
first instance, significant conceptions which are purely abstract, which are
still in themselves destitute of essential individuality, the immediate artistic

presentment of which may be as truly described either as adequate or
inadequate[19]. Our first definition of boundary consists, therefore, in
determining generally the earliest modes under which artistic perception
and representation work themselves out[20] into actuality; on the further side
of the line at the other extreme we have real art, in the direction of which
symbolic art uplifts itself as to its truth.
1. In discussing the origins of this appearance of symbolic art from the
subjective point of view, we may draw attention to an observation made
previously, that the artistic consciousness, no less than the religious, or
rather we should say both in their essential unity, and we may even include
the impulse of scientific inquiry, have originated in wonder. The man who is
still unable to wonder at anything lives in a condition of crassness and
obtuseness which is devoid of all interest, in which for him everything is as
naught for the reason that he fails as yet to separate or unravel himself from
objects around him and their own immediate and independent existence.
The man, however, at the opposite extreme, whose wonder is no longer
excited, is the man who contemplates the entire external world as somewhat
which he has made himself clear about. It may be under the abstract
conceptions of the commonsense understanding resulting in some general
survey of knowledge attainable by the average mind, or it may be in the
noble or profounder consciousness of his own absolute spiritual freedom
and universality. In either case he has converted the bare fact of such
objects and their existence into some spiritual insight of their truth brought
home to himself. We may conclude, then, that wonder originates in the
condition where we find that man, as conscious Spirit, torn away from his
first most immediate association with Nature, and from his earliest and
entirely active[21] relation to desire, steps back from Nature and his own
individual existence, and seeks after and finds in the objects which surround
him a universal, an essential and permanent principle. Then for the first
time the facts of Nature astonish him, they become for him an other-than-
himself he would fain appropriate, and within which he strives to rediscover
his own substance, that is the universal, thoughts, reason. For the dim
foretaste here of a higher and the consciousness of the external are still
unsevered, and this though a contradiction between the objects of Nature
and the Spirit which perceives them is already present, a contradiction in
which these objects appear to repel him quite as much as they attract, and

the feeling of which, in the force wherewith they thrust him away, is, in
fact, the birth-pang of his very wonder.
The earliest result of this condition of wonder in man's vision of Nature is
that on the one hand he sets himself in opposition to Nature and her
objective world as a principle[22], and adores her as Power; on the other he
is equally possessed with a desire, which craves satisfaction, to render
objective to himself his intuition of a higher, essential, and universal
somewhat, and to look upon its rehabilitated presence. In this two-fold
aspect of his conscious life he is confronted by reality in the following way.
The particular objects of Nature, and above all those elementary facts, sea,
rivers, mountains, and constellations, are not received by him in the
singularity of their immediate presentment to sense, but, carried up into the
sphere of imaginative conception, assume for that faculty the form of
universal and essentially self-subsistent existence. And we may trace the
beginning of art in this, that it reflects these ideas of the imagination thus
universalized and essentially independent, in visible representation for
immediate perception, and sets them forth for mind in the individual form
of the same as objects. The mere adoration of external facts, with its
Nature-cult and fetish-cult, is not as yet on this account an art of any kind.
Under the aspect in which it is related to the objective world, the beginnings
of art are more intimately associated with religion. The earliest works of art
are of the mythological order. In religion it is nothing less than the
Absolute, which breaks to consciousness through its own impulse[23],
though the determinating factors of that consciousness be the most abstract
and jejune conceivable. And the earliest phase in this evolution of the
Absolute is the phenomenal presence of Nature, in whose existence man
dimly forebodes the Absolute, and envisages the same for himself in the
semblance of natural objects. In this striving Art discovers its source. We
shall find, however, in this very effort art first made visible, not so much
where the Absolute is descried by human eyes in the external world which
immediately confronts them, a mode of Divine reality in which they rest
content, but rather where man's consciousness evolves from its own
substance a mode of apprehending what it conceives as the Absolute in the
form of a self-subsistent externality, no less than that objective presentation
which he unites with it in more or less adequate fashion. For we must
remember that Art possesses a substantial content which is grasped by mind

(spirit), and which, it is true, appears in external guise, but for all that in a
form of externality, which is not merely immediately visible to sense, but is
primarily the product of mind regarded as the existing fact which
intrinsically comprehends that content as a whole and then expresses it. Art
is consequently and by virtue of its power to create forms cognate with its
own substance the first interpreter of the religious consciousness; it, in fact,
is the first to make the prosaic view of the objective world a thing valid to
itself[24], when our humanity has fought itself essentially free as the self-
consciousness of Spirit from the immediacy of sense, and sets itself over
against the same in the strength of the same freedom with which it accepts
and understands that objectivity as simply external fact and no more. This
complete separation of the subject and object of sense-perception is,
however, indicative of a considerably later phase of man's spiritual history.
The first knowledge of truth, on the contrary, declares itself as an
intermediate state between the purely unintelligent absorption of the
individual in Nature and that spiritual condition which is entirely released
from it. This intermediate state, however, in which Spirit merely envisages
for itself its conceptions in the plastic forms of Nature's objects because it
still fails to master any form of higher significance, although it strives
through such association to bring the two aspects of its experience into one
homogeneous whole, is, to put it in its general terms, the attitude of art and
poetry as contrasted with that of the prosaic understanding. And for this
reason we find that the prosaic consciousness declares itself first in its full
bloom, where, as is the case in the Roman and in later times throughout our
own Christian world, the principle of the subjective freedom of Spirit is
realized in its abstract and actually concrete form.
2. And, secondly, the final aim toward which the effort of symbolic art is
directed, and with the attainment of which the symbolic type is dissolved, is
classical art. But although we find in this latter form the true manifestation
of art's essence first elaborated, it is not the first type of art. Rather it
presupposes within its content all the various mediating and transitional
stages of the symbolic form itself. It is quite true that the essential aim of
that content is to reveal the notion as a rounded and self-defined totality,
that is in its concreteness and actuality as the individuality of Spirit; but the
notion is only then able to declare itself in such concrete form to conscious
life after it has passed through a variety of mediatory stages forced upon it
by the abstract conceptions which the nature of its own initial impulse

presupposes. It is classical art, however, which brings to a close all the mere
preliminary experiments of art in the direction of symbolism and the
sublime[25]. And it is able to do this inasmuch as the subjective spirit finds
in it, as its essential possession, a form truly adequate to its substance, and
in the same way that the self-determining notion creates from its own
potency the individual existence that fully expresses it. When once Art has
discovered its true content, and by doing so found its true form, its search
and striving after both, wherein the defect of symbolical art consists, is
therewith at an end.
If we seek further for a closer principle of division of symbolic art within
the limits of the boundaries on either extreme hitherto discussed, we shall
find the same generally under the modes in accordance with which it
contends with the genuine significances of art and their truly appropriate
forms, the battle that is apparent in a content which is still striving in
opposition to the truth of art, no less than in a form that is equally
inadequate to express it. For both aspects, although externally united in the
identity of one creation, are neither brought completely together
themselves, nor permeated throughout with the notion of art in its truth; and
for this reason they appear quite as much as contestants struggling to be free
from the defects of their union. We may, in short, describe symbolic art
throughout as a continuous war carried on between the comparative
adequacy and inadequacy of its import and form[26]; and the varied
gradations of symbolic art are not so much kinds of specific difference as
they are stages and phases of one and the same incongruity between the
spiritual idea and its sensuous medium.
At first, however, this contention is only potentially present, that is to say
the incompatibility of these two sides, whose union is thus affirmed and
enforced, is not yet openly present to consciousness. And this is so for the
reason that it neither recognizes for itself in its universal nature the import
which it seizes, nor is able to comprehend the realized form in its self-
subsistent and self-exclusive existence; consequently, instead of
representing to the senses both aspects in their difference, it is content to
proceed upon the immediate appearance of identity which it enforces. In
this original point of departure we have before us the as yet inseparable
unity of the art-form and the symbolical expression it seeks after,
fermenting, as it were, beneath the association of contradictory elements in

mysterious guise—the unity, that is, of the real and primordial symbolism,
whose plastic shapes are as yet not posited as symbols at all.
The termination of this process[27], on the other hand, is the disappearance
and dissolution of the symbolic type altogether. The strife which has
hitherto been merely implied in it is now brought home to the artistic
consciousness. The act of symbolization in consequence becomes the
conscious severation of the transparent significance, which is now
recognized for what it is from the sensuous image cognate with it. In this
severation, however, there still remains an express relation of reciprocity,
which, however, declares itself as such no longer in the mode of immediate
identity, but rather as a mere comparison between the two, in which that
differentiation and separation which in the previous type was not brought
clearly to consciousness still remains as conspicuous a factor. And this is
the sphere of that symbolism where the symbol is recognized as such. Here
we find the artistic import recognized and presented in its independent
universality, whose concrete embodiment is expressly placed in
subordination as an image of that presentment, and no more, and as such a
comparative medium is utilized for the purpose of artistic representation.
Halfway between that starting-point above described and this termination of
the symbolic type we find the art of the sublime. In this the essential import,
posited as the universality of Spirit in its absolute self-exclusion, disengages
itself in the first place from concrete existence, permitting the same to
appear as a mere negative, external and subservient factor beside it, which it
is unable to leave, in order that it may express itself in it, standing in its
native self-subsistency. Rather it finds it necessary to declare it as that
which is essentially defective and self-dissolving, and this, moreover,
although it has naught beside as means for its expression than just this to
which it opposes itself as external and nugatory. The splendour of this
import of the sublime may be accepted in the order of the notional process
as previous to that of the mode of genuine comparison for this reason, that
the concrete particularity of natural and any other phenomena must
necessarily be treated in the first place negatively, merely appropriated, that
is to say, as the adornment and embellishment of the unreachable might of
Spirit's absolute significance, before that express severation and
discriminating comparison of external shapes cognate with, and yet at the

same time distinct from, the import, whose image they reproduce, can assert
itself.
3. The three principal stages[28] above indicated break up naturally on closer
inspection into the following subdivisions we now summarize in the
chapters which include them.
FIRST CHAPTER

A. The first stage which presents itself in this portion of our subject-matter
is as yet neither to be described strictly as symbolical, nor as belonging
strictly to art; it rather clears the road to both. It is the sphere of the
immediately cognized and substantive unity of the Absolute regarded as
spiritual significance with its unsevered sensuous existence in a form
presented by Nature.
B. In the second stage we pass to the symbol in its real sense; the
dissolution of the first unity above described here commences, and while,
on the one hand, the significances assert themselves in their independent
universality above the particular phenomena of Nature, on the other they
are necessarily forced with a like insistency to present themselves to
consciousness together with this preconceived universality in the concrete
form of natural objects. In this primary and twofold struggle to spiritualize
Nature, and to present that which is born of Spirit to sense, at this stage of
the conflict between them, we meet with all the ferment and wild, tossed
hither and thither medley, the entire fantastic and confused world that is to
say of symbolic art, which half surmises, it is true, the incongruity of its
manner of shaping, yet is unable to remedy the same save through the
distortion of its figures, while straining after a purely quantitative sublimity
that would fain devour all limits. In this phase consequently we find
ourselves in a world steeped with poetic phantasies, incredibilities and
miracle, yet fail to encounter one work of genuine beauty.
C. Owing to this strife between the spiritual significance and its sensuous
presentation, we are conducted thirdly to the stage we may describe as that
of the true symbol, on which the symbolic work of art for the first time
appears in its complete character. The forms and shapes are here no longer
those present to sense, which, as we saw on the first mentioned stage, were
immediately coincident with the Absolute as their positive existence,
without any further modification at the hands of art; neither, as in the

second phase, are they intent on asserting their unreconciled material
against the universality of the significance merely through extensions of the
quantitative limits of Nature's objects, the ebullitions of a rioting fancy.
Rather the symbolic form, which is here throughout apparent, is Art's own
creation, a work not merely capable of expressing its own individuality, but
from another point of view possessed with the power of presenting at the
same time both the particular object that it is and the further universal
significance with which it is associated, and which it thereby discloses to
the mind, so that these very shapes stand before us as problems which we
are imperatively called upon to unriddle and probe to the inward charge
which they carry.
We may at once further venture the general remark with reference to these
more clearly defined types of a symbolism still to be ranked as elementary
that they spring from the religious attitude to existence of entire nations; for
which reason it will form part of our plan to recall their position in history.
Not that complete identification of specific types with a given period is
wholly feasible. Rather it would be truer to say that particular modes of
conception and presentation, when we refer them generally to some kind of
artistic type, are mingled up together, so that we find the specific type,
which we have reason to regard as the fundamental one in any particular
nation's general view of existence, exemplified both in earlier and later
peoples[29], though its repetition may only be discovered in subordinate and
isolated cases. In general, however, we may say that we possess the more
concrete manifestations and visible proofs of the first stage in the ancient
Persian religion of the second in the Indian, of the third in that of Egypt.
SECOND CHAPTER

In the second chapter that significance, which has hitherto been more or less
obscured by its particular sensuous form, has at last wrested its way to
freedom, and its independent character is brought clearly to consciousness.
With this victory the relation of real symbolism is dissolved; we have
instead, through the way in which the absolute significance[30] is cognized
as the universal substance interpenetrating the entire extension of the
visible world, the art of the absolute essence[31] in the form of a symbolism
of the sublime; and this now takes the place of purely symbolical and
fantastic suggestions, deformities, and riddles.

We have here mainly two points of view to distinguish which are based
upon differences in the relation of the substantive essence, that is the
Absolute and Divine, to the finitude of the apparent. Or rather we may say
that this relation is capable of being twofold, both positive and negative,
although in both forms, inasmuch as it is in either case universal substance,
which has to appear, it is not the particular form and import of the objective
facts, but their general principle of animation and their position relatively to
this substance which is made visible to sense.
A. In the first phase or type this relation is so conceived, that substance,
here the All and the One delivered from every form of particularity, is
immanent in the determinate phenomena as the animating principle which
brings them into being and is their life; and moreover, it is affirmatively and
immediately present to the vision in this immanence, and is comprehended,
and made the object of representation by the individual who surrenders
himself to its presence through the adoring self-absorption in this
indwelling essence of the entire world of contingent and material things. In
this point of view we have the art of the Pantheism which possesses the
Sublime as its inherent principle, an art such as we find it in its elementary
stage in India, then elaborated in all its splendour in Mohammedanism and
its artistic mysticism, and finally with still profounder significance
reappearing in certain manifestations of Christian mysticism.
B. The negative relation on the other hand of true Sublimity we must look
for in Hebraic poetry. In this poetry of the Glorious, which is only
concerned to celebrate and exalt the unimaginable Lord of the heavens and
the earth that it may employ His entire creation as the passing instrument of
His Power, as the messengers of His Glory, as the delight and ornament of
His Greatness, this service of His Creation, be it never so magnificent[32], is
deliberately posited as negative, and this for the reason that it is unable to
discover any adequate or positively sufficient expression for the Power and
Dominion of the Highest, and is only able to attain a genuine satisfaction by
means of the subjection of the creature, which in the feeling and admission
of its unworthiness is alone able with adequacy to express its
insignificance[33].
THIRD CHAPTER

Through this independent self-assertion of significance, made thus
transparent to consciousness in its isolated simplicity, the severation of the
same from the imaged appearance, whose incommensurability over against
it has already been accepted, is now essentially complete; and albeit, along
with the fact of this conscious separation, both form and import may still
persist in the relation of an intimate affinity, a necessity which is implied in
the fact of their being symbolical art, yet this relation no longer attaches to
either import or form, but is placed now in a third mode of conception,
which according to its own point of view, carries relations of similarity with
both these sides[34], and in reliance on these relations makes visible and
declares the independently transparent significance by means of the cognate
and particular image.
Owing to this change the image, instead of remaining as it was previously
the unique expression of the Absolute, becomes now merely an ornament,
and we thereby discover a relation which ceases to correspond with the
notion of beauty. In other words image and significance, instead of being
moulded one within the other, confront each other as opposites, precisely, in
fact, as was the case in genuine symbolism, though then the process
remained incomplete. Consequently works of art which are based on this
form are of subordinate rank, and their content is unable to comprise the
Absolute itself, and is necessarily restricted to circumstances and
occurrences of narrower range. For this reason the forms which are now
under discussion are for the most part merely used occasionally and by way
of diversion.
More closely considered we have in this chapter to distinguish between
three principal stages of our process.
A. To the first we appropriate those types of presentation commonly known
as Fable, Parable, and Apologue. In these the severation of form and
significance, which constitutes the characteristic trait of the entire sphere to
which this chapter refers, is not as yet expressly recognized; that is to say,
the subjective aspect of the comparison is not yet fully emphasized;
consequently also the representation of the particular and concrete
phenomenon, through which the universal significance is finally to declare
itself, still remains the predominant factor.

B. In the second stage, on the contrary, the universal import asserts its
independent mastery over the elucidating form, which now appears merely
as attribute, or, under the guise of an image, capriciously selected by the
mind which makes the contrast. To this type belong the Allegory, Metaphor,
and Simile.
C. In the third stage we meet with the visible and complete collapse of
those related aspects in the symbol which previously had either been
immediately joined in union, despite the fact of their relative incongruity, or
in their independent severation had still persisted under a relation of
affinity[35]. Out of this arises that form of content which is cognized as
independent in its prosaic[36] universality, to which the art-form has become
wholly an external relation; on the one hand we find it represented by the
didactic poem, on the other that very aspect of its external form is accepted
for what it is, and exemplified in so-called descriptive poetry. Here we find
that every association and relation of symbolism has vanished; we have to
look round us for some more comprehensive union of form and content, and
one more truly adequate to the notion of art.

[5] So the French expression des couleurs, and our English "the colours."
[6] Hegel uses the 'technical term Inhalt in this passage to signify either (a) the
quality of significance, or (b) the object which is symbolized by virtue of some
selected quality. The use of it in both senses makes the passage somewhat
difficult to follow.
[7] Inhalt here evidently is the abstract quality.
[8] Necessarily because such ambiguity is implied in the idea (seinem Begriff
nach).
[9] This, I think, is the sense. The language literally is, "Which a form under
several possible significations, as symbol of any of which (deren) it can be
employed often through connecting links (Zusammenhänge) more remote, may
be taken to symbolize."
[10] The German words are Begreifen and Schliessen, which in their original
sense are "to grasp with the hand" (prehendo) and "to shut" or "lock up." The
English words in a still fainter form carry the same significance through the
Latin language. The symbolism of language at this stage is obviously only
apparent to the student of language.
[11] That is, more abstract.
[12] Or in English: /# Forth on the ocean is shipped Youth with his thousand
sails: Silent in bark barely saved steals into harbour old age. #/

[13] Substantielle, that is, an artistic consciousness which is aware of its own
essential nature—Spirit, and the object of pure intelligence—the Ideal.
[14] Perhaps we should rather say a Theosophy.
[15] The Alexandrine School, of which Plotinus and Philo are leading names.
[16] Ein allgemeiner Gedanke. The reference throughout this paragraph to the
universality of the ideas of reflection as contrasted with the sensuous image is
rather a reference to the abstract conceptions of the analytical mind, that is,
which are usually understood as universals in the sense of generic conceptions,
than any fuller grasp of concrete reality such as possesses a truly ideal
significance. So in its application to the metaphor I imagine what is meant is that
we have here the process of dry analysis which merely destroys its significance
as metaphor, that is, its synthetic unity for our aesthetic sense.
[17] Ist aufgehoben, here not in the sense of being cancelled, but raised to the
expression of concrete unity.
[18] Als blosse Personification, that is, an individualization which impersonates
the subjective identity without possessing its concrete substance, a personified
shadow like the sphinx. Such appears to be the sense.
[19] Because the content for which such shapes (Gestaltung) are given is itself
incoherent, and therefore incompatible with adequate expression.
[20] Sichhervorarbeiten. Our word "elaborate" is here insufficient. Hegel means
the mode in which the Idea of art works itself free from entirely potential
obscurity into a living force, a real energeia. We cannot say "emerges into
daylight," however, because the highest grasp of symbolic art is still only a
twilight. It is like the growth of the plant-germ, still underground, or partially so.
[21] Pracktischen. Not matter-of-fact relation, but rather a relation that asserts
itself exclusively in action.
[22] Als Grund, that is, as a fundamental unity of the real.
[23] Die erste näher gestaltende Dollmetcherin, lit., the first interpreter which
supplies forms more nearly cognate with itself.
[24] It is valid (geltend) because it introduces there its own spiritual nature.
[25] The previous statement of Hegel must not be overlooked, however, and it
may be considerably amplified, that there is much in romantic art which is
related to symbolism and the sublime. Take the case of the celebrated sculpture
of Michael Angelo typifying Night, Day, Dawn, and Twilight, or such modern
pictures as those of Watts's "The Minotaur" and "The Spirit of Christianity."
[26] Or rather "between those aspects of its import and form which are
reciprocally homogeneous and those which are not."
[27] This process of symbolic art.
[28] Hauptstufen. The word signifies either the phase or grade of a process of
development, or to take the metaphor used by Hegel above (Stadien) may
perhaps be better translated by "stage," as though indicating the successive
stages of a journey.

[29] I think Völkern rather than Zeiten must be here understood, and the sense
appears to be that the confusion indicated refers to a mingling of forms
appropriate to a nation in one historical period with those that are more cognate
with a people at any earlier or it may be later period. But unquestionably this
attempt to identify a type as between different nations with historical periods that
will harmonize with Hegel's own classification is a difficult matter as we may
see by the fact that Egypt, the oldest example of all, represents the third stage.
On the other hand, if the confusion referred to is applied to the particular
development of any one people, the examples given by Hegel do not bear on the
difficulty they illustrate.
[30] Or rather "the import of the Absolute."
[31] Substantiality, called below die Substanz; the word signifies the real essence
of the Absolute.
[32] The principal clause of this sentence has no end as printed. The auxiliary
must be omitted either before in diesem Dienste or eine positive. I prefer the first
alternative.
[33] The relative here agrees, I think, with die Dienstbarkeit rather than die
Kreatur or die Poesie. Hegel says "compatible with itself and its significance,"
we should rather say "its sense of its own insignificance."
[34] Hegel's words are sondern in einem subjectiven Dritten, welches in beiden
Seiten nach seiner subjectiven Anschauung, etc. This "subjective third" is, as
explained below, the way in which the relation between the image and the
absolute significance ceases to be regarded as identical.
[35] This sentence as it stands is ungrammatical; there is a change in the
construction as it proceeds.
[36] The prosaic universality is the prose of its form separated from content. It is
prosaic because it is unrelated to the vitality of the notion.

CHAPTER I

UNCONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM

Now that we pass to the consideration of the several distinctions of
symbolical art in more detail, we have to make a beginning with the
identical beginning of art as it proceeds out of the notion of art itself. This
commencement, as we have seen, is the symbolical form of art in its still
immediate form wherein the appearance, as purely image or likeness, is
neither brought to consciousness nor presupposed—unconscious
symbolism, that is to say. Before, however, we shall be in a position to
consider this form in its genuine symbolical character, it will be necessary

to review several presuppositions which the notion of symbolism itself
determines in order that we may utilize them for the basis upon which the
symbol may unfold itself for scientific apprehension.
The point from which we make a start may be defined more closely as
follows:
The fundamental root of the symbol is, regarding it from one aspect, the
immediate union of the universal and thereby spiritual significance with the
form which may at the same time be described as adequate and inadequate,
an inadequacy, however, which is as yet unperceived. This association,
however, must, on the other hand, receive a form from the imagination and
art, and must not merely be conceived as a Divine reality exclusively
immediate to sense. By this means the symbolical originates in the first
instance with the severation of a universal import from the immediate
presence of Nature, in whose existence the Absolute is contemplated as
actually present. These two aspects supply us with the preliminary stages
for the genuine forms of symbolic art.
The first presupposition consequently—we may call it the coming into
being of the symbolical—is not that union which is the product of art, but
rather just that immediate unity of the Absolute and True and its existence,
which is discovered in the visible world apart from art's mediation.

A. IMMEDIATE UNITY OF SIGNIFICANCE AND FORM

In this identity of the Divine immediately envisualized, a Divine, which is
brought home to consciousness as the union of its determinate existence in
Nature and humanity, Nature is neither taken simply for that which it is in
isolation by itself, nor is the Absolute severed from it and posited in an
independent self-subsistence. Consequently it is wholly beside the point to
speak of a distinction here between the Inward and the External, the
significance and the form, and this for the reason that the Inward is not as
yet released in its independence as significance from its immediate reality
in the object of sense. When we apply here the expression import[37], such
merely emphasizes our own reflection upon it, which is due to the necessity
for ourselves personally to regard the form, which contains that which is
spiritual and inward under the mode of sense-perception, generally as
something external to us, through which we are desirous of penetrating into

the Inward, that is, its animating life and significance, in order that we may
understand it. For this reason we are under the necessity from the very first,
when dealing with such general impressions of sense-perception, of making
an essential demarcation between those cases in which the peoples, who in
the first instance experienced them, themselves were clearly conscious of
this Inward itself as such, that is, as a spiritual significance, and those in
which the use of such expressions is only applicable to ourselves, who now
and only now recognize an import of this kind in the content of that external
expression of sense-envisagement.
In this primary unity such as the latter cases involve, there is no such
distinction between soul and body, notion and reality, as is implied in the
former. That which we describe as corporeal and sensuous, natural and
human, is not merely an expression for a significance which proceeds at the
same time to a point of distinction from it[38]; but the phenomenon is itself
conceived as the immediate reality and presence of the Absolute, which
does not in addition possess some other mode of self-subsistent existence,
but is confined exclusively to the immediate presence of an object of sense,
which is God or the Divine. In the service of the Lama, for example, this
particular, actual human being is immediately known and adored as God,
just as in other natural religions the sun, mountains, rivers, the moon,
particular animals, such as the bull, ape, and so on, are looked upon as
immediately Divine existences and worshipped as sacred. We may observe
a similar directness, if under a mode of profounder application, even now in
many aspects of the Christian consciousness. According to Catholic
doctrine, for example, the consecrated bread is the real body, and the wine
the real blood of God, and Christ is immediately present therein; nay, even
according to the Lutheran faith, both bread and wine are converted into
such real body and blood by virtue of the faith of the recipient. In this
mystical union it is not merely a symbolism which is expressed, a point of
view which comes into prominence as the result of it for the first time in
later doctrines of the reformed Church, where we find as a result the
spiritual significance is expressly severed from the sensuous object, and the
external medium is then accepted as merely pointing to an import which is
distinct from itself. In the same way the power of this Divine is held to
operate in the miracle-working images of the Virgin as a Divine force that is
immediately present within them, and not merely under symbolical guise
through the significant import of such pictures.

We find, however, the most thorough and universal exemplification of this
absolute and immediate unity of sense-perception in the life and religion of
the ancient Zend-people, whose conceptions and institutions are preserved
for us in the Zend-Avesta.
1. In other words the religion of Zoroaster beholds Light in the form of its
natural existence, the sun, stars, and fire in the luminous activity and flames
which proceed from them, actually as the Absolute, without separating this
Divine independently from that Light either as its expression and image or
the sensuous medium thereof. The Divine, the significance, is not thus
severed from its determinate existence in the form of lights, however
displayed. For even when light is accepted here in the sense of Goodness
and Justice, and through such significance is extended to all that is rich in
blessing, support, and life, it is still not taken as the mere image of such
things, but Light is itself the Good. And the same view applies to the
opposite of light, namely, obscurity and darkness when identified with that
which is unclean, hurtful, evil, destructive, and deadly.
This point of view may be more closely defined and considered as follows:
(a) In the first instance the Divine, as the essential purity of Light[39], and
the Darkness and Unclean are, it is true, personified under the names of
Ormuzd and Ahriman respectively. This personification is, however,
throughout entirely superficial. Ormuzd is no essentially free individuality
devoid of all relation to external objects[40] as was the God of the Jews, or
truly spiritual and personal as is the God of Christianity when conceived as
truly personal and self-conscious Spirit; rather Ormuzd, despite the fact that
he is described also as king, great spirit and judge, remains inseparable
from such external existence as Light and its illuminations. He is
exclusively this universal characteristic of all particular existences, in which
light and thereby the Divine and Pure are realized, without any additional
power to withdraw himself in a spiritual universality and independence into
his own substance from that which is thus immediately presented. His
consistence rests in the particular facts of existence precisely in an
analogous way to that of the genus in the species. It is true that regarded as
this universal he is superior to all that is wholly particular, and is the first,
most supreme, the kings of kings glorious in his gold, the purest and so
forth; but he retains his existence none the less exclusively in all that is

luminous and pure as Ahriman in all that is obscure, evil, destructive, and
charged with disease.
(b) As a result this mode of vision is at the same time extended to the
conception of an empire of light and darkness, and the strife between these
forces. In the empire of Ormuzd it is in the first place the Amschaspands, as
the seven principal lights of heaven, which receive adoration as Divinity,
inasmuch as they are the essential particular existences of Light, and for this
reason constitute as a pure and spacious empeopled heaven, the existence of
the Divine itself. Every Amschaspand, to which Ormuzd belongs, has
assigned to it days of precedence, blessing, and beneficence. The Izeds and
Ferners carry the conception still further into specification, which it is
probable enough are personifications of Ormuzd himself, albeit they add to
him no further shape that we may envisage as human, so that neither the
spiritual nor the bodily mode of subjectivity, but simply the existence as
light, appearance, illumination, splendour, remains the essential
characteristic of the object envisaged.
In the same way also the particular objects of Nature, which themselves do
not exist in external form as lights and luminous bodies, such as animals,
plants, and so forth, no less than the forms which characterize the human
world, whether we view it under its spiritual or bodily presentment, in other
words the particular activities and conditions of it, the entire life of the
state, the king with the seven great men who support him, the division of
classes, cities, the various provinces with their governors, all that is
warranted by experience as typical of the best and purest for the protection
of the rest—the entire reality, in fact, of this life is regarded as an existence
of Ormuzd. For everything that carries within itself and promulgates what
has solidity, life, and substance is an existence of Light and Purity, and
consequently an existence of Ormuzd; every particular truth, excellence,
love, justness, every individual example of life, beneficence, protection,
spiritual power and enjoyment or benignity is, according to Zoroaster,
regarded as essentially Light and Divine. The empire of Ormuzd is the Pure
and Illuminating of visible reality; and conformably to this there is no
distinction between the phenomena of Nature or Spirit, just as Light and
Goodness, the spiritual and the sensuous quality, are inseparably blended in
the conception of Ormuzd himself. The splendour of a creature is
consequently for Zoroaster the very substance of spirit, force, and life-

exhalations of every kind, in so far, that is, as they tend to actual
conservation and to the removal of everything positively evil and hurtful,
for that which is the Real and the Good, whether in beast, man, or vegetable
life, is Light, and it is according to the measure and mode of display of this
luminousness that the relative power or weakness of the splendour of all
objects is determined.
An articulation and graduated division of similar character is found in the
empire of Ahriman, merely with the difference that what is spiritually or
naturally evil, and generally the destructive and actively negative principle
asserts itself in actual masterdom. But the might of Ahriman must not be
suffered to spread; the aim of the entire world is consequently assumed to
be that of annihilating the Empire of Ahriman, in order that the life,
presence, and dominion of Ormuzd may prevail throughout creation.
(c) To this exclusive object the entire life of humanity is consecrate. The
life-task of every man consists exclusively in a purification of soul and
body, and in the extension of this blessing and this conflict with Ahriman
throughout all the conditions and activities of the life of man or Nature. The
highest and most sacred duty is consequently to glorify Ormuzd in his
creation, and to love, honour, and conform oneself to all that proceeds from
his Light and is essentially pure. Ormuzd is the beginning and end of all
adoration. Above all else the Parsee is moved to summon the life of
Ormuzd in thought and speech; he is the main object of his prayers. And in
the exaltation of him, from whom the entire world of the Pure has streamed
in its splendour, the devotee is in duty bound to accommodate his adoration
of particular objects according to the measure in which they proclaim his
majesty, worth, and perfection. So far as they are good and ring sound, to
that extent, the Parsee reasons with himself, is Ormuzd alive within them;
he loves them as the children of his purity, yea, rejoices over them as in the
beginning of his substance, forasmuch as through him was everything
brought forth in newness and purity. And for the same reason is all prayer
directed first and foremost to the Amschaspands as the most intimate
reflections of Ormuzd, as the primates of supreme splendour who surround
his throne and advance his dominion. Such prayer to these heavenly spirits
is immediately directed to their qualities and activities, and in the case of
stars at the time of their uprising. The sun is invoked by day, and always
with the changes appropriate to his own motion through sunrise, noonday,

