necessitates this. But the spelling suggests the other interpretation.]
[Footnote 224: Which is absent in the classical treatment.]
[Footnote 225: That is, the creative artist.]
[Footnote 226: _Innerlichkeit._ It is impossible to express Hegel's use of this word by one expression. It combines intimacy, ideal union, and inwardness of soul-life in its contrast to objective reality.]
[Footnote 227: That is the romantic type.]
[Footnote 228: _Die für sich seyende Subjektivität._ That is a process that elaborates itself in independent form consonant to its own substance.]
[Footnote 229: _Als dieses Subjekt._ That is, I assume, as the distinctive personality of the artist. This must appear on the face of the work as the crown of its independent type and concrete unity (_Zur Spitze des Fürsichseyns_) but must not dominate it to the extent of destroying all natural detail, not even to the extent of sculpture.]
[Footnote 230: _Zur Spitze des Fürsichseyns._ See note above.]
[Footnote 231: That is their union in sculpture.]
[Footnote 232: _Als solcher._ Hegel means that the universal present in emotion is objective therein as part of the self-conscious life, but is only presented in the concrete objective shape in the work of the artist who therein suffers to escape the wholly personal side.]
[Footnote 233: _Sein Inneres_, his ideal substance, with more direct reference to feeling.]
[Footnote 234: _Aus demselben in sich hineingehend._ I think what is meant is that the material is idealized out of one of its spatial conditions rather than that the artist selects his _medium_ in consonance with his temperament and technique.]
[Footnote 235: That is, does not affect the stability and total effect of the work. Of course the actual effect may vary.]
[Footnote 236: _Für diesen festen Punkt des Subjekts._] [Footnote 237: _Die in sich besonderte Innerlichkeit._] [Footnote 238: The distinctions in matter conditioned in Space.]
[Footnote 239: The meaning, if rather obscurely expressed, appears to be this. The art of sculpture shows us when it treats the spatial dimensions as essential that we must have the entire spatial form to do this, and it shows us that if we wish to pass from the mere presentment of bodily form to a fuller ideal quality we must contract this exclusive appearance of physical matter.]
[Footnote 240: Lit., "Begins to be subjective." Begins to possess a self-excluding centre of unity, _i.e._, self-identity.]
[Footnote 241: That is to the point of a real subject or ego.]
[Footnote 242: _E.g._, secure an abstract result in superficies only.]
[Footnote 243: Apart from artistic means.]
[Footnote 244: Though the statements here are suggestive, they are obviously influenced by Hegel's belief in the false theory of light propounded by Goethe.]
[Footnote 245: This is a direct reference to the Newtonian theory, of course.]
[Footnote 246: _Zeichnung_ here refers to line rather than technical excellence in draughtsmanship. It must be admitted Hegel's emphasis of these two aspects is carried rather too far.]
[Footnote 247: The above passage is open to criticism. Hegel hardly makes allowance for the fact that the defective technique, so far as it is defective, of the earlier masters, was mainly due to their state of knowledge. Art was, in a certain aspect of technique, in its infancy. Moreover to compare Dutch landscape with that of Bellini or Raphael is to compare things that are each unique of their kind and not comparable. Their aim was entirely different. In such pictures as the San Sisto Madonna of Raphael, the great Crucifixion of Tintoret, or the Entombment of Titian it is quite impossible to maintain that the earnestness of conception is in any way inferior to the technique, although we have no doubt a different degree of conviction expressed by Fra Angelico. And the classical landscape of Titian or Tintoret is of its type supreme.]
[Footnote 248: This statement of Hegel again requires parenthesis or at least interpretation. There is a realism such as that we find in the most consummate work of a Titian, or the genre work of the Dutch school, or our own Pre-Raphaelites, to say nothing of mere academical realism, which hardly comes within his remarks. It is obvious that the Ideal is subserved in different degrees by such examples, and in fact to preserve that unity of conception despite the greatest elaboration, _is_ to serve the Ideal at least in one aspect of it. Hegel, at least in the concluding part of this paragraph, appears mainly to have in his mind still life and the genre pictures of the Dutch, and rather seems to overlook his own statement as to the necessity of selection and the power to express detail by the shorthand of genius rather than deliberate imitation.]
[Footnote 250: _Innigkeit._ Intimate ideality, inwardness.]
