reality as such in the absolute freedom of its subjective and universal principle of life, nor is it thus manifested in every part.
The same thing may be observed in particular actions and events, where we find a similar organic totality present. The inner motive from which they proceed is not wholly made visible upon the external surface of their actual presence. What we do find is a total presentment of _fact_, whose most fundamental ground of unity and vitality still remains _hidden from sight._ Finally, when we consider from the same point of view any single individual we are confronted with the same truth. Every human person is a self-rounded totality, held together by the central unity of life. In the immediate envisagement of reality, that is in his life, action, avoidance of action, desires and impulses, he only appears in a fragmentary way; none the less it is only from a general survey of all his actions or sufferings that we are able to form an estimate of character. The centre of unity which thus concentrates to a point the entire subject-matter of our extended survey is not as such either visible or directly apprehended.
2. The second point of importance to which we would draw attention is this. With the immediate appearance of individuality the Idea, as we have already indicated, receives determinate existence. Through this very immediacy however it becomes interwoven with the complexity of the external world, is conditioned by the limitations of external circumstance and the relative character of means and ends which are found there, in one word is carried into the finitude of external Nature. For though immediate singularity is in the first place a fully rounded off unity, it is for the same reason only self-exclusive as a centre of negation opposed to _others_, and is, by virtue of its immediate singularity, influenced by, no less than related to, a totality of real existence other than its own, upon which it is dependent in a thousand different ways. The Idea, in short, is in this very immediacy realized in every direction as _individual distinction._ It is consequently now merely a reflex of the inherent energy of the notion which binds all individual existence, that of Nature no less than mind in reciprocal correlation[263]. Such a relation to the existences themselves is a purely external one, and appears also to them as a single _external necessity_ uniting each part of the manifold in one shifting complexus of interrelated reciprocity. The immediacy of determinate existence is therefore, as thus regarded, a system of necessary relations between apparently self-subsistent individual things and forces, in which each singular entity is committed as a means to the service of ends foreign to it, or itself is compelled to utilize that which is external to itself as such a means. And inasmuch as the Idea is under this aspect wholly realized on the ground of externality, there appears at the same time the unrestrained play of every caprice and accident, no less than the uncontrolled discharge of the burden of indigence. Singularity as immediate appearance lives and moves in the realm of unfreedom.
(_a_) The individual _animal_ is, for example, fettered wholly within the bounds of its natural environment of air, water and land. Its entire way of living, the mode of its self-nourishment, everything that concerns it, is thereby determined. It is this which differentiates with such variety the species of animal life. We find, moreover, intermediate strains, such as swimming birds and suckling animals, which live in the water, amphibious species and others which still further mediate between the more obviously generic. These are, however, mere confusions of race, and indicate no higher mediation of considerable range. Throughout we find the animal subject in its self-preservation to the absolute necessities of external nature, cold, drought, or insufficient supply of the means of nourishment. Under this despotic dominion it is liable through the parsimony of circumstance to lose the fulness of external form, the blossom of its beauty, in short to become as it were the reflex of starving Nature herself. External conditions fix imperatively the measure of beauty it either preserves or forfeits.
(_b_) The human organism, in its particular bodily existence is subject, if not in the same measure, to external forces of Nature, and is compelled to face the same contingencies, deficient livelihoods, and every kind of harassing disease and misery.
