elements, although from another point of view, at any rate during the period of the purest type of Gothic architecture, even in the matter of ornament, as, for example, in the pointed arches of the windows, we may observe a decisive return to simple forms.
3. DIFFERENT TYPES OF BUILDING IN ROMANTIC ARCHITECTURE The last point on which I have a few observations to make is that of the principal types followed by romantic architecture in its course of development at different periods. I must, however, add the premise that in this work no attempt can be made to supply a history of this branch of the art.
(_a_) We must wholly distinguish from Gothic architecture, such as I have above described it, the so-called pre-Gothic, whose development originated in Roman architecture. The most ancient form of Christian churches is that of the _basilica._ These originated out of the public buildings of the Empire, huge oblong halls, with the frame-work of their roofing of wood, such as Constantine placed at the disposal of Christians. In buildings such as these there was a tribune, on which, during congregational religious services conducted by priests, there was singing and an address delivered, or merely reading aloud. The conception of the choir may have originated with this. In the same way Christian architecture accepted other of its forms such as the use of columns with circular arches, the rotunda and the modes of classical embellishment throughout, more particularly in the western Roman Empire, while in the eastern section it appears to have remained constant to this type until the time of Justinian. Even buildings erected by the Ostrogoths and Lombards in Italy retained essentially the fundamental Roman type. In the more recent architecture, however, of the Byzantine Empire several modifications made their appearance.
A rotunda supported on four great piers forms the centre, to which different constructions were attached to meet the particular objects of Greek as distinct from the Roman ritual. We must not, however, confuse this genuine architecture of the Byzantine Empire with that which, in its general relation to architectural types, goes by the name of Byzantine, and which was employed in Italy, France, England, Germany, and other places up to the close of the twelfth century.
(_b_) In the thirteenth century was evolved the Gothic architecture in the distinctive form whose main characteristics I have above described in detail. It is nowadays denied that it is the work of Gothic architects, and the name given it is that of Deutsch or German architecture. We may, however, retain the more customary and ancient nomenclature. In other words we find in Spain very ancient indications of this type of construction, which suggest an association with historical circumstances under which Gothic kings, forced back into the mountains of Asturia and Galicia, retained their independence in such localities. Under such conditions, no doubt, a close affiliation of Gothic and _Arab_ architecture appears probable, yet both may be essentially distinguished. For the characteristic trait of Arab architecture in the Middle Ages is not the pointed arch, but the so-called _horseshoe_ form. Moreover, these buildings, which are constructed for an entirely different ritual, exhibit an Oriental wealth and splendour, embellishments resembling plant-life and other forms of decoration, which, in an external form, mix together what is of Roman ancestry and that which belongs to the Middle Ages.
(_c_) On parallel lines with this evolution of religious architecture we find, too, the course of _civil construction_, which from its particular point of view imitates and modifies the character of ecclesiastical buildings. In an architecture directed to the uses of citizen life, however, art has less opportunity for display inasmuch as here objects of more restricted character, combined with a great variety of requirements, are more strict in the range of satisfaction presented, and do not suffer beauty to pass beyond mere decoration.
Except for the general harmonious disposition of its forms and masses, art is in the main merely able to assert itself in the embellishment of façades, staircases, windows, doors, gables, towers, and the like, and has to do this throughout subject to the condition that the practical purpose of the building is what finally determines everything. In the Middle Ages it is pre-eminently the tower-like form of secure dwellings, which is the fundamental type of structure not merely for particular declivities and summits but also within the towns, where every palace, every private dwelling, as in Italy for example, received the form of a small fortification or keep. Walls, doors, towers, bridges and the like are executed as necessity dictates, and are decorated and embellished by art. Stability and security coupled with a grandiose type of splendour and a vital individuality of single forms and their connecting links constitute the determining factors, to enter into the detail of which would carry us beyond our present purpose. By way of supplement we may in conclusion briefly allude to the art of _gardening_, which does not only create under a wholly novel form an environment for spirit, we may call it a second exterior Nature, but draws the landscape of Nature itself within the operation of its constructive purpose and treats the same architectonically as an environment of buildings. I will only take as an example of what I mean the famous and exceedingly imposing terrace of Sans-souci.