[Footnote 251: I am not sure what Hegel means by the expression _Nicht das Niedrige ist zerdrückt._ If the text is correct I suppose it means the sensuous side does not make way for a more spiritual synthesis.
What we should expect is some other verb than _zerdrückt_ such as _ausgedrückt_, the sense being that "_though_ the mean emotion is not expressed, and no rage, etc., is asserted, _yet_ despite of it all," etc. I think there must be some misprint here.]
[Footnote 252: _Ein starres Beisichseyn._ Compare the expression lower down _affirmatives Fürsichseyn_ with which it contrasts.]
[Footnote 253: _Für sich bestehende Herz._] [Footnote 254: _Als ein göttliches Moment._ It means an actual phase in the Divine existence.]
[Footnote 255: An important statement. Hegel's words are _Sondern wir müssen das geistige Daseyn im Bewusstseyn des Menschen als die wesentliche geistige Existenz Gottes ansehn._] [Footnote 256: A bad master at any rate for such a subject.]
[Footnote 257: This metaphor appears to me rather confused, and in fact I do not pretend wholly to understand its meaning. I suppose the idea is that beyond the clouds of soul-life there are the clouds that obscure Providence. In all this passage Hegel shows his limitations as an art student.]
[Footnote 258: _Näher._ That is our love of God is mainly through Christ.]
[Footnote 259: _Ein bloss eingelnes Moment._ A phase that passes or becomes relatively insignificant.]
[Footnote 260: _Innigste_, most intimate. A curious but characteristic conclusion of Hegel.]
[Footnote 261: This analysis must be accepted of course mainly as an analysis of the ideal proposed to us by the profoundest Christian art. It is obviously not true of much Italian art, Titian's work for example, and it is equally remote from many of the most probable facts of history.]
[Footnote 262: _Die Starrheit._ The rigid or unyielding character.]
[Footnote 263: _Der Gehalt ihres Gemüths._ It is possible to see in this analysis something rather capricious and far-fetched, and yet to appreciate its value as an analysis of Christian love for the deceased beloved as contrasted with pagan sentiment. The finest illustration I myself can recollect of this is not the mother Mary at all, but the figure of the Magdalene in Tintoret's "Deposition" in the S. Giorgio Maggiore Church in Venice. As a matter of fact the divine mother in sacred art is almost invariably depicted in a state of swoon under the stress of her grief, though Tintoret's Pietà in the Brera is a notable exception.]
[Footnote 264: I do not know this painter. For pathos I know no finer conception of the death than that of Rembrandt's etching. Blake's drawing, exhibited recently at Cambridge, shows us the tranquillity and dignity of the scene more finely than any other representation.]
[Footnote 265: I presume Hegel means this by the words _die Menschheit_, but it is a difficult passage.]
[Footnote 266: It is impossible in English to preserve the antithesis between _bitten_ and _beten._] [Footnote 267: _Und nichts für sich hat._ That is to say reciprocity is of its essence. "Give and it shall be given unto you."]
[Footnote 268: _Die Gestalt_ may possibly refer to the suppliant.]
[Footnote 269: The Sistine Madonna.]
[Footnote 270: A good instance is the great Crucifixion of Fra Angelico in the S. Mark convent in Florence.]
[Footnote 271: And a painter like Carlo Dolci or the Caracci are even worse.]
[Footnote 272: It would perhaps have been more instructive to consider the difference of temperament in the artist when dealing with such subjects and its influence on his treatment. It is very far from an obvious truth that physiognomy upon which the conflict of soul-life is most marked loses thereby the characteristics of beauty. There is the beauty of gnarled oak no less than that of the rose and the lily.]
[Footnote 273: _Das Beisichseyn der Liebe im Absoluten._ Lit., the self-inherency cf Love within the Absolute.]
[Footnote 274: _Sondern auch selbständig._ He seems to mean that they receive from this relation the subsistent individuality of spirit. This reference to landscape is obviously very perfunctory and insufficient.]
[Footnote 276: _Mit dem in sich particularisirten Innern._ With the ideal complexus of particular objects as related to one subject. Their particularity is due to their characterization, and that is dependent on idealization.]
[Footnote 277: _Diess Verwachsenseyn._ Lit., this growing up with.]
[Footnote 278: There is, however, the aspect of consummate execution which in itself is a very real source of artistic enjoyment, and Hegel rather seems to overlook this here.]
