as such a comparative medium is utilized for the purpose of artistic representation.
Halfway between that starting-point above described and this termination of the symbolic type we find the art of the _sublime._ In this the essential import, posited as the universality of Spirit in its absolute self-exclusion, disengages itself in the first place from concrete existence, permitting the same to appear as a mere negative, external and subservient factor beside it, which it is unable to leave, in order that it may express itself in it, standing in its native self-subsistency. Rather it finds it necessary to declare it as that which is essentially defective and self-dissolving, and this, moreover, although it has naught beside as means for its expression than just this to which it opposes itself as external and nugatory. The splendour of this import of the sublime may be accepted in the order of the notional process as previous to that of the mode of genuine comparison for this reason, that the concrete particularity of natural and any other phenomena must necessarily be treated in the first place negatively, merely appropriated, that is to say, as the adornment and embellishment of the unreachable might of Spirit's absolute significance, before that express severation and discriminating comparison of external shapes cognate with, and yet at the same time distinct from, the import, whose image they reproduce, can assert itself.
3. The three principal stages[28] above indicated break up naturally on closer inspection into the following subdivisions we now summarize in the chapters which include them.
FIRST CHAPTER A. The _first_ stage which presents itself in this portion of our subject-matter is as yet neither to be described strictly as symbolical, nor as belonging strictly to art; it rather clears the road to both. It is the sphere of the immediately cognized and substantive unity of the Absolute regarded as spiritual significance with its unsevered sensuous existence in a form presented by Nature.
B. In the _second_ stage we pass to the symbol in its real sense; the dissolution of the first unity above described here commences, and while, on the one hand, the significances assert themselves in their independent universality above the particular phenomena of Nature, on the other they are necessarily forced with a like insistency to present themselves to consciousness together with this preconceived universality in the concrete form of natural objects. In this primary and twofold struggle to spiritualize Nature, and to present that which is born of Spirit to sense, at this stage of the conflict between them, we meet with all the ferment and wild, tossed hither and thither medley, the entire fantastic and confused world that is to say of symbolic art, which half surmises, it is true, the incongruity of its manner of shaping, yet is unable to remedy the same save through the distortion of its figures, while straining after a purely quantitative sublimity that would fain devour all limits. In this phase consequently we find ourselves in a world steeped with poetic phantasies, incredibilities and miracle, yet fail to encounter one work of genuine beauty.
C. Owing to this strife between the spiritual significance and its sensuous presentation, we are conducted _thirdly_ to the stage we may describe as that of the true symbol, on which the symbolic _work of art_ for the first time appears in its complete character. The forms and shapes are here no longer those present to sense, which, as we saw on the first mentioned stage, were immediately coincident with the Absolute as their positive existence, without any further modification at the hands of art; neither, as in the second phase, are they intent on asserting their unreconciled material against the universality of the significance merely through extensions of the quantitative limits of Nature's objects, the ebullitions of a rioting fancy. Rather the symbolic form, which is here throughout apparent, is Art's own creation, a work not merely capable of expressing its own individuality, but from another point of view possessed with the power of presenting at the same time both the particular object that it is and the further universal significance with which it is associated, and which it thereby discloses to the mind, so that these very shapes stand before us as problems which we are imperatively called upon to unriddle and probe to the inward charge which they carry.
We may at once further venture the general remark with reference to these more clearly defined types of a symbolism still to be ranked as elementary that they spring from the religious attitude to existence of entire nations; for which reason it will form part of our plan to recall their position in history. Not that complete identification of specific types with a given period is wholly feasible. Rather it would be truer to say that particular modes of conception and presentation, when we refer them generally to some kind of artistic type, are mingled up together, so that we find the specific type, which we have reason to regard as the fundamental one in any particular nation's general view of existence, exemplified both in earlier and later peoples[29], though its repetition may only be discovered in subordinate and isolated cases. In general, however, we may say that we possess the more concrete manifestations and visible proofs of the first stage in the ancient _Persian_ religion of the second in the _Indian_, of the third in that of _Egypt_.