In our examination of the genuine art of gardening it is most important to distinguish the _painter's_ point of view of it from that of the _architect._ All that pertains to mere park construction, for instance, is not truly architectonic, no building, that is, with freely disposed natural objects, but an artist's portrayal[109], which leaves the objects in their natural form and aims at imitating wide Nature in its freedom. Everything is here suggested in turn, which finds its glad place in a landscape--whether rocks and the huge rough masses which are their substance, or dales, woods, pastures, meandering brooks, broad streams with their animated banks, still lakes, wreathed round with trees, rushing waterfalls, and everything else of the kind, and is brought together with one total effect. In this way the gardening art of the Chinese embraces entire landscapes together with their islands, rivers, expanding views, and rockeries.
In a park of this kind, particularly in modern examples of such, everything is, on the one hand, intended to hold intact the freedom of Nature, while, on the other, it is artificially elaborated and constructed and conditioned by the locality where it is situated. This involves a contradiction which is never satisfactorily disposed of.
In this respect, for the most part, it is impossible to instance an example of worse taste than such an attempt to make visible in all directions a studied purpose in that which is without purpose, and to force that which refuses to be compelled. Add to this the fact that here the genuine character of what is strictly a garden disappears, in so far, that is, as a garden is primarily adapted for strolling about in at pleasure and conversation within a certain place, which is no longer simply Nature, but a Nature remodelled by man to meet his desire for an environment created by himself. A huge park, on the contrary, particularly if it be garnished with Chinese temples, Turkish mosques, Swiss châlets, bridges, hermitages, and any other conceivable foreign importation, makes an independent claim on our interest as spectator. It offers an independent pretension of being and signifying something. A charm of this sort disappears as soon as it arises; we do not care to see it twice, for an addition like this spreads before our sight no suggestion of infinity, nothing that possesses a really existent vitality[110], and is further only wearisome and tedious for conversation as we pass through it.
A garden, strictly speaking, should be only a cheerful environment and simply an environment, which will not pass for something independently valid and withdraw men from their own life and concerns. It is here that architecture, with its scientific lines, order, regularity, and symmetry, is in its proper place and co-ordinates natural objects themselves architectonically. The art of the Mongols on the other side of the great wall, in Tibet, the paradise of the Persians, already adapt themselves more closely to this type. They are no parks in the English sense, but halls with flowers, springs, courts, and palaces, which have in the form of a retreat in Nature been arranged on a splendid, grandiose, and extravagant scale for the needs of mankind and their convenience. But we find the architectural principle most thoroughly carried out in the French art of gardening, which, as a rule, borders upon great palaces, plants trees in the strictest conformity of line in long avenues, prunes them, builds up straight walls from trimmed fences, and in this way converts Nature herself into a broad dwelling beneath the open sky.
[Footnote 34: Simply as a physical object.]
[Footnote 35: That of symbolic architecture.]
[Footnote 36: _Als Momente eines Subjektes._ That is as the constituent parts of the mind of one individual.]
[Footnote 40: As in obelisks, Memnons, etc.]
[Footnote 43: Symb. (2nd ed.), p. 469. The solar city of Heliopolis.]
[Footnote 44: XXXVI, 14, and XXXVII, 8.]
[Footnote 46: "History of Architecture," vol. I, p. 69.]
[Footnote 47: _Wandungen._ I presume this refers to every kind of subdivision no less than boundary walls.]
[Footnote 48: _Pracktgewänden._ Presumably this refers to the isolated structures in which the columns are built--having flat surfaces like walls.]
[Footnote 49: _Balken._ The word would suggest perhaps that Hegel means here beams of any kind.]
