In all these three stages of honour, love, and fidelity, we shall find the soil on which the self-subsistency of personality, the soul, is supported, an independence which, however, constantly unfolds in a wider and more affluent content, remaining in the same self-reconciled.
Here stretches before us in romantic art the fairest strip of country which we can find anywhere outside the enclosure of religion in its strict sense, Its objects are concerned with that which is simply human, a relation with which we can at least from one aspect of it, namely, that of personal freedom, absolutely sympathize, and we do not find here, as we do now and again in the religious field, both a material and modes of representation which clash with our modern notions. But at the same time we must add that our present subject matter may very frequently be brought into direct relation to religion so that religious interests are interwoven with those of the world of chivalry; as, for example, was the case in the adventures of the knights of the round table in their quest of the Holy Grail. In this interfusion we find not only much that is mystical and fantastical, but also much that is allegorical added to the poetry of chivalry. And conversely this secular sphere of the interests of love, honour, and fidelity may also be totally unconnected with the deepening of their content with religious aims and opinions, and only bring to view the earliest movement of soul-life in the secular aspect of its spiritual intensity. That which, however, drops away from the present levels is the repletion of this inner life with the concrete content of human conditions, characters, passions, and realized existence generally. In contrast to this variety the essentially infinite soul still remains abstract and formal, and has therefore in front of it the task, to accept as part of its own this further material with what it held before, and to exhibit the same in the forms congenial to artistic composition.
[Footnote 241: He has not in this exclusive sense of religiosity identified himself with the spirit of the Christian community. _Der Anderen_ refers to _Gemeinschaft._ Such appears to me the sense.]
[Footnote 242: _Zur Wirklichkeit entfaltetes Leben._] [Footnote 243: Put more simply we may say in popular terminology that it is filled up or amplified by virtue of the sense of individual personality. This Hegel himself further elucidates below. Falstaff undoubtedly possessed a strong personality, but in his famous soliloquy on honour he deliberately emptied himself of any sense of it by refusing to view himself under the self-relation, that is self-respect.]
[Footnote 244: I fail to appreciate this distinction, except in a very qualified form. Even in the Middle Ages when the feudal relation was in full force, the relation between the master and the servant was surely one of the institutions of the State, though no doubt the rights of the dependent were not always very readily enforced. Even in the case of slavery in the Southern States of America the relation between master and slave carried with it quite definite ethical obligations--there was in general at least quite a distinct social if not actually political status.]
[Footnote 245: I suppose Hegel means by _ein Punkt_ a centre or point of life. The expression is rather unusual.]
[Footnote 246: _Absoluten Geltung_, that is its absolute validity in its ideal character.]
[Footnote 247: The punctuation in text is defective.]
[Footnote 248: So runs the text. It comes from such a writer with a shock. Why such qualities should vanish (_schwinden_) in the presence of unhappiness it is not easy to see. It would rather appear that such was the condition to evoke them. What is meant is, I suppose, that the failure of _reciprocity_, especially in the love of women, often brings complete collapse. We may illustrate it in several of Meredith's novels such as "Diana" and "Sandra Belloni."]
[Footnote 249: The two sides would appear to be the secularity of the social organism and "free" love.]
[Footnote 250: This I think is the meaning. Until the full notion of liberty is apprehended the divisions of class will have the appearance of natural necessity.]
[Footnote 251: Schiller's drama of that name.]
[Footnote 252: _Die an und für sich seyende Allgemeinheit._ The universal notion as explicitly made actual in life.]
[Footnote 253: _Ein in sich konkretes Individuum._ The whole of this analysis appears to me a rather abstract and professorial consideration of romantic attachment, separating love from its reality of association and relation in actual life. In so far as it is true it is purely abstract truth, and must be regarded as such. In actual life it is no more true that even in the average case misfortune blights the blossom than it is true that the love of the individual concentrates itself solely on the mere attachment between two persons. It is bound up with the idea of family and continuation of the race, and so indirectly with the State.]
[Footnote 254: As sister of her violated brother Polyneices.]
[Footnote 255: Act I, sc. 4.]