SECOND CHAPTER In the second chapter that significance, which has hitherto been more or less obscured by its particular sensuous form, has at last wrested its way to freedom, and its independent character is brought clearly to consciousness. With this victory the relation of real symbolism is dissolved; we have instead, through the way in which the absolute significance[30] is cognized as the universal _substance_ interpenetrating the entire extension of the visible world, the art of the absolute essence[31] in the form of a symbolism of the _sublime_; and this now takes the place of purely symbolical and fantastic suggestions, deformities, and riddles.
We have here mainly two points of view to distinguish which are based upon differences in the relation of the substantive essence, that is the Absolute and Divine, to the finitude of the apparent. Or rather we may say that this relation is capable of being twofold, both _positive_ and _negative,_ although in both forms, inasmuch as it is in either case universal substance, which has to appear, it is not the particular form and import of the objective facts, but their general principle of animation and their position relatively to this substance which is made visible to sense.
A. In the first phase or type this relation is so conceived, that substance, here the All and the One delivered from every form of particularity, is immanent in the determinate phenomena as the animating principle which brings them into being and is their life; and moreover, it is affirmatively and immediately present to the vision in this immanence, and is comprehended, and made the object of representation by the individual who surrenders himself to its presence through the adoring self-absorption in this indwelling essence of the entire world of contingent and material things. In this point of view we have the art of the Pantheism which possesses the Sublime as its inherent principle, an art such as we find it in its elementary stage in India, then elaborated in all its splendour in Mohammedanism and its artistic mysticism, and finally with still profounder significance reappearing in certain manifestations of Christian mysticism.
B. The _negative_ relation on the other hand of true Sublimity we must look for in _Hebraic_ poetry. In this poetry of the Glorious, which is only concerned to celebrate and exalt the unimaginable Lord of the heavens and the earth that it may employ His entire creation as the passing instrument of His Power, as the messengers of His Glory, as the delight and ornament of His Greatness, this service of His Creation, be it never so magnificent[32], is deliberately posited as negative, and this for the reason that it is unable to discover any adequate or positively sufficient expression for the Power and Dominion of the Highest, and is only able to attain a genuine satisfaction by means of the subjection of the creature, which in the feeling and admission of its unworthiness is alone able with adequacy to express its insignificance[33].
THIRD CHAPTER Through this independent self-assertion of significance, made thus transparent to consciousness in its isolated simplicity, the _severation_ of the same from the imaged appearance, whose incommensurability over against it has already been accepted, is now essentially complete; and albeit, along with the fact of this conscious separation, both form and import may still persist in the relation of an intimate affinity, a necessity which is implied in the fact of their being symbolical art, yet this relation no longer attaches to either import or form, but is placed now in a _third_ mode of conception, which according to its own point of view, carries relations of similarity with both these sides[34], and in reliance on these relations makes visible and declares the independently transparent significance by means of the cognate and particular image.
Owing to this change the image, instead of remaining as it was previously the unique expression of the Absolute, becomes now merely an ornament, and we thereby discover a relation which ceases to correspond with the notion of beauty. In other words image and significance, instead of being moulded one within the other, confront each other as opposites, precisely, in fact, as was the case in genuine symbolism, though then the process remained incomplete. Consequently works of art which are based on this form are of subordinate rank, and their content is unable to comprise the Absolute itself, and is necessarily restricted to circumstances and occurrences of narrower range. For this reason the forms which are now under discussion are for the most part merely used occasionally and by way of diversion.
More closely considered we have in this chapter to distinguish between three principal stages of our process.
A. To the _first_ we appropriate those types of presentation commonly known as _Fable_, _Parable_, and _Apologue._ In these the severation of form and significance, which constitutes the characteristic trait of the entire sphere to which this chapter refers, is not as yet _expressly_ recognized; that is to say, the _subjective_ aspect of the comparison is not yet fully _emphasized_; consequently also the representation of the particular and concrete phenomenon, through which the universal significance is finally to declare itself, still remains the _predominant_ factor.