[Footnote 51: Her. II, _c._ 108.]
[Footnote 52: Herodotus dwells on this in the above passage.]
[Footnote 54: Commentators of Herodotus point out that we have no direct evidence here of their number, which, comparing this with Strabo's account, is doubtful, and still more so the number of the chambers (οἱκήματα). Strabo says there were twenty-seven courts. The connection between the halls was not an architectural one but by means of the chambers and colonnades (παστάδες). See Blakesley's notes, vol.
I, pp. 279-80. Neither from Herodotus nor Hegel is it very easy to form a clear notion of the building.]
[Footnote 55: "History of Ancient Building," vol. I, p. 75.]
[Footnote 56: XXXVI, 19.]
[Footnote 57: _Ein Individuelles._ Lit., An individual entity.]
[Footnote 58: The relative pronoun refers to the separation of both aspects.]
[Footnote 60: Her. II, _c._ 125.]
[Footnote 62: Symbolical significance.]
[Footnote 64: Hegel uses the coined word _osirirt_ I presume in this sense.]
[Footnote 65: _Abstraction._ Abstract in the sense of possessing no ideal complexity.]
[Footnote 66: _Verständig._ Comes under the categories of the Understanding.]
[Footnote 67: Lit., "Find the element that is congenial."]
[Footnote 68: That is, the principle of geometrical design and that of organic structure.]
[Footnote 69: That is the beauty and the ulterior aim of utility.]
[Footnote 70: _Verständig._ See note above.]
[Footnote 71: The sphere of mechanical gravity.]
[Footnote 72: I presume _Aufwande_ means expense here; it would be more reasonable perhaps to say "waste of room," columns being only too often so much more expensive for their size.]
[Footnote 73: That is, the free treatment of line under scientific forms of abstraction rather than limited to specific modes of organic form in Nature.]
[Footnote 74: _Der Verständigen Gesetzmässigkeit._ The principle of scientific architecture.]
[Footnote 75: Immediate imitation, that is.]
[Footnote 76: Of classical art.]
[Footnote 78: That is, apart from the classical type.]
[Footnote 79: That is, the scientific reason of abstract principle or rule.]
[Footnote 80: _Weil beim Oblongum in der Gleichheit und Ungleichheit ist._ That is, more pleasure is derived from contrast than mere similarity. He then qualifies or explains the general principle.]
[Footnote 81: _Eurhythmie_, that is, eurhythmy or a rhythmic movement between the several parts.]
[Footnote 82: I presume this is the meaning of _die Theorie_ here.
That is the purposeful motive of the architectural skeleton of the fabric--what explains it rationally.]
[Footnote 83: _Schiebens._ It is possible that Hegel uses the word in its primary sense of "shifting."]
[Footnote 84: The idea is slightly confused in the course of the sentence. It is not the necessity (_des Bedürfnisses_) to build a stable house which has to be held in position, etc., but the structure which that necessity forces men to construct in a certain way.]
[Footnote 85: _Ihre eigenen Momente._ "Its unique traits" is possibly adequate here.]
[Footnote 86: Hegel probably has in his mind when using the expression _verständig bestimmte_ the close analogy between the self-exclusive concreteness of reason and the completeness of the circular figure.]
[Footnote 87: It is not quite clear what Hegel means by the _Köpfen der Deckenbalken._ The technical word that corresponds to _Deckenbalken_ is "joists"; here, according to the words that follow, it would appear to mean either the last horizontal line of the architrave or the entire growth of the triglyph. As he uses the word _Zwischenraümen_ after we appear to be driven on the latter alternative. The frieze, of course, was the entire space between cornice and architrave, including both triglyphs and metopes.]
[Footnote 88: Called _femora._ They were divided by two gutters or drills. The triglyph slightly projected and united perpendicularly cornice and architrave.]
[Footnote 89: _Die Baukunst nach den Grunds. der Alten_, Berlin, 1808, S. III.]