CHAPTER III THE FORMAL SELF-SUBSISTENCY OF INDIVIDUAL PARTICULARITIES If we take a glance back on the territory we have passed through, we see in the first instance that the object of our investigation was the life of the soul[256] in its most absolute capacity, in other words, consciousness in its mediation with God, the universal process of the self-reconciling spirit. The abstraction of this point of view consisted in this that the soul by an effort of abnegation withdrew itself from all that was secular, purely natural and human--even when the same had ethical features, and for this reason possessed a claim upon us--into its own distinctive domain in order to satisfy its yearning for the pure heaven of spirit. _Secondly_, we found ourselves able, it is true, to bring into view the human consciousness without this factor of abstract negation which was included in that mediation, in other words, positively in its independence and as related to others[257], but the content of this secular infinitude as such was none the less only the personal self-subsistency of honour, the intensiveness[258] of love and the vassalage of fidelity, a content which, no doubt, may appear before us in many relations, in a many-folded variety and many gradations of feeling and passion, subject to the most extensive changes of external condition, yet for all that only propounds just this personal independence and inwardness within such examples. The _third_ aspect, then, which we have now left us to examine is the mode and manner in which that further material of human existence, both on the side of its inward and its external life, that is to say, Nature and its apprehension and significance for soul-life, is able to enter into the romantic type of art. We have here to deal with the world of particular objects, determinate existence generally, regarded in its unfettered independence, and which, in so far as it does not appear transparent to religion and spiritual synthesis, bringing it into unity with the Absolute, asserts itself on its own foothold and declares its self-subsistence in its own kingdom.
In this third province of the romantic type of art consequently the purely religious material and chivalry with those lofty views and aims that we found it brings to birth from its spiritual womb[259], but which were not directly concordant with anything visible in the reality of the existing world, have vanished. The new object of satisfaction is a thirst for this actual presence itself, a delight in the facts of existence, a contentment of the soul with the dwelling that confronts it, with the finitude of our humanity, and what is finite, particular, and the true counterfeit of such generally. Man is intent to recreate for his own world the world as he actually finds it, although such may imply a sacrifice of the Beauty and ideality of the content and manifestation will reflect it as it stands before him endowed with life in his art, will have that present life before his eyes as the work of his own mind. The religion of Christianity as we have already seen has not sprung up from the soil of the imagination as was the case with the divinities of the East and Greece, whether we consider them relatively to form or content. It is the imagination which fashions the vital significance out of its own resources in order to promote the unity between the reality of soul life with the perfected embodiment of the same. In classical art this complete coalescence is actually attained. In the Christian religion, on the other hand, the secular aspect in its exclusive character is from the first accepted for just that which it really is as an essential factor of the Ideal; and the soul of man finds satisfaction in the ordinary and contingent presence of the external world without the necessary interposition of beauty. But man is nevertheless in the first instance reconciled to God only by implication, and as a possible result. All men are called to the blessed condition, but few are chosen; and the soul for which both the kingdom of heaven and that of this world still remain as a "beyond" is constrained to renounce both that which is spiritual in the external world and its own presence therein. The point of departure is from a distance infinitely remote from that world; and to make this reality, which in the first instance is simply surrendered, a positive constituent of that which is man's own, in other words to bring about this rediscovery of himself and his volition in his own present life, from which all takes its rise, this it is which supplies us first with a terminating point in the elaboration of romantic art, and is the final outlook to which the spiritual penetration of man is carried and on which it is concentrated.
In so far as the form of this new content is concerned we have already observed that romantic art from its first initiation was infected with the contradiction that the essentially infinite mode of the self-conscious life is, in its independence, incapable of being united with the external material, and is bound to remain in such separation.
This independent opposition of both aspects and the withdrawal of the inwardness of spirit into its own domain is that which constitutes the content of romance. These two aspects are continually separated anew by self-rehabilitation[260], until at length they fall entirely apart, and thereby demonstrate that we must search for some _other field_ than _Art_ to secure their absolute union. And by this falling apart we find that these aspects in their relation to art are _formal_; in other words they fail to appear as a totality in that complete type of unity which was secured to them by the Classic Ideal. Classical art is placed in a region of stable figures, that is in the midst of a mythology and its irresoluble types perfected by art. The resolution of the classical form is consequently brought about--as we found in discussing its transition to the romantic form--leaving out of our present consideration the generally more restricted territory of the comic and satyric modes--by an over-elaboration in the direction of all that pleases the senses or an imitation which loses itself in the deadly frost of a pedantic learning, till it at length entirely degenerates into a negligent and inferior technique. The objects of art remain, however, the same throughout the process, and merely play truant to the earlier intelligent mode of production with a presentation that is increasingly more spiritless and a purely traditional and mechanical technique. The progress and conclusion of romantic art on the contrary is the resolution of the material of art within its own boundaries[261] altogether, a material which falls apart into its elements, an increase of freedom in the several parts, along with which process and in contrast to the previous case, the individual craftsmanship and artistic mode of presentment is enhanced; and in proportion as the substantive content tends to break up to that extent attains a fuller perfection.
