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Title: The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4)

Author: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Translator: Francis Plumptre Beresford Osmaston

Release date: September 25, 2017 [eBook #55623]
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART, VOLUME 3 (OF 4) ***

THE PHILOSOPHY OF

FINE ART

BY

G. W. F. HEGEL

TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES, BY

F. P. B. OSMASTON, B.A.

AUTHOR OF "THE ART AND GENIUS OF TINTORET," "AN ESSAY
ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY," AND OTHER WORKS

VOL. III

LONDON

G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.

1920





CONTENTS OF VOL. III


 THIRD PART

 THE SYSTEM OF THE PARTICULAR ARTS

 INTRODUCTION

 [Summary. Nature of the relation between the system of Art-types,
 or the collective totality of ideal world-presentments, and their
 objective realization in independent works of art. Nature of the
 process in the evolution of the specific arts themselves, and of the
 aspects identical in all. The origins of art. Grace, Charm, and severe
 or agreeable Style]

 DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT

 [The principle of differentiation as determined by the sensuous aspect
 of the subject-matter, and the relation thereto of the human senses
 of Sight, Hearing, and intellectual Conception. Insufficiency of such
 a principle of classification. Alternative principle discussed and
 illustrated of more concrete nature, in which the evolution of truth
 as the reality of the Idea itself is presented]

 SUBSECTION I

 ARCHITECTURE

 INTRODUCTION

 [Of the beginnings of human art, and that of building in particular.
 Of the nature of the subordinate classification of architecture viewed
 as symbolic, classical and romantic]

 Division of Subject




 CHAPTER I

 INDEPENDENT AND SYMBOLIC ARCHITECTURE



 Introduction and Subdivision

 1. Works of architecture erected in order to unite peoples

 2. Works of architecture intermediate between the arts of building and
 sculpture

 (_a_) The influence of the generative activity of Nature on the form
 of buildings

 (_b_) Further modification of similar conceptions in the obelisks of
 Egypt and other examples

 (_c_) Temple enclosures, labyrinths, etc.

 3. The transition from self-substantive architecture to the classical
 type

 (_a_) The nature of subterranean dwellings

 (_b_) Construction raised to house the dead in Egypt and elsewhere.
 The Pyramids

 (_c_) Buildings that directly subserve a purpose as the point
 of transition to the classical type. The ordinary dwelling. The
 environment of the sculptured image. The adoption of the principle of
 expediency. The abstraction of parts of a building from the organic
 form, _e.g._, in the column

 CHAPTER II

 CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE

 Introduction and Subdivision

 1. The general character of classical architecture

 (_a_) Serviceableness to a definite end

 (_b_) The nature of the fitness or power of adaptation of such a
 structure to such an end

 (_c_) The relatively greater artistic freedom of such architecture.
 Architecture as frozen music. The dwelling-house

 2. The fundamental determinants of architectural forms in their
 separation

 (_a_) Buildings of wood and stone. The question of their historical
 priority

 (_b_) The specific forms of the parts of a temple-dwelling.

 [(_α_) Features of support. The column

 (_β_) The thing supported. The entablature, in its architecture,
 cornice, etc.

 (_γ_) That which encloses. The walls and partitions]

 (_c_) The classical temple in its entirety

 [(_α_) The horizontal rather than soaring-up character

 (_β_) The simplicity and proportion

 (_γ_) The nature of its elaboration]

 3. The different constructive types of classical architecture

 (_a_) The Doric, Ionian, and Corinthian types, compared

 and contrasted

 (_b_) The Roman type of building. The vault

 (_c_) General character of Roman architecture

 CHAPTER III

 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE

 1. General Architecture

 2. Particular architectural modes of configuration

 (_a_) As the basic form we have the wholly shut away dwelling-house

 [(_α_) Relation of this form to the ideal character of the Christian
 religion

 (_β_) Exclusion of light and access to mundane life

 (_γ_) The aspect of soaring in tower and pinnacle]

 (_b_) The form of the exterior and interior

 [(_α_) The figure of the square and rectangular roofing not
 appropriate. Parallel between the vaulting of a Gothic church and a
 roofing of forest trees. Distinction between piers and columns. The
 pointed arch. Distinction between choir, transept, nave, and aisles.
 The baptismal font and entrance

 (_β_) In contrast to the Greek temple decoration and and general
 coordination of parts determined from within outwards. The form of
 Cross. The doors. Flying buttresses, pinnacles, and towers]

 (_c_) The mode of decoration

 [(_α_) Importance of ornament to Gothic architecture

 (_β_) Lightness and delicacy a prevailing feature, especially on the
 outside

 (_γ_) Display of romantic imagination therein]

 3. Different types of building in romantic architecture

 (_a_) The pre-Gothic architecture distinct from it. The basilica

 (_b_) Genuine Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century

 (_c_) Secular architecture of the Middle Ages. The art of
 garden-making


 SUBSECTION II

 SCULPTURE

 INTRODUCTION

 [Sculpture makes a direct use of the human form instead of accepting a
 symbolical mode of expression merely suggestive of spiritual import.
 Does not primarily express emotion or spiritual life in action or the
 focus of soul-life. Absence of colour]

 Division of subject

 CHAPTER I

 THE PRINCIPLE OF GENUINE SCULPTURE

 1. The essential content of sculpture

 [(_a_) The twofold aspect of subjectivity. The province of subjective
 life as such to be excluded from sculpture. The Divine presented in
 its infinite repose and sublimity

 (_b_) Presents a spiritual content only as explicit in bodily shape]


 2. The beautiful form of sculpture

 (_a_) The exclusion of the particularity of the appearance. How far
 relative

 (_b_) The exclusion of incidental facial expression

 (_c_) Substantive individuality

 3. Sculpture as the art of the classical Ideal

 CHAPTER II

 THE IDEAL OF SCULPTURE

 Introduction and division of subject

 1. The general character of the ideal form of sculpture

 (_a_) The free product of the genius of the artist. General content
 borrowed from mythology, etc.

 (_b_) The animation which results from the plastic perfection of the
 integrated coalescence of the whole throughout its definition and
 relief

 (_c_) No mere imitation of Nature. The external shape must be suffused
 with ideal content]

 2. The particular aspects of the ideal form of sculpture as such

 (_a_) The Greek profile. Contrast of the human mouth with that
 of animals. The projection of the forehead. Position of nose.
 Consideration of the human eye and ear. Beauty of the human mouth.
 Treatment of the chin in sculpture, also the hair

 (_b_) Position of other parts of the human body and the motion thereof


 [(_α_) The nature of the relation under which the limbs are associated
 in their contribution to spiritual ideality. The upright position

 (_β_) The motion and repose of the same in their freedom and beauty

 (_γ_) The type of position and motion adapted to a situation
 (_habitus_) or bodily habit under which the Ideal is expressed]

 (_c_) Drapery

 [(_α_) Ethical origin and artistic justification of, in sculpture

 (_β_) Treatment of it by Greek sculpture

 (_γ_) Artistic principle as determining the right emphasis on ideal
 significance. Contrast between antique and modern sculpture in the use
 of it]

 3. The individuality of the ideal figures of Sculpture

 (_a_) Incidental attributes and style of drapery, armour, etc.,
 treated by sculpture. Distinguishing symbolic accessories of Greek
 gods

 (_b_) Distinctions of age and sex in gods, heroes, human figures, and
 animals

 (_c_) Representation of particular gods

 CHAPTER III

 THE VARIOUS KINDS OF REPRESENTATION, MATERIAL, AND THE HISTORICAL
 STAGES OF THE EVOLUTION OF SCULPTURE

 Introduction and division of subject

 1. Modes of Representation

 (_a_) The single statue

 (_b_) The group. Tranquil juxtaposition. Conflicting actions. Niobe.
 Lacoon

 (_c_) The relief

 2. The material of sculpture

 (_a_) Wood

 (_b_) Ivory, gold, bronze, and marble

 (_c_) Precious stones and glass

 3. The historical evolution of sculpture

 (_a_) Egyptian sculpture. Deficiency of ideal spontaneity. Position of
 hands and arms. Position of eyes

 (_b_) Sculpture of the Greeks and Romans

 (_c_) Christian sculpture

 SUBSECTION III

 THE ROMANTIC ARTS

 INTRODUCTION

 [The principle of subjectivity as such. How it is accepted as the
 essential principle by romantic art. The contrast presented by
 romantic and classical art in the changed point of view. The effect
 of such a change on both the subjective side of soul-life and the
 external aspect of objective presentment. The process of the gradual
 idealization of the external medium of art itself as illustrated by
 the particular romantic arts and the necessity thereof]

 CHAPTER I

 THE ART OF PAINTING

 Introduction and division of subject

 I. General character of Painting

 (_a_) Fundamental definition of the art. Combines the subject-matter
 of architecture and sculpture. More popular than sculpture

 [(_α_) Individuality must not be suffered to pass wholly into the
 universality of its substance. Introduction of accidental features as
 in Nature

 (_β_) Greatly extended field of subject-matter. The entire world
 of the religious idea, history, Nature, all that concerns humanity
 included

 (_γ_) A revelation further of the objective existence of soul-life.
 Vitality of artist imported into his presentation of natural objects]


 (_b_) The sensuous medium of Painting

 [(_α_) Compresses the three dimensions of Space into two. Its greater
 abstraction, as compared with sculpture, implies an advance ideally.
 Its object is semblance merely, its interest that of contemplation.
 The nature of its locale

 (_β_) Its higher power of differentiation. Light its medium. This
 implies, even in Nature, a movement towards ideality. The appearance
 of light and shadow in painting intentional. Form is the creation of
 light and shadow simply. This fact supplies rationale of the removal
 of one dimension from spatial condition

 (_γ_) This medium enables the art to elaborate the entire extent of
 the phenomenal world]

 (_c_) The principle of the artistic mode of treatment

 [Two opposed directions in painting, one the expression of spiritual
 significance by interfusion with or abstraction from objective
 phenomena, the other the reproduction of every kind of detail as not
 alien to its fundamental principle. Illustrations of the two methods
 and their relative opposition, or reconciliation]

 2. Particular modes in the definition of Painting

 (_a_) The romantic content

 [(_α_) The Ideal which consists in the reconciliation of the soul with
 God as revealed in His human passage through suffering. The religious
 content. The Love of religion

 (_αα_) The representation of God the Father. Generally beyond the
 scope of painting. The famous picture of Van Eyck at Ghent

 (_ββ_) Christ the more essential object. Modes of depicting him in his
 absolute Godhead or his humanity. Scenes of Childhood and Passion most
 fitted to express religious aspect. Love of the Virgin Mary. Contrast
 with Niobe

 (_γγ_) The ideas of devotion, repentance, and conversion as such
 affect humanity in general when included in the religious sphere. The
 pictorial treatment of martyrdom

 (_β_) The pictorial treatment of landscape

 (_γγ_) The pictorial treatment of objects in natural or secular
 associations. The vitality and delight of independent human existence.
 Art secures the stability of evanescent phenomena. The influence of
 artistic personality on the interest]

 (_b_) The more detailed definition of the material of pictorial
 representation

 [(_α_) Linear perspective

 (_β_) Accuracy of drawing of form. The plastic aspect of a pictorial
 work

 (_γ_) The significance of colour. Modelling. Of gradations of colour
 and its symbolism. Of various schemes of colour. Colour harmony.
 The painting of the human flesh. The mystery of colour The creative
 impulse of the artist]

 (_c_) Artistic conception, composition, and characterization

 [Painting can only embody one moment of time. Concentration of
 interest. The law of intelligibility. Religious subjects, their
 advantage in this respect. Historical scenes as appropriate
 to particular buildings. Unity of entire effect. Raphael's
 Transfiguration. Of the treatment of landscape as subordinate.
 The grouping of figures. The form of the pyramid. Comparison of
 the characteristic in painting and sculpture. The treatment of
 love's expression in religious subjects. The gradual elaboration of
 the portrait. The situation which is itself a critical moment in
 characterization]

 3. The historical development of Painting

 (_a_) Byzantine painting

 (_b_) Italian painting. General review of its spirit in religious and
 romantic subject-matter

 [(_α_) Characteristic features of early type: austerity, solemnity,
 and religious elevation

 (_β_) The free acceptance of all that is human and individual. The
 influence of Giotto. Later schools mark a still further advance in
 naturalism. Masaccio and Fra Angelico. The pictorial representation of
 secular subjects

 (_γ_) Further advance in power of emotional expression. Leonardo da
 Vinci, Perugino, Raphael, and Correggio.]

 (_c_) The Flemish, Dutch, and German schools

 [(_α_) The brothers Van Eyck. Innocence, naïveté, and piety of early
 Flemish School. Contrast with Italian masters

 (_β_) The emphasis by North German painting on ugliness and brutality


 (_γ_) Dutch painting. Historical conditions of its appearance. General
 characteristics of Dutch art]


 CHAPTER II

 MUSIC

 INTRODUCTION

 [Summary. The principle of subjectivity, as realized in painting,
 contrasted with its complete emancipation in the art of music.
 Annihilation of spatial objectivity. Motion with its resultant effect
 in musical tone. Analysis of the twofold negation of externality in
 which the fundamental principle of musical tone consists. The inner
 soul-life exclusively the subject-matter of music. Addressed also in
 its effect to such]

 Division of subject

 1. The General Character of Music

 (_a_) Comparison of music with the plastic arts and poetry

 [(_α_) Both affiliated to and strongly contrasted with architecture.
 It resembles architecture in the nature of the configuration of its
 content as based on rigorously rational principles directed by human
 invention. It supplies the architectonic of the extreme of ideality
 as architecture supplies that of the external material of sense. The
 quantitative or measure relation is the basis of both

 (_β_) Music further removed from sculpture than painting. This is
 not merely due to the greater ideality of latter, but also to its
 treatment of its medium. The unity realized by a musical composition
 of a different kind to that realized by the plastic arts. In the
 former case subject to the condition of a time-series

 (_γ_) Most nearly related to poetry. Employ the same medium of tone.
 Poetry possible without speech-utterance. Ideal objectivity of poetry
 as contrasted with the independence of musical tone as the sensuous
 medium of music. Music as an accompaniment of the voice]

 (_b_) Musical grasp and expression of Content

 [(_α_) Primarily must not minister to sense-perception. Must
 make soul-life intelligible to soul. This abstract inwardness
 differentiated in human feeling, of every description

 (_β_) Natural interjections not music. They are the point of
 departure. To music belongs intelligible structure, a totality of
 differences capable of union and disunion in concords, discords,
 oppositions and transitions. The nature of its relation to positive
 ideas]

 (_c_) Effect of music

 [(_α_) The evanescent character of the objectivity of music. It
 seizes on conscious life where it is not confronted with an object.
 Its effect due to an elementary force. Appeal to man as a particular
 person. The soul made aware of its association with Time. Analysis of
 the notion of Time

 (_β_) Must also possess a content. Orpheus. Incentive to martial
 ardour and enthusiasm

 (_γ_) Necessity of repeated reproduction. Personal relation of the
 executive artist to the same. Excess of this influence]

 2. The particular definition of the means of expression in music

 (_a_) Time-measure, beat, and rhythm

 [The relation of Time to the fundamental principle of subjective
 life. Time-measure prevents the series being indefinite and devoid of
 content, and further regulates by intelligible division the nature of
 its advance. Time-beat possesses the same function as the principle
 of symmetry in architecture. Coordinates a fortuitous variety.
 Distinct kinds of time-measure. Rhythm gives vital significance to the
 time-measure and beat. The accent. The rhythm of melody. The analogous
 example of verse. Handelian music]

 (_b_) Harmony

 [(_α_) Difference of sound through different instruments of music.
 Artificially made. Instruments which possess an oscillating column
 of air, or a stretched string of gut or metal which vibrates. The
 kettledrum and harmonica. The human voice. Can be employed in
 separation or combination

 (_β_)Tone in its own essential definition. The constitution of harmony
 as such. The theory of intervals. The scales and keys. Numerical
 relations of tones and their pitch. Accordant and discordant tones.
 The octave and other intervals

 (_γ_) The system of chords. The triad. Dissonant chords of the seventh
 and ninth. The resolution of a dissonance. Transitions and modulations
 of harmony]

 (_c_) Melody

 [(_α_) The more poetic aspect of music. Inseparable from the
 theoretical means which creates it. No real surrender involved in its
 subjection to rules of harmony

 (_β_) Simple melodies. Folk-songs. Part chorales where each note of
 melody represented by a chord. Musical composition as an illustration
 of the conflict between the principles of freedom and necessity

 (_γ_) General character of genuine melody. As such reflects free
 self-consciousness of soul-life]

 3. The relation between means of expression in music and its content


 (_a_) Music as an accompaniment

 [(_α_) The melodic expression of such music. Ought not to fall into
 excess of tumult. Palestrina, Durante, Haydn, Mozart, etc. Beauty of
 Italian music

 (_β_) The differentiation of the mode of musical expression must
 correspond with the nature of a specific content and its situation.
 Such a content supplied by the libretto. Distinction from this of a
 song. The recitative. Defective unity

 (_γ_) The nature of the condition of concrete unity in the libretto
 and declamatory recitative. A good libretto not wholly unimportant.
 Must be stamped with self-consistency. The libretto of Mozart's
 "Magic Flute." Comparison of the sustaining soul of music with the
 fundamental beauty of Raphael's paintings. Different forms of music as
 accompaniment. Church, lyrical, and dramatic music]

 (_b_) Independent music

 (_c_) The artist as Executant

 [(_α_) The ordinary executant who simply executes what lies before
 him. Comparison with the rhapsodist or reciter of Epos. Player must
 lose himself in music and reproduce composer

 (_β_) The virtuoso, who himself creates and makes the music a means of
 personal display. Must not merely show eccentricity, but reveal the
 life of music and the force of a personality]




THIRD PART


THE SYSTEM OF THE PARTICULAR ARTS




THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART


INTRODUCTION


The objects treated by our science in the _first_ part were the general
notion and the reality of beauty in Nature and art, in other words
beauty in its truth, and art in its truth, the Ideal in the as yet
undeveloped unity of its fundamental principles, independent of its
specific content and its distinguishing modes of envisagement.

This essentially genuine[1] unity of the beautiful in art, in the
_second_ place, unfolded itself within its own resources in a totality
of art-forms, whose determinate structure defined at the same time the
content which the art-spirit was impelled to fashion from itself in an
essentially articulate system of manifestations of beauty under which
the Divine and human is envisaged to the world.

What still is absent from both these spheres is the reality that is
present within the elementary substance of the _external_ phenomenon
itself. For although both in our examination of the Ideal as such, and
in that of the specific modes of symbolic, classical, and romantic
art, we throughout referred to the relation or complete mediation
which obtains between the significance conceived as an ideal principle
and its embodiment in the external or phenomenal _materia_, yet
this realization merely retained its validity as that which was
still exclusively the _ideal_ art-activity in the sphere of general
world-impressions[2] of beauty, in and through which it is diffused.
Inasmuch, however, as the fundamental conception of beautiful implies,
that it make itself objective for the immediate vision, that is to
say for the senses and sensuous perception as an external work of
art, so that what is beautiful becomes only then itself through such
a definite form appropriate to itself explicitly united with the
beautiful and the Ideal, we have in the _third_ place to review this
territory of the art-product as actually self-realized in the entirely
sensuous medium. For it is only through this final configuration that
the work of art is truly concrete, an individual entity which is at
once real, self-contained, and singular. The Ideal can only constitute
the _content_ of this third sphere of our aesthetic philosophy for
the reason that it is the idea of the beautiful, in the collective
totality of all its world presentments, which is thus self-realized
in objective form[3]. For this reason the art-product is still, even
up to this point, to be conceived as a totality articulated in
itself, nevertheless as an organism, whose organic parts, which--while
in the second part of our inquiry they were differentiated under a
collective concept of essentially disparate world-aspects--now fall
asunder as isolated members, every one of which becomes independently a
self-subsistent whole, and in this singularity is capable of bringing
into display the totality of the different art-types. Essentially and
in accordance with its notion it is quite true that the collective
result of this new reality of art belongs to _one_ single totality.
Inasmuch, however, as it is a portion of the realm of the sensuous[4]
present, in which the same is made real to itself, the Ideal is now
resolved into its phasal states as a process[5], and confers on them
an independent and self-subsistent stability, albeit they are capable
of coming into juxtaposition, essential relation, and reciprocal
reintegration with one another. And this real world of art is the
system of the _separate_ arts. Just as then the particular types
of art, regarded throughout as totality, expose intrinsically a
process, an evolution, that is, of the symbolical to the classical and
romantic types, we find also, on the one hand, a similar advance in
the particular arts, in so far as it is the very art-types themselves
which receive their determinate existence through these specific arts.
From another point of view, however, the particular arts have also
themselves within them a process, a progression, independently of the
art-types to which they attach an objective reality, a process which in
this its more abstract relation is _common to all._ Every art possesses
its spring-time of perfected elaboration as art, and on the one side or
the other a history that precedes or follows this period of full-bloom.
For the products of the arts collectively are spiritual products,
and consequently are not at once to hand in their own specialized
province respectively, as are the forms of Nature, but are subject to
a beginning, progression, completion, and termination, a growth, a
blooming, and a decay.

These more abstract differences, whose devolution we propose at
the very commencement of our inquiry briefly to indicate, since it
asserts itself equally in all the arts, are identical with that which
it is usual to define under the name of _rigorous_, _ideal_, and
_approved_ style, when indicating the specific styles of art in each
case, which are mainly related to the general mode of embodiment and
representation, partly as considered in its external shape, and its
possession or lack of spontaneity, its simplicity, its surfeit of
detail, briefly in all its various aspects, according to which the
definition of the content emerges in the external appearance; partly
no less in its aspect of the technical elaboration of its sensuous
material, in which the art in question gives determinate existence to
its content.

It is a common assumption that art finds its beginnings in what is
devoid of complexity and is _natural._ In a certain sense, no doubt,
we may accept this as true. In other words what is rude and barbarous
is without question, when contrasted with the genuine spirit of art,
something both nearer to Nature and less complex. What is, however,
natural, vital, and simple in art, regarded as fine art, is something
quite different to this. All beginnings which are merely simple and
natural, in the sense of uncouthness, do not as yet belong to the
province of art and the beautiful at all as, for example, in the case
where children scrawl simple figures, and with a few formless strokes
would indicate thereby a human form, a horse, and so forth. Beauty,
considered as a spiritual product, demands even from the start an
elaborate technique, implies a long series of experiment and practice.
Simplicity, when we refer to it as the simplicity of the beautiful,
its ideal proportions, is rather a result, which only succeeds in
overcoming the variety, medley, confusion, excess and incumbrance of
its matter, and in concealing and effacing its preparatory studies,
after much mediating work, so that at last Beauty, with all its
unfettered spontaneity, appears to us as though liberated in one
cast[6]. What we find here is very analogous to the behaviour of a
man of education, who, in all that he says and does, moves simply,
spontaneously, and with ease, albeit he did not by any means start in
the possession of such simple spontaneity, but rather has only secured
such as the result of a thorough self-training.

For this reason it is no less in accordance with the nature of the fact
than it is with the actual course of history that art in its beginnings
rather presents us the appearance of _artificiality_ and clumsiness,
running largely into incidental detail, and generally overloaded with
the elaboration of drapery and the environment of its subject-matter;
and precisely in the degree that this external material is more compact
and multifarious, to that extent that which is really expressive is
reduced to its baldest terms; in other words what is truly the free and
vital expression of Spirit in its forms and motion is that which is
here least in evidence.

In this respect consequently the primitive and most ancient
art-products in all the particular arts are the vehicle of a content
that is essentially most abstract, such as simple tales in poetry,
theogonies effervescent with abstract thoughts and their incomplete
elaboration, single objects of sacred association in stone and
wood and so forth, and the representation remains unaccommodating,
monotonous or confused, stiff and dry. More especially in plastic
art the facial expression is insipid with a repose which does not so
much express spirituality in its essential penetration as a purely
animal emptiness, or conversely is remorseless and exaggerated in its
emphasis on characteristic traits. In the same way the bodily forms
and their motion are devoid of life, the arms, for example, are glued
to the body, the legs are not divided, or are clumsily moved, or in
angular and constrained modes; and in other respects such figures are
ill-shaped, suffer from narrow compression, or are excessively lank
and extended. On the other hand we find that much more devotion and
industry is spent upon accessories such as drapery, hair, weapons,
and ornaments of a similar nature; the folds of the drapery remain
wooden and independent, without being able to accommodate themselves
to the limbs, just as we may often see for ourselves in images of the
Virgin and saints of early times, where they are in part run together
in monotonous regularity, and in part are continually broken up in
harsh corners, not flowing freely in their lines, but scattered about
with diffuseness over too wide a surface. And in the same way the
first attempts at poetry are full of breaks, devoid of connection,
monotonous, dominated in an abstract way by one idea or emotion, or
elsewhere wild, violent, the particular being obscurely assimilated,
and the whole as yet not bound together in a secure and ideal organic
unity.

It is only, however, after such preparatory work as the above that
the style which is the main subject of our present inquiry commences
with what is truly genuine fine art. In this it is no doubt in the
first instance at the same time still _austere_, but already moderated
with more beauty in its severity. This severe style is the more lofty
abstraction of the beautiful, which comes to a stop with that which
is of real importance, expresses and reproduces the same in its broad
outlines, still disdains all amiability and grace, suffers the main
subject-matter alone to assert itself, and preeminently expends very
little industry and elaboration on what is incidental. And in doing so,
this severe style also still adheres to the imitation of that which
is immediately given to sense. In other words, just as, in regard to
content, it takes its stand, so far as ideas and representation are
concerned, in what is given it, in the tradition, for example, of a
revered religion, so also, to take the opposite point of view, namely,
that of external form, it will merely render assured the fact itself,
and not its own invention. It is, in short, satisfied with the general
broad effect that is educed from the fact, and follows in expression
closely upon the growth and definite existence of this. In the same way
everything that is accidental is held aloof from this type of style, in
order that the caprice and spontaneity of the individual mind[7] may
not appear to be involved in it. The motives are simple, the objects of
representation few[8]; and for this reason no considerable variety in
the detail of configuration, muscles and motion, is apparent.

_Secondly_, the ideal, purely beautiful style hovers between the simply
substantive expression of fact and the fullest exposition of all that
immediately pleases. We may define the character of this style as the
highest degree of vitality compatible with a beautiful and reposeful
greatness, such as we admire in the works of Pheidias or Homer. It is
a living presentment of all traits, shapes, modifications of such,
motions, limbs, in which there is nothing without significance and
expression, but everything is instinct with life and action, and
testifies to the breath, or very pulse of free life itself on the
merest glance at the work of art in question; a vitality, however,
which essentially makes visible one totality, and only one, is the
expression of one content, of one individuality of action.

It is in such a truly vital atmosphere that we find moreover the
breath of grace poured forth over the entire work. Grace is indeed
a concession to the hearer and spectator, which the severe style
despises. At the same time, whenever Charis, that is Grace, is asserted
in the presence of an onlooker, if only as an acknowledgement, a
means of conveying pleasure, yet in the ideal style we find that
such a presence appears entirely divested of any craving to confer
merely pleasure. We may perhaps explain our meaning in more technical
language. The fact or subject-matter is here the substantive in its
concentration and self-absorption. During the process, however, that
it is manifested through the medium of art, and is, so to speak,
concerned to actually exist for others, to pass over, that is, from its
simplicity and essential solidarity to particularization, articulation,
and individualization, we may regard this development to an existent
form for others as at the same time a kind of complaisance on the part
of the predominant matter, in so far, that is, as it does not appear
to require this more concrete mode of existence, and yet is wholly
poured forth into it for us. Such a charm as this is only entitled to
assert itself in such a style so long as what is really substantive
also persists in undisturbed self-possession, as we may call it, over
against the grace of its manifestation, which blooms forth entirely in
outward guise as an original type of superfluity. This indifference of
the ideal or inner self-assurance[9] for its existence, this repose
of itself on itself is precisely that which constitutes the beautiful
negligence of the grace, which attributes no immediate value to this,
its mode of manifestation. And it is just in this that we must look
for the loftiness of the beautiful style. Beautiful free art is
careless in its attitude to the external form, in which it refuses to
let us see any peculiar movement of the mind, or any end or intention.
Rather in every expression, every modification, it points to one thing
only, and that is the idea and vital principle of the whole. It is only
by this means that the Ideal of the beautiful style asserts itself,
which is neither harsh nor severe, but already shows the softening
influence of the cheerful notes of the beautiful. Though no violence
is done either to any feature of expression, any part of the whole,
and every member appears in its independence, and rejoices in its own
existence, yet each and all is content at the same time to be only
an aspect in the total evolved presentment. This it is which alone
displays, alongside of the depth and determinacy of individuality and
character, the grace of Life itself. On the one side we have indeed
merely the substantial subject-matter predominant, but in the detailed
exposition, in the lucid, and at the same time exhaustive variety of
traits, which complete the definition of the appearance, and place it
before us in its transparent vitality, the spectator is at the same
time freed from the thing in its baldness, in so far as he possesses
and is wholly face to face with its concrete life. By virtue, however,
of the last mentioned fact, this ideal style, so soon as it carries
this modification in its external aspect to yet further lengths, passes
over into the so-called _agreeable_ or pleasing style. Here we have the
assertion of another intent than the mere vitality of the fact[10].
The giving of pleasure, the active elaboration in the direction of
externality is asserted as itself an object, and is a matter of
independent concern. As an example we may take the famous Belvedere
Apollo, not indeed as itself belonging to this latter style, but at
least marking the transition from the lofty style to that of sensuous
attraction. And inasmuch as in an art of this kind it is no longer the
single actuality itself to which the entire embodiment is referable,
the particular details become under this mode, even though in the first
instance still deducible from the central object itself and rendered
necessary by means of it, more and more for all that independent.
We feel that they are introduced, or interpolated, as ornaments,
intentional additions of episodical import. And yet for the very reason
that they are only related to the object accidentally and only receive
their essential definition in a personal relation to the spectator or
reader, they flatter the individual taste[11] of such, to which their
workmanship is primarily directed. Virgil and Horace, for example,
delight us in this respect by an educated style, in which we can trace
a variety of things aimed at, and an effort deliberately made to give
pleasure. In architecture, sculpture, and painting, owing to this
spirit of complaisance, simple and imposing effects of size disappear,
and we find on every side small pictures standing by themselves,
ornamentation, fineries, dimples on cheeks, elegant hair-dress, smiles,
all the varied folding of draperies, enchanting colours and shapes,
exceptional, difficult, but for all that unconstrained movements in
the pose of the figure[12]. In the so-called Gothic or German art of
building, where the same is carried in the direction of this spirit, we
find decoration elaborated without limit, so that the whole appears to
be little more than a collection of little columns with all the utmost
variety of ornamentations, diminutive towers, spires, and so forth,
which, in their isolation, please us, without, however, destroying
the impression of the larger connections of the whole and the still
insistent masses of the same.

In so far, however, as the province of art we have been discussing
in its entirety gives way to this activity of externalization, this
presentment of what is purely exterior, we may emphasize it in its
further generalization as the _effect_, which makes use of as a means
of expression what is unpleasing, strained, and colossal, the type
of uncouth contrasts such as the prodigious genius of Michael Angelo
often exploits to excess. The effect may be generally indicated as the
excessive leaning towards an ulterior public, which results in the
form no longer being asserted in its independent, self-sufficient and
buoyant repose. Rather it turns round, as it were, and makes an appeal
at the same time to the onlooker, and strives to place itself in a
relation to him by means of this manner of presentment. Both aspects,
namely essential repose and the address to the spectator, must no doubt
be present in a work of art; but these aspects should fall together
in complete equilibrium. If the work of art in the severe style is
wholly without qualification self-contained, without any appeal to the
spectator, it leaves him cold. If, on the other hand, the appeal is
made too directly to him, it creates indeed a sensuous pleasure, but
loses to that extent its substantive thoroughness[13], or it does so
without this thoroughness of content and the simple character of the
conception and delineation therein contained. This passage from itself
then merges in the accidental characterization of the appearance; as
a result the image itself shares this accidental character, in which
we no longer recognize the actual subject-matter and the form which
is imperatively rooted in itself, but rather the poet and artist with
his own personal designs, his peculiar type of production and skill.
And for this reason the public is entirely released from the essential
content of the work, finding itself by means of it placed in a personal
relation[14] to the artist, inasmuch as everything now wholly depends
on its seeing that which the artist through his art intended, that
is, the cunning and personal skill which is embodied in his grasp
of his subject and its execution. To be thus brought into personal
community of insight and critical acumen with the artist is for most
people a flattering concession; and our reader or audience, and very
possibly the spectator of plastic art, with even more readiness wonder
at their poet, musician, or painter or sculptor respectively; and the
vanity of such is all the better satisfied in proportion as the work
invites them to this personal criticism, and supplies them openly
with hints of such designs and points of view. In the severe style,
on the contrary, no such confidences are made over to the spectator
at all. What we have is just the substantive nature of the content,
which in its representation austerely, and even harshly, repulses the
purely personal quest. A repulse of this kind will often be no doubt
merely indicative of the spleen of the artist, who, after entrusting a
profound significance to his work, instead of making the exposition of
the same free, transparent, and buoyant, deliberately makes it hard to
follow. A trade in mysteries of this kind is also nothing but another
form of affectation, and a spurious alternative to the complaisance we
have criticized.

It is pre-eminently in the work of the French school that we find
this tendency to flatter, attract, and create effect, and they have
in this way elaborated this easy-going and complaisant attitude to
the public as the main object of their efforts. They seek to find
the real importance of their artistic work in the satisfaction such
affords others, whose interest they would arouse and whom they would
duly impress. This tendency is particularly marked in their dramatic
poetry. Marmontel, for example, gives us the following anecdote in
connection with the performance of his drama "Dénis, the Tyrant." The
crisis culminated in a question asked the Tyrant. Clairon, in whose
mouth this question was put, when the moment for asking it had arrived,
and when actually in conversation with Dionysius, made a forward step
in front of the audience and dramatically addressed them instead. By
this rhetorical effect the enthusiastic support of the entire piece was
assured.

We Germans, on the other hand, require too much a content in our works
of art, in the depths of which the artist finds a deliverance from
himself, without troubling himself about the public, who is just left
to look at it, take trouble over it, and help himself out with it, as
he pleases or is able.


DIVISION OF SUBJECT

Approaching now, after these general observations we have made with
reference to the distinctions of style common to all the arts, the
division of the third fundamental section of our inquiry we may observe
that the one-sided understanding has looked about in many directions
for various principles of differentiation in its classification of
the specific arts severally. The true division can, however, only
be deduced from the nature of the work of art, which in the entire
complexus of its forms[15] explicitly unfolds the totality of the
aspects and phases which are referable to its own notion. And the
first thing which asserts itself in this connection as important is
the consideration that art, in accordance with the fact that its
presentments now have definitely to pass into sensuous reality, becomes
on account of this also art for the _senses_, so that the definition of
this sense and the material medium which is applicable to it, and in
which the work of art is made objective, must necessarily furnish us
with the principles of subdivision in the several arts. Now the senses,
for the reason that they are senses, or in other words, are related
to a given material, a disparate exterior medium[16] and an essential
multiplicity, are themselves different, namely, feeling, smell, taste,
hearing, and sight. It is not our business in this place to demonstrate
the ideal necessity of this totality and its disparate parts; that is
the function of the philosophy of Nature. Our problem is limited to the
inquiry whether all these senses, or if not, which of them are capable,
by virtue of their notional significance, of being organs for the
reception of works of art. We have already at a previous stage excluded
feeling, taste, and smell. Botticher's mere feeling with the hand of
the effeminately smooth portions of statues of goddesses is not a part
of artistic contemplation or enjoyment at all. By the sense of touch
the individual merely comes, as an individual endowed with sense, into
contact with the purely sensuous particular thing and its gravity,
hardness, softness, and material resistance. A work of art is, however,
not merely a sensuous thing, but Spirit manifested through a sensuous
medium. As little can we exercise our sense of _taste_ on a work of
art as such, because taste is unable to leave the object in its free
independence, but is concerned with it in a wholly active way, resolves
it, in fact, and consumes it. A cultivation and refinement of taste is
only possible and desirable in connection with dishes of food and their
preparation, or the chemical qualities of objects. An object of art,
however, should be contemplated in its independent and self-contained
objective presence, which no doubt is there for the mind that perceives
it, but only as an appeal to soul and intelligence, not in some active
relation, and with none whatever to the appetites and volition. As for
the sense of _smell_ it is just as little able to become an organ of
artistic enjoyment, inasmuch as things are only presented to this sense
in so far as they are themselves in a condition of process, and are
dissolved through the air and its direct influence.

_Sight_, on the other hand, possesses a purely ideal relation to
objects by means of light, a material, which is at the same time
immaterial, and which suffers on its part the objects to continue in
their free self-subsistence, making them appear and re-appear, but
which does not, as the atmosphere or fire does, consume them actively
either by imperceptible degrees or patently. Everything, then, is an
object of the appetiteless vision, which materially exists in Space
as a disparate aggregate, which, however, in so far as it remains
unimpaired in its integrity, merely is disclosed in its form and colour.

The remaining ideal sense is _hearing._ This is in signal contrast to
the one just described. Hearing is concerned with the tone, rather
than the form and colour of an object, with the vibration of what is
corporeal; it requires no process of dissolution, as the sense of smell
requires, but merely a trembling of the object, by which the same
is in no wise impoverished. This ideal motion, in which through its
sound what is as it were the simple individuality[17], the soul of
the material thing expresses itself, the ear receives also in an ideal
way, just as the eye shape and colour, and suffers thereby what is
ideal or not external in the object to appeal to what is spiritual or
non-corporeal.

As a third accretion to these two senses we have the _sensuous
conception_, memory, the retention of images, which appear in
consciousness by means of the isolated perception, in this way
subsumed under universals, and become related and united to the same
by means of the imagination, so that now in one particular aspect the
external reality itself exists both as ideal and spiritual, while
that which is spiritual from another point of view accepts under the
imaginative conception the form of what is external, and is brought to
consciousness as a disparate and correlated aggregate.

This triple mode of seizing on reality offers art the well-known
division into _first_, the _plastic_ arts, which elaborate their
content for vision in the external form and colour of objects,
_secondly_, in the art of _sound, music_, and _thirdly_, into _poetry_,
which as the art of _speech_ uses tone merely as a symbol, in order,
by means of it, to address itself directly to what is ideal in the
contemplation, emotion, and imagination of our spiritual life. If we
rest satisfied with this sensuous aspect of our subject-matter, as the
final principle of its differentiation, we shall, in respect to our
first principles, find ourselves in a difficulty, because the grounds
of this division, instead of being deduced from the concrete notion of
our subject-matter, are merely borrowed from the most abstract features
of it. We have consequently to look about us once more for a principle
of division that has deeper roots, which has, in fact, already been
put forward in the introduction of this work as the truly systematic
mode of dividing this third section of it. The function of art is just
this and only this, namely, to bring before the grasp of the senses
truth, as it is in the world of spirit, reconciled, that is, in its
unity as a whole with objectivity and the sensuous material. In so far,
then, as this is possible at this stage in the element of the external
reality of the art-product to that extent the totality, which the
Absolute is in its very truth, breaks apart into the various modes that
differentiate it as a process.

The _middle point_, the truly substantive centrum, is given us here
in the representation of the _Absolute_, God Himself as God, in His
independent _self-subsistence_, not as yet developed to the point of
motion and difference, or advanced to the active operation of and
separation from what is His, but presented essentially self-absorbed in
supreme divine repose and stillness, briefly the Ideal embodied in a
form essentially adequate to itself, which persists in its determinate
existence in correspondent identity with itself. And in order that it
may appear in infinite self-subsistency the Absolute must be conceived
as Spirit, as conscious Subject, but as Subject which possesses
essentially itself its own adequate mode of external appearance.

As divine subject, however, which passes forth into actual reality,
it has confronting it an _external_ world for environment, which,
in conformity with the Absolute, must be built up to an appearance
harmonious with the same, an appearance permeated with the Absolute.
This environing world is then on one side the _objective_ as such,
the basis, the embrace of external Nature, which, taken by itself,
possesses no absolute significance for Spirit, nor any ideality such as
is present to individual consciousness[18], and consequently is only
able to express by suggestion the spiritual Ideal which its appearance
must seek to secure by embodying its embraced content in a world of
Beauty.

In opposition to external Nature we find the _ideal_ realm of
_consciousness_[19], the human soul as the medium[20] for the existence
and manifestation of the Absolute. Together with this subjectivity
is conjoined the multiplicity and differentiation of individuality,
particularization, distinction, action, and development, that is, in
general terms the full and varied world of the reality of Spirit[21],
in which the Absolute is known, willed, experienced, and actively
present. We may already infer from what we have indicated above that
the differences under which the total content of art is differentiated
are in essential consonance, both for our grasp and presentation of
them, with what we have previously in the second portion of our
inquiry examined as the symbolical, classical, and romantic types of
art. In other words symbolic art only carries the art-process to the
point of marking an affinity between content and form, instead of their
identity, of only suggesting the ideal significance in itself and the
content which that suggestion purports to express, in other words the
external appearance[22]. It furnishes consequently the fundamental type
to that specific art, whose function it is to elaborate the objective
world as such, Nature's environment in the beautiful conclusion
given by Art to Spirit (mind), and to image by suggestion the ideal
significance of what is spiritual in this external medium. The
classical Ideal, on the contrary, meets the case of the presentation
of the Absolute as such, in its self-subsistent external reality, its
essential self-repose, while the romantic Spirit (mind) type of art
is, both in content and form, identical with the internal life of the
soul, and the emotional life both in its infinite aspect and its finite
particularity.

It is, then, on a principle such as the above that the system of the
particular arts is differentiated as follows:

_First_, we have _architecture_, the beginning of all, whose
foundation reposes in the very nature of its subject-matter. It is
the commencement of art for this reason, that art at the start has in
general terms neither discovered for the presentation of its spiritual
content the adequate material, nor the forms that fully express it, and
is consequently compelled to rest content in the mere _search_ after
such true satisfaction, and to do so in the externality of its content
and its mode of presentation. The medium of this primary art is that
which is essentially unspiritual, gross matter, that is, only capable
of configuration according to physical laws of gravity. Its form is
the image of external Nature, united by its regularity and symmetry in
the whole of a work of art to express merely an external reflection of
Spirit.

The _second_ art is _sculpture._ Both for its principle and content it
possesses spiritual individuality under the mode of the classic Ideal
in the sense, namely, that the ideal and spiritual finds its expression
in the corporeal appearance pertinent to spiritual life, which it is
the function here of Art to present in existent artistic actuality.
It consequently still accepts for its material gross matter in its
spatial extension, without, however, shaping the same in conformity
to rule merely in respect to its gravity and its natural conditions
according to the forms of the organic or inorganic, or in relation to
its visibility in bringing it down to, and in all essential respects
particularizing it in, a simple repetition of the external appearance.
The _form_ which is here, however, determined by virtue of the content
itself is the actual life of Spirit, human form, and its objective
organism permeated with Spirit's own breath, whose function it is to
embody in adequate shape the self-subsistence of the Divine in its
supreme repose and unperturbed greatness, unaffected by the divisions
and limitations of human affairs, their conflicts and endurances.

_Thirdly_, we have to render intelligible in one final whole those
arts whose province it is to give form to the ideal content of the
individual soul-life.

The art of _painting_ marks the _beginning_ of this final totality.
It converts the external form itself entirely into an expression of
what is ideal[23], which within the limits of the environing world
not merely reproduces the ideal self-containedness of the Absolute,
but also brings to the vision the same as essentially a personal
possession[24] in its spiritual existence, volition, feeling, action,
in its activity and relation to another, and consequently also in
its sufferings, pain, death, in the entire series of passions and
satisfaction. Its object is for this reason no longer _God_ simply,
that is, as object of the human consciousness, but this consciousness
itself, God, that is, either in His reality present in the action
and suffering of individual life, or as spirit of the community,
as the spiritual related through feeling to itself, soul-life in
its resignation, its sacrifice of, or joy and blessedness in, life
and action within the limits of the natural world. As a means to
the presentation of this _content_ the art of painting is bound to
utilize the external phenomenon in respect to its form, not merely
the human organism, but also Nature in its simplicity in so far as
the same suffers what is of spirit to shine through with clarity. It
is, however, unable to utilize as material physical matter and its
spatial existence just as it is; it is compelled, in working it up into
its forms, essentially to idealize the same. The first step by means
of which the sensuous material is raised in this respect to confront
mind[25], consists, on the one hand, in the uplifting of the actual
sensuous appearance, whose visibility is converted into the mere _show_
by art, and on the other in _colour_ by means of the distinctions,
transitions, and modulations of which this transformation is effected.
The art of painting, consequently, in order to express the soul in
its ideality, resolves the three dimensions of space into that of
superficies as that which most intimately asserts the ideality of what
is external, and represents spatial distance and form by means of the
phenomena of colour. For painting is not concerned with producing
mere visibility in its general significance, but with that form of
visibility which, if it is ideally produced, is also quite as much
essentially particularized. In sculpture and the art of building forms
are visible by means of external light. In the art of painting, on the
contrary, the material which is itself essentially obscure possesses
intrinsically within itself its inward or ideal, light in short. It is
itself transfused in its own medium, and mere light is to that extent
essentially obscured. The unity, however, and blending of light and
dark is colour[26].

_Secondly_, the art of _music_ offers a contrast to that of painting
in one and the same sphere as the latter. Its real element is the
ideal realm as such, emotion in its formless independence, capable of
asserting itself not in externality and its reality, but purely through
the external medium which disappears immediately when it is expressed
and thereby cancels itself. Its _content_ consequently consists of
the internal life of Spirit in its immediate, essential subjective
unity, emotion simply; its _material_ is musical tone, its form and
configuration, the concord, discord, harmony, contrast, opposition, and
resolution of such tones according to the laws of their quantitative
intervals respectively and their artistically elaborated time measure.

Finally, in the _third_ place, after painting and music we get the
art of speech, _poetry_ in its general terms, the absolutely genuine
art of Spirit and its expression as such. For everything which the
human consciousness conceives and spiritually embodies in the chamber
of spirit speech is able to accept, express, and bring imaginatively
before us, and only speech is thus able. In respect to its content,
therefore, poetry is the richest and its boundaries are the widest.
But in proportion as it gains as the vehicle of Spirit it loses on the
side of the material object. In other words, for the reason that it
neither works for the perception of the sense as the plastic arts, nor
merely for the ideal emotion, as music does, but is concerned to create
its spiritual significances under the form of its own spiritual medium
merely for the conception and contemplation of mind, the _material_
through which its constructive activity is asserted only retains for
it the value of a _means_, however much it may be elaborated in an
artistic sense, by which Spirit is expressed for Spirit, and no longer
counts as a sensuous mode of existence, in which the spiritual content
is capable of finding a reality adequate to it. Such a means can in
the light of our previous consideration only be _tone_ regarded as the
still relatively most adequate material of spiritual expression. Tone
here, however, does not in the present case preserve, as was the case
with music, an independent validity of its own for which the unique
and essential aim of art could be exhausted in finding an artistic
form, but conversely is entirely steeped in the world of Spirit and the
definite content of conception and contemplation, and appears simply as
the external symbol of this content. So far as the _embodiment_ which
the poetry receives is concerned, in this respect poetry may claim to
include the whole field of art in the sense, that is, that it repeats
in its own province the modes of presentation adopted by the other
arts, which is only in a qualified degree the case with painting and
music.

In other words poetry gives, on the one hand, as epic poetry the form
of _objectivity_ to its content, which no doubt here does not, as in
the plastic arts, attain to an external existence. It is none the less
a world conceived by the mind in the form of the objective world and
represented as objective for the individual imagination. This it is
which constitutes human speech as such, which finds satisfaction in
its own content and its expression by means of speech.

On the other hand, however, poetry is conversely to an equal degree
speech of the soul, the _ideal_ medium, which, as that inward content
returns to itself, is _lyrical poetry_, which invokes the aid of music
in order to penetrate yet more deeply the world of souls and emotion.

Finally, to take the _third_ example, poetry proceeds through speech
within the limits of a self-contained _action_, which it at the same
time makes an object of its presentment, and consequently is able to
ally itself closely to music, gesture, mimicry, and the dance. This
is _dramatic_ art, in which man, in all that the term implies[27],
creatively presents the work of art which is the product of human life.
These five arts form the system of realized and actual art, essentially
determined by itself and differentiated as such. In addition to them
there are no doubt other incomplete arts, for example, the arts of
gardening and dance. These we shall only refer to incidentally as
the opportunity recurs. A philosophical investigation must perforce
restrict itself entirely to distinctions referable to the notion, and
develop and grasp these adequate and veritable modes of embodiment.
Nature and reality is not, it is true, confined to these circumscribed
limits, but is more liberal in its movement, and we not unfrequently
hear it made a matter of praise that in this respect the products of
genius are perforce compelled to expand themselves beyond just such
limitations. In Nature, however, transitional organisms of either
hybrid or amphibian type, instead of emphasizing the spontaneity and
excellence of Nature, merely demonstrate its inability to hold fast
to the essential differentiations of species which are rooted in that
process, or to prevent their deterioration before external conditions
and influences. The same thing may be affirmed in art with regard to
these intermediate forms, although the same are capable of producing
much, too, that delights us, is full of charm and utility, albeit not
in the highest class of perfection.

If we turn our attention now after these introductory remarks and
considerations to the more specific examination of the separate
arts, we shall find ourselves from another point of view in some
difficulty. For inasmuch as we have hitherto concerned ourselves
with art as such, the Ideal and the general types, under which its
evolution according to its _notion_ proceeds, it is imperative to
pass over into the concrete existence of art, and by doing so into
the world of experience. Here we find a condition very analogous to
that we observe in Nature, the provinces of which are readily grasped
in their generality and the necessary laws which distinguish them,
in whose actual material existence, however, the individual objects
and their species, not merely in the aspects which they present to
observation, but also in the form under which they exist, are of such
a wealth of variety that, as a part of the difficulty, they offer as
feasible every conceivable way of approaching them; and in addition to
this the philosophical notion, when we are desirous of applying the
standard of its simple lines of distinction, appears as insufficient
for this purpose and the mere grasp of thought incapable of taking in
the breath of such fulness. If, however, we merely rest satisfied with
mere description and superficial reflections we fall short no less of
the object we have set before us, that is, a development which is both
scientific and systematic. Added to which difficulties we have the
further one that nowadays every particular art makes the independent
demand for a special science, inasmuch as with the continuous growth of
connoisseurship in art the range of such special knowledge has become
ever more rich and extensive. This science of the connoisseur, or
dilettante, has, however, in our own times become fashionable under the
direct teaching of philosophy itself. It has, in short, been maintained
that it is in art we must look for real religion, the discovery of
truth and the Absolute, that, in short, it stands on a loftier pedestal
than philosophy for the reason that it is not abstract, but receives at
the same time the Idea in reality and for a contemplation and emotion
which are concrete[28]. And on the other hand it is regarded nowadays
as of august importance in art[29] to occupy one's attention with an
infinite superfluity of detail of this kind, in the interests of
which the demand is made from everyone that he should have observed
some novelty or other. Such critical labour is a kind of learned
trifling which may very readily be overdone. It causes, no doubt,
considerable pleasure to examine works of art, to grasp the thoughts
and reflections which such may suggest, to give currency to the points
of view, which others have pointed out, and by this means to become
judges and critics. The more rich, however, by this means, namely, that
everybody is intent on having discovered on his own account something
uniquely his own, a learning and process of reflection has become, the
more every particular art, nay, every branch of the same, now renders
necessary the completeness of a treatment of it from the individual's
standpoint. As a corollary the historical aspect of such a survey and
the criticism of works of art, which becomes inevitable, only add yet
further to the learning and range of the subject. It is, moreover,
essential before we take part in any discussion over the details of
matters of artistic import that we should already have seen much and
many times. Personally I have no doubt seen a considerable amount, but
by no means all that is necessary to enable me to discuss the material
of art exhaustively. All such difficulties, however, we may meet with
the simple response that it does not lie within the aim of the present
work to teach art-criticism, or to bring forward an historical review
of such learning, or only to the extent such is necessary to apprehend
on philosophical principles the essential and universal aspects of
our subject, and their relation to the idea of the beautiful in its
realization within the sensuous medium of art. If we keep this aim
before us the variety of artistic effects we above indicated need
cause us no embarrassment; for despite this complexity the essential
character of the subject-matter according to its notional idea is the
controlling factor; and although this is frequently lost in accidental
matter by virtue of the medium in which it is realized, points of view
are none the less in evidence, in which it is as clearly proclaimed. To
grasp these aspects, and to develop them in a scientific way, is the
very problem which it is the function of philosophy to elucidate.


FIRST SUBSECTION

ARCHITECTURE

Art, by enabling its content to attain a realized existence under a
definite form, becomes a _particular_ art. We may therefore now for
the first time refer to it as an actual art and find therein the
_real_ beginning of art. With this particularity, however, in so far
as it purports to bring before us the objectivity of the Idea of the
beautiful and art, we have presented to us at the same time in its
notional significance a _totality_ of what is particular. For this
reason when we now, in the sphere of the specific arts, begin our
examination of the same with the art of building this must not merely
be accepted in the sense that architecture asserts itself as the art
which, by virtue of its notional definition, is first presented to us
as such an object of inquiry, but we may equally accept as a result,
that it is also in relation to its _existence_ the art first to be
considered. In supplying, however, an answer to the question, what
the mode of origin was, which fine art, relatively to its notion and
realized form, has received, we must exclude the experience of history
no less than reflections, conjectures, and ordinary conceptions, which
merely have reference to objective history, and are so readily and in
such variety propounded. In other words, men are ordinarily actuated
by an impulse, to bring before their mental vision anything in its
original mode of appearance for the reason that the beginning is the
simplest mode, under which the fact asserts itself. And connected with
this impulse we have present behind it the covert conviction that
the simple mode of appearance informs us of the fact in its notional
significance and real origin, and the further amplification of such
a beginning to the actual point in the process which only really
concerns us is further with a like readiness conceived under the
trivial mode of thought, that a process so understood has _gradually_
brought art forward to the crucial stage above indicated. A beginning,
however, of this simplicity is, if we look at its content, something
which, taken by itself, is so unimportant, that for philosophical
thought it can only appear as wholly accidental, albeit it is for the
ordinary consciousness only just in such a way that the origin can be
readily grasped. For example, we have the story, as an explanation of
the origin of the art of painting, told us of a maiden who followed
the dim outline of the shadow of her sleeping lover. In the same way
we have sometimes a cave and sometimes a hollow tree adduced as the
point of departure in the art of building. Beginnings of this kind are
so intelligible in themselves that further comment on the fact appears
unnecessary[30]. In particular the Greeks invented many charming
tales to explain the origins not merely of fine art, but also ethical
institutions and other conditions of life, all of which satisfied the
primary need to make such beginnings visible to the _imagination._ Such
beginnings are not substantiated by history, and yet they do not aim at
making the manner of origin intelligible directly as a process involved
in the _notion_, but purport to confine their explanation to the field
of objective history.