or sunset. From morning till noonday the devotion of the Parsee centres in
this that Ormuzd may exalt his splendour; at evening he prays that the sun
may through Ormuzd and the protecting care of every Tzed perfect the
course of his life. But principally we find honour paid to Mithras, who, as
the fruit-bringer to the Earth and the wilderness, pours forth the fermenting
sap over all Nature, and as mighty champion against all the Devas of
contention, war, confusion, and destruction, is the author of peace.
In addition to this the Parsee, in his generally single-toned songs of praise,
exalts his ideals, that is, the purest and most veritable examples of human
life, the Ferver conceived as pure human spirits, on whatever portion of the
Earth's surface they live or have lived. In the chief place prayer is offered to
the pure spirit of Zoroaster, and after him to the leading lights of all classes,
cities, and provinces; and already in this religion, we find that the spirits of
all mankind are contemplated as united together with a sufficient bond in
that they are members in the living association of Light, which hereafter in
Gorotman shall receive a yet more perfect union.
Finally, not even the animals, mountains, and vegetable world are forgotten,
but are appealed to as embodiments of Ormuzd; all that is good and
serviceable in them to mankind is extolled, and especially the first and most
excellent of its kind is adored as the present existence of Deity. And over
and above this worship of Ormuzd and of every form of selected excellence
among the pure and beneficent objects of his creation the Zend-Avesta is
insistent upon the practice of goodness and the purity of thought, word, and
deed. The Parsee is to be in the entire display of his external and inward
man as Light, as Ormuzd, the Amschaspands, and the Izeds, as Zoroaster
and all good men live and do. Such live and have lived in the Light, and all
their deeds are Light; therefore shall every man make them an example to
his eyes and follow after the same. The more purity of light and goodness
man expresses in his life and accomplishment, the nearer he stands to those
spirits of heaven. As the Izeds throw the blessing of their beneficence over
everything, are a source of life and fruitfulness and friendship, so, too, he
must seek to purify Nature, to ennoble her, and to reach abroad the light of
life and the joy of plenteousness. In accordance therewith he shall feed the
hungry, tend the sick, offer the drink of consolation to the thirsty, give roof
and shelter to the wanderer, provide pure seed for the Earth, delve clean
channels of water, plant the waste with trees, nourish to the best of his

power their growth, care for the sustenance and fructification of things
alive, keep pure the lambency of fire, remove from sight the dead and
unclean beast, establish marriages, and in the doing thereof the holy
Sapandomad, the Ized of the Earth, herself rejoices, averting the harm
which the Devas and the Darvands are busy to prepare.
2. If we ask ourselves once more, after this delineation in outline of the
fundamental conceptions of this system, what is the symbolical character of
the same there can be but one reply, namely, that there is no trace here of
anything we have previously described as symbolical. On the one side, no
doubt, we have light in its obvious natural form, and on the other it
possesses the further significance of all that is rich in goodness, blessing,
and permanence. It is, therefore, possible to contend that the actual
existence of light is merely an image cognate with this universal
significance, which interpenetrates every part of the world of Nature and
mankind. If we apply such an interpretation to the conception of Parsees
themselves we shall find such a separation of existence and its import to be
false; for these the Light as Light is actually the Good, and is so
apprehended that it is in the form of light present and active in everything
that is good, vital, and positive. The universal and Divine is carried no
doubt through the distinctions of the world of particular objects, but in this
its differentiated and particularized existence, the substantial and
inseparable unity of import and form remains constant, and the distinctions
that are involved in this unity do not affect the difference of significance
quâ significance, and its manifestation, but only the distinguishing features
of particular objects, such as stars, organic life, human opinions and actions,
in which the Divine as Light or Darkness is immediately open to sense.
In the further embrace of such conceptions there are no doubt points of
connection with incipient symbolism, but we get out of them no real type of
that mode of viewing things in its completeness; they will only pass muster
as isolated traits in its direction. To such effect Ormuzd is on one occasion
made to say of his beloved one Dschemschid: "The holy Ferver of
Dschemschid, the son of Vivengham, was great before me. His hand
received from me a dagger, whose sharpness was gold, and whose shaft was
gold. Therewith Dschemschid marked out three hundred portions of the
Earth. He split up the Earth-realm with his gold-plate, yea, with his dagger
and spake: 'Let Sapandomad rejoice.' He spake the holy word with prayer to

the tame cattle and the wild and unto men. So his passing through was
happiness and blessing for these lands and animals of the home and the
field, and men ran together into great dwellings." Here we find in the
dagger, and the cleaving of the Earth-soil an image which may be
interpreted as significant of agriculture. Agriculture is still no essentially
spiritual activity, and just as little is it a purely natural one; it is rather a
universal occupation of mankind, which results from reflective thought and
experience, and which has point of association with all the relations of life.
It is no doubt never expressly stated in this conception of the passing of
Dschemschid that this splitting of the Earth with the dagger indicates
agriculture; nor is there a single word added of any increase of the fruits of
the field by virtue of this division; for the reason, however, that in this
particular act more appears to be included than the mere turning over and
loosening of the soil, we are led to look for a further significance beneath it.
The same observations apply to more recent conceptions, such as we find
exemplified in the later elaboration of the worship of Mithras, where
Mithras is represented as a youth who in the dusk of a grotto raises on high
the bull's head and plunges a dagger in his neck, whereon a serpent licks up
the blood, and a scorpion gnaws his genitals. This symbolical account has
received an astronomical and other interpretations. We may, however, find
in it a still more universal and profounder meaning, and take the bull
generally to personify the principle of Nature, over which man, as
essentially spirit, secures the victory, and this though astronomical
associations may also be implied in it. That, however, such a revolution as
the victory of Spirit over Nature is contained in it is also suggested by the
name of Mithras, or mediator, more especially if we refer it to a later period
when such uplifting over Nature was already a necessity present to the
national consciousness. Symbols such as the above, however, as already
observed, only incidentally come to the fore in the conceptions of the
ancient Parsees, and do not in any way constitute a principle for their
fundamental type of thought.
Still less can we describe the cultus, which the Zend-Avesta inculcates, as
one of symbolical tendency. We find no trace here, for example, of
symbolical dances in celebration or imitation of the interlaced revolutions
of the stars; as little any other forms of activity which may pass as the
suggestive counterfeit of universal conceptions; rather all actions which are
prescribed to the Parsee as imperative in a religious sense are matters

directly concerned with the actual enlargement of his purity, either of soul
or body, and appear as directed with one intent and one object of
realization, namely, that of increasing the actual dominion of Ormuzd over
men and the objects of Nature, an object consequently which is not merely
symbolized in such activity, but entirely carried out.
3. For the reason, then, that a genuine symbolic type fails absolutely when
applied to this religious system, it is equally destitute of a true artistic
character. No doubt we may generally describe its mode of conception as
poetical for the particular facts of Nature are just as little as the particular
sentiments, circumstances, acts, and affairs of men treated in their
immediate and consequently haphazard and prosaic relation which is void
of all significance, and are rather contemplated essentially in the Absolute
as very Light; or to put it the other way, the universal essence of the
concrete reality of Nature and mankind is not conceived in the universality
which is without existence or form, but this universal and that particular is
envisaged and expressed in immediate union. Such a mode of viewing
existence may possibly claim a certain beauty, breadth, and largeness of its
own, and in contrast to gross and senseless idols Light is no doubt as the
essentially pure and universal element, an adequate image of Goodness and
Truth. But for all that we find that poetry here fails to pass beyond a general
conception; it never reaches either art or the works of art. For the Good and
the Divine are neither essentially defined, nor is the consistency and form of
this content a creation of mind (Spirit); but rather, as we have already
found, the thing which is immediately present to sense, namely, the actual
sun, stars, fire, organic nature, throughout its vegetation, animal and human
life, is conceived as the appropriate form of the Absolute in this its existent
and immediate shape. The sensuous representation is not, as Art requires,
the plastic product of mind, shaped and discovered by the same, but
immediately identified with and expressed by the external existent shape as
its appropriate counterfeit. It is quite true, in another aspect, the particular
thing is, by means of the imagination, also fixed in an independent relation
to its reality, as, for instance, in the Izeds and Fervers, that is, in the genii of
particular men; the poetic invention, however, discovered in this incipient
severation is of the weakest kind for the reason that the distinction remains
entirely of a formal character, so that the genius, Ized or Ferver, neither
includes nor is able to include any real characteristic content of its own, but,
instead of this, either repeats one identical content or possesses nothing

more than the purely empty form of the subjectivity, which the existing
individual already possesses. The product of the imagination here is
consequently neither an other and profounder significance nor the self-
subsistent form of an essentially richer individuality. And when we
moreover find particular objects envisaged on the wider plane of general
conceptions and generic types, to which, as appropriate to such types, the
imagination vouchsafes a real existence, even here also this uplifting of
multiplicity into the sphere of an all-comprehending and essential unity,
regarded as the basic core and substance of the individuals that constitute
the same species and genus, can only in a yet more indefinite sense be
accepted as an activity of the imagination, no real exemplification of either
poetry or art. So we have, for instance, in the holy fire of Behram the
essence of fire; and in the same way there is a water that underlies all
existent water. So, too, Horn is esteemed as the first, purest, and most
stalwart among trees, the primordial tree from which the life-sap full of
immortality flows; and among all mountains Albordsch, the sacred
mountain, is set before us as the primaeval root of the Earth, erect in the
splendour of the Light, from which the good deeds of all men proceed, who
have possessed the knowledge of Light, and on whom the sun, moon, and
stars repose. In general, however, we may affirm that the universal is visibly
known in immediate union with the actual objects of sense, and it is merely
now and again that universal conceptions are embodied in the particular
image.
In yet more prosaic fashion does the cultus of this religion make as its
principal object the dominion of Ormuzd a reality which interpenetrates all
things, merely requiring this one essential condition to the adequacy of
every object, namely, its purity, and without attempting therewith to
construct from such any existent form of art that is based upon immediate
life, as, for example, the warriors and wrestlers of Greece were so ready to
do in their artistic elaboration of physical perfection.
From whatever side, then, or whatever may be the point of view from which
we regard this first unity of spiritual universality and sensuous reality, we
only get from it the basis of symbolical art; it still fails to possess a real
symbolism of its own, and is unable to produce works of art. In order that
we may attain this object, which is the next in view, we must pass away
from the union we have just considered, and examine modes of conception

where the difference and conflict between significance and form is more
really emphasized.

B. FANTASTIC SYMBOLISM

Quitting now the sphere of thought in which the identity of the Absolute
and its externally envisaged existence is immediately cognized, we have, as
an essential determination to start from, the severation of these two aspects
hitherto united, a cleavage which stimulates the effort to restore once more
the visible breach by means of an elaborate fusing together of the whole
thus divided by a rich use of the images of phantasy. With this attempt the
essential need for art is felt for the first time. No sooner has the imagination
succeeded in holding fast its envisaged content, which is no longer grasped
in immediate union with the objects of sense, in isolated separation from
that existence, than for the first time spirit is confronted with the task of
reclothing with the material of phantasy for sensuous perception, that is,
under the renewed mode of a spiritual product, these general conceptions
and of creating through this activity the shapes of art. And for the reason
that in the stage of our process where we now find ourselves, this task is
capable of only a symbolic solution, we may easily fall under the
impression that we stand already in the sphere of genuine symbolism. This,
however, is not the case. What immediately faces us here are the forms of a
fermenting phantasy[41], which in the restlessness of its fantastic dreams
merely indicates the path which conducts us to the real centre of symbolical
art. In the first appearance of the distinguishing relation between
significance and the mode of its presentation, both the severation and the
association are still grasped in a confused manner. This confusion is
necessitated by the fact that neither of the parted aspects of difference have
as yet attained a totality, capable of emphasizing the precise point in the
process, which will serve as the fundamental determination of the opposed
side in it, and by means of which for the first,time a really adequate union
and reconciliation is rendered possible. Spirit (mind), to illustrate our
difficulty further, determines by virtue of its own totality the side of the
external phenomenon out of its own essential substance quite as really as it
does its own spiritual content for the obvious reason that the essentially
complete and independent phenomenon only receives its adequate form as
the external existence of that which is spiritual. In the case, however, of this

primary severation of the significances apprehended by mind, and the
existent world of phenomena such aspects of significance are not those of
concrete spiritual life, but abstractions, and this expression also is entirely
destitute of spiritual intension, and is consequently, in an abstract sense,
purely external and sensuous. This twofold impulse in the direction of
disunion and union is for the same reason an unsteady gait[42], which ranges
from the objects of sense in undefined and unmeasured waste immediately
to the aspects of universal import, and is only able to discover for the
inward content of consciousness the absolutely opposed form of sensuous
shapes. And it is this very contradiction which is set forth as a means of
really uniting elements which contradict each other. The result is that
instead of so doing it is first driven from one side of the opposition into the
other, and then again is hurled in its ceaselessly alternating dance into the
former extreme, while it believes that in this rocking to and fro of its strain
it has found the means to lull itself to repose. Instead of getting, therefore, a
true satisfaction we have the contradiction merely affirmed as its genuine
resolution, and in addition the union most incomplete of all is set forth as
that which art really requires. We must not therefore expect to find in such a
field of confusion worse confounded the true forms of beauty. In this
restless leap from one opposed extreme to the other all that we find from
one point of view in the sensuous material that is absorbed, regarding the
same in its singularity no less than as it constitutes its elementary
appearance to sense, is that the breadth and potency of every import of
universality is associated therewith in what must consequently be a wholly
inadequate way. From another aspect that which is most universal, as soon
as the process has passed from the same, is shamelessly plunged under the
reverse treatment into the very heart of the sensuous present; and if any
feeling of the incompatibility of such an effort is consciously perceived, the
imagination here is only capable of rendering assistance by means of
distortions which carry the particular shapes over and beyond their own
secure boundaries, adding to their extension, making them ever more
indefinite, by an imaginative leap which mounts to the immeasurable,
breaks up every bond of union, and in its very strain after reconciliation
reveals each opposing factor in its most unmitigated hostility[43].
These earliest and still most uncontrolled attempts of imagination and art
we meet most signally among the ancient races of India, the main defect of

whose productions, when viewed relatively to their particular position at
this stage of our classification, consists in this, that they are neither able to
seize the profounder aspects of significance in independent clarity, nor
grasp the reality of sense-perception in its characteristic form and meaning.
The Hindoo race has consequently proved itself unable to comprehend
either persons or events as parts of continuous history, because to any
historical treatment a certain soberness is essential of accepting and
understanding facts in their true and independent form, and subject to their
mediating links, grounds, causes, and objects, being empirically
ascertained. The natural impulse to refer all and everything back to the
Divine is hostile to this prosaic reasonableness, no less than its tendency to
prefigure for itself in the most ordinary or most sensuous of objects a
presence and reality of godhead created by its own imagination. These
peoples consequently, through their confused intermingling of the Finite
and the Absolute, in which the logical order and permanence of the prosaic
facts of ordinary consciousness are disregarded altogether, despite all the
profusion and extraordinary boldness of their conceptions, fall into a levity
of fantastic mirage which is quite as remarkable, a flightiness which dances
from the most spiritual and profoundest matters to the meanest trifle of
present experience, in order that it may interchange and confuse
immediately the one extreme with the other.
If we concentrate our attention more closely upon the more conspicuous
features of this continuous bout of intoxication, this craze and condition of
craze, what we are concerned with is not to trace religious conceptions as
such, but merely to emphasize the points of prominence which relate such
modes of conception with art. These may be indicated as follows:
1. One extreme of the consciousness of the Hindoo is the consciousness of
the Absolute, here regarded as the essentially and absolutely Universal,
undifferentiated and consequently wholly indefinite. This supreme of
abstractions, inasmuch as it is neither in possession of a particular content,
nor is conceived under the mode of concrete personality, is, from whatever
side you may look at it, no object at all that the imagination acting through
the senses can reclothe for art. Brahman[44], taken in a general sense as this
supreme Godhead, is absolutely removed from the sensuous and sense-
perception, or rather is not even an object for Thought. For self-
consciousness is inseparable from thought, which posits itself as an object

of Thought, in order that it may thus come to self-knowledge. Every act of
intelligence is an identification of the ego and object, a reconciliation of that
which is severed outside from this relation of recognition; what I do not
understand remains as something strange and foreign to myself. The mode
of union, under the Hindoo conception, of human personality with Brahman
is nothing more nor less than a continually ascending process of
exhaustion[45] in the direction of this supreme of abstractions, in which not
merely the entire concrete content, but also self-consciousness itself, must
be eliminated before the final consummation is realized. Or, to put the same
thing another way, the Hindoo recognizes no reconciliation and identity
with Brahman in the sense that the spirit of humanity becomes conscious of
this union. The unity rather consists in this, that both consciousness and
self-consciousness, and with them the entire content of the objective world
and personality totally disappears. This emptying and annihilation to the
point of absolute vacuity is treated as the supreme condition under which
man is capable of identity with highest Divinity, that is Brahman. An
abstraction of this sort, one of the barest it is possible to imagine, whether
we consider it from the point of view of the Absolute, as Brahman, or from
the human aspect of a purely theoretically conceived cultus that consists in
man's self-evaporation[46] and self-annihilation, is in itself no object either
for the imagination or art; all the latter can do is to profit by such
opportunity as various imaginary representations of what happens by the
way to this goal may offer for their exercise.
2. Conversely the Hindoo view of existence launches itself with just the
same immediacy over this very abstraction from all sense into the wildest
flood of it. Inasmuch, however, as the immediate and consequently
unbroken identity of both sides is in this view cancelled, and instead of this
the element of difference within this identity has become the basic principle
of the type itself, this very contradiction plunges us with no mediating
connections from the Finite into the Divine, and again from this latter into
what is most transitory of all; and we live and move among simulacra,
which rise up entirely as the growth of this alternating process, a kind of
witches' world, where the definition of every shape eludes our grasp as we
endeavour to seize it, is converted all at once into its opposite, or straddles
away into mere inflated enormities.

The general modes under which Hindoo art manifests itself may be
summarized under the three following points of view:
(a) In the first place we find the full hugeness of the content of the Absolute
is imposed by the imagination upon the sensuous in its aspect of singularity
in such a way that this particular thing is itself, in its own form and station,
taken completely to represent such a content and to exist as such for the
imaginative sense. In the Râmâyana, for example, the friend of Râma,
namely, the prince of apes Hanuman, is a principal personage, and he
accomplishes the bravest of exploits. And generally we may observe that
among the Hindoos the ape is revered as Divine, and we find, in fact, an
entire city of apes. In the ape, as this point of singularity, the infinite content
of the Absolute is envisaged and adored. It is just the same with the cow,
Sabalâ, which in the Râmâyana during the episodic treatment of the
expiations of Visvamitra, appears clothed with immeasurable power. If we
take a glance on higher planes we find entire families in India—even
though the individual here be merely a vacant and monotonously vegetating
life-unit—in whom the Absolute itself, as this concrete reality, is adored in
its immediate life and presence as God. This same coincidence is found in
Lamaism. Here, too, a single individual receives the highest worship due to
the present God. In India, however, this honour is not exclusively paid to
one man. Every Brahmin proves at once his claim from the day of his birth
in his own caste to be ranked as Brahman, and possesses that second birth
of the Spirit which identifies his humanity with God, in the way of Nature
through his actual bodily birth, so that the crown of the most Divine itself is
immediately referred back upon the entirely commonplace fact of physical
existence. For although the Brahmin is under the most sacred obligation to
read the Vedâs, and attain by this means an insight into the secrets of Deity,
this duty can be actually carried out in the most perfunctory way without
detracting in the least from the Brahmin's own divinity. In a similar manner
it is one of the modes most common to the representations of Hindooism to
have the primordial God set forth as the procreator or begetter, as we find
Eros is in the case of Greek mythology. This procreation as Divine activity
is further worked into all kinds of representations in a wholly material way,
and the private parts, both male and female, are treated as sacred in the
highest sense. And in a reverse way, and to no less extent, the Divine, when
it passes over in its independent Divinity to the plane of existing reality, is
suffered in a wholly trivial manner to get mixed up with everyday details.

We may take an example of this from the commencement of the Râmâyana,
where Brahmâ has come on a visit to Vâlmîkis, the mythical bard of the
Râmâyana. Vâlmîkis receives him entirely in the common Hindoo fashion,
pays him a compliment or two, places a stool before him, and supplies him
with water and fruits. Brahmâ sits down just like anybody else and
constrains his host to do likewise: and there they sit on and sit on until at
last Brahmâ orders Vâlmîkis to compose the poem of the Râmâyana.
Modes of conception such as these are still not symbolic in the strict sense;
for although we find that here, as the symbol requires, forms are taken from
the material of sense and diverted to the use of conceptions of more
universal import, we still find the further condition of this requirement
wanting, namely, that the particular existences must not actually exist for
sense-perception as this absolute significance, but merely suggest the same.
For the Hindoo imagination the ape, the cow, and the particular Brahmin
are not merely a cognate symbol of the Divine, but are contemplated and
represented as the Godhead itself, as existences adequate to that Godhead.
It is the contradiction inherent in this immediacy which is the motive force
of another feature in the conceptions of Hindoo art. For while, on the one
hand, that which is absolutely severed from sense, the spiritual significance
out and out, is conceived as the actually Divine, yet, on the other, the
particular facts of concrete reality are immediately envisaged by the
imagination, even in their sensuous existence, as Divine manifestations.
They are no doubt partly only taken to represent particular aspects of the
Absolute; but even so the particular thing in its immediacy is still
incompatible with the universality, which it is, as adequate to the same,
introduced to express; and it appears in all the more glaring contradiction to
it for the reason that the significance is here already conceived in its
universality, yet, despite of this, an express relation of identity is
immediately set up by the imagination between it and the most particular of
material facts.
(b) The most obvious way in which Hindoo art endeavours to mitigate this
disunion is, as we have already suggested, by the measureless extension of
its images. Particular shapes are drawn out into colossal and grotesque
proportions in order that they may, as forms of sense, attain to universality.
The particular form of sense, which is taken to express not itself and its own
characteristic meaning as a fact of external existence, but a universal

significance which lies outside it, fails to satisfy the imagination until it has
been torn out itself into vastness which knows neither measure nor limit.
This is the cause of all that extravagant exaggeration of size, not merely in
the case of spatial dimension, but also of measurelessness of time-durations,
or the reduplication of particular determinations, as in figures with many
heads, arms, and so on, by means of which this art strains to compass the
breadth and universality of the significance it assumes. The egg, for
example, contains the bird within it. This particular fact is enlarged to the
measureless conception of a world-egg secreting the universal life of all
creation, and in which Brahmâ, the procreating God, accomplishes without
effort the year of creation, until by virtue of his thought alone the the two
halves of the egg fall asunder. And, in addition to natural objects, human
individuals and events are exalted that they may express the significance of
truly Divine action in such a way that we can neither hold fast the Divine or
the human in their independence, but both seem to run in a continual
confusion backwards and forwards into one another. As a striking
illustration of such a mode of conception, we have the incarnations of
certain Hindoo gods, principally Vishnu, the conserver of life, whose
exploits figure largely in the great epic poems. Râmas is, for instance,
himself the seventh incarnation of Vishnu (Râmatshandra). From a review
of particular demands, actions, circumstances, modes of appearance, and
traits of demeanour, we are led to infer from these poems that this content is
in great measure borrowed from actual events, that is from the exploits of
ancient kings who exercised a powerful influence in creating new
conditions of law and order; we find ourselves surrounded by a thoroughly
human atmosphere and on the firm ground of reality. But then again, in a
converse direction, the entire scene expands, reaches out into the nebulous,
playing over and beyond it with universal conceptions, so that we lose the
vantage ground we had gained and are robbed of all our bearings. We are
treated in just the same way in the Sakuntala. At first we have set before us
the most gentle and odorous realm of Love, in which everything goes on its
way in an entirely human fashion; and then we are all at once snatched from
the wealth of this genuine world, and transported into the clouds of the
heaven of Indra, where everything suffers change, and our formerly
circumscribed sphere is inflated to the measure of the universal import of
Nature's life in its relation to the Brahmin and the power of Nature's gods,
which is vouchsafed to man in return for his severe self-mortifications.

Such modes of representation are also not to be termed in a strict sense
symbolical. That is to say the true symbol suffers the determinate shape,
which it applies, to remain under that original definition, because its
purpose is not to envisage therein the immediate existent of the significance
in its universality, but to point to that import merely through the qualities of
the object which are cognate to it. Hindoo art, however, although it severs
universality from the singular existing fact, still adds the further
requirement that both sides shall be immediately united through the
imagination, and is consequently forced to divest determinate existence of
its specific limitations, and, albeit in a material fashion, to enlarge in the
direction of indefiniteness and generally to change and reconstitute. In this
melting down of all clear definition, and in the confusion which results
from it, so that that form is always set down as highest for everything,
whether phenomena, events, or actions, which in the mode of their
figuration can neither for themselves assert nor intrinsically possess and
express any control over such content, we may rather seek for features
analogous to the type of the sublime than see any illustration of real
symbolism. For in the Sublime, as we shall see for ourselves further on, the
finite phenomenon only expresses the Absolute, which it would previsage
for conscious sense to the extent that in so doing it escapes from the world
of appearance, which fails to comprehend its content. This is just its
treatment of eternity. Its idea of it is sublime when it has to be expressed in
terms of time-duration, precisely through the emphasis it lays on the fact
that no number, however great, is sufficient. In this strain runs the text: "A
thousand years in Thy sight are even as a day." Hindoo art contains much of
the same or similar nature. It strikes the opening notes of "the Sublime"
symphony. The main difference, however, between it and the true Sublimity
consists in this, that the Hindoo imagination does not in the wild
exuberance of its images bring about the essential nothingness of the
phenomena which it makes use of, but rather through just this very
measurelessness and unlimited range of its visions believes that it has
annihilated and made to vanish all difference and opposition between the
Absolute and its mode of configuration. In this extreme type of
exaggeration, then, there is ultimately little of real kinship with either true
symbolism or Sublimity: it is equally remote from the true sphere of beauty.
It offers us no doubt, more particularly in its more sober delineation of that
which is exclusively human, much that is endearing and benign, many

gracious pictures and tender emotions, the most splendid and seductive
descriptions of Nature, the most childlike traits of Love and naïve
innocence, and withal much too that is magnanimous and noble; but, none
the less, if we review it generally according to the fundamental import of all
it expresses, we shall find that the spiritual is throughout rooted in sense,
the meanest objects are placed on the same plane as the highest, true
definition is wrecked, the Sublime is lowered to the conception of mere
immeasurability, and that which is the original material of mythos for the
most part vanishes before our eyes in the fantastic dreams of a restless and
inquisitive imaginative power, and modes of shaping the same devoid of all
intelligent purpose.
(c) In conclusion, the purest form of representation which we meet with at
this stage of imaginative conception is that of personification, as it
generally applies to the human figure. For the reason, however, that the
significance on this plane is not as yet grasped as the free subjectivity of
Spirit, but rather either under a determination of abstract universality or as a
mode of natural existence, one that contains, for example, the life of rivers,
mountains, stars, or sun, for this reason it is only employed as means of
expression for this kind of content under a mode which really detracts from
the full worth of the human form. For the human body, if we view it in its
true definition, no less than the form of human activities and events,
expresses simply concrete Spirit and a spiritual content, which is self-
contained and subsistent in this its reality, and possesses therewith no mere
symbol or external sign.
From one point of view consequently this personification, albeit the
significance, which it is invoked to represent, is taken to belong to the
spiritual no less than the natural, yet, on account of the abstractness which
clings to this form of significance, is on this stage of thought still of a
superficial nature, and needs yet many other modes of representation to be
rendered clear to the closer inspection, forms with which it is here
confusedly mingled and thereby itself made obscure. And, moreover, taking
it under another aspect, it is not the subjectivity here and its form which
supplies the characterization, but rather its expressions, actions, and so
forth; for it is in deed and action that the more defined line of severation
first asserts itself, which can be brought into relation with the specific
content of the universal significances. In that case, however, we are again

face to face with the defect that it is not the conscious subject, but merely
its means of expression, which supply the signification, no less than the
confusion of thought, that events and deeds, instead of constituting the
reality and the existence of the subject as determinately self-realized,
preserve its content and significance elsewhere. A series of such actions is
able therefore very possibly to carry with it a certain result and
consequence, which is derived from the content which such a series
subserves as its expression. This consequent result is, however, to an extent
equally great, liable again to be interrupted and in part suspended by that
which is central in the personification and the man[47], because subjective
activity is also a stimulus to capricious action and its manifestation, so that
both that which is significant and that which is destitute of this quality keep
up their varied and irregular interplay just in so far as the imagination is
unable to unite their significant characteristics and the forms which are
appropriate to them in one substantial and secure mode of association. And,
moreover, if it is the purely natural aspect of such facts which is exclusively
accepted as the unified content, in that case the material must inevitably
prove itself inadequate to support the human form, just as this, being only
fully adapted as a means of expressing Spirit, is on its side incapable of
representing what is wholly natural. In all these respects such a mode of
personification as the one we are examining fails to express a true mode; for
the truth of art requires, as the truth universally requires, that there should
be a complete concordance between the inward and the outward, that is, the
notion and its reality. Greek mythology, for example, personified the
Pontine sea; Scamander possesses its river gods, nymphs, dryads, and so
forth. In other words it builds up Nature in the most various forms as the
content of its human divinities. It does not, however, suffer its
personification to remain purely formal and superficial, but creates thereby
real individuals, in whom the purely natural significance fades into the
background, and the human element, on the contrary, which has taken up
and absorbed such material out of Nature, becomes the prominent factor.
Hindoo art, on the other hand, is unable to advance beyond a grotesque
intermingling of these two sides of Nature and humanity, so that neither is
treated according to its rightful claim, and both are merely given the forms
which are appropriate to the other.
Speaking in a general way we cannot consider even these personifications
to be as yet strictly symbolical, for the reason that owing to their formal

superficiality they do not stand in any essential relation to or mode of
association more truly intimate with the more determinate form which they
are presumed to express. At the same time we may note here, with respect
to other particular modifications and attributes, with which such
personifications appear to be intermingled, and which are taken to express
the more defined qualities generally attached to Divinities, an impulse in
the direction of symbolic representation, for which the personification then
stands merely as the universal type of widest connotation.
If we turn now to the more important examples of the imaginative sense on
the plane we are now considering, we have first to draw attention to
Trimûrtis, the triformed Godhead. This Deity includes in the first place
Brahmâ, the activity which brings forth and procreates, the creator of the
world, Lord of all the gods and much more beside. On the one hand he is to
be kept distinct from Brahman (as Neuter), that is from the ultimate Being,
and is the first-born of such. In another aspect, however, he again seems to
fall into union with this abstract Godhead, as generally happens with
Hindoo thought where the lines of difference are rarely held secure, and
part are allowed to vanish and the rest simply to get confused with each
other. The form with which he is most closely identified has much that is
symbolical about it; he is formed with four heads and four hands, and with
the latter are his sceptre and ring[48]. He is of a red colour, an obvious
suggestion of sunlight, since these Divinities invariably carry qualities
which are of universal significance in Nature and which are thus personified
in them. The second Deity of this triune Trimûrtis, is Vishnu, the preserving
Godhead, the third Sivas, the destructive Power. The symbols employed to
represent these gods are countless. For by reason of the universality of the
significances they express they comprehend an infinite number of varied
activities. In part these are related to particular phenomena of Nature,
mainly the elementary, such as, for example, the quality of "fiery,"[49] which
is an attribute of Vishnu, and frequently we have set before us shapes of the
most antagonistic description.
In the conception of this triform god we have the fact at once brought home
to us in the clearest way that the form of Spirit is not yet able to assert itself
in its Truth if for no other reason than this, that here it is not the spiritual
which constitutes the truly permeating significance. That is to say, this
trinity of gods would only be Spirit if the third god were an essentially

concrete unity, a unity which returned upon itself from the differentiation
and reduplication of its substance. For God, according to the true
conception of Godhead, is Spirit as this active and absolute self-
differentiation and Unity, a conception which is generally what constitutes
the notion of Spirit. In this Trimûrtis, however, the triune God is not by any
means such a concrete totality, but merely a passage from this to that, a
metamorphosis, a procreator, a destroyer, and so forth. We must be
accordingly very careful not to imagine that we have discovered the highest
Truth in these most primordial gropings of man's reason, and in this one
note of concord which, no doubt, as mere rhythmic expression[50], contains
the triune form of Deity, that is, the fundamental conception of Christian
theology, believe that we already have before us a recognition of the
Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Starting from such fundamental conceptions as those of Brahman and
Trimûrtis, Hindoo imagination expatiates still further without let in a
countless number of the most varied formed Divinities. For those primary
significances of universal application which are apprehended as essential
Deity are of such a kind that they may be rediscovered in an infinite number
of phenomena, which are again personified and symbolized as gods, and
each and all combine in throwing the greatest obstacles in the way of any
intelligible system by reason of the indefinite character and confusing
volubility[51] of this type of imagination, which fails utterly to grasp the real
nature of anything that it discovers, and merely wrests everything that it
touches from its own appropriate sphere. For these gods of subordinate
rank, at the head of which we may place such a Divinity as Indrus, who
represents the Air and the Heavens, the chief material is furnished by the
general forces of Nature, such as stars, rivers, and mountains conceived in
the various phases of their activity, their change, their influence on
mankind, whether beneficent or hurtful, preservative or destructive. One of
the most important subjects, however, of Hindoo imagination and art is the
origin of gods and the rest of creation, in other words its Theogony and
Cosmogony. For this type of imagination is generally rooted in the
continual effort to carry over that which is most removed from sense into
the very heart of the external world, or in the reverse process once more to
expunge that which stands nearest to sense and Nature by means of the
barest abstraction. Consequently the origin of the gods is referred back to