B. In the _second_ stage, on the contrary, the universal _import_ asserts its independent mastery over the elucidating form, which now appears merely as _attribute_, or, under the guise of an image, capriciously selected by the mind which makes the contrast. To this type belong the _Allegory_, _Metaphor_, and _Simile_.
C. In the _third_ stage we meet with the visible and complete _collapse_ of those related aspects in the symbol which previously had either been immediately joined in union, despite the fact of their relative incongruity, or in their independent severation had still persisted under a relation of affinity[35]. Out of this arises that form of content which is cognized as independent in its prosaic[36] universality, to which the art-form has become wholly an external relation; on the one hand we find it represented by the _didactic_ poem, on the other that very aspect of its external form is accepted for what it is, and exemplified in so-called _descriptive_ poetry. Here we find that every association and relation of symbolism has vanished; we have to look round us for some more comprehensive union of form and content, and one more truly adequate to the notion of art.
[Footnote 5: So the French expression _des couleurs_, and our English "the colours."]
[Footnote 6: Hegel uses the 'technical term _Inhalt_ in this passage to signify either (_a_) the quality of significance, or (_b_) the object which is symbolized by virtue of some selected quality. The use of it in both senses makes the passage somewhat difficult to follow.]
[Footnote 7: _Inhalt_ here evidently is the abstract quality.]
[Footnote 8: Necessarily because such ambiguity is implied in the idea [Footnote 9: This, I think, is the sense. The language literally is, "Which a form under several possible significations, as symbol of any of which (_deren_) it can be employed often through connecting links (_Zusammenhänge_) more remote, may be taken to symbolize."]
[Footnote 10: The German words are _Begreifen_ and _Schliessen_, which in their original sense are "to grasp with the hand" (_prehendo_) and "to shut" or "lock up." The English words in a still fainter form carry the same significance through the Latin language. The symbolism of language at this stage is obviously only apparent to the student of language.]
[Footnote 11: That is, more abstract.]
[Footnote 12: Or in English: /# Forth on the ocean is shipped Youth with his thousand sails: Silent in bark barely saved steals into harbour old age. #/] [Footnote 13: _Substantielle_, that is, an artistic consciousness which is aware of its own essential nature--Spirit, and the object of pure intelligence--the Ideal.]
[Footnote 14: Perhaps we should rather say a Theosophy.]
[Footnote 15: The Alexandrine School, of which Plotinus and Philo are leading names.]
[Footnote 16: _Ein allgemeiner Gedanke._ The reference throughout this paragraph to the universality of the ideas of reflection as contrasted with the sensuous image is rather a reference to the abstract conceptions of the analytical mind, that is, which are usually understood as universals in the sense of generic conceptions, than any fuller grasp of concrete reality such as possesses a truly ideal significance. So in its application to the metaphor I imagine what is meant is that we have here the process of dry analysis which merely destroys its significance as metaphor, that is, its synthetic unity for our aesthetic sense.]
[Footnote 17: _Ist aufgehoben_, here not in the sense of being cancelled, but raised to the expression of concrete unity.]
[Footnote 18: _Als blosse Personification_, that is, an individualization which impersonates the subjective identity without possessing its concrete substance, a personified shadow like the sphinx. Such appears to be the sense.]
[Footnote 19: Because the content for which such shapes (_Gestaltung_) are given is itself incoherent, and therefore incompatible with adequate expression.]
[Footnote 20: _Sichhervorarbeiten._ Our word "elaborate" is here insufficient. Hegel means the mode in which the Idea of art works itself free from entirely potential obscurity into a living force, a real _energeia._ We cannot say "emerges into daylight," however, because the highest grasp of symbolic art is still only a twilight. It is like the growth of the plant-germ, still underground, or partially so.]