DIVISION OF SUBJECT

We have, then, in such a way to establish the beginning of art from its
notional significance, that the first problem of art is made to consist
in giving form to that which is essentially objective, the ground, that
is, of Nature, the external environment, and by doing so to make that
which is without ideal import to conform both to significance and form,
both of which still remain external to it, for the reason that they are
not either the form or significance inherent in the objective material.
The art, which has set before it this task is, as we have seen, an
architecture which has already discovered its first elaboration under
the modes of sculpture, or painting and music[31].

If we now direct our attention to the most primitive origins of the art
of building, we find at the earliest stage that we can accept for such
a beginning the hut, regarded as the human dwelling, and the temple,
as the exterior enclosure of the god and his community. With a view
to define this commencement more closely a dispute has been raised
with reference to the nature of the _material_ employed for building,
whether, that is to say, it originated in buildings of wood, which
is the opinion of Vitruvius, and is supported by Hirt in a similar
reference, or rather from those of stone. This contrast of original
material is no doubt of importance, for it does not merely concern its
external quality as one might at first sight suppose, but rather the
architectonic character of fundamental forms; for instance, the kind of
decoration united with it is essentially bound up with this external
material. We may, however, entirely set aside the distinction as a
purely subordinate aspect of the matter rather referable to what is
accidental and empirical, and devote our attention to a point of more
importance.

In other words, in dealing with houses, temples, and other buildings we
are confronted with the essential condition, to which we attribute the
fact that buildings of this kind are merely _means_ which presuppose
an external end. Hut and house of God alike presuppose those who dwell
in them, and for whom they have been erected, men and the images of
gods. Man is also prompted by a desire to leap and sing; he requires
the mediacy of human speech; but speech, leaping, shouting, and singing
are not as yet poetry, the dance and music. And when within the
architectonic adaptation of means to ends in order to satisfy specific
needs, in part referable to daily life and in part to the religious
cultus or the state, the impulse in the direction of artistic form and
beauty asserts itself, we find at the same time a _division_ apparent
in the kind of building above mentioned. On the one hand we have man,
thinking man, or the image of the god as the essential _object_, for
which, from the other point of view, architecture merely supplies the
_means_ of environment and covering. With such a divided point of view
we are unable to constitute our beginning, which is in its nature the
_immediate_, and simple, not a relativity or essential relation of this
sort; rather we must look for a point of departure, where a distinction
of this kind does not yet arise.

In this respect we have already at an earlier stage stated that the art
of building corresponds to the _symbolic_ type of art, and in a unique
degree gives realization to the principle of the same as particular art
because architecture generally is adapted to suggest the significances
implanted in it purely in the external framework of the environment.
If the distinction, then, above referred to between the object of
the external cover independently presented in the living man, or the
temple's image, and the building regarded as the fulfilment of such
an object, is to be absent from our earliest stage, we shall have to
look about us for buildings which precisely, as works of sculpture,
do stand up in _independent_ self-subsistence, which in short carry
their significance in _themselves_ rather than in some _other_ object
or necessity. This is a point of the highest importance, which I have
never found raised hitherto, although it goes to the root of the
matter, and alone is capable of disclosing the manifold nature of
external forms, and of supplying a thread to conduct us through the
maze of architectonic configuration. A self-subsistent art of building
of this kind will also to a similar degree differ from sculpture
on this ground, namely, that it, as architecture, does not create
images, whose significance is that which is essentially spiritual and
personal, and which itself intrinsically possesses the principle of
an appropriated embodiment throughout adequate to its ideal import,
but builds up works which, in their exterior form, can merely give an
impress of the significance in a symbolic way. And for this reason
this type of architecture, both in respect to its content and, its
presentation, is really of a _symbolic type._

All that we have said with reference to the principle of this stage
of art applies equally to its mode of _presentation._ Here, too, we
find that the mere distinction between buildings of wood and stone is
not sufficient, in so far as the same points to a means of limiting
and enclosing a defined space for a specific religious or other human
purposes, as is the case with dwellings, palaces, and temples. Such a
space, may be obtained either by hollowing out essentially solid and
stable masses, or conversely, by preparing walls and roofs to enclose
it. We can make our beginning of the art of building with neither of
these alternatives, which we should consequently define as an inorganic
form of sculpture; such a type no doubt piles up independently stable
images, but while doing so does not in any way make the end of free
beauty and the manifestation of Spirit in the bodily form commensurate
with the end it pursues, but in general terms sets up a purely symbolic
form, which purports in itself to indicate and express a particular
idea.

Architecture is, however, unable to remain standing at such a point of
departure. Its function indeed consists just in this, namely, to build
up external Nature as an environment which emanates from Spirit itself
through the gates of art under the forms of beauty, and to build it
for the independently present life of mind, that is mankind, or for
the images of the gods that are set up and clothed by man in objective
form, and to build up the same as that which no longer carries its
significance in itself, but discovers the same in another, that is
man, and his necessities and objects of family and State-life, culture
and so forth, and by so doing surrenders the self-subsistency of such
buildings.

Regarded under this aspect we may assume the _advance_ of architecture
to consist in this, that it suffers the above indicated distinction
between end and means to appear in separation, and constructs for man,
or the individual human form of gods, which is the work of sculpture,
an architectural dwelling, palace, or temple analogous to the
significance of the same.

And, thirdly, the _termination_[32] unites both phases in the
process, and appears within this aspect of division as at the same
time self-subsistent. These points of view present to us, as the
classification of the entire art of building, the following heads of
division, which essentially comprehend the notional distinctions of the
matter in question no less than the historical development of the same.

_First_, we have the genuine _symbolic_ or _self-subsistent_ type of
architecture.

_Secondly_, there is the _classical_ type, which gives independent form
to spiritual individuality, divesting on the other hand the art of
building of its self-subsistency, and degrading it in the intent to set
up an inorganic environment under the forms of art, for the spiritual
significances which are now on their part independently realized.

_Thirdly_, _romantic_ architecture, in other words the so-called
Moorish, Gothic, and German, in which, it is true, houses, churches,
and palaces are also merely the dwellings and places in which civic
and religious needs and activities are concentrated; which, however,
conversely are also shaped and raised without let or hindrance for the
express object of emphasizing their self-subsistency.

Although on the grounds already advanced architecture in respect to
its fundamental character remains of a symbolic type, yet the artistic
types known as the truly symbolic, classical, and romantic constitute
the closest means of defining it, and are here of greater importance
than in the other arts. For in sculpture the classical, and in music
and painting the romantic, penetrates so profoundly to the entire
root-basis of these arts respectively, that for the elaboration of
the type of the other arts[33], to a more or less degree, but little
room is left for other aspects. And, finally, in poetry, though it is
the fact that it gives the most complete impress in its art-products
of the entire series of art-types, we shall find it necessary to
make our classification not by means of the distinction between
symbolic, classic, and romantic poetry, but according to the specific
differentiation applicable to poetry as a particular art in epic,
lyrical, and dramatic poetry. Architecture is, on the other hand, art
in its immediate relation to the external medium, so that in this case
the essential differences consist in this, whether this external matter
receives its significance intrinsically, or is treated as a means for
an object other than it, or finally asserts itself in this subservience
as at the same time independent. The first case is identical with
the symbolic type simply, the second with the classical, the real
significance attaining here an independent presentation, and in doing
this the symbolic is attached as an environment wholly external to it,
a type which is exemplified in the principle of classical art. The
union of these two types is coincident with the romantic, in so far,
that is, as romantic art makes use of the exterior medium as a means of
expression, yet withdraws itself into itself out of this reality, and
is consequently able once more by doing so to let objective existence
stand forth in self-subsistent embodiment.



[Footnote 1: _Gediegene_ here seems to mean that the unity is a real
one throughout all its manifestations--it is one of sterling efficacy.]

[Footnote 2: By the words _die innere Produktion der Kunst_
is meant apparently "the creative activity of art-production
as ideally conceived in a series of general world-impressions
(_Weltanschauungen_)." The main contrast between the theoretic
apprehension of such an evolution of art as a series, held in its
broad generic outlines by mind, and its practical realization
as differentiated in the _actual_ products of different arts is
sufficiently clear. The difficulty remains, however, as to how far
Hegel regarded these _Weltanschauungen_ in their universality to have
themselves an _objective_ significance no less than a _subjective_
one--how far, in other words, are they merely abstract concepts of the
observer, the schemata of scientific generalization, or do actually
unfold an objective, if ideal process--how far is the thought one with
the revelation of the Absolute itself. It is, of course, a difficulty
not unknown to the student of Hegel in other directions. At least,
as translator, I must content myself, as an excuse for obscurity in
this and other passages, with drawing attention (_a_) To the main
contrast which is quite clear, and (_b_) To the fundamental difficulty
which remains. As a rule the word _Weltanschauung_ is generally used
rather in the sense of a world-outlook as from the point of view
of an observer. In this passage, and still more obviously a little
lower down, the sense appears to be rather world-presentment or
manifestation--and the emphasis certainly on the objective aspect.
Thus the Ideal of Beauty is defined as "the collective totality of
its _Weltanschauungen._" How far within such, which have previously
been called exclusively _ideal_ (_innere_) can be incorporated the
positive concrete embodiments of definite works of art is for myself
the difficulty, which I do not profess myself to be able to solve. I am
in fact not entirely clear as to the entire meaning of Hegel myself.
The mere statement that the one is made objective by the other does
not appear to me to remove the difficulty; for, to mention no other
objection, a particular work of art is not exclusively either concrete
or objective in the sense that an ideal process is so, or an Ideal
which combines the ideal stages or moments in such a process.]

[Footnote 3: _Welche sich objectivirt._ See note above.]

[Footnote 4: The present, that is, which is objective to sense.]

[Footnote 5: _So löst sich das Ideal in seine Momente auf._ According
to this it would appear that the process is wholly identified with the
system of the particular arts. But the universal world-presentments are
surely equally a process or at least an abstract of such a process. And
this is in fact affirmed lower down.]

[Footnote 6: A favourite metaphor of Hegel. The idea is that the metal
is all one infusion producing a result that is like the appearance of
Athene from the brow of Zeus.]

[Footnote 7: _Der Subjektivität._ The mind of the artist.]

[Footnote 8: A misprint. _Der_ should be _die._]

[Footnote 9: _Zuversicht._ Confidence in itself.]

[Footnote 10: _Die Sache._ The fact, the artistic object primarily
treated.]

[Footnote 11: _Die Subjektivität._ What is personal in the perception
of judgment.]

[Footnote 12: A fine illustration of this passage is to be found in
Miss Harrison's description of the Praxiteles Hermes in her admirable
"Introductory Studies in Greek Art" (see chap, VI), a work every
student of Greek Art should peruse.]

[Footnote 13: _Gediegenheit._ Sterling solidity. To understand all that
is implied the above cited work of Miss Harrison is the clearest and
most useful I know.]

[Footnote 14: _In Unterhaltung._ Finds himself, so to speak, directly
conversing with him.]

[Footnote 15: _Der Gattungen, i.e._, specific types.]

[Footnote 16: _Das Aussereinander._ A differentiated exteriority.]

[Footnote 17: _Subjektivität_, the ideal unity that is--not so much as
soul or personality.]

[Footnote 18: _Kein subjektives Inneres._ No ideal content that implies
a unifying subject.]

[Footnote 19: Same expression as last note. An ideal realm in its
aspect of relation to an individual soul.]

[Footnote 20: _Als Element._]

[Footnote 21: Or reason (_Geist._)]

[Footnote 22: As such content.]

[Footnote 23: This must be taken subject to qualifications which appear
further on.]

[Footnote 24: _An sich selbst subjektiv._ As essentially appertinent to
the individual soul.]

[Footnote 25: _Sich entgegenheit dem Geist_, _i.e._, raises itself as
a medium opposed to--or, as we should say, subservient to.]

[Footnote 26: This is obviously a reference to the false theory of
light advanced by Goethe and accepted by Hegel.]

[Footnote 27: _Das ganze Mensch._ The entire man with all his
faculties.]

[Footnote 28: This is a reference, of course, to the Art Philosophy of
Schelling.]

[Footnote 29: _Zum vornehmen Wesen._ Ironical, of course. It is part of
the aristocratic pretensions of the connoisseur.]

[Footnote 30: He means that as an explanation they are obvious provided
the facts are true, which he then points out in such cases is not so.]

[Footnote 31: I am not sure I follow the sense here. I presume the
meaning is that, as _notionally_ considered, we have to commence
with an architecture to which other arts are already subservient.
The process of elaboration has already been carried beyond mere
architecture. And in this sense he calls sculpture an elaboration
(_Ausbildung_) of architecture. But the addition of painting and music
as such elaboration is, to say the least, an unnecessary obscurity.
Such an elaboration of a primitive form of music is suggested lower
down. But the conception appears to me rather confusing.]

[Footnote 32: That is the final phase, romantic architecture.]

[Footnote 33: Other than architecture.]




CHAPTER I


INDEPENDENT SYMBOLICAL ARCHITECTURE


The primary and original necessity of art is this, that a conception,
a thought emanate from mind, be produced and emphasized by man as
the result of his activity, just as in speech there are simple ideas
which man communicates thereby and makes intelligible to others. In
human speech, however, the means of communication is accepted merely
as a sign, and for this reason is an entirely arbitrary mode of
externalization. The function of art, on the contrary, is not only
to make use of the mere symbolic sign, but, in contrast to this, to
supply a sensuous presence correspondent to significances. On the one
hand, therefore, the sensuous product, which art presents to us, must
afford lodging for an ideal content; on the other it has to represent
this content in a manner which enables us to see that it is itself
as its content not merely a realization of immediate reality, but an
actual product of human conception and its spiritual activity. If I
see, for example, an actually living lion I deduce from the unique
presentment of the same the concept of lion precisely as I should in
the case of a picture of it. In the picture, however, we find something
more than this. It demonstrates to us that the form has been conceived
in the mind, and has found the origination of its existence in the
human spirit and its productive activity, so that now we not only
receive the idea of an object, but the idea of a human conception of
that object. There is, however, no original artistic necessity that
either a lion, merely as such[34], a tree, or any other single object
be added for the success of such reproduction. We have seen, on the
contrary, that art, and pre-eminently plastic art, proceeds with the
presentation of such objects in order to affirm in them the dexterity
of the counterfeit from the artist's own point of view. The interest
in its first origination is directed to bringing before the vision of
the artist himself and others the primary impressions of the objective
facts, and the universal or essential thoughts thus stimulated. Such
popular impressions are, however, in the first instance abstract and
in themselves of indefinite character, so that man, in order that
he may present them to the imagination, lays hold of that which is
essentially just as abstract, the material medium as it is--which is at
once massive and ponderous--a material which is no doubt capable of a
definite, but not of an intrinsically concrete and veritably spiritual,
content. The relation between content and sensuous reality, by virtue
of which the content is to pass from the concipient world into that
of imagination, can consequently only be of a symbolical type. At the
same time, however, a building, which purports to declare a general
significance for others, stands there for no other purpose save that
of essentially expressing this loftier aspect, and is consequently an
independent symbol of a thought that goes straight to its essential
import, and is of universal validity, a kind of speech which is
present to spiritual life on its own account, however much it may not
be expressed through sound. The products, therefore, of this type of
architecture are necessarily stimulating to thought of themselves, and
arouse universal concepts, albeit they fail to be the mere envelope and
environment of significances which otherwise possess independent form.
For this reason, however, the form which permits a content of this kind
to appear through it cannot perforce merely pass as symbolic sign, as,
for example, in the case when we raise a cross to a deceased person,
or erect stones in memory of battles. For signs of this character are
doubtless qualified to stimulate ideas, but a cross, or a pile of
stones, do not suggest, in virtue of their own nature, the idea which
it is our object to awake, but are just as able to remind us of much
else entirely different. This distinction constitutes the general
notion of the stage now discussed[35].

With regard to this it may be affirmed that entire nations have known
how to express their profoundest requirements in no other way than by
the arts of building, or at least pre-eminently in an architectonic
way. This has been, however, to an essential degree only in the East,
as will appear from what we have already seen when we were called on
to discuss the symbolic type of art. To an exceptional degree we may
say that the constructions of the more ancient art of Babylonia, India,
and Egypt--which we have now before us to some extent only in ruins,
ruins which have been able to defy all ages and their revolutions, and
which excite our wonder and astonishment as much on account of what is
wholly fantastic in their forms as in virtue of their extraordinary
proportions and mass--either completely bear this character, or in
great measure are derived from it. They are works whose construction
enlists at certain periods of history the entire activity and life of
nations.

If, however, we inquire more closely into the _classification_ proposed
by this chapter and the heads of subject-matter comprised in it, we
shall find that the point of departure in this kind of architecture
is not, as in the case of the classic or romantic type, from definite
forms similar to that of the house. In other words we have here no
independently secure content, and with it no secure mode of embodiment,
advanced as the principle thereof, which is forthwith related in its
further development to the entire range of the different constructions.
Rather the significances which are accepted as content remain, as in
the case of the symbolic type generally, likewise inchoate and general
conceptions, elementary, in many respects separated and interfused
abstractions of natural life mingled with thoughts of spiritual
activity, without being, ideally concentrated to a focus as the evolved
states of _one_ mind[36]. This aspect of dissolution gives them the
appearance of the greatest variety and change, and the object of
such architecture merely consists in emphasizing in its presentation
first one aspect and then another, in making such symbolical, and, by
means of human labour, making such symbolism apparent to us. Before
a multiplicity of content such as this we cannot pretend in this
discussion to be either exhaustive or systematic. I shall limit myself
to an attempt, so far as this is possible, to bring simply that which
is of most importance into connection with a rational classification.

The prominent features of such a survey may be thus briefly enumerated.

As content our demand was for modes of view of a wholly general
character, in which peoples and individuals possess an ideal
resting-place, a point, a unity for consciousness. The _proximate_
object, therefore, of such independent and self-substantive
construction is simply to raise some work, which forms the _unity_ of
a nation or nations, a place in which its life may be concentrated.
We may also find along with this the further object more nearly
associated, to present by means of this very embodiment, that which
generally unites mankind, in other words the religious ideas of
nations, by virtue of which works of this kind receive likewise a more
definite content for their symbolical expression.

Furthermore, in the _second_ place, such an architecture is unable to
remain fixed within the limits of this incipient determination of its
_entire_ content; the symbolical images tend to become _isolated_; the
symbolical content of their signification is more closely defined, and
by this means we find that the distinctions of their forms tend to come
into more assured prominence, as for instance we see in the case of the
Lingam columns, obelisks, and other examples of this kind. From another
point of view the art of building, in the spirit of such isolated
self-subsistency, presses forward in its passage to _sculpture_, its
acceptance of organic animal forms or human figures, its enlargement of
either and association of both of them, however, on a prodigious scale,
in its further addition of walls, doors and passages, and throughout
in its treatment of what is adapted to sculpture in such objects in
an entirely architectonic manner. The Sphinxes, Memnons, and enormous
temples of Egypt come under this category.

_Thirdly_, this symbolical art of building begins to present the
transitional stage to the classic type. In other words it excludes
sculpture from its immediate province, and sets about constructing
itself as a receptacle for other significances, which are themselves
not merely expressed under an architectonic mode. That the reader may
better understand the process thus indicated I will recall to memory a
few famous examples of such buildings.



1. ARCHITECTURAL WORKS ERECTED WITH THE OBJECT OF UNITING PEOPLES


"What is holy?" is a question raised by Goethe in a certain distich,
and the answer he gives is: "that which binds together many souls."
In this sense we may affirm that what is sacred, together with the
end expressed in the above association, and as such association, has
actually formed the primary content of self-subsistent building and
the art of such. The earliest example of this we may take from the
story of the building of the tower of Babylon. In the broad expanse
of the Euphrates valley we are told that mankind erected an enormous
architectural work. It is built by the labour of a community, and
this public character of its construction is at the same time the end
and content of the work itself. And what is equally true is this,
that this foundation of an association of communal labour is no mere
unity of a patriarchal stamp; on the contrary we find here that the
mere unity of the family is precisely that which is set on one side,
and this building, which is raised to the heavens, is the objective
presentment of the dissolution of the more primitive type of unity and
the realization of another of more expansive range. The collective
activity of peoples belonging to that age worked in it; and, in
proportion as they came together in order to accomplish a building of
prodigious size, the product of their activity came to be the band,
which, on the ground and soil they had thus selected, and by means of
the accumulated mass of stone and the architectural construction on the
land--just as in our case morality, custom, and the lawful constitution
of State-life--bound them in unity together. A building of this kind is
in consequence also symbolical for the reason that it merely suggests
the band of unity which it is, because it is only able, by means of
its form and content, to express the sacred unity which unites men in
an external way. It is also equally a part of this tradition that the
communities have once more split apart from the centre of attraction
which united them on a work of this external character.

A further and yet more important building, which has, too, already
a more reliable historical basis, is the temple of Belus, of which
Herodotus informs us[37]. We will not here inquire in what relation
this stands to that of Biblical tradition. It is impossible to call
this structure, taking it as a whole, a temple in any ordinary meaning
of that term; rather we should call it a temple enclosure in the form
of a square, each side of which was two stadia long, with brazen gates
for means of entry. In the centre of this sacred place, according to
Herodotus, who had actually seen this colossal work, a tower of thick
walls (with no interior, solid throughout, in other words a πέργος
στερεός) was built, both in length and breadth a stadium: on this
was placed yet another, and again another on that, and so on, eight
towers in all. On the outside of this a roadway was made to the top;
and it appears that halfway up to the summit was a place of rest with
benches on which all who ascended could rest themselves. On the summit,
however, of the last tower there was a huge temple, and in the temple
was a great bench, well cushioned, and before it stood a gold table.
No statue, however, was placed in the temple. No one was permitted
to be there at night with the exception of the attendant women, who,
according to the statements of the Chaldaeans, the priests of this god,
were selected by him pre-eminently for service. The priests further
maintained (_c._ 182) that the temple was visited by the god, who
rested on the bench made for him. Herodotus, it is true, also states
(_c._ 183) that below within this sanctuary there was yet another
temple, in which was placed a great image of the god of gold, together
with a huge golden table before it, and at the same time refers to two
great altars outside the temple on which the sacrifices were made.
Notwithstanding these facts it is impossible to picture this gigantic
building as a temple either in the Greek or modern sense of the term.
For the first seven cubic towers are solid throughout, and it is only
the eighth one at the summit which serves as a resting-chamber for the
invisible god, who received therein no obeisance either from priesthood
or the community. His image was below outside the building, so that the
entire construction was raised in really independent and self-contained
form, and did not subserve the objects of religious ritual, although
it is no longer a purely abstract point of unity that we find here
but a sanctuary. The form remains no doubt subject to accidental
causes, or it receives its determinate character purely on account
of the material security of the cube form; at the same time we have
evidence of a demand which seeks for a significance which may supply
a determinate relation to it more directly symbolical and applicable
to the work taken as a whole. We must look for this, though this is
not a point expressly adverted to by Herodotus, in the number of the
massive floors. There are seven of them with an eighth superposed for
the nightly abode of the god. This number of seven in all probability
symbolizes the seven planets and spheres of heaven.

We find also in Media cities built in accordance with such a symbolism.
There is, for example, Ecbatana with its seven encircling walls, of
which Herodotus[38] states that in part by virtue of the height of
the elevation on the slope of which the city was built, and in part
intentionally and by artificial means, they were higher one than the
other, and their battlements were coloured differently. White was
on the first, black on the second, purple on the third, blue on the
fourth, red on the fifth; the sixth, however, was coated with silver,
and the seventh with gold, and within this last stood the royal
stronghold and its treasure. "Ecbatana," remarks Creuzer, in his work
on Symbolism, when referring to this type of building[39], "that Median
city, and its royal stronghold in the centre, with its seven circles of
walls and its battlements of seven different colours, represents the
spheres of heaven which enclose the stronghold of the sun."



2. ARCHITECTURAL WORKS INTERMEDIATE BETWEEN THE ARTS OF BUILDING AND
SCULPTURE


The first point we have to consider in the further development of
our subject consists in this, that architecture accepts for its
content significances that are more _concrete_, and aims at their
more symbolical presentation in accordance with _forms_ that are
similarly _more concrete_, which, however, whether we take the case of
their insulation[40], or collective accretion in gigantic buildings,
they do not make use of in the way sculpture makes use of them, but
architectonically in their own independent province. In the case of
this present type we have to direct our attention to more specific
facts, although all that we advance can put in no pretension to
completeness, or an _a priori_ development for the reason that art in
so far as it proceeds in its products to embrace the full range of the
actual, that is the historical ways of comprehending the world and its
religious conceptions, is lost in aspects of a contingent character.
The fundamental definition of the type is simply this, that we have
a confused blend of sculpture and architecture, albeit the art of
building is that which permeates all and predominates.

(_a_) We had occasion before, when discussing the symbolic type of art,
to mention the fact that in the East it is frequently the universal
living force of Nature, that is, not the spirituality and might of
consciousness, but the productive energy of generation, which is
emphasized and revered. More particularly in India this religious
attitude was universal; also from its sources in Phrygia and Syria
under the image of the great goddess, the fructifyer, a conception
was derived which the Greeks themselves accepted. Still more closely
considered this conception of the universally productive energy of
Nature was represented and held sacred in the form of the organs of
sex, Phallus and Lingam. This cultus was in the main promulgated in
India, albeit also, as we learn from Herodotus, it was not wholly
foreign to Egypt. At any rate we meet with something of the kind in the
festivals of Dionysus. According to the statement of Herodotus, "they
have invented other puppets as substitutes for the phalli of an ell's
length, which the women draw about with a string, on which we find
the sexual member no smaller in size than the rest of the body." The
Greeks accepted a similar ministration, and Herodotus expressly informs
us (_c._ 49) that Melampus had knowledge of the Egyptian sacrificial
festival of Dionysus, and had introduced the phallus which was carried
about in honour of the god. It was in India especially that the worship
of the energy of generation assumed the exterior shape and significance
of the organs of sex. Enormous columnar images were in this respect
raised of stone as massive as towers and broadening out at the base.
Originally they were themselves independently the aim and objects of
such worship; only at a later time it became customary to make openings
and hollow chambers within them and deposit in these divine images,
a custom which was maintained in the Hermes figures of the Greeks,
little temple shrines that could be carried. The point of departure,
however, in India was the phallus pillars, which had no such hollows,
and which only at a later date were divided into a shell and kernel,
growing thus into pagodas. For the genuine Indian pagodas, which should
be distinguished essentially from later Mohammedan or other imitations,
do not originate in the form of the dwelling, but are narrow and lofty,
and receive their fundamental type from these columnar constructions.
We find a similar significance and form also once more in the
conception of the mountain Meru as expanded by Hindoo imagination,
which is conceived as twirling stick in the sea of milk, and is the
creative source of the world. Herodotus mentions similar columns, some
constructed in the shape of the male, others in that of the female
organ. He ascribes their construction[41] to Sesostris, who erected
them everywhere on his military expeditions against all the peoples he
conquered. The majority of such pillars no longer existed in the days
of Herodotus. It was only in Syria that the historian[42] had himself
seen them. However, the fact that he ascribes them all to Sesostris is
merely based on the tradition he adopts. Moreover, his explanation is
wholly Greek in its colour; he converts the natural significance into
one of ethical import and in this sense informs us: "In cases where
Sesostris during his expedition crossed nations which were brave in
battle, he set up pillars in their land together with inscriptions,
which gave his own name and nation, and indicated that he had subdued
these peoples. Where, on the contrary, he overcame without opposition,
he indicated on such pillars the female organ of sex without attaching
an inscription in order to declare the fact that these nations had been
cowards in battle."

(_b_) We find further constructions of a similar nature, intermediate,
that is, between sculpture and architecture, principally in Egypt. With
these we may include, for example, the _obelisks_, which do not, it is
true, borrow their form from the living organisms of Nature, such as
plants, animals, or the human form, but are of a form wholly subject to
geometrical rule, yet at the same time no longer constructed expressly
as subservient to the human dwelling or temple, but are erected in
free and independent self-subsistency, and possess the symbolical
significance of the solar rays. "Mithras," maintains Creuzer, "the Mede
or Persian, rules in the solar city of Egypt[43], and is there prompted
by a dream to build obelisks, that is to say solar rays in stone, and
to inscribe on them letters which are known as Egyptian." Pliny had
already attached this import to obelisks[44]. They were dedicated to
the sun's divinity, whose rays they were intended to catch and at the
same time to reflect. Also we find that in the images set up in Persia
we have rays of fire which ascend from columns[45].

After obelisks we should mention as most important the sculptured
_Memnons._ The huge statues of Memnon of Thebes, of which Strabo was
still able to see one fully preserved and made from a single stone,
while the other, which uttered a sound at setting of the sun, was
already in his day mutilated, possessed the human form. They were
two seated colossal human figures in their grandiose and massive
proportions rather inorganically and architectonically designed than in
the strict sense sculptured, as also appears in the case of the linear
arrangement of the Memnon columns, and, inasmuch as they are only
valid in such equable order and size, they wholly digress from the aim
of sculpture and are subject to the art of building. Hirt[46] refers
the colossal melodious statue, which Pausanias states the Egyptians
regarded as the image of Phamenoph, not so much to deity as to a king,
who possessed in it his monument, as Osymandyas and others in a similar
way. It is, however, quite possible that these imposing images supplied
a more definite or indefinite conception of something universal. Both
Egyptians and Aethiopians worshipped Memnon, the son of the Dawn,
and sacrificed to him on the first appearance of the solar rays by
means of which the image greeted with its vocal sound the worshippers.
Producing as it did vocal sound it is not merely in virtue of its form
of importance and interest, but by reason of its nature as a living,
significant and revealing thing, albeit the mode of revelation is
purely one of symbolic suggestion.

This relation we have pointed out in the case of these statues of
Memnon is equally true in that of the _Sphinxes_, which we have already
discussed in our reference to their symbolic significance. We find
these Sphinxes in Egypt not merely in extraordinary numbers but also
of stupendous size. One of the most famous of them is the one which is
situated in close proximity to the Cairo group of pyramids. Its length
is 148 metres, its height from the claws to the head is 65 metres; the
feet that repose in front, measured from the breast to the points of
the claws, are 57 metres, and the height of the claws 8 metres. This
enormous mass of rock, however, has not in the first instance been
excavated and then carried to the place now occupied by it. On the
contrary, the excavations which have been made to its foundations prove
that the foundation consists of limestone, and in a manner which showed
that the entire huge work was hewn from one rock of which it only forms
a portion. This enormous image more nearly approaches, it is true,
genuine sculpture in its colossal proportions; it is, however, equally
true that the Sphinxes were also set side by side linearly in passages,
in which position they, too, receive a wholly architectonic character.

(_c_) Such independent figures are, as a rule, not only to be found in
isolation, but are supplemented by the construction of large buildings
resembling the temple type, labyrinths, subterranean excavations
of every kind, or amongst other things are utilized in masses and
surrounded by walls.

The first thing we may remark with regard to the temple enclosures
of Egypt is this that the fundamental character of this huge type
of architecture, detailed information as to which we have latterly
received in the main from French writers, consists in this that they
are constructions open to the day, without roofing, doors, passages
between partitions[47], and above all, between columned halls, entire
forests of columns. They are works, in short, of the greatest range
and variety of interior construction which, without serving as the
habitation of a god, or a communion of worshippers, independently
by this self-consistent operation appeal to the wonder of our
imaginations quite as much in the colossal size of their proportions
and masses, as through the fact that their isolated forms and images
make an independent and exclusive claim to our interest. Such forms
and images are in truth placed there as symbols for significances
which are strictly universal in their import, or in the position
they occupy as representing literature, in so far, that is, as they
declare such significances not through the manner of their form, but
by means of writings, works of imaginative form which are engraved on
their surfaces. We may in part describe these gigantic buildings as
a collection of sculptured images; for the most part, however, these
appear in such a number and with such repetition of one and the same
form, that the arrangement becomes one of a series, and it is only in
this kind of line and order that they receive what is precisely their
architectonic definition, which becomes, however, once more an object
in itself, and does not merely mean beams and roofing and nothing
beyond them.

The larger constructions of this type start with a paved passage, one
hundred feet broad, according to Strabo's statement, and three or four
times as long. On either side of this approach (δρόμος) stand Sphinxes,
in rows of fifty to a hundred, in height from twenty to thirty feet.
After this comes an imposing and splendid portal (πρόπυλον), narrower
at the top than at the base, with piers and columns of enormous bulk,
ten or twenty times higher than the height of a man; partially isolate
and independent, and in part fixed in walls and gorgeously decorated
structures[48], which also stand up perpendicularly in independence
to the height of from fifty to sixty feet, broader at the bottom
than at the top, without being connected with transverse walls, or
carrying entablatures[49], and so constituting a dwelling. On the
contrary, what we find is that, in contrast to vertical walls, which
rather suggest they are built to support a weight, they belong to the
independent mode of architecture. Here and there Memnon images lean
against these walls, which also constitute passages, and are entirely
covered with hieroglyphics and enormous pictures on stone, so that they
appeared to the Frenchmen who recently saw them like printed calico.
We may regard them as so many leaves of books, which by means of their
spatial and limited superficies arouse unlimited astonishment, feeling,
and reflection in the human soul. Doors follow at frequent intervals,
and alternate with each series of Sphinxes; or we find an open spot
engirt throughout by a wall with columned passages to these walls.
After that we get a covered place, which does not serve as a dwelling,
but is a forest of pillars, the columns of which have no roofing but
carry slabs of stone. After these Sphinx passages, series of columns,
and structural walls over-flowered with hieroglyphics, after them a
frontage building with wings, before which obelisks are erected and
lions couched; or also, after forecourts, or a cincture of yet more
narrow approaches, we reach the culmination of the entire construction,
the real temple, the sanctuary (σηκὸς), according to Strabo of moderate
proportions, which either contained no image of the god, or merely an
animal image. This dwelling of godhead was now and again a monolith,
as Herodotus, for example, narrates[50] in respect of the temple of
Buto. This temple was worked out of one piece of stone to a length
and breadth, which in each of its walls of equal size measured forty
cubits, and as final roof to the same was placed a single stone with a
cornice of four cubits' breadth. In general, however, these sanctuaries
are so small, that no communion of worshippers could find room inside.
Such a communion, however, is an essential concomitant of a temple;
otherwise the same is merely a box, a treasury, a place where sacred
images are conserved.

To such an extent buildings of this type run on for miles with their
rows of animal figures, their Memnons, their immense doors, their walls
and colonnades of the most stupendous dimensions, some of greater
breadth, some of less, their isolated obelisks and much else, that
while we wander within works so huge and so calculated to excite our
surprise, which in part possess merely a more restricted purpose in
the diverse activities of the system of culture to which they belong
the question is irresistible, what these masses of stone have to tell
us of the Divine they secrete. For on closer inspection symbolical
meanings are everywhere in-woven in these constructions in that the
number of Sphinxes and Memnons, the position of columns and passages
have relation to the days of the year, the twelve signs of the Zodiac,
the seven planets, the great periods of the lunar cycle and other
phenomena. To some extent we find here that sculpture has not yet
freed itself from architecture; and in some degree again the really
architectonic aspect of measure, interval, number of columns, walls,
steps, and so forth is so treated, that the real object of these
relations is not to be found in their own intrinsic character, that
is, in their symmetry, harmony, and beauty, but is referable to their
symbolical definition. And in this way all this work of construction
asserts itself independently as an object in itself, as itself a
cultus, in which both nation and king are united. Many works, such as
canals, the lake Maeotis, and generally waterworks have a particular
relation to agriculture and the floods of the Nile. An example of this
we have in the statement of Herodotus[51] to the effect that Sesostris
had the entire country, which up to this time had been ridden and
driven over, cut up into canals to provide drinking-water, and in this
way made horses and wagons useless. The main constructions, however,
remained those buildings with a religious purpose, which the Egyptians
instinctively piled up much as the bees do their cells. Their property
was regulated[52], their other social conditions equally so, the soil
of the country was extraordinarily fruitful, and required no laborious
cultivation, so that we may almost say their agriculture merely
consisted in sowing and harvest. We hear little of other interests and
exploits, such as are common to nations, and, with the exception of the
tales of the priesthood with reference to the maritime undertakings of
Sesostris, we have no account of sea voyages. Speaking generally, the
Egyptians restricted their efforts to this work of construction within
their own country. It is, however, what we have called self-substantive
and symbolical architecture which forms the fundamental type of their
imposing works and for this reason that the human ideal, the spiritual
in its aims and external forms, has not as yet come to self-knowledge,
or constituted itself the object and product of its free activity.
Self-consciousness has not as yet ripened in the fruit, is not yet
independently secured, but is restless, seeking, surmising, ever for
producing without absolute satisfaction, and consequently without
repose. It is only in the form that is commensurate with Spirit
that mind essentially at home with itself finds satisfaction and
finds its true definition in what it produces. The symbolical work
of art on the contrary remains more or less indefinite. Among such
creations of the Egyptian art of building we may include the so-called
_labyrinths_, courts with columned approaches, circumambient paths
between partitions, which entwine about in a mysterious fashion, but
whose confusing intricacy is not constructed with the puerile object
to make the means of exit a problem, but to create for the senses an
intricate mode of motion that is dominated by mysteries of symbolical
import. For these paths, as we have already indicated, imitate in
their course that of the heavenly bodies and embody the same for
imagination. They are in part constructed above the ground and in part
underneath it, and in addition to their passages are furnished with
chambers and halls of enormous size, whose walls are covered with
hieroglyphics. The largest labyrinth which Herodotus himself saw was
not far from the lake Maeris. He affirms[53] that its size exceeded his
powers of description, and it surpassed the pyramids themselves. The
building he ascribes to the twelve kings, and he describes it in the
following terms. The entire building surrounded by one and the same
wall consisted of two stories, the one above and the other beneath
the level of the ground. Taken together they enclosed three thousand
chambers, each story containing fifteen hundred. The upper story which
alone Herodotus was able to see was divided into twelve adjacent
courts[54], with doors placed opposite to each other, six facing the
North and six the South, and every court was engirt with a colonnade,
constructed of white and carefully worked stone. From these courts,
Herodotus continues, you have ingress to the chambers, and from these
into the halls, and from the halls into other chambers, and from these
chambers into the courts. According to Hirt[55] Herodotus only so far
defines this latter relation to the extent that he places in the first
instance the chambers in juxtaposition to the courts. With regard to
the labyrinthine passages, Herodotus states that the numerous passages
through the roofed-in chambers and the multitudinous incurvations
between the courts had filled him with infinite astonishment. Pliny[56]
describes them as obscure and tedious for a stranger on account of
their windings, and when their doors were opened there was a noise
in them like thunder; we also learn from Strabo, an evidence of
importance, for he was an eye-witness no less than Herodotus, that the
labyrinthine passages encircled the court spaces. It was the Egyptians
who mainly built such labyrinths: but we find in imitation of Egypt a
similar one in Crete, though of smaller extent, and also, too, in the
Morea and Malta. Taking into consideration the fact, however, that,
on the one hand, an art of building of this kind in its chambers and
halls already approximated to the dwelling type, while, on the other,
according to the delineation of Herodotus, the subterranean portion
of the labyrinth, an entrance into which was forbidden him, had for
its definite object the sepulchre of the founders of the building and
sacred crocodiles--so that here the essential characteristic of the
labyrinth was entirely the symbolic import in an independent sense--we
may find in such works a point of transition to the form of symbolical
architecture, which in its own constituent parts begins already to
approach the classic type of building.



3. THE TRANSITION FROM SELF-SUBSTANTIVE ARCHITECTURE TO THE CLASSICAL
TYPE


However stupendous in size the construction we have just considered are
the subterranean architecture of Oriental peoples such as the Hindoos
and Egyptians, which offer many features of resemblance, are still
more imposing and calculated to excite our wonder. Whatever aspect of
grandeur and nobility is in this respect discoverable above ground
presents no parallel to that which among the Hindoos is presented us
beneath the earth in Salsette, which faces Bombay, and in Ellora, that
is, in Upper Egypt and Nubia. In these extraordinary excavations what
we have in the earliest examples exposed is the immediate necessity of
an _enclosure._ The fact that mankind have sought protection in caves,
and made their dwelling there and that entire peoples have possessed no
other mode of dwelling is due to the compelling force of their needs.
Caves of this kind existed in the land of Judaea, where in works of
many stories there was room for thousands. There were also in the Harz
mountains in the Rammelsberg near Goslar chambers, into which men crept
for cover, and used to bring their provisions for safety.

(_a_) Of an entirely different type, however, are the Hindoo and
Egyptian subterranean constructions to which we have alluded. In some
degree they served as places of assemblage, subterranean cathedrals,
and are constructions whose object was to excite religious wonder and
concentrate the communion of spiritual life; they are united to designs
and suggestions of a symbolical character, colonnades, sphinxes,
Memnons, elephants, colossal images of idols, which, hewn from the bare
rock, were as fully left a component growth of the formless stone as
the columns in such excavations were made to stand out in isolation
from it. In front of the walls of rock these buildings were here and
there wholly exposed to the light, in other parts they were entirely
devoid of it, and illuminated merely with torches, while in other
portions light was introduced from above.

Relatively to the super-terranean constructions these excavations
appear as prior in time, so that we may regard the enormous spaces
laid out above the soil as an imitation and efflorescence of similar
tracts of land beneath it. In excavations there is no positive
building, but we have rather a given material taken away. And to nest
thus in the ground, to excavate is more natural to man than to seek for
a material, and with it to construct and inform a mass of buildings.
In this respect we may assume the cave to be utilized prior to the hut
or dwelling. Caves are the extension of spatial covering instead of
a limitation of such, or an extension which grows up as a limit and
enclosure, in which the enclosure is already present. The subterranean
construction consequently inclines to start with what is already
present, and, in so far as it leaves the fundamental material as it
finds it, is not erected with the freedom applicable to a configuration
raised above the surface of the soil. In our view, however, these
constructions already belong to a further stage of the art of building,
however much they may also have features of a symbolical type, because
they no longer are placed there as independently symbolical, but
already possess the aim or purpose of an enclosure, a partition, a
roof, within which more symbolical figures as such are set up. That
which is connoted under the conception of temple and dwelling, both in
the Greek and more modern use of the terms, we have here in their most
natural form.

We may include in the above class the caves of Mithras, although we
find them in a very different locality. The worship and ritual of
Mithras originates in Persia. A cultus, however, of a similar kind was
also promulgated in the Roman Empire. In the Paris Museum we find a
very famous bas-relief, which represents a youth in the act of striking
an ox with a steel weapon. It was discovered in the Roman Capitol in
a deep grotto beneath the temple of Jupiter. In these Mithras caves
vaults are also met with, and passages which on the one hand appear
definitely to symbolize by suggestion the course of the stars, and from
another point of view also (precisely as still in our own time takes
place in our free-mason lodges, where people are conducted through
many passages and have to see dramatic scenes and much else) the ways,
which the soul must pass through in its purification, albeit it may be
true enough that this fundamental meaning is more fully and directly
expressed in sculpture and other work than in architecture simply. In
a connection somewhat similar we may also mention the Roman catacombs,
the fundamental idea of whose construction was certainly something
quite other than that of being subservient to aqueducts, sepulchres or
any system of drainage.

(_b_) In the _second_ place we may seek for our present use a more
definite point of transition from the architecture of independent
type in those constructions which have been raised as _housings of
the dead_, partly in the form of excavations beneath the ground, and
partly as buildings above it. More particularly among the Egyptians
this kind of construction, whether subterranean or super-terranean,
was associated with a realm of the dead, just as in general among the
Egyptians it is a realm of the invisible which in the first instance
receives a habitation and is placed before us. The Hindoo burns his
dead, or suffers their bones to lie and moulder on the earth. According
to the Hindoo's point of view mankind are, or become, god or gods,
whichever way one cares to put it, and we are unable to find in
their case this assured distinction between the living and the dead
regarded as dead. Hindoo constructions, consequently, so far as they
do not originate in Mohammedanism, are not dwellings for the dead,
and appear generally to belong to an earlier period as we assumed
was true of the astonishing excavations described. In the case of
the Egyptians, however, the contrast between living and dead asserts
itself predominantly. That which is spiritual begins to separate itself
essentially from what is material. We have here the resurrection of
spirit in concrete individuality, the movement of that process. The
dead are therefore retained fast as personality[57], and are secured
and preserved securely above the conception of dissolution into Nature,
that is into universal evanescence, flood and extinction. Singularity
is the principle of the spiritual in its notion of independence,
because spirit is only able to exist as individuality, that is
personality. Consequently this honour paid to and preservation of the
dead can only appear to ourselves as a first and important element in
the definition of the existence of spiritual individuality, since
it is here that singularity is asserted as maintained rather than
abandoned, inasmuch as the body at any rate is treasured and respected
as this Nature's own mode of individuality. Herodotus assures us, a
fact we have already noticed, that the Egyptians were the first to
declare that the souls of men were immortal, and despite the fact that
the grasp on spiritual individuality is in their case very incomplete,
in so far as in their view the deceased must for three thousand years
pass through a whole series of animals belonging to land, water, and
air, yet for all that in this conception, and in the embalming of the
body, we find fixedly the notion of bodily individuality, and of the
independent self-existence as separate from that body.

It is therefore also of importance in the arts of building that
in these the separation of the spiritual, no less than the ideal
significance, which[58] is independently represented, be carried
into effect while the corporeal shell is set round it as a purely
architectonic environment. The dwellings of the dead of the Egyptians
constitute for this reason the earliest examples of the temple type.
The essential feature, the central core of worship is a subject,
an individual object which appears of significance by itself, and
expresses itself as distinct from its dwelling, which is thereby
interpreted as purely a subservient covering. And no doubt it is not
an actual man, for whose requirements a house or palace had to be
built, but deceased objects that are without such needs, kings, sacred
animals, around whom immeasurable constructions are enclosed.

Just as agriculture fixes the wandering of nomads in the stable
possession of a definite locality, we may say that generally
sepulchres, monuments, and the service of the dead unite mankind, and
even offer to those who possess no States, no limitations of property,
a place of _rendez-vous_, sacred places which they defend and refuse
to have taken away from them. As an illustration we may cite the case
of the Scythians, a nomad people, who retired everywhere, according to
the narration of Herodotus[59], before Darius. And when Darius sent an
embassage to them with the message that if their king deemed himself
strong enough to offer resistance he should come forth to battle, but
if he did not he ought to recognize Darius as his lord, Idanthyrsus met
the same with the reply that they possessed neither cities nor tilled
land, and had nothing to defend for the reason that Darius had nothing
to ravage; if, however, Darius made a point of having a fight they
possessed the sepulchres of their fathers, let him therefore dare to
advance against these, he will then discover whether they will fight
for their sepulchres or not.

The most ancient and imposing monuments erected to the dead we find
in Egypt. They are the Pyramids. What most excites our wonder at
first sight of these astonishing constructions is their extraordinary
magnitude, which at once makes us reflect upon the duration of time,
the variety, superabundance and persistence of human energies which is
inseparable from the completion of such colossal buildings. From the
point of view of form there is nothing in them to protract attention:
in a few minutes we have surveyed and taken in the entire effect.
With this simplicity and uniformity of their form in view their
object has ever been a subject of controversy. It is true that even
the ancients, as for example Herodotus and Strabo, adduced the aim,
which they subserved; but for all that both in former and more recent
times, travellers and writers have contributed much that is fabulous
and unwarranted in their reflections. The Arabs endeavoured to effect
entrance by force, hoping to discover treasure in the interior of
the Pyramids; such assaults, however, beyond disturbing much, have
failed in their object to reach the actual passages and chambers.
Europeans of a later date, among whom we may mention in particular
for distinction, Belzoni, a native of Rome, and Caviglia of Genoa,
have at last succeeded in ascertaining more accurate information
with respect to the interior of these fabrics. Belzoni discovered
the royal sepulchre in the Pyramid of Chephren. The entrances to the
Pyramids were closed in the securest way by square blocks of stone,
and it appears that Egyptians endeavoured in their construction so to
effect matters that the entrance, even when discovered, could only be
followed up and opened with the greatest difficulty. This proves to us
that the Pyramids remained closed and could not be again used. Within
their interior explorers have found chambers, passages, which point by
suggestion to the ways, which the soul undertakes after death in its
course and transmigration, great halls, channels beneath the earth at
one time descending, at another mounting up. The royal sepulchre of
Belzoni runs on in this way hewn out of the rock for a mile. In the
principal hall stood a sarcophagus of granite, sunk in the ground;
but all that was discovered in it was the remains of animal bones of
a mummy, probably that of an Apis. The whole, however, proved beyond
a doubt that the object in view was that of being a dwelling for the
dead. The Pyramids differ in age, form, and size. The most ancient
appear to be stones piled on one another in a more or less pyramidal
shape. The more recent ones are constructed with uniformity; some are
somewhat flattened out at the summit, others run up entirely to a
point. On others have been found deposits, an explanation of which may
be gathered from the description Herodotus[60] gives us when referring
to the Pyramid of Cheops of the manner in which the Egyptians carried
out such works, so that Hirt includes such among the Pyramids which
remained unfinished[61]. In the older Pyramids according to the latest
evidence of Frenchmen the chambers and passages are more winding;
in the more recent ones they are simpler, but entirely covered with
hieroglyphics, to interpret which throughout will take several years.

In this way the Pyramids, despite all the wonder they arouse of their
own accord, are really nothing but crystals, mere shells, which
enclose a kernel, that is a departed spirit, and serve as custodians
of his still consistent bodily presence and form. In this departed
and deceased person, who secures an independent reproduction, we fail
to find consequently any significance[62]; the architecture, however,
which up to this point independently possessed its significance in
itself as architecture, is now divided in its aim, and in this division
is _subservient_ to something else, whereas sculpture receives the
function to give body to the genuine ideal aspect, although in the
first instance the individual figure in its unique and immediate
natural shape is retained. We find consequently, on a general survey
of the Egyptian art of building, on the one hand, the self-subsistent
symbolical buildings; on the other, however, and more particularly
in everything which is attached to the monuments of the dead, the
specific determination of architecture to be an enclosure and nothing
more, already clearly asserts itself. It is an essential concomitant
of this, that architecture not only be limited to the construction of
excavations and caves, but attest itself as an inorganic Nature built
by human hands on the spot where men have actual need of it, and for a
definite purpose will it to be.

Other nations have raised monuments of the same kind, sacred buildings
as dwellings of the dead bodies, over whom they happen to be erected.
As examples we may instance the mausoleum in Curia, and of more recent
date that of Hadrian, the still existing Englesburg in Rome, a palace
of careful construction raised in honour of a dead person, all of which
were even in antiquity famous works. According to the description of
Uhden[63] we may also mention in this connection a type of mortuary,
which in its arrangement and environment imitated in its smaller
aspects temples dedicate to gods. A temple of this kind possessed a
garden, arbours, a spring, a vineyard, and moreover chapels, in which
portrait statues of gods were placed. More particularly in the time of
the Roman Empire were such monuments to the dead built with statues
of the deceased under the image of gods such as Apollo, Venus, and
Minerva. Figures like the above, no less than the entire construction,
consequently received during that age the significance of an apotheosis
and a temple in honour of the dead man, just as also among the
Egyptians the process of embalming, the emblems placed thereby, and
the sarcophagus attest that the deceased was treated as a god-like
Osiris[64].

The most imposing and least complex constructions of this kind,
however, are the Egyptian Pyramids. In this type we have the peculiar
and essential line of the art of building, that is the straight one,
and in general terms the uniformity and abstract simplicity[65] of
forms. For architecture, as merely enclosure and inorganic Nature,
or Nature that is not itself vitally and essentially suffused by the
indwelling spirit in an independent mode, is unable to possess form
except as one which is external to itself; external form, however,
is not organic, but abstract and purely referable to the organs of
sense[66]. However much the Pyramid already begins to receive the
determining characteristics of the dwellings, yet the rectangular
principle is still not throughout predominant, as it is in a real
dwelling-house; it has still an independent determinacy, which is
not merely of service to the purpose for which it is erected, and
consequently closes up of itself by a process of gradation directly
from the foundation to the apex.

(_c_) It is from this point that we may make the transition from the
independent type of building to that of an art of construction, which
is serviceable of a _purpose._

There are two points of departure to this later type. There is on the
one hand _symbolic_ architecture, and on the other practical necessity
and the _impulse of purpose_ to subserve that necessity. In the case
of symbolical forms, as we have already had occasion to observe,
architectonic purpose is merely an incidental feature, merely an
external mode of co-ordination. The dwelling-house, on the contrary,
erected as necessity itself, requires posts of wood, or just walls
standing up straight with beams, which are laid across them at right
angles, and a roofing, and constitutes, the other extreme. There can be
no question that the necessity of this real and effective expediency
makes its appearance as the result of its own demand. The distinction
that may be raised, however, in answer to the question, whether genuine
architecture--as we shall shortly have to consider it as the classic
art of building--takes its rise solely in this necessity, or is to
be deduced from independent and symbolical works, which conducted us
of their own accord to buildings devoted to service, is the point in
essential dispute.

(_α_) It is the force of circumstances which brings to the fore forms
in architecture which are wholly stamped with a useful purpose, and
the abstract deductions of science, such as the rectilinear line, the
right angle, and the smooth surface. For in serviceable architecture
that which constitutes the real object, is, in its independence, as
a statue, or more closely as human individuals, that is community, a
people, brought together for objects of general significance, which no
longer have as their aim the satisfaction of physical wants, but are
such in a religious and political sense. In a special degree the need
asserts itself to shape an enclosure for the image, the statue of the
gods, or generally for that which is independently placed before us and
actually present as sacred. Memnons, Sphinxes, and the like stand up in
the open, or in a grove, that is in the external environment of nature.
Images of this kind, however, and still more human images of gods,
are borrowed from another realm than that of immediate Nature. They
belong to the world of imagination, and come into existence through the
artistic powers of mankind. The purely natural environment is therefore
not sufficient; they require for their external frame a ground and an
enclosure, which shall be derived from the same source as their own,
in other words, such as are the product of the imagination, and have
received their form by means of artistic effort. It is only in an
environment created by art that the gods find themselves at home[67].
In such a case, however, this external frame does not possess its
object in itself, but it subserves something other than itself, and is
subject to the principle of purpose or expediency.

