The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4)

and it flees from the same once more into itself. It is this recoil which presents to us the fundamental type of the _romantic_ type of art. Here we find, by reason of the free spirituality which pervades the content, such content makes a more ideal demand upon expression than the mere representation through an external or physical medium is able to supply; the form on its external side sinks therefore to a relation of _indifference_; and in the romantic form of art we consequently meet with a separation between content and form as we previously found it in the symbolic form, with this difference that it is now due to the subordination of matter to spiritual expression rather than the predominance of externality over ideal significance. It is in this way that symbolic art _seeks_ after that perfected unity of ideal significance and external form, which classical art in its representation of substantive individuality succeeds in _communicating_ to sensuous perception, and which romantic art _passes over and beyond_ through its overwhelming insistence on the claims of Spirit. [Footnote 1: _Art._ Hegel takes the ordinary scientific sense to describe the meaning. The word "type" would more truly express it.] [Footnote 2: _Für sich selber ist._ That is, having arrived at one form of determination, returns upon itself and throws off another form, just as the plant germ after arriving at the leaf expands into the bud, and so on.] [Footnote 3: That is, with no reference to intelligent principle.] [Footnote 4: _Allgemeiner Gedanken._ Hegel means the bare generalizations or abstract conceptions of thought.] SUBSECTION I THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART INTRODUCTION OF THE SYMBOL GENERALLY Symbol, in the signification we here attach to the word, is not merely the beginning of art from the point of view of its notional development, but marks also its first appearance in history.…