[Footnote 90: He means that the distinct functions are not assigned to those features of the building to which they are naturally or most essentially related.]
[Footnote 92: He refers to the columns placed round.]
[Footnote 94: By _sebstständig_ Hegel means apparently that there must be nothing in their external form that would divert attention from their essential character.]
[Footnote 95: _Auf dem Unterbau._ I presume this means generally that portion beneath the ground.]
[Footnote 96: I presume what is meant is that in one case the drills or grooves are hollowed in round shape and towards the base in square shape.]
[Footnote 97: What is precisely meant by the expression _durch prismatische Einschnitte_ I frankly do not know. The expression _Balken_ is evidently used to mark the association between the slabs of stone and beams or rafters.]
[Footnote 98: That is, the spaces between the lower part of the cornice and the uppermost slab of the entablature.]
[Footnote 99: The _coussinet_ is that part of the Ionic capital between the abacus and quarter round, which serves to form the volute. There are four volutes or spiral scrolls in the Ionic capital.]
[Footnote 100: The _mutule_ is the projecting block worked under the corona of the Doric cornice.]
[Footnote 102: This must, I think, refer to the main moulding of the architrave immediately resting on the column.]
[Footnote 103: Seneca, Ep. 90.]
[Footnote 104: Lit., "Is raised to infinitude."]
[Footnote 105: As it is, for example, by Greek capitals.]
[Footnote 106: Lit., "In its penetration into the most spiritual (_innerste_, ideal) particularity."]
[Footnote 107: _Sich verselbstständigen._ Hegel means that the main purpose of the exterior is expressed on the face of it.]
[Footnote 108: I presume the word _Durchbrechen_ is here used in its specific architectural sense.]
[Footnote 110: _Keine in sich seyende Seele._ I presume Hegel means that being an artificial fragment of Nature's landscape it lacks the infinite horizon and the living relation to the whole.]
SUBSECTION II SCULPTURE INTRODUCTION Over against the inorganic nature of Spirit, in the form we find given it by art in architecture, Spirit opposes itself directly in the sense that the work of art receives and displays spirituality as its actual content. The necessity of this advance we have already adverted to. It underlies the notion of Mind, which differentiates itself under the twofold aspect of subjective self-substantive[111] existence and pure objectivity. In this latter form of externality the ideal substance, it is true, makes its appearance by virtue of the architectonic treatment; such, however, does not amount to a complete transfusion of the objective material, or a conversion of it into an entirely adequate expression of Spirit (Mind), such as suffers it, and only it, to appear. Consequently art withdraws itself from the inorganic realm, which architecture, under its yoke of the laws of gravity, has striven to bring nearer as a means of Spirit's expression, to that of the Ideal, which forthwith then independently asserts itself in its more lofty truth without this intermingling with what is inorganic. It is during this, return passage of Spirit to its own native realm[112] from out of the world of masses and material substance that we come across _sculpture._ The first stage, however, in this new sphere is, as yet, no withdrawal of mind into the completely _ideal_ world of subjective consciousness[113], so that the representation of what is of Spirit would require what is itself a purely ideal mode of expression.
Rather Spirit grasps itself, in the first instance, only in so far as it is still expressed in _bodily_ shape, and therein possesses its homogeneous and determinate existence. The art which accepts for its content this attitude to the possessions of Spirit will consequently have, as its due function, to clothe spiritual individuality as a manifestation under _material_ conditions, and we may add, in what is actually material to the senses. For discourse and speech are also indications[114] which Spirit assumes under the form of externality, but they belong to a mode of objectivity, which, instead of possessing the attributes we attach to matter in its immediate and concrete sense, is merely as tone, motion, the undulation of an entire body and the rarified element, the atmosphere, a communication of such Spirit. What I call immediate corporeality, on the contrary, is the spatial mode of material substance such as stone, wood, metal, or clay, wholly spatial in all three dimensions. The form, however, which is adequate to Spirit is, as we have already seen, the unique bodily form which belongs to it; and it is through this that sculpture makes what is of Spirit actual in a whole which is subject to the spatial condition.