If, however, these, in the first instance, purely serviceable forms are
exalted to an expression of beauty they are unable to persist in their
original abstract mode, and are forced to accept, in addition to what
is merely symmetrical and harmonious, that which is organic, concrete,
essentially itself conclusive and varied. And because this is so men
are forced to reflect over distinctions of determinating form, no less
than the express emphasis to be made on certain aspects of form, which
is wholly superfluous where the question is only one of a definite
purpose to be attained. A beam, for example, is from one point of view
that which is carried forward in a straight line; at the same time,
however, it terminates at both extremes. In the same way a post which
has to support either rafter or roof stands on the ground and reaches
its terminating point where the rafter rests upon it. The architecture
of service asserts distinctions of this kind and gives form to them by
means of art; an organic design, on the contrary, such as a plant, or
a human being, ay, whether we look at such above or below, but in any
case throughout, has to be organically embodied, to be differentiated
in the latter case consequently by feet and head, or in the former by
roots and corona.

(_β_) Conversely symbolic architecture takes its point of departure
more or less from organic forms of this kind, as we see is the case
with sphinxes, memnons, and so forth; yet it is also unable wholly
to exclude in its walls, doors, beams, obelisks, and the rest, the
principle of the straight line and uniformity, and is generally obliged
to accept the assistance of such principles appertinent to the genuine
art of building as equality of size, interval of relative position,
rectilinear progression of rows, in short, order and regularity when
it proposes to place in a series and to set up in accordance with
architectural design the colossal sculptured figures to which we
have referred. By doing so it unites in itself both principles[68],
whose union brings for result an architecture, the beauty of which is
promoted along with the object to which it is subservient, albeit in
the symbolic type these two aspects[69] still lie in separation side by
side instead of being fused in unity.

(_γ_) We may therefore so conceive the transition that on the one side
the art of building, hitherto self-subsistent in type, is forced to
modify under scientific principles[70] the forms of organisms in the
direction of regularity, and to pass into the province of proposed
expediency; while conversely what is entirely such intended purpose in
the form moves in opposition to the principle of the organic world.
Where these two extremes come together, and mutually pass into one
another, we get what is really beautiful classic architecture.

We may recognize this union, as it actually arises, clearly in the
transformation now introduced of that which we already have met with in
the architecture which was anterior under the form of columns. In other
words, it is true that from one point of view walls are necessary to
make an enclosure; but walls, too, can stand up independent, as we have
already proved with examples, without making the enclosure complete, to
which a roofing, no less than an enclosure of the sides, essentially
contributes. But a roofing of this kind has to be supported. The
simplest way of doing this is by columns, whose essential and, at
the same time exclusive, rationale consists here in being simply
_supports._ For this reason walls are really a superfluity is so far
as it is only a question of support. For supporting is a mechanical
relation, and belongs to a province of gravity and its laws. And in
this[71] gravity the weight of a particular body is concentrated in
its point of gravity, and must be assisted at this centre in remaining
horizontal without a fall. This is precisely what the column does, so
that with it the power of support appears to be reduced to the minimum
limit of exterior means to effect this. What a wall at great cost[72]
effects, is equally effected by a few columns. It is a very beautiful
characteristic of classic architecture not to set up more columns than
are actually necessary to carry the weight of the rafter and that which
reposes thereon. In genuine architecture columns, for purposes of mere
decoration, are not truly beautiful. For the same reason also columns
which stand up entirely alone do not perform their true function. No
doubt triumphal columns have been erected, such as the famous ones
in honour of Trajan and Napoleon: but these, too, are really but a
pedestal for statues, and moreover covered with sculptured reliefs to
commemorate and glorify the hero, whose image they carry. In the case
of the column, then, it is of exceptional importance to see how in the
course of architectural development it is compelled to divest itself
of the concrete form of Nature before it can secure its more abstract
form, the form, that is, which is as compatible with a definite object
as it is with beauty.

(_αα_) Independent architecture, on account of the fact that it starts
with organic images, makes use of human shapes, as, for example, we
find in Egypt figures in some measure at least human, such as Memnons
and the like, are utilized. This is, however, a mere superfluity, in
so far, that is, as a definition of this character is not the true
medium of support. We find among the Greeks that Caryatides are used
in another mode and under a more severe obedience to rule to support
superimposed weight, but such cannot be extensively employed. Moreover,
we can only regard it as a misuse of the human form to crush it
together under such burdens, and it is for this reason that Caryatides
receive the character of the oppressed; their drapery suggests a state
of slavery under which it is a degradation to carry such burdens.

(_ββ_) The more natural organic form for pillars and supports which
have to bear a weight is consequently the tree, plant-life generally, a
stem, a thin stalk which strives upwards in a vertical direction. The
hole of a tree already carries of its own nature its crown of branches,
the blade of corn the ear, the stem the flower. These forms, too, the
Egyptian art of building, which has not as yet attained the liberty of
viewing them in their abstract intension, borrows directly from Nature.
In this respect the grandiose quality which we discover in the style
of Egyptian palaces or temples--the colossal proportions of its rows
of columns, the huge number of them, and withal the imposing mutual
relations of the entire structure, has ever filled the spectator with
wonder and astonishment. In these colonnades we do not find that all
columns have the same form; they alternate between one, two, or three
types. Denon, in his work on the Egyptian expedition, has collected
a great number of such types. The combined effect is not as yet any
uniform shape based on abstract principles of selection; rather the
foundation is the shape of an onion, a reed-like efflorescence of leaf
from the bulb, or, in other examples, a compression together of the
root-leaves according to the manner of several kinds of plant. From
this base, then, the thin stem breaks upwards straight, or mounts
as column with twisted coils, and the capital is also a separation
of leaves from branches which suggests the process of a flower. The
imitation, however, is not true to Nature, but the plant-like forms are
drained off under the architectural impulse, and made to approximate to
circular, geometrical, and regular forms, or straight lines, so that
such columns, in their entirety, resemble what are usually described as
arabesques.

(_γγ_) This is not the place to enter into a general discussion of
the _arabesque_ for the reason that notionally it marks precisely
the transition from the architecture which adopts as its basic form
the natural organism to that which by its adoption of a more severe
regularity is more strictly architectonic. When, however, the art of
building has become free in its definitive character it relegates
arabesques to the function of decoration and ornament. They are then
preeminently forms of plants strained off, so to speak, or forms which
originate from plants together with entwined forms of animals and
human beings, or forms of animals in their passage over to plant-life.
In so far as they purport to authenticate a symbolical significance
the transitional passage between the different spheres of the animal
kingdom hold good for it. Apart from such an interpretation they are
simply the play of the imagination in the selection, combination and
articulation of the most diverse forms of Nature. For architectural
ornamentation of this kind, in the invention of which the imagination
finds scope for its activity in the most varied creations of every
kind, not even excluding utensils and drapery, the fundamental
determinant and type is this, that whether it be plants, leaves,
flowers, or animals, all are made to approximate to the abstract
figures of science, in other words the inorganic. For this reason
we frequently find arabesques to be stiff, untrue to organic life;
and it is on this account that they are not unfrequently condemned
and art is blamed for the use of them. This is exceptionally true of
painting, though Raphael himself did not scruple to paint arabesques
in great profusion, characterized with the highest charm, nobility of
feeling, variety, and grace. No doubt arabesques are an antithesis to
nature, whether we compare them with organic forms or the rigid laws of
mechanics; but an opposition of this kind is not merely a right of art
generally, but even an obligation under which architecture is bound.
It is only by this means that living forms in other respects unfitted
for the art of building are made adaptable to the truly architectural
style and brought into harmony with it. Such an adaptability is
offered in an exceptionally close degree by vegetable Nature, which
is also in the East utilized to an extravagant extent in arabesques;
in other words plants are not as yet individual objects which possess
feeling, but naturally present themselves as adapted to architectural
design, by virtue of the fact that they form coverings and protection
against rain, sunlight, and wind, and, generally speaking, do not
possess the free oscillation[73] of lines which breaks forth from the
regularity of scientific conceptions[74]. Architecturally used the
regularity of leaves already present is yet further subjected to rule
in the definition of rondure and straight line, so that by this means
everything which it is possible to regard as distortion, unnaturalness,
or stiffness in the plant-forms is fundamentally to be considered as
a transformation adapted to the requirements of what is genuinely
architectural.

In some such way in the column the real art of building passes from
that which is purely organic imitation to the definite purpose of
scientific rule, and from this to a position which again approximates
to the organic result. We find it necessary to draw attention to
this twofold point of departure from the actual necessities and the
purposeless self-subsistency of architecture, because the true type
unites both principles. The beautiful column originates in the natural
form, which is then transformed into the post, that is, it submits to
the uniformity and scientific precision of form.




CHAPTER II


CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE


The art of building, when it has attained the position peculiarly
its own and adequate to its notional content is subservient in its
products to an end, and a significance which it does not itself
essentially possess. It becomes an inorganic environment, a whole that
is co-ordinated and built conformably to the laws of gravity, whose
configurations are subject to that which is severely regular, straight,
rectangular, circular, the relations of definite number and quantity,
that which is essentially limited measure and strict conformity to
rule. Its beauty consists in this very relation to purpose, which,
in its freedom from direct[75] admixture with what is organic,
spiritual, and symbolical, and despite the fact that it subserves an
end, nevertheless combines in an essentially exclusive totality, which
suffers its own aim to appear through all its modifications, and in the
harmonious co-ordination of its relations clothes that which is purely
adapted to purpose in the forms of beauty. Architecture, however, at
this stage[76] corresponds to its real notion, for the reason that it
is not in a position to endow that which is in the most explicit sense
spiritual with a fully adequate existence, and is consequently only
able to inform what is external and devoid of spirit in its contrasted
appearance with that which is spiritual.

We propose, in our consideration of this art of building, in which the
relation of service is as truly a characteristic as that of beauty, to
adopt the following course of argument.

In the _first_ instance we have to establish the _general notion_ and
character of the same.

_Secondly_, we shall have to adduce the _particular_ fundamental
determinants of the architectonic types which are deducible from the
ulterior purpose which the classical work of art is erected to subserve.

_Thirdly_, we propose to survey the concrete reality which results from
the development of classical architecture.

I do not, however, propose in discussing any of the above relations
to enter into detail, but will limit myself to points of most general
significance, a restriction more easy to observe in the present case
than it was in that of the symbolical type of building.



1. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE


(_a_) In conformity with the principle I have already more than once
adverted to the fundamental idea of the genuine art of building
consists in this, that the spiritual import is not exclusively reposed
in the work of construction itself, which by this means becomes an
independent symbol of ideal signification[77], but, with the converse
result, that this significance secures its free existence outside the
limits of architecture. This existence may be of a twofold character,
to the extent in other words that another art of extensive range--I
refer, above all, to the art of sculpture of the true classical
type--sets before us and gives independent form to the significance,
or the individual man in himself receives and gives effect to the
same in the active verity of his life. Apart from this[78], these
two aspects may still appear together. When, therefore, the Oriental
architecture of the Babylonians, Hindoos, and Egyptians, on the one
hand, gave symbolical form, in images of independent consistency, to
that which was reckoned among these people as the absolute and true,
or, from another aspect, enclosed, despite its external natural form,
that which was conserved after death--in contrast to this what we
find now is--whether we regard it relatively to art's activity, or
to the life of actual existence--that the spiritual is _separated_
from the work of construction in _independent guise_ for itself,
and architecture becomes the _vassal_ of what is spiritual, which
constitutes the real significance and the determinating end. This end
is consequently predominant. It controls the entire work; it determines
the fundamental form of the same no less than its external skeleton,
and neither suffers the material nor the individual's imagination and
caprice to assert their independence in a self-substantive way, as was
the case in symbolical architecture, or to develop, over and beyond
the true purpose of the work, a superfluity of manifold parts and
configurations, as is the case in the romantic type.

(_b_) In considering a construction of this character we have, then,
first to ask ourselves not merely what are the circumstances under
which it was erected, but what is its aim and purpose. To make its
construction compatible with such considerations, to have a due regard
for climate, position, and the environing landscape, to create a
whole, one in spontaneous co-ordination, by a regard for all these
aspects as subservient to one purpose, this is the task stated
broadly, in the entire fulfilment of which the instincts and genius
of the artist will appear conspicuous. Among the Greeks we find that
it is public buildings, temples, colonnades, and halls utilized for
the ordinary rest and commerce of the day, approaches, such as the
famous ascent of the Acropolis in Athens, which are pre-eminently the
objects of the builder's art. Private residences, on the other hand,
were of a very simple character. With the Romans, on the contrary,
it is the luxurious character of private houses, especially villas,
which becomes prominent; and we may say the same thing of imperial
palaces, public baths, theatres, circuses, amphitheatres, aqueducts,
and springs. Buildings of this type, however, the utility of which
throughout remains the commanding and directing principle, are merely
able to accept beauty in a more or less decorative sense. The object
most compatible with freedom of treatment in this sphere is that of
religion--the temple-house as the enclosure of an individual which
itself is appropriated by fine art, and placed before us by sculpture
as the statue of the god.

(_c_) In the pursuit of aims such as those above mentioned, then,
genuine architecture appears to be more free than the symbolic type
of the previous stage, which seizes on the organic forms from Nature,
nay, more free than sculpture, which is compelled to accept the human
form it finds, and unites itself with them and their general relations
as presented it. Classical architecture rather invents its forms and
their configuration, so far as the content is concerned, from ends of
spiritual import and in respect to form from human reason without any
prototype. This greater freedom must, in a relative sense, be admitted;
but the province in which it is exercised remains restricted, and the
treatment which belongs to the classical art of building, on account of
the rationality[79] of its forms is, taken as a whole, somewhat of an
abstract and dry character.

Frederich von Schlegel has described architecture as a frozen music;
and in truth both these arts repose on a harmony of relations, which
admit of being referred to number, and are consequently readily grasped
in their fundamental characteristics. In our own case the fundamental
determinant for these essential traits and their simple, more serious
and imposing, or more charming and elegant relations is supplied by the
dwelling-house, that is, walls, columns, beams brought together in the
wholly crystalline forms of scientific deduction. What the relations
are we are not permitted to reduce to the bare determinants of number
and measure. But an oblong, quadrilateral figure with right angles
is more pleasing than a square, because in the case of the oblong we
are more thus affected both by equality and inequality[80]. If the
one dimension, namely breadth, is half as large as the other, we have
a relation which pleases; with an oblong which is long and narrow
the reverse is the case. Along with this the mechanical relations
of support and being supported must likewise be maintained in their
genuine measure and law; a heavy entablature, for instance, cannot rest
on slender and delicate columns, or conversely great structures be
prepared in order after all to lay on them something very light. In all
these mutual relations, such as that of the breadth to the length and
height of the building, the height of the columns to their thickness,
the intervals and number of the columns, the character and variety or
simplicity of decorations, the size of many plinths, borders, and so
forth, a secret principle of rhythm[81] prevails among the ancients,
which the instinct of the Greeks before all others has discovered; from
which he may no doubt now and again deviate in points of detail, but
the fundamental relations of which he is in general bound to preserve
in order that he may not fall away from beauty.



2. THE FUNDAMENTAL DETERMINANTS OF ARCHITECTURAL FORMS TAKEN SEVERALLY


(_a_) We have already alluded to the old controversy whether the
material of wood or stone is to be accepted as the point of departure
in building, and whether also it is from this difference of material
that the architectural types proceed. For the real art of building at
least, in so far as it lays emphasis on the aspect of ultimate purpose
and elaborates the fundamental type of the dwelling on the lines of
beauty we may accept wood as the more original of the two.

This is the conclusion of Hirt, following in this respect Vitruvius,
and his conclusion has been much disputed. I will in a few words offer
my own view on the matter in dispute, In the ordinary course of such
reflections we seek to discover the abstract and simple law for a
concrete result assumed as already present. It is in this way that
Hirt looks for the basic model of Greek buildings, in like manner
the design[82], the anatomical framework, and finds it, so far as
form and the material connected with it is concerned, in the dwelling
and building of wood. No doubt a house as such is built mainly as a
dwelling, a protection against storm, rain, weather, animals, and
human beings, and requires an enclosure that is complete, in order
that a family or a larger community of men may collect in independent
seclusion and may look after their necessities and pursue their
avocations in such seclusion. The house is a structure throughout with
a definite purpose, a creation of mankind for human objects. For this
reason we find him occupied upon it in many ways and with many objects,
and the structure is articulated in an aggregate pile of all kinds of
mechanical ways of mutual interlacement and imposition[83] in order to
hold in position and secure, according to the laws of gravity, what
men are compelled to look after, that is, the making stable what is
erected[84], the closing it in, the support of what is superimposed,
and not merely in the way of support, but, where the structure rests
horizontally, the preservation of it in such a position, and, further,
the uniting of all that clashes together at nooks and corners and so
on. Now it is quite true that the house makes it necessary that the
enclosure should be complete; and for this walls are most serviceable
and safest; and from this point of view the building of stone appears
most to answer the purpose. We may, however, with equal ease construct
our fence with posts standing in juxtaposition, upon which then beams
will rest, which at the same time both bind together and secure the
perpendicular posts. Finally we come to the cover of all and roofing.
In the temple house, moreover, the fact of enclosure is not the main
fact of importance, but the feature of support and being supported. For
this mechanical result the wooden structure is obviously the nearest
to hand and the most natural. For the post, as that which supports,
which at the same time requires a means of conjunction, and suffers the
same to weigh on it in the shape of the cross-beam, constitutes here
all that goes to the root of the matter. This essential division of
parts and connection as well as the association of these aspects for
a definite purpose belongs to the very nature of a wooden structure,
which has its necessary material directly supplied it by the tree. In
the tree we find already, without working upon it to any considerable
or laborious extent, both post and beam, in so far as, that is, the
wood already by itself possesses a definite form and consists of
separate lengths, more or less in the straight line, lengths which
can be brought together into rectangular corners no less than those
which are acute or obtuse, and in this way provide corner pillars,
supports, cross-beams and roof. Stone, on the contrary, never at any
time possesses a form so definite. In contrast to the tree it is a
formless mass, which first must be intentionally isolated and worked
upon, in order that it may fit in juxtaposition to or superposition
on other pieces and so once more be brought together with such. It
requires, in short, several processes before it receives the form and
serviceableness which wood already possesses independently. Moreover,
stone material, when it is used in great masses, invites rather
excavations and generally speaking, being _ab initio_ relatively
formless, is capable of every kind of form, for which reason it is
rather the congenial material for the symbolical as also the romantic
types of building, while wood, by reason of its natural form of
straight stems, is demonstrably without mediation more serviceable
to that more severe type of purpose and observance of rule, which
is the fountain-head of classical architecture. In this respect the
structure of stone is mainly predominant with the self-substantive type
of building, although even among the Egyptians, in their colonnades
bordered with plinths, other considerations supervene, which the
structure of wood is able more readily and in the first instance
to satisfy. Conversely we do not find that classical architecture
restricts itself entirely to buildings of wood, but, on the contrary,
where it is elaborated in conformity with beauty, executes its
buildings in stone; but in such a way, however, that we are from a
certain point of view still able to recognize in the architectural
forms the original principle of the wood structure, if also from a
further one definite relations attach which do not belong to that kind
of building as such.

(_b_) The points of fundamental importance, which emphasize the
dwelling-house as the basic type of the temple, may be in all essential
particulars enumerated as follows. If we consider with closer attention
the house in its mechanical relation to itself we shall find, in
accordance with what we have already stated, on the one hand, masses of
architectural form which serve as _support_ and, on the other, those
that _are supported_ both being united for stability and security.
Thirdly, we have before us the definite aspect of enclosure and
limitation according to the three dimensions of length, breadth, and
height. A construction, moreover, which, by the fact of its being a
mutual correlation of definite aspects distinct from each other, is a
concrete whole, is bound to declare this unity in its constitution. So
we find here that essential differences arise which perforce assert
themselves no less in their division and specific elaboration than they
do in their rational _connexus._

(_α_) Of first importance in this respect to consider is the aspect
of service in the way of _support._ When we speak of masses that
support we commonly, under the influence of every-day needs, think of
the wall as the most secure and reliable means of support. Support
as such, however, as we have already seen, is not the exclusive
principle of the wall; for the wall serves essentially as a means of
enclosure and connection, and for this reason is a predominant feature
in the romantic type of building. What is the peculiarity of Greek
architecture is this, that it gives direct form to the principle of
support by itself, and for this object employs columns as a fundamental
contribution to the purpose and beauty of its architecture.

(_αα_) The aim of the column is to support and only this; and although
a series of columns set up in a straight line make a boundary, such
an enclosure falls short of a secure wall or partition, and is, in
fact, expressly cancelled by the genuine partition and placed in a
position of free independence. Owing to this exclusive object of
support which pertains to the column, it is of first importance that it
should display the aspect of such a purpose relatively to the weight
which rests upon it. Consequently it should neither be too strong nor
too slender, nor again too compressed, not mount upwards to such a
height and with such ease as though the weight upon it was not treated
seriously.

(_ββ_) And just as this column is thus differentiated from the
enclosing wall, or fence, it is further from another point of view
distinct from the mere _post._ In other words, the post is fixed
directly in the ground and ceases with like directness at the
precise point where a weight is reposed upon it. For which reason
its determinate length, its commencement and termination equally
appear as a negative limitation by means of something else, as a
determinacy which is the result of chance, which it does not possess
in its own right. Commencement and termination, however, are defining
characteristics, which are part of the very notion of the supporting
column, and consequently must declare themselves in it as the
conditions[85] of its own substance. This is the ground of the fact
that architecture, in the elaboration of its beauty, assigns to the
column a base and a capital. In the Tuscan order, no doubt, we find no
base; the column springs immediately from the ground. This being so,
however, the length appears to the vision as something accidental. We
are ignorant whether the column has not been to some undefined extent
driven into the soil by the superimposed weight. In order that its
commencement must not expose this undefined and accidental appearance
it must with intention have the foot assigned to it, on which it
stands, and which expressly enables us to recognize the commencement
as in reality such. Art will therefore affirm as part of its function
that the column begins at a certain place and for the rest it will make
the security, and stable subsistence obvious to the eyes, and set the
vision at rest in this respect also. For similar reasons our column
should terminate in a capital, which is quite as much evidence of the
real function of being a support as it is an affirmation of the fact
that the column terminates here. This conception of a commencement
and conclusion which are both deliberate is what affords us, in fact,
the profounder explanation of base and capital. An analogous case is
that of a cadence in music, which requires a secure resolution, or
that of a book which should terminate without a full stop, or should
start off without a capital letter, in the making of which, however,
especially in the Middle Ages, large illuminated letters have been
employed, with similar decorations at the work's conclusion, in order
to bring prominently before the mind the facts of commencement and
termination. However much, therefore, both base and capital appear
to exceed what is obviously required we must not regard them as a
decorative superfluity, or think of simply deducing them from the
example of Egyptian columns, which still imitate the type of the
vegetable kingdom. Figures of organic design, such as are represented
by sculpture in animal and human form, begin and terminate in the free
outlines they themselves present, for it is the rational organism
itself, which gives outline to the form working thereon from its
own intrinsic nature. Architecture, on the contrary, possesses for
the column and its shapes nothing beyond the mechanical relation of
support, and the spatial distance from the ground to the point where
the weight that is supported terminates the column. Art, however,
is bound to emphasize and disclose the particular aspects which lie
together in this determinate relation for the reason that they are
essential features of the column. Its precise length and its twofold
boundary both above and below, that is, no less than its relation as
support, must consequently not appear as coming to it incidentally and
by virtue of something else, but must also be represented as immanent
in its very being.

With respect to the form of column other than its base and capital, it
is in the first place round, circular-shaped, for it has to stand up
in free and independent self-seclusion. The most essentially simple,
securely exclusive, rationally defined[86], and most regular line is
in fact the circle. For this reason the column already proves from its
shape that it is not adapted to form an even surface when placed in
adjacent rows, as is the case with adjacent posts which are squared to
the rectangular corner, and so present walls and partitions, but it has
merely the object to offer a support under its own self-limitation.
Moreover the columnar structure is ordinarily reduced in size
gradually, as it ascends from one-third of its height, it becomes less
in circumference and thickness, because the portions beneath have
to carry that above, and it is felt necessary to emphasize and make
obvious also this mechanical relation of the several parts of the
column itself. Finally, we frequently find that columns are grooved;
the reason of this is twofold, first, essentially to diversify the
simple form, and secondly to make the columns appear more thick by
means of such a division where this is necessary.

(_γγ_) Although, then, the column is set up in independent isolation
it has none the less to make it appear evident that it is not placed
there for its own sake, but as subservient to the mass which it is
erected to support. In so far as the house requires a boundary on every
side the singular column is therefore not sufficient, but others have
to be placed adjacent to it, in other words we come upon the definite
conception of a diversity of columns placed in a _series._ And when
several columns support the same weight this common service is at the
same time that which determines the equal height which they all possess
and which unites them together, in other words the beam. This marks the
transition from the aspect of support to the opposed object supported.

(_β_) That which columns support is the _entablature_ superimposed.
The relation of most importance to be considered here is that of
_rectangularity._ Not merely in its relation to the ground, but also in
that to the entablature the supporting structure must be rectangular.
For the horizontal position is by the laws of gravity that which is
alone intrinsically the most stable and fitting, and the right angle
the only definitely secure one. The acute and obtuse angles are, on the
contrary, indefinite, and both vary in their degree and are subject to
contingency.

We may differentiate between the component parts of the entablature as
follows:

(_αα_) The _architrave_, that is, the main beam, rests immediately upon
the columns which stand adjacent in a direct line of equal height;
this unites the columns together and places on them a weight shared
equally. As beam, and nothing more, it merely requires the form of four
level surfaces mutually related as rectangular in all three dimensions
and their abstract regularity. Owing to the fact, however, that the
architrave as to one part of it is supported by the columns, and in
another constitutes the stay of the rest of the entablature, and it
is from this latter again that itself receives the necessary relation
of being a support, progressive architecture also places in external
relief this twofold aspect of the main beam by emphasizing in the
upper portions of the aspect of support by means of jutting plinths and
so forth. In this respect therefore the main beam is not merely related
to the columns which support it, but in like degree to other burdens
which repose upon it.

(_ββ_) These in the first instance constitute the _frieze._ The border
or frieze consists in one part of it of the tops of the joists[87],
which rest on the entablature, in another part of the spaces between
the same. For this reason the frieze contains more essential
differences than those distinguishing the architrave, and is bound to
emphasize them more sharply, especially in the case where architecture,
although executed in stone materials, follows more stringently the
fundamental type of the wood construction. This is supplied us by the
distinction between triglyphs and metopes. In other words triglyphs are
the tops of the beams which are divided into three spaces, the metopes
are the rectangular spaces between the separate triglyphs. In former
times they were in all probability left bare, in later, however, they
are filled up[88], nay, even covered over and decorated with reliefs.

(_γγ_) The frieze, moreover, which rests on the entablature, carries
the _wreath_ or _cornice._ The function of this is to support the
roof, which completes the whole upwards. Here we at once meet with
questions of what form this final limitation is to be. For we may
have in this respect two kinds of termination, either the horizontal
and rectangular, or the one inclined to an acute or obtuse angle. If
we look at the mere question of natural necessity we shall see that
Southerners, who suffer little from rain and storm, merely require
protection from sunlight; in their case a horizontal and rectangular
roofing of house is likely to suffice. Northerners, on the contrary,
have to protect themselves against inevitable showers of rain, against
contingency of snow, that the weight may not prove too great; they
require inclining roofs. At the same time, in the case of a fine art of
building, mere necessity is not only of account; as art it has also to
satisfy the profounder requirements of what is pleasing and beautiful.
What mounts upwards from the ground must be conceived with a base, a
foot, on which it stands and which serves it for _support_; and in
addition to this columns and the partitions of genuine architecture
supply us visibly with the _means of support._ That which closes all
above, the roofing, has no longer to support a weight, but merely to
be supported, and is bound to declare in itself this definite aspect
that it no longer supports anything. In other words, it must be so
constructed that it is actually unable to support, and consequently
fine down to an angle, whether it be acute or obtuse. Ancient temples
have in consequence no horizontal roofing, but two roof surfaces which
meet at obtuse angles, and it is out of consideration for beauty
that the building is thus terminated. In short, roof surfaces that
are horizontal do not give us the appearance of a building entirely
complete; a horizontal flat may always add further weight to its
height; this the line in which inclining roof surfaces terminate is no
longer able to do. To take an analogous case in the art of painting, it
is the pyramidal form in the grouping of figures which best satisfies
artistic taste.

(_γ_) The final determining factor which we have to consider is that
of the _enclosing_, the _walls_, and _partitions._ Columns no doubt
support and form a boundary, but they do not enclose; they are, on the
contrary, as such boundary, incompatible with the interior which is
hemmed in by walls. If we require such an absolute enclosure we must
have also thick and solid dividing walls erected. This is actually the
case in temple construction.

(_αα_) We have nothing further to add with respect to walls except
the fact that they must be built in a straight and even line and
perpendicularly for the reason that walls that rise obliquely to acute
and obtuse angles present the threatening aspect of collapse, and
possess no direction once and for all securely defined; it can merely
appear as a matter of chance that they are reared in whatever more
acute or obtuse angle it may happen to be. The demand of scientific
rule and purpose alike is here also once more for the right angle.

(_ββ_) Owing to the fact that walls act as enclosures no less than
as means of support, while we restricted the true function of the
column to that of mere support, we approximate to the conception that
where we have to satisfy these two distinct needs of support and
enclosure columns may be set up and may be united to one another by
means of thick walls in such partitions; it is thus that we get _half_
_columns._ In this way, for example, Hirt, following Vitruvius, makes
a start in his original type of construction with four corner-posts.
If the necessity of an enclosure is to be satisfied no doubt our
columns, if we are obliged to include such, must be walled up and it is
not difficult to prove that half columns date from remote antiquity.
Hirt, for instance[89], affirms that the employment of half columns
is as old as the art of building itself, and deduces their origin
from the circumstance that columns and piers supported and carried
the roofing and other superimposed structures, but at the same time
rendered partition walls necessary as a protection against sun and
inclement weather. Since, however, the columns already supported the
main building in a sufficient manner, it was not necessary to erect
partition walls of either so thick or firm a material as the columns,
and consequently this latter, as a rule, abutted on the exterior of
the building. This theory of their origin may be correct, but for all
that half columns are repugnant to a rational view of them; we have,
in short, here two ends standing side by side in _opposition_, and
essentially _confounding each other_, without any law of necessity
being disclosed. It is of course possible to defend half columns, if
the point of departure in considering even the column is so strictly
that of the structure of wood, that we regard their essential function
to be that of an enclosure. Placed in thick walls, however, the column
has lost all its significance; it is degraded to the mere post. The
true column is in its nature round, essentially complete, and expresses
by this very trait of exclusiveness in a visible way that it is
antagonistic to an even surface, and, consequently, every inclusion
in a wall. If, therefore, we desire to have the support of walls such
must be even, not circular columns, but surfaces which can be extended
evenly in a wall.

As far back as 1773 Goethe exclaimed with spirit to the like effect
in his youthful essay, "On the German Art of Building": "What does it
matter to us, you philosophical art-critic of the latest French school,
that original man, spurred on by his needs to invent, drove into the
ground four trunks, then fastened four poles on top and covered the
whole with branches and moss. And after all it is wholly false to say
that this hut of yours was the first begotten on earth. Two poles that
cross each other at their ends, two behind and one stuck diagonally
above in forest fashion is and remains, as you may any day see for
yourself in the huts of the fields and the vineyard slopes, a far
earlier discovery from which it is quite impossible for you to deduce
a principle for your pig-stye." In other words Goethe seeks to prove
that columns enclosed in walls placed in buildings whose essential
object is that of mere enclosure have no meaning. This is not because
he would not recognize the beauty of the column. On the contrary, he is
loud in its praise. "But take good care," he adds, "not to employ them
improperly: it is their nature to _stand up free._ Woe to the wretch
who has soldered their slender growth in blockish walls." It is from
such a point of view that he proceeds to consider the building art of
the Middle Ages and our own time and affirms: "The column is of no
value as a constituent feature of our dwellings: it rather contradicts
the essence of all our buildings. Our houses do not consist of _four
columns_ in four corners; they consist of _four walls_ on four sides,
which stand _in the place of all columns_, totally exclude such, and
where they are thrust in they are a burdensome superfluity. This
applies to our palaces and churches, subject to one or two exceptions,
which it is not necessary to particularize." We have in the above
statement, which is the result of independent observation of the facts,
the principle of the column correctly expressed. The column must place
its foot down in front of the wall and appear in complete independence
of it. In our more modern architecture no doubt we find pilasters
freely used; architects, have, however, regarded them as the repeated
adumbration of previous columns, and made them flat rather than round.

(_γγ_) From this it is clear that though no doubt walls may serve as
support, yet, for the reason that the function of support is already
independently performed by columns, they must, on their part in
finished classical architecture be accepted as essentially having for
their object the enclosure. If they are taken as columns are taken, to
provide means of support, the essentially distinct defining functions
of these latter are not, as is most desirable, performed also as by
distinct constituent parts of the building[90], and the conception of
what walls ought to provide is impaired and confused. We consequently
find even in temples that the central hall, where the statue of the
god was placed, to enclose which was the main object, is often left
open in the upper part. If, however, a roofing is required, the claims
of the lofty style of beauty made it necessary that the same should
be supported independently. In other words the direct imposition of
entablature and roof on the enclosing walls is purely a matter of
necessity and need; it is not appertinent to free architectural beauty,
because in the art of classical buildings we require as means of
support neither partitions nor walls, which would be rather derogatory
to the design in so far as--we have already noticed the fact--they
put together contrivances and a wall-space of greater extent than is
actually necessary.

These would be the main distinguishing features which in classical
architecture we have to keep apart.

(_c_) Although we may then, on the one hand, declare it as a principle
of first importance that the distinctions which have been summarily
indicated must appear with their _differences_ emphasized, it is
equally necessary on the other that they should be _united in a whole._
We will shortly, in conclusion, draw attention to this union which in
architecture will be rather and simply a juxtaposition, association,
and a thorough eurhythmy of the entire construction. Generally speaking
the Greek temple buildings present an aspect which both satisfies, and
if we may use the expression, sates us to the full.

(_α_) There is no soaring up, but the whole just expands on the broad
level and is extended without particular elevation. In order to view
the building's face it is barely necessary to raise the sight with
intention; it is, on the contrary, allured to the bare expanse, while
the building art of Germany in the Middle Ages strives up almost
without mass and soars. Among the ancients breadth, regarded as secure
and convenient foundation on the earth, is the main thing. Height is
rather borrowed from the height of man, and merely is increased in
proportion as the building increases in breadth and width.

(_β_) Furthermore, embellishments are so effected that they do not
impair the impression of simplicity. For much also depends on the mode
of decoration. The ancients, more particularly the Greeks, preserve
here the finest sense of proportion. Extensive surfaces and lines
of entire simplicity, for instance, do not appear so large in this
undivided simplicity as in the case where some variety, somewhat
that destroys this uniformity is introduced, by which at once an
extension of more definite outline is presented to the vision. If this
subdivision, however, and its adornment is wholly elaborated in detail,
so that we have nothing before us but a variety and its details, even
the most imposing relations and dimensions appear to be crumbled away
and destroyed. The ancients, therefore, as a rule are actuated in their
works neither to let the same and their proportions by such means
appear in any way greater than they actually are, nor do they break up
the whole by means of interruptions and embellishments to the extent
that--because all parts are small and a unity is absent which shall
once more bring everything together and fuse it throughout--therefore
the whole also shall appear as insignificant. To quite as little an
extent are their works of beauty in their perfection merely piled up
as mere weight on the ground, or tower up out of all relation to their
breadth to the skies. They preserve in this respect, too, the mean
of beauty, and offer at the same time in their simplicity necessary
scope to a duly proportioned variety. Above all, however, the dominant
feature of the whole and its simple particularities appear to permeate
in the most transparent way through all and everything, and overmasters
the individuality of the configuration precisely in the way that in the
classical Ideal the universal substance retains its power to control
what is accidental and particular, in which the same receives its
living form, and to bring it into harmony with itself.

(_γ_) With regard to the disposition and articulation of the several
parts of a temple we find, on the one hand, a very marked graduation of
elaboration, and on the other much that is purely traditional. The main
distinctions that have an interest for us in this inquiry are limited
to the temple precinct (ναὸς), enclosed by walls containing the image
of the god, also the dwelling in front (πρόναος), that in the rear
(ὀπισθόδομος), and the colonnades that encircle the entire structure.
A dwelling in front and behind with a series of columns before it had
originally the typical form, which Vitruvius calls ἀμφιπρόστυλος; to
this was afterwards added a row on either side of the building, that
is the περίπτερος; finally we have the completest form of elaboration
in the δίπτερος, where this row of columns is doubled throughout the
circuit, and in the ὔπαιθρος colonnades detached from the walls, and
which it is possible to pass round, as in the case of the colonnades
above, are added in double rows with the interior of the ναὸς itself.
For such a type of temple Vitruvius instances as an example the
eight-columned temple of Minerva at Athens, and the ten-columned one of
Olympian Jupiter[91].

We will pass over in this place the more detailed consideration of the
number of columns no less than the nature of the intervening spaces
between themselves and the walls, and merely draw attention to the
unique significance which such colonnades and forecourts, or halls
possessed in general for the Greek temple. In these prostyles and
amphiprostyles, that is, these single and double colonnades, which
brought you direct into the open sunshine, we observe that men can
move about openly and free and can group themselves as they choose, or
according to the chance of the moment. Columns are, in short, not an
enclosure, but a limitation through which you can always pass, so that
you can be partially within and without them at once, and at any rate
can everywhere step from them into the open day. In the same way the
long walls at the back of the columns do not permit of any pressure to
one central point, whither our sight may instinctively turn when the
passages are crowded. On the contrary the eye is rather diverted from
such a point of unity in every direction; and instead of the conception
of a congregation brought together for One purpose we observe a
tendency outwards, and merely receive the impression of a means of
spending the time devoid of seriousness, light-hearted, idle, and
provocative of chatter. Within the enclosure no doubt we have suggested
a profounder aim, but even here we find surrounding features[92],
which more or less indicate that we are not to take such a purpose too
seriously. Consequently the impression of such a temple, though no
doubt simple and imposing, is at the same time gay, open, and pleasing
to the sense; the entire building, in short, is rather arranged as a
place for standing about in, strolling round, for ingress and egress
than in order to enable an assembly of persons to concentrate their
numbers in one spot shut off from the rest of the world.


3. THE DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTIVE TYPES OF CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE


Casting our glance now on the different forms of construction which
offer us the predominant examples of distinctive type in classical
architecture we may emphasize the following as most important.

(_a_) What first arrests our attention in this field are those kinds
of building whose lines of distinction are most noticeable in their
_columns_; for this reason I shall myself, too, limit myself to a
statement of the pre-eminently characteristic traits of the various
types of column.

The most famous among the orders of columns are the _Doric_, _Ionic_,
and _Corinthian_, over whose architectural beauty and adaptation to
definite purpose, neither the research of earlier times nor our own
has been able to add anything. For we may assume that the Tuscan,
or, according to Hirt[93], the ancient Greek type of building belongs
in its undecorative crudeness to the original and simple type of wood
structure, not to the architecture of beauty, and the so-called Roman
order of columns is of no real moment, being merely an increase in the
decorative character of the Corinthian. The important points in this
inquiry are the relation of the height of columns to their thickness,
the type of base and capital to be distinguished in each case, and,
finally, the greater or less intervening spaces between the columns.
With regard to the first, if the column is not of a height four times
as large as its diameter it appears too bulky and depressed; if its
height, however, exceeds such a proportion by being ten times as
large, the column will appear too slender to the eye, and too slim as
a means of support. The respective intervals between the columns must,
however, be considered in close relation to the above facts; if the
columns appear more stout they should be placed nearer to one another,
if on the contrary the impression they produce is one of slightness
and lankness the intervals have to be larger. It is a matter of equal
importance, and this is so whether the columns have a pedestal or not,
whether the capital is of higher or less ample size, is without or with
decoration, for it is by this means that the entire character of the
column is altered. With regard to the column's shaft, however, the rule
obtains that it should be smooth and devoid of decoration, although it
does not rise throughout of the same thickness, but is appreciably more
slender at the top than it is midway and at the base, and the change
is such that there is a swelling which, though barely perceptible, is
none the less present. In more recent times no doubt, notably in the
Middle Ages, when the antique types of columns were converted to the
use of Christian architecture, the smoothness of shaft was found to be
too cold, and for this reason wreaths of flowers were entwined round
them, or columns of spiral form were permitted no doubt on similar
grounds; this, however, is inadmissible and opposed to the best taste,
because the true function of the column is simply that of support,
and to carry this out they ought to rise in a secure and straight
line and be self-subsistent[94]. The only divergency from the rule in
columnar structure which the ancients admitted was that of the groove,
a variation which, as Vitruvius points out, made such appear broader
than when their surface is wholly smooth. Such grooving we find carried
out very extensively.

I will now indicate more closely the main distinguishing features of
the Doric, Ionian, and Corinthian order of columns respectively.

(_α_) In primitive buildings _security_ of structure is the fundamental
characteristic beyond which architecture fails to go; consequently
it does not as yet dare to risk relations of a slender kind with the
bolder lightness which belongs to them, but rests satisfied with forms
of greater bulk. This is the case in the Doric type of building. We
find here that the material aspect with its onerous weight still
is that which is most influential, and is particularly apparent in
the relations of breadth and height. When a building is erected in
lightness and freedom the burden of heavy masses is overcome; if on the
contrary its disposition is one which suggests mainly breadth and a low
elevation the prevailing impression, as in the Doric style, is that of
stability and solidity, subservient to the dominant force of gravity.

Consistently with this character Doric columns, if contrasted with
the other two orders, are the broadest and lowest. The more ancient
examples do not rise above a height which is six times their diameter,
and not unfrequently they are merely four times that breadth; for this
reason they give, by virtue of their unwieldiness, the impression of an
earnest, simple, and unadorned manliness, such as we have exemplified
in the temples at Paestum and Corinth. The later examples of the Doric
order, however, extend their columns to a height of seven times this
unit of measure, and, for buildings other than temples, Vitruvius adds
yet another half diameter. More generally, however, the distinctive
character of the Doric type consists in this that it approximates most
nearly to the primitive simplicity of the wood building, although it is
more receptive than the Tuscan to decorative work and embellishments.
The columns, however, have almost without exception no distinctive
base; they stand up directly on their foundation[95], and their
capitals are arranged in the simplest way out of ovolo ornament and
plinth. The shaft is sometimes left smooth, sometimes grooved with
twenty drills, which frequently were flat for one third of the way
from the base, and hollowed out in circular form the rest of the
way[96]. As regards the interval between the columns, according to
the older monuments, the breadth is twice the diameter of a column,
and only a few exceed this by a width between two and two and a half
diameters. Another peculiarity of the Doric type of building in which
it approaches the type of wood construction consists in triglyphs and
metopes. In other words triglyphs indicate in the frieze the tops of
the beams of the entablature with which the architrave culminates
inserted there by means of prismatical incisions[97], while the metopes
fill up the spaces between one beam and another, and in the Doric
construction still retain the form of the square[98]. As a decoration
they are frequently covered with reliefs, while beneath the triglyphs,
which rest on the architrave, and as a culmination to the surfaces of
the cornice on their lower side, we have for embellishment six small
conical bodies, technically known as drops.

(_β_) In the Doric style we are already made aware of an advance in
the characteristics of a solidity which affects us with pleasure. In
Ionic architecture this upward progress is further emphasized in a
type notable for its slenderness, charm, and grace, if still expressed
in a simple way. The height of the columns varies between that of
seven and ten times the width of the diameter at the base, and is
determined, according to the conclusions of Vitruvius, pre-eminently
by the breadth of the intervening spaces of the columns, that is to
say, where they are wider the columns appear thinner, and consequently
more slender, where they are more narrow, however, they appear stouter
and of less height. For this reason the architect is forced, in order
to avoid an excess of thinness or bulk, in the first case to reduce
the height, and in the second to increase it. In the case, then, where
the intervals exceed three diameters the height of the columns will
merely carry eight of such, where there is an interval of two and a
quarter rising to three, the height will rise to eight and a half
diameters. If the columns, however, are separated only by the width of
two diameters, the height must be extended to nine and a half times
the unit, and in the extreme case of an interval of but one and a half
times, such height will even rise to ten times the breadth of diameter.
However, cases such as these latter ones appear very seldom, and, in so
far as we may judge from such monuments of the Ionic type of building
that have come down to us, the ancients made very scanty use of those
relations which necessitated the more lofty columns.

The Ionic type is further distinguished from the Doric in this that
the Ionic columns do not rise directly with their shaft from the
substructure, but are set up on a variously articulated pedestal, and
then in unobtrusive rejuvenescence rise lightly in their slender height
to their capitals with a deeper hollowing out than in the Doric type,
a broad grooving of four and twenty grooves. It is especially in this
characteristic that the Ionic temple at Ephesus is distinguishable
from and in contrast to the Doric at Paestum. In the same way we find
an increase of variety and grace in the Ionic capital. It has not only
a carved coussinet[99], little ledge and plinth, but receives both to
the right and left a spiral winding, and at the sides a decorative kind
of cushion, from which is derived its title of the pulvinated capital.
The volutes at the end of the pad or cushion indicate the end of the
column, which, however, may rise to a still greater elevation, but in
this possible increase makes itself essentially a curve.

Compatibly with this slender character of the pleasing decoration of
its columns the Ionic type of building requires a less bulky weight in
its beams, and is concerned in this way too to secure an increase of
grace. By doing so it no longer suggests as a predecessor as the Doric
does the wood construction, and consequently suffers triglyphs and
metopes to fall away in the flat frieze, introducing in their place as
its principal means of decoration, heads of sacrificial animals united
with flowery coils, and, instead of the suspended mutule[100] tops, we
find tooth-like ornamentation[101].

(_γ_) Finally, to come to the _Corinthian_ order, we find it is
in fundamentals composed upon the Ionic, only that with a similar
slenderness it is elaborated in more tasteful luxuriance, and unfolds
the consummate finish of adornment and embellishment. Like it content
to possess the definite and various divisions of its structure as
a legacy from the wood building, it emphasizes the same without
permitting their origin to be conspicuous by means of its decorative
work, and expresses, in its manifold ledges and borders on cornice
and beam, on its weather moulds, its moulding flutes, its variously
articulated pediments and its more luxuriant capitals, a multiplicity
of pleasing features.

The Corinthian column, it is true, does not exceed in height the Ionic,
rising as a rule with a grooving of similar character, merely eight
times or eight and a half times as high as the diameter of the lower
portion of the column, but it appears more slender and above all more
exuberant by virtue of a loftier capital. For the capital's height
is one and an eighth times the diameter beneath, and has at each of
its four corners more slender volutes which suffer the pulvination of
the previous type to fall off, while the part below is decorated with
acanthus leaves. The Greeks have a charming tale relative to this. A
maiden of exceptional beauty, they tell us, died. Her nurse collected
her playthings in a little basket and placed it on her grave, where an
acanthus plant sprang up. The leaves very soon embraced the basket, and
it was this which suggested the thought of the capital of a column.

Of other points of difference between the Corinthian and the Ionic and
Doric orders, I will only further mention the delicately curved mutules
under the cornices, and the projection of the water moulding, and the
indentations and corbel-heads on the cornice[102].

(_b_) We may, _secondly_, regard the _Roman_ type of building as
an intermediate form standing between that of Greek and Christian
architecture, in so far as here we find mainly the application of arch
and vaultings. It is not possible to determine with accuracy the time
when the construction of arches was first discovered; it appears,
however, certain that neither the Egyptians, despite the great progress
they made in the arts of building, nor the Babylonians, Israelites, and
Phoenicians were cognisant of the _ogive_ or the _vault._ The monuments
of Egyptian architecture at any rate only show us that when it was a
question of superimposing a roof over the interior of a building the
one means the Egyptians had at their disposal was that of placing
huge slabs of stone across like beams in horizontal position. If it
was required to arch up broad entrances, or cross arches they knew
of no other way of doing this than letting one stone on either side
project forward, with another still more projecting one above it, so
that the side walls gradually approached upwards until they reached
a point where only one stone was necessary to close the remaining
space between. Where such an expedient was not necessary they covered
the spaces with huge slabs of stone arranged across in the manner of
rafters.

Among the Greeks we do, I believe, find monuments in which the arch
construction has already been adopted, but they are rare; and Hirt,
who has written with most authority over the building and the history
of the building of antiquity, affirms that among such monuments we
can rely on none with security as dating from a time previous to
that of Pericles. In other words, in Greek architecture the features
which are characteristic and elaborated are the column and beam in
horizontal position, so that we find here the column very little used
in a relation which lies apart from its true function, namely that
of supporting beams. Moreover the arch that is vaulted from two
piers or columns, and the knob-like formation, connotes a yet further
feature, for we find here that the column already begins to forsake its
determinate attribute of support. For the circular arch in its rise,
its flexure and its declivity is related to a centre which has nothing
to do with the column as a means of support. The separate parts of
the circular arch are carried in mutual opposition; they support and
prolong each other in a way that shows them far more remote from the
direct assistance of the column than is the horizontally superimposed
beam.

In _Roman_ architecture, then, as stated, the arch-construction and
vaulting is of very common occurrence, or rather we have certain
remains which we can only attribute to the age of the Roman kings, if
we may fully believe the evidence of later times. Of this type are
the catacombs and cloaca, which were vaulted, but must be regarded
as works of a more recent restoration. The most probable discoverer
yet suggested of the vault is Democritus[103], who occupied himself
in a variety of ways with mathematical problems and is held to be the
discoverer of lithotomy.

One of the most famous buildings of Roman architecture, in which the
circular arch appears as fundamental type is the Pantheon of Agrippa
dedicated to Jupiter Ultor, which, in addition to the statue of
Jupiter, contained colossal images of gods in no less than six other
niches, namely, Mars, Venus, the deified Julius Caesar as well as three
others whose identity we cannot fix with accuracy. In either side of
these niches stood two Corinthian columns, and the whole was vaulted
with one majestic vault in form of the half globe and corresponding
to the vault of heaven. With reference to the material of this vault
we may note that it is not a stone one. In other words the Romans, in
the majority of their vaultings, in the first instance carried out a
construction of wood, and covered the same with a composition of chalk
and puzzolana cement, which was made of the dust of a light kind of
tufa and broken tile shards. When this composition was dry the whole
was formed into a mass so that the wooden scaffolding could be removed
and the vaulting, by virtue of the lightness of its material and
the stability of its consolidation, exercised only an insignificant
pressure on the walls.

(_c_) The architecture of the Romans possessed moreover generally, and
apart from this novel employment of arch construction, an entirely
different scope and character than that of Greece. The Greeks
distinguished themselves, while carrying throughout their work its
main purpose, and by virtue of their perfection as artists, in the
nobility, the simplicity no less than the airy delicacy of their
decorations. The Romans on the contrary are, as artists, at least on
the mechanical side of construction more rich and more ostentatious,
but at the same time of less nobility and grace. Add to this in their
architecture we meet with a variety of intention which was unknown to
the Greek. As I have already observed the Greeks entirely devoted the
splendour and beauty of art to public objects. Their private dwellings
remained insignificant. Among the Romans, however, not only do we find
an increase of public buildings, whose main purpose of construction
was splendidly embellished in theatres, spaces for animal combats and
other means of public sport, but architecture received a deliberate
impulse in the direction of private use. More especially after the
civil wars villas, baths, colonnades, flights of steps were constructed
with the imposing character of the most luxurious extravagance, and by
this means a new opening was made for the arts of building, which also
included that of gardening, which was perfected in a way that evinced
very considerable talent and taste. The villa of Lucullus is a striking
example.

This type of Roman architecture has in many respects rendered service
as a model to Italians and Frenchmen of t more recent times. Among
ourselves we have for a long time to some measure followed in the
steps of the Italians, and also to some extent in those of the French;
finally men have once more devoted their attention to the Greeks, and
have accepted as an object of imitation the antique in its purer form.




CHAPTER III


ROMANTIC ARCHITECTURE


The Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages, which constitutes here the
characteristic centre of the truly romantic type, has for a long time,
more especially since the popularization and predominance of the French
taste, been regarded as something rude and barbarous. In recent times
it was Goethe who mainly, in the first instance, and in the youthful
freshness of his own nature and artistic outlook, brought once more the
Gothic type to its place of honour. Critical taste has been more and
more concerned to appreciate and respect these imposing works as giving
effective expression both to the distinctive purpose of Christian
culture, and the harmonious unity thereby created between architectonic
form and the ideal spirit of Christendom.



I. GENERAL CHARACTER


In so far as the general character of these buildings is concerned,
in which religious architecture is that which is most prominent, we
discovered already in our introduction to this part of our inquiry
that in this type both those of _independent_ and _serviceable_
architecture are _united._ This unity, however, does not in any way
consist in a fusion of the architectural forms of the Oriental and
the Greek, but we must look for it in the fact that, on the one hand,
the house or _dwelling-enclosure_ furnishes yet more the fundamental
type than in the Greek temple construction, and, on the other, mere
_serviceableness_ and purpose is to that extent _eliminated_, and
the house is emphasized apart from it in its _free independence._ No
doubt these houses of God and other buildings of this type appear to
the fullest extent as constructed for definite objects, as already
stated, but their true character is precisely this, that it reaches
over and beyond the determinate aim and presents itself in a form of
self-seclusion and positive local independence. The creation stands
up in its place independent, secure, and eternal. For this reason
the character of the entirety is no longer to be deduced from any
purely scientific or theoretical relation. Within the interior the
box-like envelope of our Protestant churches falls away which are built
simply that they may be filled with men and women, and do not possess
church pews as stalls; in their exterior, the building soars in its
roofing and pinnacles freely upwards, so that the relation of purpose,
however much it be also present, tends again to disappear, leaving
the impression of the whole that of a self-subsistent existence. Such
a building is entirely filled up by nothing expressly; everything is
absorbed in the grandeur of the whole: it possesses and declares a
definite object, but in its grandiose proportions and sublime repose
it is essentially and with an infinite significance exalted[104]
above all mere intentional serviceableness. This exaltation over
finitude and simple security is that which constitutes the _unique_
characteristic aspect of it. From another point of view it is precisely
in this type that architecture finds the greatest opportunity for
_particularisation_, diversion of effect and variety, without
permitting, however, the whole to fall into mere details and accidental
particulars. The imposing character of the art we are considering
restores, on the contrary, this aspect of division and dismemberment
in the original impression of simplicity. It is the substantive being
of the whole which is set in division and dismemberment in an infinite
multiplicity throughout the entire complexus of individual and varied
distinctions; but this unbounded complexity is subdivided in a simple
way, is articulated according to rule, broken into parts symmetrically
by the same substance, which is the motive and constitutive principle
throughout in a harmonious co-ordination which entirely satisfies, and
which combines without let or hindrance the mass of detail in all their
length and breadth in securest unity and most perspicuous independence.



