If we inquire further in what manner the Idea is manifested within the actual life of such living individuals our survey will be as follows: _first_, this principle of Life will be realized as the totality of an organism possessing bodily shape; _secondly_, this physical shape is not presented as a rigid product[222], but as a continous process of ideal generation, in which a living soul asserts itself. _Thirdly_, the changes and determinations through which this totality passes are not imposed externally to it, but are changes of form which are evolved from its inherent nature, imposed on itself and for itself, in a process wherein it stands self-determined as the subjective unity no less than the ultimate end of its being.
This free self-subsistence of the subjective principle of life is especially exemplified in the spontaneous motion of a living organism.
The inanimate bodies of inorganic Nature are fettered to the conditions of Space, which limits them to one place, or they are only moved from it by external forces. The motion, in short, does not originate in themselves; and, when it is visible upon them, it appears as an energy which is foreign to them, to remove which the only force they exert is that of reaction. And if the motion of the planets with similar phenomena appear to be otherwise produced, such are at least wholly fettered by natural laws and their abstract necessity. The living animal, on the contrary, in its freedom of motion, negatives this enforced limitation to one spot by virtue of its own activity. It is through such self-determination the continuous liberation of itself from the material isolation. And for the same reason it is in this freedom of motion, if only in a subordinate degree, the release of itself from the former abstractness referable to the particular modes of motion, their direction and their speed. Under a yet closer view, moreover, the animal, regarded by itself in its organism, presents the same sensuous matter that is moved; and here, too, life is as before a freedom of motion within this organic reality, evidenced in the flow of blood and the movement of the limbs.
Motion, however, is not the only expression of animated life. The free tones of the voice of animals, which are unknown in the inorganic world, where bodies merely roar and clatter through the blow of objects external to them, these already present to us the higher expression of animated subjectivity. The most intimate and vital expression of such ideal activity is, however, brought before us when we find the living individual able to concentrate itself as individuality over against the objective world, while at the same time it appropriates and transfigures that world _for its own._ And this is accomplished in part through observation by means of vision, and partly for practical purposes, in so far as such an individual brings the outer world into subjection to himself, utilizes the same, assimilates it as a means of nourishment, and in this manner continually reproduces his individuality in that objective _alterum._ Such a process, of course, as it ascends through stronger organisms, assumes more and more emphatic degrees of unsatisfied desire, assimilation, satisfaction, or satiety.
Such, then, are the activities, in which the notion of animated life makes itself apparent. Moreover, the principle of Ideality thus rendered visible is not merely the result of _our_ reflection; it is _objectively_ real itself in the living subject, whose existence consequently we may go so far as to call an objective idealism. And it is the soul, as before stated, which, as this ideal energy, brings about its own manifestation[223], always reducing the _purely_ external reality of the body to an appearance, and thereby affirming itself as objective totality in that very bodily shape.
2. Now it is as the Idea made objectively visible to the senses that the animated life of Nature is _beautiful_; in so far, that is to say, as the truth or the Idea, presented in the form of Nature, where under it first appears, in other words life, is immediately given in the particular shape of reality adequate to it. Owing, however, to its sensuous immediacy the living beauty of Nature is neither beautiful _for itself_ nor is the beauty strictly that which is _the outcome_ of itself, a product, that is, of its purely objective appearance. The beauty of Nature is only beautiful for another, that is _for us_, the consciousness that apprehends its beauty. The question therefore arises in what way and by virtue of what characteristics the principle of life appears to us beautiful in its _immediate_ existence.
(_a_) If we look at the practical way in which a living object becomes visible and preserves itself, the first thing which rivets our attention is _spontaneous motion._ This motion, regarded simply as motion, is nothing more than the entirely abstract freedom of motion from place to place and from time to time, which we find exemplified in the spontaneous, but entirely haphazard movements of animal life. In music and the dance we have, it is true, motion in its generic significance; but here motion is not merely a matter of chance and impulse, but it exhibits the laws which regulate it; it is defined, complete in itself and subject to measure; and it is all this, though we still abstract from it the significance whereof it is the beautiful expression. If we again interpret the motion of animals as the realization of an aim originating within themselves, this excited impulse is still entirely accidental, an end of most restricted import. If we further extend our survey and conceive such motion as the activity and working together of all parts of the animal organism towards a definite purpose, we shall merely find that such a conception is rendered possible by our own effort of imagination[224]. The case is just the same if we reflect upon the way in which an animal gratifies its physical wants, obtains nourishment through the organs which grasp it, consume it, digest it, and generally is a subject of the process which preserves its life. For in this case also we have either only before us single desires and their spontaneous and haphazard gratification, in which the inward activity[225] of the organism is not present at all, or at least all these activities and their means of expression have become the subject of our imaginative reflection, which is at pains to understand such a process by relating it to definite ends, and to establish a harmony between aims assumed to belong to the animal itself and the organs which fulfill them.