From this point of view sculpture stands on the same plane as _architecture_[115] to the extent, namely, that it gives form to the sensuous material as such, or what is material according its _spatial_ condition as matter. It is, however, to a like extent distinguishable from architecture by virtue of the fact that it does not work up the inorganic substance, as the opposite of Spirit, into an environment created by Spirit and endowed with its purpose in forms to which a purpose is attached which is exterior to it; rather it sets before us spirituality itself in the bodily shape which, from the standpoint of the notion, is adequate to Spirit and its individuality. In other words its efficient function and independent self-subsistency brings indivisibly before our sight both aspects, body and spirit, as one whole. The configuration of sculpture, therefore, breaks away from the specific function of architecture, which is to serve Spirit merely as an external Nature and environment, and assumes a really independent position. Despite, however, this separation the image of sculpture remains in essential relation to its environment. A statue or group, and yet more a relief, cannot be made without considering the place in which such a work of art is to be situated. One ought not first to complete a work of sculpture and then consider where it is likely to be put, but it should in the very conception of it be associated with a definite exterior world, and its spatial form and local position. In this respect sculpture retains a specific relation to the architectural aspect of space. For the primary object of statues is that of being temple images and being set up in the shrine of the sanctuary, just as in Christian churches painting supplies images for the altar, and Gothic architecture also attests a similar connection between works of sculpture and their local position. Temples and churches, however, are not the only place for statues, groups of statuary and reliefs. In a similar way halls, staircases, gardens, public squares, doors, single columns and arches of triumph receive an animation from the forms of sculpture; and every statue, even though placed in dissociation from such a wider environment, requires a pedestal of its own to mark its local position and base. And here we must conclude what we have to say as to the association of sculpture with or distinction from architecture.
If we further compare sculpture with the other arts we shall find that it is more especially _poetry_ and _painting_ which will engage our attention. Small statues no less than groups present to us the spiritual form in complete bodily shape, man, in short, as he exists.
Sculpture therefore appears to possess the truest means of representing what is spiritual, whereas both painting and poetry have the contrary appearance of being more remote from Nature for the reason that painting makes use of the mere surface instead of the sensuous totality of the spatial condition, which a human form and all other natural things actually assume; speech, too, to a still less degree, expresses the reality of body, being merely able to transmit ideas of the same by means of tone.
However, the truth of the matter is precisely the reverse of this. For although the image of sculpture appears no doubt to possess from the start the natural form as it stands, it is just this externality of body and nature reproduced in gross material which is not the nature of Spirit as such. If we regard the essential character of it its peculiar existence is that expressed by means of speech, acts, and affairs which develop its ideal or soul-life, and disclose its true existence.