(_c_) If we carry investigation further to that still higher plane of immediate reality where _spiritual_ interests are predominant we shall find this dependence on external condition for the first time emphasized in its full relativity. Here we are face to face with the prose of human existence in its entire length and breadth. The contrast already noticed between ends subservient to purely physical wants, and those profounder aims of spiritual life, and the conflict which tends to inflict a loss on one side or the other, already opens our view of it. Add to this every individual man, in order to preserve himself as such, is compelled to make himself in many ways subservient to others, and the limited aims of others, and on the other hand, in order to satisfy his own narrow interests, to accept the service of others as a mere means for their fulfilment. The individual, then, as he appears in the prose-life of everyday existence, is not therefore active out of his own particular totality, nor is he intelligible so much in virtue of himself as in virtue of that which he is not[264]. For individual man stands in a relation of dependence to the influences, laws, organizations and other social relations of civic life which he finds already existing around him, and to which he must submit whether he forfeit his own independent soul-life thereby or not. And more than this, each separate individual is not presented to others as such totality, but is only reflected in whatever isolated interest they may happen at the time to possess in his actions, desires, and opinions. And what interests mankind mainly is some relation to their own particular thoughts and aims. Even historically important actions and events, with which the community is expressly associated, appear in this field of relative appearances merely as a manifold of isolated efforts. It is a varied collection to which each contributes as he may, with aims by no means identical, some of which meet with success while others miscarry, and indeed, be they ever so fortunate, are significant in a very subordinate degree if we consider them as contributions to the wellbeing of all. What the majority may carry through, in contrast with the entire aggregate of events and the end applicable to all[265], to which it furnishes its quota, is after all a mere patch; nay, even men of eminent standing, who feel and are fully conscious of the universal passage of events[266], as their own world, are for all that clearly immeshed in the same net of particular circumstances, conditions, and a thousand other hindrances involved in their relative position. On all these grounds it is plain that in this sphere of exterior life the individual world is unable to offer us the vision of that independent and complete freedom of the living principle, such as is essential to the true notion of beauty. It is, of course, true that the immediate appearance of human reality and its events and organizations is not without system, and as such is a totality of activities; but this whole is rather in its appearance a mere mass of isolated fragments. Moreover the practical concerns of such activities are divided and subdivided into countless parts, and in such a way that each single part is in touch with the merest fraction of all; and, in short, however much individuals may remain steadfast to their own purposes, and only bring forth to the light that which their own interest has employed as a means, the self-subsistence and freedom of their will remains more or less of a formal character, determined by external circumstance or accident, and constantly thwarted by natural causes[267].
This is the prose of the world, as presented to our own consciousness no less than to that of others; a world of finitude and change, a world immeshed in relation and submerged beneath the pressure of necessity, a world from which no individual can extricate himself. The central paradox of life confronts every unit of the living whole. On the one hand there is the impulse of individuality to perfect its isolated unity in self-exclusion; on the other there is the necessary condition of dependence on others from which none may claim immunity. However prolonged the struggle to overcome this contradiction may be the effort of that interminable battle only terminates with life itself.
3. Thirdly, the immediate singularity of the worlds of Nature and Mind is not merely conditioned by dependence on others, but is deficient in any complete self-subsistency owing to its _confined_ nature, or with more accuracy, because it is particularized in its own specific mode of manifestation.
(_a_) We will explain our meaning further. Every single specimen of life in the animal world is from the first fettered by a definite, that is to say, a restricted and constant species, beyond the limits of which it cannot pass. There is in the spiritual world, no doubt, a general picture of life and its organization, which floats vaguely before our vision; but in the real world, which is one with Nature, this universal organism breaks up into a multitude of particulars, each of which possesses the determinate type of form and grade of cultivation in which it is related to a definite portion of the social organism. In addition to this and within these insuperable limits, we find the pressure of that element of contingency, as regards general condition or external environment, predominantly asserted both uniquely and in haphazard fashion throughout every one of those individual units. Such a state of things disturbs our vision of the self-subsistency and freedom, which the idea of true beauty imperatively requires.
(_b_) As already observed, it is unquestionably true that Spirit discovers in its own bodily organism the notion of life completely realized. This is so much the case that, in contrast with it, the forms of the animal world appear not only as incomplete, but in inferior species as even pitiable objects. The human organism is also, however, broken up, if to a less, degree, in racial subdivisions and the ascending grades of beauty which distinguish such races. Moreover, in addition to this obviously very general line of demarcation, we have presented to us all the accidental variety of qualities, peculiar to distinct families and their interfusion with one another, such as modes of life, facial expression, and general demeanour. We must further associate with such characteristic traits, which all of them emphasize a condition of essentially unfree particularity, those peculiarities which are inseparable from activity employed in the endless round of commercial life or professional career; qualities which find their ultimate expression in the specific habits or idiosyncracies of any exceptionally marked character or temperament, or, as the reverse side of the picture, in the various confusions of arrested development.