2. PARTICULAR ARCHITECTURAL MODES OF CONFORMATION


If we pass now to a consideration of the particular forms in which
romantic architecture receives its specific character we shall find,
as we have already above noticed, that our entire discussion will be
confined to what is genuine Gothic architecture, and mainly that of the
church buildings of Christendom, in their contrast to the Greek temple.

(_a_) As fundamental form underlying all the rest, we have here the
_wholly shut off dwelling-house._

(_α_) In other words, just as the Christian spirit withdraws itself
within an ideal realm, the building is the place essentially delimited
on all sides for the congregation of the Christian community and the
gathering together of spiritual life. It is the concentration of
essential soul-life which thus encloses itself in spatial relations.
The devotion of the Christian heart, however, is at the same time
and in the same degree an exaltation over finitude, so that this
exaltation, moreover, determines the character of God's house.
Architecture secures thereby as its significance, independently of the
object which renders it necessary as a building, this exaltation to
the Infinite, a significance which it is forced to express through the
spatial relations of architectural forms. The impression, therefore,
which art is now called upon to emphasize is, in one aspect of it,
and in contrast to the open gaiety of the Greek temple, that of the
tranquillity of the soul which, released from external nature and
worldly conditions, retires wholly into self-seclusion; in the other
aspect of it it is that impress of a solemn sublimity, which strains
and soars over and beyond all rational limits. If, therefore, the
buildings of classical architecture as a rule offer the expansion of
breadth, we find in contrast to this that the romantic character of
Christian churches asserts itself in the growth upwards from the soil
and a soaring to the skies.

(_β_) In this oblivion of external Nature and all the diverting
occupations and interests of finite existence, which is to be effected
by means of such seclusion, the open forecourts and colonnades and the
like, which are in direct communication with that world, furthermore
and of necessity fall away, or only receive an entirely modified
representation within the interior of the building. And in like manner
the light of the sun is either excluded, or glimmers in broken rays
through windows of painted glass, which, to prevent total immersion
in darkness, are perforce admitted. What humanity needs here is not
the gift of external Nature, but a world created through it and for it
alone, for its devotion and the activity of its soul-life.

(_γ_) We may fix as the pervading type by which the house of God is
generally and with particular reference to its sections characterized
that of the free rise and running up into _pinnacles_, whether they
be built up by means of the arch or straight lines. In classical
architecture, where we find columns and piers with superimposed beams
is the fundamental form, rectangularity and the office of support is
the feature of importance. For the construction superimposed at right
angles marks in a definite way that it is supported. And even though
the beams do in their turn carry the roofing, the surfaces of this
latter portion incline to one another in an obtuse angle. In such a
construction we find no trace of a genuine tendency to points and a
soaring up: we find simply repose and support. In the same way, too,
a circular arch, which extends in a continuous and equally gradated
incline from one column to another, and is referable to one and
the same centre, rests on its substructure of support. In romantic
architecture, however, we no longer find the relation of support
simply and rectangularity the fundamental form, but rather we have
before us the fact that all that is enclosed either on its interior or
exterior side independently springs upward, and, without the secure and
express distinction between the relationship of weight and support,
concentrates in a point. This pre-eminently free striving upwards and
tendency to inclines that run to culminating points is what constitutes
here the essential determinant, by virtue of which either acute-angled
triangles with a more slender or broader base or pointed arches appear,
both of which aspects stand out most obviously in the characterization
of Gothic architecture.

(_b_) Moreover, the obligations of spiritual devotion and exaltation,
regarded as a cultus, bring before us a variety of definite conditions
and features which cannot be fully met on the exterior of the building
in the open halls or forecourts of a temple, but can only be satisfied
within the house of God itself. If, therefore, in the case of the
temple of classical architecture it is the external form which is of
most importance, and we find it remaining by means of the colonnades
more independent of the interior construction, romantic architecture
presents a contrast to this not merely in the fact that the interior
of the building is more essentially important, for the reason that
the whole purports to be simply an enclosure, but also in this, that
the interior permeates the very form of the exterior throughout, and
determines its specific shape and mode of articulation.

In this connection we will, in order to examine the matter more
closely, first make an entrance into the interior, and working outwards
therefrom endeavour to elucidate the exterior.

(_α_) The definition I have already adduced as best describing the
_interior_ of the church is that of a certain place set apart and
enclosed in all its aspects, whether it be in opposition to the
inclemency of the weather or the distractions of the outer world, for
the community and its spiritual worship. The space of the interior
is consequently an enclosure in the completest sense, whereas Greek
temples, apart from the presence of open passages and halls in the
environment, not unfrequently possessed open cells.

Inasmuch as, moreover, Christian worship is an _exaltation_ of the soul
above the limitations of natural existence and a reconciliation of the
individual with God, we find in this fact a mediation of points of view
which are separably _distinct_ in one and the same essentially concrete
unity. At the same time romantic architecture receives the function
in the form and co-ordination of its building to make the above
content of spiritual life, to enclose which is the prime object of its
construction, so far as this is architecturally feasible, shine through
and determine the actual shape both of the exterior and the interior.
The following points will assist our understanding of the nature of
this problem.

(_αα_) The space of the interior will have to be no abstractly
undifferentiated and empty one, which possesses no essentially defined
features or links that relate them respectively. It must have a
concrete form, one, that is, which presents differences in respect
to all the mutual relations of length, breadth, height, and the mode
of such dimensions. The form of the circle, the square, the oblong,
with the equality of enclosing walls and roofing which is necessary to
these figures, will not be suitable here. The movement, severation, and
mediation of soul-life in its exaltation from that which is of earth to
that which is eternal, to the far-off and the more lofty, would fail to
find apt expression in this bare equality of a square figure.

(_ββ_) It is only a corollary to this that in the Gothic style the
substantial _purport_ of the house, both in respect of its enclosing
form of sidewalls and roof, and in that of its columns and beams
relatively to the _configuration_ of the whole and its parts, becomes
a matter of subordinate importance. And with this disappears, on the
one hand, as we have already noticed, the strict distinction between
burden and support, as on the other we find no longer rectangularity
is emphasized as essential to the building's purpose. Recourse is made
once more to an analogous form of Nature, namely, one that prefigures
a solemn place of assemblage and enclosure which freely soars upwards.
If we step into the interior of a cathedral of the Middle Ages we have
brought before us not so much the stability and mechanical purpose
of supporting piers and a vault that rests upon it. We are rather
reminded of the arches of a forest, whose rows of trees incline with
their branches to one another and form an enclosure by this means.
A crossbeam requires a secure centre of gravity and the horizontal
position. In Gothic architecture, however, the walls mount up freely
and independently, and in the same way the piers, which then expand
above in several directions apart from one another, and coalesce as
though by accident. In other words their function, to support the
vaulting, is, although the same in truth reposes on the piers, not
expressly emphasized and independently set forth[105]. The effect is
as though they did not carry such, just as in the tree the branches
do not appear as though supported by the stem, but rather in their
airy incurvation as a continuation of the stem, and with the branches
of other trees, form a roof of leaves. A roofing of this kind, which
is thus fixed upon as the cover of the life of Spirit, this awful
environment, which invites us to contemplation, it is which the
cathedral presents us, in so far as the walls and among them the forest
of piers freely coalesce in their summits. But for all that we do not
actually assert that Gothic architecture has accepted trees and woods
for the actual exemplar of its forms.

While the sharpening to a point offers us generally the basic type in
Gothic we find in the interior of churches this tendency take the more
specialized shape of the _pointed arch._ By this means the _columns_ in
particular receive an entirely fresh significance and appearance.

The broad Gothic churches require a roofing to close them in, a roofing
which on account of the breadth is a severe burden and renders support
unavoidable. Here, therefore, the columns appear to be in their right
place. For the reason, however, that the straining upwards is precisely
that which converts support into the appearance of free soaring-up
columns are unable to be employed here with the significance they
possess in classical architecture. They become, on the contrary, piers
which, in lieu of the cross-beam, carry arches in a manner whereby
they appear as simply a continuation of the pier and coalesce together
without definite object in a point. We may, no doubt, conceive the
unavoidable termination of two piers that stand apart from one another
as analogous to a gut-roof that rests on corner posts; but taking
into consideration the surfaces at the sides, although they, too,
are planted on piers in entirely obtuse angles, and incline to one
another in an acute angle, we find in the latter case none the less
the conception on the one hand of burden, and on the other of support.
The pointed arch, on the contrary, which apparently in the first
instance mounts up in a straight line, and only by imperceptible and
slower degrees leans forward in order to incline to the opposite side,
presents for the first time the complete idea as though it was just
nothing but the continuation of the pier itself, which forms an arch
with another. Piers and vaulting appear, in their contrast to columns
and the beam, as one and the same image, although the arches rest upon
the capitals from which they spring. The capitals, too, in specific
cases, such as occur in Netherland churches, keep away altogether, and
by this means the inseparable unity above-mentioned is made expressly
visible to the eye.

Moreover, on account of the fact that this striving upwards is declared
as the fundamental character, the height of the piers exceeds that of
the breadth of their base in a proportion that we cannot calculate at
sight. The piers are thin, slender, and soar up so high the sight is
unable to take in the entire form at a glance, and is compelled to
rove about in its upward flight until it attains repose at last in the
gently inclined vaulting of the uniting arch, much as the soul moving
with restlessness in its devotion from the ground of finitude uplifts
itself and finds rest in God alone.

The final point of distinction between piers and columns consists in
this, that the piers which are distinctively Gothic, and, where they
are elaborated in their specific character, do not, as columns do,
remain in the circular form, essentially secure in that, and one and
the same cylinder, but to begin with at their base in a reed-like way
constitute a convolute, a bundle of fibres, which break into varied
distinction as the pier mounts and radiate forth on all sides under
various modes of continuation. And, while we find already in classical
architecture that the column represents an advance from that which is
merely subject to laws of gravity, from the solid and simple to that
which is more slender and more adorned, so, too, we find much the same
change visible in the pier, which, in this more slender upgrowth, ever
withdraws itself more from the mere service of support, and freely
soars upward albeit shut in at its summit.

The same form of piers and pointed arches is repeated in windows and
doors. More particularly the windows, not merely the lower ones of the
side aisles, but also in a still higher degree, the upper ones of the
transepts and choir, are of colossal size in order that the glance,
which rests upon their lower portion, may not at once take in the upper
part as well and may be uplifted as in the case of the vaultings. This
adds to the restless motion of the upward flight which it is intended
to communicate to the spectator. Add to this the window panes, as we
have already remarked, are with their coloured glass only partially
transparent. Sometimes they present sacred histories and sometimes they
are merely panes of varied colour with the object of increasing the
twilight effect and permitting the light of the wax candles to shine
forth. For in these buildings it is another daylight than that of
Nature which illumines.

(_γγ_) Finally, as regards the _entire articulation_ of the interior
of Gothic churches we have already seen that it is imperative that the
particular parts of such should be differentiated in their breadth,
height, and length. The primary distinction to consider in this respect
is that of _choir, transept_, and _nave_ from the _encircling aisles._
These latter are constructed on the sides external to the fabric by
means of walls which enclose it, and from which piers and arches are
carried, and in their separation from the interior by means of piers
and pointed arches, which present openings toward the nave, having no
partition walls between. They receive therefore the converse aspect to
that of the colonnades in Greek temples, which are open on the outside
and are enclosed towards the interior, whereas the aisles in Gothic
churches permit free passage between the piers to the nave. In certain
examples we find two such aisles in juxtaposition; in fact, Antwerp
cathedral is an example which possesses three of them at either side of
the nave.

The _nave_ itself soars up by means of enclosing walls on either
side, at different degrees of elevation, according to various modes
of disposition, above the aisles, broken by colossal windows in such
a way that the walls themselves at the same time have the appearance
of being slender piers, which everywhere separate in pointed arches
and build up vaultings. There are, however, churches in which the
side aisles have the same height as the nave, as, for example, in the
later choirs of the Sebaldus Church in Nuremberg, which offers the
impression of an imposing, free, and capacious type of slenderness
and delicacy. In this way the whole is divided by means of rows of
piers, which are brought together at their summits like a forest in
flights of branching arches. Attempts have been made to discover in
the _number_ of these piers, and generally in the relations of number
much _mystical_ significance. There can be no question but that at
the period of the finest efflorescence of Gothic architecture, that,
for example, of Cologne Cathedral, a great significance was attached
to the symbols of number, the as yet more gloomy presentiment of
what is rational falling in readily with an insistence on external
traits of this kind. But despite this fact the artistic productions
of architecture, which are carried through by means of that which
is always to a greater or less degree merely the capricious play
of a symbolism of subordinate rank, is neither of the profoundest
significance, nor of the most exalted form of beauty, for the reason
that the genuine spirit of these is expressed in entirely different
forms and modes than those applicable to the significance of numeral
distinctions. We must therefore be especially cautious not to carry
such investigations too far. To attempt to go to the root of everything
and in every direction to desire to discover a deeper meaning will tend
quite as much to contract our horizon and destroy our thoroughness of
search as is common with all short-sighted learning which passes over
the depth which is clearly expressed and presented without grasping it.
In respect to the more detailed distinction between _choir_ and nave,
I will in conclusion emphasize the following points. The high-altar,
this real centre of the ritual, is placed in the choir, which is
thus dedicated as the place for the priesthood as distinct from the
community, whose proper place is that of the nave, where we find the
pulpit for the preacher. A flight of steps, which varies in its height,
conducts us to the choir, so that this latter section and all that
takes place in it is visible everywhere. In the same way this choir
section is relatively to decoration more ornate, and, moreover, in its
distinction from the more prolonged nave, even where the vaultings in
both cases are of equal height, is more serious, solemn, and sublime.
Above all we find here that the entire building is finally enclosed
with piers of greater thickness and more closely, by means of which the
breadth tends to disappear, and the entire effect is one of greater
stillness and height, whereas the transepts and the nave through their
towers still provide with their means of entrance and exit a connection
with the outside world. According to the points of the compass the
choir is placed to the east, the nave lies in a westerly direction,
and the transepts stand towards the north and south. We find, however,
churches with a double choir, in which the two choirs lie respectively
in the direction of morning and evening and the main entrances are
placed in the transepts. The stone font for baptism, that is, for the
sanctification of human entry into the Christian community, is placed
in a porch by the main _entrance_ into the church. And, finally, we may
note that, while the more express worship is provided for by the entire
building, and notably the choir and nave, there are also small chapels
which form in each case a fresh and independent church.

This must suffice as a description of the articulate structure of the
whole. In a cathedral of this type there is space enough for an entire
people. For here it is the intention that the community of a city and
district do not congregate round the building, but within the same.
And for this reason all the varied interests of life which in any way
come into contact with religion have, too, a place assigned them. No
fixed divisions of seats placed in rows divide and diminish the broad
space, but everyone comes and departs in peace, engages for himself
or takes a seat for immediate use, kneels down, offers his prayer and
removes himself once more. If it is not the hour of high mass the most
various things take place at the same time, and there is no confusion.
In one portion a sermon is delivered, in another a sick man is brought
in; between these points we may find a slow procession; at one spot,
we have a baptism, at another a deceased person is carried through
the church. Or we may find in one place a priest delivering mass or
celebrating the marriage services and in every direction the people in
broken groups kneel before altars and sacred images. All such things
are embraced by one and the same building. But this very variety and
individualization disappears, nevertheless, with its alternations
when contrasted with the expanse and size of the building. Nothing
completely fills up the whole, every incident passes by; individuals
with all that they do are lost and dispersed as points in this
grandiose whole. What happens at a given time is merely visible in its
passing flight, and over and above all the huge and almost measureless
spaces soar up in their secure and immutable form and construction.

Such, then, are the fundamental characteristics of the interior of
Gothic churches. We must not look here for any definite purpose as
such, but rather an object for the private devotion of the soul in
its self-absorption in every detail of the spiritual life[106], and
its elevation over all that is isolated and finite. For this reason
these buildings are cut off from Nature by spaces enclosed on all
sides, built up in the atmosphere of gloom and at the same time to
the smallest detail in a spirit that strives upwards sublime and
immeasurable.

(_β_) If we direct our attention now to the _external_ aspect we shall
find, as we have already above observed, that in contrast to the
Greek temple the exterior configuration in Gothic architecture, the
decoration and co-ordination of the walls and all else is determined
from within outwards, the exterior having to appear simply as an
enclosure of the interior.

In this connection we have good reason to emphasize the following
points:

(_αα_) In the _first_ place in the form of the _cross_ which we find
dominates the whole exterior we cannot fail to recognize in outline a
similar construction as that which obtains within, a form which cuts,
the nave and choir in two, and supplies, moreover, the distinctions of
height which obtain between the aisles, the nave and choir.

On closer inspection we find that the _principal façade_, as the
external form of the aisles and nave, corresponds in the _portals_
to the particular construction within. A more lofty principal door,
by which we pass direct into the nave, stands between the smaller
entrances into the aisles, and suggests by means of the contraction in
perspective that the exterior must draw together, grow more narrow,
and disappear in order than an entrance may be thereby provided. The
interior is the background already visible, into the depths of which
the exterior is carried, just as the soul is constrained to grow more
profound as ideality when it enters its own intrinsic wealth. Over
the doors at the sides extend in the most direct connection with the
interior colossal windows, just as the portals rise up to similar
pointed arches, in a way similar to that in which they are employed
as the particular form for the vaultings of the interior. Between
these doors over the principal portal a large circular window branches
out, the rose-window, a form which is, we may add, the exclusive and
peculiar possession of this type of building, and only fitted to it.
Where such rose-windows are absent we find substituted for them a still
more colossal window with pointed arches. The façades of the transepts
are divided in a similar way while the walls of the nave, the choir,
and the aisles in their windows and their form, no less than in the
position of the solid walls between, repeat in all respects the form of
the interior and set the same forth on the outside.

(_ββ_) In the _second_ place, however, the exterior begins to make
itself at the same time intelligible to itself[107] in this close
association with the form and subdivision of the interior for the very
reason that it has its own peculiar tasks to fulfil. In this connection
we may mention the _flying buttresses._ They represent the position
of the many piers within the building and are necessary as points of
support for the elevation and security of the whole. At the same time
they further make apparent on the outside, so far as interval, number,
and other features are concerned, the rows of piers on the inside,
albeit they do not exactly reproduce the shape of the interior piers,
but the higher they mount up become reduced in the strength of their
springing buttresses.

(_γγ_) Inasmuch as, however, in the _third_ place, it is only the
interior which has to be one essentially complete enclosure, this
feature is lost in the form of the exterior and makes way in every
respect for the all-prevailing characteristics of continuous elevation.
And for this reason the exterior receives at the same time a form
independent of the interior, which asserts itself mainly in a tendency
to strive upwards on all sides into points and pinnacles, breaking
out in them one on the top of another. To this fundamental feature
belong the lofty uplifted triangles which, independently of the pointed
arches, soar upwards over the portals, pre-eminently the principal
façade, though also over the colossal windows of the nave and choir,
and in a similar way the slenderly pointed shape of the roof, whose
gable-end is especially prominent in the façades of the transepts. Add
to these the flying buttresses, which everywhere terminate in little
pointed pinnacles, and in this way, just as the rows of piers within
the building create a forest of stems, branches, and vaultings, on
their part on the exterior stretch up heavenwards a forest of points.

With most independence and most emphatically, however, it is the
_towers_ which rise upwards in their sublime summits. In other words
we find that the entire mass of the building concentrates among other
things itself in them, in order that thus in its main towers it may be
without hindrance uplifted to an incalculable height without thereby
losing its character of repose and stability. Such towers are either
placed in the principal façade over the two side entrances, while a
third and broader main tower springs up at the point where the vaulting
of the transepts, choir, and nave meet, or one single tower constitutes
the principal façade and is raised above the entire breadth of the
nave. Such are at any rate the positions which are most usual. In
direct connection with the worship such towers have belfries, that is,
to the extent that the ringing of bells properly applies to Christian
services. This merely indefinite tone of the bell is a solemn stimulus
of the soul-life, though in the first instance one that as yet prepares
the worshipper only on the outside of the building. The articulate
tone, on the other hand, wherein a definite content of feelings and
ideas is expressed, is the song which is only to be heard within the
church. The inarticulate clang of the bell finds its right place on the
outside and only there and is sounded forth from the towers that its
peal may pass forth as from some pure height far over the land.

(_c_) As to the mode of decoration I have already pointed to the main
features of determinate character.

(_α_) The _first_ point we have to emphasize is the importance of
ornament generally for Gothic architecture. Classical architecture
preserves as a rule a wise mean in the adornment of its constructions.
Inasmuch as, however, it is the main interest of Gothic architecture
to make the masses which it places in position appear larger and
considerably more lofty than they in fact are it is not satisfied with
plain surfaces, but subdivides the same throughout; and, moreover,
breaks them up with forms which themselves suggest on their part a
striving upwards. Piers, pointed arches, and triangles, which rise
above them with their pinnacles, occur, too, as decorative work. In
this way we find that the simple unity of the great masses is impaired,
and the elaboration is carried to the point of every conceivable
detail, leaving the entire effect, however, involved in the most
flagrant contradiction. On the one hand we cannot fail to observe the
most obvious outlines in a clearly defined co-ordination, on the other
we have fulness and variety of delicate embellishment impossible to
follow with the eye, so that the most motley particularity is directly
set up in contrast to what is most universal and simple, just as the
soul, in the opposition implied in Christian worship, is deeply engaged
in finite things, and indeed carries its life into the mere detail and
the trifle. This very opposition acts as a stimulus to contemplation,
this striving up invites to a like action. For what is of paramount
importance in this style of decoration is this that it do not, by
the mass and alternation of its ornament, destroy or cover up the
fundamental outlines, but rather suffer them completely to make their
way through such variety as the essential feature of importance. Only
when it can do this, and I speak in particular of Gothic buildings,
is the solemnity of their imposing seriousness kept intact. Just as
religious devotion has to permeate all particular experiences of
soul-life, the life-conditions of every type of humanity, has further
to engrave indelibly on the heart its universal and incommutable ideas,
so in the same way the simple and fundamental architectural features
should have strength sufficient to recall the most varied articulation,
diversity and embellishment of the structure once more within the
fundamental impression of those outlines and wholly thus absorb them.

(_β_) A _further_ aspect in decorative work is bound up in the same way
with the romantic type of art in general. The romantic has on the one
hand for its principle Ideality, the return of the Ideal to itself.
On the other the Ideal has to reappear in that which is external, and
then withdraw itself into itself from the same. In architecture it is
the sensuous, material mass in relations of Space, in which the most
Ideal essence itself is, so far as that is possible, to be presented in
visible shape. With a material such as this to deal with there is no
other alternative possible than that of not suffering this material
to assert itself with power in its materiality, but to break up and
dismember its masses in every direction, and to wrest from the same the
appearance of its immediate coherence and self-subsistency. In this
connection the ornamentation, more particularly that of the exterior,
which has not to display the fact of enclosure as such, assumes the
character of a net-work[108] carried in every direction, or rather
interwoven over the surfaces; and we have no example of an architecture
which, taking into account the enormous and heavily weighted masses of
its stone and their secure coherence, nevertheless has preserved to
such a complete extent the character of lightness and delicacy.

(_γ_) We have only further and _thirdly_ to remark with reference to
such embellishments that in addition to pointed arches, piers, and
circles, the forms once more call to mind those of the real organic
world. The fretwork and working out of the mass already carries a
suggestion of this. Regarded in more detail, however, we actually find
leaves, rosettes of flowers, and, in entwining work of an arabesque
character, human figures and those of animals partly realistically
and partly fantastically linked together; the romantic imagination,
in short, even in architecture, displays its wealth of imaginative
creation, and its power to unite in unexpected ways heterogeneous
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 37: Herod. I, _c._ 181.]

[Footnote 38: I, _c._ 98.]

[Footnote 39: I, p. 469.]

[Footnote 40: As in obelisks, Memnons, etc.]

[Footnote 41: II, _c._ 162.]

[Footnote 42: _c._ 106.]

[Footnote 43: Symb. (2nd ed.), p. 469. The solar city of Heliopolis.]

[Footnote 44: XXXVI, 14, and XXXVII, 8.]

[Footnote 45: Creutzer I, p. 778.]

[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 50: II, _c._ 155.]

[Footnote 51: Her. II, _c._ 108.]

[Footnote 52: Herodotus dwells on this in the above passage.]

[Footnote 53: II, _c._ 148.]

[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 59: II, _c._ 126-7.]

[Footnote 60: Her. II, _c._ 125.]

[Footnote 61: _Geschichte der Baukunst der Alten_, I, S. 55.]

[Footnote 62: Symbolical significance.]

[Footnote 63: Wolff's and Buttmann's Mus., B. I, p. 536.]

[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 77: _Symbol des Innern._]

[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 91: Hirt, _Geschichte der Baukunst_, III, S. 14-18, and II,
S. 151.]

[Footnote 92: He refers to the columns placed round.]

[Footnote 93: _Gesch. d. Bauk._ I, S. 251.]

[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 101: Hirt, _Gesch. der Baukunst_, I, S. 254.]

[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 109: _Ein Malen._]

[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
merely instance the numerous statues of bronze, but also in still
stronger opposition the greatest and most excellent works, which,
as in the case of the Zeus of Pheidias, were artificially coloured.
But we are not here discussing absence of colour in such an extreme
abstract sense. Moreover, ivory and gold are not primarily the use of
colour as the painter employs it; and generally we may add that the
various works of a definite art do not ever in fact retain fixedly
their fundamental notion in so abstract and unyielding a way, inasmuch
as they come into contact with the conditions of life subject to
aims of all kinds; they are placed in different environments, and
are thereby associated with circumstances of an external kind, which
inevitably modify their real and essential type. In this way the images
of sculpture are not unfrequently executed in rich material such as
gold and ivory. They are placed on magnificent chairs or stand on
pedestals which display all the extravagance and luxuriousness of art,
or receive costly decorations, in order that the nation, when face to
face with such splendid works, may likewise enjoy the sense of its
power and wealth. And sculpture in particular, for the reason that
it is essentially, taken by itself, a more abstract art, does not on
all occasions hold fast to such exclusiveness, but, on the one hand,
introduces incidentally much that is of a traditional, scholastic,
or local character as a contribution from its history, while, on the
other, it ministers to vital popular necessities. Active humanity
demands for its diversion variety, and seeks in diverse directions for
a stimulus to its vision and imagination. We may take as an analogous
case the reading aloud of Greek tragedies, which also brings before us
the work of art under its more abstract form. In the wider field of
external existence we have still to add, to make a public performance,
living actors, costume, stage scenery, dancing, and music. And in like
manner, too, the sculptured figure is unable to dispense with much that
is supplementary on its own stage of reality. We are, however, only
concerned here with the genuine work of sculpture as such; external
aspects such as those above adverted to must not be permitted to
prevent us bringing before the mind the notion of our subject-matter in
its most ideal and exclusive sense of definition.

Proceeding now to the more definite _heads of division_ in this
section we may observe that sculpture constitutes the very centre of
the _classical_ type of art to such a degree that we are unable to
accept the symbolical, classical and romantic types as distinctions
which affect throughout and form the basis of our division. Sculpture
is the genuine art of the classical Ideal simply. It is quite true
that sculpture has also its stages in which it is in the grasp of
the _symbolical_ type, as in Egypt for example. But these are rather
preliminary stages of its historical evolution, no genuine distinctions
which essentially affect the art of sculpture when notionally
considered, in so far, that is, as these exceptional examples, in
the manner of their execution and the use that is made of them,
rather belong to architecture than are strictly within the aim and
purpose of sculpture. In a similar way, when we find the _romantic_
type thereby expressed, sculpture passes beyond its rightful sphere,
and only receives with the qualified imitation of Greek sculpture
its exclusively plastic type. We must therefore look about us for a
principle of division of another character.

In agreement with what we have just stated we shall find that it
is from the particular way in which the _classical Ideal_ means of
sculpture acquires a form of reality that most fully expresses it that
the focus of our present inquiry is derived. Before, however, we are
in a position to make an advance in this evolution of the ideal figure
of sculpture we must by way of introduction demonstrate what kind of
_content_ and _form_ are pertinent to the point of view of sculpture
regarded as a specific art, and the course it follows by virtue of both
until the point is reached where the classical Ideal is fully unfolded
in the human form permeated by spiritual life, and in its shape as
subject to spatial condition. From another point of view the classical
Ideal stands, and falls with an individuality which is unquestionably
substantive, but also to an equal degree essentially particularized, so
that sculpture does not accept for its content the Ideal of the human
form in its _generality_, but the Ideal as _specifically defined_; and,
by virtue of this fact, it is variously displayed under forms distinct
from each other. Such distinctions partly originate in the conception
and _representation_ simply, in part are due to the _material_ in which
such is realized, and which further, according to the way it affects
execution, introduces points of severation on its own account, to both
of which finally, as the last ground of difference, the various stages
are related in the _historical_ development of sculpture.

Having made these observations we will indicate the course of our
inquiry as follows.

In the _first_ place we have merely to deal with the _general_
determinants of the essential _content_ and _form_, such as are
deducible from the notion of sculpture.

_Secondly_, as a further step, we have to differentiate more
closely the nature of the classical Ideal, in so far as it attains a
determinate existence in its most artistic form.

_Thirdly_, and finally, we shall find that sculpture avails itself of
various types of presentation and material, and expands to a world
of productions, in which, either under one aspect or another, the
symbolical or romantic types also definitely assert themselves, albeit
it is the classical which constitutes the true point of centre between
them in plastic art[131].




CHAPTER I


THE PRINCIPLE OF GENUINE SCULPTURE


Sculpture, to put the matter in general terms, conceives the astounding
project of making Spirit imagine itself in an exclusively material
medium, and so shape this external medium that it is presented to
itself in such and recognizes the presentment to be the objective form
adequate to its ideal substance.

In this respect our inquiry will take the following directions.

_First_, we have the question what kind of _spiritual life_ is capable
of being reproduced in this material of a form entirely sensuous and
spatial.

_Secondly_, we have to ask in what manner the _forms_ of the spatial
condition have to be modified in order to permit us a recognition of
the spiritual in the bodily shape of beauty.

What we have generally to consider here is the unity between the _ordo
rerum extensarum_ and that of the _ordo rerum idearum_, the primal fair
union of soul and body, in so far as spiritual ideality is expressed by
sculpture exclusively in its bodily existence.

This union, _thirdly_, corresponds to what we have already found to be
the Ideal of the classical type of art; and for this reason the plastic
forms of sculpture are nothing less than the very art itself of the
classical Ideal.



1. THE ESSENTIAL CONTENT OF SCULPTURE


The elementary medium, in which sculpture realizes its creations is,
as we have seen, the elementary, still universal material subject
to spatial condition, in which no further particularization can
be utilized for an artistic purpose than the universal spatial
dimensions, and the more detailed[132] spatial forms which are
compatible with these dimensions under their most beautiful
configuration. Now what most exceptionally corresponds as content to
this more abstract aspect of the sensuous material is the _objectivity_
of Spirit which reposes on its own resources, in so far, that is, as
Spirit has neither differentiated itself in contradistinction to its
universal substance, nor to its determinate existence in its bodily
presence, and consequently is not as yet withdrawn as independent
self-subsistency into its own subjective world. There are two points we
would draw attention to here.

(_a_) Spirit as Spirit[133] is no doubt always subjectivity, that is
ideal knowledge of the Self, the Ego. This Ego can, however, separate
itself from everything that constitutes, whether in knowledge,
volition, conception, feeling, action, or achievement, the _universal_
and eternal content of Spirit, and can concentrate its hold on that
aspect of _individual_ experience which is unique and contingent. It
is then _subjectivity as such_ which we have before us, which has
let go the truly objective content of Spirit, and is self-related
formally, and without content. In the case of self-satisfaction, for
example, I can no doubt view myself from a certain standpoint in an
entirely objective way and remain satisfied with myself on account of
moral action. I do, however, as thus self-satisfied, already withdraw
myself from the content of such action. I separate myself as a distinct
person, as this particular Ego, from the universality of Spirit, in
order to compare myself with it. The sense of unison of myself with
myself through this comparison produces this self-satisfaction, in
which this determinate Ego, as this core of unity, rejoices in itself.
No doubt this personal Ego is involved in all that a man knows, wills,
or carries out; but it makes an immense difference whether, in-dealing
with knowledge and action, the matter of concern is the man's own
unique Ego, or that in which the essential content of consciousness
consists; whether, in other words, a man sinks himself and his
self-identity in this content, or lives in the unbroken seclusion of
his subjective personality.

(_α_) In this exaltation over what is substantive[134] the subjective
life passes into the abstract and disrupt world of personal
inclination, the caprice and contingency of emotions and impulses,
owing to which, in the changes to which it is subject in particular
acts and undertakings, it grows dependent upon particular circumstances
as they happen to arise, and is unable generally to dispense with this
association with something else. In such a condition of dependence the
individual life is nothing but _finite_ subjectivity as contrasted
with a real spirituality. And if this personal state essentially
persists through the volition and knowledge which characterizes it in
this contradiction of its conscious life, it can only further become
involved--to put on one side the mere emptiness of its imaginings and
self-conceits--in the deformity of character and its evil passions, in
crime and moral offence, in malice, cruelty, obstinacy, envy, pride,
insolence, and every other kind of the reverse side of human nature and
its insubstantial finiteness.

(_β_) This province of the subjective life must be excluded in its
entirety and without hesitation from the content of sculpture. The art
is exclusively co-extensive with the objectivity of Spirit. And by
the term objectivity we mean in this connection what is substantive,
genuine, not transitory, the essential nature of Spirit, apart from
its involvement in that which is accidental and evanescent, for which
the individual person is responsible simply in his unmediated state of
self-relation.

(_γ_) Spirit, however, even in its truly objective sense, can
only realize itself as Spirit when associated with _explicit
self-identity._ Spirit is only Spirit as self-consciousness[135]. The
position, however, of this aspect of individual consciousness in the
spiritual content of sculpture is of such a character that it is not
independently expressed, but displays itself as throughout interfused
with this substantive content, and not formally reflected back upon
itself apart from it. We may consequently affirm that though such a
mode of objectivity possesses a type of self-subsistency, yet it is a
self-knowledge and volition which is not released from the content it
fulfils, but forms an inseparable unity with it.

The presentment of Spirit in this complete and independent seclusion
of what is essentially substantive and true, this unperturbed and
unparticularized being of Spirit, is that which we name divinity in
its contrast to finitude, which is the process of disruption into
contingent existence, a world that is broken into complex forms and
varied movement. From this point of view the function of sculpture is
to present the Divine simply in its infinite repose and sublimity,
timeless, destitute of motion, entirely without subjective personality
in the strict sense and the conflict of action or situation. And
in proceeding to the more detailed definition of our humanity in
shape and character, it must, nevertheless, exclusively rivet its
attention on what is unalterable and permanent, in other words what
is truly substantive in its characterization, and merely select such
aspects for its content, passing over what it finds there of an
accidental or evanescent nature; and it must do so for the reason
that the objectivity which it presents does not rightly include
a differentiation of this fluctuating and fleeting kind, and one
which comes into being by virtue of a subjective consciousness whose
conception of itself is that of pure insulation. In a biography, for
instance, which gives an account of the motley incidents, events, and
exploits of some individual, we find as a rule the course of varied
developments and fortuities finally closed by a character sketch which
summarizes the entire breadth of detail in a few general qualities
such as goodness, honest dealing, courage, exceptional intelligence,
and so forth. Characteristics such as these we may term the permanent
features of a personality; the remaining peculiarities it possesses
are merely accidental features in the impersonation. It is just this
stable aspect of life which it is the part of sculpture to present
as the unique being and determinate substance of individuality. Yet
we must not suppose that it creates allegories out of such general
qualities. It rather builds up true individuals, which it conceives and
informs as essentially complete and enclosed within their objective
spiritual presence, in their self-subsistent repose, delivered thereby
from all antagonism as against external objects. In the presentment
of an individuality of this character by sculpture what is truly
substantive is throughout the essential foundation, and neither purely
subjective self-knowledge and emotion, nor a superficial and mutable
singularity[136] must be permitted in any way to be predominant, but
what is eternal in the godlike and our humanity should, divested of all
the caprice and contingency of the particular self[137], be set before
our eyes in its unimpaired clarity.

(_b_) The further point we would draw attention to consists in this,
that the content of sculpture, for the reason that its material
requires an external presentment in the complete form of the three
spatial dimensions, is also unable to be a _spiritual content_ as such,
that is, the ideality self-enclosed within and absorbed into itself,
but rather in the sense that it is only _explicit_ in its opposed
factor, in other words, the _bodily form._ The negation of what is
external is already implied in the ideal subjective consciousness,
and can therefore have no place here, where what is divine and human
is accepted as content with exclusive reference to its objective
characteristics. And it is only this self-absorbed objective aspect,
which does not comprise ideal subjectivity in the strict sense[138],
that gives free play to an externality conditioned in all its three
dimensions, and is capable of being associated with such a spatial
totality. For these reasons it is incumbent on sculpture that it only
accept out of the objective content of Spirit that which admits of the
fullest expression in external and bodily shape; if it do otherwise
it simply selects a content which its specific material is unable to
assimilate or to unite with an adequate mode of exposition.



2. THE BEAUTIFUL FORM OF SCULPTURE


We must now inquire into the nature of the bodily _forms_ which are
adapted to give an impression of a content of this kind.

Just as in classical architecture the dwelling-house is the anatomical
skeleton framework which art has to inform with its accretions, in
like manner sculpture, on its part, discovers the _human form_ as
the fundamental type for its figures. Whereas, however, the house is
already a piece of human workmanship, though not as yet elaborated
artistically, the structure of the human form, on the contrary, appears
as a product of Nature unaffected by man. The fundamental type of
sculpture is consequently _given_ to it, that is, does not hail from
human inventiveness. The expression, however, that the human form is a
part of Nature is a very indefinite one, which we must submit to closer
analysis.

In Nature it is the Idea, which is given there, as we have already
found when discussing natural beauty, its primary and immediate mode of
existence, receiving in animal life and its complete organic structure
the _natural_ existence adequate to its notion. The organization of
the animal frame is therefore a birth of the notion in its essential
totality, which exists in this corporeal mode of being as soul, yet, as
the principle of merely animal life, modifies the animal frame in the
most varied classifications, albeit too every specific type continues
to be subject to the general notion[139]. The fact that notion and
bodily form, or more accurately, soul and body, correspond to one
another--to fully understand this is the problem of natural philosophy.
We should have to demonstrate that the different systems of the animal
frame in their ideal[140] structure and conformation no less than
their association, and the more definite organs in which the bodily
existence is differentiated are in general accord with the phasal steps
of the notion's movement, so that it becomes clear, to what extent we
have here presented to us as real only the particular aspects of the
soul-life which are necessary. To develop this exposition, however,
does not lie within the scope of the present inquiry.

The human form is not, however, as the animal form, merely the
corporeal framework of the soul, but of _Spirit._ In other words,
spirit and soul are essentially to be distinguished. For the soul
is merely this ideal and simple unity of self-subsistence attaching
to the body in its _corporeal_ aspect[141], whereas Spirit is the
independent selfness of conscious and _self-conscious_ life together
with all the emotions, ideas, and aims of such a conscious existence.
In contemplating the immense difference which separates merely animal
life from spiritual consciousness, it may appear strange that the
bodily frame attaching to the _latter_, the human body, is nevertheless
so clearly homogeneous with that of animal life. It will tend, however,
to decrease such an astonishment if we recall to mind the definition,
which Spirit itself has authorized us to make in accordance with its
own notion, that it is a mode of life and essentially therefore itself
also a _living soul_ and _natural existence._ As such living soul the
life of conscious spirit, by virtue of the same notion that is inherent
in the animal soul, is entitled to accept a body, which fundamentally
in its general lines runs parallel to the organic structure of animal
life. However superior to mere animal life Spirit may be it is evolved
through[142] a corporeal frame whose visible appearance receives an
identical articulation and principle of life with that which the
notion of animal life in general underlies. Inasmuch as, however, and
furthermore Spirit is not merely the _Idea_ as _determinate existence_,
that is, the Idea as Nature and animal life, but the Idea which secures
independence in its own free medium of ideality as Idea, the spiritual
principle elaborates for itself its own specific mode of objectivity
over and beyond that of animal life, simply, in other words, science,
the reality of which is exclusively that of thought itself. Apart from
thought, however, and its philosophical and systematized activity,
Spirit is involved within an abounding life of feeling, inclination,
idea, imagination, and so forth, which is fixed in a more direct or
less immediate association with its vital being[143] and bodily
frame, and consequently possesses a reality in the human body. In this
reality, which is part of its own substance, Spirit asserts itself
also as a principle of life, shines into it, transpierces it, and is
made manifest to others by means of it. Consequently, in so far as the
human body remains no purely natural existence, but has asserted itself
also in its configuration and structure as the natural and sensuous
existence of Spirit, it is, nevertheless, regarded as the expression of
an ideality more exalted than that compatible with the purely animal
body to be distinguished from it, despite the fact that the human body
in its broad lines is in harmony with it. For this reason, however,
that Spirit is itself soul and life, that is, an animal body, it is and
can only be modifications, which the indwelling Spirit of one living
body attaches to this corporeal form. As a manifestation of Spirit
consequently the human shape is distinct from the animal by virtue of
these modifications, albeit the distinctions of the human organism
from the animal are as much the result of the unconscious creation
of spiritual activities, as the soul of the animal kingdom is the
informing though unconscious activity of the body that belongs to it.

We have thus reached the precise point of our present departure. In
other words, the human body is present to the artist as Spirit's
expression. What is more, he discovers it as such not merely in a
general way, but also in particular characteristics it is presupposed
to be the type which, in its form, its specific traits, its position
and general habit, reflects the ideality of Spirit.

We shall find it a difficult matter to fix in clear terms of thought
the precise nature of the association between spirit and body in
their relation respectively to feeling, passion, and other spiritual
conditions. It has, no doubt, been attempted to develop the same
scientifically both from the _pathognomical_[144] point of view and
the _physiognomical._ Such attempts have hitherto not met with much
success. For ourselves the science of physiognomy can only be of
importance in so far as that of pathognomy is exclusively concerned
with the mode under which definite feelings and passions are physically
located in particular organs. It has been stated, for example, that
the seat of anger is in the gall, of courage in the blood. Such
statements, we may remark incidentally, are erroneous in their manner
of expression. For even assuming the activity of particular organs
corresponds to specific passions, we cannot say that anger, for
instance, has its local position in the gall bladder, but, in so far
as anger is corporeally related, the gall is pre-eminently that in
which its active appearance asserts itself. In our present inquiry
this pathognomical aspect does not, as already stated, concern us,
because sculpture has merely to deal with that which passes over from
the ideal side of Spirit into the external aspect of _form_ permitting
Spirit thus to be visible in the physical environment. The sympathetic
interaction between the internal organism and the feeling soul is no
object of sculpture; indeed, we may add, it is unable to accept much
which appears on the external surface itself, such as the tremble of
the hand and the entire body in an outburst of anger, the movement of
the lips, and others of like nature.

With regard to physiognomical science I will limit myself to this
observation. If the work of sculpture, which has as its fundamental
basis the human form, has to exhibit the way in which the bodily
presence as such manifests not only the divine and human aspect of
Spirit in its broadest and most substantive features, but also the
particular character of a definite individuality in this divine
presence, we are no doubt compelled to discuss what parts, traits, and
conformations of the body are fully accordant with any specific mode of
ideality. We are indeed forced upon such an inquiry by the sculpture
of antiquity, which we must as a matter of fact admit includes the
expression of individual god-like characters with that of divinity
generally. Such an admission does not, however, amount to an assertion
that the association of spiritual expression with bodily form is
merely a matter of accident and caprice rather than the creation of a
figure of self-subsistent actuality. In this connection every organ
must, in a general way, be looked at from two points of view, as a
mode of expression that possesses its physical side no less than its
spiritual. We need hardly caution our readers that the method of Gall
in conducting such an inquiry is inadmissible. This writer reduces
Spirit to what is little better than a Calvary.

(_a_) The advance of sculpture, in respect to the content which its
function is to declare, is limited to the investigation how far the
substantive and at the same time individual condition of spiritual life
is made vital in bodily form, receiving therein determinate existence
and form. In other words, through the content adequate to genuine
sculpture the contingent _individualization of the external appearance_
is from one point of view excluded, and this applies both to the
spiritual and physical aspects of the presentment. Only that which
persists, and is universal and according to rule in the human form is
the object of a work of sculpture. And this is so albeit we have the
additional necessity to individualize the universal in such a way that
not only the abstract law but an individual form, which is brought into
the closest fusion with it, is placed before our eyes.

(_b_) From another point of view it is necessary that sculpture,
as we have seen, be kept unaffected by purely contingent _personal
life_[145], and all expression of such in the independent ideal mode
under which it asserts itself. For this reason an artist, in dealing
with physiognomical characteristics, is not entitled to move in the
direction of individual manner[146]. For a facial manner is simply
just this appearance on the surface of an individual idiosyncrasy and
some particular aspect of emotion, idea, and volition. A man by his
chance expressions of countenance expresses the feelings he has as
some particular person, whether it be in his exclusive relation to
his own life, or in his self-relation to exterior objects, or other
persons. One sees, for example, on the street, more particularly in
little towns, in many, or rather the majority of men, that they are
exclusively preoccupied, in their demeanour and expression of face,
with themselves, their dress and attire, in general terms, that
is, their purely personal particularity, or, at least, matters of
momentary importance, and any unforeseen or accidental features thus
presented. Countenances which express pride, envy, self-satisfaction,
depreciation, and so forth, are of this nature. Moreover, the feeling
and contrast of substantive being with my personal idiosyncrasy may be
responsible for such alterations of expression. Humility, defiance,
threats, fear, are expressed in this way. In a felt contrast of
this kind we find already a separation between the individual in
the subjective sense and the universal asserted. Reflection on what
is truly substantive continually leans in the direction of merely
personal considerations, so that it is the individual rather than the
substantive character which is predominant in the content. The form,
however, which remains severely true to the principle of sculpture
ought neither to express this severation nor the predominance of the
personal aspect above adverted to.

In addition to definite expressions of countenance[147] physiognomy
presents us with much that merely passes momentarily across the
features and indicates the human mood. A sudden smile, an instantaneous
outburst of anger, a quickly repressed expression of scorn, are a
few of many examples. In particular, the mouth and eyes possess most
mobility and resource in seizing and making apparent every shifting
mood of soul-life. Changes of this character, which are compatible
with the art of painting, the sculptor must exclude. Sculpture
must rather concentrate its attention on the permanent traits of
spiritual expression, and retain and disclose such in the posture and
configuration of the body no less than in the face.

(_c_) The task of sculpture, then, essentially consists in this, that
it implants that which is of substantive spiritual import in that form
of individuality which is not yet essentially particularized in the
narrow subjective sense within the figure of a man, and contributes to
the same such a harmony, that it is only that which is universal and
permanent in the _bodily shapes_ correspondent with the life of Spirit
which is made to appear therein, while that which is accidental or
mutable is brushed aside, albeit a certain mode of individuality is not
absent from its forms.

An accord of this complete nature between what is ideal and what
is external, the goal of sculpture, in short, offers us a point of
transition to the _third_ point which we have still to discuss.


3. SCULPTURE AS THE ART OF THE CLASSICAL IDEAL

The conclusion that most immediately follows upon the above
observations is this, that sculpture in a way, and to an extent
unrivalled by any other art, remains constant to the Ideal[148]. In
other words, from one point of view it is free of the symbolical
type both by virtue of the translucency of a content, which clearly
grasps itself as Spirit, and on account of the fact that it is able
to disclose such a content with absolute mastery. And so, too, from
another it refuses as yet to enter into the subjective aspect of the
personal life, to which the external form is indifferent. Consequently
it forms the focus of classical art. No doubt both the symbolical and
romantic types of architecture and painting were shown to be adapted
to classical ideality; but the Ideal, in its genuine sphere, is not
the supreme principle of these types of art, inasmuch as they do not,
as is the case with sculpture, take for their object self-subsistent
individuality, character, that is, throughout objective, in other
words, the beauty that is both free and inevitable[149]. The
configuration of sculpture must, however, entirely proceed from the
pure spiritual energy of an imagination and thought that denudes its
content of all the haphazard features of personal life and bodily
presence; it must have no leanings for idiosyncrasies, or any place
for the mere emotion, desire, and variety of accidental impulse and
pleasantry[150]. What the artist has at his disposal for his most
elevated creations is simply, as we have seen, the bodily presentment
of Spirit in what is exclusively the general configuration of the
organic structure of the human form. His invention is therefore
restricted to promoting on the broadest lines the harmony between
what is ideal and what is external, and partly to making, in however
an inobtrusive way, the individuality of the presentment accommodate
itself to and interfuse with the truly substantive character of his
design[151]. Sculpture must give form, just as the gods create in
their own sphere according to eternal ideas, within what is in other
respects the world of reality, but exclude as rejected residue all
licence and mere selfness from its creations. Theologians make a
distinction between the acts of God and all that man in his folly and
capriciousness accomplishes. The plastic Ideal is, however, exalted
above such questions. It stands at the very centre of this blessedness
and free necessity for which neither the abstraction of the universal
nor the caprice of the particular are valid or significant.

This insight into the consummate plastic union of the divine and human
was pre-eminently native to Greece. We fail to grasp Greece at her
heart and centre in her poets and orators, historians and philosophers,
unless, as the key to our problem, we are already possessed of an
insight into the Ideal of sculpture, and can contemplate from the
standpoint of plastic art both the figures of her epic and dramatic
heroes and her actual statesmen and philosophers. For characters in
her practical life, no less than poets and thinkers, possessed also in
the palmy days of Greece, this plastic, universal, and yet individual
character, stamped with one mint, whether we look at its external or
more personal features. They stand up big and free, a self-subsistent
growth, on the basis of their essentially substantive individuality; a
growth of their own making, built up into that which they ultimately
became and intended to be. In particular the period of Pericles was
rich in such characters. Pericles himself was one of them. We may add
Pheidias, Plato, and pre-eminently Sophocles. So, too, Thucydides,
Xenophon, and Socrates, everyone with his own type, not one of them
impairing the quality of the rest; all are out-and-out artistic
natures, ideal artists in the work of self-creation, personalities of
one mould, works of art, which stand before us like figures of immortal
gods, in whom we can detect no taint of Time and mortality. We may find
a similar plastic subsistency in the artistic perfections of the bodily
frames of the victors at the Olympic games; nay, even in the apparition
of Phryne[152] herself, who, as the fairest woman, came from the sea
naked before all the world.




CHAPTER II


THE IDEAL OF SCULPTURE


Now that we pass on to consider the really ideal style of sculpture we
must once again recall the fact that the perfected type necessarily
presupposes the imperfect as its predecessor; and it does so not merely
in relation to its technique, which, in the first instance, does not
concern us here, but in respect to the general notion, in other words
the mode of its conception and the particular way in which it sets
forth the same ideally. We have in general terms called the symbolical
type that of inquiry; consequently pure sculpture, too, has for its
presupposition a certain stage of the symbolical type, and by this we
do not merely mean a stage of the symbolic form as generally conceived,
in other words of architecture, but a form of sculpture which is itself
characterized by the symbolical principle. We shall find an opportunity
of supporting this assertion with the example of Egyptian sculpture in
the third chapter.

We may in this place and from the point of view of the Ideal
generally, and for the present wholly in an abstract and formal
manner, assume that which we term symbolical in a specific art is
its _incompleteness_; as, for example, we may so apply this term to
an attempt of children to draw the human figure, or mould it from
wax and clay. What they execute is to this extent merely a symbol,
as it only _suggests_ the living reality it purports to exhibit,
remaining, however, wholly unfaithful to the actual object and its
significance. Art is consequently in the first instance hieroglyphical,
no mere accidental and capricious mark, but a haphazard delineation
of an object for the imagination. For this purpose a badly drawn
figure suffices if it recalls that object it is intended to suggest.
In a similar way piety is content with badly executed images, and
still worships Christ, the Virgin, and any other saint in the most
bungling counterfeit, although such images may merely derive such
individualization purely from particular attributes conveyed by such
means as a lantern or a mill-stone. For piety refuses to be reminded
of aught save the object; the soul adds all else thereto, which
will be filled up with an image of the object, however untrue the
counterfeit may be. It is not the living expression of the present
which is required; it is not that which is presented which is intended
to enkindle us by itself. Rather a work of art of this kind already
brings satisfaction if it excites the general concept of the objects
by virtue of its images, however insufficient they be. A concept of
this kind, however, already abstracts from the given content. I can
readily imagine some known thing, such as a house, a tree, a man;
but even in such a case, where the reference is to something quite
determinate, the concept merely includes wholly general traits, and is
in fact only a _true concept_[153] in so far as it has effaced from the
concrete presentment the wholly immediate singularity of the objects
and simplified the same. If the imaged concept, which the work of art
has to arouse in us, is that of the divine nature, and if this has to
receive recognition from an entire people, this object is especially
attainable when no _alteration_ is allowed in the mode of presentation.
For this reason art is on the one hand conventional, and on the other
scholastic[154]; and this is so not merely in the case of the more
ancient Egyptians, but also in that of more ancient Greek and Christian
art. The artist in such case was bound to restrict himself to definite
forms and to repeat their type.

The crucial point of transition, where fine art wakes from its sleep,
must consequently be sought there, where at last the artist is creative
by virtue of his own free conception, where the flash of genius
strikes into the material presented, and communicates freshness and
vitality to the presentment. Then for the first time the atmosphere
of mind[155] enfolds the work of art, which is no longer restricted
to merely calling up in a general way some idea before the mind, and
recalling to it some deeper significance which the spectator already
is essentially possessed of, but which proceeds to make visible this
significance as throughout made vitally present in some individualized
creation, and which consequently neither makes no further advance
beyond the purely superficial generality of its forms, nor binds itself
on the other hand, in respect to the detail of its delineation, to the
characteristics of all that common reality offers it.

In the rise of ideal sculpture we presuppose perforce a complete
passage to such a sphere of creation. In establishing the facts of this
appearance we may emphasize the following points of view.

_First_, we have to address ourselves to the general character of the
ideal form in its contrast to the stages previously discussed.

_Secondly_, we shall have to adduce specific aspects of it, the
importance of which is most obvious, such as the way in which facial
characteristics, drapery, and pose are modelled or treated.

_Thirdly_, we have to enforce the position that the ideal figure is
not merely a general type of beauty in the formal sense of type,
but includes, by virtue of its principle of individuality, which
belongs to the really living Ideal, essentially, too, the aspect of
differentiation and specific definition within its own sphere, and
by this means the province of sculpture is expanded in a cycle of
particularized images of gods and heroes.