the primordial Godhead[52], and at the same time the workings and
existence of Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Sivas are represented as actual in
mountains, streams, and human events. A cosmological content of this kind
can, on the one hand, contain an independent and specific order of Deities,
while on the other these gods are made to merge in those universal
significances of the supremest type of Godhead. Such theogonies and
cosmogonies are numerous and of every conceivable variety. When anyone
ventures, therefore, to say that the Hindoos have thus or thus portrayed the
creation of the world or the origin of Nature, such a statement can only be
taken to apply to a particular sect or book; you can very easily find a
perfectly different account of these events elsewhere. The imagination of
this people in the pictures and images they have created is exhaustless.
A mode of conception which is conspicuous throughout the entire series of
these creation stories is the constantly repeated presentation of the creative
act not in the form of spiritual fiat, but of a purely natural process of
generation. Only after having made ourselves thoroughly conversant with
this mode of imaginative vision shall we discover the key to unlock the
meaning of many representations which at first totally confound all our
feelings of shame, shamelessness being here apparently driven to its
furthest limits, and in its utter sensuousness carried beyond all belief. A
striking example of this mode of imaginative treatment is offered us by the
notoriously popular episode from the Râmâyana, known as the descent of
Gangâ. This tale is narrated on the occasion when Râmas happens by
chance to come to the Ganges. The wintry and ice-covered Himavân, the
prince of the mountains, was father by the slender Menâ of two daughters,
Gangâ, the elder, and the beautiful Umâ the younger one. Certain gods,
more particularly Indras, beseech the father to send them Gangâ, in order
that they may institute the sacred rites, and as Himavat proves himself quite
ready to accede to their request Gangâ mounts on high to the blessed gods.
After this follows the further story of Umâ, who after accomplishing
wonderful actions of humility and penitence, is espoused to Rudras, that is,
Sivas. From this union spring up wild and unfruitful mountains. For a
hundred years long Sivas lay with Umâ in the bridal embrace, without
intermission, so that the gods aghast at the procreative power of Sivas, and
full of anxiety for the productive child, beseech him that he will divert the
stream of his strength on the Earth. This passage the English translator has
not ventured to translate literally, for the reason that it flings too much for

him every shred of shame or modesty to the winds. Sivas hearkens to the
beseechings of the gods, and staying his former procreative ardour, that he
may not utterly confound the universe, he loosens the seminal flood over
the Earth. Out of this, transpierced with fire, rises up the white mountain
which separates India from Tartary. Umâ, however, falls into scorn and
anger at this complaisance, and thereon curses all wedlock. In this section
of the tale we have what are mainly fearful and distorted pictures which run
so entirely counter to our ordinary notions of imagination and intelligent
senses that the most we can do is to observe what they would appear to
offer in default of either. Schlegel has omitted to translate this section of the
episode and merely added in his own words how Gangâ descends once
more on the Earth. And this took place in the following way. A certain
forebear of Râmas, Sagaras, was father of a bad son, and by a second wife
he was father of no less than 60,000 sons, who came into the world in a
pumpkin, were, however, raised up into stalwart men on clarified butter in
pitchers[53]. Now it chanced one day that Sagaras was of a mind to sacrifice
a steed, which was, however, seized from him by Vishnu in the form of a
serpent. On this Sagaras sends forth his 60,000 sons. But no sooner had
they come to Vishnu after great hardships and a long searching than a
breath of hers burns them all to ashes. After a weary waiting a certain
grandson of Sagaras, by name Ansumân the Shining, son of Asamaschas,
set forth to find his 60,000 uncles and the sacrificial steed. He actually
comes upon both the steed Siwas and the heap of ashes. The king of birds,
Garudas, however, notifies to him the fact that unless the stream of the holy
Gangâ flows down from heaven over the heap of ashes his relations will be
unable to return to life. Whereupon the stalwart Ansumân endures for
32,000 years on the mountain-top of Himavân the sternest mortifications.
All in vain. Neither his own chastisements nor those of yet another 30,000
years of his son Dwilipas are of the slightest avail. At last the son of
Dwilipas, the glorious Bhagîrathas, succeeds in accomplishing the feat, but
only after mortifications which last 1,000 years. Then the Gangâ plunges
down; but in order that the Earth may not thereby shiver in pieces, Siwas
now bows his head so that the water runs into his mane. Thereupon yet
further mortifications are enjoined upon Bhagîrathas, in order that Gangâ
may be free to stream forth from these locks. Finally she is poured forth in
six streams; the seventh Bhagîrathas conducts after mighty privations to the

place of the 60,000, who mount up to heaven, and therewith Bhagîrathas
rules for yet many a year over his people in peace.
Other theogonies such as the Scandinavian and the Greek are very similar
in type to the Hindoo. The principal feature of them all is this of physical
generation and production; but not one of them plunges so headlong into
the subject or in general displays such caprice and impropriety in the
images of its invention as the Hindoo. The theogony of Hesiod is in
particular far more intelligible and succinct, so that at least one knows
where one is, and is clear as to the general significance; and this is so
because the impression is far more pronounced that the form and external
embodiment of the myth is set forth by the narrator as something external.
The mythos starts in this case[54] with Chaos, Erebos, Eros, and Gaia. The
Earth (Gaia) brings forth Uranos of her own accord, and then is mother by
him of the mountains, sea, and so forth, also of Cronos and the Cyclops,
Centimani[55], whom Uranos, however, shortly after birth incarcerates in
Tartaros. Gaia thereupon induces Cronos to castrate Uranos. The deed is
accomplished. And from the blood that falls on the Earth spring to life the
Erinnyes and the Giants. The castrated member is caught by the sea, and
from the sea's foam arises Cytherea. In all this description the outlines are
more clearly and decisively drawn. And we are thereby carried beyond the
circle of mere gods of Nature.
3. If we endeavour now to seize some point where the transition is
emphasized to the stage of real symbolism, we shall find the same already
in the first beginnings of Hindoo imagination. That is to say, however
preoccupied the Hindoo imagination may be in its efforts to contort the
sensuous phenomenon into a plurality of Divinities, a preoccupation which
no other people has displayed with anything like the same exhaustless scope
and countless transformations, yet from another point of view in many of its
visions and narratives it remains throughout constant to that spiritual
abstraction of a God supreme over all, in contrast with whom the particular,
sensuous, and phenomenal is undivine, inadequate, and consequently is
apprehended as something negative, something which has finally to be
cancelled. For, as we have from the first noticed, it is precisely this
continual involution of one side on the other which constitutes the
fundamental type of the Hindoo imagination, and makes it for ever
incapable of finding a true principle of reconciliation. The art is

consequently never tired of representing, in every imaginable way, the
surrender of the sensuous and the power of spiritual abstraction and self-
absorption. Of this kind are the representations of toilsome mortifications
and profound meditations, of which not merely the most ancient epical
poems, such as the "Râmâyana" and the "Mahâbhârata," but also many
other works of art furnish most important examples. No doubt many of
these self-chastisements are undergone on grounds of ambition, or at least
with a view to definite objects, which do conduct the devotee to the highest
and most final union with Brahman, and to the mortification of everything
carnal and finite. An object of this kind is the endeavour to secure the power
of a Brahmin; but even in this there is always the fact present to
consciousness that the expiation and the continuance of a meditation that is
ever more and more diverted from the objects of sense will raise the
devotee over his birth-place in a particular caste, no less than help him
resist the power of Nature and the gods of Nature. For this reason, that
prince of Divinities of this class, Indras, opposes most signally strenuous
aspirants, and strives to entice them away; or, in the case where all his
seductions fail, he invokes assistance from the supreme gods lest the entire
heaven fall into confusion.
In the representation of mortifications of this kind and the several kinds and
grades according to which they are ranked, Hindoo art is almost as fertile in
its invention as in its system of Divinities, and it pursues the theme with the
most thorough earnestness.
This, then, is the point from which we may now extend our survey in a
forward direction.

C. REAL SYMBOLISM

In the case of symbolical, no less than that of Fine Art, it is necessary that
the significance which it seeks to embody should not merely be set forth, as
is the case in Hindoo art, from the first immediate unity of the same with its
objective existence, such as obtains before any severation or distinction has
as yet been emphasized, but that this significance should itself be
independent and free from the immediate sensuous content. This
deliverance can only so far assert itself as the sensuous and natural medium
is both grasped and envisaged as itself essentially negative, as that which

has to be and has been absorbed. It is a further requirement, moreover, that
the negativity, which is successful in making its appearance as the passing
off and the self-dissolution of the Natural, should be accepted and receive
embodiment as the absolute import of the object generally, as a phase, that
is to say, of the Divine. But with a fulfilment of such claims we are already
beyond the limits of Hindoo art. It is true that the consciousness of this
negative side is not wholly absent from the Hindoo imagination. Sivas is the
destroyer no less than the producer. Indras dies, nay, more, the Destroyer
Time, personified as Kâla the terrible giant, confounds the entire universe
and all gods, even Trimûrtis, who passes away at the same time in
Brahman, just as the individual in his self-identification with the highest
form of Divinity suffers his Ego and all his wisdom and will to vanish
away. In these conceptions, however, the negative element is in part merely
a transformation and change, in part only an abstraction, which allows all
definition to drop away, in order that it may thrust its path to an indefinite
and consequently vacuous and content-less universality. The substance of
the Divine on the other hand persists through change of form, passage over
and advance to a system of many Deities, and the abrogation of that system
once more in the one highest form of God unalterably one and the same. It
is not that conception of the one God, which itself essentially possesses, as
this unity, the negative aspect as its own determination, both necessary and
appropriate to its own essential notion. In an analogous way the destructive
and hurtful element is placed according to the Parsee view of existence
outside the personality of Ormuzd in Ahriman, and consequently only
makes a contradiction and conflict manifest belonging under no form of
relation to Ormuzd, as a distinct phase of his own substance.
The actual point in the advance which we have now to make consists,
therefore, in this that, on the one hand, the negative aspect, fixed by
consciousness in an independent relation as the Absolute, is, however, on
the other, merely regarded as a phase of the Divine, as a phase, however,
which is not only as outside the true Absolute incidental to another
Godhead[56], but is to be so ascribed to the Absolute, that the true God
appears as a process in which He negates Himself, and thereby contains this
negative element as an inherent self-determination of His own substance.
Through this enlarged conception the Absolute is for the first time
essentially concrete, that is self-determination, and thereby essential unity,

whose particular antitheses, as parts of a process, appear to consciousness
as the different determinations of one and the same God. For the necessity
of giving essential definition to the absolute significance is just that which
at this stage it is felt to be of first importance to satisfy. All the significances
up to this point persisted by virtue of their abstract character as absolutely
undefined and consequently void of content, or were merged, when in a
converse direction they tended to clear distinction, immediately in the
Being of Nature, or fell into a conflict in respect to their configuration
which gave them no repose and reconciliation. This twofold defect we have
now to remove, both by showing the advance of Thought regarded as itself
an ideal process, and by illustrating that advance by means of particular
facts of the mind and institutions of nations on the objective plane of
history.
And in the first place we may observe a more intimate bond of association
is set up between the Inward and Outward aspect of consciousness in the
increased recognition that every determination of the Absolute is already
essentially an inchoate movement in the direction of expression. For every
determination is essentially distinction[57]. The External, however, is as
such always defined and distinct, and consequently there is thus an aspect
immediately presented, according to which the External is manifested in a
form more adequate to the significance than was possible under the modes
of conception as yet examined. The first definition, however, and essential
negation of the Absolute inevitably falls short of the free self-determination
of Spirit as Spirit. It is merely the immediate negation of itself. This
immediate and consequently natural negation in its most comprehensive
form of statement is Death. The Absolute is consequently apprehended now
in a way that it is compelled to submit itself to this form of negation as a
part of the essential determination of its own notion, in other words it is
obliged to enter the path of extinction, and we observe consequently the
glorification of Death and grief in the first instance made present to the
national consciousness as the death of the dying sensuous material. The
death of Nature is cognized as a necessary part[58] of the life of the
Absolute. The Absolute, however, on the one hand, in order to be subject to
this phase of Death, must be posited already as determinate existence; and,
equally from another point of view, must not be suffered to remain in the
annihilation of Death, but must be held to re-establish itself in an

essentially positive unity on a yet higher plane of existence. Death is
consequently not accepted here as constituting the entire significance, but
merely one aspect of the same. And though no doubt the Absolute is in one
sense viewed as a cessation of its immediate existence, a passage over and
beyond and a passing away, yet it is quite as much in the reverse sense
conceived as a return upon itself, as a resurrection, as an eternal process of
Divine realization rendered possible by virtue of this evolutional principle
of negation. For Death is capable of a twofold meaning. Under the first it is
the immediate passing away of the natural; under the second Death is the
extinction of the exclusively natural and thereby the birth of a higher type,
that is, spiritual, from which the merely natural falls away in the sense, that
Spirit possesses in itself this phase as an essential phase of its own
substance.
For this reason, secondly, the form of Nature can no longer be accepted in
the immediacy of sensuous existence as adequate to the significance
referred to it, because the significance of the External consists just in this,
that it must die in the form of its real existence and rise again.
On the same ground, thirdly, the mere conflict between significance and
form and that ferment of the imagination, which was the fantastic product
of Hindoo conceptions, drop away. The significance is, it is true, even now
not yet fully and with absolute clarity cognized in its pure unity free from
all sense-presented reality, so that it could be set forth in real contrast with
the form of its actual embodiment; conversely, however, the form itself, this
particular, object, that is, whether in its glorified shape of grandiosity or in
any other more conspicuous form of caricature, as an image of animal life, a
human personification, event or action, is not taken to envisage for
immediate sense an adequate existence of the Absolute. This corrupt form
of identity is already surpassed as fully to the extent that it still falls behind
that other complete deliverance. And in the place of both of these extremes
we have asserted that kind of representation, which we have above already
described as the real symbolical. On the one hand it is now able to appear
for the reason that the Inward, or that which is conceived as significance, is
no longer something which merely, as in Hindoo conceptions, comes and
passes away, at one moment is absorbed immediately in externality, at
another is withdrawn from the same into the solitude of abstraction, but it
begins to make itself independently secure against the mere reality of

Nature. And on the other hand the symbol is now forced to seek some form
of plastic shape. That is to say, although the significance, identical in every
way with that which has hitherto obtained, possesses as a phasal condition
of its content the negation of the Natural, yet the true Inward now for the
first time shows a definite tendency to wrest its way from that Natural, and
is consequently itself still swallowed up within the external mode of
appearance, so that it is unable independently to be brought home to
consciousness in its clear universality without having previously had to
comply with the form of external reality.
Now the kind of configuration which is implied by the notion of that which
generally constitutes the fundamental significance in symbolism, may be
described in the following terms, namely, we find in it that the definite
forms of Nature, human activities and so forth, neither—to express one
aspect of it—represent or signify merely themselves severally in their
isolated natural characteristics, nor—to emphasize the other aspect—bring
their immediate form to consciousness as the Divine actually visible to
sense. They are rather employed to suggest that same Divine through
qualities which they possess cognate with a significance of more
comprehensive range. For this reason it is just that universal dialectic of
Life, its origin, growth, collapse in and awakening from Death, which also
in this connection supplies the appropriate content for the true symbolic
type; and this is so because we find in almost every province of natural and
spiritual life certain phenomena, which presuppose this process as the basis
of their existence, and consequently can be utilized as means of giving a
visible body to such significant aspects and of pointing by suggestion to the
same, a real affinity being actually inherent between the two sides. Thus
plants spring from their seed, sprout, grow, bring forth fruit; the fruit
corrupts and produces fresh seed. In the same way the sun rises to a low
elevation in winter; in Spring he mounts on high, until we have his meridian
reached in summer; it is then that he pours forth his richest blessing or
exerts the greatest destructive force; after that he inclines once more
towards the horizon. The various stages of human life, too, childhood,
youth, maturity, and old age, illustrate precisely the same universal process.
But in a special sense specific localities such as the Nile-valley are adapted
to the closer particularization in the direction indicated.

In so far, then, as that which is purely fantastic is displaced by these more
fundamental traits of affinity and the more intimate applicability of the
expression to the import it expresses there arises a thoughtful process of
selection with reference to the comparative congruity or incongruity of the
symbolizing forms, and the intoxicated eddy to and fro which prevailed is
laid to rest in a more intelligent circumspection.
We consequently observe that a union more at one with itself reappears in
the place of that which we found in the first stage of our process, subject,
however, to this characteristic difference, that the identity of the
significance with its objectively real existence is no longer one immediately
envisaged, but one that is set up out of the difference and consequently not
one previously discovered, rather we should say a mode of union that is the
product of mind (Spirit). That which, in its most general terms, we call the
Inward begins at this point to assume the solidity of self-subsistence, to be
conscious of itself; it seeks for its counterfeit in the objects of Nature,
which on their part possess a similar reflection in the life and destinies of
Spirit. Out of this eager movement to recognize the one side in the other,
and by means of the external to bring for itself visibly to sense and the
imaginative faculty the significance, as also to envisage by virtue of that
Inward the significance of the external shapes through a union in which
both sides are associated, we get that vast impulse of art which finds its
satisfaction through means which are purely symbolical. Only when the
Inward is free and is driven forward to make clear to the imaginative vision
in real form what it essentially is, and to have before itself this very vision,
moreover, in the form of an external work, do we find that the genuine
impulse of art, and the particularly plastic arts, begins to be a living fact.
Then it is that the necessity is felt to clothe the Inward with a form not
merely previously discovered from the resources of spiritual activity, but
rather one that is minted out of spirit (mind) for the first time. In the
symbol, then, there is a second form created, which, however, is not
independently valid for itself as its main purpose, but is rather employed to
envisage the significance, and stands consequently in a dependent relation
to the same.
It were possible to apprehend the above relation in such a way as though the
significance were that point from which the artistic consciousness starts on
its journey, and that only after having found this it begins to look round for

means to express its universal conceptions through external phenomena
cognate in their affinity to such conceptions. This, however, is not the way
that real symbolic art proceeds. For its characteristic distinction consists in
this, that its penetration fails as yet to grasp the significances in their
independent consistency, independent, that is, from every mode of
externality. For this reason its point of departure is rather from that which is
immediately presented and its concrete existence in Nature and Spirit. This
it thereupon, in the first instance, expands to the measure of the universality
of such significances, whose determination such objective real existence
contains only under more restricted conditions, adding this wider range in
order that it may create a form from Spirit, which is to make that
universality visible to consciousness in this particular reality when once it is
set forth clearly before perception. Regarded as symbolical forms,
therefore, the images of art have not as yet attained a form truly adequate to
Spirit, inasmuch as Spirit itself is not as yet at this stage essentially clear
and thereby free Spirit; but we have at least here embodiments, which
essentially proclaim the fact to us, that they are not merely selected to
represent simply themselves, but are intended to point to significances of
profounder intension and more—comprehensive range. That which is
purely natural and sensuous asserts itself as fact and nothing beside; the
symbolical work of art, however, whether it be the phenomena of Nature or
the human figure that it makes visible to the eye, points at the same time
over and outside such facts to something further, which, however, must
possess an intimate root of affinity with the images that are thus displayed,
and an essential bond of relation with them. This association between the
concrete form and its universal significance may conceivably be present in
many different ways. At one time the emphasis will be laid on the external
aspect, and it will consequently be more obscure; at another, however, the
basis of affinity will be more pronounced as in the case when the
universality, which is to be symbolized, constitutes, in fact, the essential
content of the concrete phenomenon. In this case naturally it is a much
simpler matter to grasp the symbolic character of the object.
The most abstract mode of expression in this respect is number, which,
however, it is only possible to use as an indication of a further meaning
beyond that it ordinarily elucidates when this significance is itself,
essentially numerical. The numbers seven and twelve are frequently met
with in Egyptian architecture, because seven is the number of the planets,

and twelve is that of the lunar revolutions or the number of feet that the
water of the Nile must necessarily rise in order to fructify the land. Such a
number is then regarded as sacred in so far as it is present as a determinant
in the great elementary relations, which are revered as forces in the whole
life of Nature. Twelve steps or seven pillars are to this extent symbolical.
The same kind of numerical symbolism has an extensive influence upon the
form of widely famous mythologies. The twelve labours of Hercules, for
example, appear to contain a reference to the twelve months of the year; for
if Hercules under one aspect of the myth is no doubt presented to us as the
thoroughly human impersonation of a hero, in another he unquestionably
indicates a significance of Nature under a symbolized form, and, in fact, is a
personification of the course of the sun.
In a further and more complete sense symbolical configurations of space,
labyrinthine passages, and such like carry a symbolical image of the course
of the planets, just as dances, too, in virtue of their complex evolutions
symbolically express the motion of the great elementary bodies.
And further, on a higher plane, the bodies of animals are utilized as
symbols, but most succinctly of all the human figure, which, even at this
stage, as we shall see later on, appears to be elaborated in modes more
compatible with its intrinsic worth for the reason that even now Spirit in
general makes a real movement to embody itself from out the mere
swaddling clothes of Nature in a shape more adequate to its own self-
subsistent personality. Such, then, constitutes our general concept of the
true form of symbolism and the necessity under which art labours to
express the same. And in order that we may discuss the more concrete
exemplifications of this type of symbolism, it will be necessary in dealing
with this first plunge of Spirit into the wealth of its own resources to leave
the East and direct our attention mainly on the West.
As a symbol of universal import to indicate the point of view where we now
stand, we may perhaps first and foremost fix before our eyes the image of
the Phoenix, which is its own funeral pile, yet ever is rejuvenated out of the
flames of its death and rises from the ashes. Herodotus informs us (II, 73)
that at least in representations he saw this bird in Egypt, and, in fact, it is the
Egyptian people who also supply us with a focus for the type of symbolical
art. Before, however, we proceed to the closer consideration of Egyptian art
we will mention several other myths, which form, as it were, the passage to

that national symbolism which we find most elaborate, no matter from what
direction we approach it. Such are the myths of Adonis, that of his death,
and the lament of Aphrodite over him, the funeral festivals, etc.,
conceptions and rites which find their original home on the Syrian coast.
The service of Cybele among the Phrygians possesses the same
significance, which also finds its echo in the myths of Castor and Pollux,
Ceres and Proserpina.

As the essence of such significance we find in the above quoted examples,
before everything else, that phasal condition of negation we have already
alluded to, the death, that is, of the natural regarded as a basic and absolute
condition of the Divine process, emphasized as such, and made visible in its
independence. It is in this sense that we can explain the funeral festivals
that celebrate the death of the god, the excessive lamentations over his loss,
which is once more made good through his rediscovery, resurrection, and
rejuvenescence, making it possible for the festivals of joy to follow. This
universal significance contains further its more definite relation to Nature.
In winter the sun loses his force, while in spring he returns once more, and
with that Nature regains her youth, she dies and is reborn. In examples such
as these the Divine, personified as a human event, discovers its significance
in the life of Nature, which then from a further point of view becomes a
symbol for the essential character of the negative condition generally, in
spiritual things no less than natural.
It is in Egypt, however, that we have to look for the perfect example of
symbolical representation in its systematic elaboration of characteristic
content and form. Egypt is the land of symbol, which proposes to itself the
spiritual problem of the self-interpretation of Spirit, without being able
successfully to solve it. The problems remain without an answer; and such
solution as we are able to supply consists therefore merely in this, that we
grasp these riddles of Egyptian art and its symbolical productions as this
very problem which Egypt propounds for herself but is unable to solve. For
the reason that we find that Spirit here still endeavours in the external
objects of sense, from which again it strains to free itself, and further
labours with unwearied assiduity, to evolve from itself its essential
substance by means of natural phenomena no less than to embody the same
in the form of spirit for the vision of the senses, rather than as the pure
content of mind, this Egyptian people may, in contrast to all the instances
previously examined, be described as the nation Art claims for herself[59].
Its works of art, however, remain full of mystery and silence, without music
or motion; and this is so because Spirit here has not yet truly found its own
life, nor has learned how to utter the clear and luminous speech of mind. In
the unsatisfied stress and impulse, to bring before the vision through her art,
albeit in so voiceless a way, this wrestle of herself with herself, to give
shape to the Inward of her life, but only to become conscious of her own

Inward, no less than that which universally prevails[60], through external
forms which are cognate with it—we have in a sentence the characterization
of Egypt. The people of this wonderful land was not merely agricultural, but
also constructive, a folk which tossed up the soil in every direction, delved
lakes and canals, and exercised their artistic instincts not merely in giving
visible shape to buildings of enormous solidity, but in carrying works
themselves of vast dimension to a like extent into the bowels of the earth.
To erect buildings of this kind was, as we have long ago learned from
Herodotus, a principal occupation of this people, and one of the chief
exploits of their kings. The buildings of the Hindoo race are also
unquestionably of colossal size; we shall, however, find nowhere else a
variety which can compare with that of Egypt.
1. Reviewing now the general conceptions of Egyptian art with a closer
attention to particular aspects of it, we may in the first place define the
fundamental principle of so much of it as follows, that we find here the
Inward is securely held in its independent opposition to the immediacy of
external existence. And what is more, this Inward is conceived as the
negation of Life, in other words the dead thing, not as the abstract negation
of the evil and hurtful thing, such as Ahriman in contrast to Ormuzd, but as
form essentially substantive.
(a) To illustrate this thought further, the Hindoo merely subtilizes his life to
the most empty of abstractions, that is in result one that therewith negates
every form of concrete content. Such a Brahm-becoming process is not to
be found in Egypt; rather we find here that the invisible possesses a fuller
significance; the corpse secures the content of the living body itself, which,
however, as torn away from immediate existence, in its retirement from
actual life[61], still possesses its relation to that which is alive, and in this
concrete form is maintained as self-subsistent. It is a well-known fact that
the Egyptians embalmed and revered cats, dogs, hawks, ichneumons, bears,
and wolves (Herod., II, 67), but most of all the dead human body (Herod.,
II, 86-90). By them the honour paid to the dead is not that of burial, but its
preservation from age to age as a corpse.
(b) And moreover we may observe that the Egyptians do not merely remain
constant to this immediate and still wholly natural permanency of the dead.
That which is preserved in its physical or natural aspect is also conceived to
endure in a form present to the imagination. Herodotus informs us that the

Egyptians were the first who held the doctrine that the human soul is
immortal. We consequently find that they are the first who present to us a
more exalted mode of this resolution of the natural and spiritual, a mode
that is to say, under which it is not merely the natural body which secures
an independent self-subsistence.
The immortality of the soul is a conception which borders closely upon the
freedom of Spirit. The Ego is here apprehended as removed from the purely
natural mode of its existence, reposing on its own substance. This
knowledge of itself, however, is the principle of freedom. No doubt we are
not justified in asserting that the Egyptians grasped the notion of spiritual
freedom in its profoundest sense. We must not imagine that their belief in
the immortality of the soul is identical with our own form of that belief; but
they already possessed the power to retain securely that which was
separated from Life under a form of existence visible only to the
imagination, no less than one in which it was identical with the bodily
material. They have thereby made possible the passage to the full
emancipation of Spirit, albeit it was but the threshold of the temple of
freedom that they passed over. This fundamental conception of theirs is
further expanded to a unified and substantial Kingdom of the Departed set
up in contrast to the immediate presence of the real. A Court of Justice of
the Dead is held in this invisible state over which Osiris as Amenthes
presides. One of similar character is also instituted in the sphere of
immediate reality, justice being executed even among men over the dead,
and after the decease of a king every one was entitled to submit his
grievances to that court.
(c) If we now proceed to inquire what is the symbolical form of art, which
is given to such conceptions, we must look for this among the characteristic
features of Egyptian architecture. The form of this architecture is twofold;
there is one type that is superterraneous, while the other is subterraneous.
On the one hand we find underground labyrinths, gorgeous and extensive
excavations, passages half a mile in length, dwellings covered with
hieroglyphics elaborated with every possible care. On the other we have
piled above their level those amazing constructions among which we may
first and foremost reckon the pyramids. For centuries men have ventilated
various notions as to the precise meaning and significance of these
pyramids. It is now, however, assured beyond dispute that they are nothing

more or less than the enclosures of the graves of kings or sacred animals,
such as the Apis, the Cat, or the Ibis. In this way we have before our eyes in
the pyramids the simple prototype of symbolical art. They are enormous
crystals which secrete an Inward within them; and they so enclose an
external form which is the product of art, that we are at the same time made
aware they stand there for this very Inward in its severation from the mere
actuality of Nature, and that their entire significance depends on that
relation. But this kingdom of Death and the Invisible, which here
constitutes the significance, possesses merely the one and, what is more, the
formal aspect appropriate to the true type of art, that is its dissociation from
immediate existence; it is for this reason primarily but a Hades, not yet a
Life, which, although raised above sensuous existence as such, is none the
less at the same time essentially a defined existence, and thereby
intrinsically free and living Spirit. Consequently the embodiment for such
an Inward still remains in relation to the determinacy of the same's content
quite as much a wholly external form and envelopment. Such an external
environment, in which an Inward reposes under a veil, are the pyramids.
2. In so far, then, as the Inward can be generally envisaged as an external
object to immediate perception, the Egyptians in their relation to the aspect
opposed to this externality have come to worship a Divine existence in
living animals, such as the bull, the cat, and various others. That which is
alive is on a higher plane than the purely inorganic object, inasmuch as the
living organism possesses an Inward, to which the external shape points,
which, however, persists as an Inward and consequently a realm of mystery.
This sacred cult of animals must consequently be understood as the vision
of a secreted soul[62], which as Life is a power superior to that which is
merely external. To us no doubt it can only appear as a repugnant fact that
animals, dogs and cats, are held sacred instead of that which is truly
spiritual.
This worship, moreover, has nothing symbolical in it viewed simply as
such; for it is the actual living animal, Apis or the like, which is here itself
revered as the existence of God. The Egyptians, however, have used the
shapes of animals in a symbolical way. In that case they are no longer valid,
simply for what they are, but it is further assumed that they express a more
universal import. We find the most ingenuous illustration of this in the use
of animal masks, which we find more particularly under representations of

embalming, at which process certain individuals, who take an active part,
either in opening the corpse or removing the intestines, are depicted
wearing such masks. It is obvious that the animal's head is not taken to
present the animal itself, but a significance at the same time distinct from it
and more universal. The forms of animals are also utilized in other ways
than this in admixture with the human form. Human figures are to be found
with heads of lions, which have been interpreted as images of Minerva; then
there are heads of the hawk, and in the heads of Ammon we find the horns
still retained. Examples such as the above obviously imply symbolical
relations. In a like sense the hieroglyphical writing of the Egyptians is in
great measure symbolical, for it either endeavours to make its meaning
comprehensible through the images of real objects which do not stand for
themselves, but a universality which is cognate with them, or, as is still
more frequently the case, in the so-called phonetic aspect of this style of
writing, it signifies particular letters by means of the specific mark of some
external object, whose initial letter possesses in speech the same tone as that
which it is the intention to express.
3. And generally it is the fact that in Egypt pretty nearly every conformation
is symbolical and hieroglyphical, expressing not itself but indicative of
something more, with which it possesses affinity, or in other words a
cognate relation. The truest forms of the symbol, however, are only
completely illustrated in such cases where we find that this relation is of a
more profound and fundamental character than those we have just adverted
to. We will now briefly enumerate a few constantly recurring examples of
this more important type of affiliation.
(a) Precisely as Egyptian belief[63] surmises a mysterious Inwardness of
content in the animal form, we find the human figure represented in such a
way that the most characteristic intension[64] of subjectivity is still asserted
through an external relation, and consequently is unable to unfold into the
freedom of Beauty. Particularly remarkable in this respect are those colossal
figures of Memnon which, reposing on themselves, motionless, with arms
glued to the body, feet close together, inflexible, stiff and lifeless, are set up
face to face with the sun, waiting for his ray to strike them, animate them,
and make them resonant. Herodotus, at any rate, informs us that these
Memnonic figures emitted a musical note on the sun's rising. The higher
criticism has no doubt expressed itself as sceptical on the latter point; the

fact, however, of a distinct note has recently been once more established
both by Frenchmen and Englishmen; and though it appears that this echo is
no result of previous mechanical ingenuity, we have an explanation of it in
the fact that, as sometimes happens with minerals which make a crackling
noise in water, the tone of these images of stone is actually produced by the
collective action of the dew, the morning cool, and the subsequent impact of
the sun's rays, to the extent, that is, that tiny fractures appear in the stone
which then again disappear. In any case we may attribute to these colossal
shapes the symbolical import, that they do not possess the spiritual principle
of Life free in themselves, and consequently require that their animation
should be brought to them externally by Light, which alone is able to unbar
the music of their life, instead of having the power to accept the same from
that real soul of Inwardness, which essentially carries with it measure and
beauty. In contrast to them the human voice is the echo of personal feeling
and the soul's self, without any external stimulant, just as the height of
human art generally consists in the fact that the Inward of Spirit supplies the
form thereof from its own substance. The Inward or soul of the human form
is in Egypt still a mute, and in its animation it is the relation to external
nature which alone commands attention.
(b) A further type of symbolical conception is to be found in Isis and Osiris.
Osiris is an object of procreation and birth, and is done to death by Typhon.
Isis seeks for the scattered members, finds, collects, and buries them. This
mythos of the god has, then, in the first place as its content purely natural
significance. From one point of view, that is to say, Osiris is the sun, and his
life-history stands as symbolic for his yearly course; from another, however,
he signifies the rise and fall of the Nile, which is necessarily the source of
all fruitfulness in Egypt. For in Egypt there may not be a drop of rain for
years together, and it is the Nile which primarily waters the land by its
floods. In winter time it flows but a shallow stream within its bed; then,
however, with the summer-solstice ("Herod.," II, 19) it begins for a hundred
days to rise, pours over its banks and streams far and wide over the land.
Finally the water dries up beneath the sun's heat and the scorching desert
winds, and once more retires to its course. Under such conditions the tillage
of the soil is carried out with ease; the most luxurious vegetation springs up.
Everything buds and ripens. The sun and Nile, and the way both of them
become weak or strong, these are the conspicuous forces of Nature in this
land, which the Egyptian has symbolically depicted under a human form in