[Footnote 279: _Verzweigungen._ All off-shoots of attention or interest.]
[Footnote 280: Of course, even in the painting of still life, artistic composition itself implies by its selection and subordination to an idea a new result. And the characteristic technique of a painter inevitably has the same result.]
[Footnote 283: It is perhaps rather strange that Hegel should have considered the Dutch and Flemish schools as pre-eminently colourists.
Apart from Rembrandt the truth is not very apparent. But he was mainly thinking of their dexterity in the lighting of a picture and the scintillation of colour.]
[Footnote 284: That is, as black and white and its gradations.]
[Footnote 285: It is not quite clear what is intended here by _Vervielfältigung_, probably power of being adapted to various subject matter and modes of expression.]
[Footnote 286: It is hardly necessary to point out that this discussion, being based on Goethe's false theory of colour in opposition to Newton's prismatic analysis, has no scientific value, though historically of interest. The blueness of the sky is due to the blue rays being detained.]
[Footnote 287: I presume by concrete unity Hegel refers in some form to a unity that is such owing to its intrinsic nature.]
[Footnote 288: But red quite as often symbolizes enthusiasm and love, and in Tintoret's Paradise the Virgin has the red tunic and the blue mantle.]
[Footnote 289: As a matter of fact violet or purple is a cardinal colour.]
[Footnote 290: Green is not a cardinal colour.]
[Footnote 291: Hegel seems to have in view the Flemish school rather than the Dutch in the restricted sense. It is rather strange that he should dwell on this rather than work of the Venetians such as Bellini.]
[Footnote 292: _Verschwemmte._ Carried away by a stream.]
[Footnote 293: Such as Ary Scheffer and others of the same monotony.
The flesh tints of Leighton and Poynter and many less men suffer in the same way.]
[Footnote 294: _Farbenschein_, as Hegel uses it later on, I find it impossible to translate in one word. In fact it is not easy to seize precisely what he means. "Modulation of colour" partly expresses it.
But he also seems to refer to what we understand as the personal quality of a picture or its general atmosphere, not regarded simply as Nature's atmosphere, but as the communication of the artist's own afflatus.]
[Footnote 295: I crossed a young landscape-artist of growing fame the other day, who affirmed and endeavoured to express in his pictures the conviction that colour was as strong in distance as foreground. His pictures were of great interest, but I still think his robust theory unsound.]
[Footnote 296: We have no English equivalent for the German _das Incarnat_ or colour incarnate.]
[Footnote 297: _Ein ideelles Ineinander._ By ideal Hegel means apparently that the distinctions of tint fine away beyond the grasp of sense vision. This of course is true in all natural colouring. Possibly he may mean that the idea of Life is contributive to the result.]
[Footnote 298: Hardly a just simile for the reason that, as Hegel himself points out, flesh does not reflect external objects.]
[Footnote 299: _Den Schein innerer Belebung._ This expression seems to prove that Hegel uses the word _ideel_ in its ordinary sense of spiritual ideality.]
[Footnote 300: _Als selbst lebendiges Ganze._ The colour must appear as itself a part of the vitality, not a mere covering.]
[Footnote 301: _Vertreibung._ What Hegel exactly means I am not sure, probably finish by overpaintings.]
[Footnote 302: Fresco painting is strictly in tempera. I suppose Hegel has here before him the two processes of tempera painting on the wet wall of plaster and tempera painting on some other dry surface.]
[Footnote 303: _Zu grosser innerer Klarheit und schönen Leuchten._ I give what appears to me to be the meaning.]
[Footnote 304: I presume Hegel understands by _Deck und Lasurfarben_ the distinction of our opaque and transparent colours such as flake white and the madders or umbers. He clearly refers to glazes.]
[Footnote 305: _Die Duftigkeit, Magie in der Wirkung des Kolorits._ This is a difficult passage to translate, and I am not quite sure what Hegel is aiming at. He seems to have in his mind both the ideal atmosphere of a composition and the presence of a personal style.]
[Footnote 306: Hegel has already related the effects considered to the artist's personality. He now endeavours to examine more closely what is implied in the relation.]
[Footnote 307: Adriaen van Ostade, 1610-1685.]
[Footnote 308: He means painting, of course. He never passed beyond the stage of the average amateur.]