Poverty, care, anger, coldness, and indifference, the rage of passion, the obstinate retention of narrow purposes, indications of change and division in the spiritual world, entire dependence on that of Nature--in one word all that is implied in the transitory condition of human life--leaves its indelible, if quite incalculable, expression on the varied surface of the faces of mankind. Who has not crossed weather-beaten types of such, on which the storm of all the passions has imprinted its disturbing wave; or others, where the coldness and superficiality of the soul within is all the impression we receive; or, lastly, as the final verdict of self-absorbed particularity[268], cases in which the general type seems almost totally to have disappeared.
There is no end to the caprice of the human features. Speaking generally, we would associate with this ground the fact that the beauty of children most arrests us. In their faces we find all pronounced idiosyncracies slumber as it were beneath a quiet veil; no dominating passion as yet ravages their soul; not one of the thousand interests of the grown man has engraved for ever the expression of its necessity on these mobile features. This envisaged innocence of the child, however, though we may discover in its flexible animation the possibility of Life's completed fulness, obviously fails to reveal those profounder indications of a spirit which has been carried forward to explore the range of its own recesses and to make its life one with rational purpose.
We may regard, then, immediate existence, both in the purely physical and spiritual sense of the term, as a _finitude_, or more justly as a finitude which does not satisfy its notion and for this very reason declares its finitude. For the notion, and more concretely still, the Idea, is essentially _independent_ and _free._ Purely animal life, although as Life it is the Idea, is no manifestation of infinity as such or freedom. This is alone possible under conditions, where we find the notion penetrate so completely the reality which is adequate to it, that it finds itself entirely at home therein, with no extraneous matter, to disturb its possession. Then alone do we find it a really free and concrete individuality. The natural life, on the contrary, is unable to overcome the element of feeling to which it is attached, and which renders it incapable of penetrating the entire reality which enrings it. It finds itself, moreover, immediately conditioned in itself, restricted in its range and dependent, a result which is due to the fact that its freedom is not truly self-determinate, but conditioned by the external: object. And the same thing is true of the immediate and finite reality of the spirit world in its knowledge, volitional action, and fateful history. For although in this latter case we find centres of unity expressed which have a real significance, neither these any more than the particularities they unite have truth as they stand by themselves; but only that truth which, in their reciprocal relation to each other, they manifest as constituent parts of a whole. And this whole, albeit in a sense adequate to its notion, does not correspond to it in such a way as to manifest itself in its full totality[269], which consequently still remains aloof from such envisagement, or rather, is only apprehended in the ideal world of thought. In other words, the notion finds no fully adequate presentation in external reality, such as is powerful enough to marshal homogeneously all the numberless fragments of particularity, and to concentrate them into _one_ expression and _one_ single form.
(_c_) This, then, is the fundamental reason which prevents Spirit itself, on the finite planes of determinate existence, and under the restricting conditions of its externality and necessity, from rediscovering the immediate vision and enjoyment of its freedom. It is consequently driven by its absence to seek that vision in a higher sphere. That sphere is art, and its realization is the Ideal.
We have thus seen that it is the defects of immediate reality which drive us forward inevitably to the idea of the beauty of art. We are further under an obligation to prove that its fundamental object[270] is to manifest here on this very plane of rational reality and in its freedom the envisagement of life, and, most important of all, the life of Spirit. Here, then, we have at last the external revealed to us in a form adequate to the notion. Here, for the first time, truth is lifted up from its environment of temporal conditions, from its running to and fro among the whirl of finite particularity, and attains repose; nay, more than this, discovers an external form, from which the hunger of Nature and the prose of life no longer stare at us. Here at last we have a form worthy of substantial truth, which is wholly self-contained and self-dependent, determining with freedom its own content, and not driven from such self-assertion by the weight of that of others.