the myths of Isis and Osiris. To this type of symbolism, too, belongs the
symbolical representation of the zodiac, which is associated with the year's
course, just as the number of the twelve gods is bound up with the months.
Conversely, however, Osiris typifies under another aspect the entirely
human. He is held sacred as the founder of agriculture, of the division of the
soil, property and laws, and his worship is consequently to an equal extent
related to human activities, which are connected in the closest manner with
ethical and judicial functions.
In the same way he is judge of the Dead, and secures as such a significance
wholly released from the mere life of Nature, an import under which the
symbolical tends to pass away for the reason that here the Inward and
Spiritual is of itself content of the human form, which, under such a mode
of relation, begins to conserve the Inward essentially belonging to it, one,
that is, which through its external form signifies merely its own substance.
This spiritual process, however, assumes again in equal measure as its
content the external life of Nature, and, for example, in temples, number of
steps, floors, and pillars, in labyrinths and their passages, windings and
chambers, represents the same in an external manner. Osiris is thus quite as
much the natural as he is the spiritual life in the different phases of his
process[65] and its transformations; and his symbolical embodiments are
partly symbolic of the elements of Nature; while again in part these changes
of Nature are themselves merely symbols of spiritual activities and their
various phases. For this reason, too, the human form persists here as no
mere personification, such as we found to be the-case previously, because
here the natural aspect, albeit from one point of view it appears as the real
significance, yet from another is itself merely asserted as a symbol of the
Spirit; and, generally speaking, at this stage of conception, where we find
that the Inward struggles to come forth from the sense-vision of Nature, it is
in a position of subordinance.
For the same reason we find here that the human figure already receives an
entirely different type of elaboration, attesting thereby a real effort to
penetrate the arcana of true Inwardness and Spirit, though this endeavour
also fails as yet to attain its object, that is, the essential freedom of the
Spiritual. And it is by reason of this very defect that the human figure
remains before us with neither freedom nor serene clarity, colossal,
brooding, petrified, legs, arms, and head glued straitened and tight to the

rest of the body, without the grace or motion of Life. Thus it is that art is
first ascribed to Daedalus, in that he loosed arms and feet from their fetters,
and endowed the body with movement.
On account of this alternative aspect of symbolism above referred to
symbolism in Egypt is, in addition to its other characteristics, a totality of
symbols in the sense that what in one respect is asserted as significance is
employed as symbol in a sphere cognate with it. This ambiguous
association of a symbolism which makes significance and form intertwine,
which is further actually typical or suggestive of much, and thereby is
already concurrent with that inward subjective sense, which alone is
capable of following such indications in a variety of directions[66], is the
characteristic distinction of these images, albeit by reason of this ambiguity
the difficulty of interpreting them is of course increased.
A significance of this type—attempts at deciphering which are
unquestionably nowadays carried too far for the reason that pretty nearly
every kind of form is virtually set before us as symbolical in some relation
—may very possibly from the point of view of the Egyptians themselves
have been clear and intelligible as significance. But, as we insisted at the
very entrance of our inquiry, the appropriate motto for the interpretation of
Egyptian symbolism is implicite multum nihil explicite. There is a type of
workmanship undertaken with the express endeavour that it shall carry its
own interpretation on the forehead, but we only find there evidence of the
effort; it stops short of the essential point of self-illumination. It is in this
sense that we must fix our eyes on the works of Egyptian art. They contain
riddles, the full solution of which is not merely withheld from ourselves,
but was equally beyond the reach of the great majority of the artists who
created them.
(c) The works of Egyptian art in their excessively mysterious symbolism
are therefore riddles, let us rather say the objective riddle's self. And we
may summarily define the Sphinx as symbol of the real significance of the
genius of Egypt. It stands as a symbol for symbolism itself. In countless
numbers, set forth in rows of a hundred at a time, we come across these
Sphinx-forms on Egyptian soil; they are hewn from the hardest stone,
polished, covered with hieroglyphics, and in the vicinity of Cairo of such
colossal dimensions that their lion-claws alone measure a man's height.
Their animal bodies lie in repose, above which as bust a human body rears

itself; now and again we find the head of a ram, but in the most common
case it is that of a woman. Out of the obtuse strength and robustness of
animality the spirit of man is fain to press forward, albeit still unable to
attain the perfect representation of his own freedom, or a counterfeit of his
body in motion; and this is inevitable, for he is still forced to remain
blended in the company of that Other which confronts himself. This
straining after self-conscious spirituality, which fails to grasp itself from the
truth of its own substance in a form of external reality which is alone
adequate to express it, and instead envisages and brings the same home to
consciousness in that which is merely cognate with it, but also that which is
equally foreign to it, is, in its general terms, the symbolical; and we find it
here concentrated to a point as the riddle.
It is in this sense that the Sphinx in the Greek mythos, which itself again is
open to symbolic interpretation, appears as the monster which propounds its
riddle. The sphinx asked here the famous and problematical question: "Who
is it, who walks in the morning on four legs, at noon upon two legs, and in
the evening on three?" Oedipus discovered the simple answer that it was
man himself, and hurled the sphinx from the rocks. The resolution of the
symbol consists in the illumination of all that is implied in the significance
of one word, Spirit, just as the famous Greek inscription cries out to
mankind: "Know thyself." The light of consciousness is that clarity, which
suffers its concrete content to shine all luminous through the form which is
wholly adapted to unfold it, and in its positive form of existence simply
reveals that which it is in truth.

[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] Phantasie may 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 as Taumel and schamlos hineinrücken remind
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 wrote Verdummens, or more probably
Verdampfens. The idea of "becoming mouldy" makes no sense.
[47] This I think is the sense, though Hegel expresses it by using words such as
das Personificieren und Vermenschlichen, and lower down das 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: Centimanen refers 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, not the 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 Bisherigen refers 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 translated Innerem here 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 on ahnt.
[64] Hegel puts it in the rather obscure and contradictory way that the human
figure is represented as "still having the 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."

CHAPTER II

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SUBLIME

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 totality of the phenomenal it is the

essentially substantive One, 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 is negative; 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 the
Sublime. 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 and ultimate essence it is itself essentially without
form and out of the reach of concrete external existence. We may describe
pantheistic art 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.
The second or negative celebration 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 the one substance 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.

A. THE PANTHEISM OF ART

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 one hand 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 specific shaping 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 of Krishna (Bhagavad-Gita, Lect. VII, II. 4 et 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 the Earth, 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 manner Krishna affirms 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 the Persians.
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 thus expanded
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, with the 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 glow
Of 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, even where 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 swell
Of passion tumultuous,
Which strewed them on desolate
Strand of his life.
Gold-tips I call it,
Pierced with bright jewels,
Tenderly conned o'er
By tapering fingers.
"Take them," he exclaims to his beloved:
Circle thy neck with them,
Close, close to thy breast!
These raindrops of Allah
The 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-roll
Caught afar the bulbul's passion,
Won the song which shook the soul.
3. In this unity of pantheism, moreover, if emphasized in its relation to
personal life, which feels itself united with God thereby, and the Divine as
this presence intuitively cognized, we have, speaking generally, that type of
mysticism which, 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 of
God 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.

B. THE ART OF SUBLIMITY

The One substance, however, which is here conceived as the real
significance of the entire universe, is only truly posited as substance where
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 is set forth in 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 that
negative aspect 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 the Goodness which 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 and thereby 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 its claim 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
real Sublime. 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 the external form was 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 a significance in the absolute sense of the term conjoined with its
full recognition. 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 all determinate 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 the relation of
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 of generation and purely physical procreation of
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 supplies no 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 to His Wisdom,
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 us cut 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 a
totally 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,
wonder for 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's own self-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 highest point 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
infinite extension of 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 of immortality is 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 absolute
unworthiness before 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 as evil and
sin belongs 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 the Law; 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 to bring
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.

[67] Des An-und-für-sich-seyenden, i.e., the explicit content of all that is implied
in actuality cognized as an object in itself.
[68] According to Hegel the conception of Kant is right in that (a) He makes the
Sublime to consist in a relation between the phenomenal fact and something

which it is not; and (b) that he lays it down that no mere representation by means
of phenomenal form can adequately express it. He is wrong, however, in that he
refers the Sublime for its source wholly to the subjective content, i.e., that Nature
which is peculiar to ourselves (in uns.)
[69] "Critique of the Judgment," 3rd ed., p. 77.
[70] Parrhesia, i.e., πἀρρἥσια,—speaking freely or beyond ordinary bound.
[71] Den Schenken should be die Schenken, and a few lines below der Kerze
should be die Kerze. I omit the Schenken altogether. Of course it is possible der
Kerze is Genitive, "in the woe of the taper," and the verb intransitive; but this is
very harsh.
[72] This appears to be the meaning of Garechtigkeit.
[73] Sondern so darüber hinausgeht, dass eben nichts als dieses Hinauseyn und
Hinausgehen zur Darstellung kommen kann. That is, the art of the Sublime is
based essentially on a contradiction, for while it assumes the One substance to be
the significance of the external world, it is the truth of that significance that it
points to that which transcends externality.
[74] The thought here is not strictly logical. What is associated by symbolism
with Unity is the external Other, what is divided by Hebraic conception is the
entire content of the Real both in its spiritual and external aspect. But the general
sense is sufficiently clear.
[75] This I take to be the point of the contrast between the words scheinen and
erscheinen.

CHAPTER III

THE CONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM OF THE COMPARATIVE TYPE
OF ART

The result we have now arrived at in the above consideration of the
Sublime, and in contradistinction to the strictly unpremeditated type of
symbolization, consists partly in the separation of its own independent
Inwardness, consciously apprehended in its quality of significance, from the
concrete appearance that is thereby distinguished from it, partly also in the
direct or indirect affirmation of the incompatibility of the two above
mentioned aspects to one another, by which it appears that the significance
as the universal passes beyond the particular fact and its singularity. But in
the imagination of pantheism, no less than in the type of the Sublime, the
real content, that is the One universal substance of all concrete existence,
was unable to be presented to imaginative vision or sense-perception

without some relation to created existence, albeit created under a mode
inadequate to express the essence of that Unity. This relation, however, was
attached to the substance itself, which, in the negativity of its accidents,
supplied the proof of its Wisdom, Goodness, Power, and Justice[76]. For this
reason the relation between significance and content is also in the case of
the Sublime, at least in a general way, of a kind that is both essential and
necessary, and the two sides thus linked with each other are not yet, in the
strict sense of the term, external to each other. It is, however, inevitable, for
the reason that it is implicitly present in symbolism, that this externality
should come to be directly posited and appear in the forms we have now to
consider in this concluding chapter on the art of symbolism. We may
summarily describe them as conscious[77] symbolism, or, in a still more
direct way, the comparative type of art.
In other words, what we understand by conscious symbolism is this, that the
significance is not merely independently cognized, but is expressly set forth
as distinct from the external mode, in which it is represented. The
significance then appears, as in the case of the Sublime, to receive an
independent expression which is not essentially in the actual embodiment
given to it under the mode employed[78]. The relation, however, of both to
one another no longer continues to be, as in the type last examined, a mode
of relation which is fundamentally due to the significance itself, but is a
more or less haphazard association, which may generally be expressed as
the product of the subjectivity of the poet, the absorption of his spirit in an
external object, the result of his wit or invention; a mode, in short, which
enables the poet at one time rather to make a beginning directly from a
sensible phenomenon, and to imagine for it from his own mind a spiritual
significance cognate with it, and at another to select in preference as his
point of departure the real or only relatively personal idea, with a view to
embodying the same, or even to do nothing more than relate one image with
another, which presents characteristic features of resemblance.
This kind of linking together must consequently be distinguished from that
still naïve and unconscious symbolism in virtue of the fact that now the
individual recognizes the inward essence of the significances he adopts for
the content of his creation no less than, the positive nature of the external
objects, which he employs as means of comparison for the more direct
presentment of the same, placing both in this juxtaposition with clear

intention owing to the similarity he has discovered between them. The
distinction, on the other hand, between the present type and that of the
Sublime is rather to be traced to the fact that though under one aspect it may
be true that the separation and juxtaposition of the significances with their
concrete shaping in the work of art is itself set forth in express relief to a
less or higher degree, yet, on the other hand, for the reason that it is no
longer the Absolute itself that is accepted as content, but any defined and
restricted significance whatever, the typical relation of the Sublime falls
away, and in its place a relation is set up within the act of severance thus
intentionally made between the real significance and its embodiment, a
relation which in effect produces the very result in the sphere of
premeditated comparison that we found unconscious symbolism in its own
way proposed as an object.
In one word, so far as content is here concerned, the Absolute itself, the
Lord of creation, can no longer be conceived as the significance which Art
seeks after. That this is so is rendered inevitable by the already obvious fact
that on account of the severation of more concrete existence from the
notion, and further, if only under the mode of comparison, the juxtaposition
of both sides thus separated, the category of finitude is there and then
accepted by the artistic consciousness, in so far as it conceives this form as
the real and ultimate one; and for this reason, moreover, the imagined
significances, being selected wholly from the sphere of the finite, have no
further association whatever with the Absolute as the fundamental
significance of all created things. Sacred poetry stands out in entire contrast
to this, for in this God is the exclusive significance of all things; as set over
against Him, they have no stability at all, but vanish or are nothing. If,
however, the significance is able to discover its image and parallel of
resemblance in that which is itself essentially restricted and finite, it follows
that it must itself to that extent be limited in its range, as, in fact, it is in the
type of symbolic conception which now occupies our attention, where that
which is found is nothing more than an image, necessarily external to the
content, selected purely at random by the poet for the sake of the similarity
it presents to the content, and as such regarded as relatively adequate
thereto. For this reason there is but one trait left us in the comparative type
of art, which is also shared by that of the Sublime, and it is this that every
image, instead of embodying the fact and significance directly under a

mode adequate to their full reality, is only taken to present an image and
similitude of either.
For these reasons this kind of symbolization is, if we conceive it apart as an
independent whole, a generic class of subordinate rank. The form which it
supplies is merely the descriptive selection of a portion of sensuous
existence immediately perceived, or of a prosaic idea of the mind[79], in
other words, the significance is expressly to be distinguished from it. And,
further, in a measure such an employment of comparison in works of art,
which are shaped out of homogeneous material, and in their specific form
constitute an indivisible whole, can only assert itself as relatively valid, that
is, as mere ornament and accessory, such as we find it, in fact, in the
genuine products of classic and romantic art.
It is a further consequence that if we regard the entire sphere of this type as
the union of the two stages which preceded it on the ground that it not
merely comprehends within itself the separation of significance from
external reality, which is the fundamental causa rationis of the Sublime, but
also includes the reference of a concrete phenomenon to a universal import
cognate with it, as we have seen was asserted in the real type of symbolism,
such a union is notwithstanding in no way a higher type of art; it is, in truth,
despite its very clearness, a superficial way of apprehending things, limited
in its content and formally more or less prosaic, which falls away into the
consciousness of commonsense as fully remote from the secretly
fermenting depth of genuine symbolism as it is from the height of the
Sublime.
So far as the classification of our present subject-matter is concerned we
may observe, first, that in this act of comparative differentiation, which
presupposes the significance independently, and affirms either a sensuous or
imaginary form in a relation of opposition to it, there is the aspect held
constantly throughout that the significance is here accepted as of most
importance, and the form is solely the embodiment of the same and external
to it; but along with this the further difference makes its appearance,
namely, that it is sometimes the one aspect of this opposition which is first
pre-eminently emphasized, and made the significant point of departure,
while at other times it is the other. And owing to this fact we have either the
embodiment presented us as an independently external, immediate fact or
phenomenon of Nature, which is then related by comparison to a

significance of a more general bearing, or the significance is independently
come by in another way, and only afterwards a mode of embodying it is
selected from some external source, it matters not what.
Relatively to the above distinctions we may classify our material under the
two first fundamental and a third and other supplementary divisions as
follows:
A. In the first it is the concrete phenomenon, whether the selection be made
from Nature or human events, incidents, and actions, which constitutes both
the point of departure in the process of artistic conception, and the
substance of essential weight in the reproduction. It is no doubt exhibited
solely on account of the more general significance, which it contains and
signifies, and is only so far unfolded, that it may contribute to the object of
embodying this significance in a specific occurrence or condition cognate
with it. The comparison, however, of the general significance and the
particular case is not as yet expressly set forth as subjective activity, and the
entire reproduction will not merely be the embellishment of a work which
actually possesses a substantive position without it, but is set forth as itself
claiming to give the character of an independent whole. The types of this
class are the fable, the parable, the apologue, the proverb, and the
metamorphosis.
B. In the second phase the significance on the contrary is that which is first
presented to consciousness, and the concrete embodiment is that which is
merely incidental or accessory to it, possessing no independent subsistency
of its own, but appearing as wholly subordinate to the significance, so that
we are now also made more immediately aware of the element of personal
caprice in the selection of this rather than any other image. This mode of
production is unable in the great majority of cases to reach the point of a
fully perfected work of art, and is consequently forced to leave the forms it
supplies as appurtenant to other artistic images. The important types of this
class are the riddle, the allegory, the metaphor, the image, and the simile.
C. Thirdly, and in conclusion, if rather by way of supplement, we have yet
further to include within our list the didactic poem, and purely descriptive
poetry, inasmuch as in these types of poetry we find, on the one hand, that
the presentment of the general character of the objects in the clearness
under which they are made intelligible to commonsense[80], no less than on

the other that the exhibition of their concrete appearance receives a
substantially independent form, and by doing so effects with elaborate
completeness the severation of that which only in its union and really
reciprocal fusion is capable of giving us a genuine work of art.
This separation of the two phases essential to the process of art-production
carries with it the result that the various forms which find their place in the
entire subject-matter under discussion have merely a claim to fall in as part
of an inquiry into the modes of art in virtue of the fact that poetry, and only
poetry, is in a position to express such a relation of self-contained
independence as between significance and form. As opposed to this it is the
very problem of the plastic arts to manifest such significant content in and
through their external form and viewed thus externally.

A. MODES OF COMPARISON, WHICH HAVE THEIR ORIGIN UPON THE SIDE OF EXTERNALITY

The attempt to arrange the several kinds of poetic production which are
apportioned to this first stage of the comparative type of art carries with it
no little difficulty, and is a fruitful source of embarrassment. They are, that
is to say, hybrid species of a subordinate rank, which in no way whatever
mark out any necessary aspect of art They stand in the domain of Aesthetic
presenting features analogous to certain animal types, and other exceptional
phenomena in natural science. In both spheres the difficulty consists in this
that in either case it is the notion of the science itself, which is the ground of
its classification and specific differences. As differentia of the notion these
are also at the same time distinctions really adequate to the notional
process, and intelligible as such; with these latter such transitional modes
are unable fully to conform for the reason that they are merely defective
types, which proceed from a previous phase that is fundamental without
being able to reach the next one. This is no fault of the notion, nay,
supposing that we preferred to make such ancillary types the basis of our
classification, instead of pointing out their relation to the specific phases of
the notional process of our subject-matter, we should have presented us
precisely that aspect of them which was inadequate to this process as the
irreproachable mode of their development. A true principle of classification,
on the contrary, is compelled to proceed from the true notion, and such
hybrid types as those now discussed can only be suitably placed where the

genuine and independently stable ones show a tendency to dissolve and
pass over into others.
Apart from such considerations, however, the artistic types referred to
belong to the forecourt of artistic symbolism, inasmuch as they are
generally incomplete, and to that extent merely a search after art in its truth.
Such a movement no doubt presents the essential ingredients of a genuine
mode of configuration, but it lays hold of them in their aspect of finitude,
separation, and purely relative propinquity; it fails consequently to rank on
the same level. When we discuss, therefore, the fable, apologue, and the rest
we must treat these forms not as though they belonged to poetry in the
specific sense, as it differs among other things from music no less than the
plastic arts, but only with the view of pointing out the relation in which they
stand to the generic types of art. It is only thus their specific character can
be elucidated. To such an object the notion of the genuine types of the art of
poetry, whether epic, lyric, or dramatic, will not assist us.
We propose now to differentiate these forms in the following order; we
shall begin with the fable, proceed after that to discuss the parable,
apologue, and proverb, and conclude our inquiry with the metamorphosis.
1. THE FABLE

Hitherto we have throughout merely dwelt upon the formal aspect of the
relation of an expressed significance to its embodiment; we have now
furthermore to elucidate the content, which declares its suitability for such a
mode.
In our previous consideration of the various aspects of the Sublime we saw
that at the point where we have now arrived, it is no longer a matter of any
importance to envisualize the Absolute and One in its indivisible Power by
means of the nothingness and impotency of the created thing to rise up to
that infinite transcendency. We are now on the plane of the finite
consciousness, and have only to concern ourselves with a finite content. If
we direct our attention conversely to the genuine symbolical type, to which
the comparative is under a certain aspect equally related, we find that here
that inward aspect, which stands in opposition to the form up to this point
always immediately presented, the natural shape, that is to say, is the
spiritual, a truth that even in Egyptian symbolism received ample
illustration. To the extent, however, that everything natural is left standing,

and preconceived in its position of isolated solidarity, the spiritual is also
something both finite and defined, that is to say man and his finite aims and
the natural maintains a certain, albeit theoretical[81], relationship to these
objects, a significant suggestion and revelation of the same to the use and
weal of mankind. The phenomena of Nature, storms, flight of birds, the
constitution of the intestines of animals and so forth, in the significance
they possess for human interests, are now accepted in a totally different
sense to that they figured in the conceptions of Parsees, Hindoos, or
Egyptians, for whom the Divine is still linked to the Natural under the mode
that man, as an integral part of Nature, moves to and fro in a world full of
gods, and his personal action consists in the display through his activities of
this very identity of Life, whereby this doing of his, in so far as it is
compatible with the natural existence of the Divine, appears itself as a
revelation and bringing forth of the Divine in mankind. When, however,
man is withdrawn into himself, and intuitively seeks for his freedom within
the closed doors of his own substance[82], he becomes intrinsically the
object of his own personality; he acts, transacts his affairs, and works as he
himself wills; he possesses a personal life of his own, and feels the essential
character of his aims as part of himself, to which the natural is only related
as something outside him. Consequently Nature becomes insulated around
him, serves him under such an aspect that in his attitude to the Divine he no
longer secures an envisagement of the Absolute in her, but simply regards
her as a means, through which the gods enable him to discover such a
knowledge of themselves as may contribute most to his advantage,
unveiling their will to the human spirit through the medium of Nature and
suffering the purpose thereof to declare itself through mankind. An identity
of the Absolute and Nature is here presupposed, an identity in which human
aims are pre-eminently emphasized. A type of symbolism such as this,
however, is not within the province of art, but that of religion. That is to say,
the vates or prophet subordinates every significant relation of natural
events, pre-eminently to the service of practical ends, whether it be in the
interest of the particular designs of individuals, or in that of the common
action of an entire people. Poetry, on the contrary, is bound to recognize and
express even the practical situations and relations in a more universal form
adapted to contemplation.

What we have, however, to deal with now is a natural phenomenon, an
occurrence, which, in its passage, exhibits a particular relation, which
maybe accepted as symbol for a general significance in the circle of human
deeds and dealings, in other words for an ethical maxim, a saw, for a
significance, therefore, whose content unfolds a reflection over the nature
of the course which either is taken or ought to be taken in human matters,
that is, facts which are related to volition. Here it is no longer the Divine
will, which is self-revealed in its essential nature to mankind through
natural events, and their religious import. We have nothing more than a
quite ordinary course of everyday occurrences, from the isolated
reproduction of which we are able to abstract in a way commonly
intelligible an ethical dictum, a warning, ensample, or rule of prudence, by
whatever name we choose to call it, which is set before us in a form that
appeals to our imagination for the sake of the reflection it carries with it.
And this is just the way in which we ought to regard the fables of Aesop.
(a) In other words, the fables of Aesop in their original form are just such a
mode of conceiving a natural relation or event between single natural
objects generally, mainly between animals, whose intercourse with one
another is based on the same practical necessities of life that are the motive
force in that of humanity. This relation or occurrence, as viewed in its more
general characters, is consequently of a kind that may happen in the sphere
of human life, and as such carries with it a significance for man.
As thus explained the genuine fable of Aesop is therefore the reproduction
of a condition of animate or inanimate life, of some occurrence in the
animal world for example, which is not by any means composed at
haphazard, but is put together in conformity with natural fact and genuine
observation, and so reproduced in the form of narrative that, in its relation
to human existence, and particularly the practical aspect of the same, a
general maxim may be deduced from it. The requirement of primary
importance that it implies, therefore, is that the particular case in question,
which is to supply the so-called moral, must not be purely imaginary, that is
to say, first and foremost the substance of the composition must not present
facts which run counter to the mode of their appearance in real life. The
narrative may be further and yet more clearly characterized in this that it
does not record the particular case itself in its universality, but rather the
mode under which this, taken in its concrete singularity and as a real fact, is

in such external reality the type for all action based upon analogous
circumstances.
This original form of the fable leaves upon it, and this is the third point to
which we direct attention, the impress of most naïveté, because in it the
didactic aim and the deduction of general significances of utilitarian colour
do not appear to be that which was the original intention of the narrator, but
rather something which turned up afterwards. For this reason the most
attractive among the so-called fables of Aesop will be those which
correspond most emphatically with this naïve tone and narrate actions, if
such an expression may here be used, or at least relations and events, which
in part are founded upon animal instinct, partly are the expression of some
other natural relation and partly are generally put together for their own
sake rather than exclusively composed as the fancy of the moment
happened to dictate. For this reason it is further sufficiently obvious that the
motto fabula docet, which has attached itself to these fables as we now have
them presented us, either takes the true spirit out of them, or frequently is
something like a fist in our eyes[83], so that quite as often as not we are
inclined to deduce the intended maxim's opposite, or one or two as good if
not better.
In further elucidation of this conception of these Greek fables we propose
now to offer a few illustrations. The oak and the reed stand in the teeth of
the storm-wind. The slender reed merely bows before it, the stubborn oak
snaps. This is a frequent enough occurrence in a great storm. In its ethical
suggestion what we have here is some man of high position and inflexible
temper as opposed to one of more modest station who, through his natural
pliancy, is able in misfortune to keep himself secure on such ordinary
levels, while the great man goes to ground through his pride and obstinacy.
An analogous case is the fable of the swallows which we find in the
Phaedrus. The swallows and other birds with them see a rustic sowing the
flax seed, from the growth of which the bird-snare is to be made. The
provident swallows fly away, the other birds think nothing of the morrow;
they abide at home and are caught. A real phenomenon of Nature is also at
the bottom of this fable. It is a notorious fact that in autumn swallows are
off to southerly climes, and consequently are absent when birds are snared.
The same thing may be said of the fable about the bat, which is despised by
day and night, because it belongs to neither the one nor the other. A more

general human significance is attributed to real prosaic incidents of this
class, much as pious people are only too ready nowadays to interpret
everything that occurs in a sense that is edifying or useful. It is, however,
not essential to such a purpose that in every case the true fact of Nature
should appear at once as obvious. In the fable, for instance, of the fox and
the raven we are unable at first blush to recognize the natural fact, although
it is not wholly absent. It is, in truth, a genuine characteristic both of ravens
and crows that they set about cawing when they happen to catch sight of
strange objects, whatever they may be, whether man or beast, in sudden
motion. Natural relations of a similar kind lie at the root of the fable of the
thorn-bush, which plucks the wool off the passer-by, or wounds the fox that
seeks refuge there, or that of the countryman who warms a snake in his
bosom. Others set forth occurrences which may naturally form part of
animal experience; take, for instance, the first example of the fables of
Aesop where the eagle devours the cubs of the fox and carries off a hot coal
attached to the sacrificial flesh which sets his nest on fire. And, in
conclusion, we find that others contain traits of old myths, such as the fable
of the dung-beetle, eagle, and Jupiter, where the circumstance borrowed
from natural history—we will pass it by for what it is worth—appears to be
referable to the different seasons of the year when the eagle and dung-beetle
respectively lay their eggs; at the same time we may observe a clear
intimation here of the traditional importance of the scarab, which, however,
even in our present example, is already treated with an inclination toward
comedy, an inclination still more pronounced in Aristophanes. As an excuse
for not entering more fully here into the question how many of these fables
can actually be traced to Aesop we mention the already well-established
fact that only of quite a small minority—the last-cited one of dung-beetle
and the eagle is among them—can it be shown that they date from Aesop's
time, or that in general terms there is any flavour of antiquity about them to
support the view that Aesop is in fact their author.
Of Aesop himself we are informed that he was a deformed and humpbacked
slave; and for his place of residence we are transported into Phrygia, the
very land, that is, which marks the passage from the immediately
symbolical and the existence still fettered on Nature, to a land in which man
begins to take real hold of the spiritual and himself as the source of the
same. In our present connection, no doubt, he does not behold the animal
and natural world in the way the Hindoos and Egyptians beheld it, that is, as

something of itself, superior and Divine. He regards it with prosaic vision
as something whose relations are only of service in the presentment of a
picture of human act and avoidance. His conceits are further merely the
reflections of wit, without real energy of soul or depth of insight and a
fundamental grasp of reality, without poetry and philosophy, in fact. His
opinions and maxims are, in consequence, fairly rich in sensuous image and
traits of cleverness, but we never get beyond the digging away into mere
trifles, which, instead of creating free shapes from the unfettered life of
spirit, is contented to discover some additional aspect that is new in material
already close at hand, such as the specific instincts and habits of animals or
other daily occurrences of little moment; and this is so because that which
he would teach he is still afraid to express freely, and is only able to make it
intelligible in a kind of riddle which is at the same time always being
solved. Prose has its origin in the slave, and in the same way prose clings to
the entire type of conception with which we are now concerned.
Despite this fact, however, the experience of almost all nations and times
has in one form or another run through these old tales; and however much
any particular people whose literature is generally well versed in fable may
pride itself as possessing more than one fabulist of distinction, we shall find
that their poetry is for the most part merely a reflection of these primary
sallies of invention, merely translated into the vernacular of the age. All that
has since been added to the general heritage of such conceits falls far
behind the original legacy in real merit.
(b) There are, however, among these fables of Greek descent a number
which betray the greatest poverty of invention and execution, being mere
pegs on which to hang the instructive moral, so that the contents, whether
they refer to gods or animals, have merely a formal significance. Yet even
these are far enough removed from the modern tendency of doing violence
to the animal world as we find it in Nature. An example of this tendency is
that fable of Pfeffel about a marmot which collected provisions in autumn,
an act of foresight which another marmot neglected, and so was brought to
the condition of beggary and starvation. Or there is that other of the fox, the
bloodhound, and the lynx, of whom it is narrated that they presented
themselves before Jupiter, together with the talents which exclusively
belonged to them of cunning, keen scent, and clear sight, and requested that
these gifts should be equally divided between them; the fable goes on that

they obtained such consent under these rather surprising terms: "The fox
gets a blow on the forehead, the bloodhound is good for no more hunting,
the Argus Lynx receives a cataract." That a marmot should cease to make
provision for its wants, or that the three animals above mentioned should
ever incidentally meet with, or be naturally capable of receiving, a
proportionate division of their respective gifts is contrary to all reason and
consequently meaningless. A better fable than those above cited is that of
the ant and the grasshopper, or that other of the deer with the beautiful
horns and the slender legs.
Conformably to the tenor of fables of this kind we have grown, as a rule,
accustomed to accept the moral of the fable as that which is of first
importance, and to regard the narrative as merely an external form, and
consequently an event entirely composed with a view to expound that
moral. Embodiments of this sort, however, more particularly when the
occurrence described is wholly at variance with the natural character of
specific animals, are in the highest degree insipid, attempts at invention
which mean less than nothing. The real ingenuity of a fable consists
exclusively in this that it is able to impart to that which already exists in
determinate form a further and more universal significance than that which
is immediately presented.
The question has further been raised, in reference to the general assumption
that the essence of a fable consists in setting before us the actions and
speech of animals rather than those of mankind, as to what it is precisely
which attracts us in this allusion. We cannot suppose, however, that there is
after all much that is attractive in such a furbishing up of our humanity in
animal form, even though it should exceed or at least differ from that of a
comedy of apes and dogs, where, apart from the sight of the general
cleverness of the dressing up, the entire interest consists rather in the
deliberate contrast between animal nature as it really is and appears, and
that represented as taking part in human affairs. On grounds of this sort
Breitinger finds the attraction to consist entirely in the element of the
marvellous. In the original type of the fable, however, the appearance of
animals endowed with speech is not put before us as anything uncommon
or surprising. And for this very reason Lessing is of the opinion that the
introduction of animals is really of great use in helping us to understand and
assisting the poet to abridge his exposition; in other words we are well

acquainted with the qualities of animals, the cuteness of the fox, the
magnanimity of the lion, the voracity and violence of the wolf, and are
consequently able to set before our minds a concrete image in place of such
abstract qualities. An advantage of this kind, however, in no essential
degree mitigates the triviality of the relation when it has become one purely
of form, and generally it is even a disadvantage to place animals thus before
us instead of men, for the reason that the animal form remains a mask,
which, so far as intelligibility is concerned, veils fully as much as it
declares the significance.
The most important fable of this kind should be in that case the old history
of Reinecke, the fox, which is notwithstanding strictly speaking no fable at
all.
(c) In other words we may in conclusion add a third type of the fable, in
which we find that there is already a tendency to pass beyond the real
boundaries of the type. The ingenuity of a fable consists, as already pointed
out, in the discovery of particular cases among the variety of natural
phenomena, which we are able to use as evidential support of general
reflections upon human action and behaviour, without essentially displacing
the animal and natural world from its own native mode of existence. For the
rest this general application or adaptation of the particular case to the so-
called moral is an exercise of personal caprice, or shall we say native wit,
and is therefore to all intents and purposes an affair of pleasantry. It is this
aspect which receives the main emphasis in the type of fable now before us.
The fable is in fact accepted as a witty jest. Goethe has written many a
delightful and ingenious poem in this vein. The following lines occur in one
of them, which is entitled "The Barking Dog":
Down every road afield we ride
On business bent or pleasure;
And ever in our wake full-cry
A hound's bark beats the measure.
Loosed from our horse's stable he
Will always gallop beside us:
And this is what his clamour proves!
We ride, are with the riders.