[Footnote 309: _Spiel von Scheinen._ The play of appearance, that is, as it strikes on different natures.]
[Footnote 310: _Malerischen Auffassung._ Here the ideas on mental conception and artistic composition seem to be combined. But Hegel is rather loose in his use of them.]
[Footnote 311: Hegel has doubtless Albrecht Dürer and yet earlier German art in his mind.]
[Footnote 312: _Die besonderen Bestimmungen._ The lines of its definite exposition.]
[Footnote 313: I adopt Hegel's generic term. But he means here little more than delineation or composition.]
[Footnote 314: As between the art of painting and those of poetry and music.]
[Footnote 315: _Geistig._ We may say the same thing of Tintoret's great Golden Calf picture. But the objection to the composition as a work of art remains more strongly than is the case with Raphael's picture.]
[Footnote 316: The same thing is a characteristic of Tintoret's Annunciation in the S. Rocco Scuola and several pictures of Dürer.]
[Footnote 317: Fine examples of this are Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross in the Munich Gallery, and the group of mourners in Tintoret's Great Crucifixion.]
[Footnote 318: They have in this respect been well contrasted with the characters of Euripides in the play of Aristophanes which particularly emphasizes the difference between the heroic type of Aeschylus and the realism of Euripides, "The Frogs of Aristophanes," text and translation of B. B. Rogers; see Introd., pp. XVIII, XIX, XLV.]
[Footnote 319: As to ugliness and its treatment by Hegel, see Professor Bosanquet's "History of Aesthetik," pp. 338, 355, and generally pp.
432-436.]
[Footnote 320: That is sculpture. Hegel calls it _im Plastischen._] [Footnote 321: An ideal with Hegel is not necessarily an image of the mind, but far more generally the concrete realization of life.]
[Footnote 322: He should have added Tintoretto at least. What could be more pertinent than his Sages in the Palazzo Reale in Venice.]
[Footnote 323: Applies to the study rather than the talent exercised.]
[Footnote 324: _Aber ganze Grundbild des Charakters darstellen._] [Footnote 325: _Den geistigen Sinn und Charakter._ He means the entire spiritual impression, heart, soul, and intelligence, with its practical effect in substantive character.]
[Footnote 326: I think this is implied here in Hegel's use of the words _verarbeitet durch den Geist._ But it may mean "in the face as worked upon the soul within the _person portrayed._"] [Footnote 327: _Die wahrhaften absoluten Momente für die Characteristik._] [Footnote 328: The German expression is, "It is not a serious affair with her sinning." I am not sure that Hegel's view here does not lean towards the sentimentalism he generally so strongly opposes. No doubt a clear conception of the Magdalene's character is difficult. But it is obvious that the less stress we lay upon her sin, the less weight her conversion carries from the religious point of view, and the less great appears the effect of the interposition of her divine Master. Correggio was not a master likely to penetrate profoundly into his subject.
But, on the other hand, it must be admitted that Hegel's contention is in one aspect of it supported by the far finer conceptions of the Magdalene in Tintoret's work. At least this great master clearly shows us that in his view of her she was strongly emotional, heart and soul in everything whether for good, under good influence, or for evil under opposite direction. It is possible to understand Hegel's interpretation as one mainly aesthetic.]
[Footnote 329: In Berlin. The statement is made in February 1829.]
[Footnote 330: The omission of the Spanish school at least omits a most important link with modern impressionism and its close relation to that transition to music. And it is impossible to indicate the progress of landscape without reference to the English school.]
[Footnote 331: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. I, p. 279.]
[Footnote 332: The words _in ähnlicher Weise_ make no sense.]
[Footnote 333: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. I, p. 280.]
[Footnote 334: Literally the sense is "Which (apparently agrees with the trait of piety) invigorates with soul that assuredness and accepted fact (_Fertigkeit_) of existence, which is from the very first (_von Hause aus_) more decisive (_entscheidenere_) in this province of salvation (_des Heils_)." _Heils_ must obviously be used in the same sense as _Heiland_ above. My translation is necessarily rather free, but I hope I have emphasized the meaning.]
[Footnote 335: _Ein ideal bleibender Uebergang._ The transition is rather one the soul imagines than an actual fact. "Ideal persistence" is perhaps better.]
[Footnote 336: _Religiosität_ here used in good sense.]