[Footnote 201: _Als Beseelung sich kund gäbe._ The reference is to the second class which follows rather than truly animates life. The sun is such an animating principle. How far modern physics with its investigations of the laws of motion that obtain among the chemical atoms of any specific form of matter and its denial of all dead matter would have modified Hegel's view is an interesting question.]
[Footnote 202: _Wir wollen betrachten._ Hegel seems to be conscious himself that there is something fanciful in this interpretation of the significance of what is simply an arbitrary, if systematic, arrangement of bodies according to natural laws.]
think what Hegel means here is that every body as a vehicle of light reflects the mode in which the identity of the notion as system in the different parts asserts itself.]
[Footnote 204: In other words what should be phasal elements (_Momente_) of a whole integrated within that unity remain independent units. They are not Momente in the full sense.]
[Footnote 205: _Als bloss real unterschiedener._ The meaning is that the distinction is only in the totality, not as in the former case in a body which though part of a system, could be viewed as an independent body like the sun.]
[Footnote 206: _Gewöhnliches Bewustseyn_, _i.e._, the ordinary view of understanding (_Verstand_) and sense-perception.]
[Footnote 207: _Blosser Zusammenhang._ Fortuitous is rather too strong.
He means a bond of union cemented by one principle without which either side fails to possess its specific character, _e.g._, the human body apart from the human soul its animate individuality, ceases to be human.]
[Footnote 208: _Als Begriff seyende Begriff._ The reference I take to be to the logical or dialectical movement of the Idea.]
[Footnote 209: _Viele tausend empfindende_, or centres of feeling.]
[Footnote 210: _Die realen Unterschiede_, _i. e._, the distinctions of the body viewed as part of the physical process of Nature.]
[Footnote 211: _Zu ihrer subjektiven Einheit_, that is to say, their unity with the notion of Life as objectively realized in Nature, subjective only in the sense that it is ideal, not apprehended by sense-perception as such.]
[Footnote 212: _Nähere._ I think Hegel uses _nähe_ in the idiomatic sense in which he uses it in the phrase (p. 150) when he speaks of Nature as _das nächst Daseyn der Idee_, _i.e._, most elementary, more near to it when the notion first presses out of abstraction into totality.]
[Footnote 213: Lötze apparently disputes this distinction, but it appears to me very clear.]
[Footnote 214: _Seyn._ The logical terms are here employed in their technical Hegelian sense. _Seyn_ is "being" as part of a process, it is rather a tendency to become than a particular or determinate being (_daseyn._)] [Footnote 215: _Das Negiren_, the negation of them as entirely independent structures.]
[Footnote 216: _Des Idealisirens_, _e.g._, the principle of ideality which is in one aspect of it negation.]
[Footnote 217: _Affirmatives Fürsichseyn_, _e.g._, the explicit ideal totality of Life apart from the process.]
[Footnote 219: _Das Innere_, otherwise called subjective (see note above) and meaning what is not externally visible as _materia_, though it may be visible indirectly as explained further on.]
[Footnote 220: The rather difficult German here is: _Da nun aber in der Objektivität der Begriff als Begriff die sich auf sich beziehende in ihrer Realität für sich seyende Subjektivität ist._ The comma after _Begriff_ is clearly a misprint.]
[Footnote 221: The words here are _das subjektive Fürsichseyn_, _i.e._, the self-conclusion of an explicit whole in virtue of a principle of ideal unity (_i.e._, life) asserted, throughout.]
[Footnote 222: _Ein Beharrendes_,> one that persists in an inert form.]
[Footnote 223: Hegel uses the word _scheinen_ both for the ideal manifestation of the Idea in the object and the appearance of material reality reduced by it to mere "show" (_herabgesetzt zum scheinen_), _i.e._, deprived of its independent reality. This introduces a slight confusion I have endeavoured to avoid by using different terms.]