We may now attempt a more specific subdivision of this the final chapter of this part of our subject in the following terms.
In the first place we have before us _the self-subsistency of character_, which is, however, a particular one, that is, a definite individual self-absorbed in its world, its specific qualities and aims.
In opposition to this formal particularity of character we have the external conformation of situations, events, and actions. For the reason, moreover, that the inward spirituality of romance stands generally in an indifferent relation to that which is external the actual phenomenon[262] appears in the present case independently free, that is as neither permeated by the spiritual content of human aims and actions nor clothed in modes adequate to retain them. By reason of its unrelated and loose mode of manifestation it therefore enforces the contingency of natural processes[263], circumstances, the sequence of events, and manner of its realization as _the unexpected._[264] In the _third_ place, and finally, the severation of the two factors asserts itself, the complete identity of which supplies us with the real notion of art. This is consequently the dismemberment and dissolution of art itself. On the one hand we find that art passes to a representation of wholly commonplace reality, to the reflection of objects precisely as they appear in their contingent isolation and its equally singular characteristics. Its interest is now wholly absorbed in reproducing this objective existence by means of the technical ability of the artist. On the other hand we have, in what is a mode of conception and representation entirely dependent on the accidental idiosyncracy of the artist himself, that is in humour, a complete reversal of the pictorial style above mentioned. For in _humour_ we meet with the perversion and overthrow of all that is objectively solid in reality; it works through the wit and play of wholly personal points of view, and if carried to an extreme amounts to the triumph of the creative power of the artist's soul over every content and every form.
1. THE SELF-SUBSISTENCY OR INDEPENDENCE OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER The fundamental determinant of our present subject-matter is once again that infinitude implied in the very nature of the human consciousness which was our point of departure in the romantic type of art. The new accretions we have now, however, to add to our conception of this mode of self-subsistent infinity consist partly in the _particularity_ of content, which constitutes the world of the individual mind, as to a further aspect of it in the immediate coalescence of the ego with this its particularity, its wishes and objects, and thirdly, in the living individuality, in which the substantive character is self-determined. We are not, therefore, entitled to understand under the expression "character" as now employed that which the Italians represented in their masks. The Italian masks are also no doubt definite characters, but this definition is only presented by them in its abstraction and generality, without a personal individuality.
The characters, on the other hand, of the type under discussion are each of them a character unique in itself, an independent whole, an individual person[265]. If we have, therefore, occasion here to refer to the formalism and abstraction of character, such an expression is entirely relative to the fact that the fundamental content, the world of such a character appears, on the one hand, as restricted and to that extent abstract, and, on the other, as qualified by accidental causes.
What the individual is is not carried or sustained by virtue of what is substantive or essentially self-accredited[266] in its content, but through the naked personality asserted by the character, which consequently reposes formally on its own individual self-subsistency rather than on its content and its independently secured pathos.
Within the limits of this formalism we may now observe _two_ main lines of distinction.
On the one hand we have the stability of character in the energy of its _executive_ power, which restricts its line of action to specific aims, and entrusts the concentrated force of individuality thus restricted to the realization of such objects. On the other hand we have character under the aspect of a totality that is _personal_, which, however, persists not wholly articulated throughout the content of that inward life and in the unsounded[267] depths of the soul, and is unable to unravel itself wholly, or express itself with absolute clarity.
(_a_) What we have therefore before us, in the first instance, is the particular character which wills to be that its immediate presence proposes, Just as animals differ from each other and discover themselves as independent creatures in this difference, so, too, here we have different characters whose range and idiosyncracy remains subject to the element of contingency[268], and is not to be accurately determined by the mere notion.
(_α_) An individuality of this kind built up entirely on itself consequently has no ready thought-out opinions and objects, which it has associated with any universal principle of pathos: all that it-possesses, does, and accomplishes it creates right away with no further reflection out of its own specific nature; which is just what it happens to be, and has no wish to be rooted in anything more exalted, to be resolved in that and to find its justification in something substantive. Rather it reposes unyielding and unmalleable on itself, and in this stability either goes on its way or goes to ground. A self-subsistency of character of this kind is only able to appear, where the secular or natural man[269], in other words, humanity in its particularity has secured its fullest claim. Pre-eminently the characters of Shakespeare are of this type. It is just this iron[270] steadfastness and exclusiveness which constitutes the aspect of them which most excites our wonder. We have no word here of religion for religion's sake, or action as the embodiment of human reconciliation, in the unqualified religious sense, or of morality pure and simple.