In this respect sculpture has to yield the place of honour and pre-eminently when contrasted with _poetry._ No doubt clarity of outline[116] is superior in the plastic arts, in which the bodily presence is placed before our sight, but poetry too can describe the exterior figure of a man, such as his hair, forehead, cheeks, size, dress, pose and so forth, though of course not with the precision and sufficiency of sculpture. What it loses, however, in this respect is made up by the imagination, which, moreover, does not require for the mere conception of an object such a fixed and definite outline, and before everything else brings before us man in his _action_, with all his motives, developments of fortune and circumstance, with all his emotions, discourses, everything that discovers the soul-life or throws light on external incidents. This sculpture is either wholly unable to do, or only in a very incomplete way for the reason that it neither can present to us the individual soul[117] in its particular inward life and passion, nor as poetry a sequence of expressed results, but only offer us the general characteristics of individuality, so far as the body expresses such, and whatever happens together in one particular moment of time, and this too in a state of repose without the progressive action of real life. In these respects, too, it is inferior to painting. For the expression of spiritual life receives in painting an emphatically more defined accuracy and vitality by means of the colour given to the human face and its light and shadow, not merely in the sense in which it satisfies generally the material substance of nature, but pre-eminently in the way it expresses physiognomy and the phenomena of emotion. It is possible, therefore, at first to entertain the view that sculpture requires merely for its greater perfection to associate the further advantages of painting with that itself possesses in the spatial totality, and to regard it as a mere act of caprice that it has made up its mind to dispense with the palette of the painter, or, as indicating a poverty and incapacity of its execution, that it entirely restricts its effort to one aspect of reality, namely, that of the material form, and withdraws its attention from that, much as the silhouette and the engraving may be set down as mere makeshifts[118]. We are, however, not warranted in thus applying such a term as "caprice" to genuine art. The form such as it is in the object of sculpture, remains in fact merely an _abstract_ aspect of the concrete human bodily presence. Its presentments receive no variety from particularized colours and movements. This is, however, no defect due to accident, but a limitation of material and manner of presentment itself pre-supposed in the notion of art. For Art is a product of mind, and we may add of the more exalted and thoughtful mind. A work of this order claims as its object a content of this defined character, and consequently implies a mode of artistic realization which excludes other aspects. We have here a process similar to that observed in the different sciences where we find, for example, geometry exclusively adopts space as its object, jurisprudence law, philosophy the explication of the eternal Idea and its determinate existence and self-identity in the facts of experience, wherein each of the above mentioned sciences develops these objects by differentiation out of their differences, without one of them actually presenting to consciousness in its completeness that which we are accustomed in ordinary modes of thought to call concrete real existence.
Art then, as a creative informing activity of spiritual origination, proceeds step by step, and separates that which in the notion, in the nature of the thing, albeit not in its determinate existence, is separated. It retains such stages consequently in their self-exclusive finity, in order to elaborate them according to their distinct peculiarities. And what contributes to this notional distinction and exclusive separation in the spatial material substance, which constitutes the element of the plastic art is corporeality in its aspect of spatial totality and its abstract configuration, in other words bodily form simply, and the more detailed particularization of the same relatively to the variety of its _colorization._ We find at this first stage the art of sculpture so placed relatively to the human form, which it treats as a stereo-metric body, merely, that is, according to form which it possesses in the three spatial dimensions.
The work of art, whose process is in and through the sensuous material, must no doubt have an existence for another[119], with which forthwith the particularization commences. The primary art, however, which is concerned with the human bodily form as an expression of spiritual life, only proceeds so far in this "being for another" to the point of its first, or rather the still universal mode of Nature's own existence, that is to the point of mere visibility and existence in light generally, without uniting with the same in its presentment the relation of the latter to darkness, in which that which is visible is particularized in its own medium[120] and becomes colour. And the art occupying such a position is that of sculpture. For plastic art, which is unable as poetry to bring together the totality of the phenomenon in one equal element or world of idea, inevitably breaks up this totality[121].
For this reason we get on the one hand _objectivity_, which in so far as it is not the unique configuration of spirit, stands over against it as inorganic Nature. It is this relation of bare objectivity which converts architecture into a mere suggestive symbol, which does not possess its spiritual significance in itself. The point of extreme contrast to objectivity as such is _subjectivity_, that is the soul[122], emotional life in the entire range of all its particular movements, moods, passions, exterior and interior agitations and actions. Between these two we are confronted with the spiritual individuality which no doubt has a definite structure, but which is not as yet deepened to the extent of the essential ideality of the individual soul; in which, instead of the full personal singularity, the substantive universality of Spirit and its objects and characteristic traits is the prevailing factor. In its generality it is not as yet absolutely withdrawn into its own exclusive domain to the point of purely spiritual unity; rather it comes before us as this midway point[123] still hailing from the objective side, that is the side of inorganic Nature, and consequently even carries as part of itself corporeality, as the particular form of existence appropriate to spirit, in the body that not merely is its own, but also discloses it. In this mode of externality, which no longer remains something simply opposed to what is ideal, spiritual individuality has now to be displayed, not, however, as living form, that is to say as corporeality continuously referred back to the point of unity implied in the singularity of spiritual life, but rather as form set forth and manifested in its external guise, into the mould of which Spirit has no doubt been poured, without, however, being from this outward bond of association, made visible in the sense that it is so when it withdraws into its own essential and ideal domain[124].