[Footnote 224: _Unseres Verstandes._ We supply the notion of intelligent purpose.]
[Footnote 225: That is, the assumed subordination of all organs to one definite end.]
[Footnote 226: _Sichbewegens._ The emphasis is of course on the self.
But even then the statement is rather an excess. For it seems difficult to attribute all the beauty visible in the spontaneous movements of so many living creatures, notably that of birds, to their purely formal character. At least there is something given by such motion analogous to the impression we receive from music and the dance; they are _gesetzmässig_ in short.]
[Footnote 227: _Zufällig_--capricious as opposed to a uniform principle. There is, however, one apparent bond of external similarity, between the majority of such members, namely, their covering of skin; this not merely relates the cheek to the neck, for example, but to some extent destroys the distinction.]
[Footnote 228: Physical parts, that is to say.]
[Footnote 229: That is to say, it is based on a purely limited experience which does not necessarily concern the true nature of the objects perceived.]
[Footnote 230: _Stangen._ The word may express the branches on which the flowers are carried or the stamens they carry at their apex.]
[Footnote 231: _Geistreich_, "intelligent," _i.e._, an ingenious way of regarding such facts.]
[Footnote 233: The use of the word _Sinn_ to which Hegel here alludes is not quite identical with our word _Sense._ In the English use of the term there is more stress on the _materia_ presented to sense-perception and perhaps less reference to intellect when the word is employed in such an expression as "That man has sense." However, Milton has "What surmounts the reach of human sense," and no doubt both are employed very similarly in many writers.]
[Footnote 234: _Bleibt bei der Ahnung._] [Footnote 235: _Naiver Weise_, a common epithet of Hegel to denote freedom from all philosophical prepossessions, a frank and simple attitude of reception.]
[Footnote 236: _Betrachtung_ appears to imply in its contrast with _Anschauung_ the presence of that intuitive sense or imaginative co-ordination above discussed.]
[Footnote 238: This account of the criterium to be adopted in determining beauty in the animal creation is open to some criticism.
Mobility is no doubt one element of beauty, but it is only one.
Professor Bosanquet points out in his criticism of the passage ("Hist, of Aesthetik," p. 338) that it amounts to the assertion that ugliness is purely relative. The defect is not only due, it seems to me, to Hegel's insufficient regard for Nature as a modern painter would so regard it, but it may be traced also to his manifest preference for motion in all the manifestations of Nature.]
[Footnote 239: _Schnabelthier_, otherwise called the _duck-billed platyptis_, a mammal found in Australia, much the size of an otter, with the horny beak of a duck and paws formed for swimming.]
[Footnote 240: _Getrübt_, we have the word _trüben_ above, translated there "troubled," life merely seen through the thick veil of instinctive sense.]
[Footnote 241: That is, the unity manifested is as abstract from all concrete totality as the form itself.]
[Footnote 242: This shows clearly that symmetry is only in an analogous way applicable to musical tones.]
[Footnote 243: In other words, uniformity is outside the purely qualitative relation, whereas symmetry is not so.]
[Footnote 244: _Beseelte Lebendigkeit_, lit., the insouled life-principle.]
[Footnote 245: Lit., "Is continually thrust out into the external." Its activity as life is directed outward.]
[Footnote 246: _Was schon im Sichverzehren begriffen ist._ I think the distinction implied is that in smell we are in actual contact with a part of the object. The same thing would, however, be true of sight according to former theory exploded by Newton's hypothesis.]
[Footnote 247: _Gesetzmässigkeit._ I cannot think of an English word that quite reproduces it. I am not sure that either conformity to rule or law singly quite expresses it. It implies both.]
[Footnote 248: As in uniformity.]
[Footnote 249: As in symmetry.]
[Footnote 250: That is to say, apart from symbolical meaning, it possesses no hidden law to be discovered in the relation of part to part.]