[Footnote 21: _Pracktischen._ Not matter-of-fact relation, but rather a relation that asserts itself exclusively in action.]
[Footnote 22: _Als Grund_, that is, as a fundamental unity of the real.]
[Footnote 23: _Die erste näher gestaltende Dollmetcherin_, lit., the first interpreter which supplies forms more nearly cognate with itself.]
[Footnote 24: It is valid (_geltend_) because it introduces there its own spiritual nature.]
[Footnote 25: The previous statement of Hegel must not be overlooked, however, and it may be considerably amplified, that there is much in romantic art which is related to symbolism and the sublime. Take the case of the celebrated sculpture of Michael Angelo typifying Night, Day, Dawn, and Twilight, or such modern pictures as those of Watts's "The Minotaur" and "The Spirit of Christianity."]
[Footnote 26: Or rather "between those aspects of its import and form which are reciprocally homogeneous and those which are not."]
[Footnote 27: This process of symbolic art.]
[Footnote 28: _Hauptstufen._ The word signifies either the phase or grade of a process of development, or to take the metaphor used by Hegel above (_Stadien_) may perhaps be better translated by "stage," as though indicating the successive stages of a journey.]
[Footnote 29: I think _Völkern_ rather than _Zeiten_ must be here understood, and the sense appears to be that the confusion indicated refers to a mingling of forms appropriate to a nation in one historical period with those that are more cognate with a people at any earlier or it may be later period. But unquestionably this attempt to identify a type as between different nations with historical periods that will harmonize with Hegel's own classification is a difficult matter as we may see by the fact that Egypt, the oldest example of all, represents the third stage. On the other hand, if the confusion referred to is applied to the particular development of any one people, the examples given by Hegel do not bear on the difficulty they illustrate.]
[Footnote 30: Or rather "the import of the Absolute."]
[Footnote 31: _Substantiality_, called below _die Substanz_; the word signifies the real essence of the Absolute.]
[Footnote 32: The principal clause of this sentence has no end as printed. The auxiliary must be omitted either before _in diesem Dienste_ or _eine positive._ I prefer the first alternative.]
[Footnote 33: The relative here agrees, I think, with _die Dienstbarkeit_ rather than _die Kreatur_ or _die Poesie._ Hegel says "compatible with itself and its significance," we should rather say "its sense of its own insignificance."]
[Footnote 34: Hegel's words are _sondern in einem subjectiven Dritten_, _welches in beiden Seiten nach seiner subjectiven Anschauung_, etc.
This "subjective third" is, as explained below, the way in which the relation between the image and the absolute significance ceases to be regarded as identical.]
[Footnote 35: This sentence as it stands is ungrammatical; there is a change in the construction as it proceeds.]
[Footnote 36: The prosaic universality is the prose of its form separated from content. It is prosaic because it is unrelated to the vitality of the notion.]
CHAPTER I UNCONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM Now that we pass to the consideration of the several distinctions of symbolical art in more detail, we have to make a beginning with the identical beginning of art as it proceeds out of the notion of art itself. This commencement, as we have seen, is the symbolical form of art in its still immediate form wherein the appearance, as purely image or likeness, is neither brought to consciousness nor presupposed--_unconscious symbolism_, that is to say. Before, however, we shall be in a position to consider this form in its genuine symbolical character, it will be necessary to review several presuppositions which the notion of symbolism itself determines in order that we may utilize them for the basis upon which the symbol may unfold itself for scientific apprehension.
The point from which we make a start may be defined more closely as follows: The fundamental root of the symbol is, regarding it from one aspect, the immediate union of the universal and thereby spiritual significance with the form which may at the same time be described as adequate and inadequate, an inadequacy, however, which is as yet unperceived. This association, however, must, on the other hand, receive a form from the _imagination_ and _art_, and must not _merely_ be conceived as a Divine reality exclusively immediate to sense. By this means the symbolical originates in the first instance with the _severation_ of a universal import from the immediate _presence of Nature_, in whose existence the Absolute is contemplated as actually present. These two aspects supply us with the preliminary stages for the genuine forms of symbolic art.