On the contrary we are presented with individuals, conceived as dependent solely on themselves, possessed with aims that are their own exclusively, exclusively deducible from their individuality, and which they carry through as best satisfies them with the unmitigated consequences of passion, and with no incidental reflection on the principles involved. In particular the tragedies, such as "Macbeth," "Othello," "Richard III" and others contain one character of this type for their main interest surrounded by others less pre-eminent for such elemental energy. Macbeth is forced by his character, for example, into the fetters of his ambitious passion. At first he hesitates, then he stretches his hand to seize the crown; he commits a murder in order to secure it, and in order to maintain it storms on through the tale of horror. This regardless tenacity, this identity of the man with himself, and the object which his own personality brings to birth is the source to him of an abiding interest. Nothing makes him budge, neither the respect for the sacredness of kingship, nor the madness of his wife, nor the rout of his vassals, nor destruction as it rushes upon him, neither divine nor human claims--he withdraws from them all into himself and persists. Lady Macbeth is a character of the same mould, and it is merely the chatter of our latter-day tasteless criticism which can find in her the least flavour of affection. At her very first entrance, on reading Macbeth's letter reporting his meeting with the witches and their prophecy in the words[271]: "Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor! Hail to thee king that shall be!" she exclaims, "Glamis thou art and Cawdor; and shall be what thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full o' the milk of human kindness, to catch the nearest way." She shows no affectionate trait, no joy over the happiness of her husband, no moral emotion, no sympathy, no pity of a noble soul; she simply fears lest the character of her husband will stand in the path of his ambition. She regards him simply as a means. With her there is no recoil, no uncertainty, no consideration, no retreating, as we find is at first the case with Macbeth, no repentance, but the pure abstraction and rigour of character, which perpetrates that which falls in with it, until it finally breaks.
This collapse which comes in a tempest on Macbeth from the outside as he executes his object, becomes madness of the mind in Lady Macbeth.
Of the same type is Richard III, Othello, the old Margaret and many another also. We have its opposite in the wretched coherence[272] of modern characters, such as those of Kotzebue, which are outwardly noble in the highest degree, great and excellent, yet in their soul-force are all rags and tatters. Later writers have done no better in other relations, despite their supreme contempt for Kotzebue. Heinrich von Kleish is an example with his Kätchen and Prince von Homburg[273], characters in which, in contrast to the alert condition of real causal effect, magnetism, somnambulism, and sleep-walking are depicted as that which is of highest and most effective moment. This Prince von Homburg is a most pitiable exhibition of a general; he is distracted when he makes his military dispositions, writes out his orders in a way none can decipher them, is engaged in the night previous to the battle with morbid forebodings, and acts on the day of battle like a fool. And despite such duality, raggedness, and lack of harmony in their characters these writers imagine that they tread in the footsteps of Shakespeare. Wide indeed is the distance which separates them, for the characters of Shakespeare are essentially consequent in what they do; they remain staunch to their master passion; in what they are and in what confronts them, nothing makes them veer round but what is in strict accord with their rigidly determinate character.
(_β_) The more particular, then, the character is, which relies purely on itself, and consequently readily approaches evil, to that extent it is forced in the concrete world of reality to maintain itself, not merely against the obstacles which lie in its path and prevent the realization of life's aims, but so much more by this very realization such is driven headlong to its downfall. In other words, on account of the fact that it achieves its object, the fate that has its origin in the specific nature of its character itself, deals it a blow in a mode of destruction it has itself prepared. The development of this fatality is, however, not merely a development from the _action_ of the particular personality, but quite as much a growth of the soul[274], a development of the _character_ itself in its headlong movement, its running wild, its shattering in pieces or exhaustion. Among the Greeks, for whom pathos, the substantive content of action, rather than the personal character, is the important feature, a destiny affects the character that is thus sharply defined to a less degree for this reason, that it is not further evolved within the sphere of its activities, but remains at their conclusion what it was at the start.