[Footnote 251: The words are _die grosse und kleine Axe von wesentlichem Unterschiede._ These refer primarily, it appears, to the axes of an ellipse, but the expression may possibly include the axes of a parabola parallel to the sides of a cone. However I admit frankly I find the words _von wesentlichem Unterschiede_ difficult to interpret closely.]
[Footnote 252: In the text _grossen_, obviously a misprint.]
[Footnote 253: The incorrectness of this statement according to more recent analysis does not, of course, affect the argument.]
[Footnote 254: _Nicht einseitig._ I think the meaning here is that colour is not an abstract idea for independent qualities, but is the generic notion of a really existing totality.]
[Footnote 255: _Alles melodische_, primarily, organic, of course.]
[Footnote 256: Namely, that of abstract unity.]
[Footnote 257: Hegel expresses this rather differently by saying that they tend to pass over into pink (_röthliche_) or orange (_gelbliche_) and green. I have put the same statement rather more directly.]
[Footnote 258: I think this is the meaning of the words _aber nur äusserlich, d.h._, _nicht beschmützt._ Violet, however, is now regarded as a cardinal colour. It may also be doubted whether the difficulty of harmonizing pure colour is as Hegel states it.]
[Footnote 259: This of course is a very questionable position from the point of view of aesthetic taste no less than the conformity of our sight to natural objects. The obvious retort is, it all depends what the nature of the green is. Why is there such a preponderance of green in Nature as we find it?]
[Footnote 260: That is to say, under the Platonic view of universal.]
[Footnote 261: So I have interpreted the words, _Die Subjectivität nun aber liegt in der Negativen Einheit als Ideellsetzen der Unterschiede und ihres realen Bestehens._] [Footnote 262: _Das Insichseyn_, _i.e._, the incipient singularity of a feeling subject.]
[Footnote 263: I have translated the words _bleibt nur die innre Macht_ "merely a _reflex_ of the inherent energy," etc. I do not pretend thereby to clear up all the difficulties of this paragraph. I would rather remind the general reader that in this entire discussion of the principle of individuality and its modes of real existence we are face to face with one the fundamental difficulties of the Hegelian philosophy, the passage of the Idea to Nature. Readers who wish to see difficulties more fully developed on this aspect of Hegel's thought should read Professor Seth's interesting and on the whole moderately worded criticism contained in his little book "Hegelianism and Personality" (Blackwood and Sons; see particularly Lecture IV, Thought and Reality).]
[Footnote 266: I think the expression _das Ganze der Sache_ means this rather than the entire "organic whole of living reality."]
[Footnote 267: It is well for the general reader to remember that we have here no full account of what constitutes the _content_ of a free will. The emphasis throughout is on human activity as exercised in a world conditioned in its external aspect by necessary laws of Nature.]
[Footnote 268: The reference here must I think he mainly, perhaps wholly, to the distorted face of the criminal, outcast, or insane classes. But it is just possible that a certain type of aggressive genius may also be denoted.]
[Footnote 269: The totality of the notion.]
[Footnote 270: _Beruf_, _i.e._, that which it professes to do.]
CHAPTER III THE BEAUTY OF ART, OR THE IDEAL In our consideration of the beauty of art we will confine our attention to three fundamental points of view: _First_, the Ideal in its essential import.
_Secondly_, the determination of the Ideal in a particular work of art.
_Thirdly_, the creative subjectivity of the artist.
A. THE IDEAL SIMPLY, OR AS SUCH 1. The most general conclusion which may be gathered from the examination we have already made in a merely formal way of the Ideal of art may be thus summarized. Truth, in its unravelment as external reality, is only fully in possession of a true and determinate existence, however much it may combine and retain in embracing unity a manifold content, in so far as every portion of the content thus unfolded permits this unity, which may be called either the animating soul or the unified totality, freely to appear. To take the human form once more under review as the most direct illustration of this, we have already remarked that it is a totality of organic members each of which is penetrated by the notion, differentiated thus in every particular organ by some particular mode of activity and the specific motion congenial to it. If we ask ourselves now in which particular organ the soul appears as such in its entirety we shall at once point to the eye.