[Footnote 337: Lit., "More free from struggling." Compare Saint John and Saint Paul as examples on the higher levels.]
[Footnote 338: That is Italian painting.]
[Footnote 339: Hegel's delight in Italian opera is well known to readers of his correspondence. In the above fine passage he to some extent unbelts himself from his ordinary tone of rather austere reticence.]
[Footnote 340: The distinction seems to be between the more formal unity of personality and the peculiarly seductive charm of Italian art.
It is rather a fine one and it seems to me rather confusing. Moreover I do not quite see the pertinency of the simile of a Psyche that is wafted as a butterfly even round blooms that have been spoiled of their treasure, for such I understand to be the sense of _verkümmerte Blumen._ A butterfly comes into no active relation with such unless the idea is pictorial decoration. But possibly Hegel was thinking of his reference to Dante, and in that case employed the metaphor loosely, rather too loosely I should say.]
[Footnote 341: "Stunted" is perhaps the best translation. The fault of the simile lies in its superficiality. It does not penetrate the conception Hegel has before him.]
[Footnote 342: Giotto, Mantegna, Carpaccio, Masaccio, would be leading names in point here. Hegel mentions two himself lower down.]
[Footnote 343: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 4.]
[Footnote 344: _Grelle._ That is harsh and flagrant outline.]
[Footnote 345: _Ihrer_ must refer I think to the Italians, though the sentence might mean, "In contrast to these Greek productions."]
[Footnote 346: _Als Ueberzug._ The expression suggests it was used as a facial glaze or varnish.]
[Footnote 347: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. I, p. 312.]
[Footnote 348: That is mixed with the attrited colour in its dryness.]
[Footnote 349: _Leimen. Leim_ is size or lime, in the compound word _leim-farbe_ signifying distemper.]
[Footnote 350: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 42.]
[Footnote 351: Decam. Giorn., 6. Nov. 5.]
[Footnote 352: Such as S. Francis as presented us in Giotto's great frescoes in Assisi.]
[Footnote 353: No doubt the serious aspect is less imposingly emphasized; but if the opinion condemned below is too sweeping it remains the fact that we can imagine nothing more profoundly serious in the religious sense than the frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua.]
[Footnote 354: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 73.]
[Footnote 355: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 213.]
[Footnote 356: _Aufgaben_, artistic problems, themes.]
[Footnote 357: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 243.]
[Footnote 358: This of course is too strong a statement, and indeed is ridiculous to anyone who has complete knowledge of the best work even of Giotto.]
[Footnote 359: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 252.]
[Footnote 360: The frescoes of Mantegna, and those of Ghirlandaio, we would mention in particular the fine examples in the S. Maria Novella church in Florence, or for Mantegna our own cartoons at Hampton Court and the invaluable but now hopelessly ruined frescoes of Gozzoli, in the Campo Santo of Pisa, are fine illustrations of the text.]
[Footnote 361: _Des inneren Geistes_ may here refer to the ideal aspects of civil and domestic life, but I think Hegel is contrasting the two extremes and it refers to the religious content.]
[Footnote 362: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 282.]
[Footnote 363: To make this judgment in any degree a sound one we must assume the stress is laid on the mysterious aspect of expression and form. The genuine examples of Leonardo are so very few. But quite apart from that unless we exclude the great triumvirate of the Venetian school altogether Tintoret, Titian, and Veronese, the praise here given to Leonardo as a consummate master of the technique in oil-painting can only be received with considerable reserve and qualification.]
[Footnote 364: Compare "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 308.]
[Footnote 365: _Die reinste Vollendung._ The adjective refers to the character of the perfection as an expression of artistic feeling and execution.]
[Footnote 366: _Halbdeutliche Erinnerungen._ Not I think memories that are obscure themselves so much as memories which have failed to grasp the content of what is recollected. The expression is rather confused.]
[Footnote 367: Modern criticism would doubtless have a good deal to say in qualification of this. The name of Bellini alone is sufficiently suggestive.]
[Footnote 368: This emphasis on the work of Raphael and Correggio is characteristic of the best art criticism of the times of Hegel, but marks its limitations. Neither Raphael nor Correggio can be called religious painters in the sense that those profound masters Tintoret and Michelangelo were such. The essentially academic aspect of so much of Raphael's later production is not noticed. And it is these three great names, Titian, Tintoret, and Michelangelo, who most truly mark the transition to our modern outlook.]