We shall rather find that neither the sensuous perception of single haphazard appetites, arbitrary movements and efforts towards self-satisfaction, nor the fanciful consideration of the animal organism as one directed by purpose will present to us purely animal life as a part of the beauty of Nature. The beauty consists in the appearance of individual form, both in repose and motion, quite apart from the relation of its self-gratification to any purpose thus subserved, as it is apart from the entirely isolated contingency of self-imposed movement[226]. Such beauty is related to the _form_ alone, because it is only as such that it is the external appearance, in which the objective idealism of the principle of life makes itself known to us as a thing perceived and contemplated upon through the senses.
Thought apprehends this "objective idealism" in the medium of its notion, appropriating the same in the element of _universality_ which belongs to it, albeit the contemplation of its beauty is inseparably bound with its _phenomenal reality._ And this reality is the external form of the articulated organism, which is, in our view of it, quite as much determinate particularity as it is a semblance, namely, that of the physical manifold of the separate members, which can only form part of the concrete totality of the _living form_ under the guise of phenomenal appearance.
(_b_) From the explanation of the notion of life already given we may deduce more narrowly the form of this appearance as follows. The form is one of spatial extension, limitation, and configuration, distinguished through its various shape, colour, and motion, being, in fact, a manifold of such distinctions. If, however, the organism which manifests these differences is a living organism, it will inevitably appear that the organism does not derive its true existence from such a _manifold_ and its physical configurations. This is brought about by the fact that the different parts, which are apprehended by us through the senses, are at the same time conjoined together in one totality; they appear consequently as the _members_ of one individual existence, which is a unity of such differences, and which not merely possesses them in their difference, but as parts of one homogeneous whole.
(_α_) In the first place, however, this unity will assert itself as the _purposeless_ identity of such differences, that is to say with no abstract relation to any causal end whatever. The parts in such a case are not rendered visible to sense merely as a means to or in the service of some defined purpose, nor are they able to fix the determinate relation of form and structure which they occupy one over against the other.
(_β_) Rather the contrary is the case, for, in the _second_ place, the bodily members have for our sense-perception the appearance of being quite _accidental_ in their form; in other words the determination of one appears to be quite indifferent to that of another. In other words, we can never conclude because one has a certain form another will have the same, as would be the case if a material uniformity was clear between them. Where uniformity is the rule an abstract determination of some kind of form, size, or whatever it may be, is the property of all parts. The windows of a building, for example, are all of one size, or at least are placed together in one row. Or we may illustrate the same similarity with the uniform worn by all soldiers belonging to one regiment. We have various parts of such clothing differing in colour, texture and the rest, but their formal opposition is no matter of chance; each has its causal connection with some other; it is there because the other is there. Neither is there here any complete distinction of form, nor any unique independence wholly asserted. With the individual organism of life the case is entirely otherwise. Here every part is absolutely distinguished; the nose from the forehead, the mouth from the cheek, the breast from the neck, the arms from the legs, and so on. Inasmuch as for our sense-perception every member possesses its unique form rather than one which belongs to another, or one which is determined by that of another, the members appear as self-subsistent parts, and for this reason free and spontaneous[227]. For the material juxtaposition of the parts alone throws no light upon their particular form.