The _first_ presupposition consequently--we may call it the coming into being of the symbolical--is not that union which is the product of art, but rather just that immediate unity of the Absolute and True and its existence, which is discovered in the visible world apart from art's mediation.
A. IMMEDIATE UNITY OF SIGNIFICANCE AND FORM In this identity of the Divine immediately envisualized, a Divine, which is brought home to consciousness as the union of its determinate existence in Nature and humanity, Nature is neither taken simply for that which it is in isolation by itself, nor is the Absolute severed from it and posited in an independent self-subsistence. Consequently it is wholly beside the point to speak of a distinction here between the Inward and the External, the significance and the form, and this for the reason that the Inward is not as yet released in its independence as significance from its immediate reality in the object of sense. When we apply here the expression import[37], such merely emphasizes our _own_ reflection upon it, which is due to the necessity for ourselves personally to regard the form, which contains that which is spiritual and inward under the mode of sense-perception, generally as something external to us, through which we are desirous of penetrating into the Inward, that is, its animating life and significance, in order that we may understand it. For this reason we are under the necessity from the very first, when dealing with such general impressions of sense-perception, of making an essential demarcation between those cases in which the peoples, who in the first instance experienced them, themselves were clearly conscious of this Inward itself as such, that is, as a spiritual significance, and those in which the use of such expressions is only applicable to ourselves, who now and only now recognize an import of this kind in the content of that external expression of sense-envisagement.
In this primary unity such as the latter cases involve, there is no such distinction between soul and body, notion and reality, as is implied in the former. That which we describe as corporeal and sensuous, natural and human, is not merely an expression for a significance which proceeds at the same time to a point of distinction from it[38]; but the phenomenon is itself conceived as the immediate reality and presence of the Absolute, which does not in addition possess some other mode of self-subsistent existence, but is confined exclusively to the immediate presence of an object of sense, which is God or the Divine. In the service of the Lama, for example, this particular, actual human being is immediately known and adored as God, just as in other natural religions the sun, mountains, rivers, the moon, particular animals, such as the bull, ape, and so on, are looked upon as immediately Divine existences and worshipped as sacred.
We may observe a similar directness, if under a mode of profounder application, even now in many aspects of the Christian consciousness.
According to Catholic doctrine, for example, the consecrated bread is the real body, and the wine the real blood of God, and Christ is immediately present therein; nay, even according to the Lutheran faith, both bread and wine are converted into such real body and blood by virtue of the faith of the recipient. In this mystical union it is not merely a symbolism which is expressed, a point of view which comes into prominence as the result of it for the first time in later doctrines of the reformed Church, where we find as a result the spiritual significance is expressly severed from the sensuous object, and the external medium is then accepted as merely pointing to an import which is distinct from itself. In the same way the power of this Divine is held to operate in the miracle-working images of the Virgin as a Divine force that is immediately present within them, and not merely under symbolical guise through the significant import of such pictures.
We find, however, the most thorough and universal exemplification of this absolute and immediate unity of sense-perception in the life and religion of the ancient Zend-people, whose conceptions and institutions are preserved for us in the Zend-Avesta.
1. In other words the religion of Zoroaster beholds Light in the form of its natural existence, the sun, stars, and fire in the luminous activity and flames which proceed from them, actually as the Absolute, without separating this Divine independently from that Light either as its expression and image or the sensuous medium thereof. The Divine, the significance, is not thus severed from its determinate existence in the form of lights, however displayed. For even when light is accepted here in the sense of Goodness and Justice, and through such significance is extended to all that is rich in blessing, support, and life, it is still not taken as the mere image of such things, but Light is itself the Good. And the same view applies to the opposite of light, namely, obscurity and darkness when identified with that which is unclean, hurtful, evil, destructive, and deadly.