1. THE GENERAL CHARACTERIZATION OF THE IDEAL FIGURE OF SCULPTURE


We have already examined at length what the general principle of
the classical ideal is. Our present inquiry is therefore limited to
the particular mode under which this principle is realized through
the medium of sculpture in the human form. In this connection the
lines of difference between the human physiognomy, expressive as it
is of spiritual life and the general build of the animal organism,
which is unable to pass beyond the mere expression of natural life
in its unbroken association with natural wants and an organism that
is exclusively adapted to their satisfaction, will supply us with a
standard of comparison which carries us considerably further. Yet
even such a standard is still somewhat indefinite for the reason
that the human form alone neither is as bodily form, or as an
expression of Spirit, wholly and as we find it first of ideal type.
On the contrary we may observe with more closeness from the fine
masterpieces of Greek sculpture what the ideal of sculpture in the
spiritually fine expression of its creations has to bring before us.
It was pre-eminently Winckelmann who, with this intimate knowledge
of and devotion for art of this kind, and by means of his receptive
enthusiasm, no less than his intelligence and critical faculty, made
an end of indefinite statements over the Ideal of Greek beauty by
leaving the characterization of detail in the form at once distinct
and precise, an endeavour which by itself is full of instruction. No
doubt the results he obtained supply abundant opportunity for further
criticism, exceptions, and the like; but we should be careful, before
attempting to criticize details and errors in his work, not to obscure
the main result which he established. However far aesthetic science
may extend its borders that at least must be presupposed as essential.
Assuming this, it cannot, however, be denied that since Winckelmann's
death our knowledge of the antique has not only been essentially
enlarged in the number of examples submitted to criticism, but also has
been placed on a securer basis in its relation to the style of these
works and the true appreciation of their beauty.

Winckelmann, no doubt, passed under review a great number of Egyptian
and Greek statues; we have, however, added in more recent times the
closer acquaintance of the Aeginetan sculptures, no less than those
masterworks which in part are ascribed to Pheidias and in part we must
recognize as creations of his age and under his supervision. In a word
we have secured a more intimate knowledge of a number of sculptures,
whether single statues or reliefs, which, in their relation to the
severity of the ideal style, are referable to the age in which Greek
art was at its fullest bloom. For these astonishing monuments of Greek
sculpture, as is well known, we are indebted to the efforts of Lord
Elgin, who, as English ambassador to Turkey, had a number of statues
and reliefs of the greatest beauty taken from the Parthenon at Athens
and other towns to England. People have blamed such acquisitions and
called them temple robbery. Lord Elgin has, however, as a matter of
fact, really rescued these works of art for Europe and preserved
them from complete destruction. Such an enterprise deserves its true
recognition. Moreover, it is due to this circumstance that the interest
of all connoisseurs and friends of art have been directed to an epoch
and a mode of presentation, which, in the exceptionally consistent
severity of its style, constitutes the true greatness and height of
the Ideal. What the general verdict has highly estimated in the works
of this epoch is not the charm and grace of form and pose, not the
elegance of expression which already, as in the times subsequent to
Pheidias, makes an external appeal and distinctly aims at pleasing
the spectator, nor yet the delicacy and boldness of the elaboration;
rather the general chorus of praise is concentrated upon the expression
of self-subsistency and essential repose in these figures, and more
especially has this note of admiration been most emphatic by virtue
of the free vitality, the absolute transfusion of and command over
the purely natural and material aspect, a command by which the artist
moulds the marble, makes it alive and endows it with a soul. And we
may add that when all has been said that can be said in such praise
the figure of the reclining river-god remains as most emphatically its
object, which is one of the finest examples of antique art we have
recovered.

(_a_) The vitality of these works consists in this, that they are the
free product of the genius of the artist. The artist at this stage
is neither satisfied with giving, by means of general and haphazard
contours, suggestions and expressions, a general conception of that
which he desires to reproduce, nor does he, on the other hand, in
respect to what is individual and singular, accept the forms as he has
received them by chance from the external world. For this reason also
he does not present them again with loyalty to this accidental aspect,
but he is concerned to place within his own free creation what is
empirically particularized in isolated aspects that thus appear in a
further individual accord with the universal types of the human form,
an accord which is made to appear as throughout transpierced with the
spiritual configuration of that which he is called to make apparent,
when he suffers us to see his own vitality, conception and animation in
the work regarded on the side of the artist's activity. The universal
aspect of the content of his work is not due to his creation. It is
presented him by means of mythology and saga precisely in the way that
he finds the general effect and details of the human form; but the
free and living individualization, which permeates all portions on his
work, is the result of his own personal point of view, his efforts and
services.

(_b_) The effect and charm of this vitality and freedom is only
produced by means of the sufficiency, the honest candour of the
elaboration of all the particular parts to which the most definite
knowledge and review of the construction of these parts belongs, no
less in their position of repose than also in that of their motion. The
way in which the different members are disposed and moulded with regard
to rondure and smoothness, in every condition of rest and movement,
must be expressed in the most satisfactory way. This fundamental
elaboration and placing in relief of all the separate parts we find in
all products of antique art, and the animation thus produced is only
the effect of infinite pains and truth. When the eye contemplates works
of this kind it is, in the first instance, unable clearly to recognize
a mass of distinction; and it is only by virtue of a particular manner
of lighting that we can appreciate the same by means of a stronger
contrast between light and shadow. But though these fine nuances are
imperceptible at first glance, the general impression they produce is
not for that reason lost. In part they appear as the spectator varies
his point of view, and in part we derive from them what is essentially
the impression of the organic continuity of all the members and their
forms. This spirit of vitality, this soul of material configuration,
is due wholly to the fact that, though every part is entirely complete
in its separable independence, yet it is to a like extent throughout,
by virtue of the wealth of its modes of transition, associated not
merely with the part that is immediately its neighbour, but with the
entire work. For this reason the form is vital in every part of it;
the least detail of it is stamped with purpose; every part of it is
differentiated from the rest, possesses that which distinguishes it
and makes it distinct, and yet is affected by the same fluidity of
treatment, is only what it is vitally as a part of the whole, so that
we are able to recognize the whole in the very fragments of it, and a
part that is broken off enables us not merely to see but to enjoy a
totality that is not thus mutilated. The material surface, although for
the most part statues are now seriously impaired by the weather and
other causes in this respect, presents a soft and malleable appearance;
and in one particular example of the head of a horse I have in mind
it literally glows with the ardour of life on the face of the marble
itself. This scarce perceptible undercurrent of fluidity in all organic
parts, united to the most conscientious elaboration which avoids
purely regular surfaces and anything approaching the bare convexity of
circular shape, supplies that softness and ideality of all parts, that
harmonious unity, which extends throughout the whole as the spiritual
breath of one animating presence.

(_c_) However true, notwithstanding, expression of detailed or
general configuration may be, this truth is no mere imitation of
Nature simply. Sculpture is always occupied with the abstraction of
form, and is consequently obliged, on the one hand, to omit from
the bodily presentment what is most essentially the natural aspect,
in other words, what is exclusively indicative of natural function.
From a further point of view it is unable to carry to extremes its
particularization of detail, but rather as, for example, in its
treatment of hair, must restrict its attention and reproduction to the
more general of its forms. In this way, apart from any other, the human
figure, when properly treated by sculpture, is at once declared as the
form and expression of Spirit, rather than of a purely natural form.
Closely connected with this consideration is the fact that, though a
spiritual content is expressed by means of sculpture in the _bodily_
form, yet in the genuine Ideal it is not asserted so _prominently_ in
the exterior form to the extent of making that which is simply external
in its charm and grace either the exclusive or predominant attraction
to the spectator. On the contrary, though the genuine and more severe
Ideal of Spirituality is here presented in bodily shape, and is
exclusively thus presented by means of such shape and its expression,
yet this configuration must equally appear to be without exception
unified, supported and transfused by this ideal content. The swell of
life, the malleability and bodily presence, or sensuous fulness and
beauty of the bodily organism, must as little supply independently the
object of the presentation, as what is individual in the spiritual
presence can be carried to the length of expressing the more intimate
and more closely related inner life of the spectator, when we consider
his own particularity.


2. THE PARTICULAR ASPECTS OF THE IDEAL FORM OF SCULPTURE AS SUCH

If we direct our attention now to the more specific consideration of
the fundamental phases, on which the ideal form of sculpture reposes,
we shall do well to follow Winckelmann in essentials, who has laid
stress on the several types with the finest intuitive sense, and with
the most fortunate results, as well as on the way in which the same
have been treated and shaped by Greek artists, with the result that
they finally present to us the Ideal of sculpture. The vitality,
this floating emanation no doubt evades the definitions of the
understanding, which in the present case is unable to hold fast and
transpierce the particular as in architecture, which, however, asserts
itself in the entire work, as we have already seen, as the coalescence
of free spirituality and bodily forms.

The first general feature of distinction which arrests us concerns
the determination of works of sculpture in a general way, by virtue
of which the human form has to express that which is spiritual. The
spiritual expression, albeit it has to be poured forth over the entire
bodily presence reaches its highest degree of concentration in the
_facial form_, whereas the remaining members are merely able to reflect
what is spiritual by means of their _position_, in so far, that is, as
the same proceeds from Spirit in its essential freedom.

In our examination of these ideal forms we will make a beginning in
the _first_ place with the head; we will, then, in the _second_ place
enlarge upon the position of the body, after which we shall _conclude_
with the principle of the drapery.

(_a_) In the ideal configuration of the human head we are first and
foremost confronted with the so-called Greek profile.

(_α_) This profile consists in the peculiar union of the forehead
and nose; in the almost straight or merely slightly crooked line in
which the forehead unites without interruption with the nose, as also,
to speak more accurately, in the vertical direction of this line to
another which, extending it from the root of the nose to the orifice
of the ear, forms a right angle with the line of the forehead and
nose above mentioned. In a line of this sort nose and forehead stand
throughout to one another in the ideal and fine art of sculpture, and
the question presents itself whether this is a merely national and
artistic contingency or a physiological necessity.

Camper, the famous Dutch physiologist, has, with more exactness and
in an exceptional way, characterized this line as the line of facial
beauty; he in fact discovers therein the main distinction between the
form of the human visage and the profile of animal life; and on account
of this follows up the modifications of this feature throughout the
various human races. In this respect his researches are no doubt in
conflict with those of Blumenbach[156]. Speaking generally, however,
the line adverted to is in fact a most marked means of distinction
between the outward form of man and animal. Among animals, it is
true, muzzle and nasal bone also form a more or less straight line,
but the specific projection of the animal's snout, which is forced to
the front, as being in the nearest practical relation to objects, is
essentially determined through its connection with the skull, united to
which the ear is moreover placed above or below, so that in the present
instance the line that is carried forward from the skull to the root of
the nose or the upper jaw, where the teeth are in position, forms an
acute angle instead of a right angle as is found in the case of man.
Everybody can independently feel in a general way the strength of this
distinction, which no doubt opens the path to more definite thinking on
the subject.

(_αα_) In the formation of the head of animals the most insistent
feature is the mouth as the organ by means of which it feeds in
co-operation with the upper and lower jaws, the teeth, and the muscles
of mastication. All the other organs are subordinate and in a position
of subservience to this principal feature. Notably the snout as a
means of scenting food, the eyes being to a lesser degree instrumental
in spying it out. The express insistence on these animal features as
exclusively devoted to the natural wants and their satisfaction gives
to the head of the animal the appearance as though intended merely to
satisfy natural functions without any trace of spiritual ideality. For
this reason the entire animal organism is rendered intelligible from
the mouth as a point of departure. A specific mode of nourishment, that
is to say, requires a specific structure of the muzzle, a particular
formation of the teeth, together with which the structure of the jaw
bones, the muscles of mastication, cheek-bones, and, moreover, the
vertebrae, the thighbones, claws, and so forth all stand in the closest
relation. The body of the animal merely subserves natural ends and on
account of this dependence on the purely material aspect of nourishment
gives the impression of absence of spirit. If, then, the human
countenance is, even in its bodily conformation, to possess a spiritual
stamp, those organs which in the animal form are so predominant must
in the case of man, retire from such a pre-eminence and give way to
those which do not so much suggest a practical relation as one that is
referable to the ideality of mind.

(_ββ_) The human countenance has consequently a _second_ central point,
in which that attitude to facts, which indicates the relation of the
soul or spirit, is declared. We find this in the _upper_ portion of
the face, in the thoughtful brow and the eye, through which we face
the soul, which looms out beneath it, together with its environment.
Thought, reflection--that is, the introspection of the spiritual
identity--is necessarily connected with the forehead, whose internal
life in concentrated clarity looks forth from the eye. Through
the prominence of the forehead and the correspondingly retreating
appearance of the mouth and the cheek-bones the human countenance
derives its _spiritual_ character. This projection of the brow is
therefore necessarily that which determines the entire formation of the
skull, which no longer falls back, forming the side of an acute angle
as its extreme point the mouth is pressed to the front[157], but rather
permits of a line being drawn from the forehead through the nose to
the point of the chin, which, with a second drawn over the rear of the
skull to the apex of the forehead, form a right angle, or one at least
which approximates to it.

(_γγ_) _Thirdly_, we may say that the _nose_ forms the passage and
connection between the lower and upper portion of the face, that is
to say, between the purely contemplative and spiritual forehead and
the practical organ of nutrition; and if we take into consideration
its natural function as the organ of smell it is rightly placed in
this intermediate position between an attitude to the external world
which is either wholly practical or ideal. No doubt the sense of smell
in such a position is still associated with an animal want; it is
intimately connected with the taste; and for this reason, in the case
of the mere animal, the snout is at the service of the mouth and the
organ of nourishment. But the sense of smell is by itself as a fact no
actual consumption of objects, as eating and tasting are; it merely
accepts the result of the process in which the objects pass into the
atmosphere and its invisible and mysterious medium of dissolution.
Assuming, then, that the passage from forehead and nose is of such a
formation that the forehead viewed independently arches forward, and
yet in relation to the nose retreats, whereas this latter organ on its
part, in proximity to the forehead, is withdrawn back and only projects
beyond this point, we see that both these portions of the face--that
is, the contemplative part, the forehead, and that which suggests a
practical use, with which we may associate the mouth, form an emphatic
contrast, in virtue of which the nose, as belonging in a sense to
both extremes, appertains equally to the practical aims[158] of the
mouth. Furthermore, the forehead, in its isolated position, receives
the appearance of severity and exclusive spiritual concentration in
its contrast to the eloquent sympathy of the mouth, which is primarily
the organ of nutritive support, and at the same time accepts the nasal
organ into its service as its instrument in creating the natural want
by virtue of its smell, and thereby declares its direct relation to the
material side. And in close connection with this reciprocity is the
contingent character of the form to the indeterminable modifications
of which both nose and forehead may be carried. The particular type of
the forehead's arch, the nature of its projection or retreat, loses its
secure lines of definition, and the nose can be fiat or fine, drooping,
arched, more acutely flattened and a snub.

By virtue of amelioration[159] and accommodation, however, that
beautiful harmony, which the Greek profile asserts in the gentle and
uninterrupted communication between the spiritual forehead and the
nose, that is, between the upper and lower portions of the face, the
nose appears on this very account of closer affinity to the forehead,
and consequently receives itself a spiritual expression and character
as though drawn up into the spiritual system. The sense of smell
becomes at the same time a sense independent of purely practical ends,
a nose refined for spiritual purpose; just as in fact also the nose by
its sneer and similar movements, however unimportant by themselves they
may be, is nevertheless shown to be in the highest degree pliable as
a mode of expressing the judgments and emotions of soul-life. So, for
example, we say of a proud man that he holds his nose high, or ascribe
sauciness to a young girl who tosses up her bit of a nose.

And the same thing may be said of the _mouth._ No doubt it is on the
one hand referable as an instrument to the satisfaction of hunger
and thirst; it expresses, however, in addition to this conditions of
the soul, opinions, and passions. Even among animals it is used in
this relation as the organ of animal cries, and by man as that of
speech, laughter, sighs, and so forth, by which means the lineaments
of the mouth are themselves associated with the facts of eloquent
soul-sympathy, or of joy, sorrow, and similar conditions.

It is no doubt asserted that, though for the Greeks, such a
configuration of the human countenance is presented as the true
presentation of beauty, the Chinese, Jews, and Egyptians, regarded on
the contrary an entirely different type, or rather forms absolutely in
conflict with such, as equally beautiful, or yet more beautiful, and
the conclusion is made that, cancelling one example by another, we have
not proved that the Greek profile is the type of genuine beauty. Such
a statement, however, is wholly superficial. The Greek profile must
in fact not be regarded as any mere external and accidental form, but
approximates to the ideal of beauty by its independent claims, namely,
first, because it is the type of countenance in which the expression of
soul-life forces into the background all that is purely material, and,
secondly, because it to the fullest extent detaches itself from all
that is contingent in the form, without, however, displaying thereby
mere subservience to rule, and leaving no place for every kind of
individuality.

(_β_) With respect to specific types and their closer consideration I
will merely touch upon certain fundamental aspects selected from the
abundant material which otherwise invites attention. In this respect
we may in the _first_ instance refer to the forehead, the eye, and the
ear, as those parts of the face which are most nearly related to the
contemplative, or at least spiritual aspect, and, _secondly_, to the
nose, mouth, and chin, as those relatively speaking more connected with
the organs of practical import.

_Thirdly_, we shall have somewhat to say of the _hair_ as the external
setting, by virtue of which the head is rounded off in an oval shape of
beauty.

(_αα_) The _forehead_ is in the ideal form of classical sculpture,
neither fully arched forward, nor as a rule lofty; for, although the
spiritual aspect has to be prominently emphasized in its configuration
of the visual features, yet it is not as yet spirituality simply
as such, which sculpture has to present before us, but rather
individuality as still exclusively expressed in bodily form.

In heads of Hercules, for example, the forehead is preferably low,
for the reason that Hercules possesses rather the muscular vigour of
the body directed towards external objects than the introspective
energy of mind. And for the rest we find the forehead subject to
many modifications, lower in the case of charming and youthful
feminine forms, and more lofty in the case of figures that represent
substantial character and serious reflection.

In speaking of the _eye_ it is important at once to make it clear that
in the figure of ideal sculpture, in addition to the absence of any
true colour such as is found in painting, the _glance_ of the eye is
also absent. It is possible no doubt to show on historical evidence
that the ancients, in the case of particular images of Minerva and
other gods placed in temples, have painted the eye, since we find
actual traces of colour in certain statues; in the case of images
dedicated to a sacred purpose, however, artists have frequently held
fast so far as possible to traditional usage in the face of good taste.
In the case of other examples it is clear that they must have possessed
eyes in the shape of precious stones inserted. This practice, however,
is the result of a desire already adverted to of adorning the images
of gods in as rich and lavish a manner as possible. And we may affirm
generally that such either mark the beginnings of the art, or are due,
as exceptions, to the traditions of religion. Moreover, apart from
this, mere colour is still far from giving to the eye the essentially
concentrated look, which alone communicates to it an expression that
is wholly complete. We may therefore here assume it as a fact that in
the case of statues and busts of a truly classical type, unaffected by
such exceptional conditions which have come down to us from antiquity,
the light focus of the eye, no less than the spiritual expression
of its glance, is absent. For although not unfrequently the focus
is inserted in the apple of the eye, or at least is indicated by a
conical depression, and a modification which expresses the light point
of this focus and by this means a kind of visual glance, such remains
nevertheless the purely external configuration of the eye-ball, and is
no presentation of its vitality; in other words it is not the glance of
it simply, the inward glance, that is, of the soul.

We can readily imagine that it must cost the artist a great deal to
sacrifice the eye in its simple aspect of animation. We have only to
look a man in the eyes to discover a point of arrest, a centre that
explains and is basic to his entire presentment, which we may grasp in
its simplest terms from the unifying declaration of its bare look. The
eye-glance is in fact that aspect which is most steeped in soul; it is
the concentration of the inward life and its subjective emotion. Just
as a man by means of a handshake, so, too, with yet more rapidity he
is brought into unity with his fellow by virtue of the eye-glance he
faces. And it is this pre-eminently spiritual mode of revelation which
sculpture is forced to dispense with. In painting, on the contrary,
this outward expression of soul-life makes its appearance by means
of the subtle gradations of colouring either in its entire spiritual
effect, or in a manifest association with external facts and the
particular interests, feelings, and passions, which are called up by
their presence. But the province of the sculptor in his art is neither
the essential inwardness of soul-life, the concentration of the entire
man in the simple centre of self-identity, which gleams out in the
human glance as its ultimate point of illumination, nor the developed
subjectivity as we find it diffused amid the surrounding world. The
end of sculpture is the totality of the external form, into which the
soul must disintegrate itself, and present itself by means of the
manifold of the medium thus utilized, so that the recourse to one
simple soul-focus, in other word the immediacy of the spirit-glance,
is not here permitted. The work of sculpture possesses no such ideal
intimacy in its simplest terms which is allowed to assert itself, as
the human look does assert itself in contrast to other parts of the
human body, thereby unfolding a contrast between the eye and the body;
rather in sculpture what the individual is in his ideal and spiritual
significance remains wholly fused in the total aspect of form, which
the spirit that contemplates it, the spectator, can alone grasp in its
unity. And in the _second_ place, and with equal truth the eye peers
into the world that surrounds it; it necessarily looks at something
positive, and thereby is witness to man in his relation to a manifold
world of objects, just as in the sphere of feeling he is united to his
environment and general experience. It is, however, precisely this
union with external objects from which the true figure of sculpture
is withdrawn, being rather absorbed in what is substantive in its own
spiritual content, essentially self-subsistent, that is without further
diffusion or development. _Thirdly_, the glance of the eye receives
its fully evolved significance by virtue of the expression of the rest
of the bodily presentment, such as in its general mien and speech,
albeit as the purely formal point of subjective life, in which the
entire manifold of the form and its environment is concentrated to a
focus, it holds itself aloof and contrasted with this development. A
breadth of vision of this specific kind is, however, foreign to the
plastic art. For this reason the more specialized mode of expression in
the human vision, which did not at the same time immediately discover
its further reciprocal response of effect in the entire compass of
its configuration, could only be an accidental particularity, which
the sculptured figure must dispense with. For reasons such as these,
sculpture does not merely deprive itself of nothing when it leaves
its figures bare of the eye's full glance; but we may affirm that it
is only true to its fundamental principle when it totally disregards
this mode of the soul's expression. Consequently it is merely one
more example of the fine insight of antiquity, that it recognized
firmly this limitation and restriction of sculpture, and remained
loyal to the abstract view it implied. It is an evidence of the lofty
intelligence of the ancients, based on the fulness of their reasoning
faculties, and the comprehensive grasp of their outlook. No doubt we
do meet with cases in antique sculpture, in which the eyes gaze upon
some definite point, as for example in the case of the faun we have
alluded to several times who glances at the young Bacchus. This smile
of recognition is expressed in a moving way; but even here the eye is
itself visionless, and the real statues of the gods in their simple
situations are not presented to us in relations of this specific
character so far as the direction of eye and glance is concerned.

With regard to the _form_ of the eye in ideal sculpture it is large
of size, widely extended, oval and in respect to position placed
at right angles toward the line of the forehead and nose, and in
considerable depression. As far back as Winckelmann[160] the large
size of the eye was accounted significant of beauty, just as a great
light is more beautiful than a small one. "The size, however," his
description continues, "is relative to the bone of the eye or its
cavity, and is expressed in the mode of incision[161] and in the
opening of the eyelids, of which in beautiful eyes the upper describes
a more circular arch toward the angle within than the lower one." In
the case of profile heads of superior workmanship the apple of the eye
itself possesses a profile and receives precisely by virtue of this
opening thus cut away a nobility and a free glance, whose very light,
according to Winckelmann's observation, is rendered visible on coins
through an exalted point or focus on the apple of the eye. At the same
time mere size does not make all eyes beautiful; they are this in the
first place by virtue of the cast of the eyelids, and in the second
through being themselves deepset. In other words the eye ought not to
press forward, and by so doing be thrust on the external world, for
it is just this close relation to the external world which is removed
from the ideal, exchanging for this the self-retirement of personality
upon its own resources, that is, upon what is ideally substantive in
the individuality. The projection of the eye, however, also suggests
the thought that the apple of the eye is at one time pushed to the
fore and at another withdrawn, and, particularly in the case of the
staring gaze, only testifies to the fact that the individual is beside
himself, either staring in total absence of thought, or in an equally
soulless way absorbed in the gaze upon some material object. In the
Ideal of antique sculpture the eye is placed in even more pronounced
retreat than we actually find it in Nature. Winckelmann suggests as
a reason for this that in the case of statues of larger size which
are placed more remote from the vision of the spectator, without
this more receding position, on account of the fact that apart from
this the apple of the eye was for the most part flat, the eye itself
would have been without meaning and practically lifeless, if by just
this more emphatic projection of the bone of the eye-socket, the
thereby accentuated play of light and shadow had not made the eye more
apparently active. Yet this deepening of the eye has a yet further
significance. In other words, if the forehead is thereby suffered to
receive a prominence superior to that of Nature the contemplative
portion of the face is the predominant factor, and we receive a keener
sense of spiritual expression, while also the emphasized shadow in
the eye-sockets on its own account enables us to feel a depth and
unimpaired inwardness, a look that is shut off from external objects,
and retires on the essential presence of individuality, whose depths
are suffused over the entire presentment. In the case of coins, too, of
the best period the eyes are deep-set, and the enclosing bones of the
eye are projected. The eyebrows on the contrary are not expressed by
a more extended arch of tiny hairs, but merely suggested by means of
the acute sharpness of the eye-bone ridge, which, without interrupting
the forehead in its form of continuity as eyebrows actually do through
their colour and relative elevation, surround the eyes as with an
elliptical garland. The more elevated and consequently more independent
arch of the eye-brows has never been regarded as beautiful.

Winckelmann[162] further observes with regard to the _ears_ that the
ancients devoted the greatest care to their elaboration, so that in the
case of cut stones indifferent attention to the execution of the ear
is an infallible sign of the spuriousness of the work in question. In
particular he insists that statues which are portraits often reproduced
the characteristic and individual type of the ear. It is consequently
possible in many cases to ascertain the very personality represented
from the ear, if the same happens to be known, and to take one example,
from a single ear with an exceptionally large opening into it, to
deduce the presence of a Marcus Aurelius. Indeed, the ancients have
not failed to indicate in this respect what is actually misshapen.
As examples of a peculiar type of ear to be found in ideal heads,
Winckelmann draws attention to certain ears given to Hercules, which
are beaten out flat, and others which bulge out in their cartilaginous
folds. They indicate wrestlers and pancratiasts, just as Hercules
himself carried off the prize at Elis as a pancratiast in the games of
Pelops.

(_ββ_) We have still to add some remarks with reference to that part
of the countenance which is more nearly related to the practical or
sensuous side of natural function, in other words the specific form
of the nose, the mouth, and the chin. The distinction in the form of
the nose gives to the face a variety of configuration and many various
kinds of expression. A keenly cut nose with thin folds[163] at the
apertures we are accustomed to associate with an acute understanding,
whereas a broad and drooping one, or a snub nose that is somewhat
brutish, suggests as a rule sensuality, folly, and bestiality. It is,
however, the function of sculpture to hold itself aloof, not merely
from such extremes, but also the intermediate stages of design and
expression, and refuse consequently to accept, as we have already seen
is the case with the Greek profile, not simply the separation from the
forehead, but also the extreme curve, whether upwards or downwards, the
acute point and the more extended rounding off, the elevation in the
middle and the depression towards the forehead and the mouth, generally
speaking the extreme acuteness and thickness of the nose, setting in
the place of these varied modifications a comparatively indifferent
type, if at the same time one which in a quiet way is throughout
vitalized by individuality.

Second only to the eye the _month_ belongs to the most beautiful
portion of the face, provided that it is formed not so much in express
relation to its natural function as an organ for eating and drinking
as in accommodation to its spiritual significance. In this respect it
only gives place to the eye in the variety and wealth of its means
of expression, and this though it is enabled to express with vital
force the finest nuances of scorn, disdain, envy, the entire gamut of
sorrows and joy through the slightest of movements and the fullest
play of such, and to a similar degree to express the charm of love,
earnestness, sensuous feeling, obstinacy, attraction, and other such
emotions by its state of repose. Sculpture, however, makes less use
of it to express the nuances of particular expression, and, above
all, is bound to keep what is entirely sensuous, and suggests natural
wants away from the form and delineation of the lips. For the most
part, therefore, it models the mouth neither over-full-shaped nor too
spare, for extremely thin lips also suggest a parsimony of emotional
life; makes the underlip more full than the upper, which was also the
case with Schiller, upon the modelling of whose mouth was inscribed
every kind of significance and fulness of temperament. This more ideal
type of the lips in its contrast to the animal snout presents the
appearance of a certain absence of desire, whereas in the case of the
beast, if the upper portion projects, we are at once reminded of the
headlong devouring of food and the grasp for it. Among human beings the
mouth is, when we have regard for its spiritual relation, primarily
the seat of human speech, the organ for the free communication of
self-conscious life, just as the eye is that of the emotional spirit.
Moreover, according to the ideals of sculpture, the lips are not
tightly closed; rather in the works of art in its blooming season the
mouth is set slightly open without suffering the teeth, however, to be
visible, which have nothing to do with the expression of a spiritual
significance. This attitude is so far supported by the fact that when
the organs of sense are strongly active, as, for example, when we gaze
intently at an object, the mouth is closed; when, on the contrary, we
are absorbed in visionless thought it opens slightly and the angles of
the mouth are to an appreciable extent inclined downwards.

Last in our review of the objects above named, the _chin_, in its
ideal form, completes the spiritual expression of the mouth, that is,
assuming it is not wholly absent, as in the case of animals, or only
retained in a retreating and meagre condition as in works of Egyptian
sculpture, but as rather lengthened out even beyond the degree which is
usual, receiving thus in the rounded fulness of its arched curve, more
particularly where we have shorter underlips, yet further increase of
size. To sum up in fact a full chin conveys the impression of a certain
satiety and repose. Odd fussy wenches wag with their withered-up chins
and meagre muscles. Goethe, for example, likens their chops to a pair
of tongs that will be snatching at something. All restlessness of this
kind disappears with a full chin. The dimple, however, which nowadays
is held to have some claim to beauty is, as an accidental grace itself,
no essential accompaniment of beauty. In its place, however, a rounded
chin of considerable proportions is an infallible sign of antique
heads. In the case of the Medicean Venus it is not so noticeable, but
it is proved on good evidence that the statue has suffered a loss in
this respect.

(_γγ_) We have only now in conclusion to refer to the _hair._ Generally
speaking the hair has rather the character of a vegetable than an
animal formation; it testifies less to the strength of the organism
than it is indicative of weakness. Barbarians allow the hair to hang
in straight lines, or cut it off close to the head rather than in
undulating line or locks. The ancients, on the contrary, devoted
excessive attention to the elaboration of the hair in their ideal works
of sculpture, a direction in which more modern artists devote less
trouble and skill. No doubt the ancients also, when the stone on which
they worked was extremely hard, did not suffer the hair of the head to
flow in freely hanging locks, but arranged as though it was cropped
short[164] and, in that form, finely combed out. In the case of marble
sculpture of the better time the hair is in locks and of great vigour
both in the case of male and female heads, where we find it presented
in upward rolls and bound together on the crown of the head; one finds
it at least, as Winckelmann points out, drawn out in winding rolls and
with express depressions the better to indicate its various folds in
light and shadow, which is impossible if the drills are shallow. Add
to this in the case of particular gods the line of direction and the
arrangement of the hair is different In a similar way in Christian
painting Christ is made recognizable by a definite type of the crown of
the head and the locks of hair, following which type in our own time
there are not a few who deliberately imitate such an appearance.

(_γ_) The parts above described in their form sum up collectively the
head as a whole. The beautiful form is here determined by a line which
most nearly approaches the oval of an egg, and thereby resolves every
indication of sharpness, pointedness, and angularity in harmonious
form and a gently progressive association, without, however, being
exclusively regular and abstractly symmetrical, or issuing in multifold
variety of lines and their direction and inclination as is the case
with other portions of the body. In order to form this self-collected
oval shape, the beautiful and free inclination from the chin to the ear
contributes, particularly if we look at the face from the front, no
less than the line already indicated, which describes the termination
of the forehead, the bones of the eye-socket. And the arch over the
profile from forehead over the point of the nose to the chin is
equally noticeable, and the beautiful arching of the back of the head
to the nape of the neck. So much I have permitted myself, without
entering on further detail, to observe on the ideal shape of the head.

(_b_) In respect to the other organic members such as neck, breast,
back, belly, arms, hands, thighs, and feet, we find here another type
of co-ordination. They can no doubt possess a beautiful form, but the
beauty is sensuous, vital, without expressing by virtue of their form
as such a spiritual significance as the countenance expresses it. The
ancients have shown for the form of these parts of the body the highest
sense of beauty; but in genuine sculpture they must not merely pass as
the beauty of a living organism, but as members of the _human_ form
it is their further function to present the appearance of a spiritual
effect, so far as this is compatible with what is purely bodily
presence. Otherwise the expression of the soul would be concentrated
wholly in the face, whereas in plastic sculpture what is spiritual must
appear as permeating nothing less than the entire configuration, and
must not be permitted to isolate itself independently and in contrast
to what is corporeal.

If we now inquire what are the means which enable the breast, the
torso, the back, and the extremities to contribute to the expression of
spirit and thereby to receive over and beyond a beautiful vitality, the
breath of a spiritual life, we shall find the following:

In the _first_ place there is the relation in which the limbs, in so
far as that relation proceeds from the ideality of Spirit, and is
freely determined by that ideality, are brought into juxtaposition.

_Secondly_, there is the motion and repose in their complete freedom
and beauty of form.

_Thirdly_, this type of position and motion in their definite
affiliation[165] and expression supplies the situation more closely,
in which the Ideal, which can never consist purely in the Ideal of
abstraction, is comprehended.

I will add yet further some general remarks on the above points.

(_α_) With regard to _position_ of first importance is that aspect
we have had already occasion to notice in a superficial way, namely,
the _upright_ position of man. The body of animals moves in a parallel
line with the ground; mouth and eye follow the same direction, and the
animal is unable independently to raise himself from this relation
to gravity. The opposite is the case with mankind; the eye looking
straight forward is placed in its natural direction, that is, in a
right angle with the line of gravity and the body. Man is no doubt able
to go on all fours just as animals do, and children do so in fact;
but as soon as consciousness begins to awaken, man wrests himself
from the animal chains of the earth, and stands up straight in free
independence. This stansion is an act of will, for if we cease to try
to stand our body collapses and falls to the ground. In this way the
upright position possesses a spiritual significance, in so far as the
self-elevation from the ground remains linked with the volition and
thus with that which is spiritual and ideal; just as we are accustomed
to say of an essentially free and independent man, who keeps his
opinions, view's, principles, and aims unaffected by others, that he
stands on his own feet.

The upright position is, however, not yet merely as such beautiful;
it is only so by virtue of the freedom of its form. In other words if
a man stands up only straight in an abstract way, letting his hands
fall glued to his side with no interval of separation, his legs in the
same way being close to each other, we receive an untoward expression
of stiffness, even although in the first instance this is due to no
compulsion. From this stiff effect we deduce on the one hand the
abstract and likewise architectonic principle of uniformity, under
which the limbs adhere together in the like position, and on the other
hand we do not discover in it any determination derived from what is
spiritual and the ideal principle. In such a case arms, legs, breast,
body, all the members stand and hang just as though they had from the
first grown there on man, without being brought by means of his spirit,
his volition and emotions into a change of position. The same thing
may be said of the sitting posture. Conversely also the squatting or
perching on the ground is destitute of freedom for the reason that it
suggests an attitude of subordination, dependence, and serfdom. The
free position, on the contrary, avoids in a measure this abstract
uniformity and angularity, and places the position under lines which
approximate to the organic form; and to a further extent it suffers
spiritual relations to shine through, so that by virtue of such a
position the conditions and passions of the soul are cognizable. Only
in this manner can the position pass as a genuine exhibition of Spirit.

In the application of positions as significant pose[166], it is
necessary, however, that sculpture proceed with great circumspection,
and it has thereby many a difficulty to overcome. On the one hand,
no doubt, the reciprocal relation of the members is to be derived
from the ideal principle of Spirit; on the other hand, however, this
determination from the ideal side ought not to place the particular
parts under a mode which contradicts the corporeal structure and the
laws of the same, and thereby produce the impression of a constraint
imposed on the members, or come into collision with the material of
substance, in which sculpture is set the task to execute the artist's
conceptions. And, in the third place, the pose must appear wholly
spontaneous, as though the body received it of its own initiative,
otherwise body and spirit have the appearance of being distinct and
separable from each other, and are involved in the relative position
of mere direction from one side and purely abstract obedience from the
other, whereas both in sculpture ought rightly to constitute one and
the same immediately congruent totality. This absence of constraint
is here of the first importance. Spirit, as the ideal principle, must
throughout transfuse the members, and these latter must in like degree
essentially accept spirit and its determination as to the content of
its own soul. As to the pose itself and its character, which we may
empower to express the just attitude in ideal sculpture, we can readily
infer from our previous exposition that it ought not be one wholly
referable to change or instantaneous action. The representation of
sculpture must produce no effect such as is seen in the case where men,
while in the art of motion and action, were turned to stone or frozen
by means of Hüon's horn. On the contrary, it is necessary that the
posture, although it may without question point to some characteristic
action, express for all that merely a beginning and preparation, an
intention, or it must indicate the close of an action and a return from
the same to the state of repose. The repose and self-subsistency of a
spiritual life, which potentially encloses in itself an entire world,
is the most suitable aspect for the ideal form of sculpture.

(_β_) And, in the _second_ place, what we have observed of posture is
equally applicable to _motion._ There is in sculpture as such less room
for motion in the full sense of the term than other arts[167], just in
so far as the same does not as yet advance to the mode of presentation
which is more nearly related to an art whose sphere of effect is more
extensive. The tranquil image of the god in his blessed self-seclusion
is the presentment which it is its task mainly to set before us in
all its essential freedom from conflict. A variety of movement is
necessarily excluded from such. What we ought to have is rather a
stansion or reclining posture of essential self-absorption[168].
This attitude of self wholly referable to self it is which does not
proceed to a definite action, and by doing so does not contract
its entire energy to the space of a single moment, making such of
first importance, but rather persists in the continued equilibrium
of tranquillity. We ought to be able to imagine that the figure of
the gods will remain for ever in the same posture. The escape from
self-subsistency, the plunging of individual life within the vortex of
a particular action that implies conflict, the strain of the moment,
which is unable to continue as such--such relations are foreign to
the ideality of sculpture. We cross them rather where, in the case of
groups and reliefs, the particular moments of an action are presented
with a distinct inclination to the principle of painting. A result
brought about by powerful effects, and their passing exhibition,
no doubt exercises upon us an immediate impression; but after once
having received it we do not readily return to it. For that which is
so prominent in the presentation is the affair of a moment's passage,
which we both observe and recognize in that moment, whereas the ideal
fulness and freedom, what is infinite in its significance, in other
words that which holds our attention permanently, is relegated to the
background.

(_γ_) In asserting this, however, we do not maintain that sculpture,
where, in the case where it adheres to its principle in all its
severity and attains its highest point, must necessarily exclude
entirely the attitude of movement. If it did so it would merely
present to us the divine in its indeterminacy and indifference. On the
contrary, in so far as it is its function to comprehend the substantive
as individuality, and to present it to our vision in bodily form, both
the ideal and external condition, in accordance with which it brings
its content and form to an impression, is necessarily individual. And
it is this individuality of a definite situation which is pre-eminently
expressed by means of the pose and movement of the body. Inasmuch
as, however, the substantive in sculpture is of most importance, and
individuality is not as yet itself extricated from the same to the
point of particular self-subsistency, the specific determinacy of the
situation must not be of a kind that it impairs or annuls the simple
sterling character[169] of that substantiveness, by either making
it one-sided or drawing it into the conflict of collisions, or in a
general way by placing it without reserve under the overmastering
importance and variety of what is particular. It must rather remain,
independently regarded, a determinacy less essential in its result, or
rather we may say a vivacious play of vital force, harmless in effect
over the superficial features of individuality, whose substantive
character in no respect suffers loss thereby in depth, subsistency, and
repose. This is, however, a point which I have at an earlier stage of
this investigation already[170] discussed at length in relation to the
Ideal of sculpture when the situation itself was under review, in which
the Ideal ought to appear in definite relation to the presentation:
further discussion may here be consequently dispensed with.

(_c_) The last point of importance we have now to consider is the
question of _drapery_ in sculpture. At first sight it may appear as
though the nude form and its corporeal beauty permeated by spiritual
significance, in the manner of its pose and movement, were the most
appropriate form for the Ideal of sculpture, and drapery were simply
a hindrance. In accordance with such a view we hear the complaint
raised, more particularly in our own time, that modern sculpture is
so frequently forced to drape its figures, whereas no drapery should
touch the beauty of human organic forms. And we have finally the wail
added that our artists should have so little opportunity of studying
the nude which was ever before the eyes of the ancients. In general we
may simply reply to this that though without question, from the point
of view of sensuous beauty, the preference must be given to the nude
form, yet merely sensuous beauty is not the ultimate aim of sculpture,
so that the Greeks do not give the lead to a false path when they
presented the larger number of their male figures no doubt in the nude,
but by far the greater number of female figures draped.

(_α_) And generally we may add that, apart from artistic purpose,
drapery is justified in real measure in the necessity of providing a
protection from climatic changes, Nature having failed to provide man
with any covering of hide, feathers, hair, such as animals possess.
And from another point of view it is the sense of modesty which
compels man to cover himself with raiment. Now this shame, regarded
in a general way, is a beginning of indignation over that which is
coarse or crude. Man in fact, who is conscious of his more elevated
calling to be Spirit, must necessarily regard what is purely animal
as an incompatibility with that, and pre-eminently seek to cover, as
that which is not consonant with the Ideal of his soul[171], those
parts of his body, such as the belly, breast, back, and legs, which
are subservient to animal functions, or only are directed to external
uses, and possess directly no spiritual determinacy, and no spiritual
expression. We therefore find among every people, who have entered
upon the life of reflection, this sense of shame and the necessity of
clothing in some degree, whether great or small. As far back as the
narrative of Genesis we have this transition expressed in the shrewdest
way. Before Adam and Eve have eaten of the tree of knowledge they walk
in Paradise in the nakedness of innocence; but no sooner is their
consciousness as spiritual beings[172] aroused than they are ashamed
of their nakedness. The same sense is prevalent among all other
Asiatic nations. So, for example, Herodotus asserts in narrating[173]
how Gyges came to the throne, that it was regarded even in a man as a
matter of shame among the Lydians, and almost all barbarians, to be
seen naked; and as a proof of this we have the tale of the wife of
Candaules, king of the Lydians. The tale runs that Candaules exposed
his wife in nudity to the gaze of Gyges, his satellite and favourite,
in order to convince him that her beauty as a woman was beyond compare.
She, however, discovered the outrage, which it was intended to conceal
from her, by chance seeing Gyges, who had been hidden in her sleeping
chamber, slip out of the door. Indignant at the outrage, she received
Gyges in audience the following day, and declared to him that, inasmuch
as the king had taken this step and permitted Gyges to see what he
ought not to have seen, he might select one of two courses, either
kill the king as his punishment, and possess himself both of her and
the kingdom, or himself die. Gyges selected the first alternative, and
after assassinating the king mounted the throne and married the widow.
On the other hand the Egyptians represented frequently, or, indeed,
for the most part, their statues in the nude to the extent that the
male figures merely carried an apron; and in the case of Isis the
drapery was indicated by nothing more than a barely perceptible fringe
round the legs. This, however, was neither due to a defective sense of
shame, nor in virtue of their instinct for the beauty of organic forms.
For if we consider their symbolic point of view we can only maintain
that what concerned them was not the configuration of a presentment
consonant with a spiritual significance, but rather the meaning, the
essence and conception of that which the form was intended to present
to intelligence; and they permitted the human form to be thus, without
reflection upon the further and more remote adequacy of the same to
Spirit, in its natural state, which they moreover copied with great
closeness to life.

(_β_) Finally, among the Greeks, we meet with both aspects, both nude
and draped figures. And in actual life also they were equally clothed,
albeit from other considerations they held it a point of honour to
have first contested in the games nude. To an exceptional degree the
Lacedaemonians were the first to wrestle naked. But this was with them
not due so much to a sense of beauty as to their general indifference
to what savoured of refinement and spiritual purport in the sense of
modesty. In the national character of the Greek people, among whom the
feeling for personal individuality in all its immediacy, and as it is
the spiritual animation of their existence, is so strongly developed,
taking this as the instinct for free and beautiful forms, it was also
inevitable that what was human in its immediacy, the bodily presence,
that is, as it belongs to man and is suffused with his spirit, should
be elaborated in independent form, and that the human form should be
revered above all others for the reason that it is the freest and the
most beautiful. In this sense, no doubt, they threw aside that instinct
of shame, which will not suffer us to look at what is purely corporeal
in' man, not out of indifference to what was spiritual, but with an
indifference to what is purely sensuous in desire, for the sake of
beauty; and this intention is manifest in full play throughout a great
number of their nude figures.

This entire absence of drapery, however, it was impossible wholly
to justify on principle. For, as I have already indicated when
distinguishing the head from other parts of the body, it is undeniable
that the spiritual expression of the form is restricted to the face
and the pose and movement of the whole, to the general mien, which is
preeminently eloquent by virtue of the arms, hands, and position of
the legs. For these organs, whose activity is in an outward direction,
have still, and precisely by the nature of their pose and movement,
for the most part the expression of a spiritual deliverance. The other
members of the body, on the contrary, are and remain solely productive
of a sensuous beauty; and the distinguishing features which are visible
on them can only be bodily vigour, development of muscle, or degrees
of delicacy and softness, such as characterize respectively the two
sexes, age, youth, and childhood. As a means, therefore, of expressing
what is spiritual in the form, the nudity of these parts is also
from the standpoint of beauty indifferent; and it is only due to our
moral sense, when, that is to say, the main thing looked for is the
paramount presentation of the spiritual in man, that such parts should
be veiled. What in general ideal art does in the case of every separate
part of the body is to remove the necessary limitations of animal life
in its detailed particularities, such as little veins, wrinkles, hairs
of the skin, and so forth, and simply to enforce and emphasize the
spiritual impression of the form in its vital outlines, and this is
precisely what drapery effects. It covers up the superfluity of the
organs, which are no doubt necessary for the body's self-support, but
are in other respects superfluous as an expression of the spirit's
import. We are, therefore, not entitled to assert without condition
that the nudity of figures of sculpture in every respect betrays a
higher sense of beauty, and a greater ethical freedom and emaculacy. It
was in this respect, as in others, that a just and spiritual instinct
dominated the Greek.

Children, Cupid for example, where we find the bodily presentment one
of unreserved innocence, and the spiritual beauty consisting just in
this; or, to take other examples, youths, youthful gods, heroic gods,
and heroes, such as Perseus, Hercules, Theseus, Jason, in which cases
heroic courage, and the use and elaboration of the bodily frame in
works of bodily strength and permanence is of most importance; or
wrestlers in the national games, where it is not so much the content
of the action, the spirit and individuality of character, as the
physical aspect of the exploit, the vigour, suppleness, and free play
of the muscles and limbs, which is the source of exclusive interest;
or finally fauns and satyrs, Bacchantes in the frenzy of the dance,
no less than Aphrodite, in so far as the sensuous charm of her beauty
is emphasized--such are the kind of examples which were rendered
in the nude by antique sculpture. Where, on the contrary, a more
lofty significance and reflection, a more ideal earnestness is made
prominent, where in general the natural features are not superlatively
emphasized, there we get drapery. So Winckelmann adduces a case where
among ten statues of the female form only one is wholly undraped.
Among the goddesses Pallas, Juno, Vesta, Diana, Ceres and the Muses
are pre-eminently those which are veiled in drapery, while among the
gods such a treatment particularly applies to Jupiter, and the bearded
Indian Bacchus, with some others.

(_γ_) And finally with regard to the principle of drapery, it is
unquestionable that we have here a subject that critics are very fond
of discussing, and which has consequently to some extent been already
well thrashed out. I will, therefore, limit myself to the few following
remarks.

Generally we have no reason to lament the fact that our modern feeling
of what is respectable is somewhat averse to setting up totally nude
figures. For if the drapery merely permits the pose in question to be
entirely transpicuous instead of covering it up, we lose nothing at
all; rather the drapery is just that which rightly fixes the emphasis,
and is in this respect even an advantage, in so far as it draws us
aside from the direct view of that which as merely sensuous is without
true significance, and simply shows us what is there in relation to the
situation expressed by means of pose and movement.

(_αα_) Once accept this principle, and it may at first sight appear
that such covering is of most signal advantage for the artistic
treatment, which conceals the contour of the limbs, and consequently
also the pose as little as possible, precisely in fact as this is the
case with our sufficiently enclosing _modern_ garments. Our closely
fitting sleeves and trousers follow the outlines of the form, and
stand in the way of the motion and mien least of all by their making
the entire form of the limbs visible. The long white garments and
bulging-out hoses of the Orientals, on the contrary, are intolerable to
our sense of vivacity and multifarious activities, and are only fitting
for folk who, like the Turks, sit the whole day long in one place with
legs crossed, or only perambulate slowly and with great gravity. And
yet we are conscious at the same time--indeed the very first glance
at either modern statues or pictures will establish the truth for
us--that our modern clothing is entirely unartistic. In other words
what we behold in it really is, as I have already in another passage,
insisted, not the fine, free, and vital outlines of the body in their
tender and flowing elaboration, but stretched out sacks with stiff
folds. For albeit we do obtain the most generalized form, yet the
beauty of the organic undulations is lost; and what we really look at
is a contrivance of exterior aim, a matter of tailor's work, which in
one place is stitched together, in another folded back over, and yet in
another made tightly fitting--in other words, as a whole, forms that
are not free, folds and surfaces which are fastened together by stitch,
buttons and button holes. To all intents and purposes such a clothing
as this is simply a cover and veil, which, while devoid of any real
form of its own, yet in its other aspect, though in a general sort of
way following the organic contour of limbs, hides from the view just
that sensuous beauty and vital rondour and undulation which belongs to
them, merely to replace it with the material aspect of the mechanically
elaborated stuff of which it is composed. And thus we get what is so
entirely inartistic in our modern form of garments.

(_ββ_) The principle for an artistic type of clothing, then, consists
in this that it is at the same time treated as a work of architectonic
design. Such a work is simply an environment, in which a man can
likewise move in freedom, and which must essentially possess and
declare on its part a determinate shape of its own as its mode of
covering quite apart from the form which it encloses. Add to this
such a work, in its aspect of a thing which is worn and carried, must
freely follow its own mechanical texture. A principle of this type
follows in the track of the kind of draping which we find adopted in
the ideal sculpture of the ancients. Particularly here do we find that
the mantle is as it were a house in which free motion is possible. It
is no doubt carried, but is only made fast at one point, namely, on the
shoulder. For the rest it evolves its particular form according to the
modifications brought about by its own weight; it hangs, falls along
the ground, and casts folds spontaneously, and only receives through
the pose the varied changes of this free kind of configuration. In like
manner there is little to impair essentially, if in varied degree, the
freedom of disposition in other parts of antique drapery. This it is
which constitutes its artistic quality. It is only in drapery such as
this that we do not face something which is a burden, and something
artificial, whose shape merely displays an external constraint and
necessity, which is rather something itself independent in its form,
and which, however, accepts from a spiritual source, that is the pose
of the figure, its point of departure. For this reason the garments
of the ancients are only fastened to the body so far as is actually
unavoidable, that is, to prevent their collapse, and are modified by
the pose of it. In all other respects they hang freely about it, and
themselves in their power of movement through the motion of the body
give yet further support to the same principle. And this is wholly as
it should be; for the body is one thing and its drapery another, and
the latter ought thereby to receive its full due and be displayed in
its freedom. Modern clothing on the contrary is either wholly carried
by the body and purely in subjection to it, so that even the pose
itself is too emphatically repeated, and it merely follows the forms
of the limbs, or, in cases where it is able to secure an independent
form in the formation of folds, it is after all merely the tailor's
work who makes this form according to the exigences of fashion. The
material is, on the one hand, dragged up and down by the various parts
of the body and their movements, and, on the other, by its stitches and
seams. On grounds of this description the antique form of drapery is by
a long way to be preferred to our modern style as the ideal standard
for works of sculpture. No end has been written with every resource of
antiquarian research over the form and details of the ancient ways of
draping, for although men as a rule do not permit themselves to chatter
much over fashion in their clothes, the kind of cloth, border, cut,
and every other such detail, yet they find ample justification from
the antiquarian standpoint for treating these trifling matters also as
important, and of talking about them with even greater prolixity than
is permitted to woman herself in her unchallenged field of supremacy.