(_γ_) _Thirdly_, it is obvious there must be for our imaginative perception a more inward bond of connection present in the self-subsistence of the organism, if the unity is not offered us in its rational, spatial, temporal, or quantitative relations such as are presented in the examples of uniformity referred to, which, as we have seen, the unique particularity of the parts can extinguish. This identity is not sensuous and immediately present to perception in the way the distinction between the members is presented; it is rather a secret and _inward_ bond of necessity and harmonious relation between the members and their form. If it were only inward, quite out of reach of our vision, such a necessary unity would be apprehended only in thought, removed from our sense-perception altogether. In such a case, however, it would fail to enter into the beautiful object of our vision, and what we found as such in the living, object would cease to be the Idea in its own objective and phenomenal reality. Such a unity must consequently enter into what is externally perceived, although it is, as the ideal principle of life within it, not entirely apparent to sense or confined in spatial dimensions. It appears in fact in the individual totality as the universal ideality of its members, constituting thus the fundamental basis which supports and holds them together, the subject of the living subject. And this subjective unity in organic life finds its first direct expression in feeling. In the emotional life the Soul finds its true expression as _Soul._ For soul the mere juxtaposition of limbs have no real truth, and in the presence of its subjective ideality the purely spatial multiplicity of external configuration ceases to exist. Such a manifold, with its unique differentiations, its organic articulation of parts[228] is no doubt presupposed; but when and in so far as the soul expresses itself through such in feeling the more inward unity ever-present to life asserts itself equally as the dissolution of all absolute independence between the physical parts, which reveal now not merely their _materia_, but also that wave of animation which fuses all in their soul.
(_c_) To start with, however, we must observe that the emotional expression of soul-life neither offers us the visual impression of any necessary inter-dependence between the separate members, nor indeed the perception of an identity which is necessary between such _physical_ articulation and the _subjective_ unity conferred on it by simple feeling. We will investigate this more narrowly.
(_α_) If indeed the form and only the form renders in some way visible this inward harmony and its necessity, it may be because we look upon this juxtaposition as the _habitual_ relation of such members, a connection which brings to our view some specific type and the oft-repeated formal exemplifications of such a type. But the necessity of custom is after all only a _subjective necessity._[229] According to such a principle we may find certain animals ugly for no other reason than that we find in them an organism which differs from our ordinary experience, or runs contrary to it. For this reason we call the organisms of certain animals bizarre in so far as the way in which their organs are related together is foreign to what is more common to our experience or entirely contradicts it. Fishes whose bodies are in size out of all proportion to their length of tail, or those in which we find eyes together on one side of the head only, are an example. In the world of plants we are already prepared to find many such strange departures from type, although the cactus with its spines, and the more rectilinear shaping of its angular junctures[230] may still arouse our wonder. The more a man is educated, however, in all branches of natural history, the more able he will be to recognize in their truth the subordination of all parts of organic life, and carry in the memory the greatest variety of types in their proper classification, and the less anything he may observe will surprise him.
(_β_) A profounder penetration into this correlation of the parts will, however, in the _second_ place, tend to give us that truer insight competent to determine from one of the parts the entire form to which it must belong. Cuvier is a famous example of such aptitude: a man of science, who by the examination of a single bone, whether fossil or otherwise, was able to specify at once by its characteristics the kind of animal to which it belonged. An excellent illustration this of _ex ungue leonem._ So from a claw or a thigh bone we may discover the conformation of the teeth, or _vice versa_ from the teeth that of the hip-bone, or that of the vertebral column. Such a profound synthesis of the type and the knowledge it implies carries us, however, beyond habitual experience only. We must assume, to render it possible, previous thought and the systematic arrangement of the isolated facts of science. Our example Cuvier had no doubt secured from previous experience a determinate content and some specific quality which prevailed in each generic conception, and asserted itself as a unity of principle in all particulars however distinct, and so enabled him to recognize their affinity. Such a specific quality is that of flesh-eating, which is then the determinating principle of the form of the other members of the organism to which it belongs. A flesh-eating animal requires teeth and jaws of exceptional vigour; when hunting it will require claws to seize its prey, mere hoofs are insufficient. Here in short is a quality which necessarily determines for us the form and principle of affinity among all the organic members. A conception of such a typical character is the ordinary one we form of the strength of an eagle or a lion. We may no doubt find something both beautiful and instructive[231] in this way of regarding the animal world, in so far as we derive from it some unified idea of its configuration, which is not a mere repetition of that unity in all the parts, but gives full value to the distinctions they possess. For all that it must be remembered the dominant factor of this survey is not the _perception of our senses_, but the generic _thought_ of our minds with which it is made to conform. Reviewed in this light we ought not to say that we find the object as such _beautiful_, but rather attribute that beauty to the _reflection_ of our own minds upon it. And if we examine these reflections more closely we shall find they are after all a deduction of our principle of unity from a limited aspect of the organic whole.