This point of view may be more closely defined and considered as follows: (_a_) In the first instance the Divine, as the essential purity of Light[39], and the Darkness and Unclean are, it is true, _personified_ under the names of Ormuzd and Ahriman respectively.
This personification is, however, throughout entirely superficial.
Ormuzd is no essentially free individuality devoid of all relation to external objects[40] as was the God of the Jews, or truly spiritual and personal as is the God of Christianity when conceived as truly personal and self-conscious Spirit; rather Ormuzd, despite the fact that he is described also as king, great spirit and judge, remains inseparable from such external existence as Light and its illuminations. He is exclusively this universal characteristic of all particular existences, in which light and thereby the Divine and Pure are realized, without any additional power to withdraw himself in a spiritual universality and independence into his own substance from that which is thus immediately presented. His consistence rests in the particular facts of existence precisely in an analogous way to that of the genus in the species. It is true that regarded as this universal he is superior to all that is wholly particular, and is the first, most supreme, the kings of kings glorious in his gold, the purest and so forth; but he retains his existence none the less exclusively in all that is luminous and pure as Ahriman in all that is obscure, evil, destructive, and charged with disease.
(_b_) As a result this mode of vision is at the same time extended to the conception of an _empire_ of light and darkness, and the strife between these forces. In the empire of Ormuzd it is in the first place the Amschaspands, as the seven principal lights of heaven, which receive adoration as Divinity, inasmuch as they are the essential particular existences of Light, and for this reason constitute as a pure and spacious empeopled heaven, the existence of the Divine itself.
Every Amschaspand, to which Ormuzd belongs, has assigned to it days of precedence, blessing, and beneficence. The Izeds and Ferners carry the conception still further into specification, which it is probable enough are personifications of Ormuzd himself, albeit they add to him no further shape that we may envisage as human, so that neither the spiritual nor the bodily mode of subjectivity, but simply the existence as light, appearance, illumination, splendour, remains the essential characteristic of the object envisaged.
In the same way also the particular objects of Nature, which themselves do not exist in external form as lights and luminous bodies, such as animals, plants, and so forth, no less than the forms which characterize the human world, whether we view it under its spiritual or bodily presentment, in other words the particular activities and conditions of it, the entire life of the state, the king with the seven great men who support him, the division of classes, cities, the various provinces with their governors, all that is warranted by experience as typical of the best and purest for the protection of the rest--the entire reality, in fact, of this life is regarded as an existence of Ormuzd. For everything that carries within itself and promulgates what has solidity, life, and substance is an existence of Light and Purity, and consequently an existence of Ormuzd; every particular truth, excellence, love, justness, every individual example of life, beneficence, protection, spiritual power and enjoyment or benignity is, according to Zoroaster, regarded as essentially Light and Divine.
The empire of Ormuzd is the Pure and Illuminating of visible reality; and conformably to this there is no distinction between the phenomena of Nature or Spirit, just as Light and Goodness, the spiritual and the sensuous quality, are inseparably blended in the conception of Ormuzd himself. The _splendour_ of a creature is consequently for Zoroaster the very substance of spirit, force, and life-exhalations of every kind, in so far, that is, as they tend to actual conservation and to the removal of everything positively evil and hurtful, for that which is the Real and the Good, whether in beast, man, or vegetable life, is Light, and it is according to the measure and mode of display of this luminousness that the relative power or weakness of the splendour of all objects is determined.
An articulation and graduated division of similar character is found in the empire of Ahriman, merely with the difference that what is spiritually or naturally evil, and generally the destructive and actively negative principle asserts itself in actual masterdom. But the might of Ahriman must not be suffered to spread; the aim of the entire world is consequently assumed to be that of annihilating the Empire of Ahriman, in order that the life, presence, and dominion of Ormuzd may prevail throughout creation.