(_γγ_) It is, however, a totally different problem we have to consider
when the question is asked whether modern clothing, that is, the kind
so greatly to be contrasted with the antique, is in all cases to be
rejected. This question is of particular importance when we examine the
case of portrait statues; and inasmuch as its main interest closely
touches a principle of importance to art as we have it now, we will
consider it at rather greater length. When nowadays we have to create
a portrait of some contemporary it becomes necessarily a part of it
that the drapery and the environment are both accepted from the actual
facts of their individual existence, for, inasmuch as it is just this
actual person which is here made the object of art, this external
framework, to which the clothing essentially belongs, is in its reality
and truth precisely that which is most important. And this is more
especially to be observed when what is aimed at is the presentment
before our vision in our individuality of well-defined characters whose
greatness and activity in any _particular_ sphere have been remarkable.
Whether it be in a picture, or in the marble, an individual is, in
fact, exhibited to our immediate vision in a bodily mode, in other
words under external conditions, and to seek to carry the portrait
beyond such a restriction would virtually imply the self-contradiction
that the individual was associated with that which was essentially
untrue, and this for the reason that the service, what is peculiar
and distinguished in actual men, consists precisely in their active
relations to the real, that is in their life and action in definite
professional spheres. And if this individual activity is to be made
clear to us the environment must exhibit nothing that is foreign to or
tends to impair the effect. A famous general, for example, has lived
in respect to his professional surroundings with cannon, rifles, and
powder before his eyes. If we intend to depict him in his professional
activity we recur most naturally to the way he gives orders to his
adjutants, commands the line of battle, and advances against the enemy.
And with yet more detail such a general is not merely one of a class,
but is distinguished by the particular style of his uniform. He is
either a leader of infantry or a stalwart hussar, and so forth. In
every example of this kind we have some exceptional form of habiliment
which is appropriate to the circumstances. Moreover a famous general
is simply a famous general, not necessarily a law-giver, poet, or
even very possibly a religious man; he commands in all respects as
a soldier; he is just that; he is, in a word, no complete totality,
and this alone gives us the ideal and divine type. For the divinity
of the ideal figures of sculpture is to be sought in nothing so much
as this that their character and individuality are appertinent to no
particular relations and professed callings, but are rather removed
from such division, or, in the case that the idea of such relations is
mooted, it is so placed before us that we are forced to believe about
such individuals that their powers of performance are unlimited. For
reasons such as the above a demand to represent the heroes of our time
or the more recent Past, when their heroism is of a restricted nature,
in ideal drapery is very superficial. Such a demand testifies no doubt
to a zeal for artistic beauty, but a zeal which is unintelligent, and
in its devotion to the antique overlooks the fact that the greatness of
the ancients likewise reposes essentially in the lofty comprehension
of all that they accomplished. In other words, they have, no doubt,
represented what is essentially ideal, but they have not sought to
enforce a form that is opposed to reality. If the entire content of
the individuals in question is not of an ideal character, then their
draping ought not to be such; and if a powerful, determined, and
resolute general does not already possess a countenance indicative of
the lineaments of Mars, then to drape him with Greek drapery would
be as much a folly as though we popped a bearded man in a maiden's
petticoats. Despite this truth, however, modern clothing does involve
us in considerable difficulty because it is subject to fashion, and
consequently subject to change. For the rational principle of fashion
consists in this that it exercises over Time the claim to be always
subject to modification. A robe, according to some particular cut, soon
passes out of fashion, and it is only in fashion so long as it pleases.
But when the fashion is over, we cease to be used to it, and what
pleased us a few years back now appears suddenly ridiculous. For this
reason only those forms of garments are appropriate for statues which
carry the specific character of a period in a more permanent type; but,
in general, it may be advisable to find a middle way, as our artists
attempt to do. Yet, despite of the rule, it is generally a mistake
to clothe portrait statues in modern clothing when they are either
small, or the object sought after is simply a familiar presentation.
In such cases mere busts are best, which are the more easily lifted to
an ideal elevation, simply neck and breast being retained, inasmuch
as the head and the physiognomy thus remain of most importance, and
everything else is relegated to incidental insignificance. Where we
have large-sized statues on the contrary, more particularly where
the pose is one of tranquillity, we see at once, because they are in
repose, how they are draped; and large-sized male figures, even in
the painted portrait, when clothed after modern wont can only with
difficulty be raised over what is insignificant. As instances we may
mention the full-figure seated portraits by old Tischbein of Herder and
Wieland, of which we have excellent engravings on copper. One feels
at once, when looking at them, that it is a somewhat stale, flat, and
unprofitable business to gaze at their breeches, stockings, and shoes,
and absolutely so to see their cosy, self-contented posture on a sofa,
where they have their hands lying happily together over their paunches.

It is another matter with portrait statues of individuals where,
either in respect to the period of their activity they are far removed
from our own, or are themselves essentially of an ideal greatness. In
such cases what is old is already divested of the temporal aspect and
has passed into the more indefinite background of the general idea,
so that in this release from its particular form of actuality it is
also in the mode of its drapery capable of an ideal presentation. And
this is still more true in the case of individuals, who by virtue of
their self-subsistency and the ideal fulness of what are otherwise
the mere limitations of their particular profession, and detached
from what is merely the activity of a definite period of time, create
independently for themselves a free totality, a world of relations
and activities, and consequently should appear, even in the aspect of
their habiliments, as exalted above the familiar guise of everyday life
in their ordinary temporal costume. As far back as the Greeks we find
statues of Achilles and Alexander, on which the more individual traits
of portraiture are of so fine a quality that we should rather imagine
them to be sons of gods than human beings. In the case of the genial
and greathearted youth Alexander this is quite as it should be. And in
much the same way, moreover, Napoleon himself has been lifted to such
a fame, and is a genius of so comprehensive a grasp, that there is no
reason why he should not be depicted in ideal drapery, which indeed
would not be unfitting for Frederick the Great, when the object is to
celebrate him in all his greatness of soul. No doubt the size of the
statues is here, too, of importance. In the case of small figures,
which carry an air of familiarity, the three-cornered little hat of
Napoleon is out of place no less than the famous uniform and the arms
crossed over breast, and, if we desire to have before us the great
Frederick as "old Fritz," we may have him pictured for us with hat and
stick as we find him on tobacco boxes.



3. THE INDIVIDUALITY OF IDEAL FIGURES OF SCULPTURE


Hitherto we have considered the Ideal of sculpture in its general
character and in the further aspect of the more detailed forms which
distinguish it. We have _thirdly_ only left us to emphasize the fact
that the Ideals of sculpture, in so far as, in respect to their
content, they have to manifest what is substantive in individualities,
and in respect to their external form the human bodily shape, are
also under the necessity of an advance in which the _particularity_
of their presentation is differentiated, and an aggregate of specific
individuals is thereby created, just as we already, in the classical
type of art, recognize the embracing circle of the Greek gods. We
may, no doubt, very possibly imagine to ourselves there can only be
one _exemplum_ of the finest beauty and perfection, which may be,
moreover, concentrated in its absolute completeness in one statue.
Such a conception of one Ideal in its purity is deficient in insight
and indeed ridiculous. For the beauty of the Ideal consists just in
this, that it is no purely general form or standard, but essentially
individuality, and consequently possesses both particularity and
character. It is simply owing to this that vitality is imported into
works of sculpture, and it is this[174] which expands the one abstract
beauty, in a totality of essentially definite creations. Taken as a
whole, however, this aggregate is, if we regard its content, one with
marked limits; and the reason is that a number of categories, which
we are, for example, accustomed to employ in our Christian outlook,
fall absolutely away in the case of the genuine Ideal of sculpture. The
ethical points of view and virtues, for example, such as were brought
together by the Middle Ages and our modern world in a synthetical nexus
of duties which yields to some modification, moreover, in every epoch,
has no meaning at all when applied to the ideal gods of sculpture; it
is simply absent from such a circle altogether. Consequently we can as
little expect to find here the presentation of sacrifice, of egotism
overcome, of the conflict, against what is sensuous, of the victory of
chastity and so forth, as that of incommutable fidelity, of the honour
and honesty of either man or woman, or of the expression of religious
meekness, subjection, and blessedness in God. All these virtues,
qualities, and conditions repose in part on the breach between what is
spiritual and what is corporeal; and in part they retire altogether
beyond what is of the body within, the intimate shrine of the soul, or
betray the individual personal life in its separation from its entirely
concrete and explicit substance, as also in its struggle to find again
mediation in the same. Moreover, the circle of these veritable gods of
sculpture is no doubt a totality, but, as we already discovered in our
consideration of the classical type of art, it is, when we examine the
distinguishing differences of its notion, no stringently articulated
and unified system. Moreover, the particular examples are every one
of them to be distinguished from all the others in their essentially
definite and self-exclusive individuality, albeit they are not thus set
apart by virtue of the characteristics of a purely abstract mintage,
but rather, on the contrary, include much which they share in common
relatively to their ideal and divine substance.

We will now pass in review the distinctions above indicated under the
following aspects:

_First_, we have to examine purely external marks, incidental
attributes, style of drapery, style of armour, and such like,
indications with the detail of which Winckelmann deals at exceptional
length.

_Secondly_, we shall see how the most important differences do not
merely consist in external marks and traits of this kind, but rather
in the individual configuration and _habitus_ of the entire figure.
What is most important in this respect is the distinction of _age_,
_sex_, no less than that of the _different sphere_, from which the
works receive their content and form, whether they are the impressions
of gods, heroes, satyrs, fawns, or such representations as reach their
final dissolution in the attempt to render animal images.

And, _thirdly_, we propose to direct the attention on a _particular_
example of each class, in the individual form of which sculpture
elaborates these general differences. Here, no doubt, we are faced with
a multiplicity of material, and can only permit ourselves to deduce
parts of it by way of example, a province, too, as it moreover is which
implies a large experience.

(_a_) In considering these _first_ mere attributes and all such
external accessories, the kind of ornament, armour, tools, vessels,
and in general all that is associated with mere environment, we find
that such things are of a very simple character in superior works of
sculpture, and retained only in a temperate and restricted degree, so
that we see little of them beyond what is suggestive or sufficient
to appeal to our minds. It is the independent figure, that is its
expression and not outside accessories, which has to give us the
spiritual significance and its manifestation. Conversely, however,
marks of this kind are nevertheless necessary, in order to enable
us to recognize the particular gods. In other words divinity in its
universal guise, which is the source of the substantive part of the
presentment in the case of each individual, asserts, by virtue of this
very equality of ground-basis, close affinity between the expression
of each example and also between the individual figures, so that every
god is to this extent withdrawn from the aspect of his particularity,
and can indeed further pass through other conditions and modes of
expression, than would otherwise belong to them. For this reason we do
not as a rule have set before us the particular characterization with
complete seriousness; and it is frequently these external additions
which exclusively make the particular god intelligible. Among these
indicating marks I will allude briefly to the following.

(_α_) I have already discussed the real _attributes_ when the classical
type of art and its gods presented an opportunity. In sculpture the
same lose yet more their self-subsistent, symbolical character, and
merely retain the right to appear as the external presentation and
form which is referable to simply one aspect of the specific gods, a
presentment which is true to this extent or approximately so. Such
marks are frequently borrowed from animal life, as for example when
Zeus is represented with the eagle, Juno with the peacock, Bacchus
with the tiger and panther, who are harnessed to his car, because, as
Winckelmann observes[175], this animal is an exceptionally thirsty
one, and, moreover, fond of wine; and in the like manner we have Venus
with her hare. Other attributes are tools or utensils of some kind,
which are related to activities and actions, which may be ascribed to
any particular god by virtue of his or her specific individuality. So
we have Bacchus depicted with the thyrsus wand, in order to entwine
thereon the ivy-leaves and garlands; or he receives a wreath of laurel
leaves, to indicate him as victorious in his expedition to India, or a
torch, with which he lighted Ceres home.

Accessories such as these, among which I have here, of course, only
adduced the most famous examples, are an exceptional stimulus to the
acuteness and learning of our professors, and carry them into a kind of
commerce in trifles, which too frequently leads them out of bounds, and
finds significance in things where there is really none. As an example
we are assured that two famous sleeping female figures in the Vatican
and the Villa Medici are representations of Cleopatra, simply because
they have a bracelet in the shape of a viper, and to the vision of
such archaeologists a serpent at once suggests the death of Cleopatra,
much as it would suggest to a pious father of the church the original
serpent who seduced Eve in Paradise. It was, however, a prevailing
custom for Greek women to wear bracelets in serpent coils, and such
bracelets in fact were called by that name. Consequently the just
sense of Winckelmann[176] has long ago rejected this interpretation,
and Visconti has finally recognized[177] them as figures of Ariadne,
as she at lasts sinks to sleep after her sorrow at the departure of
Theseus. Although in uncounted cases acuteness of this quality shows
itself at fault in dealing with detail of this kind, and makes itself
appear contemptible in its departure from such insignificant facts, yet
unquestionably both research and criticism of apparently unimportant
facts are necessary, because it is only thereby that we can arrive at
the closer determination of a figure. Yet even here the difficulty
crops up, that attributes no less than form, do not in all cases point
our conclusions to one god, but may be shared in common by several.
We have the vase, for example, not only associated with Jupiter,
Apollo, Mercury, Aesculapius, but also with Ceres and Hygiaea. Several
goddesses receive the ear of corn; we find the lily in the hand of
Juno, Venus, and Hope; and even the lightning is not the exclusive
possession of Zeus, for it is shared by Pallas, who on her part again
does not alone carry; the Aegis, but on equal terms with Zeus, Juno,
and Apollo[178]. The source of the individual deities from a general
significance of less determinate character which, they share itself is
associated with ancient symbols, which were appertinent to this more
general and consequently more widely shared nature.

(_β_) Accessories of this incidental nature are more in place with
works which, already departing from the simple repose of the gods,
represent actions, groups, or the series of figures such as we find on
reliefs, and for this reason are able to make more extensive use of
a variety of external indications and suggestions. On gifts dedicate
to a devout purpose, which are frequent in all kinds of works of art
and nowhere more frequent than, in the case of statuary, on statues of
Olympic victors, but more particularly on coins and cut stones, the
rich and prolific invention of the Greek found ample scope for the
presence of symbolical references of this type, such as that to his
city's locality and others like it.

(_γ_) Other signs are more removed from purely external significance,
and penetrate deeper within the individuality of such deities. These
themselves are a part of the particular type in question, and are
an integrating factor in it. Among such we may mention the specific
type of the drapery, armour, adornment of the hair, and other attire
of a similar nature, in respect of which I must here content myself
in elucidation with a few examples borrowed from Winckelmann, who
exercised great acuteness in such matters. Among the several gods Zeus
was pre-eminently recognizable by the general treatment of his hair,
and our authority maintains[179], that any particular head can at once
be determined as one intended for this deity or no by the hair over his
forehead, or his beard, even though there be nothing else significant
to arrest us. In other words he asserts that, "the hair is elevated
in an outward curve on the brow, and its different divisions fall
in a narrow curve with broken lines[180] down again." This type of
hair-treatment was so rigorous, that we even find it persisted in among
the sons and grandchildren of Zeus. So, for example, the head of Zeus
is barely to be distinguished from that of Aesculapius in this respect,
who consequently receives another kind of beard, more particularly
over the upper lip, where the same is more depressed in its curve,
whereas that of Zeus is rather folded over the angle of the mouth and
intermingled with the beard on the chin. Winckelmann further recognizes
the fine head of a statue in the Villa Medici, later in Florence, by
means of the more curled beard, which, moreover, folds over the upper
lip, and is of greater thickness, and must be distinguished from the
heads of Zeus with their greater tendency to curled locks. Pallas,
in direct contrast to Diana, wears her hair long, bound together in
its downward fall from the head, and then beneath the fillet flowing
in a series of locks. Diana, on the contrary, wears hers thrown up
from all sides, and fastened in a knot on the crown of the head. The
head of Ceres is up to the back portion covered with her veil. Add to
this, in addition to the corn she carries, she holds a diadem as Juno
does, in front of which, to quote our authority once more[181], the
scattered hairs are thrown into a charming confusion, as though to
suggest possibly her sorrow at the robbing of her daughter Proserpine.
Individuality of the same kind is emphasized by other exterior means,
as for example, when we recognize Pallas by her helmet and its
particular shape, in her type of drapery and various other things.

(_b_) The truly vital individuality, however, in so far as it should
find its mintage in sculpture by means of the spontaneous and beautiful
bodily form, ought not to be asserted merely by such accessories as
the external attributes or modes of things we have cited, but should
be displayed no less in the form itself than in its expression. In
attempting such an individualization the fine insight and creative
power of the Greek artist increased in proportion as the figures of
their deities possessed a substantive basis of essentially the same
kind, from which, without wholly departing from it, it was their task
so to elaborate the characteristic individuality that this ground-root
of their conception was still maintained as a wholly vital and present
fact. Nothing invites our admiration so much in the best works of
antique sculpture than the exquisite attention the artist directed
to the task of bringing the smallest traits of the presentment and
expression into harmony with the entire figure, an attention which is,
in fact, the source of such a harmony.

(_α_) If we inquire further after general distinctions of main
importance which assert themselves as the substantive bases in most
direct relation to the more individual severation of the bodily forms
and their expression we may note, _first_, the distinction of more
youthful figures in contrast to those of more mature age. In the
genuine Ideal, as I have already stated, every trait, every particular
part of the figure is expressed; and, moreover, the direct line,
which is taken straight forward, avoids the abstractly level surface
precisely as the circular form avoids the geometrical circle; and
instead of this the vital variety of lines and shapes is elaborated
in the finest way throughout by the nuances of their transitional
forms which unite them. In juvenile and youthful age the boundaries of
forms are less noticeably fluent, and pass into each other so finely,
that we may compare them, I borrow the simile from Winckelmann[182],
with the surface of a sea unruffled by the wind, of which we may say
that, although in continuous motion, it is still. In the case of
more advanced age, however, such distinguishing features are more
definitely emphasized, and have to be elaborated with more pronounced
characterization. Consummate male figures consequently are more
likely to please us at the first glance, because the expression is
throughout more distinct, and we wonder more readily at the knowledge
and ability of the artist. Youthful examples appear more easy in their
accomplishment because of their softness, and the smaller number of
their distinguishing features. As a matter of fact, however, the
opposite is the case. That is to say, in so far as "the forming of
their parts in the interval between their first growth and their
completion is permitted to be indefinite[183]," the joints, bones,
sinews, muscles, are necessarily more delicate and tender, yet are none
the less suggested. Antique art celebrates its triumph in just this
fact, that even in its most delicate figures all parts throughout and
their appropriate organization are somehow made perceptible in barely
visible nuances of elevation and depression, by means of which the
science and virtuosity of an artist is only followed by an observer
whose research and attention is equally thorough. If, for example, to
take the case of a delicate human figure, such as the youthful Apollo,
the entire structure of the human body were not reproduced actually,
and in all its essentials with consummate, if half veiled insight, the
members might indeed appear well and fully rounded off, but they would
be at the same time flaccid, without expression and variety, so that
the entire effect could hardly satisfy. As a striking example of the
distinction between the youthful body and a man's in mature age, we may
adduce the sons and father in the Laocoon group.

Speaking generally the Greeks, in the representation of their deities,
preferred the still youthful age, and even in heads and statues of Zeus
and Neptune do not indicate old age.

(_β_) In the case of the _sex_, in which the figure is portrayed, the
difference, that is, between male and female figures, we meet with a
distinctive mark of still more importance. In general we may affirm of
the latter what I have already briefly stated in the contrast drawn
between the more youthful and more advanced age. The female figures
are more tender and soft, the sinews and muscles, albeit they must be
there, are less pronounced, the transitional lines are more flowing
and malleable, yet in the wide interval of expression from the point of
quiet earnestness, greater severity of power and dignity to that of the
most delicate charm and grace of the love attraction, there is room for
the richest gradations and variety. We find a wealth of form equally
great in the male figures, in the treatment of which we have, moreover,
the expression of elaborate bodily strength and courage. The cheerful
tone of delight, however, is shared by all, a blithesomeness and
blessed indifference, which soars above all particularity, associated
not unfrequently with a trait of tranquil sorrow, a kind of smile
through tears, in which we neither have wholly smile nor tears.

There is not a marked line of distinction here between the masculine
and feminine character, for the more youthful figures of Bacchus and
Apollo frequently are fined out to the point of feminine delicacy and
softness, nay, we even find representations of Hercules in which there
is so much the appearance of a young woman's form that critics have
confused him with Iole, his sweetheart. And it is not merely this point
of transition but even the combination of the male and female figure,
which the ancients have expressly represented in their hermaphrodites.

(_γ_) _Thirdly_, and in conclusion, there is the question as to the
main distinctions which the figure of sculpture receives in order
that it may be classed within one of the specific divisions of
subject-matter which constitute the content of the ideal outlook on the
world appropriate to this art.

The organic forms which sculpture can utilize generally in its plastic
effort are on the one hand the forms of humanity, on the other those
of _animal_ life. In respect to the animal forms we have already seen
that in the case of the more severe type of the art at its culminating
perfection they will only be found as attributes associated with
the divine form, as when we find a hind with the hunting Diana, or
Zeus with an eagle. And the same thing may be said of the panther,
griffin, and similar figures. Apart from the genuine attributes animal
forms are, however, accepted partly in combination with human shapes,
and in part entirely by themselves. The extent, however, of such
representations is of a limited character. Apart from figures of the
roebuck it is above all the horse whose beauty and fiery animation
obtains a recognition in plastic art, whether it be in union with
the human form, or in its own free and independent shape. In fact,
we find that the horse stands generally in a close relation to the
courage, bravery, and dexterity of human heroism and heroic beauty,
whereas other animals, such as the lion, which Hercules overcomes,
and the wild boar, which Meleager kills, are objects of heroic deeds
themselves, and consequently are entitled to a place within the circle
of representation, when such are expanded in groups and reliefs where a
freer field is admissible for situations of movement and action.

The _human_ figure on its part, in so far as it is conceived in form
and expression as pure Ideal, supplies the adequate form for the
divine, which, being still in union with the sensuous material, is not
capable of being concentrated in the simple unity of _one_ God, and can
merely embrace a _collective_ whole of divine figures. And similarly,
to put the matter conversely, the human, whether we regard it according
to its form or its expression, cannot pass out of the province of human
individuality, albeit the same is at one time brought into intimacy and
union with the divine, and at another with the animal nature.

For these reasons sculpture is faced with various sources out of
which it can select and elaborate its subject-matter, and which I
will now review. The essentially central source is, as I have already
several times indicated, the sphere of the _particular gods._ Their
distinction from humanity preeminently consists in this, that as they,
in respect to that which they express, appear essentially gathered
up over and beyond the finitude of care and mortal passion within a
blessed repose and everlasting youth, so, too, their bodily shapes are
not merely purified from the finite particularity of mankind, but they
are further detached from everything which would suggest the needs
and necessary limitations of sensuous life, without, however, losing
their vitality. We have, for example, an object of human interest in
the way a mother pacifies her child. The Greek goddesses, however,
are always represented as childless. Juno, according to the myth,
tosses the young Hercules from her, and the Milky Way is the result.
To associate a son with the majestic spouse of Zeus was beneath the
dignity of the antique point of view. Even Aphrodite does not appear in
sculpture as mother. Cupid is no doubt very near to her, but scarcely
in the sense of her child. In the same way Jupiter is nursed by a
goat, and Romulus and Remus are suckled by a wolf. Among Egyptian and
Hindoo representations, on the contrary, we find many, in which deities
receive mother's milk from goddesses. Among Greek goddesses the maiden
form is that which is pre-eminent, this being that which to the least
extent asserts the purely natural functions of the wife.

The above constitutes an important contrast between classical art and
romantic, in the latter of which maternal love is a leading subject.
After the gods we find that sculpture deals with heroes and those
figures which have both the human and animal form in their composition,
such as centaurs, fauns, and satyrs.

The line of distinction between _heroes_ and gods is a very fine one;
and much the same interval separates them from ordinary human life.
Winckelmann observes with regard to a Battus on a coin of Cyrene, "With
a single glance of tender jollity we could make a Bacchus of it, and
one trait of godlike greatness would leave us an Apollo." And yet even
in such cases human forms, where the object is to envisage the force
of the will and bodily strength, tend in certain directions to make
for greatness; the artist gave to the muscular development a vital
activity and movement, and in violent actions set in motion all the
springs of Nature's workmanship. Inasmuch as, however, we find the same
hero subject to an entire series of conditions not merely distinct,
but opposed to each other, the masculine forms here also frequently
approximate to the feminine. This is, for example, the case where
Achilles first appears among the maidens of Lycomedes. Here we do not
find him in his full heroic strength such as he displays before Troy,
but in drapery resembling that of a woman and a fascination of figure
which almost conceals his sex. Hercules, too, is not always depicted
in the gravity and power suggestive of the tedious labours which he
performed, but in the milder impersonation of his service to Omphale,
as also in the repose of his deification, and generally in a variety of
situations. In other relations heroes possess the closest affinity for
the figures of the deities themselves, Achilles for that of Mars, for
instance; it is consequently only after the most profound study that we
can recognize the specific meaning of a piece of statuary merely from
the characterization without further suggestion from attributes. Really
expert connoisseurs can, however, deduce the character and shape of the
entire figure from isolated pieces and supply what is missing; from
which fact we again are instructed to admire the fine insight and the
consequential character the individualization of Greek art displays to
us, whose masters knew how to preserve and execute even the smallest
detail in consonance with the entire effect.

Coming now to _satyrs_ and _fauns_ we find in them made visible what
is throughout excluded from the lofty Ideal of the gods, the needs
of mankind, the jollity of life, sensuous pleasure, satisfaction of
excessive desire, and the like. Yet we find in particular young satyrs
and fauns so remarkable for the beauty in which they are represented
by the ancients that, to adopt a phrase of Winckelmann[184], "Every
example of such figures may be exchanged, if we except the head, for a
statue of Apollo, I refer to that one which is styled Sauroktonos, and
possesses the same stansion of the legs." The heads of fauns and satyrs
may be known by their pointed ears, their stiffly erected hair, and
their little horns.

A _second_ province of sculpture is occupied by what is _human simply._
In this we have above all else the beauty of human form as we find it
set before us in its elaborate power and dexterity in the sacred games.
Wrestlers, discoboli, and the like are its main subject-matter. In such
productions sculpture proceeds in a way that is somewhat opposed to the
mere portrait, in which department the ancients, even in cases where
they actually copied _real_ personages, still understood how to hold
fast throughout to the principle of sculpture as we have come to know
it.

The _last_ field that sculpture makes its own is that of independent
_animal_ figures, more particularly lions, hounds, and some others.
Here, too, the ancients did not fail to grasp, make vital in its
individuality, and enforce the principle of sculpture, the substantive
significance of form, and indeed attained to such a perfection that,
to take one example, the cow of Myron has become more famous than all
his other works. Goethe, in "Kunst und Alterthum[185]," has described
it with great charm of style, and pre-eminently drawn attention to the
fact that, as we have already seen, such as animal function as suckling
is only presented by Greek art in the entirely animal world. He
entirely sets on one side poetical conceits such as we find in ancient
epigrams, and with acuteness confines his attention to the _naïveté_
of the conception out of which this most familiar of artistic themes
arises.

(_c_) In concluding this chapter we have now to refer a little more
closely to the _particular_ individuals, in the characterization and
vitality of which the distinctions above mentioned are elaborated, that
is to say, for the most part to the presentment of gods.

(_α_) However much, speaking generally--and we may no doubt seek to
enforce our conviction in reference also to the spiritual deities of
sculpture--this spiritual significance is at bottom the emancipation of
individuality--and the remark applies to Ideals also according to the
degree of their ideality and nobility--to that extent as individuals
their distinction from one another is less marked. And the astonishing
thing in the problem of sculpture, as solved by the Greeks, consisted
just in this, that despite of the universality and ideality of their
gods they have none the less preserved their individuality and lines
of distinction; they have done so despite the fact that in certain
directions we are conscious of the endeavour to eliminate hard-and-fast
boundaries and to depict particular forms in their transitional state.
If, moreover, we are inclined to regard individuality in a way that
suggests definite traits as being appropriate to definite deities,
much as the traits of a portrait are so, a fixed type will thereby
necessarily appear to be substituted for a vital creation and art
will suffer accordingly. But this is quite as little in accordance
with the facts. On the contrary we find that their invention in
such individualization and vitalization gained in subtlety just in
proportion as a substantive type lay at the roots of the same.

(_β_) Again, in considering the particular deities, we are inevitably
led to the conviction that one individual is of commanding influence
in determining all these ideal figures. This supreme value and dignity
Pheidias attached in an unrivalled degree to the form and expression of
his Zeus, albeit the father of the gods and mankind, is set before us
at the same time with a blithe and benignant look throned in serenity
of mature age, that is not in the first flush of youth, without,
however, on the other hand emphasizing in the least any harshness of
form or suggesting the feebleness of age. The most obvious parallels in
form and gesture with Zeus are his brothers Neptune and Pluto, whose
interesting statues in Dresden, for example, despite all that they
share with him, nevertheless retain a clear line of distinction--Zeus
himself, by virtue of the benignity of his lofty presence, Neptune, by
virtue of his greater ruggedness, Pluto, who is a kindred type to the
Egyptian Serapis, by virtue of his profounder gloom and melancholy.

Essentially more apart from Zeus are Bacchus and Apollo, Mars and
Mercury, the first pair in their more youthful beauty and the greater
delicacy of their figures, the second more masculine albeit beardless.
Mercury, too, is more robust, more slender in shape, with exceptional
fineness noticeable in the facial traits. Mars is not so much marked
out from the others as Hercules might be in the strength of his muscles
and other parts of his figure, but rather as a more youthful and
beautiful hero of an ideal form.

Among the goddesses I will only refer to Juno, Pallas, Diana, and
Aphrodite.

Just as Zeus among the masculine deities, so, too, Juno among the
feminine displays in her figure and its expression the greatest
dignity. The large circular-arched eyes are proud and commanding, in
like manner, too, the mouth by which she is at once recognized more
particularly in profile. Generally she presents the appearance of "a
queen, who will rule, is to be revered and must awaken devotion[186]."
Pallas, on the contrary, receives the expression of more austere
maidenhood and chastity. Tenderness, love, and every kind of womanly
weakness are kept away from her; her eyes are less expanded than
those of Here, less emphatically arched and somewhat downcast in the
tranquillity of reflection, just as her head is, which is not proudly
erect as in the case of the spouse of Zeus, although it is armed with
a helmet. A very similar type of maidenhood characterizes the figure of
Diana. She is, however, endowed with a more fascinating quality, more
lightly poised, more slender, albeit there is no self-conscious delight
in her charm. She is not given the pose of tranquil observation, but
is generally in motion, pressing forward as toward some object in her
vision.

Finally we have Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty as such, who is, along
with the Graces and the Hours, alone depicted by the Greek artists as
undraped and even here subject to exceptions. In her case nudity is
justified on the good ground that she expresses, above all, sensuous
beauty and its conquest, grace, attractiveness, tenderness, elevated
and tempered by spiritual qualities. Her eye, even in cases where a
more grave and lofty expression is emphasized, is smaller than that of
Pallas and Juno, not so much in length, but narrower by reason of the
lower eyelid being slightly raised, by which means Love's yearning look
is admirably expressed. She varies, however, very considerably in the
type expressed. In some cases her pose is more serious and powerful; in
others delicacy and tenderness are most insisted upon; her age, too,
is sometimes that of maidenhood, at other of riper years. Winckelmann
compares the Medicean Venus to a rose which blossoms in the fair light
of its own colour at daybreak. Uranian Aphrodite is, on the contrary,
indicated by a diadem which resembles that worn by Juno, and which
Venus victrix also wears.

(_γ_) The discovery of this plastic individuality, whose entire
expression is wholly elaborated through abstract form and nothing
further, was in a like degree of consummate perfection peculiar to
the Greeks and is due to religion itself. A more spiritual religion
can rest satisfied with the contemplation and devotion of the soul,
so that works of sculpture pass for it simply as so much luxury and
superfluity. A religion so dependent on the sense vision as the Greek
was must necessarily continue to create, inasmuch as for it this
artistic production and invention is itself a religious activity and
satisfaction, and for the people the sight of such works is not merely
so much sight-seeing, but is part of their religion and soul-life.
And in general the Greeks did everything with a public and universal
aim in view, in which every man discovered his enjoyment, pride, and
honour. In this public aspect the art of the Greeks is not merely an
ornamental object, but a vital thing that meets a really felt want,
in much the same sort of way as that of painting in its most glorious
season responded to the life of Venice. Only on grounds such as
these can we find a rational explanation, if we consider the great
difficulties which the technique of sculpture implies, for the host
of sculptured figures, this forest of statues of every kind, which
in their thousand and indeed thousands, were to be met with in _one_
single city, in Elis, in Athens, in Corinth, and even in towns of
lesser importance, and in the same way in the greater Greece beyond and
the islands of the Cyclades.




CHAPTER III


DIFFERENT TYPES OF PRESENTMENT, MATERIAL, AND HISTORICAL STAGES IN THE
EVOLUTION OF SCULPTURE.


We have hitherto in our inquiry in the first instance looked about
us for the _general_ determinants, out of which it is possible to
develop the most adequate content for sculpture and the form which
best responds to it. We discovered the classical Ideal supplied this
content, so that in the _second_ place we were called to establish the
precise mode, in which sculpture among the particular arts is most
readily adapted to give shape to this Ideal. Inasmuch as we found,
moreover, that this Ideal is only to be comprehended in its essential
import as _individuality_, not only did we find that the ideal outlook
of the artist expand to a collective cyclus of ideal figures, but
the external mode of representation and execution in actual works of
art breaks up into _particular types_ of sculpture. In this latter
direction we have still several points of view left us to discuss as
follows:

_First_, there is the manner of representation, which, in so far as
actual execution is concerned, either creates single statues, or
groups, until finally in the relief we are confronted with the step of
transition to painting.

_Secondly_, there is the external medium, in which these distinctions
are given actual effect to.

_Thirdly_, we have to deal with the historical stages of evolution, or
the process within which works of art are executed in the various types
and material.



1. THE SINGLE STATUE, THE GROUP AND THE RELIEF


Just as, in the case of architecture, we made an essential distinction
between independent building and that which was subservient we may also
here establish a similar dividing line in sculpture, that is between
such works that have an independent position and those which rather
contribute to architectural decoration. In the case of the first the
environment is nothing more than an artificially prepared locality,
whereas in the latter cases their relation to the building which they
adorn is of the first importance, and does not merely determine the
form of the work of sculpture, but in a large measure even its content.
Speaking in a summary way we may assert in this respect that single
statues are set up on their own account, while groups and _a fortiori_
reliefs tend to lose this independence and are utilized by architecture
for its own artistic purposes.

(_a_) As to the single statue their original function is that of
sculpture generally, that is to supply temple images as they are set up
in the shrine of the temple, and all that surrounds them is in direct
association with them.

(_α_) In such a case sculpture retains its most adequate purity. It
displays the figure of the god apart from all situation, in beautiful,
unimpaired, and inactive tranquillity, or at least free, unmolested,
without definite action and development, such as I have on several
occasions depicted, that is, in unconstrained situations.

(_β_) The earliest departure from this austere loftiness consists in
this that the entire pose suggests the beginning of an action, or
the conclusion of the same, without the godlike repose being thereby
disturbed, or the figure being presented as in struggle or conflict.
We place under this type the famous Medicean Venus and the Belvedere
Apollo. In the times of Lessing and Winckelmann the admiration of the
critical world over these statues, as the highest Ideal of art, was
unconditional; nowadays, since we have come to know works more vital
and substantial in their configuration, and more profound in their
expressive power, we must deduct somewhat from this estimate; critics,
in fact, place them in an age somewhat subsequent to the great period,
an age in which the smoothness of their elaborate workmanship already
suggests that to please is the main object, and the genuine grand and
severe style is not persisted in. An English traveller goes so far as
to say that the Apollo is "a theatrical coxcomb," and while admitting
that the Venus has extraordinary softness, sweetness, symmetry, and
coy grace, yet only finds in this a spiritual quality that is wanting
in much, a negative perfection, and--a good deal of insipidity. We
may generally review that transition from the former more severe
repose and holiness as follows. Sculpture is no doubt the art of lofty
seriousness, but this elevated austerity of the gods, inasmuch as the
same are no abstractions, but individual figures, brings with it the
absolute blithesomeness, and thereby a reflex attitude to reality and
finite life, in which the blithesomeness of the gods does not express
the feeling of absorption in such finite content, but the feeling of
reconciliation, of spiritual freedom and alertness.

(_γ_) In consequence of this Greek art is throughout permeated with all
the blithesomeness of the Greek genius, and has found its satisfaction,
delight, and an object for its activity in a countless number of
gratifying situations. When it once had discovered a way from the
constraint of the abstractions of its presentment to an appreciation
of vital individuality, which is the unifying factor of the whole, its
joy in all that is indicative of life and cheerfulness became a real
thing, and artists became occupied with a great variety of subjects,
which, without glancing aside at anything suggestive of pain, horror,
distortion or injurious, fixed as its final limit unoffensive humanity
and remained thus. The ancients have in this respect executed much
of the greatest excellence. I will here only mention, among the many
mythological subjects of playful, that is playful in the most innocent
way, interest, the sports of Cupid, in which we already see a close
approach to the ordinary life of mankind, just as there were others in
which the vitality of the presentment is the main interest, and indeed
the very attempt to secure and execute such subject-matter itself
contributes this blithesomeness and innocence to the effect. In this
kind of way we may point out that the dice-players and satellite of
Polycleitus were thought quite as highly of as his Argive statue of
Here. The discus-throwers and racers of Myron were equally famous. How
dear to this folk, too, and admired is that youth in a seated posture
who extracts a thorn from his foot? There were many others of the same
type of production in great measure merely by name. We are face to face
with the fleeting moment of natural existence, which is here arrested
for ever by the sculptor.

(_b_) Beginning with examples such as the above of a movement towards
external objects, sculpture proceeds further in the representation of
situations, conflicts, and actions yet more involved with motion, and
at last arrives at the group. For with an increase of specific detail
in the action we have placed before us the more concrete animation,
which expands in contradiction, reactions, and thereby, too, in the
presence of several figures essentially related and intertwined with
each other.

(_α_) At first we have, however, merely tranquil juxtapositions, such
as, for example, the two colossal horse-tamers, which are set up in
Rome on Mount Cavallo, and indicate Castor and Pollux. The one statue
is commonly ascribed to Pheidias, the other to Praxiteles. There is,
however, no strong evidence for this, although the extraordinary
excellence of conception, and the no less exquisite thoroughness of
the execution justifies names as famous. Such are entirely independent
groups, which as yet express no real action, or the result of it, and
are wholly appropriate as representations of sculpture and public
exposition before the Parthenon, where it appears they were originally
placed.

(_β_) Sculpture, however, is equally occupied in the group with the
presentment of situations, which have as their content conflicts,
discordant actions, pain, and other similar conditions. In this
direction, too, we can only speak highly of the genuine artistic
insight of the Greeks, which did not set forth such groups
independently, and by themselves, but brought them, for the reason
that sculpture has already made a departure from its peculiar, that
is to say its self-subsistent, province, into closer relation to
architecture. The temple figure, that is the isolated statue, stood in
unimpaired tranquillity and sacredness within the inner shrine. The
external pediment, on the contrary, was decorated with groups which
represented definite actions of the god, and consequently admitted
of more animated movement in its elaboration. The famous group of
Niobe and her children is of this type. The general form for the
co-ordination of each part is determined by the space which the group
in question had to fill. The principal figure stood in the middle, and
was thus able to be the largest in size and most prominent. The rest
according as they were placed in the direction of the acute angle of
the gable-end had to submit to other postures, the limit being reached
by that of a reclining figure.

Of other famous works I will here only mention the Laocoon group.
It has now for over forty years been the object of much inquiry and
controversy. In particular it has been regarded as a matter of real
importance, whether Virgil in his description followed this work of
sculpture, or the sculptor adopted his work to the scene depicted by
Virgil, whether Laocoon here is actually crying out, and whether it is
appropriate in a work of sculpture to attempt to express such a cry,
and many more criticisms of this kind. Critics have worried themselves
up and down with such matters of psychological interest for the simple
reason that they have not as yet secured the sort of enthusiasm and
critical acumen which Winckelmann possessed; and, moreover, arm-chair
professors are more readily disposed for such investigations for the
reason that not unfrequently they have neither the opportunity granted
them to see real works of art, nor the capacity to grasp them for what
they are when they do so. The most essential thing which can occupy
our attention in this group is this namely, that in the supreme pain,
the supreme truth, the convulsive tension of the body, the distention
of all the muscles, the noble aspect of beauty is still preserved, and
the process has not been carried in the remotest degree to the extremes
of grimace, distortion, and over-strain. Despite of this, however,
the entire work belongs without doubt--we have only to consider its
subject-matter, the artificiality of its coordinate grouping, the
disposition of each posed figure and the type of its elaboration--to
a much later period, which already seeks to pass beyond simple beauty
and vitality by means of a deliberate obtrusion of science in the
configuration and muscular development of the human body, and no less
is anxious to please by refined excess in its executive elaboration.
The step from the ingenuous ease and greatness of art to a mere
mannerism is already taken.

(_γ_) Works of sculpture may be set forth in very various places,
such as in the entrances to columned halls, forecourts, landings
of staircases, niches, and so forth. It is just in this variety of
local position and architectural setting, which, on its account too,
is variously related to human circumstances and conditions, that
the content and object of such works of art are for ever changing,
approaching as such art does in the group yet more closely our
humanity. It is, however, a serious defect to place groups that embody
much movement and variety of figure on the top of a building without
further background against the sky. In other words the colour of the
sky may sometimes be gray, at others blue and dazzlingly bright, so
that it is impossible to see the outlines of the figures. Yet these
outlines, that is, the silhouette we find in them, is just what is most
important; it is the main thing which we recognize, and which simply
makes the rest intelligible. For in the case of a group we find that
many portions stand in front relatively to others, an arm before the
trunk of the body, or one leg in front of another. Now the fact of
distance alone disturbs the clearness and intelligible articulation
of such parts, or at least tends to do this more emphatically than
in the case of outlined portions which are independent. We have only
to imagine a group depicted on a piece of paper in which certain
parts of a figure are strongly and sharply indicated, while others
on the contrary are marked with lines of less defined and arresting
definition. This is precisely the effect of a statue's lines, and yet
more those of groups, which have no other background but that of the
sky; in the latter case we only see a sharply indicated silhouette,
in which, so far as what is within the compass of that outline, only
relatively weaker articulation is visible.

This is the reason that, to take an example near home, the Victory on
the Brandenburg gate in Berlin not only affects us strongly by virtue
of its simplicity and repose, but can be readily followed through its
separate figures. The horses, in fact, stand far from each other,
without either of them impairing the view of the other; and similarly
the figure of Victory rises sufficiently high above them. Conversely
the Apollo drawn in a car by griffins, which we have on the Opera
House, is less satisfactory from this point of view, however artistic
the entire conception and technical work may be in other respects. By
the favour of a friend I saw these figures before they were taken
from the workshop. The effect promised was noble. But as we see them
now at such a height, we have far too much of one outline partly
obscuring another, which in its turn is backed by something else, and
consequently is less freely and clearly silhouetted than would be the
case were all the figures silhouetted in their simple outlines[187].
The griffins, which necessarily, on account of their shorter legs, do
not stand up either so highly or so freely as horses, have wings into
the bargain, and Apollo, too, has his tuft of hair and his lyre. All
this detail is too much for the position, and only tends to make the
outlines obscure.

(_c_) The final mode of representation, in which sculpture makes an
important step in the direction of the principle of painting is the
_relief_; in the first instance the high-relief, and after it the
low-relief. The condition here is the surface, the figures standing on
one and the same plane, so that the spatial totality of the figure,
which is the point of departure of sculpture, more and more tends
to disappear. The older form of relief, however, does not as yet
approximate so closely to painting, which involves distinctions of
perspective between the foreground and background, but rather holds
fast to the surface or plane as such without permitting the different
objects to project into or to retire within the distinctions of their
spatial position by means of an artificial reduction of size. In the
present case figures in profile are preferred, and they are placed side
by side on an even surface. A simple treatment of this kind does not
admit the content of complicated actions, but actions which in real
life already adopt more or less of one and the same line of motion,
processions of all kinds, whether those of sacrifice or Olympian
victors or others. Add to this the relief is capable of the greatest
variety of form. It not only fills up and decorates the friezes and
walls of temples, but is attached to utensils of all kinds, sacrificial
bowls, votive gifts, shells, goblets, urns, lamps, and so forth; it
is the adornment of seats and tripods, and is closely allied to the
skilled crafts. Here as nowhere else the ingenuity of invention
receives the fullest scope in every kind of form and combination, and
is no longer in position to retain the true object of independent
sculpture.



2. THE MATERIAL OF SCULPTURE


We have, by our acceptance of the principle of individuality, which
is fundamental to sculpture, been compelled not merely to emphasize
in separation the different provinces of the divine, human and
natural, from which plastic art accepts its subject-matter, but also
to classify the several modes of presentation in the single statue,
group, or relief. In the same way we have to discover a like variety
of division in the _material_ which the artist can make use of in his
works. For different kinds of content and mode of presentation are more
particularly congenial to different kinds of sensuous material, and
betray a secret attraction to and affinity with such.

By way of generalization I will merely here permit myself the remark
that the ancients, in addition to the extraordinary excellence of their
invention, equally excite our astonishment by reason of the amazing
elaboration and versatility of their technical accomplishment. Both
aspects present an equal difficulty in sculpture, because the means at
hand here for such presentation are without the ideal many-sidedness,
which is at the disposal of the other arts. Architecture is no doubt
poorer still in this respect; but it is not her province to embody
spirit in its vitality, or what is actually alive in Nature in a
material which is by itself wholly inorganic. This elaborate dexterity
in the absolutely consummate treatment of pure material is, however,
bound up with the notion of the Ideal itself, for its very principle
is a complete entrance into the sensuous concreteness and the blending
together of the Ideal with its external mode of existence. The same
principle is therefore once again asserted, where the Ideal attains its
executed form and realization. In this respect we have no reason to
wonder, when it is asserted that artists, in periods distinguished by
great executive ability, either executed their works of marble in clay
without models, or, if they had recourse to them, set about their work
in a much freer and unconstrained manner than is the case in our own
times, where, to put the fact bluntly, it only makes copies which are
now executed in marble after originals carried out in the clay[188].
The old artists retained in fact the vital enthusiasm, which is always
to a more or less extent lost in the case of copies and replicas,
although it is undeniable that now and again we meet with defective
work in famous masterpieces, as, for example, eyes that are not of the
same size, ears one of which is placed lower than the other, feet that
are of unequal length and others of the same kind. They did not lay so
much stress on the absolute precision of the compass in such things as
ordinary production and art criticism, that mediocrity of talent which
imagines itself so profound, is wont to do; and it can do little else.

(_a_) Among the different materials in which sculptors have executed
images of gods, wood is one of the most ancient. A trunk, a post at
the top of which a head can be indicated, such was the beginning.
Among the earliest examples of the temple image many are of wood, but
the material was also used even in the days of Pheidias. The colossal
Minerva of Pheidias at Plataea was mainly carved from wood which
was gilded, the head, hands, and feet being of marble[189]; Myron,
too[190], executed a Hecate out of wood here with only one head and
body, and no doubt for Aegina, where Hecate was most revered and a
festival took place annually in her honour, a festival which the
Aeginetans maintained the Thracian Orpheus had inaugurated for them.

Generally speaking, wood, when it is not covered over with gilding or
some other precious material, by reason of its texture and the grain
of it, appears too fine a material for works of importance and more
appropriate to smaller figures, for which purpose it was frequently
used in the Middle Ages, and is still thus utilized nowadays.

(_b_) Other materials of most importance are _ivory_, associated with
_gold_, founded _bronze_ and _marble._

(_α_) As is well known, Pheidias employed ivory and gold for his
masterpieces, such as his Olympian Zeus, and also for his famous
colossal Athene in the Acropolis of Athens, who carried on her hand
an image of Victory, itself being larger than life-size. The nude
portions of the body were made out of sheets of ivory, the drapery
and mantle from gold plates, which could be removed. This type of
workmanship in yellowish ivory and gold dates from a period in which
statues were coloured, a kind of representation which steadily
approximated to the one colour tone of bronze and marble. Ivory is an
extremely pure material, smooth and without the granular character of
marble, and, moreover, costly. And among the Athenians the costliness
of the statues of their gods was itself of importance. The Pallas at
Plataea had merely a superficial gilding, that at Athens solid metal
plates. The statues had to be both of colossal size and of the richest
material. Quatremère de Quincy has written a masterly work upon these
works, upon the "toreutic" of the ancients. "Toreutic"--τορεύειν,
τόρευμα--is primarily applicable to figures whose lines are brought
out by engraving in metal, or cutting of some kind such as cut stones;
one uses the expression, however, to indicate entire works or parts of
entire works in metal, which are executed by means of moulds and the
founder's art, that is, not by means of engraving, then, still more
remotely from the original meaning, of superb figures on earthenware
utensils, and finally in the widest sense of mouldings[191] on
bronze. Quatremère's researches have particularly been directed to
the technical aspect of the execution; he calculates what must have
been the size of the plates made of elephants' tusks, and, among other
things, how much space, in proportion to the gigantic dimensions of
the figure, they would leave covered. From another point of view he
is equally concerned to reproduce for us from the sketches, or other
evidence[192] we possess from antiquity, a drawing of the seated figure
of Zeus, and, most of all, the great chair with its rich decorations
of bas-reliefs, and by so doing to give us in every respect some
conception of the splendour and perfection of the work.

In the Middle Ages ivory is mainly used for smaller works of very
varied character, such as Christ on the Cross and the Virgin Mary, or
yet again for drinking vessels with scenes of hunting and the like, in
which cases ivory, on account of its smoothness and hardness, is in
many respects preferable to wood.

(_β_) The material which was most favoured and most widely employed
by the ancients was bronze, in the casting of which it attained a
success of the highest mastery. Preeminently during the period of Myron
and Polycletus it was the prevailing material utilized in statues of
deities and other kinds of sculpture. The darker, less defined colour,
the sheen, the smoothness of bronze generally, has not reached the
abstract formality of the white marble, and it is at the same time
warmed. The bronze which the ancients used was partly gold and silver,
partly copper, varying considerably in the degrees of its component
parts. The so-called bronze of Corinth is, for example, a composition
unique of its kind which originated after the burning of Corinth from
the almost incredible wealth of this city in statues and vessels of
bronze. Mummius had many statues carried off on his ships; and the
excellent man was so full of anxiety for their safe deliverance in Rome
that he informed the captain that in case of loss he must recreate
the same exactly or suffer, such was the threat, heavy punishment. In
the founding of bronze the ancients attained an incredible mastery,
by aid of which it was possible to them to cast it securely despite
its extreme thinness. It is possible to regard such a feat as merely a
matter of technical dexterity which is unconnected with true art. Every
artist, however, works upon a certain material, and it is an essential
quality of genius to be complete master of the same. Dexterity and
adaptability in matters which concern the technique and instruments of
its work constitute one distinct aspect of genius. On account of this
virtuosity in the founder's art a work of sculpture in this medium
involved a less expensive process, and was in the reach of a larger
number than the chiselling out of marble statues. A second advantage,
which the ancients were able to attain in casting their work in bronze,
was the purity thereby acquired, which they carried so far that their
bronze statues did not require further enchasening, and consequently
lost nothing of the finer marks of expression, which is almost
inevitable where such a process is necessary. If we consider, then, the
extraordinary number of works of art, which originated in this facility
and mastery over technical matters, we cannot fail to be astonished and
admit that the artistic sense for sculpture is a distinctive impulse
and instinct of spirit, which can only, that is, in so overwhelming
a degree, appear in one period and one people. In the whole of the
Prussian State, for example, at the present time we can easily reckon
up the number of bronze statues, the single bronze door of a church
we find in Gnesen, and, with the exception of the standing figures of
Blücher at Berlin and Breslau, and Luther at Wittenburg, we have merely
a few more in Königsberg and Düsseldorf[193].

The very various tone and the infinite adaptability to form and
fusibility of this material, which may accommodate itself to every kind
of representation, gives to sculpture the pass into every conceivable
variety of production, and makes its sensitive material suitable for
a host of conceits, prettinesses, utensils, ornaments, and innocent
trifles of all kinds. Marble, on the other hand, is limited in its
suitability for the depicting of objects and their size; it is, for
instance, possible to execute bas-reliefs in it of a certain size on
urns and vases. It is, however, unsuitable for smaller objects. In the
case of bronze, however, which is not merely cast into specific forms,
but can also be beaten into shape and informed by the engraver's tools,
there is hardly any type or size of representation which it does not
command. We may here, by way of more definite example, instance the
case of coinage minting. In this art, too, we find that the ancients
executed masterworks of beauty, albeit in the technical aspect of the
mere mintage[194] they stand as yet far behind our present elaboration
of all that is mechanical in the design. The coins in fact were not
really minted, but beaten but of pieces of metal closely resembling
a globular form. This department of the art attained its culmination
in the time of Alexander. The coins of the Roman Empire have already
deteriorated. In our own time Napoleon endeavoured to revive the beauty
of antique work in his medals and coinage, and they are of great
excellence. In other states, however, the mere worth of the metal and
accurate weight is mainly important in the mintage of coin.

(_γ_) The last kind of material exceptionally favourable to sculpture
is stone, which possesses independently the external aspect of
consistency and permanence. The Egyptians long before chiselled out
their sculptured colossi with a labour that spared no pains from
the hardest granite, syenite and basalt. _Marble_ is, however, most
directly, as a material, in harmony with the aims of sculpture through
its soft purity, whiteness, no less than by the absence of definite
colour and the mildness of its sheen, and in particular possesses,
by virtue of its granular texture and the soft interfusion of light
which it carries, a great advantage over the chalk-like dead whiteness
of gypsum, which is too bright, and easily kills with its glare the
finer shadows. We find a distinct preference given to marble, only
at a later epoch of the Greek school, that is during the period of
Praxiteles and Scopas, who executed their most famous works in marble.
Pheidias no doubt worked in marble, but for the most part only in the
execution of head, hands, and feet. Myron and Polycletus mainly made
use of bronze. Praxiteles and Scopas, on the other hand, appear to have
sought to remove from sculpture that feature which is alien to its main
principle, namely colour. No doubt it is undeniable that the beauty of
the ideal of sculpture is capable of being embodied in bronze as in
marble, with no diminution whatever of its purity. When, however, as
was the case with Praxiteles and Scopas, art begins to approach the
softer forms of grace and charm of figure, the marble asserts itself
as the more congenial medium. For marble "encourages, by virtue of
the transparency of its surface, a softness of outline, its gentle
articulation[195] and mild conjunction; add to this that the tender and
artificial elaboration of consummate work always appears more clearly
on the soft whiteness of stone than on bronze, however noble it may
be, which, in proportion as the transition of green is beautifully
gradated, makes the lustres and the reflections all the more disturbing
to the effect of repose[196]." For the same reason the careful
attention, which at this period was paid to effects of light and shade,
whose nuances and gradations are more clearly marked by marble than by
bronze, was a further reason why stone should be preferred to metal.

(_c_) In conclusion we ought to associate with the above more important
kinds of material _precious stones_ and _glass._

The ancient gems, cameos and pastes are invaluable. They repeat in
fact on the smallest scale, yet with consummate finish, the entire
survey of sculpture, from the simple figure of a god, through all the
varied forms of grouping to every possible kind of conceit in dainty
delight and prettiness. Winckelmann, however, observes with regard to
the Stosch collection[197]: "It was while looking at this that I was
made aware of a truth, which afterwards became to me of great value in
elucidating monuments, very difficult to understand; and the truth is
this, that on cut stones, no less than on imposing works of sculpture,
we very rarely come across events which took place after the Trojan
war, or after the return of Odysseus to Ithaca, if we only except
the one case of the Heracleidae and the descendants of Hercules; for
in this latter case the limits of history and fable still overlap,
and fable is the main subject of these artists. Only one example of
the tale of the Heracleidae, however, is known to me personally." As
for gems, the genuine and most consummately executed figures are of
the greatest beauty, fine as the work of organic Nature, and may be
inspected through a magnifying glass without any loss to the purity of
their delineation. I refer to this fact in proof that the technique
of art in such cases is almost an art of intuition; the fineness is
such that the artist is unable as the sculptor is to follow the work
with his eyes, but is rather compelled to _feel after_ it. He holds
the stone which is made fast on wax against tiny sharp wheels which
are made to spin by means of a flying-wheel, and in this way cuts
out the forms. By this process what we have is a kind of instinctive
sense, which takes in and directs so consummately the conception, the
intention of line and drawing, that we can almost fancy ourselves
to have before us in these stones, when one sees them properly
illuminated, a relief work.