We concentrate our attention, for example, on the mode in which it is nourished, _i.e._, whether such an animal is carnivorous or herbivorous. Through such a limited determination we are still removed from a vision of the coalescent unity of the whole we identified with the notion, the soul itself.
(_γ_) The truth is we can only, in this sphere, bring before our consciousness the entire unity of life by means of our thought and grasp of reason. In the natural world the _soul_, in its full activity, is not found; that is to say, the subjective unity, in its pure ideality, does not exist there for a self-consciousness.
If, however, by means of thought, we endeavour to grasp the nature of soul-life according to its essential notion we shall find two aspects under which we may regard it; first, as the form subject to such a principle of animation; secondly, as the notion of soul for thought in all that the conception implies. Such a complete grasp of its true nature is not possible in the sensuous perception of the objects of beauty. Such must neither pass before us as thought, nor must we allow the interest of Thought as such to form a barrier of difference or opposition between itself and the vision revealed to us. We are left, then, with no alternative but to consider, under this point of view, the object as wholly presented to sense; we must assume that in the sphere of Nature a _sensuous_ perception of the natural form is our genuine mode of contemplating the beautiful. "Sense," that is the master-key[232] to the position; a word which in itself is interpreted in two opposed senses. In the first place we may indicate thereby the organs of immediate[233] perception, secondly, by the "sense of a thing" we may refer to the significance, or the element of thought and the universal within it. In this way "Sense" is related on one side to the immediate externality of existence, and on the other to its inward or essential nature. A sensuous perception of that existence in fact preserves both sides in unity, or rather in one direction so presents the aspect that is opposed to it in the immediate sense vision as to include therein both the essence and notion of the object. But for the reason that it combines these opposed determinations in unfractured unity, the notion is not presented as such to consciousness, but is rather to be dimly foreshadowed there[234]. We accept, for example, as a determinate fact the existence of three realms of Nature, which we define as that of the mineral world, that of plants, and finally that of animals; we can conclude from this, as already foreshadowed by its truth regarded as a process rising from plane to plane, that there is an inward necessity inherent in the notional articulation of its divisions, and do not confine ourselves only to the purely imaginative conception of it as a world conforming on its exterior side only to a final end. In the same way when confronted with the variety of the external presentment in each of these realms, the sense-perception surmises a controlling unity intelligible to mind, a progress subject to laws of thought, visible no less in the formation of mountain ranges than in the orderly succession of plant-life and of the animal races. The same tendency is presupposed when, after an examination of the form of any particular animal organism, an insect's, for example, as subdivided into head, body, abdomen, and extremities, we conclude the correlation of such parts to be based on a rational principle, and are confident that though, at first blush, it may appear quite accidental that we are in possession of five senses, we shall discover a true bond of relation between that number and the notion therein asserted. Of just this type is Goethe's method of observing and accounting for the innate reason of Nature and her phenomena. With an extraordinary intuitive sense he directed his attention directly to[235] the objects of experience, entirely convinced of the ideal bond of unity which explained their interconnection. History may be written with a like object. The narration of facts and individual lives is given in such a way as indirectly to throw a light on the essential significance which such events or persons contributed to the period in which they are necessarily bound together in one organic whole.
3. Consequently we may affirm that Nature generally, regarded as the sensuous manifestation of the concrete notion and the Idea, is to be considered an object of beauty in so far as by such a sensuous perception of natural forms some kind of foreshadowing of the notional unity consonant to them is surmised, and we are able through the channels of sense to discover not merely their form, but somewhat of the inner necessity which binds together all their parts. Further than this incomplete surmise of the notion the sensuous contemplation of Nature as beautiful is not carried. This way of comprehending things, for which the separate parts, despite their appearance of independent freedom among themselves, nevertheless reveal to the sight the harmony that exists there either in the characteristics of _their form_, or detached portions of it or their motion and so forth, remains for all that _indefinite_ and _abstract._ The inward unity is not open to external sense, nor can it appear in its ideal and concrete form to such perception[236], whether imaginative or no; such at most acquiesces generally in the universality of a law of connection inherent in every living thing.
(_a_) It is, then, in the first instance only in this bond of union which reveals itself as a necessary adjunct of vitality from the objectivity of Nature, in so far as the same is presented in forms adequate to the notion, that we have before us the beauty of Nature.