It is equally necessary here, as in the case of Aesop's fables, that objects
which are borrowed from Nature should receive their native aspect, and
only bring before us in their action and habits human circumstances,
passions, and traits, which have a close affinity to those of the animal
world. The story of Reinecke is one of this kind, and is really more a fairy-
tale than a fable in the strict sense. We find in the content of this the
reflection of an age of disorder and lawlessness, of evil generally, weakness,
baseness, violence, and shamelessness, of unbelief in religion, that merely
retains the appearance of a mastery, or indeed an established position in the
world-drama; and the result is that craft, cunning, and selfishness have it all
their own way. It is, in fact, the condition of the Middle Ages, more
especially as developed in Germany. The powerful vassals pay, it is true,
some appearance of respect to the king; but practically every man does as
he pleases—robs, murders, oppresses the weak, betrays the king, finds a
way somehow to the favours of the queen, so that if the community just
holds together that is about all. Such is the human content, which by this
fable is preserved, not in a mere abstract proposition but in an entire
complexus of conditions and characters, and by reason of its baseness fits in
with the animal nature exactly, under the forms of which it is unfolded. For
this reason we find nothing embarrassing in the fact that it is without any
reserves transferred to the animal realm; and for the same reason the
particular form it takes does not so much appear as an exceptional case
cognate with it; rather we are inclined to feel the singularity of it make way
for a certain breadth of universality, a vision emphasizing the general truth:
"Such is the way things happen in the world." The comical side consists in
the forms under which the whole is put together, drollery and jest being
freely mingled with the bitter earnestness of the situation; the general effect
of which is that we not only have human meanness admirably depicted
through that of animals, but we are further made a present of the most
entertaining traits, and most characteristic anecdotes wholly peculiar to
animal life, so that, despite all tartness to the palate, our final view is that of
a comedy whose main intention is neither bad nor purely capricious, but
one that has genuine earnestness to support it.
2. PARABLE, PROVERB, APOLOGUE

(a) The Parable

Parable has this general affinity with fable, that it accepts events from the
circle of common life, but also makes them the depositors of a higher and
more universal significance, expressly with a view that the same shall
become intelligible and objective by means of that daily occurrence in its
ordinary guise. A difference, however, at once asserts itself between the
parable and fable, and it is this, that the former selects such occurrences in
human action and habits, as we have them every day before our eyes, rather
than in Nature and the animal world; it then expands the particular case
selected, which appears trite enough at first as such a particular, to the range
of wider interest, by suggesting through it a higher kind of significance.
For this reason the range and the importance of the significances in wealth
of content can materially be increased and deepened[84], while, if we take
the point of view of form, it is clear that the subjective process of
intentional comparison and setting out of a generally instructive reflection
already marks the acceptance and appearance of a more advanced type.
As a parable, still united to a wholly practical end, we may view the means
of persuasion used by Cyrus to induce the Persians to rebel (Herod., I, cap.
126). His letter to the Persians advised them to betake themselves to a
certain spot provided with sickles. When there he set them all on the first
day to clear with hard labour a certain field overgrown with thistles. On the
following day, however, after they had rested and bathed, he conducted
them to a meadow and supplied them with ample cheer in the shape of food
and wine. Finally, at the close of the feast, he asked of them which of the
two days had proved the most enjoyable. All voted naturally for to-day
rather than yesterday; the former had brought them only good things, while
the latter had been a day of weariness and toil. On this Cyrus exclaimed:
"Follow me, and many will be the good days such as the present has
brought you. Refuse to follow me, and countless labours are in store quite a
match for those of yesterday." Of a type akin to the above, though of
profoundest interest and the widest range considered relatively to their
significance, are the parables we meet with in the Gospels. Take, for
example, that of the sower, a narrative which as such possesses the most
unimportant subject-matter, and whose significance centres throughout in
the comparison it supplies to the preaching of the kingdom of heaven. The
significance in these parables is wholly a religious gospel, to which the
human occurrences, wherein such is imaginatively presented, stand in a

relation similar to that between the animal and human world in the fables of
Aesop, where the former elicits the meaning of the latter. Of a like breadth
of content is the famous story of Boccaccio, which Lessing converted in his
"Natham" into the parable of the three rings. The substance of the narrative
is also in this case taken by itself nothing remarkable; the extraordinarily
wide, reach of its content arises wholly from the way the differences
between and the relative validity of the three religions, namely, the Jewish,
the Mohammedan, and the Christian, are suggested by it. The same thing
may be said of the latest novelties in this type of art, the parables of Goethe
for example. Take that of the "cat-pasty." In this a famous chef, in order to
prove himself hunter no less than cook, went out hunting, but shot a tom-cat
instead of a hare, which he then served up to the company sauced with his
most consummate art. This is no doubt a reference to the Light theory of
Newton. We have here under the guise of the hare-pie which the cook tried
in vain to elaborate out of a cat a reflection of that abortive type of physical
science which the mathematician will assume to be something better than it
is. These parables of Goethe frequently have a strong touch of drollery
about them, an aspect which they share with his fables by the help of which
he was wont to shed himself of life's disappointments.
(b) The Proverb
The proverb forms as it were the middle point of this sphere. In the form of
their execution, that is to say, proverbs lean at one time in the direction of
the fable, at another to that of the apologue. They give us a particular case
selected for the most part from the daily walk of mankind, which, however,
is to be interpreted universally. Take the example, "One hand washes the
other," or those others, "Every one wheels before his own door," "Who digs
a grave for another, falls into it himself," "Bake a pudding for me and I will
staunch your thirst," and others like them. To wise saws of this type belong
the many apophthegems that Goethe has contributed to modern literature,
often of exquisite grace and profound to a degree. These are not modes of
comparison of the type that the general significance and the concrete
phenomenon are opposed to one another in separation, but the former is
immediately expressed with the latter.
(c) The Apologue

The apologue may be regarded as a parable, which not only serves in the
way of comparison to render visible a general significance, but rather in this
its very form reproduces and expresses the general moral, the same being
actually included in the particular case, which is, however, related as only a
single example. Conformably to this definition we may call Goethe's "Der
Gott und die Bajadere" an apologue. Here we find the Christian tale of the
repentant Magdalene reclothed in accordance with Hindoo ideas. The
Bajadere[85] exemplifies the same humility, a like strength of love and faith;
God puts her to the proof, an ordeal she completely sustains, and her
exaltation and reconciliation follows. In the apologue also narrative is so
extended that the outcome of it furnishes the moral itself, bare of any
parallel to support it, as may be illustrated from "The Treasure-Finder":
Work by day and guests at night,
Weeks of moil, feasts of delight,
Such the Future's spell for thee.
3. THE METAMORPHOSIS[86]

The third mode we have to discuss in its contrast to the fable, parable,
proverb, and apologue, is the metamorphosis. This is no doubt of a kind
which is both symbolical and mythological; it sets forth, however, expressly
furthermore the natural in its opposition to the spiritual. That is to say, it
confers on an object immediately present to sense such as a rock, animal,
flower, or spring the peculiar significance of being a delapsus and a
punishment of spiritual existences. Such are the examples of Philomela, the
Pieredes, Narcissus, and Arethusa, all of whom, through some false step,
passion, transgression or the like, became subject to irreparable guilt or
pain, and for this reason were deprived of the freedom of spiritual life, and
united to the substance of physical nature. From one point of view Nature is
not regarded merely under its external and prosaic aspect, simply, that is, as
mountain, river-source, tree and so forth, but it further receives a content
which is bound up with some action or event of spiritual life. The rock is
not simply stone, but Niobe herself, who weeps for her children. From the
other point of view this human action implies guilt of some kind, and this
metamorphosis into the physical phenomenon is accepted as a degradation
of Spirit.

It is therefore necessary to distinguish these metamorphoses of human
individuals or gods very sharply from the genuine type of unconscious
symbolism. To return to Egypt, for example, the Divine is here in part
immediately envisaged in the mysterious and secluded intension of animal
life, partly, too, the real symbol is here a natural form which is immediately
associated with a wider significance cognate to it, despite the fact that this
form is unable to supply the determinate existence fully commensurate with
it; and this is so for the reason that neither in respect to its form or its
content has unconscious symbolism arrived at the free outlook of Spirit.
Metamorphosis, on the contrary, emphasizes the essential distinction
between Nature and Spirit, and by doing so marks the passage from that
which is both symbolical and mythological to that which is in the strict
sense mythological, under, that is to say, a conception of the latter, which,
albeit that it proceeds in its myths from a concrete fact of Nature such as
sun, sea, rivers, trees, earth, and the like, nevertheless, further and expressly
sets this purely natural aspect on one side and apart, divesting such natural
phenomena of their inner content and individualizing the same as a spiritual
Power in the adequate artistic form of gods clothed in the lineaments of
humanity, whether we regard them as external shape or spiritual activity. In
this sense Homer and Hesiod have given to the Greeks their mythology, a
mythology which by no means merely consists in the revelation of the
significance of such gods, by no means is merely an exposition of moral,
physical, theological, or speculative doctrine, but one that is a mythology in
the strict sense, that is the origin of a spiritual religion under the genuine
guise of our humanity.
In the Metamorphoses of Ovid the most heterogeneous material is brought
together quite apart from the entirely modern spirit in which myth is treated.
Beside the mere aspect of metamorphosis, which could here in general
terms only be conceived as a kind of mythical representation, we have the
specific character[87] of this type raised in an exceptional way in these
narrations, in which embodiments of this sort, which are commonly
accepted as symbolical, or are already received in their entirely mythical
character, appear to have been converted into metamorphoses, and that
which is elsewhere united is so presented as to assert an opposition between
its significance and form, and the passage of the one into the other. In this
way, for instance, the Phrygian or Egyptian symbol, the wolf, is so
separated from its intrinsic significance, that the same is converted into a

previous existence if not actually into the kingship of the Sun, and the
existence of the wolf is conceived as resulting from an act of that human
existence. In the same way in the song of the Pierides the Egyptian gods,
the ram, the cat, and so forth are imaged as such animal forms, in which the
mythical gods of Greece, Jupiter, Venus, and the rest have concealed
themselves from sheer fright. The Pierides themselves, however, by way of
punishment, in that they dared to rival the Muses with their singing, are
changed into woodpeckers.
Looked at from another side it is equally necessary, with a view to securing
the more accurate definition, which the content wherein the significance
consists essentially carries, that we distinguish the metamorphosis from the
fable. That is to say in the fable the binding together of the moral with the
natural fact is an association that is harmless; for in this the thing of Nature,
regarded under the mode in which it differs in its natural aspect from Spirit,
does not affect the significance, although there are certainly single
examples of the fables of Aesop, which, with but slight alteration, would be
instances of metamorphosis. As such may be cited the forty-second fable of
the bat, the thorn-bush, and the diver, whose instincts are explained as due
to the ill-luck of former experiences.
And here we must end our passage through this the first circle of the
comparative type of art. It started from that which was immediately present
to sense, that is, the concrete phenomenon. We proceed now from the point
we have arrived at to examine a further kind of significance which the type
unfolds.

B. COMPARISONS, WHICH IN THEIR IMAGINATIVE PRESENTMENT HAVE THEIR ORIGIN IN THE
SIGNIFICANCE.

Forasmuch as the severation of significance from embodiment is the
hypostasized form for consciousness, within which the relation of both
originates independently, it is both possible and inevitable that in the
articulation of the self-subsistency of one side no less than the other a start
should be made not only from external existence, but conversely and as
emphatically from that which is immediately present to the conscious
subject, in other words general conceptions, reflections, emotions, and
principles of thought. For this inward aspect is equally with the images of
external objects a subject-matter present to consciousness and in its

independence of that which is external proceeds on its way from its own
resources. In the case, then, where we find the significance is the point of
departure, the expression, that is, the reality, appears as the modus
formulandi, which is abstracted from the concrete world in order to give a
visible and sensuously defined shape to the significance regarded as
abstract content.
Owing, however, to the reciprocally indifferent relation under which both
sides confront each other, this association which binds the two sides
together is, as we have already seen, no essentially explicit and necessary
union; consequently the relation, such as it is, that is no actual reflection of
objective fact, is rather a product of active mind, which no longer even
disguises this its fundamental character, but rather deliberately exposes it in
the form of its representation. The very embodiment possesses this binding
together of form and content, soul and body, under the guise of concrete
animation[88], as essentially and explicitly the substantial union of both
sides in the soul as in the body, in the content as in the form. In the case
before us, however, what is presupposed by consciousness is the dislocation
of the two sides, and consequently their association is the vivification of the
significance simply for consciousness by means of a shape external to it,
and an indication of a real existence, equally subjective in its character
through the relation of the same to the general conceptions, emotions, and
thoughts common to humanity. For this reason what is mainly emphasized
in these forms of comparative art is the subjective art of the poet in his
creative capacity, and in complete works of art we have mainly in our
attitude to this particular aspect of them to separate that which strictly is
appurtenant to their subject-matter and its necessary embodiment from that
which is attached to them by the poet as mere ornament and embellishment.
Such accessory detail, which we cannot fail to distinguish, that is,
consisting mainly of images, similes, allegories, and metaphor, is precisely
that part of his work in virtue of which he earns his title to fame with most
people, a tendency which is all the more common because it indirectly bears
witness to the insight and subtlety which enables such critics to discover
our poet and draw attention to that aspect of his invention which is so
entirely his own. But for all that, as we have already observed, in genuine
works of art such forms as those we are discussing can only be regarded as
accessory, although we doubtless do find in previous works on Poetics such
incidental features treated as precisely those which go to make the poet.

Furthermore however, though unquestionably in the first instance the two
sides which have to be associated stand in a relation of indifference to one
another, yet in order to justify the subjective relation and comparison, the
embodiments must also in the character of its content itself include the
same relations and qualities under a cognate mode to that which the
significance intrinsically possesses; the grasp of this similarity is, in fact,
the one sure ground upon which the setting forth of the significance in
union with this specific form rather than any other, and the envisagement of
such import by its means is based. Lastly, inasmuch as we begin here, not
from the concrete phenomenon, by the abstraction of a general
characteristic from that, but conversely from this universal itself, which the
intention is to have reflected in an image, the significance secures the
position which makes it stand out actually as the real object, and as such is
predominant over the sensuous picture which is the modus of its
envisagement.
The series in which we propose now to examine the particular types we
have mentioned as belonging to this phase of comparative art may be
indicated as follows:
First in order, as most cognate to the previous stage, the riddle will enlist
our attention.
Secondly, we have to examine the allegory, in which as the main feature we
shall find the abstract significance assert a mastery over the external form.
Thirdly, we have the class of the comparison in its strict sense; metaphor,
image, and simile.
1. THE RIDDLE

The true symbol is essentially enigmatical in so far as the externality, by
means of which a general significance is made apparent, still differs from
the import it is intended to express: in other words it thereby raises the
doubt as to what is the exact signification applicable to the form. The riddle,
however, appertains to conscious symbolism, and an obvious distinction
between it and the genuine symbol is to be found in the fact that in the
former case the meaning is clearly and fully recognized by the propounder
of it, and the form which veils that which is to be interpreted by it is
therefore intentionally selected for this very purpose. The genuine symbol is
both before and after the act of selection an unsolved problem, the riddle,

on the contrary, is essentially a problem that is solved. It is therefore with
very good reason that Sancho Panza exclaims: "I should much prefer to
hear the solution first and the riddle afterwards."
(a) First, then, in the invention of the riddle, the point from which the
process starts, is the apprehended meaning, the signification of it.
(b) The second step consists in the intentional selection of traits of character
and other qualities from the common experience of the external world,
which—such is always the aspect of Nature and external objects of every
kind—are placed relatively to one another in piecemeal fashion, and in thus
setting them forth in disparate contiguity, which makes their singularity the
more striking. And inasmuch as they are so placed they are without the
enfolding unity of mind, and their array and association intentionally
distract has so far no intrinsic significance whatever. And yet for all that,
and this is the other aspect of the riddle, they do expressly point to a unity
in relation to which even traits to all appearance most heterogeneous
contain, notwithstanding, both a real sense and significance.
(c) This unity, which may be styled the subject of these distract predicates,
is just the simple preconception, the word that solves our riddle, to discover
or divine which from the apparently confused medley of the mode under
which it is propounded is the riddle's problem. Thus interpreted we may call
the riddle the facetiousness of symbolism, aware that it is such which puts
to the proof acuteness of insight and aptness at putting things together, and
finally, by stimulating the zest of solution, breaks into and destroys the very
mode of presentation it has itself set up. In the main we shall find this,
form, therefore, most employed in human speech, though we may find
exceptional examples of it also in the plastic arts[89], architecture,
horticulture, and painting. With regard to its historical appearance the East
is first and foremost responsible, and we may date its advent in that
intermediate and transitional period out of the more obtuse type of
symbolism into one of more intelligent knowledge and comprehension.
Entire peoples and historical epochs have taken delight in the solution of
such problems. It also plays an important part in the Middle Ages among
the Arabs and the Scandinavians, and as a particular example it is much in
evidence in the minstrel tourneys on the Wartburg. In modern times it is
mainly under the more modest guise of recreation and purely social
pleasantry that we cross it.

In the riddle we have opened a practically limitless field for witty and
striking conceits, which in their reference to any given circumstance,
occurrence, or object take the form of a play upon words or an
epigrammatical sentence. On the one hand we have presented an object trite
to a degree, on the other some conceit of the mind which emphasizes
unexpectedly with conspicuous force some aspect or relation, which we
failed to perceive in that object on first confronting it, and which now
attaches to it the light of a new significance.
2. THE ALLEGORY

The counterpart to the riddle in this sphere of comparative art, where the
point of departure is from the generality of the significance, is the allegory.
From a certain point of view this form, no less than the former, endeavours
to make more visible to us the definite qualities of a general conception
through qualities in materially concrete objects which are cognate
therewith; but in contrast to that form this is not done in the interest of a
partial concealment and a mysterious problem; rather it is now quite the
other way with the express object of absolute revealment; to an extent, in
fact, that all which is external, and is as such utilized by it, must become
through and through transpicuous with the significance which has to make
its appearance therein.
(a) It is therefore in the first place concerned to personify abstract
conditions of a general character or similar qualities both from the human
and the natural world, such as religion, love, justice, strife, fame, war,
peace, the seasons, death, and the like, and conceive them under the mode
of personality. This subjective aspect, however, is neither in respect to its
content nor its external form in itself either a real subject or individual, but
persists as the abstraction of a general conception, whose content is merely
the barren form of subjectivity which may be called as truly a grammatical
subject[90]. In other words an allegorical being, despite every attempt to
clothe it in the lineaments of humanity, entirely falls short of concrete
individuality, whether it be a Greek god, a saint, or any other genuine
example. It is, in fact, so forced to pare away[91] from the substance of
subjectivity, in order to make it conform with the abstract character of its
significance, that all the true definition of individuality disappears. It is
therefore only a just criticism of allegory to say that it is frosty and cold,
and, having regard to the abstract quality of its significances, even in the

point of invention, that it is rather the result of the matter-of-fact
understanding than that of the complete vision and emotional depth of
genuine imagination. Poets, such as Virgil, for example, are particularly
ready to give us examples of allegorical individualization simply because
they are unable to create gods of the Homeric type of personality.
(b) Secondly, however, the significant character of allegorical material is at
once defined in its abstraction, and only by means of such definition is it
intelligible; the expression of such particular aspects, for the reason that it is
not immediately unfolded in that which is in the first instance a purely
generalized conception of personality, is consequently forced to appear
alongside of the subject, simply as the predicates which elucidate the same.
This separation of subject from predicate, generality from particularity, is
the second feature of the frostlike appearance of the allegory. The
envisagement of the determinate and specific qualities is borrowed from the
modes of expression, activity, and resultant effects which make their
appearance in virtue of the significance, when that secures its realized form
in concrete existence, or from the various means which subserve it in its
true realization. For example, war is delineated through weapons, cannons,
drums, and standards, etc.; the yearly seasons, by an enumeration of the
flowers and fruits, which pre-eminently spring up under the favouring
influence of the particular seasons. Objects of this kind may further receive
purely symbolical relations, as, for instance, Justice may be brought home
to our minds by means of the scales and fillet, Death by that of the hour-
glass and scythe. For the reason, however, that the significance in allegory
is the dominant factor, and the more specialized presentment is subordinate
to it under an equally abstract form, for it is, after all, itself merely an
abstraction, the embodiment of such definable characteristics only secures
the validity of an attribute pure and simple.
(c) In this way the allegory is under both these aspects without vital
warmth. Its general personification is empty, the definite mode of its
externalization is only a sign, which taken independently has no longer any
meaning, and the centrum, which is thus constrained to gather up the
variety of the attributes into a focus does not possess the potency of a truly
subjective unity which is itself self-embodied in its real and determinate
existence inter-related throughout, but is rather a purely abstract form, for
which the substantial filling-up with particular traits, which, as we have

seen, never succeed in rising above the rank of the formal attribute, remains
as something external. Consequently we may say that in so far as the
allegory sets up any claim to real self-consistency, in which it personifies its
abstraction and their delineation, it is not to be taken seriously. In other
words, that which is both implicitly and explicitly self-substantive is unable
really to conform with an allegorical being. The Dikê of the ancients, for
instance, is not on all fours with allegorical individualization. She is
universal Necessity personified, eternal Justice, the universally potent
subject, the absolute substantivity of the relations which co-ordinate Nature
and spiritual Life, that is, she is the absolute Self-subsistent itself, in the
train of whom all other individuals are bound, whether gods or men. Herr
Frederick von Schlegel has, it is true—we have already referred to the fact
—ventured the opinion that every work of art must of necessity be an
allegory. Such an expression of opinion is only true if limited to the sense
that every work of art must contain a general idea and a significance which
is itself essentially true. What we have above, on the contrary, included
under the term allegory is a mode of presentation which only conforms to
the notion of art incompletely, being itself no less in content than in form
subordinate to it. Every human event and development, every relation in
which life is concerned, possesses no doubt intrinsically an aspect of
universality, which may be emphasized as such, but abstractions of this kind
are already to be found in the general contents of consciousness, and merely
to assert them in their prosaic aspect of generality and external delineation,
which is the point where the allegory halts, is still to fall short of the true
sphere of art.
Winckelmann has also written an immature work on allegory, in which he
has ranged together a large number of examples, but failed for the most part
to distinguish those which exemplify the symbol and allegory respectively.
Among the particular arts within which we find examples of the allegory,
poetry is really acting contrary to its laws when it takes refuge in such a
mode of presentment; sculpture on the contrary is in most directions barely
complete without it, more especially modern sculputure, which freely
admits of that which is native to portraiture, and so must avail itself of
allegorical figures in order to delineate more closely the relative aspects
under which the individual presentment is posed. On Blucher's monument,
for example, which has been raised to him here in Berlin, we find both the

genius of Fame and Victory, although, having regard to the general
treatment of the war of liberation, this allegorical aspect is once more set
aside by means of a series of particular scenes such as the departure of the
army, its march, and victorious return. Generally speaking, however, where
the subject of sculpture is portraiture the sculptor will avail himself gladly
of allegorical representation as offering to the simplicity of his central
figure the contrast of environment and variety. The ancients on the other
hand, on their sarcophagi for example, more frequently made use of general
mythological representations of such figures as Sleep, Death, and the like.
Allegory generally is far less common in the antique than it is in the
romantic art of the Middle Ages, although it must be added that such
romance as it possesses is not really referable to allegory. The frequent
appearance of allegorical conception at this particular epoch of human
history is to be thus explained. From a certain point of view we find that the
content of the Middle Ages is preoccupied with particular types of
individuality and the personal aims, generally focussed in love and honour,
and resulting in vows, wanderings, and adventures, which are common to
them. Individuals of this type and the events of such lives invariably offer
the imagination a wide scope for the inventive faculties, and the
composition of accidental and capriciously imagined collisions and their
resolution. On the other hand, in direct contrast to this motley show of
worldly adventure we have the universal, taking it here as the stability of
the ordinary relations and conditions of life, a universal which is not, as was
the case in the ancient world, individualized in the figures of self-subsistent
gods; consequently we find it freely and naturally emphasized in
independent isolation as such universality alongside of these particular
types of personality and their specific modes of appearance and activity. If
the artist therefore happens to have before his mind the general conditions
of life we have adverted to, and assuming that he is desirous of giving
artistic embodiment to them in some form other than the accidental mode
common to his age, that he wishes, in short, to emphasize their universality,
he has no other alternative than to accept the allegorical type of
presentment. This is precisely what we find in the sphere of religion.
The Virgin Mary, Christ, the actions and dramatic events of apostolic
history, the saints with their penances and martyrdoms, are, it is true, even
here individualities in the full sense; but Christendom is also to an equal

extent concerned with the general conceptions of abstract spiritual qualities,
such as will not comply with the concrete definition of actual persons
inasmuch as the relation of universality is precisely the mode under which
they are presented, of which examples are Love, Faith, and Hope. And
generally the truths and dogmas of Christendom are independently cognized
by the religious consciousness, and a main interest even of their poetry
consists in this that these doctrines are emphasized in their universal aspect,
that Truth is known and believed in as universal truth. In that case,
however, it is necessary that the concrete presentation should remain a
subordinate factor, itself external to the content, and allegory is just the
form which satisfies this want in the easiest and most sufficient way.
Conformably to this the divine comedy of Dante is full of allegorical matter.
Theology, for example, in this poem is run together in fusion with the image
of his beloved lady Beatrice. This personification, however, wavers in the
lines of its delineation; and this uncertainty of outline is that which
constitutes the beauty of it, and places it halfway between genuine allegory
and a vision of his youthful love. In the ninth year of his life he looked on
her for the first time: she appeared to him no daughter of mortal men, but of
God. His fiery Italian nature conceived a passion for her, which the years
failed to extinguish. And conscious that it was she who awoke in him the
genius of poetry he finally sets himself the task, after he had lost in her that
which was most loved in the fairest flower of its promise, of composing that
wonderful monument of the most intimate and personal religion of his heart
in the poetic masterpiece of his life.
3. METAPHOR, IMAGE, SIMILE

The third sphere of content attached to the riddle and the allegory consists
in the imaged thing generally. The riddle veiled the still independently
cognized significance and the mode of its shaping in cognate, albeit
heterogeneous and distantly placed traits of definition was still of most
importance. Allegory on the contrary emphasized the perspicuity of the
significance so strongly as the predominant aim, that the personification and
its attributes appear deposed to the rank of mere signs. The imaged thing
now connects this clarity of allegorical expression with that impulse of the
riddle to envisage the significance which stands out clearly before the mind
in the form of an externality cognate with it; the result, however, is not that
it gives rise to problems which have first of all to be solved, but rather that

the imaged shape appears, by means of which the preconceived conception
is revealed with absolute transparency, notifying itself as that which it really
is.
(a) The Metaphor
The first point we have to draw attention to in the metaphor is this, that it
may be accepted at once as essentially a simile, in so far as it expresses
clear and self-subsistent significance in a similar phenomenon of reality
comparable with it. In the comparison as such, however, both sides of the
comparison, that is the real meaning and the image, are definitely kept apart
from each other, while on the contrary in the metaphor this separation,
albeit it is essentially present, is not as yet clearly posited. For this reason
Aristotle long ago distinguished comparison and metaphor by his statement
that a "how" is added to the former which is absent from the latter. In other
words the metaphorical expression specifies but one aspect, the image. In
the context, however, to which the image is attached, the real significance
which is intended lies so near that it is at the same time immediately
asserted without any direct separation of it from the image. When it is said,
for example: "the Spring-time of these cheeks," or "a sea of tears," we are
inevitably forced to accept such an expression as an image rather than an
actual fact, an image whose significance the context at the same time
expressly designates. In the symbol and allegory the relation of actual
meaning to external form is not asserted either so immediately or
necessarily. From the fact that an Egyptian staircase consists of nine stages,
and a hundred other circumstances of similar pregnancy, it is only the adept,
the connoisseur, and the professor who will derive a symbolical
significance, and doubtless will scent out and discover much that is both
mystical and symbolical into the bargain, which is so much ingenuity of
research thrown away for the reason that what is discovered is not there.
This may have happened often enough to my honoured friend Creutzer, no
less than our latter-day Platonists and the commentators of Dante.
(a) In range and variety of form it is impossible to exhaust the resources of
metaphor; its definition, however, is simple. It is a wholly abbreviated
comparison, in which we find, as a fact, image and significance are not as
yet set in opposition to one another, but only the image is introduced by it;
at the same time, however, the meaning which is thus attached to the image
is not its real meaning; this is as it were effaced, and by virtue of the content

in which it is set we are enabled to recognize the significance which is
really intended in the image itself, albeit that meaning is not expressly
asserted.
For the reason, however, that the meaning that is thus rendered intelligible
under the image only comes to light by virtue of the context, the
significance which is expressed in metaphor cannot claim the importance of
an independent artistic presentation; their mode of appearance is purely
incidental, so that metaphors, in a still more emphatic degree, can only be
employed as the external embellishment of an essentially independent work
of art.
(β) The metaphor is mainly used in the expressions of speech, which we
may usefully consider in this relation under the following aspects.
(αα) In the first place every language includes within its own compass a
host of metaphors. They arise from the fact that a word, which in the first
instance merely designates something entirely sensuous, is carried over into
a spiritual sphere. "Grasp", "comprehend"[92], and generally a number of
words connected with the processes of thought, have in regard to their
original meaning a content that is wholly sensuous, which is consequently
abandoned and exchanged for the meaning applicable to mind; the first
meaning is sensuous, the second spiritual.
(ββ) By degrees, however, the metaphorical aspect disappears in the general
use of such a word, which as the current coin of language is converted from
an expression which is not strictly accurate to one that is so, the effect of
this process being that image and import, owing to the habitual frequency
with which the latter is only conceived in the former, cease to differ from
one another, and the image merely immediately presents the abstract
significance itself instead of a concrete mode of vision[93].
When we take, for example, the word "grasp" in the sense applicable to
mental life it entirely escapes us that there is any sensuous relation implied
between the hand and external objects[94]. In living languages this
distinction between genuine metaphor and words which already through
usage have fallen to the level of a mere means of expression is readily
established; the reverse is the case with dead languages, for the reason that
here mere etymology is unable finally to bring our minds to a decision,
inasmuch and in so far as the question does not depend on the original

source of that word, and its general development in speech, but first and
foremost on the fact whether a word which has all the appearance of being
used in a picturesque and metaphorical sense had or had not already lost by
habitual usage under a meaning applying exclusively to spirit, and in the
speech when alive, its first sensuous significance and been absorbed wholly
in that higher sense.
(γγ) When this takes place the invention of new metaphors, which are the
exclusive product of the poetical imagination becomes for the first time a
vital necessity. That in which this invention is mainly concerned consists
first in transferring the phenomena, activities, and conditions of a higher
level of fact in a way that illustrates the content of less important material,
and in bringing to light significances of such inferior matter in the form and
image which stands above them. The organic, for example, is by itself
essentially of higher importance than the inorganic, and to carry forward
that which has no life within, the range of vital phenomenal enhances its
expression. We may illustrate this with the saying of Ferdusi: "The keenness
of my sword devours the brain of the lion, and drinks the dark blood of the
courageous." In a yet more enhanced degree we find the same result when
that which is of Nature and sensuous is imaged, and thereby raised and
ennobled in the form of spiritual phenomena. So we have such common
turns of speech as "smiling fields," and "angry flood," or in the language of
Calderon: "The waves sigh beneath the burden of ships." In these examples
that which exclusively applies to humanity is diverted to the expression of
Nature. The Latin poets use such metaphorical language often enough, as
we may find in our Virgil, take the example: Quum graviter tunsis gemit
area frugibus (Georg., III, 132).
Conversely and in the second place that which pertains to mind is brought
in the same way more close to our powers of vision through the image of
natural objects. Such fanciful presentations, however, can very readily
degenerate into mere trifling and far-fetched conceits, when that which is
essentially without life receives notwithstanding every appearance of
individuality, and really spiritual activities are assigned to it with perfect
seriousness. The Italians more especially have given themselves over to
illusive trickery of this kind, and even Shakespeare is not wholly free from
them, as in that passage from "Richard II" (Act V, sc. I), where he makes
the King say to the Queen on parting:

For why, the senseless brands will sympathize
The heavy accent of thy moving tongue
And in compassion weep the fire out;
And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black
For the deposing of a rightful king.
(γ) Finally, if we look at the aim and interest of that which is metaphorical,
the first thing which strikes us is that a word in the strict sense is an
independently intelligible expression, the metaphor otherwise. The question
consequently presents itself, what is the reason of this twofold means of
expression, or, to put it another way, why is it that we have the metaphorical
which essentially implies this division? The common explanation is that
metaphors are used to give vivacity to poetical composition, and this
animating effect is the ground in virtue of which Heyne, in particular,
insists on their value. The vivacity consists in the support they offer to
imaginative vision in the direction of clear definition, divesting the word,
which is always something generalized, of its purely indefinite character,
and bringing it home to sense by means of an image. No doubt a greater
degree of vivacity is to be found in metaphors than in the strict expressions
of ordinary speech; genuine vitality, however, is not to be sought for in
metaphors, whether in isolation or combination, whose figurative plasticity,
it is true, may frequently include a relation, which by good chance attaches
at the same time to the expression an increased perspicuity and a higher
definition, but quite as often, if every detail of the process of thought is thus
figuratively emphasized in isolation, makes the whole unwieldy,
overloading it thus with its emphasis on singular aspects.
The genius of metaphorical diction is consequently, as we shall have to
elucidate more closely in our consideration of simile, to be regarded as
responding to a need and potency of mind and the emotional life, which
will not rest satisfied with that which is entirely simple, ordinary, and
homely, but make an effort beyond this and over into something more
recondite under the attraction which distinction offers and the impulse to
co-ordinate contrasted effects. This binding together has itself again various
causes, which may be notified as follows.
(αα) First, we have it for the sake of reinforcing an effect. The emotional
life, under the pressure and movement of its passions, gives visible
utterance to these forces by means of the piling up of sensuous image. More

than this, it strives to express its own whirl and tumble, or persistence in the
ideas which crowd upon it by means of a similar letting itself go into
phenomena cognate with such a condition, and its own free movement
among images of the greatest variety. In Calderon's supplication to the
Cross Julia utters the following words when she looks upon the dead body
of her only just deceased brother, and her lover, Eusebio, the man who has
killed Lisardo, stands before her:
O that I might close for ever
Eyes before this blood here guiltless,
Blood which cries for vengeance with its
Flooding stream of purple flowers!
Would that I could deem thee pardoned
In the rush of tears that blind thee:
Wounds and eyes are mouths which swallow
Lies which seek admittance never, etc.
With a still more vehement burst of passion Eusebio starts back from the
sight of her, when Julia finally is for surrendering herself to him, as he
exclaims:
Flaming sparks thine eyeballs scatter;
Every sigh is breath that scorches;
Every word is a volcano,
Every hair a scribbled lightning,
Every word is Death, and every
Soft caress is Hell's own anguish;
Such the horror stirs within me
As I see—O awful symbol,
Crucifix thy bosom carries.
The human soul on the swell of its emotion keeps adding image on image to
that immediately confronting it, and with all this impetuous seeking to and
fro for new means of expression barely lays to rest its own tumult.
(ββ) A second rationale of the metaphorical consists in this that the human
soul, after adding to its own depth by this the motion of its own life into the
varied survey of objects cognate with it, is stirred at the same time to cast
itself free of the externality of such objects, to the extent that it seeks to
rediscover itself in what is external; it transmutes that external in its own

free activity, and by clothing both itself and its passions in the forms of
beauty, proclaims furthermore its power to present in visible semblance its
own exaltation above the bare fact.
(γγ) A third ground of figurative expression, and one of at least equal force,
may be found in the purely ribald exuberance of the phantasy, which is
unable to set before us an object in its own outlines for what they are worth,
or a significance in its unadorned simplicity, but on all occasions hankers
after some concrete embodiment cognate with it, or is overmastered by the
ingenuity of a personal caprice, which, in order to escape the commonplace,
abandons itself to the charms of the piquant novelty, a caprice that is never
satisfied until it has discovered for us points of affinity in material the most
remote apparently from that before us, and has thereby related the same to
the most distant objects.
And we may here observe that it is not so much the prosaic and poetic style
generally as the style of the classic world in contrast with that of later
periods which presents such a marked difference in the pre-eminent
importance they attach to genuine or metaphorical expression respectively.
It is not merely the Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, or the
great historians and orators, such as Thucydides and Demosthenes, but also
the great poets, Homer and Sophocles, who, albeit we find examples of the
simile in all them, remain on the whole, and without exception, constant in
the use of their direct form of expression[95]. Their plastic severity and
sterling substance will not permit them such a multifarious product, as is
bound up with the use of metaphor, nor will it suffer them, even for the sake
of gathering the so-called flowers of expression, to waver fitfully in devious
ways from their ideal mintage of the completely simple and co-ordinate
result as of one metal cast in one mould. The metaphor, in fact, is always an
interruption to the logical course of conception and invariably to that extent
a distraction, because it starts images and brings them together, which are
not immediately connected with the subject and its significance, and for this
reason tend to a like extent to divert the attention from the same to matter
cognate with themselves, but strange to both. The prose of ancient writers in
the extraordinary clarity and flexibility of its utterance and their poetry in
the repose of its completely unfolded content[96], are equally removed from
the frequent use of metaphor by modern writers.

On the other hand it is particularly in the East, and above all the later
literature of Mohammedan poetry, which makes use of the indirect or
figurative modes of expression, and, indeed, finds them essential. The same
thing may be said, if less emphatically, of modern European literature. The
diction of Shakespeare, for instance, is full of metaphor. The Spaniards, too,
are very fond of this flowery region, and, indeed, have wandered off into it
to the point of the most tasteless exaggeration and superfluity. Jean Paul
falls under the same charge. Goethe by virtue of the equal strength and
clarity of his vision to a less extent. Schiller, however, is even in his prose
exceedingly rich both in image and metaphor; in his case this is rather due
to his effort to bring really profound ideas within the range of the
imaginative vision without being forced to expound all they imply for the
mind in the technical language of philosophy. We behold and find there the
essential unity of the speculative reason reflected on the mirror of Life as it
stands before us.
(b) The Image
We may place the image midway between the metaphor and the simile. It
has, in fact, so close an affinity with the metaphor that we may regard it as
merely a metaphor fully amplified[97], an aspect which at the same time
marks its very close resemblance to the simile; there is, however, this
distinction, that in the case of the image as such the significance is not set
forth in its independent opposition to the concrete external object expressly
compared with it. That which we term the image arises when two
phenomena or conditions, which by themselves stand substantially apart,
are placed in concurrence so that one condition supplies the significance
which is made intelligible by means of the other. The first, that is to say, the
fundamental modus of the definition constitutes here the relation of
independent consistency[98], and is the line of division of the spheres in their
separation, from which both the significance and its image are deduced; and
that which is common to them, the qualities and relations and so forth, are
not, as in the symbol, the indefinite universal and substantive itself, but the
self-defined concrete existence on the one side no less than on the other[99].
(a) Under a relation such as this the image may possess as its significance a
whole series of conditions, activities, contrasts, and modes of existence, and
manifest the same through a series of a similar nature from an independent

if cognate source, without emphasizing in so many words the significance
as such within the limits of the image. The poem of Goethe, entitled "The
Song of Mahomet," is of this kind. It is merely the title here which shows us
that in the image of a rocky water-spring which, in the freshness of youth,
leaps over the cliff's edge into the abyss, and which then spreads away with
the rush of tributary springs down the plain, ever and anon taking up
fraternal rivers, which gives further a name to localities, and sees whole
towns subject to its glory, until it finally bears in the tumultuous folds of its
rapturous heart all these splendours, the brothers, its possessions, its
children, to the great source that awaits them—it is, we repeat, merely the
title which explains to us that in this comprehensive and radiant image of a
mighty river we have the first bold appearance of Mahomet, then the rapid
spread of his teaching, and, finally, the deliberately planned attempt to bring
all nations to the one faith set forth with such singular directness. We may
view in a similar way many of the Xenien of Goethe and Schiller, those
sentences edged in part with scorn, but as often the mere vehicle of good
spirits, which were flung at the public and its weak authors in particular.
Take the pair of distiches which follow, as an example:
Stille kneteten wir Salpeter, Kohlen und Sewefel,
Bohrten Röhren, gefall' nun auch das Feuer work euch!

Einige steigen als leuchtende kugeln und andere zünden,
Manche auch werfen wir nur spielend das Aug' zu erfreun[100].
Ay, we have in truth seen not a few rockets of this order changed to dull
ash, to the exceeding entertainment of the better half of public opinion, only
too delighted when the rabble of commonplace and miserable quality,
which had for a long time spreadeagled it far and wide and laid down the
law, received a genuine smack in the mouth and a bucket of cold water over
its precious body into the bargain.
(β) In these last examples there is, however, already a second aspect
brought to view, which in our consideration of the image should be
emphasized. In other words the content is in these cases an individual which
acts, brings before us objects, experiences specific states, etc., and then is
reflected in the image not as such a subject, but merely with a reference to
his particular actions, workings, and experiences. The individual himself as
subject is, on the contrary, introduced without an image, and it is only his

actions and relations strictly viewed which contain the form of indirect
expression. Here, too, as in the case of the image generally, it is not the
entire significance which is separated from its mode of embodiment, but the
subject is alone set forth independently, while the definite content of that
subject receives at the same time the form of an image; and the result is that
the subject is imagined in such a way as though it was itself the means
which supplied the imaged form of their existence to the objects and actions
in question. The metaphorical relation is, in fact, ascribed to the individual
subject expressly named. This confusion, or at least interfusion of the direct
and indirect modes of expression has frequently been the subject of adverse
criticism, but we do not find very solid ground to support it[101].
(γ) Orientals are to an extraordinary degree distinguished by the bold use
they make of this type of imagery. They will unite together and intertwine
in one image entirely independent forms of existence. Take for example this
sentence of Hafiz: "The life-course of the world is a bloodstained dagger,
and the drops which fall therefrom are crowns." Or that other: "The sword
of the sun drips in the red of morning with the blood of Night, over which it
has won the victory." Or again this: "No one has yet drawn aside the veil
from the cheeks of thought as Hafis since the day when the tips of the locks
of the Word's bride were curled." The meaning of this image may be
apparently thus expanded. Thought is the bride of the word; so Klopstock
calls the word the twin-brother of Thought, and since this bride has been
adorned by man with delicately turned words, no one is likely to be more
competent than Hafis to suffer the thought thus adorned to appear in the
clarity of its unveiled beauty.
(c) The Simile
From this last type of imagery we may proceed without a break to the
consideration of simile. For in the image we already find the initial
appearance of the independent and imageless expression of this
significance, the subject of the image being here designated. The two types
are, however, distinguished by this that in the simile everything which
exclusively manifests the image in a figurative form is furthermore able to
receive an independently subsistent mode of expression as significance,
which thereby appears alongside of its image and is placed in comparison
with the same. The metaphor and image declare the significances without
making that declaration explicit, so that it is only the context, in which

either metaphor or image occur, which shows without disguise what their
meaning veritably is intended to be. In the simile, on the contrary, both
aspects, image and significance, albeit no doubt we find at one time it is the
image, and at another the significance which is most clearly and fully
emphasized, are kept completely apart and set forth each in its isolation,
and only then, and in such severation are related to one another in virtue of
the similarity of their content.
Viewed in this relation it is possible to characterize the simile as to some
extent merely a vain repetition, in so far, that is, as one and the same
content is reproduced in a twofold, or it may be threefold or fourfold form.
In part, too, we may even see in it a frequently wearisome superfluity, for
the reason that the significance is already there as an independent factor,
and requires no further mode of figuration to render it intelligible. The
question consequently presses upon us here with even more insistence than
in the case of the image and metaphor, what essential interest and object
there may be in the employment of isolated examples or a whole number of
similes. For their use is not to be justified on the commonly received
ground of mere vivacity, and the contention that they increase the lucidity
of expression will assist us just as little. On the contrary similes make a
poem only too frequently insipid and overweighted, and an image or
metaphor by itself can possess a clarity fully as pronounced without there
being any previous necessity to attach the significance to either as
something still outside.
We must consequently conceive the object of the simile to consist in this,
that the subjective[102] imagination of the poet, however much it has
brought home to the artist's consciousness the content, which it seeks to
express, with distinctive emphasis according to its more abstract generality
and expresses it in this universal aspect, yet it finds itself equally under a
constraint to seek out a concrete form for it, and to envisualize for itself in
the phenomena of sense that which already is clearly before the mind as its
significance. Looked at in this way we shall find that the simile is, no less
than the image and the metaphor, indicative of the bravery which invariably
distinguishes imaginative power when it faces its object, it matters not
what, it may be a single object of sense-perception, a definite condition, or
a general significance—the enterprise, that is, to bind together with its own
activity that which lies remote from it in its external environment, and by so

doing to carry away by force objects of the greatest variety, and unite them
to the interest which its unified content possesses, and generally to annex to
the matter in hand a whole world of diversified phenomena. And this power
of the imagination continually to find out the new plastic shape, and cement
together heterogeneous material by means of the relations and associations
of sense is, in general terms, also the rational basis of the simile.
(α) In the first place, then, this impulse to compare can find satisfaction
simply by virtue of the demand which it satisfies, without bringing to light,
that is to say, anything else in the brilliancy of its images than the bravery
of the imagination itself. And this is but the same thing as that revelry[103]
of imaginative power, which, more particularly in the East, with all the
easy-going tranquillity of the South regales itself in the wealth and
splendour of its images nor seeks any other object, while it seduces the
hearer to give himself up to the same spirit. At the same time we are
frequently astounded by the amazing force, with which the poet surrenders
himself to ideas of the most startling contrasts, and displays a cunning of
combination which far exceeds all the effort of mere wittiness as an
indication of genius. Calderon, too, supplies us with many comparisons of
this type, more particularly in his pictures of important and splendid
pageants and festive processions, in his descriptions of chargers and
cavaliers, or in his reference to ships, which on one occasion he calls "birds
without pinions, and fish without fins."
(β) A second and more intimate aspect of these comparisons is that in virtue
of which we find them to be a tarrying by one and the same object, which
becomes thereby the substantial centre of a series of other ideas remote
from it, by pointing to or illuminating which the interest of the content
compared receives a tangible increase.
This protraction of the interest round one centre may be explained in
several ways.
(αα) As the first we may draw attention to the absorption of the soul in the
content, which is the source of its animation, and which attaches itself so
intimately to it, that it is unable to detach itself from the permanent interest
thus excited. We may at the same time observe that a fundamental
difference once more asserts itself in this respect between the poetry of the
East and the West resembling that we have already adverted to our

discussion of Pantheism. In other words the Oriental is in his absorption
less dominated by the personal relation, and consequently without the
languish and yearning of self-interest: his longing, such as it is, remains a
more impersonal delight in the object under comparison, and consequently
more of a contemplation. He looks about him with a free mind, sees in
everything which surrounds him, everything which stirs either his mental
faculties or his heart, an existing image of that which actively concerns his
sense-life and his spiritual forces, and with which he abounds. This type of
the imagination which is free from all mere self-obsession, delivered, I
mean, from all morbid introspection discovers its satisfaction in the
figurative conception of the object itself, and most of all when that object,
by virtue of the comparison instituted, is extolled, exalted, and declared in
line with that which is most glorious and beautiful. The West is in its
general contrast more remote from this impersonal spirit, and in its grief
and pain more inclined to languish and yearn itself away.
This dallying, as we may call it, is then pre-eminently an interest of the
emotional life, more particularly of love, which delights to take refuge in
the objects of its suffering and its raptures; and as often as it finds itself
unable to break loose from such feelings finds naught that is wearisome in
the task of repainting the object ever anew. The lover is above all things the
prodigal in wishes, hopes, and ever changing conceits. Among such
conceits we have to reckon the simile, to which love and the emotions
generally have recourse, all the more readily for the reason that they take up
and absorb the entire soul, and are themselves the independently motive
source of comparison. Whatever is their immediate content, is, that is to say,
a beautiful object arrested in its singularity, whether it be the mouth, the
eye, or the hair of the beloved. In such a state the human soul is active,
restless, and the states of joy and pain are neither without life nor in repose,
but full of activity and motion, are up and down, which at least is
continuous in this that it is for ever bringing all material of whatever kind
into relation with the one emotional centre of the world of the heart. In
other words the interest of comparison has its root in the feeling itself,
which is insistently conscious of the fact, for example, that there are other
objects in Nature which are beautiful, or have given rise to pain and so on.
Consequently love draws these objects with the aid of the simile into the
sphere of its own content, and makes the same wider and more universal
thereby. If the object of the simile is, however, entirely isolated in its

material form, and brought into juxtaposition with objects of a similar
nature, we shall find, and particularly so where similes of this sort are piled
one on the top of another, that such a composition is due to emotion of a
still rather superficial order, and to reflection equally wanting in depth; the
result will be that the variety which merely plays round an external material
will readily appear to us insipid and of no vital interest, because we have
here no spiritual relation interpenetrating it. We may illustrate such an effect
from the fourth chapter of the Song of Solomon where we find the words:
"Behold thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes
within thy locks; thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount
Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came
up from the washing, whereof everyone bear twins, and none is barren
among them. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely:
thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is
like a tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a
thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men. Thy two breasts are like two
young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies[104]. Until the day
break and the shadows flee away." This naïveté is to be met with in many of
the comparisons of Ossian. Take for example the words: "Thou art as snow
on the heather; thine hair is as mist on the kromla, when he curls himself up
on the rock, and glistens toward the gleam in the West; thine arms are as
two arrows in the halls of the mighty Fingal."
Of the same kind, only here in wholly a rhetorical way, are the following
words Ovid places in the mouth of Polyphemus (Met. XIII, vv. 789-807):
"Thou art more white, O Galatea, than the leaf of the snow-white
meadowland; more blooming than the fields, more slender than the elm;
more brilliant than glass, more arch than the tender little roebuck; smoother
than the shell ever-polished by the sea; more dear than Winter's sun, or the
shade in Summer; nobler than the fruit-tree, more comely than the lofty
plane." And so on through all the nineteen hexameters, a description not
wanting in rhetorical beauty, but as the presentation of an emotion, which
rouses little interest, itself equally lacking in interest.
We may find many examples of this style of comparison in Calderon,
although a halt, by the way, of this kind is more suitable to lyrical emotion
simply, and fetters the march of drama far too insistently, if it is not actually
motived by the subject-matter. Don Juan, for instance, during the progress

of the action, describes at length in this way the beauty of a veiled lady
whom he had followed. This is what he says to a third person:
Natheless in despite and often
Through the gross and barriered darkness
Of that intranslucent veil,
Flashed a hand of sheen most splendid,
Mistress pure of rose and lily,
Princess, to whose matchless glory
E'en the snow's gleam paid obeisance,
Slave all murk of Aethiop moulding.
The matter is wholly different, however, when any one capable of profound
emotion, expresses his life through images and similes, in which the most
secret folds of spiritual feeling are unveiled, the soul here either identifying
itself with some scene of external Nature, or making such a scene the
counterfeit of a spiritual content. We may cite Ossian once again in
illustration of this better use of image and comparison, although the range
of objects which serve him in such similitude is jejune, mainly restricted to
clouds, mists, storms, trees, streams, thistles, grasses, and other facts
equally obvious. Here is one of them: "The Present[105] brings joy to us, O
Fingal; it is as the sun on Kromla, when the hunter has mourned its absence
a whole year long and now it breaks forth from the clouds." In another
passage of the same writer we find these words: "Did not Ossian hearken
but now to a voice? Is it then the voice of the days that are no longer?
Ofttimes, oft as the evening suns, comes the memory of times that are gone
into my soul." And for another instance take this bit of narration: "Pleasant
are the words of song, saith Kuchullin, and dear to the heart are the tales of
times far away. They are as the quiet dew of the morning on the hill of the
roe-deer, when the sun trembles faintly on his flank, and the pool lies
motionless and blue in the dale." In the case of Ossian this halting by the
same emotions, and their similitudes expresses the attitude of an old age
which out of weariness and exhaustion turns to sorrowful and painful
memories. And generally a recourse to comparisons is evidence of an
inclination to melancholy and effeminate emotion. The desire and interest
of such a soul lies far away and foregone; and for this reason we find as a
rule that, instead of bracing itself up manfully, it yields to its longing to lose
itself in something else. Many of the figurative expressions of Ossian

consequently are quite as much a response to this wholly personal mood as
they are a reflection of ideas mostly of a mournful colour, and of the
restricted circle beyond which he is unable to pass.
But, conversely, it is quite possible that passion, in so far as it is able to
concentrate its forces on one content, despite its own unrest, with the object
of finding a counterfeit of the soul in the natural world around it, may
fluctuate to and fro in a variety of images and similitudes, which are all
purely conceits of the fancy over one and the same object. A fine example
of this we have in that monologue of Juliet from "Romeo and Juliet," in
which she apostrophizes the night as follows:
Come, night; come Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back:
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
(ββ) The similes of epic poetry as they come before us over and over again
in Homer stand out in a marked contrast to the above type of almost purely
lyrical simile in which sentiment is absorbed in the heart of its content. In
the former case the aim of the poet, when he may by any chance wish to
dally with the comparative mode around some specific object, is, on the one
hand, interested in raising us over the active curiosity, expectancy, hope,
and fear, by which we are moved relatively to the several situations and
exploits of his heroes during the actual progress of events over, that is to
say, the general concurrencies of cause, action, and consequence, and in
fixing our attention upon the images which he places before us in their
plastic repose, purely for our contemplation, serene as the works of
sculpture. This repose, this absolution from the merely practical interest that
we may enter into that which he places visibly before our eyes comes upon
us with all the more force in so far as everything with which he compares
the object is taken from a field entirely remote from it. Moreover, this
halting round the simile possesses the further significance that by virtue of
this kind of twofold painting of the same object its importance is

emphasized, and is thus not permitted to be whirled away in the mere
shifting stream of the song and the events it celebrates. Take, for example,
what Homer says of Achilles, when that hero, fired with anger, confronts
Aeneas ("Iliad," XX, vv. 164-175):
As when the harmful king of beasts (sore threatened to be slain
By all the country up in arms) at first makes coy disdain
Prepare resistance, but at last when anyone hath led
Bold charge upon him with his dart, he then turns yawning head,
Fell anger lathers in his jaws, his great heart swells, his stern
Lasheth his strength up, sides and thighs waddle with stripes to learn
Their own power, his eyes glow, he roars, he leaps to kill,
Secure of killing: so his power then rous'd up to his will
Matchless Achilles, coming on to meet Anchises' son[106].
Much in the same spirit he speaks of Pallas, when she averted the arrow
which Pandaros had let fly against Menelaus ("Iliad," IV, vv. 130-131):
"She did not forget him, and warded off the arrow e'en as a mother flicks
away some fly from her son, as he lies in sweet slumber."
And again further on when the arrow, notwithstanding, wounds Menelaus
(vv. 141-146):
Yet forth the blood flow'd, which did much his royal person grace,
And show'd upon his ivory skin, as doth a purple dye
Laid, by a dame of Caïra, or lovely Maeony,
On ivory, wrought in ornaments to deck the cheeks of horse;
Which in her marriage room must lie; whose beauties have such
force,
That they are wish'd of many knights, but are such precious things,
That they are kept for horse that draw the chariots of kings;
Which horse, so deck'd, the charioteer esteems a grace to him;
Like these, in grace, the blood upon thy solid thighs did swim,
O Menelaus, etc[107].
(γ) A third motive cause of similes, quite distinct from that of purely
imaginative riot as also the self-absorbed sentiment or, under its other
aspect, the dallying round important objects with the figurative power of the
fancy, we have now to emphasize with particular reference to dramatic

poetry. The content of the drama is made up of the conflict of passions,
activities, pathos, actions, and the accomplishment of the thing willed by
the soul, a content which does not, as in the case of the epic, take the form
of a narrative of past events, but the dramatic poet places the individuals
themselves before our eyes and makes them unfold their emotions
personally in an objective form, and their actions as taking place in the
present: his mediate position between ourselves and the objects represented
therefore ceases. Looked at from this point of view it would appear as
though in order to make this presence in Nature clear to us a primary
requirement of drama would be that the expression of passions and the
vehemence of their grief, consternation, and delight should be painted as
naturally as it was possible to paint it, and consequently the simile would be
here out of place. To let individuals, on the very plane of their action, in the
full storm of emotion, and in the continuous strain of the busy world, speak
much in the language of metaphor or image is obviously, from the
commonsense point of view, an unnatural proceeding and injurious to the
directness aimed at. We are by the simile diverted from the immediate
situation, and the characters, whose actions and emotions are involved in it,
to something external and strange to it, which in short does not strictly
belong to it, as part of its own present; consequently the general course of
the dialogue must unavoidably appear to lag under the interruption thus
imposed. And for this reason it came about also in Germany when at last
our young bloods were all for freeing themselves from the fetters of French
rhetorical taste, that the Spaniards, Italians, and French were regarded as
artists who did nothing more than place their own personal flights of fancy
or witticism, their own conventional attitude to society and elegance of
speech in the mouth of their dramatic characters in situations, too, when the
very tempest of emotion cried out for Nature's most direct expression to the
exclusion of all other. We find as a result of such an insistence on the
principle of realism that in many dramas, which hail from this time, the
outcry of emotion, with all the exclamatory signs and hyphens which may
render its nudity more visible, takes the place of a noble and dignified
diction, rich in image and simile. In much the same sense even English
critics have often charged Shakespeare with a superabundant and too varied
recourse to the simile, some of which he not unfrequently will attach to
characters in the full strain of personal bereavement, where the stress of
emotion least of all admits of the tranquillity necessary to reflection, the

attitude of mind which is indispensable to this type of comparison. We may
no doubt admit that now and again we meet with in Shakespeare an
exaggerated tendency to pile up image upon image, and that his diction is
thereby overweighted. At the same time we shall see, if we examine the
matter in all its bearings, that even in drama the simile is entitled to a
position essential to this form of poetry and vital to its action.
In other words if the emotion makes a pause in similes for the reason that it
is absorbed in its object and is unable to free itself therefrom, there is also
on the plane of active life a distinct purpose subserved by it, namely, to
indicate that the individual is not thus so exclusively preoccupied with the
particular situation or state of the emotions then uppermost, but possesses a
fine and noble nature superior to such conditions and able to assert its
independence. In passion soul-life is restricted and fettered to its own
seclusion, narrowed down to the point of concentrated heat, either thereby a
mute, an ejaculation of monosyllables, or the rage that vents itself at
random. Greatness of soul and intellectual power alike refuse to submit to
such limitations: they are wings which carry the soul in a fine tranquillity
over and above the storm of pathos that moves it. It is this deliverance of
the soul, which the simile primarily expresses by the very mode under
which it is asserted. In other words it is only a really profound composure
and strength which is able to make itself the object of its pain and suffering,
to compare itself with something else, and by doing so to view itself
impartially[108] in a strange material; or it may be in a mood of the most
terrible scorn to set forth in the external thing the confronting image of its
own annihilation, and still persist in the repose of its own obdurate forces.
In epical poetry, as we before observed, it was the poet's undoubted
function to transmit to his audience, by means of those halts by the way
which his picturesque similitudes offered, that sense of tranquillity which is
essential to fine art. In dramatic art, on the contrary, the dramatis personae
appear as themselves the poets and artists. Here it is the characters who
objectify their own soul-life in that which they are powerful enough to
imagine and inform, thereby further manifesting to us the nobility of their
receptive faculties and the inherent force of their emotional resources[109].
For this absorption into something else that is external is now[110] the
deliverance of the world within from a purely practical interest, or at least is
that which lifts the immediacy of emotion to the level of forms the soul may

contemplate in freedom; and for this reason every comparison instituted
simply for the comparison's sake in the way we have already observed it
under the first aspect of the simile discussed, is vindicated now in a much
profounder sense than was then possible; it can now only appear as a
victory over the exclusive obsession of passion and the release from its
masterdom. In following up the course of this liberating process we will
now emphasize several important distinctions to illustrate which we shall
borrow exclusively from Shakespeare.
(αα) Now in the first place we would observe that when we have a soul set
before us about to meet with a grave misfortune, by which it will be shaken
to its depths, and the pain of this inevitable cataclysm is at length actually
entered upon, it would be nothing less than an indication of a nature
essentially commonplace if it were there and then to break out into the cry
of horror, pain, and desperation, and so make a clean breast of it. A strong
and noble spirit on the contrary holds its lamentation as such in reserve,
keeps a hand of iron upon its pain, and by this means preserves a free power
to embody in far-distant material imaginatively presented the profound
sense of its anguish, and to express its own tragic state under the image of
that which is remote. Thus man rises superior to his suffering; he is not
utterly with all that is in him bondman to it; rather he is as wholly distinct
from it as he is one with it; and consequently he can still pause before that
which is outside and beyond him, which he relates to his emotion as an
independent force cognate with his own. This will explain to us those words
of the old Northumberland in Shakespeare's "Henry IV," when he inquires
of the messenger who comes to inform him of the death of Percy, what
news he brings him of his son and his brother, and, on receiving no reply,
gives utterance to the composure of the most poignant grief as follows:
Thou tremblest; and the whiteness of thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt;
But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue,
And I my Percy's death ere thou report'st it[111].

This attitude of the soul, which spins about itself as it were the garments of
its pain, and yet retains the power throughout to image itself under new
modes of comparison, receives a particularly striking illustration in the
character of Richard II, where we find him repentant over the youthful
frivolity of his days of prosperity. In fact there is no trait in this royal grief
that is more touching or suggestive of a child's simplicity than the fact that
he always expresses himself under the objective form of most pertinent
images, and in the play of this type of self-expression preserves his
suffering all the more profoundly. When, for example, Henry demands of
him the crown, he replies:
Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown;
Here cousin;
On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water.
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs while you mount up on high[112].
(ββ) The other aspect to which we would now draw attention is this,
namely, that a character which is already made one with its interests, its
sorrow, and its destiny, endeavours by means of the simile to release itself
from this immediate union, and makes this deliverance obvious to us by the
very fact that it shows itself still able to deduce such similitudes. In "Henry
VIII,"[113] for instance, the Queen Katherine, on being forsaken by her royal
consort, expresses the depth of her desolation in the words:

I am the most unhappy woman living!
Alas, poor wenches, where are now your fortunes?
Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,
No friends, no hope; no kindred weep for me;
Almost no grave allow'd me: like the lily,
That once was mistress of the field and flourish'd,
I'll hang my head and perish.
In a still more admirable manner in "Julius Caesar"[114] Brutus exclaims to
Cassius, to whose want of spirit he has vainly striven to give the spur:
O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
That carries anger as the flint bears fire;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cool again.
That Brutus in such a situation can find room for a simile is already an
excellent proof that he himself has thrust his scorn into the background, and
has begun to assert himself as master of it.
For the most part Shakespeare, by endowing his criminal characters with
greatness of soul in crime no less than in misfortune, exalts them before he
leaves them above their own evil passions: he will not let them rest in the
purely abstract assertion of crimes they are for ever going to do, but never
really commit, as is the French style, but actually infuses them with the
imaginative power, by means of which they stand out before us as distinctly
as any other personification that is new to us. Macbeth, for instance, when
his last hour has struck[115], exclaims in the well-known words:
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
The same thing may be said of those last words of Cardinal Wolsey in
"Henry VIII,"[116] uttered at the close of his career when struck down from
the summit of his greatness:

Farewell! a long farewell to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes: to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.
(γγ) In this impersonal relation of objective fact and its expression of the
comparative mode, the repose and substantial self-command of character
returns to itself; it is the means whereby the pain of a great downfall is
softened. So Cleopatra exclaims[117] to Charmian, after she has already put
the mortal aspic to her breast:
Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?
As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle—
The bite of the serpent relaxes her members so gently that Death is himself
deceived and holds himself to be Sleep. And this image may well pass as
itself a counterfeit of the mild and allaying influence of such similitudes.

C. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART

Didactic, descriptive poetry and the ancient epigram.
The conception we have in general terms formed of the symbolic type of art
is such that within it significance and expression are unable to unite
sufficiently to appear in complete and reciprocal fusion. In unconscious
symbolism the incompatibility of these two aspects remained a fact
throughout, if not actually declared as such; in the Sublime on the contrary
this inadequacy was explicitly asserted: the absolute significance, God, no
less than His external reality, the world, are expressly represented in this
excluding relation to one another. On the other hand, however, in all these
types that further aspect of symbolism, namely, the affinity which obtains
between the significance and the external form, in which it is visibly
manifested, still retained its importance. In the original type of symbolism

this was exclusively the case, a type which did not as yet set forth the
significance in contrast to its concrete existence. But in the Sublime, too, it
remained an essential relation, a type which, in order to express the
Supreme Being, if here under a wholly inadequate mode, required as its
means the phenomena of Nature, and the events and exploits of God's
chosen people. And finally it reappears in the comparative type of art a
personal relation and one that is consequently amenable to caprice. This
element of caprice, however, albeit it is an entirely present fact and
particularly so in the case of the metaphor, image, and simile, is
notwithstanding still hidden away behind the affinity between the
significance and the image utilized to express it, in so far as it selects the
comparison simply out of a regard for their mutual resemblance, a
fundamental aspect of which is not so much the external form as just this
relation set up between them by the activity of the soul and consisting in
subjective emotions, points of view and ideas and their cognate modes of
configuration[118]. When, however, it is not the notion of the material itself,
but simply a capricious use of the judgment, which brings together the
content and its artistic form, both can only be conceived as posited in an
entirely external relation to one another; their association is now a
juxtaposition without essential relation, simply a dressing up, that is to say,
of the one side by the other. For this reason we have here to treat these last-
mentioned and subordinate types of art by way of supplement. They arise
from the absolute collapse of the essential phases in all true art-production;
they bring before us, in short, by their independence of the principle of
relativity the suicide of the symbolic type.
If we view this stage generally as a whole we find on the one hand already
as wholly independent the elaborate but formless significance, for the
artistic shaping of which all that we can now supply is an external ornament
selected at caprice to set it off. On the other side we have the external mode
pure and simple. That is to say, instead of being mediated in its identity with
that on which it is imposed by the fact that this is its own essentially
cognate significance it can now only be accepted and described in the
aspect of its self-subsistence over against this centrum of significance, and
consequently only as mere externality. From the above contrasted aspects
we may differentiate in abstract terms didactic from descriptive poetry, a
distinction which so far at least as the didactic is concerned is only to be

made good under the poetic type for the reason that this alone is able to
bring before us the significance in its abstract universality.
Inasmuch, however, as the notion of art does not consist in the dissociation,
but the identification of significance and form we find even at this stage not
only a complete separation, but also in line with that, a relation asserted
between the sides thus opposed. This relation, however, now that the
partition line of symbolism has already been crossed, is no longer of a
symbolic nature, and is therefore an attempt to abolish the fundamental
characteristics of that type, namely, the incompatibility, and at the same
time the self-subsistence of form and content, a position that all the
previous types were unable to transcend. Owing, however, to the separation
of the two sides, which thus make for unity, being already presupposed by
this type this attempt can only be looked upon as a mere aspiration[119], to
completely satisfy which in all that it involves is reserved for a more perfect
type of art, namely, the classical.
We will now briefly glance at these supplementary forms, in order to make
our passage from them to the real type above mentioned more fully
intelligible.
1. THE DIDACTIC POEM

When a significance, which as such co-ordinates a homogeneous complexus
of relations, is apprehended exclusively as significance, yet does not receive
the form strictly adequate to this content, but is merely invested with the
external ornamentation of art, then we have before us the didactic poem.
The didactic poem does not figure among the genuine types of art. For in it
we find on the one hand a content already completely elaborated under a
mode that is thereby necessarily prosaic, while on the other we have the
artistic form, which is merely tacked to it in an external way, for this very
reason that it had already been accepted by the mind in a form stamped with
prose throughout, and is merely exhibited to our common sense or
reflective faculties as instruction under this prosaic aspect, that is to say,
with an exclusive reference to the significance embodied in its abstract and
general terms. Consequently art, in this its external relation to a content so
essentially foreign to its real informing process, can only recognize in the
didactic poem its external aspects, such as metre, exalted language, episodic
matter, images, similes, ebullitions of sentiment, points of acceleration and

transition in the march of ideas, aspects in short which do not give us the
heart of the content as such, but rather surround it as an incidental accretion,
with the object of alleviating and making more enjoyable the serious and
dry tone of the didactic material by means of their more inspiriting
atmosphere. That which is intrinsically, in the fundamental conception of it,
relegated to prose, cannot receive the poet's mintage, though it may be the
peg on which he may hang his mantle[120]. Just as we find, for example, that
the art of gardening is in great measure a purely external rearrangement of
what is already presented us by Nature, but not necessarily of that which is
itself a truly lovely locality; or as the art of building ameliorates by its
ornament and external decoration a locality which has been expressly
devoted to prosaic purposes and affairs.
In this way Greek Philosophy made a start under the mode of the didactic
poem. We may even adduce Hesiod as an example, albeit a prosaic
treatment of this kind in its strict sense is only fully assured when the
understanding is undisputed master of the subject with its train of
reflections, consequences, and classifications, and instructs us from this
standpoint alone in as pleasing and elegant a way as it can. Lucretius, too,
in his relations to the philosophy of Epicurus, and Vergil, with the
information he supplies on agriculture, are in part examples of the same
type. Despite all their artistic adroitness they are unable to give their
versification the genuine spontaneity of the artistic form. In Germany the
didactic poem is new out of fashion; in France Delille, in addition to his
previous efforts entitled "Les jardins, ou l'art d'embellir les paysages," and
his "Homme des champs," has presented his compatriots with a further
example of the didactic poem, in which he has treated physical science as
compendiously through its forms of magnetism, electricity and the rest.
2. DESCRIPTIVE POETRY

The second type which we have to examine stands out in direct contrast to
the previous one. The point of departure here is not from a significance
already present before the mind in an independent form of its own, but from
external objects simply such as natural localities, buildings, seasons of the
year or periods of time, and the modes under which they are presented to
sense. But as we found in the didactic poem the content persisted in
formless generality so far as its essential character was concerned, so here,
if in a converse manner, the external material is independently set forth in

the singularity which pertains to it simply as phenomenon without being
drawn within the circle of the significances apparent to mind; and it is this
particularity which is depicted and described in its external aspect precisely
as it appears to the matter-of-fact consciousness. Such a sensuous content
has no relation to true art whatever, except under the one feature, namely,
that of its external existence; and this can only claim art's recognition in so
far as it represents the natural basis of spiritual life and individuality, its
actions and events, the facts, that is to say, which constitute an environing
world; as merely external form separated by itself from all that pertains to
such life it has no such claim.
3. RELATION OF BOTH ASPECTS

On grounds deducible from the above, neither the instructive nor the
descriptive type is secured in the exclusive one-sidedness which would
obliterate every vestige of art, and we find in the one case that the external
reality is brought into appreciable relation with that which is seized by mind
as significance, just as conversely in the other the abstract universal is
related to its concrete mode of appearance.
(a) We have already explained how this is so in the case of the didactic
poem. Without depicting external conditions and particular phenomena,
without the episodical narration of mythological and other illustrations we
shall rarely find a genuine example of it. By means, however, of a parallel
series of this character in which the universal for mind is thus laid alongside
of the particular object of sense we have merely a quite collateral relation
set up instead of a union carried out in every detail, a parallelogism,
moreover, which does not affect the entire content and its all-embracing
artistic form, but merely isolated aspects and traits.
(b) Such a modicum of true relation is particularly conspicuous in the case
of descriptive poetry, in so far as its delineations are accompanied with such
emotions as the sight of natural landscape, the course of the days and
seasons, a wooded hill, a lake, a babbling brook, a church, a picturesquely
situated village and the poor man's peaceful cottage are likely to arouse. We
find consequently in descriptive poetry much as we do in the didactic poem
episodes which, although merely accessory, animate us, in particular
through the reflection of affecting emotions, such as a tender melancholy or
little touches of occasional experience taken from the more homely levels
of life. Such an association of spiritual feeling with the external facts of

Nature can still only too easily in this type of poetry remain wholly external
in its presentation. For the natural or local condition is here assumed to be
something which quite independently confronts us. Man no doubt draws
near to it; under its influence he entertains this or that feeling, but there is
nothing which essentially unites moonlight, forests, valleys, landscape, and
so on, with the emotions of the soul they excite. I am not here either the
interpreter or the animating focus of Nature, but feel, as each happens to
confront me, a wholly indefinite kind of harmonious reciprocity establish
itself between the objects I face and the emotional life which they stimulate.
Most of all are we Germans devoted to this type of picturesque description,
and along with it to every variety of exquisite feeling and heart
effervescence such natural scenery can possibly evoke. It is a public high-
road over which all may march in line. Even some of the odes of Klopstock
are tuned to its key.
(c) But thirdly, if we inquire whether there is not a profounder relation
between these opposed aspects of the internal feeling and external object,
we shall find our nearest approach to an answer in the ancient epigram.
(α) The very name of the epigram already expresses the original gist of it. It
is an inscription.
Unquestionably we find, also here on the one hand an object, and on the
other we have a definite statement propounded as to this object; but in the
most ancient epigrams, among which Hesiod has preserved a few examples,
we do not have the picture of an object accompanied by any reaction of
feeling, rather we find, the matter of fact put before us in two distinct ways.
In the one the external existence, and with it the meaning thereof and
explanation, is concentrated in its form as epigram on the keenest and most
forcible of its characteristics. This original characterization of the epigram,
however, even among the Greeks, later examples have already lost; and we
find an increasing tendency both to secure and apply the passing conceits of
fancy, whether ingenious, witty, or merely entertaining, to particular
incidents, works of art, people and so on, ideas in short which do not so
much set forth the object itself, as illustrate the condition of personal feeling
in reference to the same.
(β) The main point to observe here is this that, just in proportion as the
object itself fails as such to become the predominant factor in this type of

presentment to that extent it becomes less complete. In this connection we
may also in passing mention a few more modern examples of an analogous
nature. The novels of Tieck, for instance, not unfrequently have to deal with
specific works of art or artists, or a definite gallery of pictures, composition
of music and so forth, and they have then some nice little romance attached.
These particular pictures, however, which the reader has never seen, these
compositions, which he has never heard, the poet obviously can neither
bring before our eyes nor ears. From this point of view the entire expression
of his art, in so far as it depends on objects of this nature, must remain
subject to this defect. In the same way in yet more important romances
writers have sought to embody as the real content of their work entire arts,
and their finest productions as Heinse, for instance, did with that of music
in his Hildegard von Hohenthal. But in every case where we find that a
work of art throughout is unable to reproduce with essential adequacy its
fundamental subject-matter, we can only conclude that the primary cause of
this defect arises from the inadequacy of the type of art selected.
(γ) To remove the defects above adverted to two things are clearly essential;
the objective fact and the explanation of it which is offered to mind must
not be suffered to fall into absolute severation as was the case in the type
last considered, nor must the union when effected, an equally important
point, assume a character identical with either the symbolical, sublime or
purely comparative types. A yet more genuine form of presentment must be
sought for under a condition in which we find that the fact in question
supplies an elucidation of its ideal content by means of its external mode of
appearance, and actually in this mode, a condition under which that which
is of spirit unfolds itself completely in the form of its reality, and the
corporeal and external presence is simply the adequate explication of the
spiritual and ideal. In order, however, to follow up this problem to its
complete fulfilment we must bid farewell to the symbolic types of art. For
the essential character of symbolism consisted precisely in this that the
union of the animating principle of the significance with its spatial
embodiment always stopped short of such completeness.

[76] In other words everything created being posited as unsubstantial apart from
the One necessitated the conclusion that all the Goodness, etc., there divulged
was referable to that Supreme Source.

[77] Bewussten, that is a symbolism conscious of its typical character. I have
above used the expression "premeditated," but "conscious" is perhaps sufficient.
[78] I understand auf solche Weise, "under such a mode as expressed either by
Symbolism or the Sublime."
[79] It is prosaic because it has no absolute root in reality.
[80] Lit., "As consciousness lays hold of the same in the clear light of ordinary
reason" (seiner verständigen Klarheit.)
[81] Theoretische, that is personal, contemplative rather than practical.
[82] Lit., "and his freedom secludes itself with a prophetic instinct (ahndend) in
itself."
[83] Wie die Faust auf das Auge passt. A proverbial expression unknown to me.
We should rather say "a beam in our eyes."
[84] As contrasted, that is, with the fable.
[85] An Indian dancing girl.
[86] Hegel uses the term in the plural, Die Verwandlungen, possibly with
reference to Ovid's Metamorphoses.
[87] Standpunkt, i.e., the form viewed relatively to the general type.
[88] Beseelung.
[89] Plastic must be taken here in the very loose and pregnant sense of any art
that deals with external material.
[90] Ein grammatisches Subject. Hegel presumably means that it is merely
subject under the mode of literary expression without possessing the true
determination of personality.
[91] Aushöhlen muss. We should rather say that the allegorist is forced to
attenuate (lit. hollow out) the substance of subjectivity, etc. But I have left the
more literal rendering.
[92] In the German fassen, begreifen.
[93] Einer konkreten Anschauung. That is, a quality or feature that belongs to the
phenomena of the concrete world of perception.
[94] Of course this is not so in the English equivalent, where the primary sense is
still material.
[95] Lit., "Of expressions in the strict sense of the term."
[96] Ihr ruhiger vollständig ausgestaltender Sinn. The meaning that declares
itself completely through the form in classic repose.
[97] Ausführliche, explicit in all its detail.
[98] Das Für-sich-seyn.
[99] I give the literal translation. I presume a more intelligible one would be "but
actual existence in its self-defined concreteness." The passage is not easy to
follow.
[100]

Silent we pounded up carbon, saltpeter, and sulphur,
Set the train going. Good friend! How did our cracker find you?
Some as illuminate balls soared prodigious while others exploded,
Many we flashed in our fun simply the eye to delight.
[101] I find this analysis of the image more than usually difficult to follow, I
have therefore made my translation very literal. I must confess that this
distinction between the image and the metaphor appears to me rather an example
of hyper-subtlety on Hegel's part, or as some might say, an effort to make what is
virtually only a verbal distinction correspond to a more real difference of idea.
[102] That is the emphatically personal.
[103] Die Schwelgerei.
[104] In the German the sentence is continuous. Our version clearly gives
another reading to the Hebrew.
[105] May be a misprint for "thy presence," deine instead of die.
[106] Chapman's translation.
[107] Chapman's translation, somewhat an extension of the Greek it must be
admitted.
[108] Theoretisch, i.e., in contemplative repose.
[109] Such I take to be the contrast implied in the words den Adel ihrer
Gesinnung and die Macht ihrers Gemüths. Gesinnung is the sense-perception.
Gemüth includes the creative fertility.
[110] Hier, i.e., as contrasted with the first stage of the discussion.
[111] "Henry IV, Part II," act i, scene I.
[112] "King Richard II," act iv, sc. 1.
[113] "King Henry VIII," act iii, sc. 1.
[114] "Julius Caesar," act iv, sc. 3.
[115] "Macbeth," act v, sc. 5.
[116] "Henry VIII," act iii, sc. 2.
[117] "Antony and Cleopatra," act V, sc. 2.
[118] The meaning is that the selection is not made merely with reference to
external resemblance, but is also based on relations only existing in the soul of
the artist and therefore to that extent capricious, however much they appear to be
essential.
[119] Ein blosses Sollen, lit., a mere "should," a mere movement in a given
direction.
[120] This is implied in the contrast of the verbs umstalten and überkleiden.

SUBSECTION II

THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION

THE CLASSIC TYPE IN GENERAL

Thr central point[121] of art's evolution is the union, in a self-integrated
totality, carried to the point of its freest expression, of content and form
wholly adequate thereto. This realization, coinciding as it does with the
entire notional concept of the beautiful, towards which the symbolic form
of art strove in vain, first becomes apparent in classical art. We have
already, in our previous consideration of the Idea of the beautiful and of art,
outlined the general character of classic art. The Ideal supplies a content
and form to classical art, which in this adequate mode in which it is
embodied reveals that which true art is according to its notion.
To perfect this result, however, all the various phases of art, whose
evolution is the subject-matter of our previous investigations, are
contributive. For classical beauty has for its ideal substance[122] free and
independent significance, that is to say, not the significance of any
particular thing, but a significance which declares itself, and thereby points
to its substance. This is the spiritual substance, which in general terms is
that which makes of itself an object. In this objectification of itself it
possesses the form of externality, which, as identical with its ideal
character, is consequently also on its own part the significance of itself, and
is made conscious of itself by this self-knowledge. It is true that in our
consideration of the symbolical our point of departure was that of the unity
of the significance and its mode of envisagement in the art product; but this
unity was purely immediate, and for this reason inadequate.
For the real content either remained essentially the natural according to its
substance and abstract universality, and consequently the isolated thing in
the objective world of Nature[123], although it was regarded as the real
determination of that universality, was not able to present the same in a
mode adequate to it, or that which is purely ideal, and only to be
apprehended by spirit, in so far as it was received in the artistic content,
carried with it in that which was foreign to its essential nature, namely the
immediate individual and sensuous thing, the mode of its appearance that

was in fact incongruent with it. And generally here significance and form
only stood in the relation of mere affinity and suggestion; and however
much in certain respects they could be brought together homogeneously,
they as clearly fell apart again in other directions. This original unity was
therefore torn asunder; this simple and abstract inwardness or ideality was
imaged for the Hindoo conception of the world on the one side in the
manifold reality of Nature, and on the other in finite human existence; and
the imagination, in the unrest of its impetuous motion, was carried from the
one to the other by turns, without being either able to deliver the ideal in its
essentially pure and absolute self-subsistency, or to thoroughly infuse it
with the phenomenal matter as it was presented and informed, and so
reproduce it throughout that material in undisturbed union. The disorder and
grotesque appearance, which arose in the commingling of elements opposed
to one another, no doubt again vanished, but only to make way for an
enigmatical condition equally unsatisfying, which, instead of solving the
problem, was only able to prevent the problem's solution. For here, too, still
was lacking the freedom and self-subsistency of content, which only
thereby is rendered explicit in that the Inward is presented to consciousness
as in itself a whole, and by this means as that which overlaps the externality
which in the first instance is other than itself and foreign to itself. This
essential self-subsistency, cognized as free and absolute significance, is
self-consciousness, which has for its content the Absolute, and for its form
the subjectivity of Spirit. In contradistinction to this self-determining,
thinking, willing power everything else is self-subsistent in merely a
relative and momentary sense. The material phenomena of Nature such as
the sun, the heavens, stars, plants, animals, stones, streams and sea have
only an abstract relation to themselves, and are in the eternal process of
Nature bound up with other facts of natural existence, so that they can only
pass as self-subsistent for the finite perception. The real significance of the
Absolute is not presented in them. Nature is indeed under a mode
expressed[124], but only under the mode of what is outside itself; its
inwardness is not as such for itself, but poured forth into the varied show of
its appearances, and consequently devoid of self subsistency. Only in Spirit
as the concrete, free and, infinite self-relation, is the true and absolute
significance actually disclosed, and self-subsistent under the mode of its
determinate existence.

On the way to this emancipation of the Idea from the immediately sensuous
medium and to its self-establishment we are confronted by the Sublime and
the consecration of the imagination. The absolute significance is, that is to
say, in the first instance the thinking, absolute and senseless[125] One, which
is self-related as the Absolute, and in this relation affirms that which it
creates; Nature and finitude generally, as the negative, thing, that which is
essentially in itself devoid of stability. It is the explicit and essential
Universal, conceived as the objective power over collective existence,
whether it be that this One be brought now to consciousness and
represented in its expressly negative attitude to the created, thing, or in its
positively pantheistic inherence in the same. The twofold defect of this
point of view, so far as it is connected with art, consists first in this that this
One and Universal which constitutes the fundamental significance has not
yet in itself arrived at the closer determination and distinction, and by this
means just as little at the point of real individuality and personality in which
it could be apprehended as Spirit, and could be set before the sensuous
perception in a form which would be applicable to its spiritual content,
according to its own notion, and duly conformable therewith. The concrete
idea of Spirit on the contrary requires, that it both defines and distinguishes
itself in itself, and by the very act of making itself an object discovers
through this reduplication an external phenomenon, which although
material and present, nevertheless is throughout permeated by Spirit, and
consequently taken by itself expresses nothing at all, simply permitting
Spirit to declare itself as its inner core, the expression and reality of which it
is. Secondly, from the point of view of the objective world the defect is
bound up with this abstraction of an Absolute to which the principle of self-
determination is lacking that now also the real phenomenon, being that
which is essentially without substance, is unable to set forth under any true
mode the Absolute in concrete shape. In contrast to those songs of praise
and glory, those celebrations of the abstract and universal majesty of God,
we have now in the passage we are making to a higher form of art to recall
to our minds that phase of negativity, change, pain, and progress through
life and death, which we discovered among other matter in the conceptions
of the East. We have here set before us the principle of self-distinction in its
essential character under a mode which is unable to unite with its
conception the unity and self-subsistency of that subjective principle. Both
aspects, however, both the essential and self-substantive unity, and the

differentiation of that unity by virtue of a self-defined content, are equally
necessary to unfold a true and free self-subsistency in its concrete and
mediate totality.
In this connection we may incidentally, together with this reference to the
Sublime, mention that further conception which at the same time entered on
its process of explication in the East. It is that apprehension, in opposition
to the substantiality of the one God, of internal freedom, self-subsistency
and innate independence of the individual, so far as the elaboration of this
impulse was permitted to Eastern nations. The main source of this attitude
we must seek for among the Arabs, who in their deserts, upon the infinite
sea of these expanses, with the clear heavens over their heads, in a nature
such as this have emphasized their own courage and the bravery of their
hand, as also the means of their self-preservation, whether it be camel,
horse, lance, or sword. Here we find the more stubborn independence of
personal character asserting itself in its contrast to the Hindoo softness and
lack of individuality, as also to the more recent pantheism of Mohammedan
poetry, and opposing also to the objective world its circumscribed, securely
defined and immediate reality. With this incipient stage of the independence
of the individual we must also associate free friendship, hospitality, and
august nobility, but at the same time an insatiable lust of revenge and the
inextinguishable memory of a hate, which is insistent and will have
satisfaction with an unsparing passion and an absolutely remorseless
cruelty. None the less all that happens on this soil is wholly within the circle
of humanity. We have here deeds of revenge, conditions of love, traits of
self-sacrificing nobility from which the fantastic and the wonderful have
vanished; everything is carried forward in the secure and determinate shape
which the causative connection of the facts necessitate. A similar
conception of real objects which are referred to their determinate basis of
actuality[126], and are made visible in their free power, not merely in that
which conserves an exterior purpose[127], we discovered in an earlier stage
of our investigations among the Hebrews. The more assured independence
of character, the savagery of revenge and hate lie, too, at the root of the
original Jewish nationality. But the difference is at once pronounced, that in
this case even the most powerful images of Nature are depicted less for
their own sake than for that of the glory of God, as related to which they at
once again lose their self-subsistency; and furthermore even hate and

persecution are not merely a personal matter affecting persons, but are
embraced in the service of God as national vengeance against whole
peoples. As, for example, the later Psalms and yet more the prophets
frequently only are able to desire and plead for the misfortune and
overthrow of other nations, and not unfrequently find the main strength of
their utterance in curses and imprecations.
No doubt the elements of true beauty and art are presented to each of these
points of view above noticed; but they are in the first instance brought
together in haphazard and confused fashion, and are set in a false relation to
each other, instead of being referred to a genuine principle of identity. For
this reason the purely ideal and abstract unity of the Divine is unable to
bring forth any entirely adequate art-product in the form that is
characterized by real individuality; and at the same time Nature and human
individuality either are manifestly not, whether we consider their inward
principle, or their external mode of appearance, permeated by the Absolute,
or at least not positively pervaded by it. This externality of significance,
which is thus made the essential content, and the determinate mode of
appearance under which it is generally reproduced is finally and in the third
place exemplified in the comparative activity of art[128]. In this type both
sides have become wholly independent, and the unity that binds them
together is merely the invisible subjectivity which compares. For this very
reason that which is defective in such an external presentment returned in
ever more emphatic degree and betrayed itself as that which was for the
genuine art representation merely negative or, rather, entirely subversive.
And when this dissolution is really effected the significance can no longer
remain the inherently abstract ideal, but the inherently determinate and self-
defined ideal principle, which in this its concrete totality possesses quite as
essentially the other aspect thereof, that is, the form of an inherently
exclusive and determinate appearance; and consequently in its external
existence, as that which is its very own, merely expresses and signifies
itself.
1. This essentially free totality which remains constant to itself throughout
each successive self-determination in something other than itself, this ideal
principle, which in its objectivity is self-related is the essentially true, free,
and self-subsistent, which in its determinate existence unfolds nothing other
than itself. In the realm of art, however, this form is not present in its form

of infinitude, is not, that is, the thinking of itself, as the essential, absolute,
which is made an object for itself in the form of ideal universality, and
makes itself, wholly explicit, but is still in immediate natural and sensuous
existence. In so far, however, as significance is self-substantive, it must in
art borrow its form from its own resources and inherently possess the
principle of its externality. It must consequently, it is true, repair to Nature,
but as predominant over that which is external, which, in so far as it is itself
an aspect of the totality of this ideal realm, no longer exists as purely
natural objectivity, but being without its own self-subsistence, simply serves
as the expression of Spirit. In this interpenetration consequently the natural
form and externality, which is modified by Spirit contains out and out on its
part, as immediately given, its significance in itself, and no longer points to
this as to something separate and different from the corporeal appearance.
And this is that identification of the spiritual and natural which is
appropriate to the notion of Spirit, which, that is, does not merely proceed
no further than the neutralization of the two opposed aspects, but raises that
which is spiritual into the higher totality, in which it is able to preserve itself
in its own Other, to bring the natural within its own ideal range and to
express itself in and relatively to the natural. It is on this type of unity that
the notion of classical art is based.
(a) This identity of significance and bodily form may be approached yet
more closely under the view of it that no separation of these opposed
aspects[129] takes place within their consummated union; and consequently
the ideal principle does not, as purely inward spirituality, return upon itself
from out of the corporeal and concrete reality, under a process which would
give us once more the distinction of these aspects in opposition. And
inasmuch as the objective and external, in which Spirit is made visible as an
object of sense, according to the very notion of it, is at once throughout
defined and separate, mind which is free, and which it is the function of art
to elaborate in the form of reality truly commensurate with it, can only be
that spiritual individuality which is not merely defined but essentially self-
consistent in its natural form. For this reason it is the human which
constitutes the centre and content of true beauty and art; but as content of
art—we have already developed the subject in discussing the notion of the
Ideal—it is brought under the essential determination of concrete
individuality and the external appearance adequate thereto, which in its

objectivization has been thus purified from the imperfection of the finite
condition.
(b) Under such a consideration of the matter it is at once obvious that the
classical mode of representation, if we take it for what it essentially is, can
no longer be of the symbolic type in the strict sense of the term, however
much now and again we may find along with it the play of that which
belongs to symbolism. Greek mythology, for example, which, in so far as
art asserts its mastery over it, belongs to the classical Ideal, is, if we grasp it
in its fundamental character, not of a beauty which is symbolical, but
unfolded under the genuine character of the Art-ideal, albeit there may be
certain remnants of symbolism which adhere to it, as we shall shortly see.
If we now proceed to ask ourselves what, then, is the nature of the
determinate form, which can thus enter into this unity with Spirit without
offering merely the suggestion of its content, we shall find it determined for
us in the conception that in classical art both content and form must be
adequate, must, that is, in the aspect of form meet the demands of totality
and essential self-subsistency. For it is a prime condition of the free self-
subsistence[130] of the whole, which constitutes the fundamental
determination of classical art, that either of these aspects, the ideal form no
less than its external embodiment, should be essentially a totality which
goes to make the notion of the whole. Only by this means is either side
essentially identical with the other, and consequently their difference
reduced to the purely formal differences of one and the same, through
which also the totality appears now as free, the adequacy of both of its
aspects being now fully displayed, inasmuch as it declares itself in either of
them and is one and the same in both.
The lack of this free reduplication of itself within the same unity carried
with it in the symbolic type precisely this absence of freedom in the content
and with it also in the form. Spirit was here not clear to itself, and for this
reason declared its external reality not as that which belonged to itself, set
forth in its explicit significance through and in it. Conversely the form had
no doubt to be significant, but its significance only lay partly and on one
side in it. The external existence gave here primarily to what passed for its
ideal aspect, though still under a mode that was external, merely itself
instead of a significance which declared an ideal content; and in attempting
to show that there was something further which it suggested its power was

necessarily put under a constraint. In this distortion it neither remained true
to itself, nor was it the Other, that is significance, but declared nothing save
that which was a problematical connection and confusion between
incompatible things, or tended to be the purely co-adjutant attire and
external adornment of what was simply the glorification of the one absolute
significance of all things whatever, until it was finally obliged to surrender
itself to the purely subjective caprice of comparison with a significance
which was far removed from it and indifferent to it. If this relation of
unfreedom is to find a release the form must already inherently possess its
significance, or, to speak more definitely, must possess the significance of
mind or Spirit itself. This form is essentially the human form because the
externality of this form is alone capable of revealing the spiritual in
sensuous guise. Human expression in countenance, eye, pose, and carriage
is, it is true, material and therein not that which the spirit is; but within this
corporeal frame itself the human exterior is not merely alive and a part of
Nature as the animal is, but it is the bodily presence which reflects Spirit to
itself. Through the human eye we look into the soul of a man just as through
the entire presentment of him his spiritual character is expressed. When
consequently the body belongs to Spirit, as its determinate presence, Spirit
is also that ideal principle which is appropriate to the body, and is no form
of ideality which is foreign to the external form in the sense that materiality
still inherently possesses a significance other than that to which it testifies
or suggests. It is quite true that the human form still carries within it much
of the universal animal type, but the fundamental distinction between the
human and the animal body consists simply in this, that the human is
obviously, by virtue of its entire conformation, declared as the dwelling,
nay, we may add the only possible dwelling-place of Spirit. And for this
reason also it is only in the body that Spirit is immediately present to others.
This is, however, not the place to discuss the necessity[131] of this
association and the peculiar reciprocity of soul and body. We must here
assume this necessity. We have, of course, many indications on the human
figure of death and ugliness, that is, of other influences and defects which
are traceable to their source. When we find this to be the case it is the
function of art to expunge the divergence between the purely natural and the
spiritual, to exalt the external bodily appearance to a form of beauty, that is,
a form throughout dominated and suffused with the animation of Spirit.