In the compass of our present subject-matter, however, by the carrying through of the action itself, the inner life of the personality is evolved quite as much as the progress of the action; the advance is not simply on the outside. The action of Macbeth appears at the same time a descent of the soul into savagery, accompanied by a result which, when all irresolution is thrown to the winds, and the dice is cast, leaves nothing further able to restrain it. His wife is from the very first decided: development is shown here merely as the anxiety of the soul, which is carried to the point of physical and spiritual ruin, the madness, in short, which strikes her down. And this is the kind of process which we can follow in the majority of Shakespeare's characters, whether important or unimportant. The characters of ancient drama assert themselves, no doubt, also on fixed lines, and we find them even face to face with opposed forces, relief from which is no longer possible except through the advent of a _deus ex machina._ Yet this stability, as in the case of Philoctetes, is united to a content, and, on the whole, penetrated with a pathos which may be vindicated on ethical grounds.
(_γ_) In the sphere of presentation we are now considering, owing to the contingent nature of all that the characters which belong to it seize upon as their aim and the independence of their individuality, no _objective reconciliation_ is possible. The environment of all that they are, and what opposes their progress, is in part without defined lines, but also in part we see that there is neither a "Whence" nor a "Whither" unriddled for themselves. Here we have once more presented to us that Fate which is the most abstract form of Necessity. The only reconciliation of the individual issues from the infinite mode of his soul-life, his own steadfastness, in which he stands supreme over his passion and his destiny. "Thus it came to pass,"[275] whatever falls in his way, whether it be due to a controlling destiny, necessity or accident, there is his "Wherefore"; he accepts it at once without further reflection. It is fact, and man adjusts himself thereto, and tries to make himself as stone toward its authority.
(_b_) In absolute contrast to the above, however, there is a further or _second_ mode in which the formal aspect of character may find its seat within the _innermost_ of soul-life, and in which the individual may remain fixed without being able to extend its range or execute its effects.
(_α_) Such are those spiritual natures of intrinsic substance, who, while self-absorbed in a complex whole, are only able in the simplicity of their compactness[276] to perfect that profound activity within the shrine of the soul without further development or explication in the world around them. The formalism which we have hitherto been examining was relative to the defined character of the content, the entire self-concentration[277] of the individual upon one object, which it makes to appear in all its unrelieved severity, a concentration which expressed itself, was carried out, and in which, just as circumstances fell out, either collapsed or held on to the end. This further mode of formalism is emphasized in a converse way by its undisclosed and formless character, and by its defect of expression and expository power. A soul of this type is like some precious jewel, which is only visible at certain points, a manifestation which is that of a lightning flash.
(_β_) And the reason that such state of self-seclusion should still be of worth and interest to us is due to the fact that it presupposes a secret wealth of the soul, which, however, only permits its infinite depth and fulness, and precisely, by means of this silence, to show itself in a few and so to speak half-muted ways of expression. Such simple natures, unconscious of what they possess, and without speech, may exercise an extraordinary fascination. But that this may be so their silence must be like the unruffled stillness of the sea upon its surface, over its unsounded depths, not the silence of all that is shallow, hollow, and stupid. It is quite possible sometimes for the dullest fellow to succeed by means of an external demeanour that manages very little to expose itself, and merely presents now and again something that is but half intelligible, to awake in others the opinion that it is the veil of a profound wisdom and spiritual depth, so that people wonder what in the world lies hidden in such a heart and soul, where we find in the end there is just nothing. The infinite content and profundity of _silent_ souls of the genuine type is made clear to us--and to declare it makes the greatest demand on the intuitive powers and executive ability of the artist--by means of isolated, unrelated, naïve, and involuntary expressions of soul-life, which quite unintentionally make it plain to all who can grasp their significance that such a soul has seized upon the substantial import of all that confronts it with the richest quality of spiritual insight, that its reflective capacity, however, is not carried further by positive expansion into the general environment of particular interests, motives, and finite aims, but rather preserves its original purity that the fact it refuses to have its powers dissipated by the commonplace excitements of the heart and the serious quests and modes of sympathy which are thus inevitable, may remain unknown to the world.