With this coalescence the _materia_ is wholly identical; the form is immediately at home in the matter, as its true essence and its conforming energy[237]. This description may in fact stand for us, so far as beauty at this stage is concerned, as a general definition of it. We admire, for example, the natural form of a crystal on account of the law of uniformity it manifests, a law which through no mere action of forces external to it, but by virtue of its own specific definition and free activity, free in all its aspects as itself an object, is manifested there. For although an activity external to it could as such equally be free, yet in crystals the conformative activity is not extraneous to the object; rather it is a form operative as belonging to the mineral's innate character. We may define it as the free force of its substance, which out of its own resources informs itself and is not merely passively receptive of its environment. Consequently we find here the constituent material in its realized form as a free and independent creation. In still higher and more concrete mode the immanent form projects itself through the living organism and all its parts, in the articulate form and, above all, in its motion and its vital expression as feeling. For in this last case we have the inward vitality pregnant itself as living.
(_b_) It is moreover through this indeterminacy of the beauty of Nature, originating in its inward principle of animation that (_α_) both in virtue of the conception of life and the intuition of its true notion no less than of the habitual types conformable to its adequate presentment, we are able to distinguish between animals which are beautiful and those which are ugly. Animals incapable of vitality, such as the sloth, which creeps about with difficulty, and whose entire mode of life is suggestive of incapacity for motion or activity, offend our aesthetic sense for this very reason[238]. Activity and mobility are precisely the qualities which assert the higher ideality of life.
For the same reason we condemn forms of amphibious life, certain species of fishes, crocodiles, toads, and many kinds of insects; an additional reason will influence our similar attitude to hybrid species, where confusion of form marks the passage from one determinate type to another; the ornithorhyncus is an example[239], an animal which with its mixture of bird and four-footed beast may indeed astonish us, but at the same time is repulsive to our sense of beauty. Such feelings of repulsion can no doubt be traced entirely to our habitual prepossessions which have moulded for the imagination a fixed type of animal species consonant to experience. But even so there is already actively present the intuitive surmise that the configuration of a bird, for example, is related in its parts by a necessary principle of unity, and cannot as such graft upon itself forms which belong to other species without being thereby transformed into a hybrid variety. Such abnormal deviations from type appear to us both strange and contradictory. Neither the one sided narrowness of organization, which is so defective and mean in its manifestation, that it exercises no activity over the straitened conditions of its environment, nor confusions and passages of type, which, albeit they are not so enclosed within themselves, are unable to hold fast the distinctive features of their type, belong strictly to the sphere of natural beauty.
(_β_) There is another sense in which we attribute beauty to Nature, namely, when we have the collective picture of a landscape before us rather than observe the living form of a simple object. Here we have no organic articulation of parts such as is derived from their notion and is presented to us as such ideal unity in spontaneous life. We have instead a rich variety of objects both organic and inorganic, which are united together on one or more planes of vision in their distinctive features, contour of mountains, winding outlines of rivers, groups of trees, huts, dwellings, palaces, and cities of mankind, ships, roadways, heaven and sea, valley and rock-cleft. We find, in addition to this variety and proceeding therefrom, a delightful or imposing harmony which appeals to our sense and interests us.
It is lastly a peculiar characteristic of the beauty of Nature that it should excite or exercise a harmonious influence over our emotional life. A mood of this kind is aroused by the stillness of moonlight, the peace of a valley, through which some brook or other meanders, the sublimity of the immeasurable storm-tossed sea, the tranquil depth of the star-strewn heavens. But the significant factor in this case is not so much to be found in the objects as in the peculiar moods they arouse in our feelings and affections. On analogous grounds we attribute beauty to animals, when the expression of their life directly suggests human qualities, such as courage, strength, cunning, good nature, and the rest. Such, no doubt, in one aspect of it, truly expresses the nature of the animals themselves; but there is also our own conception of its affinity to ourselves, and the mood in which we receive it.