(_c_) To this exclusive object the entire life of humanity is consecrate. The life-task of every man consists exclusively in a purification of soul and body, and in the extension of this blessing and this conflict with Ahriman throughout all the conditions and activities of the life of man or Nature. The highest and most sacred duty is consequently to glorify Ormuzd in his creation, and to love, honour, and conform oneself to all that proceeds from his Light and is essentially pure. Ormuzd is the beginning and end of all adoration.
Above all else the Parsee is moved to summon the life of Ormuzd in thought and speech; he is the main object of his prayers. And in the exaltation of him, from whom the entire world of the Pure has streamed in its splendour, the devotee is in duty bound to accommodate his adoration of particular objects according to the measure in which they proclaim his majesty, worth, and perfection. So far as they are good and ring sound, to that extent, the Parsee reasons with himself, is Ormuzd alive within them; he loves them as the children of his purity, yea, rejoices over them as in the beginning of his substance, forasmuch as through him was everything brought forth in newness and purity.
And for the same reason is all prayer directed first and foremost to the Amschaspands as the most intimate reflections of Ormuzd, as the primates of supreme splendour who surround his throne and advance his dominion. Such prayer to these heavenly spirits is immediately directed to their qualities and activities, and in the case of stars at the time of their uprising. The sun is invoked by day, and always with the changes appropriate to his own motion through sunrise, noonday, or sunset. From morning till noonday the devotion of the Parsee centres in this that Ormuzd may exalt his splendour; at evening he prays that the sun may through Ormuzd and the protecting care of every Tzed perfect the course of his life. But principally we find honour paid to Mithras, who, as the fruit-bringer to the Earth and the wilderness, pours forth the fermenting sap over all Nature, and as mighty champion against all the Devas of contention, war, confusion, and destruction, is the author of peace.
In addition to this the Parsee, in his generally single-toned songs of praise, exalts his ideals, that is, the purest and most veritable examples of human life, the Ferver conceived as pure human spirits, on whatever portion of the Earth's surface they live or have lived. In the chief place prayer is offered to the pure spirit of Zoroaster, and after him to the leading lights of all classes, cities, and provinces; and already in this religion, we find that the spirits of all mankind are contemplated as united together with a sufficient bond in that they are members in the living association of Light, which hereafter in Gorotman shall receive a yet more perfect union.
Finally, not even the animals, mountains, and vegetable world are forgotten, but are appealed to as embodiments of Ormuzd; all that is good and serviceable in them to mankind is extolled, and especially the first and most excellent of its kind is adored as the present existence of Deity. And over and above this worship of Ormuzd and of every form of selected excellence among the pure and beneficent objects of his creation the Zend-Avesta is insistent upon the _practice_ of goodness and the purity of thought, word, and deed. The Parsee is to be in the entire display of his external and inward man as Light, as Ormuzd, the Amschaspands, and the Izeds, as Zoroaster and all good men live and do.
Such live and have lived in the Light, and all their deeds are Light; therefore shall every man make them an example to his eyes and follow after the same. The more purity of light and goodness man expresses in his life and accomplishment, the nearer he stands to those spirits of heaven. As the Izeds throw the blessing of their beneficence over everything, are a source of life and fruitfulness and friendship, so, too, he must seek to purify Nature, to ennoble her, and to reach abroad the light of life and the joy of plenteousness. In accordance therewith he shall feed the hungry, tend the sick, offer the drink of consolation to the thirsty, give roof and shelter to the wanderer, provide pure seed for the Earth, delve clean channels of water, plant the waste with trees, nourish to the best of his power their growth, care for the sustenance and fructification of things alive, keep pure the lambency of fire, remove from sight the dead and unclean beast, establish marriages, and in the doing thereof the holy Sapandomad, the Ized of the Earth, herself rejoices, averting the harm which the Devas and the Darvands are busy to prepare.
2. If we ask ourselves once more, after this delineation in outline of the fundamental conceptions of this system, what is the symbolical character of the same there can be but one reply, namely, that there is