(_γ_) A time must, however, arrive for a soul of this type in which it becomes uniquely affected at one definite point of attachment in that inward worlds it concentrates the whole of its undivided powers in one supreme form of emotion that dominates its life-current; it adheres to this with a force that refuses to be diverted, and secures happiness therein, or goes to ground from lack of support. To retain a hold on life a man requires a constantly expanding breadth of ethical sustenance, which alone supplies an objective stability. To this type of character belong some of the most fascinating figures in romantic art, whose full perfection of beauty we shall find among the creations of Shakespeare. As an illustration we may take the Juliet in his "Romeo and Juliet." It is possible at this moment to see a reproduction of this play in this city[278]. It is well worth going to. The picture we have given us there of this character is a moving, lifelike, passionate, talented, highly finished and noble one. But for all that it is possible to entertain a somewhat different conception of the part. In other words, we may figure for ourselves a maiden in the first instance simple as a child, of only fourteen or fifteen years of age, who, it is quite clear, has as yet no self-knowledge or world wisdom, no emotional activity, no strong inclination or wishes of the heart, but has rather glanced into the motley show of the world as into some _laterna magica_ without learning anything from it, or reflecting upon what is seen there. All in a twinkling we behold the development of the entire strength of this soul, of its artfulness[279], its circumspection, its force; it is prepared to sacrifice everything and to submit itself to the severest ordeals, so that in its entirety it now suddenly appears to be the first breaking forth of the full rose in all its petals and folds, an infinite outburst of the innermost purity which gushes from the spring source of the soul, in which it had held itself back previously as yet undiscerned, unmoulded and undeveloped; which moreover, as the now existing creation of _one_ awakened interest, betrays itself unpremeditated in the fulness and strength of its beauty from the previous seclusion of spirit. It is a brand which one spark has kindled, a bud which at the first bare touch of love breaks unawares before us in full bloom. And yet the faster it unfolds the more rapidly it also sinks, and its petals fall from it. An impetuous progress is still more conspicuous in the case of Miranda. Brought up in seclusion we have her portrayed for us by Shakespeare at the critical moment when she first makes the acquaintance of manhood[280]. He depicts her in a few scenes, but in those we get a picture that is complete and unforgettable. We may also include Schiller's Thecla under the same type, despite the fact that it is rather the creation of a reflective kind of poetry[281].
Though placed in the midst of a life of such amplitude and richness she remains unaffected by it; she remains within it without vanity, without reflection, purely absorbed by the one interest which alone dominates her soul. And as a general rule it is chiefly the beautiful and noble natures of women, in which the world and their own heart-life blossoms for the first time in love, so that it is as though their spiritual birth here takes its rise.
Under the same type of spiritual intensity, which is unable fully to unfold itself, we may for the most part classify those folksongs, more particularly our German ones, which, in the copious compactness of the soul-life therein reflected, and however much such is displayed to us as carried away by any one absorbing interest, are yet unable to express the same except in broken flashes, and thereby fully reveal just this very depth. It is a mode of artistic presentment, which in its reserve is apt to fall back on the effects of symbolism. What it offers us is not so much the open, transparent display of the entire inward life as it is purely a _sign_ and indication of that life.
But we do not get, however, from it a symbol, the significance of which, as was the case previously, remains a general abstraction, but an expression the inward content of which is nothing more nor less than this personal, living, and actual soul. In times like our own, dominated by a critical reflectiveness, which lies so far removed from a self-absorbed _naïveté_ of this kind, such presentations are of the greatest difficulty, and if successful, are a sure proof of an original creative genius. We have already seen that Goethe, more particularly in his lyrics, has shown himself a master in this respect, namely, that he can depict and unfold to us in a symbolical way, in other words with a few simple, apparently external and insignificant traits, the entire truth and infinite wealth of a soul. His poem, "The King of Thule," one of his most lovely bits of poetical work, is of this class. The king here makes us aware of his love by just one thing only, namely, the drinking cup which the old man preserved as a gift of his beloved. The old carouser stands up there on the point of death in his lofty palace hall; his knights, his kingdom, his possessions are around him; and he bequeaths them all to his heir, but the goblet he flings into the waves; no one shall have that.
/$ Er sah ihn stürzen, trinken, Und sinken tief in's Meer, Die Augen thäten ihm sinken, Trank nie ein Tropfen mehr[282].
$/ A soul, however profound and still of this kind, which retains its energy of spirit pent up like the spark in the flint, unopened to form, which does not elaborate its existence and reflection beyond its own boundaries, has also failed to free itself by such expansion. It remains exposed to the remorseless contradiction that, if the false note of unhappiness ring through its life, it possesses no remedial aptitude, no bridge as a way of passage between the heart and reality; it is equally unable to ward off external conditions from itself, and