(_c_) However much animal life, as the culminating point of natural beauty, unfolds its freest expression as a living principle, it is comparatively narrow in its range and subject to very limited qualities. The circle of such existence is a strait one; and in this the predominant interests are those of the satisfaction of natural instincts such as hunger and sex-attraction. Soul-life, regarded as the inward principle expressed through external figure, is poor, abstract, and empty of content. Add to this the consideration that this inward is not manifested at all as _inward._ The soul in its essential substance is not revealed by the life of Nature; it is, in fact, the determining characteristic of Nature that its soul remains shut in itself, does not, in other words, proclaim itself in its ideality. As already pointed out, the soul of an animal is not this ideal unity _self-acknowledged._ If it were otherwise we should have the manifestation of such personality brought home to others. Only in the self-conscious Ego do we find the ideal in its simplest terms, which is itself an ideal medium to itself, knows itself as this simple unity, and thereby endows itself with a reality, which is not limited to bodily and sensuous form, but is itself of an ideal character. Here, for the first time, reality is in possession of a form adequate to the notion; or rather the notion sets itself up as its own opposite, makes itself objectively real and finds its own realization in that objectivity. The animal life, on the contrary, is only _potentially_ such a unity as that in which reality as bodily form is other than the ideal unity of soul. In self-consciousness we have this unity realized, whose opposing factors are constituent elements of one transparent ideality. And it is as this concrete totality of self-consciousness that the Ego is manifested to others. The forms of animal life merely enable us through imaginative perception to divine the soul's existence. Such only possess the troubled semblance of a soul, betrayed to us through the breath or exhalement which permeates the whole, gives some unity to all the members, and reveals in the entire instinctive life the first germs of an independent character. Herein lies the primary defect of the beauty of Nature, even when taken at its point of culminating form: and it is precisely this defect which will introduce us to the necessity of _the Ideal_ as the beauty of art. But before we consider at length the nature of this Ideal, there are two determinations involved as the most immediate result of this inherent defect in natural beauty, which invite our attention.
We have stated that in the animal form the soul appears as the bond of connection within the organism and the unified point of animation only under a cloud[240] and destitute of any fully realized content. We only find there a quite indeterminate and restricted mode of soul-life. We will now consider the abstract limitations of this mode more closely.
B. THE EXTERNAL BEAUTY OF ABSTRACT FORM REGARDED AS UNIFORMITY, SYMMETRY, CONFORMITY TO RULE AND HARMONY AND REALITY IN THE SENSE OF ABSTRACT UNITY OF THE PHYSICAL MATERIAL.
There is in Nature an external reality which is, of course, visible and definitely objective, but the inward unity of which, instead of presenting itself in the concrete inwardness referable to the unity of soul-life, only goes to the point of indeterminacy and abstraction. In other words, it stops short of the inwardness self-actualized in an ideal form and as the particular existence conformable to its ideal content. Its appearance is that of the defining principle on the face of external reality. Now the specific characteristics of inwardness in all its concreteness should be these. First, the principle of soul-life is asserted for itself no less than is potentially replete with content. Secondly, external reality interpenetrates this ideal arcanum, and by so doing fully reveals its true form as such external reality.
A concrete unity of this nature is not reached by mere natural beauty: it lies beyond as the Ideal. On this plane of existence we cannot say that such a concrete unity enters into the manifestation of form. We have to deduce it through analysis, examining in their separation and singularity the _distinguishing features_ which the unity supports. The form that informs here and the sensuous external reality _fall apart_ from one another; or rather we have _two_ distinct aspects which we are compelled to consider separately. By virtue of this fact, which we may either regard as a division of the material of sense or as a review of certain facts taken in abstraction, the inward unity, which is one aspect of the external reality, itself falls outside it; that is to say, it is not itself asserted in that rational reality as the wholly immanent form of the entire notion which constitutes it, but rather as an Ideality and determinacy imposed externally.
Such are the points of view thus presented us which we will now consider more closely.
First, then, we have to discuss 1. THE BEAUTY OF ABSTRACT FORM The form of natural beauty in its abstraction is a form which is determinate and thus of limited range; in a further aspect of it it is focussed in a unity of abstract relation to itself[241]. On closer inspection we shall, however, find that the external manifold controls this form of abstract beauty by reason of its own determinacy and unity. We must not, however, imply in these latter any immanent inwardness or form of vital ideality, but regard them as purely material definitions and unity of the external medium. Forms of such a character are uniformity, symmetry, or conformity to rule, and finally harmony.
_(a) Uniformity_ Uniformity is, speaking generally, equality in external presentment, or, more specifically, the unbroken repetition of one and the same definite form, supplied by the determining unity to the form of objects. Such a unity, in virtue of its initial abstraction, is at the furthest extreme removed from the rational totality of the concrete notion. Its beauty is therefore a beauty which is referable to the faculty of the analytical understanding. The fundamental process of that faculty is to perceive objects in their abstraction, not in their self-determined completeness and identity. For example, among all lines the straight line is that which is most uniform, because it alone