We have seen, then, that in this type of representation symbolism is no
longer presented by the external relation, and everything that partook of
effort, strain, distortion, and perversion is eliminated. For when Spirit has
grasped itself as Spirit it is at once explicit and clear; and on the same
ground is also its association with the form adequate to it from the side of
externality, something which is essentially ready to the hand and a free gift,
which does not require, as a means for its declaration, a bond of connection
introduced by the imagination, and contrasting with that which is
immediately presented. Just as little is the classical form of art exhibited as
a purely material and superficial personification. It is Spirit in its entirety, in
so far as it is intended to make it the content of the art-product, which
passes into that bodily shape, and is able to identify itself completely with
it. From this point of view we may considerer the conception that art has
followed the human figure by means of imitation. According to the
common view, however, this acceptance of the human figure as the model
of imitation appears as a matter of accident, whereas we should rather
maintain the art which has arrived at its maturity is obliged to reveal its
substance by a necessary law in the form of man as he appears to sense
perception, because Spirit alone obtains in it the existence fitting to it in the
sensuous material of Nature.
All that we have here observed relatively to the human body and its
expression applies also to human emotions, impulses, actions, experiences,
and occupations. The externalization of these is also, in classical art, not
merely characterized as a part of Nature's life, but as that of Spirit; and this
ideal aspect is brought into full and adequate identity with that which is
external appearance.
(c) Inasmuch, then, as classical art comprehends free spirituality as
determinate individuality, and immediately envisages the same in its bodily
presentment, it frequently falls under the reproach of anthropomorphism.
Even among the Greeks, to take an example, Xenophanes ridiculed the
presentation of Gods by means of the sensuous image in his famous remark,
that if lions had been sculptors they would have given their gods the
external shape of lions. Of a similar tendency is that piece of French wit:
God made men according to His image, but man has returned Him the
compliment by creating God in the image of man. If we consider the matter
relatively to the form of art that follows, the romantic, we may in this

respect observe that the content of the classical form of beauty is no doubt
defective precisely as the religion of art is so; but so little does the defect
consist in anthropomorphism as such, that we may rather maintain, on the
contrary, that though classical art is certainly sufficiently anthropomorphic
for art, for the higher form of religion it is not enough so. Christianity has
carried anthropomorphism to far greater lengths; for, according to Christian
doctrine, God is not merely individuality in a human form, but a real and
singular individual entirely God, and entirely a real man who has entered
into all conditions of existence, and is no mere Ideal of beauty and art
created by man. If our conception of the Absolute is limited to an abstract
Being essentially without any characterization then, no doubt, every kind of
representation vanishes, but if God is Spirit he must appear as man, as
individual subject, not as ideal human being, but as actual participator in the
entire externality of temporal conditions[132] which pertain to immediate
and natural existence. In other words, from the Christian point of view, the
infinite movement is carried to the extremest verge of opposition, and only
returns to the absolute unity as the resolution of this separation. The man-
becoming of God is incident to this phase or significant moment of
separation; as real and individual subjectivity it is involved in the difference
between unity and substance in its bare extension, and in this common
sphere of temporal and spatial condition creates the consciousness in and
pain of division in order through the ultimate resolution of such
contradiction by the same means to arrive at eternal reconciliation. And this
essential point of passage in the process, according to the Christian
conception, is inherent in the nature of God Himself. As a matter of fact,
God is here apprehended as absolute and free Spirit, in which Nature and
immediate singularity is indeed proferred us as a phasal moment of a
process, but, at the same time, as one which is necessarily transcended[133].
In classical art, on the contrary, the material medium is neither killed nor
suffers death, but for this reason also we cannot wholly find in it the
resurrection of Spirit. Classical art and its religion of beauty does not
consequently wholly satisfy the depths of Spirit. However essentially
concrete it may be, it still remains abstract for humanity because, instead of
movement and reconciliation obtained by the contradiction we have
adverted to of that infinite subjective process, it merely possesses as its life
that undisturbed harmony of the free individuality determined in its
adequate existence, this repose in its reality, this happiness, this content and

greatness in itself, this eternal blitheness and bliss which even in
unhappiness and pain does not lose its secure reliance on itself. Classical art
has not worked its way to the full contradiction which is fundamentally
involved in the notion of the Absolute and overcome that contradiction. For
this reason it does not recognize the aspect which is in close relation to this
contradiction, that is the essential obduracy of the subject as opposed to that
which is ethical and of absolute significance, namely, sin and evil, no less
than the waste of individual life in its own subjective aims, the dissolution
and incontinence of that world which we may summarily describe as that of
the entire sphere of its divisions, which is productive on the side both of
sense and spirit of distortion, ugliness, and the repulsive. Classical art fails
to cross the pure territory of the genuine Ideal.
2. In so far as the historical realization of classical art is concerned, it is
hardly necessary to observe that we must seek for that among the Greeks.
Classical beauty, with its infinite range of content, material and form, is the
gift bestowed on the Greek people; and this folk is entitled to our respect on
the ground that it has produced art in its highest form of vitality. The
Greeks, if we regard the form of their realized life immediately presented
us, lived in that happy middle sphere of self-conscious and subjective
freedom and substantive ethical life. They did not persist, on the one hand,
in the unfree Oriental unity, which is necessarily bound up with a religious
and political despotism for the reason that the individuality of the subject is
overwhelmed in a universal substance, or, in some particular aspect of the
same, because it has essentially as personality no right, and consequently no
ground to stand on; neither, on the other, did they pass beyond to that
subjective penetration, in which the particular subject separates itself from
the whole and the universal, in order to make itself more explicit in its
ideality; and only through a higher return to the ideal totality of a purely
spiritual world, succeeds in its final purification of the substantive and
essential. On the contrary, in the ethical life of Greece, the individual was
self-substantive and essentially free, without disengaging himself from the
general interests of the realized State immediately visible to him and the
positive immanence of spiritual freedom in the temporal condition. The
universal of morality and the abstract freedom of personality, both in its
ideal and external aspect, remains in accordance with the principle of Greek
life in undisturbed harmony, and during the time in which, even in real
existence, this principle asserted itself in still unimpaired purity, the self-

substantiality of the citizen did not stand forth in relief in contrast to a
morality which was to be distinguished from it: the substance of political
life was so far merged in the individual, as he on his part sought his own
liberty absolutely in the universal ends of the entire civic life. The feeling
for beauty, the significance and spirit of this joyous harmony interpenetrates
all productions, in which the freedom of Greece is self-conscious, and in
which she has made visible to herself her being. Consequently her view of
the world is just the midway ground on which beauty commences its true
life and breaks open its serene dominion; the intermediate realm, that is, of
free vitality, which is not merely a fact at once immediate and natural, but
one which is the creation of a spiritual point of view revealed by art, the
realm, that is, of a culture of reflection, and at the same time of an absence
of reflection, which neither isolates the individual nor on the other hand is
competent to bring back again its negativity, pain, and unhappiness to a
positive unity and reconciliation—a realm, however, which, just as in the
case of Life itself, is at the same time only a point of passage, however true
it be that it scales at this point the summit of beauty, and in the form of its
plastic individuality is so spiritually concrete and rich, that all tones have
their interplay within it, and also, too, that which is for its own standpoint
what lies behind it, albeit it is no longer present as an absolute and
unqualified principle, is nevertheless felt as that which accompanies it—a
kind of background to it. In this sense the Greek nation has also, in the
representation of its gods, made its spirit visible to the perceptions and the
imaginative consciousness, and bestowed on them, by means of art a
determinate existence, which is entirely conformable with their true content.
By virtue of this homogeneous form, which is alike consistent with the
fundamental notion of Greek art and Greek mythology, art became in
Greece the highest expression for the Absolute, and Greek religion is the
religion of art itself, whereas romantic art, which appeared later, although it
is undoubtedly art, suggests a more exalted form of consciousness than art
is in a position to supply.
3. In establishing the position, as we have just done, on the one hand, that
essentially free individuality is the content of classical art, and, on the other,
that a like freedom is the equally requisite determinant of the form, we have
already assumed that the entire blending of both together, however much it
may be presented in the immediate form, is nevertheless no original unity
such as Nature's, but is necessarily an artificial association made possible

by the subjective spirit. Classical art, in so far as its content and its form is
spontaneity[134], originates in the freedom of the Spirit that is clear to itself.
And for this reason also we may say that in the third place the artist
occupies a position different from that of his predecessors. That is to say his
production declares itself as the spontaneous product of a man in the full
possession of his senses[135], who as truly knows what he wills as he is able
to accomplish such a purpose; who is consequently obscure to himself
neither in respect to the significance and substantive content of that which
he has resolved to make visible in the form of art, nor finds himself
hindered by any defects of technique from executing the result aimed after.
(a) If we look more closely at this change in the position of the artist we
shall in the first place find this freedom announced to us relatively to the
content in this way, that he does not feel compelled to seek for it with the
restless process of symbolical fermentation. Symbolic art remains the
captive of its travail to bring to birth and make clear its form to its own
vision, and this embodiment is itself only the original form[136], that is, on
the one side Being in the immediate guise of Nature, and on the other the
ideal abstraction of the universal, unity, conversion, change, becoming,
origination, and passing away. In this original form of the artistic process,
however, art does not come to its rightful possessions. Consequently, these
representations of symbolic art, which should be expositions of content,
remain still themselves riddles and problems, and merely testify to the
struggle after clarity and the effort of Spirit, which on and on seeks to
discover without obtaining the rest and repose of discovery. In contrast to
this troublous search the content must for the classic artist be presented him
as something already there in the sense that as a thing essentially positive,
as belief, popular opinion, or as an actual event either of myth or tradition,
it is determined for his imagination in all its essential character. Relatively
to this objectively determined material the artist is placed in the freer
relation that he does not himself undertake the process of production and
fermentation, and pass no further than the impulse after the real
significances of his art, but rather that for him a completely explicit and
unfolded content lies before him which he accepts and freely reproduces
from himself. The Greek artists received their material from the popular
religion in which already that which had been brought over to Greece from
the Orient had begun to receive a form of its own. Pheidias borrowed his

Zeus from Homer, and other tragedians also did not create the fundamental
groundwork of that they represented. In the same way the artists of
Christianity, Dante and Raphael, have only reclothed what was already to
hand in the doctrines of their faith and their religious conceptions. This is
also, it is true, from a certain point of view in like manner the case in the art
of the Sublime, but with this difference, that here the relation to the content,
as the one substance, does not permit subjectivity to come by its just claims,
and allows to it no self-substantive finality. The comparative form of art, on
the other hand, no doubt starts with the selection of significances as images
which it makes use of, but this initiative of selection remains at the
disposition of subjective caprice, and on its part dispenses with all
substantive individuality, which constitutes the notion of classical art, and
for this reason must rest with the personality which creates it.
(b) The more, however, an explicitly unfolded content is present for the
artist in popular beliefs, myth, and other actual facts, the more his energy is
concentrated upon the object of endowing such a content with the external
embodiment of art fitting to it. While in this respect symbolic art dissipates
its resources in a thousand forms, and with unbridled imaginative power
lays about it for material that it fails either to measure or define in order to
adapt forms that are never really conformable to the significance it is
seeking after, the classical artist in this respect is possessed of an aim that is
at once resolute and definite. That is to say, the free form is with the content
itself defined through that content, and is essentially pertinent to such
content, so that the artist only appears to execute what is already accordant
with the fundamental conception of what is presented him. While, therefore,
the symbolic artist strives in his imagination, to suit the form to significance
or vice versa, the classic artist adapts significance to plastic shape by means
of the process of freeing the external phenomena which are already
presented from that part of them which is merely an incidental product. In
this activity, however, although all that is purely his caprice is excluded, his
productive power not merely follows or is not merely limited to a bare type,
but is at the same time creative throughout the whole. Art which, to start
with, is forced to seek out and discover its true form neglects for that reason
the very aspect of form; but where, on the contrary, the building up of form
is made the essential interest and the main task there we find the content
also receives its plastic shape by imperceptible degrees through the process
of the reproduction, precisely as we have hitherto found in a general way

that form and content proceed hand in hand during the process, wherein
they are completed. In this respect the classic artist elaborates the result also
where it is a religious world that is presented him; he throughout develops
in the free and buoyant medium of his art the material and mythological
ideas which he receives.
(c) The same applies to the technique of art. In the case of the classic artist
the ingredients must be already to hand; the sensuous material through
which the artist labours must already be disengaged from all brittleness and
extreme stubbornness, and yield directly to the aims of the artist, in order
that the content, conformably to the notion of the classic type, may make its
free and unfettered way through this external medium. To classical art,
consequently, belongs from the first a high level of technical ability, which
has subjected the sensuous material to an apt subservience. Such a technical
perfection, if it is really to carry out all that is required of Spirit and its
conceptions, is presupposed by the complete elaboration of all that pertains
to craftsmanship in art, that is, in especial degree of that which makes itself
visible within the plastic forms of the religion to which we now refer. The
religious view of things, such as the Egyptian, for example, discovers, that
is, definite external forms, idols, colossal constructions whose type remains
fixed, and, further, in the usual similarity of forms and shapes, supplies a
considerable field for elaboration in the treatment of it by the steadily
progressive executive powers. This adaptability to the talents of the
craftsman must already have been presented in that which is of an inferior
and distorted type before the genius of classical beauty can associate these
powers of mechanical facility with the forms of technical perfection. Then,
at last, when that which is purely mechanical work is confronted with no
further insuperable difficulty, is art enabled to proceed in the elaboration of
a form, the practice in working out which is at the same time an elaboration
which is in the closest relationship to the progressive advance of both
content and form.
So far as the division of classical art is concerned it is usual in the more
general sense of the term to call every complete work of art classic,
whatever the particular character it may otherwise carry, whether symbolic
or romantic. We have no doubt thus accepted it in the particular sense of art
perfection, but with this important qualification, that this perfection must be
based on the thorough interpenetration of ideal and free individuality and

external definition. We consequently differentiate the classic form expressly
from the symbolic and romantic, whose beauty in content and form is
entirely of another kind. And along with the classic, regarded in its usual
and more indefinite significance, we have as little to do here at this early
stage with the particular arts in which the classical ideal is represented, as,
for example, sculpture, the Epic, definite forms of lyrical poetry and
specific types of tragedy and comedy. These particular types of art,
although classic art is imprinted upon them, will be first discussed in the
third portion of the division of our subject in the explication of the several
arts and their grades[137]. What we approach more immediately now is the
classic in the sense we have secured for the term, and as bases of our
subdivision we can only therefore seek out the grades of evolution, which
proceed from this notion of the classical ideal itself. The essential phases of
this development are as follows.
The first point to which we would direct our attention is this, that the
classical type of art is not to be apprehended as was the case with the
symbolic type as immediately primary, as art's commencement, but, on the
contrary, as its result. We have evolved it, consequently, in the first instance
from the course of the symbolic modes of representation, which it
presupposes. The essential feature on which this process turned was the
concentration of content in the elucidation of an essentially self-conscious
individuality, which can neither employ for its expression the mere natural
form, whether it be that of the elements or animals, nor the defective and
confused personification of the human figure with it, but receives its
expression in the animation of the human body permeated throughout with
the breath of Spirit. Inasmuch, then, as the essence of freedom consists in
this, to be that which it is through its own resources, that which in the first
place appeared purely as the presupposition and condition of its origin
outside the sphere of classical art must take its place within the circle
peculiar to the same in order to make really visible the true content and the
genuine form by means of the subjection of what is unconformable to and
the negation of the Ideal. This process of conformation through negation,
this process by means of which, whether we view it relatively to content or
form, the genuine type of classical beauty begets itself from its own
substance is consequently our point of departure, and we shall treat of that
in our first chapter.

In the second chapter, on the other hand, we have reached by means of this
process the true Ideal of the classical type of art. We find here as the central
fact the fair and novel world of the gods of Greece, which it will be
incumbent on us to develop exhaustively from within, both in its aspects of
spiritual individualization, and those which are related to the bodily form
with which such individuality is immediately associated.
In the third place, however, the notion of classical art implies conversely,
along with this becoming of the beauty which springs from itself, also the
dissolution of that creation, which will carry us into a further sphere,
namely, that of the romantic type of art. The gods and human individuals of
classic beauty just as they rise so, too, pass away once more from the art-
consciousness, which in part turns round in opposition to the aspect of
Nature that still persists, in which Greek art, in fact, had elaborated itself in
the full perfection of beauty, in part transcends an undeific[138], defective,
and vulgar mode of reality in order to reveal that which is false and purely
negative therein. In this dissolution, whose artistic activity we shall take as
the material of our third chapter, the specific phases in the process, which
created the truly classical type in that harmony presented by the perfect
fusion of immediate beauty, fall apart. The ideal essence is made explicit on
the one side in its independence of the external mode of its existence on the
other. Subjectivity withdraws into itself, for the reason that it fails now to
find an adequate realization in the forms hitherto employed, and is
constrained to enlarge itself with the fuller content of a new spiritual world
of absolute freedom and infinity, looking about for novel means of
expressing this profounder grasp of its substance.

[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 zurückgeführt. To their own proper standard or
measure that strictly applies to them.
[127] I think this must be the meaning of nützlich here. 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] Selbstständigkeit. 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 gänzlichen Äußerlichkeit.
[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 words
das Moment des Natürlichen ... zwar vorhanden seyn as 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 words dieser Gehalt ist selber nur der Erste would seem to refer back
to the expressions Keine Erste und somit natürliche Einheit. But the sense is not
very clear.
[137] Deren Gattungen, their specific types.
[138] Entgöttert—a mode from which the Divine is removed.

CHAPTER I

THE COMING INTO BEING OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL

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 Ideal for 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 naïve 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, on the 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 essentially
universal, 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.
The first concerns the degradation of that which is purely animal, and the
removal of the same from the sphere of free and pure Beauty.
The second more 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 the third place, 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.

1. THE DEGRADATION OF ANIMALISM[140]

Among the Indians and Egyptians, among Asiatics generally we find
animalism, or at any rate specific kinds of 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 at the 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 culture and 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 famous huntings, 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 thirteenth book, 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.

(α) 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 their
bodily 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, Tereus—she happened at the
time to stand in his favour—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 Philomela before 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 her—pale, trembling, already fearful of the worst,
and beseeching with tears to know where her sister is—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 into the 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 the fields 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.
(β) 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,
not spiritual, 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.
(γ) 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 so lofty 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
instructive rôle, 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.

2. THE CONTEST BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND MODERN DIVINITIES

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 the
humanity, 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
it is 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
find therefore 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 of subjectivity, 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 Sublime—conceived as an essentially abstract, that is purely ideal
masterdom of one supreme substance, or—as in the case of Christianity—
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 as yet lord 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 that which 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
directed—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 peculiar centrum of 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 (διoπετὴς)—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 Rome—into the human form 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.
The first, which arrests our attention, are the oracles in which the
knowledge and volition of gods, still under a formless mode, gives witness
to their presence through natural existences.
The second point 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 conflict—
a mode of presentation as naïve as it is astonishingly direct—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 the oracles, 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 such—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 riddles—but that
the gods, being themselves subjects 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."
(α) 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.
(β) 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

who knows, 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 requires interpretation and explanation.
(γ) 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, one aspect thereof, for the reason
that every action under particular circumstances is unavoidably definite,
only, that is to say, giving a decisive impulse in one direction and shutting
off another. His action is barely accomplished, and the deed—which
consequently has become his own and for which he must now be
answerable—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. In classical art, 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 the content is to be found in the gods that
know and willy while the form of the external phenomenon is the external
which is abstract and a part of Nature, from the other point of view that
which is natural, if we look at it relatively to its universal forces and the
activities which belong to these, becomes the content, 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.
(α) The first thing we would remark in this connection is attributable to the
circumstance that we are not here concerned—as in that view of the world
which belongs to the Sublime, or in part even that appropriate to Hindoo
doctrines—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 viewed from another standpoint, still carry with
them much that is essentially symbolical.
(β) The more detailed distinctions among these Titan potencies may be thus
indicated:
(αα) 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
personified Time, 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.
(ββ) 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 and deserves 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 was once 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 fire—for without fire it would be impossible to possess it
or make it of use—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 still
without 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 (ἐυπoρία τoῦ βίoυ)."
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 was merely 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 time property,
and yet more, marriage, social custom, and law stand in close association.
(γγ) 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 Eumenides of
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, here—and we
cannot sufficiently value it on this score—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 knowledge of 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 Apollo—the clear, knowing and self-consciously knowing ethical
sense—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 the Dei inferi of Hades[168], the
instinctive Powers of feeling, Love and kinship, not the daylight gods of
free and self-conscious, social, and political life.

(γ) The third point, which we would advert to in connection with the
theogony of the outlook of artists in the classic period, has reference to the
difference between individuals of the older gods relatively to their powers
and the duration of their authority.
(αα) 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.
(ββ) 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.
(γγ) 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. And although 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, essentially simply 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 and
sub specie eternitatis it becomes the conception of the victory over the
natural Powers by means of the spiritual and individual Divinities.
(α) This contest exposes an absolute catastrophe, and is the essential deed
of the gods, by virtue of which the fundamental distinction between the old
and new gods is first made visible. Consequently we ought not to point to
the war, which exposes this distinction as a mythical story in the same way
we should point to any other myth; rather we should regard it as the mythos,
which in fact punctuates a great moment of transition, and expresses the
creation of the later theogony.
(β) The result of this violent strife among the gods is the ruin of the Titans,
the unique victory of the new gods, who forthwith receive in their assured
dominion a plenitude of gifts in every direction from the imagination. The
Titans, on the other hand, are banished, and compelled to huddle in the
hollows of the Earth, or, like Oceanos, dally on the dark skirts of the clear,
joyful world, or still endure many grievous punishments. Prometheus, for
example, is fettered on the Scythian mountains, where an eagle insatiable
devours the liver that ever renews itself. In like manner an infinite and
inexhaustible thirst torments Tantalus in the lower world, and Sisyphus is

for ever constrained to roll up hill in vain the rock that for ever rolls back
again. These punishments are, in truth, the false type of infinity, the
yearning of the indefinite aspiration or the unsatisfied craving of natural
desires, which in their eternal repetition fail to discover rest or final
satisfaction. For the truly godlike intuition of the Greeks regarded the mere
extension into space and the region of the indefinite, not, as some modern
votaries of such longings do, as the highest attainment of mankind, but as a
damnation which it relegates to Tartarus.
(γ) If we ask ourselves in a general way, what from this point must for
classical art fall into the background, failing, that is, to have any right to
figure as its final form and adequate content, we shall find at the earliest
point of departure the elements of Nature. With them disappear from the
world of the new gods all that is gloomy[170], fantastical, void of clarity,
every wild confusion between Nature and Spirit, between significances
essentially substantive and the accidental incidents of externality. In a world
such as this the creations of an unrestricted imagination, which has not yet
for its principle the measure of spiritual proportion, have no place, and are
compelled and justly so to vanish before the clear light of day. We may
furbish up the monstrous Cabeiri[171], the Corybantes, these representatives
of procreative force as much as we choose, yet for all that such
presentations in every trait of them—to say nothing of the ancient Baubo,
whom Goethe sets careering over the Blocksberg on an old sow—belong to
a greater or less degree to the twilight of consciousness. Only that which is
spiritual imperatively demands the light; and that which does not reveal
itself and in itself expound its own interpretation is the unspiritual, which
fades again once more into Night and obscurity. That which is of Spirit on
the contrary reveals itself, and purifies itself, by itself defining its external
form, from the caprice of the imagination, the flood of obstructing shapes,
and the otherwise perturbed accessories of symbolical sense.
For the same reasons we now find that human activity, in so far as it is
limited merely to Nature's wants and their satisfaction, falls into the
background. That old right, Themis, Dike and the rest, as one not
determinate through laws which originate in self-conscious Spirit, loses its
unimpaired validity, and in the same way, if conversely, that which is purely
local, albeit there is still room left for its play, passes by incorporation into
the universal figures of the gods; in which we may still trace the lingering

vestiges that remain of it. For as in the Trojan war the Greeks fought and
conquered as one people, so, too, the Homeric gods, who already have their
conflict with the Titans behind them in the past, are one essentially secure
and defined god-world, a world which is yet further with ever-increasing
fulness made definite and unassailable by later poetry and the plastic arts.
This invincible consistency[172] is in its relation to the content of the Greek
world of gods Spirit and only Spirit; but not Spirit in its abstract ideality,
but as identified with its external and adequate existence, just as with Plato
soul and body, as in union brought into one nature and in this consolidation
from one piece, is at once the Divine and Eternal.

3. THE POSITIVE CONSERVATION OF THE CONDITIONS SET UP THROUGH NEGATION

Despite, then, the victory of the new gods that which came before them still
remains in the classical type of art partly preserved and revered in the
original form in which we have already recognized it, partly under a
transmuted mode. It is only the limited Jewish national god which is unable
to tolerate other gods in its company for the reason that it purports as the
one god to include everything, although in regard to the definition of its
form it fails to pass beyond its exclusiveness wherein the god is merely the
God of His own people. Such a god manifests his universality in fact only
through his creation of Nature and as Lord of the heavens and the earth. For
the rest he remains the god of Abraham, who led his people Israel out of
Egypt, gave them laws on Sinai, and divided the land of Canaan among the
Jews. And through this narrow identification of him with the Jewish nation
he is in a quite peculiar way the god of this folk; and consequently,
speaking generally, neither stands in positive consonance with Nature, nor
appears truly as absolute Spirit referable back from his determinate
character and objectivity to his universality. Consequently this austere,
national god is so jealous, and ordains in his jealousy that men shall see
elsewhere merely false idols. The Greeks, on the contrary, discovered their
gods among other nations and accepted what was foreign among
themselves. For the god of classical art has spiritual and bodily
individuality and is for this reason not the one and only one, but merely a
particular godhead, which, as everything else that shares particularity, has a
circle of particularity which surrounds it or in opposition to it as its Other,
from which it is the result, and which is qualified to preserve its validity and

worth. The process here is analogous to that of the particular divisions of
Nature. Although the world of vegetation is the truth of the geological
image of Nature, the animal again the higher truth of the vegetable, yet the
mountains and the flooded land persist as the solid basis of trees, shrubs,
and flowers, which in their turn do not lose their existence alongside the
world of animals.
(a) The earliest form under which among the Greeks we come upon this
ancient residue, are the Mysteries. The Greek Mysteries were nothing secret
in the sense that the Greek nation was not in a general way aware of their
content. On the contrary, the majority of the Athenians and a large number
of foreigners were among the initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries; but they
were not permitted to speak of that in which they had been instructed
through initiation. In our own times people have been at great pains to
discover more nearly the type of conceptions which prevailed in these
mysteries, and to investigate the kind of religious services which were used
in their celebration. It appears, however, that on the whole there was no
extensive wisdom or profound knowledge concealed in the Mysteries. They
merely preserved the old traditions, the basis, that is, of what was latterly
reconstructed by the genuine type of art, and consequently, so far from
containing the true, higher, and more valuable content, rather unfolded that
which was of less significance and of inferior rank. Whatever it was, this
holiness was not clearly expressed in the mysteries, but merely handed
down in its symbolical features. And in fact this character of secrecy and
reticence is bound up with the old telluric, sidereal, and Titanic deposit;
Spirit alone is the revealed and the self-revealer. Consonant, too, with this it
is the symbolical mode of expression which constitutes the other aspect of
secrecy in the mysteries, because in symbolism the interpretation remains
obscure, and contains a something other than the external image, which it
purports to display, in fact offers to the view. In this sense, for example, the
mysteries of Demeter and Bacchus were, it is true, spiritually interpreted,
and contained a profounder sense. The form of the same remained quite
externally isolate from this content, so that it was impossible clearly to
disengage it from it. Consequently the Mysteries had very little influence
over art; for though we are told of Aeschylus, that he willfully betrayed
something which attached to the Demeter mysteries, this merely amounts to
an assertion on his part that Artemis had been the daughter of Ceres, which
is not very profound wisdom after all.

(b) But, secondly, we find that the reverence and preservation of the old
régime is yet more clearly indicated in actual artistic representation. We
have already referred to Prometheus as the chastised Titan who appears in
the stage immediately prior to that of genuine art. We meet with him
however again as delivered. For as the Earth and as the Sun, so also the fire,
which Prometheus brought down to men, that is, the eating of flesh, which
he taught them, is an essential feature of human life, a necessary condition
for the satisfaction of their needs; and consequently Prometheus is
honoured with an enduring recognition[173]. In the Oedipus Colonos of
Sophocles we have the words:
χῶρoς μὲν ἱερὸς πᾶς ὅδ ἔστ· ἔχει δέ νιν
σεμνὸς Πoσειδῶν· ἐν δ' ὁ πoρφόρoς θeὸς
Tιτὰν Πρoμηθὲυς[174]
and the scholiast adds that Prometheus was revered in the Academy along
with Athene, as Hephaestos was, and a temple was shown in a grove of the
goddess, and an ancient pedestal near the entrance, where there was not
only an image of Hephaestos, but also one of Prometheus. Prometheus,
however, according to the statement of Lysimachides, was represented as
primary and more ancient, and he held in his hand a sceptre; Hephaestos as
the younger and in the second place, and the altar on the pedestal was
shared by both. Prometheus, then, according to the tale, was not obliged to
endure his chastisement for ever, but was released from his fetters by
Hercules. In this story of his liberation we come across certain remarkable
traits. In other words, Prometheus is delivered from his agony because he
informs Zeus of the danger which threatens his empire at the hands of the
thirteenth descendant. This descendant is Hercules, to whom, we may add
in illustration, Poseidon exclaims in the "Birds" of Aristophanes[175], "he
will do himself an injury, if he strike a bargain with reference to the
transference of the divine headship, for all that Zeus leaves behind him on
his decease will most assuredly take place." And, in fact, Hercules is the
only man who passed over into Olympus, became a god after being a man,
and stands higher than Prometheus, who remained a Titan. Moreover, the
overturning of the old race of tyrants is intimately connected with the name
of Hercules and the Heraklidae. The Heraklidae break up the power of the
old dynasties and royal houses, in which we may remark the selfish desire
of personal aggrandizement and lawlessness no less than disregard for their

subjects admitted no judicial restraint, and consequently was responsible for
the grossest cruelties. Hercules, though himself in the service of a superior
lord, overcame the savagery of this despotism.
In a similar way we may, to linger once more for a moment by the
illustrations we adduced on a former page, recall again to our readers the
"Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The conflict between Apollo and the Eumenides
is to be settled by the intervention of the Areopagus. In other words, a
human tribunal, as a whole, at whose head stands Athene, stands forth as
the concrete spirit of the folk, and is as such to terminate the collision. The
judges, however, give an equal number of votes for condemnation and
acquittal, having an equal reverence both for the Eumenides and Apollo; the
white pebble of Athene, however, decides the conflict in favour of Apollo.
The Eumenides break out in indignation against this decision of Athene;
she, however, allays their wrath by promising them worship and altars in
the famous grove of Colonos. What the Eumenides have to give in return to
her people is a protection against the evils[176] which result from the
elements of Nature, the earth, the heavens, the sea, and the winds; they have
further to ward off unfruitfulness in the fields, the failure of living seed, and
misbirths in all else that is procreated. Pallas, on her part, takes beneath her
protection the strife of wars and sacred contests. Ina similar way
Sophocles[177], in his "Antigone," not only makes Antigone suffer and die,
but to a like extent we find that Kreon is punished by the loss of his wife
and the death of Haemon, both of whom perish through the death of
Antigone.
(c) Thirdly, the ancient gods do not merely preserve their place in
juxtaposition to the new, but, what is of more importance, the natural basis
itself is maintained by the new gods, and receives, continuing to made its
echo sound in them, if in conformity with the spiritual individuality of
classical art, a reverential acceptance.
(α) And for this reason people are not unfrequently led into the error of
conceiving the Greek gods, in respect to their human character and form, as
mere allegories of such natural elements. This is not so. In this sense we
frequently hear it stated that Helios is the god of the sun, Diana the goddess
of the moon, or Neptune the god of the sea. Such a separation, however,
between the natural element, as content, and the humanly shaped
personification, as form, no less than the external association of both,

regarded merely as the masterdom of the god over the natural fact, as we
are accustomed to it in the Old Testament, is quite inapplicable to Greek
conceptions. We never find among the Greeks such an expression as ὁ θεὸς
τoῦ ἡλίoυ, τῆς θαλάσσης, and so forth, though it is quite certain they would
have used with others such an expression for the relation in question, had it
been compatible with their point of view. Helios is the sun as god.
(β) We must, however, at once insist on the further fact that the Greeks
never regarded mere Nature as itself divine. On the contrary, they retained
the definite conception that what was purely natural was not divine. This is
partly contained, if unexpressed, in what their gods actually are, in part also
it is expressly stated so by themselves. Plutarch, for example, in his essay
upon Isis and Osiris, refers incidentally to the modes of interpretation
current of myths and divinities. Osiris and Isis belong to the Egyptian
theogony, and had yet more of the natural element for their content than the
Greek gods, who correspond to them; they merely express the longing and
conflict to escape out of the circle of Nature to that of Spirit. In later times
they were very highly honoured in Rome, and the mysteries allied with
them were of great importance. Yet for all that it is Plutarch's view that it
would be an interpretation beneath the level of the subject to think of
explaining them as sun, earth, or water. Only that which in the sun, Earth,
and so forth, is without measure or co-ordination, defective or superfluous,
can strictly be referred to the natural elements, and all that is good and
conformable to order is as exclusively a work of Isis, and the rational
principle, the λόγoς, a work of Osiris. It is not, therefore, the natural as such
which is adduced as the substantive content of these gods, but the spiritual
principle, the universal, λόγoς, reason, conformity to law.
By virtue of this insight into the spiritual nature of the gods, the more
definite elements of Nature, then, had also among the Greeks been
differentiated from the later gods. We have, it is true, grown accustomed to
associate Helios and Selene, to take two examples, with Apollo and Diana:
in Homer, however, they are presented as distinct. The same remark applies
to Oceanos and others.
(γ) But in the third place an echo still lingers in the new gods of the natural
powers, whose operative energies themselves belong to the spiritual
individuality of the gods. We have already indicated, at an earlier stage, the

basis of this positive connection of the spiritual and natural in the ideal of
classical art, and may limit our observations here to a few illustrations.
(αα) In Poseidon resides, as in Pontus and Oceanus, the might of the world-
encircling sea, but his power and activity extends further. He built Ilium and
was a shield of Athens. Generally he is revered as the founder of cities, in
so far as the sea is the element of sea-faring, of commerce, and a bond
between mankind. Apollo, in like manner, is the light of knowledge, of
oracular speech, and preserves, moreover, a distant relation with Helios, as
the natural light of the sun. Critics differ, no doubt—take Voss and Creuzer
for examples—as to whether Apollo is referable to the sun. One may,
however, in fact, assert that he both is and is not the sun, since he is not
limited to its natural content, but is raised thereby to the significance of a
spiritual import. It is impossible to escape the inevitable connection in
which knowledge and light, the light of Nature and that of Spirit, if we
regard their fundamental characteristics, stand relatively to one another.
Light regarded as a element of Nature is that which manifests. Without our
seeing Light itself it makes visible to us the illuminated objects around. By
means of Light everything grows on the plane of contemplation for
something else. Spirit, that is the free light of consciousness, knowledge,
and cognition, possesses just the same character of manifestation. The
distinction, apart from the differences of the respective spheres, in which
these two modes of manifestation reveal themselves, consists simply in this,
that Spirit reveals itself, and in that which it brings us, or which it
assimilates as content[178], remains constant to itself. Light, however, does
not make itself apprehensible to itself, but, on the contrary, makes that
which is other and external to itself apprehensible; and though, no doubt,
we may say this is done from its own resources, yet it cannot, as the Spirit
can, once more retire into itself. For this reason it does not win the higher
unity which finds itself constant by itself in another. Just as, then, light and
knowledge are closely associated, we find in Apollo, as spiritual god, still a
recollection of the light of the sun. For this reason Homer, for example,
ascribes the plague in the camp of the Greeks to Apollo, which, in such a
locality is in the summer solstice ascribable to the operation of the sun. We
may add that his deadly arrows have unquestionably a symbolical reference
to the solar rays. In the external representation it is external signs which
more closely determine under what specific interpretation the god shall be
mainly accepted.