[Footnote 369: _Eine aüssere Abgeschlossenheit._ This must mean, I think, a dignified and reserved treatment of the technique mainly of such themes.]
[Footnote 370: The technical and somewhat long-worded aspect of Hegel's style is here at its worst and I find it hard to make complete sense of this doubtless unrevised passage. The main difficulty is this, that the sentence appears to assert that "the centre" (_der Mittelpunkt_) of religion persists (_fortbleibt_) and yet asserts in the same breath that the informing unity is broken up. I have done my best.]
[Footnote 371: A piety which is not merely emotional, but is concrete in active life, possesses practical content.]
[Footnote 372: See note at end of chapter.]
[Footnote 373: This appears rather to contradict what Hegel has said before of the impression a fine picture such as Correggio's Magdalene leaves upon us that we cannot imagine the character to be other than it is. See note below.]
[Footnote 374: More literally, "Without the alleviating effect of what is comic."]
[Footnote 375: I presume _die Formen_ refers here rather to the artistic forms of grouping and composition than the traits of vital expression. But perhaps the latter interpretation would be more natural to the words.]
[Footnote 376: The above survey of Dutch art is of great interest, and in its careful comparison of the type of that art with the national development of the Dutch may be contrasted favourably with the somewhat prejudiced criticism of such a critic as John Ruskin. At the same time I think it must be obvious that Hegel is a little inclined to overrate the ideal aspect of that portion of it we may indicate in the work of painters such as Wouvermans or Teniers, many examples of which are little removed from the defects of theme he points out in more modern work. Also personally I should say that, if we exclude the supreme genius of Rembrandt, he rather exaggerates their rank as supreme colourists in respect to the scintillation, mystery, and other effects of light. To consider that they rank above the Venetians in this respect is wholly impossible, to say nothing of Velasquez. Rubens, however, may add some support to the view, but he is hardly in the school described, and Van Dyck stands with him.]
CHAPTER II MUSIC INTRODUCTION If we glance back at the course the evolution of the several arts has taken, we shall find that it began with _architecture._ It was the art which was least complete; for, as we discovered, it was, by reason of the purely solid material, which it attached to itself as its sensuous medium, and made use of according to the laws of gravity, incapable of placing before us under an adequate mode of presentation what is spiritual; it was consequently constrained to limit itself to the task of preparing from the resources of the mind an artistic external environment for Spirit in its living and actual existence.
_Sculpture_, on the contrary, and in the _second_ place, was able, it is true, to accept the spiritual itself as its object. It was, however, neither one in the sense of a particular character, nor as the intimate personal life of soul, but rather as a free individuality, which is as little separate from the substantive content as it is from the corporeal appearance of Spirit; a presentment which only displays itself as such individuality, in so far as the same enters into it, in the degree that the same is actually required to import an individual vitality into a content which is itself intrinsically essential. Moreover, it only, as such ideal spiritualization, is fused with the bodily configuration to the extent of revealing the essentially inviolable union of Spirit with that natural embodiment which is consonant therewith. This necessary identity in the art of sculpture of Spirit's independent existence wholly with its _corporeal_ organization, rather than with the medium of its own _ideal essence_, makes it incumbent upon the art still to retain solid matter as its material, but to transform the configuration of the same, not, as was the case with architecture, into a purely inorganic environment, but rather into the classical beauty adequate to Spirit and its ideal plastic realization.