The work on cameos is to be contrasted with the above. These represent
figures finely cut in out of the stone. The onyx was particularly
utilized as material for this kind of work. In dealing with these, the
ancients were expert in setting off to advantage and with taste the
various strata, in particular the white and yellow-brown. Aemilius
Paulus had a number of such stones and other trinkets carried to Rome.

In the representations which were depicted upon all this varied
material the Greek artists adapted as the basis of their work no
situations which were poetically conceived by themselves, but selected
their subject-matter invariably, if we only except examples of
Bacchanals and dances, from myths about the gods and sagas. Even in
the case of urns and representations of events relative to deceased
persons they had definite facts before them, which were associated with
the individual, whom it was thought right to honour by reason of his
decease. The direct allegory, in fact, does not belong to the genuine
Ideal, but only becomes perspicuous in art's later development.



3. THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF SCULPTURE


We have hitherto regarded sculpture as the most adequate expression
of the classical Ideal. The Ideal, however, has not merely an
intrinsic forward development on its own account, by virtue of which
it approximates to that which it is in virtue of its notion, and
by doing so equally begins a forward movement beyond this absolute
harmony with its own essential nature. Quite apart from this, as we
have already seen in the second main division of this work during
our review of the particular types of art as a process, it contains,
putting on one side its mode of presentation under the symbolical
type, a certain aspect presupposed, which it is bound to pass beyond
in order generally to establish itself as Ideal, and moreover a
further type of art, that is the romantic, from which it will once
more pass away. Both types of art, the symbolical no less than the
romantic, likewise seize upon the human figure as an element of their
presentment, whose spatial outlines they adhere to, and consequently
set forth as sculpture sets them forth. We have, therefore, when it is
a question of drawing attention to the historical-development, not only
to speak of Greek and Roman sculpture, but also Oriental and Christian.
It was, however, the Egyptian people pre-eminently among all, among
whom the _symbolical_ type sums up the fundamental character of their
art-production, who first began to associate with their deities the
human figure as it emerges from a mode of existence that is purely
natural, and for this reason it is mainly among them that we meet
too with sculpture, inasmuch as they gave as a rule to their general
outlook an artistic existence in that which was simply material. The
sculpture of Christianity is of wider range and richer development.
We do not merely refer here to its uniquely romantic character in the
Middle Ages, but also to that further elaboration, in which we find it
made an effort once again to approach more closely the principle of the
classical Ideal, and establish that type most specifically consonant
with sculpture.

I will in concluding the present section of my work in its entirety,
and following the above general observations, add a few words,
_first_, upon Egyptian sculpture as contrasted with the Greek as the
introductory stage of the true Ideal.

The characteristic elaboration of _Greek_ sculpture makes our _second_
stage, which closes with _Roman_ sculpture. On the present occasion
what will mainly concern us will be to survey the stage which precedes
the really ideal mode of presentation, because we have already in our
second chapter considered at length ideal sculpture.

_Thirdly_, we have merely left us to indicate briefly the principle of
Christian sculpture. I can only undertake in this place to refer to it
in the most general terms.

(_a_) When we have the intention to investigate on the soil of Greece
the classical art of sculpture from the _historical_ standpoint, we
find ourselves already confronted with Egyptian art in the form of
sculpture before we have arrived at our object; and we must add not
merely is this so in regard to great works which bear witness to the
highest technique and elaboration in an entirely unique artistic
style, but as the point of departure and source for the forms of Greek
plastic art. That this last result on the ground of historical fact
amounts also to an external contact, an acceptance and an instruction
to which Greek artists submitted, this must be left to the history
of art to establish, whether it be in reference to the significance
of figures of deities represented from the field of mythology, or to
the particular methods of artistic treatment. The association between
Greek and Egyptian ideas of the gods is a conviction set forth with
proofs by Herodotus. Creuzer is of the view that we find this external
association of these arts most clearly demonstrated on coins, and
he lays exceptional stress on ancient Attic examples. He has showed
me one in his own possession in which without question the face, a
profile possessed quite the outline of the physiognomy of Egyptian
figures in every respect[198]. We must, however, here leave this purely
historical aspect to stand on its own merits, and confine ourselves
to the inquiry whether apart from it a more ideal and necessary bond
of connection cannot be established. This bond of intrinsic causality
we have already adverted to above. It is necessary that the art which
is incomplete must precede the complete form of art, the Ideal, by
means of the negation of which, that is by the stripping off of that
aspect which adheres to it as a defect, the Ideal is first realized.
In this respect unquestionably classical art is a _becoming_ or a
process, which, however, apart from it must necessarily possess an
independent existence, inasmuch as _quâ_ classical it must leave all
deficiency, all the mere becoming behind it, and be essentially rounded
in "completion." This process as such consists in this, that the form
of the presentation first begins to run counter to the Ideal, and
yet remains incapable of an ideal grasp, belonging as it does to the
symbolical synthesis, which is unable to embody in union the universal
aspect of the significance, and the individual embodiment as it appears
to sense. That _Egyptian_ sculpture possesses such a fundamental
character, is the single point that I will now briefly touch upon.

(_α_) The primary fact that calls for attention is the deficiency we
find here in ideal and creative _spontaneity_, despite the greatest
technical perfection. The source of works of Greek sculpture is the
vitality and freedom of the imagination, which builds up individual
figures from the religious ideas which are prevalent, and in the
individuality of this its production makes an actual fact of its
own ideal outlook and classical perfection. The Egyptian figures of
deities, on the contrary, receive an inherited[199] type. As Plato long
ago observes[200], the representations were long before fixed by the
priestly caste, and it was neither permitted to painter nor any master
of sculpture to introduce novelty, nor indeed to invent anything at
all, but to accept instead what was already among them and traditional;
neither is such permission conceded now. We consequently find that what
was made and fashioned, it may be myriads of years before (to allow
oneself a hyperbolical expression for the great number that is actual
verity), is neither more beautiful nor more ugly than the work of
to-day. The circumstance must also be associated with this scholastic
accuracy, that in Egypt, as appears clear from Herodotus[201], artists
did not enjoy the same respect as other citizens, but were forced
with their children to defer to all who were not engaged in artistic
work. Add to this art among the people was not followed according to
natural inclination; the institution of caste was paramount, and the
son walked after his father, not merely in the matter of profession,
but also in the way in which he made himself efficient in his duties
and his art. One man simply placed his feet in the steps of another,
so that, as Winckelmann has already observed[202], "Not a soul appears
to have left behind him a footmark, which he can appropriate as his
own." Consequently art, when fully confronted with this enforced
serfdom of Spirit--in conjunction with which the mobility of free and
artistic genius, in other words, not the mere impulse after external
honour and reward, but the more elevated impulse to be _artist_, is
banished--maintained itself simply as the mere craftsman working in
a purely mechanical and abstract way according to forms and rules
ready to hand, rather than with the vision of the artist of his own
individuality in his work, viewed in this way as his own unique
creation.

(_β_) Coming now in the _second_ place to the actual works of art,
here, too, we may borrow from Winckelmann, whose descriptions attest
once more his exceptional acuteness of observation and distinction, and
whose account of the character of Egyptian sculpture is in its main
lines as follows[203].

Speaking generally we may say that both grace and vitality, which
are the result of the genuine sweep and balance of organic line, are
absent from the entire figure and its detailed parts; the outlines are
straight or in lines that show less deviation from it, the pose appears
constrained and stiff, the feet are thrust close together, and in cases
of figures in the upright position where one foot is placed before
the other, both point in the same direction instead of having the
toes turned outwards. In the same way, in masculine figures, the arms
hang down straight and glued to the body. Further, the hands, such is
Winckelmann's view, are shaped much as we find them in men who possess
hands not badly shaped originally, but deteriorated and neglected;
feet, on the other hand, are too flat and spread out, the toes are of
equal length and the little toe is neither crooked nor curved inwards:
in other respects hands, nails, and toes are not badly shaped, although
neither the joints of fingers nor toes are indicated. And similarly
we may say of all the rest of the nude figure the muscles and bones
are but slightly indicated, and the nerves and veins not at all. In
short, so far as detail is concerned, despite the laborious and able
execution, just that aspect of the elaboration is absent which alone
communicates to the figure its true animation and vitality. The knees,
however, bones, and elbows are traceable in relief, as we find them
in Nature. Masculine figures are conspicuous for their exceptionally
narrow waist above the hips. The backs of figures, on account of their
position against columns and their being sculptured from one block with
them, are not visible.

Together with this lack of mobility, which is not entirely due to
the technical inferiority of the artists, but must be regarded as a
result of their primitive conception of the figures of deities and
their mysterious repose, is nearly associated the absence of any
true situation and any sort or kind of action, which are asserted
in sculpture by means of the position and motion of the hands and
the demeanour and expression of delineation. No doubt we do find
among Egyptian representations on obelisks and walls many figures
in movement, but these are purely reliefs and are for the most part
painted.

To add a few more examples of even more intimate detail, the eyes are
not deeply set as in the Greek ideal, but are almost on a level with
the forehead; they are flattened and extended obliquely. The eyebrows,
eyelids, and rims of the lips are mainly suggested by the graver's
lines, or the brows are indicated by a stroke in relief, which extends
as far as the temples and is at that point cut off angular wise. What
we above all find wanting here is the projection of the forehead, and
along with this, together with uncommonly high placed ears and arched
noses, as is the rule with vulgar natures, we have the retreating form
of cheekbones, which in contrast to other parts are strongly indicated
and emphasized, whereas the chin is always retiring and small; the
rigidly closed mouth, too, draws its corners in an outward rather than
an under-ward direction, and the lips appear to be separated from each
other by a mere slit. Speaking generally, then, such figures are not
only wanting in freedom and vitality, but more than anything else the
head fails to show us the expression of spiritual significance; the
animal aspect is the prevailing one, and Spirit is not as yet suffered
to appear in its self-poise and independence.

The execution of _animal_ figures is, on the contrary, according to the
same authority, carried through with much knowledge and an exquisite
variety of gently gradated outlines and of parts that flow one into the
other without a break. And if in the human figures spiritual life is
not as yet liberated from the animal type and the interfusion of the
Ideal with what is sensuous and of Nature on a new and free model is
absent, yet we find here that the specifically symbolical significance
of the human no less than the animal figures is directly expressed by
means of sculpture in these embodiments of forms, in which human and
animal shapes pass into one mysterious union.

(_γ_) Consequently the works of art, which carry on their face this
character, remain at the stage where the breach between significance
and form is not yet bridged over. For such a stage significance
is still of main importance, and what is aimed at is rather the
conception of that in its general aspect, than the vitalization of any
one individual figure and the artistic enjoyment derived from such
presentment. Sculpture proceeds here from the genius of an entire
people, about which we may on the one hand affirm, that it has in the
first instance arrived at the point where the need of _imaginative_
conception is disclosed; and it is satisfied to find that indicated in
the work of art, which is present in the conception, and here of course
is a conception which is _religious._ We are not therefore entitled,
taking into consideration the great strides they have made in laborious
activity upon and actual perfection in technical execution, to call
the Egyptians uneducated in their sculpture merely on the ground that,
despite all this, they did not as yet in great measure seek to attach
truth, vitality, and beauty to their results, by virtue of which
qualities the free work of art receives a soul. Doubtless from another
point of view the Egyptians did advance beyond the mere idea and its
necessary demand. They sought further to envisage and embody the same
in human and animal forms, nay, they knew how to comprehend and set
forth the forms, which they reproduced, clearly, without distortion and
in their just relations. They failed, however, to impart to them the
breath of vitality, which the human form in its natural state already
possesses, and to infuse with them that more exalted life, by virtue
of which an active and fluent motion of spirit could be expressed in a
created image that was adequate to its significance. Their works rather
attest a seriousness that is entirely lifeless, an unsolved riddle, so
that the configuration does not so much embody their own individual
ideality as permit us to surmise a further significance which is
still alien to it. I will here only adduce one example, namely, the
frequently recurring figure of Isis, holding Horus on her knees. Here
we have, so far as externals are concerned, the same subject-matter
that we meet with in Christian art as the Madonna and her Child. In the
symmetrical, straight-lined, and immovable pose of the Egyptian example
we discover, to quote a recent description[204], "neither a mother,
nor a child; there is no trace of affection, smile, or endearment, in
a word there is no real expression at all. Tranquil, unperturbed, and
immovable is this divine mother, who suckles her divine babe; or rather
we have here neither goddess nor mother, nor son, nor god. It is simply
the sensuous sign of a thought, which is capable of no result and no
passion; it is not the genuine presentation of a real action, still
less the just expression of a natural emotion."

And it is precisely this which constitutes the breach between
signification and determinate being, which creates the absence of
figurative expression in the artistic results of the Egyptian people.
Their ideality or spiritual sense is still so imbruted, that it has
no imperative desire to possess the precision bound up in a true and
vital representation carried through with detailed accuracy, to which
the onlooker has nothing to add, but may simply surrender himself
to the attitude of reception and translation, because everything is
already a gift of the artist. We must have a more lofty feeling of the
individual's self-respect aroused than the Egyptians possessed, before
we cease to be content with the indefinite and superficial features of
art, and make valid in its products a claim to reason, science, motion,
expression, soul, and beauty.

(_b_) We find this artistic self-consciousness, so far as sculpture is
concerned, first wholly alive among the Greeks. By its presence all
the defects of the Egyptian phase of art vanish. Yet in this further
development we do not have to make a wide leap from the imperfections
of a type of sculpture still symbolical to the perfected result of
the classical Ideal. Rather the Ideal has, in its own distinctive
province--I have noticed this more than once--although lifted to a
higher range, to remove the defects whereby in the first instance its
onward path of perfection is obstructed.

(_α_) I will here very briefly refer to _Aeginetan_ and ancient
_Etruscan_ works of art as examples of such beginnings within the
sphere itself of classical art. Both these stages, or rather styles,
already pass beyond that point of view, which is satisfied, as was the
case with Egypt, in repeating forms, we will not say absolutely opposed
to Nature, but at least forms that are lifeless, precisely as they
have been received from others, and is further content to place before
the imagination a figure, from which the same can abstract its own
religious content and recover the same for memory, without, however,
attempting to work it out under a mode, by virtue of which the work is
made apparent as the individual conception and vitality of the artist
himself.

But along with this and to the same degree this preliminary stage of
ideal art fails as yet to force its way entirely to the true classical
ground, and this, first, because it is still clearly constrained within
the bonds of the type and therewith the lifeless; secondly, because
though it makes an advance in the direction of vitality and motion,
yet in the first instance all that it attains to is the vitality of
what is wholly of _Nature_, rather than that beauty, whose animation
is Spirit's own gift, and which manifests the life Spirit inseparably
conjoint within the living presentment of its natural form, accepting
the individual modifications of this fully completed union with equal
impartiality from present vision of actual fact and the free creation
of genius. It is only in recent times that we have obtained a more
detailed knowledge of Aeginetan works of art, over which it has been
a matter of controversy, whether they belonged to Greek art or no. In
considering their artistic quality, as representations, we must at once
make an essential distinction between the head and the rest of the
body. The whole of the body, if we except the head, attests the most
faithful apprehension and imitation of Nature. Even accidental features
of the skin are copied and excellently executed with an extraordinary
manipulation of the marble's surface; the muscles are set forth in
full relief and the skeleton framework of the body well indicated; the
figures are thickset in their severity of line[205], but are reflected
with such knowledge of the human organism, that they appear alive to a
limit of actual deception, ay, to an extent, so Wagner assures us[206],
that we are almost scared at the sight and hardly like to touch them.

On the other hand, in the execution of heads all attempt to represent
Nature is abandoned. One uniform design of face is throughout apparent
in all the heads despite every divergence of action, character, and
situation; the noses are pointed; the forehead is still the retreating
type, which fails to rise up straight and with freedom; the ears
are set high in the head; the long slit eyes are flat and oblique;
the closed mouth ends in corners which are pursed outwards; the
cheeks are stretched flat-shaped; the chin, however, is strong and
angular[207]. Of a similar uniformity is the form of the hair and the
fall of the drapery, in which symmetry, a principle which is also
uniquely conspicuous in the pose and groupings, and second to that, a
peculiar kind of exquisiteness are the prevailing characteristics. This
uniformity has been in part imputed to a lack of the sense of beauty in
seizing national traits, and in part traced to the fact that reverence
for the ancient traditions of an art still immature has fettered the
hands of the artists. An artist, however, whose life is that of his
personality, and who lives in his work, does not suffer his hands to
be thus shackled; consequently we can only explain this type of work,
associated as it is with great ability in other respects, by assuming
some bondage of spirit, as yet not wholly conscious of its freedom and
independence of its creative powers.

The pose of these figures is of the same kind of uniformity, not so
much a quality of stiffness as uncouthness, lack of enthusiasm, and in
a measure, where we have the attitudes of warriors, resembling what we
sometimes find from artisans at their trade, such as the rough work of
joiners with the plane[208].

The net result, which we gather from the above description, we may
affirm to be that, however interesting they may be for the history
of art, what is wanting in such works of art, in the conflict they
disclose between tradition and the imitation of Nature, is _spiritual_
animation. For we must remember that, in accordance with what I have
already explained in the second chapter of this part of my work,
spiritual significance is exclusively expressed in the countenance and
the pose of the figure. The other parts of the body no doubt indicate
natural distinctions of soul, sex, and age, but what is spiritual in
the full sense can only be reflected by the general pose. But it is
precisely the traits of countenance and the posture which in Aeginetan
sculpture is the relatively spiritless.

The _Etruscan_ works of art, that is, such whose genuineness is fully
authenticated by inscription, display the same imitation of Nature in
a yet higher degree; they are, however, freer in their pose and facial
characteristics, and, in fact, some of them approximate closely to the
portrait. Winckelmann, for example[209], mentions the statue of a man
which appears to be simply a portrait, though it would also appear to
date from a later period of art. It is a man of life-size, representing
some kind of orator, a magisterial, worthy sort of person. It is
executed with an extraordinary spontaneity and naturalness both of pose
and expression. Remarkable and significant it would indeed be, if we
did not recollect that on Roman soil it is not the Ideal but actual and
prosaic natural fact which is from the first at home.

(_β_) In the _second_ place truly _ideal_ sculpture, in order to reach
the highest point of classical art, has above all, to abandon the
mere type and the respect for what is traditional, and to give free
scope to the principle of spontaneity in artistic production. It is
alone possible to a freedom of this kind entirely to incorporate the
significance in its generality in the individual presentment of the
form; or, from another point of view, to elevate the sensuous forms
to the high level of a true expression of their spiritual import.
Only after doing this do we find the rigid and inflexible aspect
which is native to the origins of the more ancient art, no less than
the emphatic prominence of the significance over the individuality,
by means of which the content ought to be expressed, liberated as
that vital creation, in which the bodily forms also on their part
equally lose the abstract uniformity of a traditional, character,
and an illusive realism, and by doing so move in the direction
of the classical individuality, which quite as much makes, vital
the universality of the form in the particularity of its object
as, on the other hand, it makes the sensuousness and actuality of
the same throughout interfused with the expression of a soul's
inspiration[210]. A vitalization of this type affects not only the
form, but also the pose, movement, drapery, grouping, in short
every aspect of the sculptured figure to which I have already drawn
attention. What here communicates unity are these two principles of
universality and individualization. They have, however, not merely to
be brought into harmony in respect to the spiritual content, but also
in relation to the material form, before they can be participant in
the indissoluble association which is the classical type in its full
flavour. This identity, however, has itself a series of stages. In
other words, under one extreme we find that the Ideal still somewhat
inclines to the aspect of _loftiness_ and severity, which it is true
does not deprive the individual object of its living impulse and
movement, yet does tend to concentrate it more securely under the
lordship of the general type. At the other extreme we find that the
universal aspect more and more tends to dissolve in the individual;
and while it pays the penalty for doing so in loss of depth it can
only replace this loss by further elaboration of this sensuous
individuality. Consequently it descends from the heights to the lower
levels of that which _gives pleasure_, is exquisite, blithesome,
and displays the charm which flatters. Between these two there is a
_further_ phase, one, namely, which carries forward the severity of the
first to increased individualization, without reaching that point where
mere charm of aspect is held to be the supreme object.

(_γ_) _Thirdly_, in the art of _Rome_ we have indications of the
dissolution of classical sculpture. In this art it is no longer upon
the true Ideal that the entire conception and execution depends. The
poetry inherent in the vital action of Spirit, the breath and nobility
of the soul apparent in the essentially perfected presentment, these
peculiarly emphasized excellences of Greek plastic art disappear,
and give place, as a rule, to a preference for portraiture studies.
And this insistence on realistic truth in art is carried out in all
possible modifications. Notwithstanding, this Roman sculpture maintains
so lofty a position in this its own province, that it is only in so
far as it withdraws from that which brings a work of art to its full
perfection, in other words, the poetry of the Ideal in the true sense
of the word, that it essentially falls behind Greek art.

(_c_) Fixing now our attention on _Christian_ sculpture we shall find
that the principle of artistic conception and its mode of embodiment is
from the commencement one that does not so directly commend itself to
the material and forms of sculpture as we find to be the case in the
classical Ideal of the Greek imagination and art. The romantic Ideal in
short is essentially concerned, as we discovered in the second portion
of this work, with a personal withdrawal of the self into its own realm
from the external world, with a self-absorbed individuality, which
no doubt possesses its external reflection, but which permits this
external appearance to issue independently from it in its aspect of
particularity, without enforcing a fusion between it and its ideal and
spiritual self. Pain, torture of body and soul, martyrdom and penance,
death and resurrection, the personality of the individual soul, inner
life, love, and emotional life in general--this characteristic content
of the romantic imagination, in a religious sense, is no object, for
which the external form taken simply for what it is in its spatial
entirety, and the material which belongs to it in its more sensuous
existence unrelated to ideality, can supply either a form that is
wholly relevant to it, or one similarly congruent with it. It is
therefore not in romantic art sculpture contributes the fundamental
type and the affiliating quality of membership in a system[211] to
all the other arts as in Greece, but yields the palm in this respect
to painting and music, as arts more adequate to express the life of
the soul, distinct from the external world of particularity which is
withdrawn from it. No doubt we find also in Christian art repeated
examples of sculpture in wood, marble, bronze, and both silver and gold
work, examples of the greatest excellence. Yet for all that sculpture
is not here the art which, as in Greek art, is most fitted to reveal
the Divine image. Religious romantic sculpture, on the contrary, is
to a larger extent than in the case of the Greek, an embellishment of
architecture. The saints are placed as a rule in the niches of towers
and buttresses, or at the entrance doors. Likewise the birth, baptism,
the histories of the passion and resurrection, and many other incidents
in the life of Christ, the day of Judgment and so forth, accommodate
themselves naturally by the multiplicity of their subject-matter to
reliefs over church doors, on church walls, and stalls in the choir,
and readily approximate to the character of arabesques. All such
sculpture contains, for the reason that it is the life of the soul
which is herein pre-eminently expressed, characteristics suggestive
of the painter's art in a higher degree than is permitted in the
plastic of ideal sculpture. And from another point of view, for the
same reason, such a sculpture seizes more readily upon aspects of
ordinary life, and therewith inclines to portraiture, which, as in the
case of painting, it is quite prepared to associate with religious
representations. The goose-seller, for example, in the Nürnberg
marketplace, which is highly prized by Goethe and Meyer, is an ordinary
rustic of very realistic appearance in bronze (it would be impossible
in marble), who carries a goose under either arm to market. There are,
too, the many sculptured figures, which we find upon the St. Sebaldus
Church and on many other churches and buildings, especially dating from
the period previous to Peter Vischer, and which in their representation
of religious subjects such as the Passion, make clear to us with great
vividness this particular type of individualized form, expression, mien
and attitude, more particularly in their reflection of every degree of
sorrow.

As a rule, then, romantic sculpture, which has deviated only too
frequently into every kind of confusion, remains most loyal to the
genuine principle of plastic art in those cases where it approaches
most nearly the Greek, and either is concerned to treat in the mode of
sculpture ancient subject-matter, much as the ancients would have done,
or to model the standing figures of heroes and kings, and portraits,
with an intention to imitate the antique. This is exceptionally the
case nowadays. Much of the most excellent work, however, has been
accomplished by sculpture, even in the religious field. It is only
necessary here to mention the name of Michelangelo. We can hardly
admire sufficiently his dead Christ[212], of which we have a plaster
cast in our Royal Museum. The authenticity of the sculptured figure
of the Madonna in the Frauenkirche at Bruges, a consummate work, is
disputed by certain critics. Speaking for myself, nothing has ever
more impressed me than the tomb of the Count of Nassau at Breda[213].
The Count reposes with his lady, life-size figures both in alabaster,
on a slab of black marble. At the angles of this are placed Regulus,
Hannibal, Caesar, and a Roman warrior in a bowing posture, and they
support above their heads a black slab similar to the one beneath.
Could anything be more interesting than to see a character such as that
of Caesar placed before our eyes by Michelangelo. Even when dealing
with religious subjects the genius, the power of imagination, the
force, thoroughness, boldness, in short all the extraordinary resources
of this master tended, in the characteristic production of his art, to
combine the plastic principle of the ancients with the type of intimate
soul-life which we find in romantic art. But as we have seen, the
direction as a rule of the Christian emotion, where the religious point
of view and idea are paramount, is not towards the classical form of
ideality, which primarily and with highest results is the determinant
factor of its sculpture.


From this point we may now fix the transition from sculpture to another
principle of artistic apprehension and presentment, which requires for
its realization another sensuous material. In classical sculpture it
was the objective and _substantive_ individuality in its human shape,
which constituted the vital core, and the human form was placed thereby
at such a lofty level, that it was in fact retained in its abstract
simplicity as the beauty of form, and as such converted to the Divine
image. Under such a one-sided aspect of content and representation man
is not fully himself in his _concrete humanity._ The anthropomorphism
of art remains in its incomplete state in ancient sculpture. For that
which fails us here is humanity in its _objective universality_, a
universality which we identify at the same time with the principle
of _absolute personality_, quite as much as that aspect of it which
in common parlance is called human, in other words the phase of
_subjective singularity_, human weakness, contingency, caprice,
immediate sense life, passion, and so forth, a phase or factor which
must be taken up into that universality in order that the _entire
individuality_, the subject of conscious life, that is, in its entire
range, and in the infinite compass of its reality, may appear as the
vital principle both of the mode of presentment and its content.

In classical sculpture one of these phasal aspects, that is the human
from the side of immediate Nature, is in part only brought before us
in animals, quasi-animals, fauns and the like, without being reflected
back again into the personal life of soul, and stated as a negation
of that; and also in some measure this type of sculpture only accepts
the factor of particularity, only directs its interest to external
things in the _pleasing style_, in the countless sallies of delight and
conceits, in which the antique plastic lives and moves. Owing to this
we wholly fail to meet here the profundity and infinity which lies at
the root of man's personal life, that inmost reconciliation of Spirit
with the Absolute, that ideal union of humanity with the humanity of
God. No doubt Christian sculpture is the instrument which makes visible
the content which here enters the domain of art more consonant with the
above disregarded principle. But it is precisely its modes of art's
embodiment which expose to us the fact that sculpture is insufficient
for such a content, that other modes of art will infallibly arise able
to reach in very truth the mark which sculpture failed in its work to
achieve. We may collectively unite these new arts under the title of
the _romantic arts._ They are indeed the modes most adequate to express
the romantic type of art.

[Footnote 111: _Sein subjektives Fürsichseyn._ Subjective independence
of material conditions. Self-consciousness.]

[Footnote 112: _Rückkehr in sich._ Into itself, its own ideal world of
conscious thought and emotion.]

[Footnote 113: _In seine innerliche Subjektivität._ That is, what is
essentially the world of soul. Spirit here stands for mind and _Gemüth_
or emotional life.]

[Footnote 114: _Ein Sichzeichen des Geistes_, _i.e._, are signs of
itself which mind evolves in a mode of externality.]

[Footnote 115: Here called generically _Baukunst._]

[Footnote 116: _Die plastische Deutlichkeit._]

[Footnote 117: _Das subjektive Innere, i.e._, spiritual experience of a
personality.]

[Footnote 118: That is in comparison with the fully independent arts.]

[Footnote 119: That is to say it must be a distinct object of the
senses.]

[Footnote 120: _In sich materiell particularisirt._ We see Hegel's
false notions of the theory of colour influencing his expression. It is
really false to say that sculpture has nothing to do with colour. Light
and shadow at least are necessary and colour is implied.]

[Footnote 121: That is, lets fall some of its aspects.]

[Footnote 122: _Das Gemüth._ Strictly the more emotional part.]

[Footnote 123: Between the extremes of architecture and poetry or
music.]

[Footnote 124: Lit., "Without being manifested in its return to itself
as ideal substance."]

[Footnote 125: Unparticularized, that is in its essential experience.]

[Footnote 126: He explains this lower down. The concentrated point is
in the flash of the eye. Perhaps here he merely refers to it generally.]

[Footnote 127: _Als Innerlichkeit._]

[Footnote 128: This is only partially true of bronze, and any marble
that has had weathering.]

[Footnote 129: By _grosse geistige Sinn_ Hegel means no doubt more than
"taste." He refers to the deep-rooted instinct in the genius of the
race.]

[Footnote 130: Meyer, "History of the Plastic Arts among the Greeks,"
vol. I, p. 119.]

[Footnote 131: _Die acht plastische Mitte._ Hegel means that plastic
art comes to its most important focus, as it were, between the arts
that either incline too much to the material as in architecture, or to
ideality as in poetry.]

[Footnote 132: _Näheren._]

[Footnote 133: The reader must always bear in mind that Spirit
(_Geist_) includes intelligence. It might no doubt in some places be
better translated as "mind."]

[Footnote 134: _Substantielle._ That is what is the concrete fulness of
real spiritual content.]

[Footnote 135: _Als Subjekt._]

[Footnote 136: _Besonderheit._ The isolated self of the _Aufklärung._]

[Footnote 137: _Zufälligen Selbstischkeit._ Contingent selfness. The
ego above described.]

[Footnote 138: _Ohne innere Subjektivität als solche._ That is, in the
wholly abstract sense.]

[Footnote 139: _Begriff_ appears to refer here to the notion of animal
life generally, rather than the generic notion in its narrow sense.]

[Footnote 140: _Innern Strukture._ The structure that ideally motives
the whole.]

[Footnote 141: _Dieses ideelle einfache Fürsichseyn des leiblichen._
Apparently this includes the vegetable world.]

[Footnote 142: _Macht sich._ That is an operative principle in the
working out of.]

[Footnote 143: _Als Seele_, _i.e._, in the narrow sense of the
expression above defined.]

[Footnote 144: _Pathognomik_, _i.e._, the science, that is, of the
expression of the passions, together with that of their physiological
aspect.]

[Footnote 145: Lit., contingent subjectivity.]

[Footnote 146: Hegel's expression _Mienen_ is not easy to translate
by a single English equivalent. It signifies the passing look--the
general variety of facial expression as contrasted with the permanent
expression of substantive character.]

[Footnote 147: _Den eigentlichen Mienen._ The definite aspects of the
face which express relatively permanent states of soul-life.]

[Footnote 148: Persists in the line of direction of the Ideal.]

[Footnote 149: _Die schöne freie Nothwendigkeit._]

[Footnote 150: By _Witzigkeit_ I presume Hegel means oddity and
funniness of every kind--perhaps "humorous eccentricity" would
interpret it.]

[Footnote 151: I think this gives the sense, though the language is
rather confused because his image is that of invention attaching itself
to what is already presented rather than creating a form that is based
on external suggestion.]

[Footnote 152: The celebrated courtesan. She entered the sea with
dishevelled hair at a celebrated festival at Eleusis. She had a statue
of gold at Delphi.]

[Footnote 153: _Eigentlich Vorstellung ist._]

[Footnote 154: _Statarisch._ That is, modelled on historical
associations or the results of former work; perhaps "eclectic" would be
a better word.]

[Footnote 155: _Der geistige Ton._]

[Footnote 156: _De varietate nationum_, § 60.]

[Footnote 157: As in savage animals.]

[Footnote 158: The word _system_ is used, which is not readily
translated in this context, though I have adopted the literal
translation lower down.]

[Footnote 159: _Mildrung._ The softening of its severe lines.]

[Footnote 160: Werke, vol. IV, bk. 5, c. 5, § 20, p. 198.]

[Footnote 161: It is difficult to see what Hegel means exactly here by
_Schnitte._ I suppose he means the external lines of the eye-socket.]

[Footnote 162: _L.c._ § 29.]

[Footnote 163: _Flügeln_ must here refer to the orifices of the nose.]

[Footnote 164: Winck, _l.c._ § 37, p. 218.]

[Footnote 165: Hegel's word is _habitus._ Customary attitude and mode
of connection appears to be included.]

[Footnote 166: _Gebehrde_, a word somewhat difficult to translate here.
It seems to combine the ideas of gesture and pose.]

[Footnote 167: The reference is, of course, to painting and indirectly
to poetry.]

[Footnote 168: _Ein in sich versunkenes Dastehn oder Liegen._]

[Footnote 169: _Gediegenheit._]

[Footnote 170: See vol. I, pp. 268-272.]

[Footnote 171: _Das höhere Innere._]

[Footnote 172: _Das geistige Bewusstseyn._]

[Footnote 173: Her. I, _c._ 10.]

[Footnote 174: This vitality.]

[Footnote 175: Vol. V, bk. 2, p. 503.]

[Footnote 176: Vol. V, bk. 6, ch. 2, p. 56.]

[Footnote 177: Mus. Pio-Clement. Tom. 2, pp. 89-92.]

[Footnote 178: Winck., vol. II, p. 491.]

[Footnote 179: Vol. IV, bk. 5, ch. I, § 29.]

[Footnote 180: I am not sure what is exactly meant by _gekrümmt_ here.
The description is not very lucid.]

[Footnote 181: IV, 5, 2, § 10.]

[Footnote 182: Winck., vol. VII, p, 78.]

[Footnote 183: Winck., vol, VII, p. 80.]

[Footnote 184: Vol. IV, p. 78.]

[Footnote 185: Vol. II, § I.]

[Footnote 186: Winck., vol. IV, p. 116.]

[Footnote 187: Such is, I think, the general meaning, though the
literal translation of the words _als den Figuren sämmtlich die
Einfachheit abgeht_ is not quite clear. I take the word _sämmtlich_ to
mean "taken collectively as separate units."]

[Footnote 188: Winck., Werk., vol. V, p. 389. Anmerk.]

[Footnote 189: Meyer's _Gesch. der bild. Künste bei den Griechen_, vol.
I, p. 60.]

[Footnote 190: Pausanias, II, 30.]

[Footnote 191: I presume this is the meaning of _Bildnerei._]

[Footnote 192: I am not sure whether _Angaben_ refers to actual
sketches, or merely other evidence handed down.]

[Footnote 193: In the year 1829.]

[Footnote 194: That is in the accuracy of mechanical line as the result
of machine.]

[Footnote 195: _Sanftes Verlaufen, i.e._, passage from one plane
surface to another. _Zusammen-stossen_ appears to me the melting
together of lines, _i.e._, conjunction, fusion.]

[Footnote 196: Meyer's _Gesch._, vol. I, p. 279.]

[Footnote 197: Vol. III, Vorr. XXVII.]

[Footnote 198: That is in 1821.]

[Footnote 199: _Statarischen_, scholastic, eclectic.]

[Footnote 200: "De Leg.," Lib. II, ed. Bekk., III, 2, p. 239.]

[Footnote 201: Herod, II, _c._ 167.]

[Footnote 202: Vol. III, bk. 2, ch. I, p. 74.]

[Footnote 203: Vol. III, bk. 2, ch. 2, pp. 77-84.]

[Footnote 204: "Cours d'Archéologie par Raoul-Rochette,
1-12me leçon," Paris, 1828.]

[Footnote 205: I am not sure if this rightly gives the sense of the
words _Die Gestalten bei strenger Zeichnung gedrungen._]

[Footnote 206: Ueber die Aeg. Bildwerke mit kunstgesch. Anmerk. von
Schelling, 1817.]

[Footnote 207: That is, it does not approach Egyptian type so nearly.]

[Footnote 208: Hegel's words mean this, I suppose, though the German is
somewhat compressed and not very clear as it stands.]

[Footnote 209: Vol. III, ch. 2, § 10, p. 188 and Pl. VI, A.]

[Footnote 210: Hegel uses the unusual word _Begeistigung_, I presume
somewhat in the sense of _Begeisterung_, signifying the personal
inspiration of the artist.]

[Footnote 211: This appears to be the meaning of the difficult
phrase that sculpture supplies _das gesammte Daseyn_, _i.e._, is the
affiliating link of the collective body. All the different arts are
stamped with its characteristics.]

[Footnote 212: I presume the Pietà in St. Peter's.]

[Footnote 213: Hegel's "Vermisch. Schriften," vol. II, p. 561.]




SUBSECTION III


THE ROMANTIC ARTS


The source of the general transition from sculpture to the other arts
is, as we have seen, the principle of _subjectivity_, which now invades
art's content and its manner of exposition. What we understand here by
subjectivity is the notion of an intelligence which ideally exists in
free independence, withdrawing itself from objective reality into its
own more intimate domain, a conscious life which no longer concentrates
itself with its corporeal attachment in a unity which is without
division.

There follows from this transition, therefore, that dissolution,
that dismemberment of the unity which is held together in the
substantive and objective presence of sculpture, in the focus of its
tranquillity and all-inclusive rondure and as such is apprehended
in fusion. We may consider this breach from two points of view. On
the one hand sculpture, in respect to its _content_, entwined what
is substantive in Spirit directly with the individuality, which is
as yet not self-introspective, in the exclusive unit of a personal
consciousness, and treated thereby an _objective_ unity in the sense in
which objectivity suggests what is intrinsically infinite, immutable,
true--that substantive aspect, in short, which has no part in mere
caprice and singularity. And from another point of view sculpture
failed to do more than discharge this spiritual content wholly within
the corporeal frame as the vital and significant instrument of the
same, and by doing so create a _new objective_ unity in _that_ meaning
of the expression, under which objectivity, as contrasted with all that
is wholly ideal and subjective, indicates real and external existence.

When we find, then, that these two aspects, at first thus reconciled
in one another by sculpture, are separated, that which we call
_self-introspective_ spirituality is not merely placed in opposition
to that which is _external_, but also, in the domain of what is
_spiritual_ throughout, what is substantive and objective in that
medium, in so far as it no longer continues to be retained in what
is substantial individuality simply, is dissevered from the vital
particularity of the conscious life, and all these aspects which have
been hitherto held together in perfect fusion are relatively to each
other and independently free, so that they can be treated too by art as
free in this very way.

1. If we examine the content, then, we have through the above process,
on the one hand, the substantive being of what is spiritual, the world
of truth and eternity, the _Divine_ in fact, which however here, in
accordance with the principle of particularity, is comprehended and
realized by art as a subject of consciousness, or as personality, as
the Absolute, which is self-conscious in the medium of its infinite
spiritual substance, as God in His Spirit and Truth. And in contrast to
Him we have asserted the worldly and _human_ condition of soul-life,
which, regarded now as no longer in direct union with the intrinsic
substance of Spirit, can unfold itself in all the fulness of that
particularity which is simply human, and thereby permits the heart of
man wherever and whenever represented[214], the entire wealth of our
human mortality, to be open to art's acceptance.

The meeting-ground upon which these two aspects once more coalesce is
the principle of _subjectivity_, which is common to both. The Absolute
is, in virtue of this, disclosed to us to the full extent a living,
actual, and equally human subject of consciousness, as the human and
finite conscious life, viewed as spiritual, makes vital and real the
absolute substance and truth, or in other words simply the Divine
Spirit. The new bond of unity which is thus secured no longer, however,
supports the character of that former immediacy, such as sculpture
disclosed it; rather it is a union and reconciliation which asserts
itself essentially as a mediation of opposed factors, and whose very
notion makes its apprehension only possible in the realms of _the
soul_ and ideal life.

I have already, when the general subdivision of our science in its
entire compass offered an opportunity for doing so, laid it down, that
if the Ideal of sculpture sets forth in a sensuously present image the
essential solidity[215] of the individuality of the God in the bodily
form alone able to express that substance, the community thereupon
essentially confronts such an object as the intelligent reflection of
that unity. Spirit, however, that is wholly self-absorbed can only
present the substance of Spirit under the mode of Spirit, in other
words as a conscious subject, and receives thereby straightway the
principle of the spiritual reconciliation of individual subjective
life with God. As particular self, however, man also possesses his
contingent natural existence, and a sphere of finite interests, needs,
aims, and passions, whether it be more extensive or restricted, in
which he is able to realize and satisfy his nature quite as much
as he can in the same be absorbed in those ideas of God and the
reconciliation with God.

2. _Secondly_, if we consider the aspect of the representation on its
_external_ side, we find that it is by virtue of its particularity
at once self-subsistent and possesses a claim to stand forth in
this independence, and this for the reason that the principle of
subjectivity excludes that correspondence in its immediacy, and
disallows to itself the absolute interfusion of the ideal and
external aspects in every part and relation of it. For the subjective
principle is here precisely that which comes to be, in self-subsistent
seclusion, that inward life which retires from real or objective
existence into the realm of the Ideal, the world of emotion, soul,
heart, and contemplation[216]. This ideal life is manifested no doubt
in its external form, under a mode, however, in which the external
form itself appears, that is to say it is _merely_ the outer shell
of a conscious subject that is growing _independently_ within. The
hard and fast association of the bodily form and the life of Spirit
in classical sculpture is not therefore carried to the point of an
all-dissolving unity[217] but in so light and slack a coalescence
that both aspects, albeit neither is present without the other,
preserve in this connection their separate independence relatively to
the other, or at least, if a profounder union is really secured, the
spiritual aspect as that inward principle, which asserts its presence
over and beyond its suffusion with the objective or external material,
becomes the essentially illuminating focus of all. And it results from
this that, to promote the enhancement of this relatively increased
self-subsistency of the objective and material aspect,--we have in
our mind mainly, no doubt, the extreme case of the representation
of external Nature and its objects, even in their isolated and most
exclusive particularity,--yet even in such a case and despite all
realism in the presentment it is necessary that such counterfeits
should permit a reflection of the artist's soul to be visible on
their face. They should in other words suffer us to see the sympathy
of Spirit in the manner of their artistic realization, and therewith
discover to us the life of soul, the ideal life which is the vital
breath of their co-ordination, the penetration of man's emotional life
itself into this extreme type of external environment.

Speaking, then, generally, we may affirm that the principle of
subjectivity carries with it as its inevitable result, on the one hand,
that the wholly unconstrained union of Spirit with its corporeal frame
should be given up, and the bodily aspect be asserted in a more or less
negative relation over against the former, in order that the ideality
of Spirit may be emphasized on the front of that external reality, and,
on the other hand, in order to procure free scope for every separate
feature of the variety, division, and movement of what is spiritual no
less than what directly appeals to man's senses.

3. And, _thirdly_, this new principle has to establish itself in the
sensuous material, of which art avails itself in its new manifestations.

(_a_) The material hitherto was matter simply, that is, the material
of gravity in the content of its spatial extension, and no less was it
form under its simplest and most abstract definition of configuration.
Now that the _subjective_ and at the same time the essentially
particularized content of the soul is imported into this material,
the spatial totality of such material will without question in some
measure suffer loss in order that the former content may appear
upon its face with its ideal mintage[218], and contrariwise will be
converted from its immediately material guise to an appearance which
is the product of _mind_ or spirit; and, on the other hand, both in
respect to form and its externally sensuous visibility, all the detail
of what appears will be necessarily emphasized in the way that the new
content requires. Art is, however, even now compelled in the first
instance to move in the realm of the visible and sensuous, because,
following the above course of our inquiry, though no doubt the inward
or ideal is conceived as self-introspection[219], yet it has further to
appear as a return of its own quality to itself from this very realm
of _externality_ and _material shape_, in short, as a return of itself
to itself, which can only from the earliest point of view be portrayed
in the objective existence of Nature and the corporeal existence of
Spirit's life.

The _first_ among the romantic arts will consequently have as its
proper function to assert its content in the visible forms of the
external human figure and the natural shape wherever disclosed,
without, however, remaining bound to the sensuous ideality and abstract
range of sculpture. This is the task and province of _painting._

(_b_) In so far, however, as we find in painting for its fundamental
type, not as in sculpture the entirely perfected resolution of the
spiritual idea and the bodily form in one content, but rather the
predominant exposition of the self-absorbed ideality of soul, to that
extent the spatial figure in extension is not a truly adequate medium
of expression for the inward life of Spirit. Art therefore abandons the
previous medium of configuration, and in the place of spatial forms
employs the medium of _tone_ in the limited duration of its sounds;
tone in fact by its assertion of the material of Space under a purely
negative relation secures for itself a finite existence nearer to
ideality, and corresponds to that soul-life, which in accordance with
its own inward experience conceives and grasps that life as emotion,
and then expresses that content, as it enforces its claim in the unseen
movement of heart and soul, in the procession of tones. The second
art, therefore, which follows this principle of exposition is that of
_music._

(_c_) Thereby, however, music merely is placed at the opposite
extreme, and, in contrast to the plastic arts, both in respect to its
content and relatively to its sensuous material, and the mode of its
expression, cleaves fast to the formless content of its pure ideality.
It is, however, the function of art, in virtue of its essential
notion, to disclose to the senses not _merely_ the soul-life, but the
manifestation and actuality of the same in its _external reality._
When, however, art has abandoned the process of veritably informing
the real and consequently visible form of objective existence, and has
applied its activity to the element itself of soul-life, the objective
reality, to which it once more recurs, can no longer be the reality as
such in itself, but one which is merely _imagined_ and prefigured to
the mind or sensitive soul. The presentment, moreover, as being the
communication to Spirit of creative mind working in its own domain
is compelled to use the _sensuous_ material united to its disclosure
simply as a mere means for such communication. It must consequently
lower its denomination to that of a sign which of itself is without
significance. It is at this point that _poetry_ or the art of speech,
confronts us, which now incorporates its art-productions in the medium
of a speech elaborated to an instrument of artistic service, precisely
as intelligence already in ordinary speech makes intelligible to
spiritual life all that it carries in itself. And, moreover, for the
reason that it is able thus to unfold the _entire_ content of Spirit in
its own medium, it is the _universal_ art, which belongs indifferently
to all the types of art, and is only excluded in that case where the
spiritual life which is still unrevealed to itself in its highest
form of content is merely able to make itself aware of its own dim
presentiments in the form and configuration of that which is external
and alien to itself.




CHAPTER I


THE ART OF PAINTING


The most adequate object of sculpture is the tranquil self-absorption
of personality in its essential substance, the character whose
spiritual individuality is in the fullest degree displayed on the face
of its corporeal presentment, making the sensuous frame, which reveals
this incorporation of spirit, adequate to such an embodiment of mind
wholly in its aspects of external form. The sightless look has as yet
failed to concentrate at one point the supreme focus of ideal life,
the vital breath of soul, the heart of most intimate feeling, and is
as yet without spiritual movement, without the deliberate distinction
between a world without it and a life within. It is on account of this
that the sculpture of the ancients leaves us in some degree unmoved.
We either do not remain long before it, or our delay is rather due
to a scientific investigation of the fine modifications of form and
detail which it displays. We cannot blame mankind if they are unable
to take the profound interest in fine works of sculpture which such
works deserve. To know how to value them is a study in itself. At
first glance we either experience no attraction, or are immediately
conscious of the general character of the whole. To come to closer
quarters we have first to discover what it is that continues to supply
such an interest. An enjoyment, however, which is only the possible
result of study, thought, learning, and a wide experience is not the
immediate object of art. And, moreover, the essential demand we make
that a character should develop, should pass into the field of action
and affairs, and that the soul should thereby meet with divisions
and-grow deeper, this, after all our journey in search of the delight
which this study of the works of antique sculpture may bring to us,
remains unsatisfied. For this reason we inevitably feel more at home
in painting. In other words we are at once and for the first time
conscious in it of the principle of our finite and yet essentially
infinite spiritual substance, the life and breath of our own existence;
we contemplate in its pictures the very spark which works and is active
in ourselves. The god of sculpture remains for sense-perception an
object simply; in painting, on the contrary, the Divine appears as
itself essentially the living subject of spiritual life, which comes
into direct relations with the community, and makes it possible for
each individual thereof to place himself in spiritual communion and
reconcilement with Him. The substantive character of such a Divinity
is not, as in sculpture, an individual that persists in the inflexible
bond of its own limitations[220], but is one which expands into and is
differentiated within the community itself.

The same principle generally differentiates the individual from his
own bodily frame and external environment to quite as considerable an
extent as it brings the soul into mediated relation with the same.
Within the compass of this subjective differentiation--regarded as the
independent assertion of human individuality as opposed to God, Nature,
and the inward and external life of other persons, regarded also
conversely as the most intimate relation, the most secure communion of
God with the community, and of individual men with God, the environment
of Nature and the infinite variety of the wants, purposes, passions,
and activities of human existence--falls the entire movement and
vitality, which sculpture, both in respect to its content and its
means of contributing expression, suffers to escape; and it adds an
immeasurable wealth of new material and a novel breadth and variety
of artistic treatment which hitherto was absent. Briefly, then, this
principle of subjectivity is on the one hand the basis of division,
on the other a principle of mediation and synthesis, so that painting
unites in one and the same art what hitherto formed the subject-matter
of two different arts, namely, the external environment, which
architecture treated artistically, and the essentially spiritual form,
which was elaborated by sculpture. Painting places its figures on the
background of a Nature or an architectural environment, both of which
are the products of its own invention in precisely the same sense,
and is able to make this external material in both of these aspects
by virtue of its emotional powers and soul a counterfeit within its
ideal realm, in the degree that it understands how best to place it in
relation and harmony with the spirit of the figures that live and move
therein.

Such is the principle of the new advance that painting contributes to
the representative powers of art.

If we inquire now the course which the more detailed examination of our
subject necessitates the following division will serve us.

In the _first_ place we shall have yet further to consider the _general
character_ which the art of painting must necessarily receive in
accordance with its notion and relatively both to its specific content,
the material that is made consonant with this content and finally the
artistic treatment which is thereby involved.

_Secondly_, we have to develop the _separate_ modes of definition,
which are contained in the principle of such a content and manner
of presentation, and more succinctly fix the boundaries of the
subject-matter which is adapted to painting no less than the modes of
its conception, composition, and technical qualities as painting.

_Thirdly_, painting is itself _broken up_ into _distinct schools_ of
painting by reason of the above divisions of matter, technique, and so
forth, which, as in the other arts, have their own phases of historical
development.



1. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE ART OF PAINTING


After having thus emphasized as the essential principle of painting
that world of the soul in its vitality of feeling, conception, and
action cast in embrace round heaven and earth, in the variety of its
manifestations and external disclosures within the bodily frame, and
affirmed on this account that the focus, and centre of this art is to
be sought for in romantic and Christian art, it may immediately occur
to the reader that not only do we find excellent artists among the
ancients, who are as distinguished in this art as others of their
age in sculpture--and we cannot praise them more highly--but also
that other peoples, notably the Chinese, Hindoos, and Egyptians, have
secured distinction in the direction of painting. Without question the
art of painting is, by virtue of the variety of the objects treated and
the particular type of its manner of execution, less[221] restricted
in the range of nations that exemplify its pursuit. This, however, is
not the point at issue. If our question is simply that of the historian
doubtless we find single examples of one type[222] of painting or
another have been produced at the most varied epochs by the nations
already mentioned and others. It is, however, a profounder question
altogether when we ask ourselves what is the _principle_ of painting,
examine the means of its exposition and in doing so seek to establish
that content, which by virtue of its _own nature_ is emphatically
consonant with the _painter's art_ as such and its mode of presentment,
so that we can affirm the form thus selected to be wholly adequate to
the content in question. We have but little left us of the painting of
the ancient world, examples, in fact, which we see can neither have
formed part of the most consummate work of antiquity in this respect,
nor have been the product of its most famous masters. At least all that
has been discovered through excavation in private houses is of this
character. It is impossible, however, not to admire the delicacy of
taste, the suitability of the objects, selected, the clearness of the
grouping, and, we may add, the lightness of the handling and freshness
of the colouring, excellences which without doubt were present in the
originals of such pictures in a far higher degree, in imitation of
which, for example, the wall paintings in the so-called house of the
tragedian at Pompeii have been executed. We have, unfortunately, no
examples of the works of famous masters. Whatever degree of excellence,
however, these more original productions attained, we may none the
less affirm that the ancients could not, alongside of the unmatchable
beauty of their sculptures, have lifted the art of painting to the
level of artistic elaboration as painting which we find secured in the
Christian era of the Middle Ages, and pre-eminently in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. And we may assume this to be so on the
philosophical ground that the most genuine heart of the Greek outlook
is, in a degree which is inapplicable to the other arts, concordant
with the root and fragrance of that which sculpture and sculpture
alone can supply. And in art we are not entitled to separate spiritual
content from its mode of presentation. If, having this clear to our
minds, we inquire how it is that painting only reached its most
characteristic consummation through the content of the romantic type of
art, we can but reply that it is precisely the intimacy of feeling, the
blessedness[223] and pain that give to us the soul of this profounder
content, whose demand is for such a vital infusion, which has paved the
way to and in fact been the cause of this higher perfection of painting.

As an example of what I mean I will but recall to recollection one
particular instance already cited, namely, that we borrow from
Raoul-Rochette of the treatment of Isis carrying Horns on her knees. In
general the subject is identical with the Madonna pictures, a Divine
mother and her child. The difference of handling and conception in the
two cases, however, is immeasurable. The Egyptian Isis, as we find
her thus situated on bas-reliefs, has nothing maternal about her, no
tenderness, no trait of soul or emotion, such as is not even wholly
absent in the stiffer Byzantine pictures of the Madonna. And if we
think of Raphael, or any other great Italian master, what results have
they not achieved from this subject of the Mother and Christ-babe!
What depth of emotion, what spiritual life, what intimacy and wealth
of heart, what exaltation and endearment, how human and yet how
entirely filled with divine spirit is the soul which speaks to us
from every line and feature. And under what infinite variety of forms
and situations is this one subject presented to us even by particular
masters taken singly and still more by different artists. The mother,
the pure Virgin, the physical, the spiritual beauty, loftiness and
devotion of love, all this and countless other features are emphasized
in their turn as the main significance of the expression. But chief
of all we find throughout that it is not the sensuous beauty of mere
form, but the animate life of Spirit, by virtue of which artistic
genius no less than mastery of execution is asserted and secured. Now
it is quite true that Greek art has passed a long way beyond Egyptian
art, and we may add that it has made the expression of man's soul an
object aimed for. But it was not capable of grasping that intimacy
and depth of emotion which is discovered to us in the Christian type
of expression, and indeed was careful, in accordance with its entire
character, not to attach itself to such intensity of feeling. Take, for
instance, the case I have more than once already cited of the faun, who
carries the youthful Bacchus in his arms; it is, no doubt, expressive
of extremely tender and amiable qualities. The nymphs are equally so
who tend upon Bacchus, a situation which is depicted by a gem in a
very beautiful group of figures. In such cases we have an analogous
sentiment of unconstrained love for a child, equally free from passion
and yearning; but, even putting on one side the maternal relation[224],
the expression possesses in no respect the intimacy, the depth of soul,
which confront us in Christian paintings. The ancients may very well
have painted excellent portraits, but neither their way of conceiving
natural fact, nor the point of view from which they regarded human and
divine conditions was of the kind that, in the case of painting, an
infusion of soul-life could be expressed with such intimate intensity
as was possible in Christian painting.