From the above observations the two points to which we have already drawn attention become more clear, namely, first, that sculpture makes use of the human form directly, which is the actual existence of spiritual life, instead of accepting a mode of expression which is symbolical with a view to promoting the spiritual import of modes of appearance that are merely _suggestive._ At the same time, secondly, it is content, as the manifestation of that mode of subjectivity which does not express emotion and the soul essentially unparticularized[125], with _form_ and _nothing more_, where the focus of subjectivity is dissipated[126]. This is also the reason why sculpture does not on the one hand present Spirit in action, in a series of movements, which both possess and testify to one aim nor in undertakings or exploits, wherein a certain character is made visible, but rather as persisting throughout in one objective way, and for this reason preeminently in the repose of form, the movement and grouping of which is merely a first and obvious commencement of action, not, however, in any sense a _complete_ presentment of the subjective life as agitated by all the conflicts that assail it whether within or without, or as its development is variously affected in contact with the external world. Consequently what we also miss in the figures of sculpture is precisely this revealed focus of the subjective life, the concentrated expression of soul as _soul_, namely, the glance of the eye, a fact upon which we shall have something further to say later.
We miss it because such a figure presents to our sight Spirit embedded in corporeality, and Spirit, too, which has to show itself visible in the entire form. From another point of view an individuality, which is not as yet essentially separated into its component parts, that is, the object of sculpture, does not as yet require the painter's charm of colour as means to display it, a charm which is as capable of making visible, through the fine gradations and variety of its nuances, the entire wealth of particular traits of character, the absolute manifestation of spiritual presence, its ideal significance[127], as by means of the vital flash of the eye it will concentrate in a point all the vigour of the soul. Sculpture must not, in other words, accept a material which is not rendered necessary by its fundamental point of view. It only makes use of the spatial qualities of the human figure, not the colouring which depicts it. The figure of sculpture is in general of one colour, hewn from white not vari-coloured marble. And in the same way metals are used as the material of sculpture, this primitive substance, self-identical, essentially undifferentiated, a light in fluxion, if we may so express it, without the contrast and harmony of different colours[128]. The Greeks are indebted to their unrivalled artistic insight[129] for having grasped and firmly retained this point of view. No doubt we find, too, in Greek sculpture, to which we must for the main part confine ourselves, examples of coloured statuary; we must, however, take care in this respect to distinguish both the beginning and end of this art from that which is created at its culminating point.
In the same way we must discount that which is admitted by art in deference to traditional religion. We have already found it to be true in the classical type of art that it does not forthwith and immediately set forth the Ideal, in which its function is to discover its fundamental lines of definition, but in the first instance removes much that is inconsonant with it and foreign; it is the same case precisely with sculpture. It is forced to pass through many preliminary stages before it arrives at its perfection; and this initial process differs very considerably from its supreme attainment. The most ancient works of sculpture are of painted wood, as, for example, Egyptian idols; we find similar productions among the Greeks. We must, however, exclude such examples from genuine sculpture when the main point is to establish its fundamental notion. We are therefore in no way concerned to deny that there are many examples at hand of painted statues. It is, however, also a fact that the purer art-taste became, the more strongly "sculpture withdrew itself from a brilliancy of colour that was not really congenial, and with wise deliberation utilized, on the contrary, light and shadow in order to secure for the beholder's eye a greater softness, repose, clarity, and agreeableness[130]." As against the uniform colour of the bare marble we may no doubt not