And just as sculpture in this respect proved itself to be pre-eminently fitted to give vitality to the content and mode of expression of the _classical_ type of art in its products, while architecture, despite all the service it rendered in the content which belonged to it, was unable in its manner of presentation to pass beyond the fundamental mode of a purely _symbolical_ significance, so, too, _thirdly_, with the art of painting, we enter the province of the _romantic._ No doubt we find still in painting that the _external_ form is the means by virtue of which the ideal presence is revealed. In this case, however, this ideality is actually the ideal and particular _subjectivity_, is, in short, the soul-life returning upon itself from its corporeal existence, is the individual passion and emotion of character and heart, which are no longer exclusively delivered in the external form, but mirror in the same the very ideal substance and activity of Spirit in the domain of its own conditions, aims, and actions. On account of this intimate ideality of its content the art of painting is unable to rest satisfied with a material that, in one aspect of it, is in its shape merely solid matter, and in another as such crude form is merely tangible and unparticularized, but is forced to select exclusively the show and _colour semblance_ of the same as its sensuous means of expression. The colour, however, is only present in order to make still apparent spatial forms and shapes as we find them in the actuality of Life, even in the case where we see the art developed into all the magic of colouring, in which the objective fact at the same time already begins to vanish away, and the effect is produced by what appears to be no longer anything material at all. However much, therefore, painting is evolved in the direction of a more ideal independence of a kind of appearance which is no longer attached to shape as such, but is permitted to pass spontaneously into its own proper element, that is, into the play of visibility and reflection, into all the mysteries of chiaroscuro, yet this magic of colour is still throughout of a spatial mode, it is an appearance growing out of juxtaposition on a flat surface, and consequently a _consubsistent_ one.
1. If, however, this ideal essence, as is already the case under the principle of painting, asserts itself in fact as _subjective soul-life_, in that case the truly adequate medium cannot remain of a type which possesses independent subsistency. And for this reason we get a mode of expression and communication, in the sensuous material of which we do not find objectivity disclosed as spatial configuration, in order that it may have consistency therein. We require a material which is without such stability in its relation to what is outside it, and which vanishes again in the very moment of its origin and presence. Now the art that finally annihilates not merely _one_ form of spatial dimension, but the conditions of Space entirely, which is completely withdrawn into the ideality of soul-life, both in its aspect of conscious life and in that of its external expression, is our second romantic art--_Music._ In this respect it constitutes the genuine centre of that kind of presentment which accepts the inner personal life as such, both for its content and form. It no doubt manifests as art this inner life, but in this very objectification retains its subjective character. In other words it does not, as plastic art, suffer the expression in which it is self-enclosed to be independently free or to attain an essentially tranquil self-subsistency, but cancels the same as objectivity, and will not suffer externality to secure for itself an inviolable presence[377] over against it.
In so far, however, as this annihilation of spatial objectivity, regarded as a means of manifestation, is an abandonment of the same which is itself already in anticipation asserted of the sensuous spatiality of the plastic arts themselves[378], this principle of negation must also in a similar way have its activity conditioned by the _materiality_, which, up to this point, we have indicated as one of tranquil independent self-subsistency, just as the art of painting reduces in its province the spatial dimensions of sculpture to the simple surface. This cancelling of the spatial form therefore merely consists in this, that a specific sensuous material surrenders its tranquil relation of juxtaposition, is, in other words, placed in motion but is so essentially affected by that motion that every portion of the coherent bodily substance not merely changes its position, but also is reacted upon and reacts upon the previous condition[379]. The result of this oscillating vibration is _tone_, the medium of music.
In tone music forsakes the element of external form and its sensuous _visibility_, and requires for the apprehension of its results another organ of sense, namely hearing, which, as also the sight, does not belong to the senses of action but those y of contemplation; and is, in fact, still more ideal than sight. For the unruffled, aesthetic observation of works of art no doubt permits the objects to stand out quietly in their freedom just as they are without any desire to impair that effect in any way; but that which it apprehends is not that which is itself essentially ideally composed[380], but rather on the contrary, that which receives its consistency in its sensuous existence. The ear, on the contrary, receives the result of that ideal vibration of material substance[381], without placing itself in a practical relation towards the objects, a result by means of which it is no longer the material object in its repose, but the first example of the more ideal activity of the soul itself which is apprehended. And for the further reason that the negativity into which the oscillating medium here enters is from one point of view an annihilation of the spatial condition, which is itself removed by means of the reaction of the body[382], the expression of this twofold negation, that is tone, is a mode of externality which, in virtue of its very mode of existence, is in its very origination self-destructive, and there and then itself fundamentally disappears. And it is by virtue of this twofold negation of externality, in which the root-principle of tone consists, that the same corresponds to the ideal personal life; this resonance which, in its essential explicitness[383], is something more ideal than the subsistent corporeality in its independent reality, also discloses this more ideal existence[384], and thereby offers a mode of expression suited to the ideality of conscious life.
2. If we now, by a reverse process, inquire of what type this inner life must be, if we are to prove it on its own account adapted to the expression of sound and tones, we may recall the fact already observed