For in the eye the soul concentrates itself; it not merely uses the eye as its instrument, but is itself therein manifest. We have, however, already stated, when referring to the external covering of the human body, that in contrast with the bodies of animals, the heart of life pulses through and throughout it. And in much the same sense it can be asserted of art that it has to convert every point of the external appearance into the direct testimony of the human eye, which is the source of soul-life, and reveals Spirit. Take the famous adjuration of Plato to the stars in the lines: When thou gazest forth at the stars, my star, Would that I were the heavens and thence on thee Could gaze forth out of a thousand eyes.
Conversely we may exclaim that art gives to her forms the dilation of a thousand-eyed Argus, through which the inward life of Spirit at every point breaks into view. And not merely is it the bodily form, the expression of countenance, the attitude and demeanour which thus avails; the same appearance is everywhere visible in actions and events, speech and voice-modulation, in short, under every condition of life through which it passes, and under which it is possible for soul to make itself recognized in its freedom and ideal infinity.
(_a_) And, in close connection with this inquiry into the interpenetration through all parts of the animating soul, we may justly ask ourselves, what precisely we understand under this conception of a soul which is throughout visible: or to restrict attention to definite limits we may inquire what are the specific characteristics of the soul whereof art reveals to us the truest manifestation. For in ordinary parlance one refers to the animating principle[271] peculiar to metals, stones, wild animals, to say nothing of that belonging to every kind of human character and its expressions. To natural objects, however, such as stones and plants, the expression "soul" in the complete acceptation of the term above mentioned is not strictly applicable. Such soul as purely natural objects possess is entirely finite, transitory, and rather a specific nature than a soul. The determinate individuality of such existences is consequently completely exposed in their finite existence; and, inasmuch as all that is present there is a positive limit of restriction, such appearance as there may be of a further claim to independence and freedom is only an appearance; ideal characteristics which may indeed be imported into them from without by means of art, but are not in the nature of the objects by themselves. In the same way the soul of sense-feeling, through which Nature manifests first the Life-principle only betrays a subjective individuality, which still remains shut within itself, unable to assert its reality in the further sense of a return upon itself in a consciousness which shall attach to it the form of infinity. Its content is, therefore, of a restricted nature, and its manifestation in part the unrest, power of motion, sexual impulse, anxiety or fear of the dependent life; and, in part, it is the mere expression of an _inwardness_ capable of overcoming its finitude. The animating life of Spirit (mind) brings us first into contact with the free infinity capable within its own external and determinate existence of remaining constant to the inner principle of unity, and, in the act of expression, still reflected back upon its ideal substance. To Spirit consequently is it alone permitted to impress the hall-mark of its infinity and free self-recurrence on its external expression, even though by such expression it enters the realm of narrow boundaries.
At the same time we may observe that Spirit, too, is only free and infinite in so far as it truly apprehends its universality, and deliberately posits for itself and accepts those ends which are adequate to its own notion. Consequently, in so far as it fails to grasp its own freedom it can only exist in a restricted content, a character that is stunted, a temperament at once crippled and superficial. In combination with nullity of this kind the manifestation of Spirit must perforce remain wholly formal. We shall only find here the abstract crust of self-conscious Spirit, whereof the content contradicts the infinity of its freedom. Only by virtue of a genuine and essentially substantive content through which the restricted and mutable particularity derives its essential self-subsistency--so that definite structure and intrinsic worth, determined limit and substantial content, are realized in one totality--is such existence thereby able, through the very mode of expression which confines it, to proclaim itself also in its universal substance of self-contained soul-life. It is, in short, the province of art to comprehend and enunciate determinate and rational existence in its _truth_, that is to say, in the form adequate to its substance, the truly explicit content.
And, consequently, the truth of art cannot consist in a mere conformity such as that to which we restrict the so-called imitation of Nature; external form must express harmoniously an internal content which is in itself harmonious throughout, and consequently can express itself as such.
(_b_) Art then, by comparing what is otherwise stained and rent