The demand of painting, however, for this more personal type of
inspiration is a result of its very material. In other words, the
sensuous medium in which it moves is an extension on pure surface, and
the display of form by means of the use of _diversified_ colours, by
virtue of which process the objective shape, as we have it presented
to the vision, is converted to an artificial illusion adopted by a
spiritual agency[225] in the place of the actual form of fact. It is
part of the principle of such a treatment of material that which is
external should not ultimately retain its validity in its independent
native existence, even in the modified form it takes as a vital
product of human hands, but should in this form of realization be
lowered as reality to a purely phenomenal reflex of the _inward_
soul-life itself, which seeks to contemplate itself independently as
such. When we look into the heart of the matter we shall find that
the advance from the rounded form of sculpture amounts to nothing
less than the above statement. It is the soul-life, the ideality
of Spirit which undertakes to express itself in an intimate way
through the counterfeit of the objective world. Add to this, in the
second place, that the surface on which the art of painting makes
its objects visible, opens independently the path to the employment
of a surrounding background and other complex relations; and colour
too, regarded as the articulation of that which appears, requires
a correspondent differentiation of soul-life, which can only be
rendered clearly through the definition of expression, situation,
and action, and consequently makes necessary variety, movement, and
the detailed exposition of both the inward and external life. This
principle of inwardness[226] taken alone, which at the same time in
its actual manifestation is associated with the variety of external
existence and is cognizable on the face of such particular existence
as an essentially complete and independent complex of conditions, we
have already seen to be the principle of the romantic type of art, in
whose configuration and mode of presentation consequently the medium
of painting discovers in a unique way its _wholly adequate object._
Conversely we may affirm at the same time that romantic art, when
the question is actually one of definite works of art, must seek for
material which is consonant with its content, and in the first instance
it finds such in painting, which consequently remains more or less of
a formal character when dealing with all objects and compositions not
of this type[227]. Granting, then, the fact that we find outside the
Christian paintings an Oriental, Greek, and Roman school of painting,
yet the real centre and focus of all is none the less the elaboration
which this art secured within the boundaries of romantic art. We can
only speak of Oriental and Greek painting in the same kind of way
as we did when, despite our main thesis that sculpture attained its
highest crown of perfection in the classical Ideal, we referred to a
subordinate Christian type of sculpture. In other words we are forced
to admit that the art of painting first apprehends its content in the
material of the romantic type of art, which completely corresponds to
its instruments and its modes, and consequently that it was only after
the treatment of such material that it discovered how best to use and
elaborate in every direction all the means at its disposal.

Following now the course of the above remarks in a wholly general
way we have to observe as follows in connection with the _content_,
_material_, and _artistic mode_ of treatment of painting.

(_a_) The fundamental definition of the _content_ of painting is, as we
have seen, subjectivity as an independent process[228].

(_α_) In this process, looking at it from the point of view of a
_reflex of soul-life_, individuality must not wholly pass into the
universality its substance, but must on the contrary disclose how
it retains that content as a distinctive personality[229], and
possesses and expresses its inward life, that is the vitality of its
own conception and feeling in the same; neither should the external
form be wholly dominated by the ideal individuality as is the case
in sculpture. For the principle of subjectivity, albeit that it
permeates the external material as the mode of objectivity adequate to
express it, is notwithstanding likewise an identity which withdraws
itself into itself out of that objective domain, and by virtue of
this self-seclusion is relatively to that objective aspect neutral,
leaving it quite untrammelled. Just as therefore, on the spiritual
side of the content, the particularity of the personal life is not
set forth in direct union with its substance and universality, but is
essentially reflected as the culminating feature of its independent
embodiment[230], so, too, in the objective envisagement of form, the
particularity and universality of the same are carried from their
previous plastic union[231] to a predominance of the individual aspect,
and indeed of comparatively accidental and indifferent features, and
in a manner much the same as that which, in the reality of sense
experience, is the prevailing character of all phenomena.

(_β_) A _further_ important point is that connected with the range
of _scope_ that is permitted to the art of painting in virtue of its
principle with regard to the objects to be thus presented.

The free principle of subjectivity suffers on the one hand the entire
field of natural objects, and every department of human activity to
remain in its substantive mode of existence; on the other, it is
capable of entering into fusion with all possible detail, and creating
therefrom a content of its own ideal life, of rather we should say that
only in this interfusion with concrete actuality does it assert itself
as concrete and vital in its products. Consequently it is possible for
the painter to import a wealth of material into the realm occupied by
his artistic works, which remains outside, the reach of the sculptor.
The entire world of the religious idea, conceptions of heaven and hell,
the history of Christ, his disciples and saints, external Nature, all
that concerns humanity down to the most fugitive of situations and
characters, all this material and more can find a place here. For as
we have seen all that pertains to the detail, caprice, and accidental
features of human need and interest is affected by this principle,
which at once strives to comprehend and compose it.

(_γ_) And along with this fact we have as its _corollary_ that painting
makes the _soul_ of man itself the subject of its creative work. All
that is alive within the soul is present in ideal form, if it is,
when we consider its content, at once objective and absolute in the
abstract sense[232]. For the emotional life of soul can without
question carry the universal within its content, a content, however,
which, as feeling, does not retain the form of this universality,
but appears under the mode as I, this individual person--I know my
identity therein and feel the same. In order to educe and set forth
this objective content as objective, I must forget myself. In this way
the painter no doubt reveals to our sight the ideal substance of soul
in the form of external objects, but the truly real content which it
expresses is the personal soul that feels. For which reason painting,
from the point of view of form, is unable to offer such distinctive
envisagements of the Divine as sculpture, but only ideas of less
defined character such as belong to the emotions. It may appear as a
contradiction to this position that we find again and again selected
as subjects of the paintings of masters, who stand without question
in the highest rank, the external environment of mankind, mountains,
valleys, meadows, brooks, trees, ships, buildings, their interiors,
in short earth, sea, and sky. What, however, constitutes the core in
the content of such works of art is not the objects themselves, but
the _vitality_ and soul imported into them by the artist's conception
and execution, his emotional life in fact, which is reflected in his
work, and gives us not merely a counterfeit of external objects, but
therewith his own personality and temperament[233]. And it is precisely
by his doing this that the objects of Nature, as reflected by painting,
even from this realistic point of view, are relatively insignificant,
because the influence of soul-life begins to assert itself in them as
the main significance. In this tendency towards temperament, which, in
the case of objects borrowed from external Nature, may frequently only
amount to a general response emphasized between the two sides, we find
the most important distinction between painting on the one hand and
sculpture and architecture on the other. Painting indeed approximates
in this respect more closely to music and emphasizes here the point of
transition from the plastic arts to that of tone.

(_b_) To proceed to our _second_ main division I have already several
times referred, if only in respect to features of fundamental
importance, to the difference we discover between the sensuous
_material_ of painting and that of sculpture. I will therefore in this
place only touch upon the closer connection which obtains between this
material and the spiritual content which it most notably has to display
to us.

(_α_) The first fact we have to consider in this connection is this
that painting compresses the _three_ dimensions, of Space. Absolute
concentration would be carried to the point, as elimination of
all juxtaposition, and as unrest essentially predicable of such
concentration, as we find it in the point of Time. Such a mode of
negation carried out in its entire result, however, we only meet
with in the art of music. Painting, on the contrary, permits the
spatial relation still to subsist, and only effaces _one_ of the three
dimensions; superficies is made the element of its representations.
This reduction of the three dimensions to level surface is implied
in principle of increasing reality, which is only capable thereby of
asserting itself in spatial relation as such ideal transmutation, owing
to the fact that it does not suffer the complete totality of objective
fact to persist as such, but restricts the same. Ordinarily we are
accustomed to view this reduction as a caprice of the art which amounts
to a defect. What is here sought for, it appears, is that natural
objects in all their naked reality, or spiritual ideas and feelings, by
means of the human body and its postures should be made visible to our
senses for such an aim it is obvious that the surface is insufficient
and inferior to Nature, which appears before us with a completeness
wholly different.

(_αα_) Painting is unquestionably yet more abstract than sculpture in
respect to material conditioned in Space; but this abstraction, remote
as it is from being a purely capricious limitation, or an indication of
human incapacity, is just that which brings about the necessary advance
from sculpture. Even sculpture is not simply an imitation of natural
or physical existence, but a creation of intelligence, which removes
from form all aspects of natural existence which are not in accord
with the definite content it undertakes to present. This elimination
was carried out by sculpture in the case of all colour detail, so that
what remained to it was only the abstraction of material form. In
painting we have the opposite process, its content being the ideality
of soul-life, which can only appear on the face of objective reality,
by a process of self-absorption from that very material[234]. The art
of painting, therefore, no doubt, works for the sense-perception,
but in a way, through which the object which it displays remains no
longer an actual natural existence wholly in Space, but is changed to a
counterfeit creation of intelligence, in which it only so far reveals
its spiritual source as it annuls the actual existence of its object,
recreating it for itself in a purely phenomenal semblance within its
own spiritual realm--for Spirit.

(_ββ_) And to this intent painting must necessarily effect a breach
with the totality of the spatial condition, and there is no reason
for charging to human incapacity this loss of Nature's completeness.
In other words, inasmuch as the object of painting from the point of
view of its spatial existence, is merely a semblance, reflective of
the soul of man, exhibited by art for his spirit, the self-subsistency
of the object as we find it actually in Space is dissolved, and the
object is related in a far more restricted way to the spectator than
is the case in sculpture. A statue is by itself wholly an isolated
object, independent of the spectator, who may place himself where
he pleases; his point of view, his movements, his walking round it,
not one of them affect the work of art as a whole[235]. If this
self-subsistency is to be preserved the sculptured figure must also
have some definite impression to offer each and every point of view.
And this independence of the work must be retained in sculpture for
the reason that its content is the tranquillity, self-seclusion, and
objective presence which, in both an external and ideal sense, reposes
on their own substance. In painting, on the contrary, whose content is
conditioned by an ideal atmosphere, and in fact is composed of ideal
relations essentially particularized, it is precisely this aspect of
discord in a work of art between object and spectator which has to be
emphasized, and yet with a like directness to be resolved in the fact,
that the work, as depicting the ideality of intelligence in its entire
mode of presentation, can be only defined under the assumption that it
stands there related to an individual mind, that is a spectator, and
apart from the same has no self-subsistency. The spectator is assumed
and reckoned to be there from the first, and the work of art is only
intelligible as related to this point of personal contemplation[236].
For such a relation to mere _visibility_ and its reflection upon
an individual consciousness, however, the mere show of reality is
sufficient; or rather the actual totality of the spatial condition is
a defect, because in that case the objects seen retain an independent
existence, and do not appear to be created by Spirit for its own
contemplation. Nature consequently is not entitled to reduce its images
to the plain surface; its objects possess and claim to possess a real
and independent existence. The satisfaction, however, we derive from
painting is not in actual existence, but in the contemplative interest
we receive from the external reproduction of ideal truths, things born
of the soul, and its art therefore dispenses wholly with the need and
apparatus of spatial reality in its complete organization.

(_γγ_) And together with this reduction to the level surface we may
_thirdly_ associate the fact that painting is placed in a still more
remote position to architecture than that occupied by sculpture.
Works of sculpture even where exhibited independently for themselves
in public places or gardens, require some kind of pedestal treated
architectonically, and, in the case of apartments, forecourts, and
halls, either the art of building merely assists in presenting the
statue's fitting environment, or conversely the sculptured figure is
used as the decoration of the building, and between these two thus
related objects we find a close association. Painting, on the contrary,
whether placed in the enclosed apartment, or in public halls, or under
the open sky, is limited to the wall. Originally its function is
simply to fill up empty wall spaces. Among the ancients this original
destination is mainly sufficient, and they decorated in this way the
walls of their temples, and in more recent times also their private
chambers. Gothic architecture, whose main task is the enclosure
under the most grandiose conditions, supplies no doubt still larger
surfaces, or rather the largest possible, yet it is only in the most
ancient mosaics that we find painting is employed as a decoration of
empty spaces, whether in the case of the outside or the interior. The
more recent architecture of the fourteenth century, on the contrary,
fills up its enormous wall surfaces in an architectural manner,
the most imposing example I know of which is the main _façade_ of
Strasbourg cathedral. Here we find that the empty surfaces, excluding
the entrance doors, the rose and other windows, are filled in by the
ornamental work analogous to that of windows traced over the walls,
and decorated by figures of considerable delicacy and variety of form,
so that we have no need here for painting. In the case of religious
architecture, therefore, painting mainly appears in buildings which
begin to approximate to the ancient type of architecture. As a rule,
however, Christian painting is to be distinguished from the arts of
building, and presents its works in independent form, as for example in
large pictures, whether placed in chapels or on high altars. It is true
that here, too, the picture must retain some relation to the character
of the place, which it is destined to fill; for the rest, however, it
is not merely intended to fill up wall spaces, but to hang them as
a work of art independently just as a work of sculpture may do. In
conclusion painting has its use as a decoration of halls and apartments
in public buildings, town halls, palaces, and private houses, in which
respect its association with architecture is once more closely marked,
an association, however, in which its independence as a free art ought
not to be lost.

(_β_) A further necessary ground for the contraction of the spatial
dimensions in painting to bare surface is due to the fact that the art
of painting is concerned to express ideal conditions essentially in
their separation[237], and thereby rich in every kind of particular
character. A mere restriction to the shapes of _spatial_ form, with
which sculpture is able to rest satisfied, vanishes therefore in the
more luxuriant art; for the forms of spatial dimension are the most
abstract in Nature, and an attempt must now be made to seize particular
distinctions, in so far as the demand is now for an essentially more
multifold material. The matter specifically defined in the _physical_
sense is attached to the very principle of presentation in Space,
the differences of which[238], if they are to appear as essential
in the work of art, themselves disclose this fact[239] in the total
configuration of spatial form, which no longer remains the final
mode of presentation, and they are compelled to make a breach in the
complete form of spatial dimensions, in order to cancel the exclusive
appearance of the physical medium. For the dimensions in painting are
not presented by themselves in their actual reality, but are merely by
means of this physical aspect made to appear and be visible as such.

(_αα_) If we further inquire what is the nature of the _physical_
element which the art of painting makes use of we shall find this to be
_Light_, regarding it as that medium which renders all objects whatever
visible.

Previously the sensuous, concrete material of architecture was the
resisting matter of gravity, which more particularly in the art of
building asserted this character of heavy material in its features of
burden, constraint, power to support and be supported, and even in
sculpture still retained such characteristics. Heavy material encumbers
because it does not possess its centre of material unity in itself, but
in something else; and it seeks for this centre and strives towards it,
though it retains its position through the resistance of other bodies,
which become by doing so bodies of support. The principle of light is
an opposite, or extreme, of that material of weight which is not as
yet enclosed within its unity. Whatever else we may predicate of light
it is obvious that it is absolutely devoid of weight and offers no
resistance; rather it is pure identity with itself, and thereby simple
self-relation, the primordial ideality, the original self of Nature. In
light Nature make its start on the path of ideality or inwardness[240],
and is the universal physical ego, which of course is not carried
here to the point of particularity[241], nor has as yet concentrated
itself within the unit of individuality and self-seclusion, yet is
thereby enabled to cancel the bare objectivity and external show of
heavy matter and abstract from the sensuous and spatial totality of the
same[242]. From this aspect of the more _ideal_ quality of light it
becomes the physical principle of the art of painting.

(_ββ_) Light regarded simply as such, however, only exists as _one_
aspect contained in the principle of subjectivity, that is, as this
more ideal identity. In this respect light is manifestation, just that,
which, however, in Nature is only asserted _generally_ as the power of
making objects visible, holding the particular content of that which
it reveals outside itself as an objective world, which is not light,
but rather that which confronts it and consequently is dark. These
objects light renders cognizable under their distinctions of form by
irradiating them, that is, illuminating to a greater or less degree
their obscurity and invisibility, and permitting certain parts to be
more visible, namely, as they approach the spectator, and others, on
the contrary, more obscure as they withdraw from him. For light and
darkness, putting for the present on one side the particular colour of
an object, is generally speaking due to the relative remoteness of the
illuminated objects from us in their specific degree of illumination.
In this direct relation to objectivity light is no longer asserted
simply as light, but as essentially particularized brightness and
obscurity, light and shadow, whose varied manifestations render the
shape and distance of objects from one another intelligible to the
spectator. This is the principle which painting makes use of, because
from the first differentiation is implied in its notion. If we compare
this art in this respect with sculpture and architecture we shall
see that in these latter arts the actual distinctions of spatial
configuration are set forth in their nakedness, and light and shadow
are suffered to retain the ordinary effect which light produces in
Nature relatively to the position of the spectator, so that the rondure
of form is here already independently[243] present and light and
shade, whereby they are rendered visible, are merely a result of that
which was already actually on the spot independently of this further
aspect of their becoming visible. In the art of painting, however,
brightness and darkness together with all their gradations and finest
transitions are themselves part of the fundamental _artistic material_,
and it is a purely _intentional appearance_ they produce of that
medium, which sculpture gives form to in its _native_ state. Light and
shade, in short, the appearance of objects under this illumination, is
effected by art rather than the mere natural light, which consequently
only makes that kind of brightness, darkness, and lighting _visible_,
which are the products of painting. And this it is which constitutes
the positive rationale deduced from the material of the art itself, why
painting does not require three dimensions. Form is the creation of
light and shadow simply, and that form which exists in spatial reality
is superfluous.

(_γγ_) Bright and dark, shadow and light, no less than their interplay
are, however, merely an abstraction, which do not exist in Nature as
such abstraction, and consequently cannot be utilized as sensuous
material. In other words Light, as we have already seen, is related
to its opposite Dark. In this relation both principles have no
self-subsistency apart from each other, but can only be asserted in
their unity, that is, as the interplay of light and dark. The light,
which is in this way essentially impaired and obscured, which, however,
to a like extent transpierces and illumines darkness[244], supplies us
with the principle of _colour_ as the genuine material of painting.
Light in its purity is devoid of colour, it is the pure indeterminacy
of essential identity. Distinction from bare light, a lowering of its
value, is the characteristic of colour, which in contrast to light is
already in some degree obscurity, and together with which the principle
of light is asserted in union. It is consequently an incorrect and
false idea to hold that light is the aggregate result of different
colours, or in other words different degrees of obscuration[245].

Form, distance, limitation, rounded shape, in short, all spatial
relations and distinctions visible in the phenomena of Space are
unfolded in the art of painting entirely by means of colour, the
more ideal principle of which is capable of presenting a more ideal
content and by virtue of its profounder oppositions, the infinite
variety of its transitional gradations and the delicacy of its softest
modulations relatively to the fulness and detail of the objects it
accepts as subject-matter, is possessed of a field for its activity
of the widest range. It is beyond belief what mere colour is able to
accomplish in this art. Two human beings are, for example, something
totally distinct. Either is in his self-conscious identity no less than
his bodily organism an independent and exclusive spiritual and bodily
totality, yet the entire result of this difference is in a picture
reduced to a distinction of colours. In one place some particular
shade of colour ceases, in another a particular one starts up, and by
such means we get everything set before us, shape, distance, play of
posture, expression, what is nearest to sense and what is most akin to
intelligence. And we are not to regard this reduction as a make-shift
and defect. Quite the reverse is the fact; the art of painting
dispensing with the third dimension in no such way, but deliberately
rejecting it in order to set in the place of purely spatial reality the
higher and richer principle of colour.

(_γ_) This wealth enables painting to elaborate in its reproductions
the entire extent of the phenomenal world. Sculpture is more or less
restricted to the stable self-seclusion of individuality. In painting,
however, the individual cannot remain in such limitations of stability
whether regarded in his ideal aspect or relatively to the external
world, but is placed in every kind of varied definition. For on the one
hand, as already pointed out, he is placed in a far closer relation to
the spectator, and on the other he receives a more varied connection
with other individuals and the environment of Nature. A process,
therefore, which merely illuminates semblance of objective fact makes
possible the widest expansion of distances and spaces and the present
of such and all the varied objects that appear in them in one and the
same work of art. Yet it must no less, as a work of art, prove itself
to be a self-contained and unified whole, and exhibit itself in this
synthesis, not simply as an aggregate whose limits and boundaries
are defined by no principle, but rather as a totality whose unified
consistency is due to its own subject-matter.

(_c_) In the _third_ place we have, after this general consideration
of the content and sensuous material of painting, briefly to adduce in
general terms the principle of the _artistic mode_ of treatment adopted
by it.

The art of painting more so than either sculpture or architecture
admits of the two extremes. In the first case prominence is given
to the religious and ethical severity of the conception and
presentation of the ideal beauty of form, and in the second, where the
subject-matter is, taken by itself, insignificant, to the detail of
what it contains and the personal aspect of the creative art. We may
therefore not unfrequently hear two extreme kinds of criticism. Our
critic in the one case apostrophizes the nobility of the object, the
depth and astonishing sufficiency of the conception, the greatness of
the expression, and the boldness of the delineation[246]. And in the
other equal praise is given to the fine and unexampled character of
the painter's treatment of his colour. This contrast is implied in the
very notion of the art; indeed, we may affirm that it is impossible
to unite both aspects on one plane of elaboration. Each must remain
inevitably independent of the other. For painting has shape simply as
such, that is, the forms of spatial limitation, no less than colour
as means contributive to its artistic result, and is placed thereby
midway between the Ideal of the plastic arts and the extreme form of
the direct detail of Nature's reality; by reason of which we get two
distinct types of painting. One, that is the ideal, whose essential
basis is universality; and the other, that which presents particular
objects in all their closeness of detail.

(_α_) In this respect painting must accept, in the first instance, as
sculpture, that which is substantive in the sense that the objects of
religious belief are such, no less than the great events of history,
and its pre-eminent individual characters, albeit it renders visible
this substance in a form wherein the ideal and personal aspect is
emphasized. It is the imposing character, the serious significance
of the action portrayed, or the depth of the soul expressed which is
here of most importance, so that the elaboration and employment of all
the rich artistic means which are within the reach of painting, and
the dexterity, which the wholly consummate use of these means demands
regarded as a _tour de force_ of technique, cannot here be entirely
indicated. In cases of this kind it is the force of the content to be
presented and the absorption in what is essential and substantive in
the same, which tend to drive into the background the overwhelming
facility in the art of painting as that aspect which is less essential.
In this sense, for instance, the Cartoons of Raphael are of invaluable
merit, and fully display the entire excellence of their composition,
although Raphael, even in the case of particular pictures, despite all
his mastery in drawing, and the purity of his ideal, and at the same
time wholly vital personal figures, and the composition he may have
arrived at, most certainly in colour, and all that concerns landscape
and other aspects, is excelled by the Dutch masters. This is yet more
the case with the earlier Italian heroes of art, in contrast to whom
Raphael is to a somewhat similar degree inferior in depth, power, and
ideality of expression, as he surpasses such in the technique of his
craft, in the beauty of vital grouping, in draughtsmanship and the
like[247].

(_β_) Conversely, however, the art of painting, as we have seen, ought
to advance further than this exclusive absorption in the ideal and
infinite content of man's soul-life; its function is equally to assert
the subsistency and freedom of detail, which however incidental it may
be, contributes to the environment and background of the work. In this
advance from the profoundest seriousness to the objective features
of independent detail it is bound to force its way to the extreme
articulation of the purely phenomenal, where any and every content is
a matter of indifference, and artistic illusion in a realistic sense
is the main interest. In such a type of art we find depicted for us
the most fugitive aspect of the sky, the time of day, the lighting up
of the woods, the gleam and reflection of the clouds, waves, lakes,
streams, the shimmer and glitter of wine in the glass, the glance of
the eye, and every conceivable look and smile of the human countenance.
Painting in such cases moves from the idealistic standpoint to that of
living reality, whose phenomenal effect it mainly seeks to reproduce
by means of accuracy in the execution of every bit of detail[248]. Yet
this effort is no mere assiduity of elaboration, but a real exercise of
genuine talent, which strives to present every kind of detail in its
independent perfection, and yet retain the whole composition in unity
and fusion, and this can only be done by the finest art. In such work
the vital force of the realistic appearance thus secured tends to be
more near to the artist's aim than the Ideal; and it is precisely this
kind of art, as I have already found occasion to remark, which raises,
as no other, controversial points over the significance of the Ideal
and Nature. No doubt it is very possible to blame the use of the most
elaborate technique in subjects of little importance by themselves
as mere extravagance; yet there is no real reason for rejecting such
material, and it is precisely of that kind which ought to be treated in
this way by art, and be permitted to keep every conceivable subtlety
and refinement of surface appearance that it possesses.

(_γ_) The artistic treatment does not, however, stop at this more
general kind of opposition, but, inasmuch as painting reposes on the
principle of soul-expression and particularity, proceeds yet further
in the direction of differentiation in its results. Both architecture
and sculpture, it is true, assert differences of national type, and in
particular we are made aware in sculpture of a closer individuality
typical of certain schools and masters. In the art of painting this
distinction and personal aspect in the modes of representation expands
to an incalculable degree in proportion as the objects, which it may
accept, are taken from a field without definable limitations. In
this art to a pre-eminent extent the genius of particular peoples,
provinces, epochs and individuals asserts its claims and affects not
merely the choice of subjects and the spirit of their conception, but
also the character of drawing, grouping, colouring, handling of the dry
point no less than that of particular colours down to characteristics
of personal style and wont.

Inasmuch as the function of painting is so without restriction
concerned with the ideal aspect and the details of its subject-matter,
it follows of course that it gives us quite as little opportunity to
make definite statements of universal validity as to adduce specific
facts which can always without exception be accepted as true of it. We
must, however, not rest satisfied with what I have already discussed in
respect of the principle of the content, the material and the artistic
treatment, but make a further effort, however much we leave on one
side all that confronts us in its multifold variety, still to subject
certain aspects, that most emphatically enlist our attention, to
further examination.



2. PARTICULAR MODES OF THE DEFINITION OF PAINTING


The different points of view, according to which we have to undertake
this closer characterization, may be already anticipated from our
previous discussion. They refer once more to the content, the material
and the artistic treatment.

_First_, as to _content_, we have no doubt found the content of the
romantic type of art offer the most adequate subject-matter; we must,
however, inquire further what specific portions we should select from
the entire wealth within this type as pre-eminently adapted to the art
of painting.

_Secondly_, we have already made ourselves fairly cognisant with the
_principle_ of the sensuous material. We have now to define more
narrowly the forms, which may be expressed on the level surface by
means of colouring, in so far as the human form and other facts of
Nature have to be made visible in order that the ideality of Spirit may
be thereby disclosed.

_Thirdly_, we have a similar question with regard to the definite
character of the artistic conception and presentation, which
corresponds to the different character of the content thus itself
similarly differentiated, producing thereby different _types_ or
schools of painting.

(_a_) I have already at an earlier stage recalled the fact that the
ancients have had excellent painters, but added thereto the statement
that the function of painting is only completely satisfied by the way
of looking at things and the type of art which is referable to the
emotional life and which is actively asserted in the romantic type of
art. What appears, however, to contradict this from the point of view
of content is the fact that at the very culminating point of Christian
painting, during the age of Raphael, Rubens, Correggio, and others,
we find that mythological subjects are used and portrayed in part on
their own merits, and in part for the decoration and allegorization of
great exploits, triumphs, royal weddings, and so forth. In this sense
Goethe, for example, has once more borrowed from the descriptions
of Philostratus of the pictures of Polygnotus, and, assisted by his
imaginative powers as a poet, has added a novel freshness to such
subjects for the painter's benefit. If, however, such contributions
further imply the demand that subjects of Greek mythology and saga, or
scenes, too, from the Roman world, for which the French at a certain
period of their painting have evinced a great inclination, should
be conceived and portrayed in the definitive mood and significance
attached to them by the ancient world we can only object generally
that it is impossible to recall to life this past history, and what is
peculiarly appropriate to the antique is not wholly compatible with
the art of painting. The painter must consequently create from such
material an entirely different result, must import therein a totally
different spirit, other emotions and modes of seeing things than those
present to the ancients, in order to bring such a content into accord
with the real problems and aims of painting. For this reason also the
circle of antique material and situations is not that which painting
has elaborated in a consequential process; rather it is an aspect of
it which has been passed over as alien to its material, and which has
first to be essentially remodelled. I have several times insisted that
painting has before all to seize that, the presentment of which it can,
in deliberate contrast to sculpture, music, and poetry, master by means
of external form. And this is preeminently the self-concentration of
Spirit, which is denied to sculpture, while music again is unable to
make the passage to the external appearance of ideality, and poetry
itself can merely render visible the bodily presence in an incomplete
way. Painting, on the contrary, is still in a position to unite both
aspects. It can express the entire content of soul-life in an external
form, and is consequently bound to accept for its essential content
the emotional depth of the soul no less than the particular type of
character and its specific traits in its deepest impression--in other
words intensity of feeling and ideality in its differentiation, for the
expression of which definite events, conditions, and situations not
only must appear as the explanatory source of individual character,
but the specific individuality must disclose itself as a part of the
moulded form of the soul and physiognomy, rooted therein, and entirely
taken up into the external embodiment.

In order to express generally this ideality of soul we do not require
that ideal self-subsistency and largeness[249] of the classical
type we have previously dealt with, in which individuality persists
in immediate accord with the substantive core of its spiritual
essence and the physical characteristics of its bodily presentment;
to quite as little extent will suffice to the manifestation of
this soul-life Nature's ordinary hilarity, that Greek geniality of
enjoyment and blissful absorption in its object; rather true depth
and self-revelation of spiritual life presupposes that the soul has
worked its way through its emotions, its forces, its whole inward life,
has overcome much, has suffered and endured much anguish or misery
of spirit, and yet in all these divisions has retained its sense of
unity and come back to the same out of them. The ancients no doubt
also place before us in the mythos of Hercules a hero, who after many
troubles receives his apotheosis, and enjoys among the gods the repose
of blessedness; but the labours which Hercules accomplishes are purely
external, and the bliss, which he obtains as a reward, is merely a
tranquil cessation from labour; and the ancient rune, that Zeus will
have brought his empire to its consummation by his efforts, he, that
is the greatest hero of Greece, has not accomplished. Rather the end
of the rule of these self-subsistent gods then commences for the first
time, where we find man overcomes the dragons and serpents of his own
breast, the obstinacy and stubbornness of the soul's native realm
rather than the living dragons and serpents of Nature. Only thereby
will Nature's gladsomeness attain to that loftier cheerfulness of the
spirit, which is perfected in its passage through the negative phase
of division, and finally secures an infinite satisfaction through such
travail. The feeling of blitheness and happiness must be glorified and
expanded in real blessedness. For happiness and content still retain
an association with external conditions which partake of Nature's
contingency. In blessedness, however, that happiness, which is still
related to immediate existence, is left behind, and the entire content
is made one with the inner life of soul. Blessedness is a satisfaction
which is an attained result, and is thereby justified; it is the
gladness of a victory, the emotion of a soul which has essentially
set at nought what is sensuous and finite, and thereby thrust from
itself the care which lurks for ever in ambush. Blessed is the soul,
which has, it is true, experienced both conflict and pain, but come
victorious through its troubles.

(_α_) If we now inquire what is the nature of the actual _Ideal_
in this content we shall find it to be the _reconciliation_ of the
individual soul with God, who in His human manifestation has Himself
traversed this passage of sorrows. The substantive ideality[250] can
only be that of _religion_, the peace of self-consciousness, which
only feels itself truly satisfied, in so far as it is concentrated
in its own substance, has broken its earthly heart, has raised itself
above the purely natural conditions of finite existence, and in this
exaltation has secured an inward life of universal significance,
an ideal union in and with God Himself. The soul wills itself, but
it finds the object of its will in something other than itself, in
its particularity; it thereby gives itself up in its opposition to
God, in order to find itself again and its joy in Him. This is the
vital character of Love, the soul's function in its truth, that is
religious love purged of mere desire, which communicates to Spirit
reconciliation, peace, and blessedness. It is not the enjoyment and
delight of the actual love of living nature, but rather one that is
devoid of passion, nay, one that is without inclination, a tendency
of the soul, a love in fact which on the side of Nature is identical
with death, and is such a state, so that the actual relation as earthly
bond and relation of man to man floats before us as a thing of the
Past, which essentially has no consummation in its usual existing form,
but carries within itself the defect of its temporality, and as such
prepares the way for an exaltation to something beyond it, which is
found to be at the same time a conscious state and enjoyment of a love
that is without yearning and sensuous desire.

It is this character which gives to us the soulful, intimate, and
more elevated Ideal, which we find now in the place of the tranquil
greatness and self-subsistency of the antique. No doubt the divinities
of the classical Ideal were not without a trait of sombre grief, a
negative replete with fateful import, which is as it were the shadow of
a cold Necessity passing over these blithesome figures, which remain,
however, secure in their substantive divinity and freedom, their simple
greatness and might. The freedom of Love, however, is not a freedom
of this kind, being more instinct with soul-life, for the reason
that it subsists in a relation between soul and soul, and spirit to
spirit. This inward glow enkindles the ray of bliss made actual in the
soul, a love, which in suffering, and the extremest loss not merely
can discover comfort or independence therefrom, but in proportion to
the depth of its suffering can feel the more profoundly therein the
reality and assuredness of its love, making clear the mastery of
its own essential substance in that suffering. In the Ideal of the
ancients on the contrary we find no doubt, independently of that trait
of a tranquil sorrow already indicated, the expression of the pain
of noble natures, as for instance in the case of Niobe and Laocoon.
They do not betake themselves to lamentation and despair, but adhere
to their greatness and loftiness of spirit; but this self-continency
remains empty; their suffering, their pain is likewise the conclusion
of the matter. In the place of reconcilement and satisfaction we can
only have an austere resignation, which, without suffering entire
collapse, surrenders that upon which it had previously laid hold. It
is not the base that is crushed[251]; no rage, no contempt or vexation
is expressed; but despite of it all the loftiness of this type of
individuality is nought but an inflexible self-continency[252], an
endurance of destiny that is without relief, in which the nobility and
pain of the soul do not appear as reconciled in fulfilment. In the
romantic love of religion we find for the first time the expression
of blessedness and freedom. This union and satisfaction is by nature
concrete in a spiritual sense, for it is the feeling of Spirit which
is made cognizant of its unity in something other than itself. And for
this reason we find necessary here, if the content presented is to be
complete, two aspects, in so far as the reduplication of spiritual
personality is necessary to love's appearance. It reposes upon two
independent individuals who possess, however, the sense of their
intrinsic union. With this union, however, the negative condition is
always at the same time connected. In other words Love belongs to the
soul's condition; the subject of such a conscious state is, however,
this independently self-stable[253] heart, which to experience love
must bid goodbye to itself, surrender itself and sacrifice the
unyielding focus of its individual isolation. It is this sacrifice
which constitutes the _motive_ principle of Love, the life and emotion
of which is bound up wholly in a self-surrender. In consequence of
this, if notwithstanding a man retains his consciousness of self in
an act of such surrender, and just in this very annihilation of his
personal independence attains to a truly positive self-subsistency,
in that case he has left him at least in the feeling of this unity
and its supreme happiness the negative aspect, the movement of Love's
principle, not so much in a sense of sacrifice, as of a blessedness
undeserved, which in despite of himself permits him still to feel his
assured identity at unity with itself. The movement is the feeling of
the dialectical contradiction, namely, to have surrendered personality
and yet to remain in self-subsistent unity, a contradiction which is
present in Love and eternally resolved in it.

In so far, then, as the aspect of an individual _human_ state of
soul-life is concerned in this universal condition we find that the
unique Love, which blesses and discovers its heaven within it, tends
to rise over all that is finite and the specific individuality of
character, which lapses into a position of insignificance. Already
we have observed that the divine ideals of sculpture pass into one
another, always provided, however, that they are not wrested from
the content and province of that original and immediate type of
individuality; and yet it must be admitted that this individuality
remains the essential form of the mode of presentment. In this later
pure gleam of blessedness, however, particularity is on the contrary
cancelled. Before God all men are equal, or rather piety makes them
actually equal, so that the sole point of importance is the expression
of love in the concentrated focus above depicted, and which has no
further need of happiness, or this or that particular object. No doubt
religious Love, too, requires definite individuals as a condition of
its existence, which possess also, apart from this experience, other
spheres of existence; for the reason, however, that this soul-possessed
state of intimate life supplies the really ideal content, the
expression and reality of such are not to be found in the isolated
distinctions of character, its talents, conditions, and fortunes, but
are rather lifted above the same. When consequently nowadays we hear
people make a regard for distinctions in the soul-life of different
persons a matter of first importance in education, and in that which
is the essential requirement of each man individually, from which we
deduce the fundamental thesis that every one will and indeed inevitably
must act differently in a given case, such a position directly clashes
with the fact of the love of religion, in which all such diversities
of individual life fall into the background. Conversely, however,
individual characterization now, precisely for the reason that it
is the unessential, which refuses wholly to fuse with the spiritual
realm of celestial Love, receives a more emphatic definition. In
other words, agreeably to the romantic type of art, it is free, and
is written in character all the more distinct in proportion as it
refuses to accept as its supreme principle classical beauty, that is
the entire transfusion of immediate vitality, and the particularity of
finite existence, with a spiritual or religious content. In despite of
this fact, however, there is no absolute reason that this individual
characterization should impair this inward intensity of Love, which,
as such on its own account, is not shackled to such features, but has
become free, and constitutes independently the truly self-substantive
Ideal of Spirit.

What, then, constitutes the ideal centre and main content of the
religious field is, as we have already indicated in our examination of
the romantic type of art, the essentially _reconciled_ and satisfied
Love, whose object should appear in the art of painting, whose function
it is to exhibit the most spiritual content under the mode of human
and corporeal actuality, as no mere "beyond" of Spirit, but in its
veritable presence. In conformity with such a result we may adduce the
Holy Family, and above all the love of the Madonna to her child as the
ideal content pre-eminently fitted to this sphere. On either side of
this centre, however, a mass of additional material extends which is
in varying degree less adapted in this sense to the art in question.
I will now attempt to differentiate the whole of this material on the
following lines.

(_αα_) The first objectification is the object of Love itself in its
pure universality and unimpaired unity with itself--God Himself in
His unphenomenal essence--or God the Father. In this case, however,
painting has great difficulties to overcome, when it attempts to
depict God the Father as the religious imagination of Christendom seeks
to grasp Him. The Father of gods and men regarded as a particular
personality is exhaustively dealt with by art in Zeus. What on the
contrary falls away from the Christian conception of God the Father
is the human individuality, in which painting is alone in a position
to reproduce the spiritual aspect. For taken in His independent
self-exclusion God the Father is no doubt spiritual personality and
supreme Power, Wisdom and so forth, but only retained as such without
defined form and as an abstraction of thought. The art of painting is,
however, unable to avoid anthropomorphization, and must perforce assign
to Him the figure of man. However broad in its generalization, however
lofty, ideal, and masterful the presentment of such a figure may be,
we fail to get beyond the fact that it is entirely a human individual
of more or less grave aspect, which fails entirely to coalesce with
the conception of God the Father. Among the early Flemish painters Van
Eyck in his God the Father of the altar picture at Ghent has attained
the greatest success that we can conceive as possible in this sphere.
It is a creation that may well match our conception of the Olympian
Zeus. But however consummate it may be also in its expression of
eternal repose, loftiness, power, worth, and other qualities--and it
is quite impossible to overstate the depth and imposing character of
its conception no less than its execution--yet our imagination cannot
fail to find something in it which does not satisfy. For what is here
set before us as God the Father, that is to say a creation that is
likewise human personality, is just what we first meet with in Christ
the Son. It is in Him that we contemplate for the first time this
decisive moment in which individuality and human existence combine as a
moment in the Divine Life[254], and moreover combine in such a way that
the same is not disclosed as an ingenious creature of the phantasy,
as was the case with the Greek divinities, but as essential and very
revelation, the fact of all importance and fundamental significance.

(_ββ_) The more essential object, therefore, of Love in the creation
of painting will be _Christ._ In other words, with this object Art at
once finds itself in the sphere of humanity, a sphere which along with
Christ embraces further material in its presentations of the Virgin
Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, the disciples, and so forth, and
ultimately the common folk who in part are followers of the Gospel, and
in part cry out for the crucifixion of its Master and mock Him in His
sufferings.

And here once more the already mentioned difficulty confronts us how
we are to conceive and depict Christ in his _universality_, when he is
presented in the ordinary way of half-length figures or portraits. I
must admit that for myself at any rate, the heads of Christ I have seen
by Caracci and others and, to take two famous examples, that of Van
Eyck, formerly in the Sully Collection and now in the Berlin Museum,
and that of Von Hemling, now in Munich, do not give me the entire
satisfaction which they ought to do. That of Van Eyck, no doubt, is
very imposing in figure, forehead, colour, and general conception, but
the mouth and eye wholly fail to express anything that transcends our
humanity. The expression is rather that of an inflexible seriousness,
which is emphasized by the general type of the form, the parting of the
hair, and other traits. And when such heads incline still further in
expression and shape towards the specifically human type, and a milder,
more yielding and tender aspect is thereby imported, much of their
depth and power of impression is very readily lost; and least of all
suited to such, as I have already observed, is the beauty of Greek form.

For this reason Christ, as depicted in the experiences of His actual
life, is a more suitable subject for pictorial effort. Yet in this
connection an essential distinction must not be overlooked. It is
quite true that in the biographies of Christ we have from one point
of view the human consciousness of God presented us as a fundamental
aspect. Christ is one of the gods, but under the guise of an actual
man, and takes His place among men as one of them, in whose phenomenal
appearance He can consequently be depicted in so far as such expresses
the life of Spirit. From another point of view, however, he is not
merely an individual man, but entirely God. In such situations,
therefore, in which this supreme Divinity forces its way beyond the
limits of human soul-life, the art of painting is met with a fresh
source of difficulty. The very depth of the content begins to be too
overpowering. For in the majority of cases in which we find Christ
presented for example merely as a teacher, art will not pass much
beyond the point in which He is depicted as the noblest, most worthy,
and wisest of men, much as Pythagoras or any other wise man, is
presented to us in such a picture as Raphael's "School of Athens." The
most important way in which painting can overcome such a difficulty
is to bring the Divinity of Christ mainly into direct contrast with
His surroundings, and above all, to contrast it with the sins, the
repentance and penance, or the meanness and evil of our humanity, or
again conversely through His worshippers, who, by their adoration of
Him remove Him as one of themselves and a man, existing in a particular
place, from such immediate conditions, so that we behold Him exalted
to the heaven of Spirit, and at the same time get a glimpse of the
fact that His appearance has not merely been that of God, but also
that of the human form under its ordinary and natural, in other words,
not wholly ideal conditions, who as Spirit essentially possesses his
existence in our humanity and the human community, and expresses
His divinity as reflected in the same. But we must not understand
this reflection as though God is present in humanity as in a purely
accidental or external mode of form and expression; rather we ought
to regard the Spirit manifested in the consciousness of mankind as
the essential spiritual existence of God Himself[255]. Such a mode of
presentation will be exceptionally appropriate where Christ is to be
represented as man, teacher, as the risen and glorified person who
ascends up to heaven before our eyes. To speak plainly, in situations
such as these the means of expression in painting such as the human
form and its colour, the countenance, the glance of eye, are not wholly
sufficient to express all that is implied in the Christ. And least
of all will the antique beauty of forms suffice. In particular the
resurrection and ascension, and generally, all scenes in the life
of Christ, in which He, the individual man, is already divested of
immediate existence as such on His return to His Father, require a more
elevated expression of Divinity than the art of painting is able to
supply, for the reason that it ought to cancel the very means it uses
in its representation, that is, the expression of human soul-life in
its external form, and glorify the same in a light of purer quality.

Consequently, we shall find those scenes of Christ's life treated
with greater advantage and more fitting effect in which He Himself
has not yet arrived at the full consummation, or where His Divinity
appears to be obstructed and depressed in the moment of negation. And
this we find is the case in His _childhood_ and the _Passion._ That
Christ as a child expresses definitely from a certain point of view the
significance which attaches to Him in religion. He is God Who becomes
man, and Who consequently passes through the stages of man's natural
life. In another aspect of the same fact that He is presented to our
minds as a child we are led to feel the practical impossibility of
disclosing entirely to us all that He essentially is. And it is just
here that the art of painting possesses the incalculable advantage
of being able to show how the loftiness and dignity of Spirit can
shine forth from the _naïveté_ and innocence of the child, which in
some measure derives actual force from such a contrast, and in part,
for the very reason that it is predicated of an infant, is to an
infinitely less extent required by us in comparison with that we look
for in Christ as man, teacher, and judge of the world. In this way the
examples of Christ the babe which we find in Raphael's pictures, and
above all, that in the Sistine Madonna picture at Dresden, offer us the
most beautiful presentment of childhood. We are, however, aware in them
also of a tendency to pass beyond merely childlike innocence, a passage
which discloses quite as much the Divine already present in the opening
sheath, as it enables us to surmise the expansion of such Divinity to
an infinite fulness of revelation, a revelation the incompleteness
of which in the child carries with it its own justification. In the
Madonna pictures of Van Eyck, on the contrary, the Divine babe is the
least successful feature, for they are in general stiff and emphasize
the defective form of a newly-born child. It has been attempted to
regard this as allegorical and intentional. They are not to be fair in
aspect because it is not the beauty of the Christ babe which is that
which is adorable, but the Christ as Christ. Such a mode of thought
is not consonant with the true aim of Art, and the babes of Raphael
regarded as works of art are in this respect of far higher rank.

In the same way the history of _Christ's passion_, such as the
scenes where He is mocked and crowned with thorns, that of the Ecce
Homo carrying the cross, deposition, and burial, are exceptionally
appropriate to pictorial presentment. For in these it is precisely
the Divinity, in its contrast to its triumph and in the depression of
its unlimited power and wisdom, which supplies the content. Art is
not merely able to present this, but there is ample room for the play
of originality in the composition of such scenes without falling into
purely fantastical imagery. God is here set before us as suffering, in
so far as He is man and under certain determinate bounds. Such pain
is not merely disclosed as human pain over human calamity, but it is
an awful suffering, the feeling of an infinite negativity, albeit in
human form, as the conscious life of one individual. And withal there
is added, for the reason that it is God who suffers, a certain sense of
alleviation, a reduction of such anguish which is thus unable to break
forth in actual despair, distortion, and horror. This expression of
_soul-suffering_ is, more particularly in the works of several Italian
masters, an original creation. The pain is in the lower portions of
the countenance, a gravity of mien, and nothing more, not as in the
Laocoon a contraction of the muscles, which can be interpreted as
an actual cry; but in the eyes and on the forehead the billows of
soul-anguish are, so to speak, allowed to roll over one another. The
sweat drops that bespeak the heart's agony stand forth; and with true
instinct on the brow, in which the immovable bone constitutes the
determining feature, precisely at the point where nose, eyes, and
forehead coalesce, and the life of mind and heart is concentrated and
emphasized, we find that just one or two indications of skin-folds
and muscles, unable to be distorted to any great extent, are suffered
pre-eminently to bear and express in tension this accumulated weight
of agony. In particular I can recall a certain head in the gallery
of Schleisheim, in which the master--I fancy Guido Reni[256]--and
doubtless others in a similar way, have discovered a distinct colour
tone for the flesh, which is quite unlike that of human flesh. They had
to disclose the night of the Spirit and created for the same a dowry
of colour, most admirably adapted to express this tempest, these black
clouds of Spirit which are likewise encompassed by the brazen forehead
of the Divine Nature[257].

As the most perfect subject of such painting, however, I have already
affirmed that Love, which is essentially _satisfied_, whose object is
no purely spiritual Beyond, but one actually present, so that we can
behold Love itself in its object. The highest and most unique form of
such a Love is that of the Virgin Mother for her Christ child, the
love of the one mother who has brought forth the Saviour of the world
and carries Him in her arms. This is the content of most loveliness
to which we may say Christian art generally and pre-eminently the
painter's art in the religious sphere has been exalted.

The love of God, and more expressly[258] that of which Christ is the
object, is of an entirely spiritual type. Its object is only visible to
the eyes of the soul, so that in these cases we do not in the strict
sense get the reciprocity which is bound with the notion of Love, and
moreover there is no natural tie which secures the lovers and from
its origin binds them to each other. Every other type of love, to
put the matter conversely, remains in some measure accidental in its
incidence, and in another aspect of it the lovers possess, as, for
instance, sisters, or the father's love for his children, yet further
relations outside this particular one, which assert an essential claim
upon them. A father or brothers are compelled to direct their attention
to the world, the State, affairs or war, in one word universal ends;
the sister becomes wife, mother, and so forth. In the case of a
mother's love of her child, on the contrary, the love is from its
very nature neither something that is contingent, nor is it merely a
single phase[259]. It is its highest earthly type, in which its natural
character and its most sacred function immediately coalesce. From
the point of view, however, in which as a rule in maternal love the
mother sees and feels at the same time her husband in her child, we may
observe that this aspect, too, in the Virgin Mary's case disappears.
Her feeling has nothing in common with a wife's love for her wedded
husband; on the contrary her relation to Joseph is rather that of a
sister, and on the side of Joseph a feeling of respectful reverence for
the Child that is God's and Mary's. We therefore find that religious
love is set forth in its fullest and most ideal[260] human form, not in
that for Christ amid His sufferings, nor in His resurrection, nor as He
delays His departure among His friends, but in the emotional nature of
a woman, in Mary. Her entire soul and life is human love for the Child,
which she calls her own, and along with it adoration, and love of God
with whom she feels herself thus united[261]. She is humble before God,
and yet is steeped in the infinite exaltation that she is the single
one among maidens who is above all blessed. Not alone and apart, but
only in her Child is she made perfect in God, but in that, whether it
be by the cradle or as queen of heaven, she is entirely content and
blessed, without passion and yearning, with no other want, with no
other aim to have or possess anything but that which she possesses.

The manifestation of this love under the aspect of its religious
content expands in many directions, such as the annunciation,
the visitation, the birth, the flight into Egypt, and other such
incidents. We may also associate with it, during the later course of
the Christ-life, the disciples and women, who follow Him, and in whom
the love of God is more or less a personal relation of their love to
the living, present Saviour, Who, as actual man, pursues His course
among them, and in like manner also the love of those angels who, on
the occasion of His birth and at other times, hover around in grave
adoration or simple joy. In treating all such figures the art of
painting in particular discloses the complete peace and content of such
a love.

But this peace, furthermore, is dissolved in the most heartfelt
anguish. Mary the mother beholds Christ carrying the cross. She sees
Him suffer on the cross and die; she sees Him taken from the cross and
buried, and no grief is more poignant than her own. And yet we may
observe that it is neither the irreparableness[262] of such a grief, or
rather of such a loss, nor the weight of the calamity, nor the lament
over the injustice of destiny, which constitutes the real content in
such anguish, so that a contrast between it and the sorrow of Niobe is
particularly instructive. Niobe, too, has lost all her children, and
is set before us in severe loftiness and unperturbed beauty. The main
content here is the aspect of the natural life of this ill-starred
sufferer, the beauty in which Nature has robed her and which embraces
the entire presentment of her actual existence. She, this actual
personality, is beauty personified, and therein she persists. But her
soul-life, her heart, has lost the entire content of its love, its
soul, and her individuality and beauty can only turn into stone. The
grief of Mary is of a wholly different type. She feels intimately the
dagger which cuts through her soul's very centre, her heart breaks, but
she does not become stone. She did not merely possess love, but her
soul-life throughout is nothing but love, that is, free and concrete
ideality, which retains the absolute content of that which it loses,
and in the loss itself of the beloved persists in the peace of love.
Her heart indeed breaks, but the substantive principle of her heart,
the content of its life[263], which is disclosed through her anguish
of soul with a vital strength that can never be lost, is something
infinitely more exalted, namely, the living beauty of the human soul,
as contrasted with its abstract substance, whose ideal existence
as presented in _bodily shape_, when it is lost remains indeed
indestructible, but is turned to stone.

There is one further subject for painting in connection with Mary the
mother of Jesus, and that is her death and assumption. Schoreel has
with exceptional beauty depicted a death of Mary in which we find the
charm of her youth once more restored[264]. This master has united
in his picture the expression of somnambulism, presence of death,
rigidity, and blindness towards the exterior world with one which seems
to suggest that the spirit, which seems somehow to penetrate through
their general aspect, has found a home elsewhere and is blessed therein.

(_γγ_)_Thirdly_, we must include within the sphere of the actual
presence of God in the life, sufferings, and glorification of
Himself, _mankind at large_[265], that is to say the consciousness of
_individual human life_, which God, or more accurately the events of
His history, constitutes as itself an object of His love, communicating
to it a content which is not merely finite but absolute in its
significance. Here, too, we may emphasize the three aspects of tranquil
_devotion_, _repentance_, and _conversion_, which both from the
point of view of the soul and that of external condition the history
of the Divine Passion repeats to mankind, no less than the ideal
_consummation_ in glory and the blessedness of pure attainment.

In respect to the _first_ of these, namely, devotion, we have here
what is primarily the content of _prayer._ This relation is in one
aspect of it a humbling, surrender of the self, the seeking of peace
in another; from another point of view it is not a _petition_ but
rather a _prayer_[266]. Petition and prayer are no doubt closely
connected in so far, that is, as a prayer can be a petition. And yet
the genuine petition seeks after something _for itself._ It importunes
the man who possesses something of importance to myself, that he may
feel inclined to do me a favour in virtue of the request, that his
heart may yield, or his love may be roused toward me, in one word that
his feeling of identity with myself may be awakened. What I, however,
feel in making a petition is the desire for something, which the other
person must lose if I am to secure it. The other person is to love me
in order that my self-love may be satisfied, and my weal and necessity
be promoted. I on the contrary give nothing further in the transaction
unless it be contained in an admission that the person thus opportuned
may ask for similar favours from myself. Prayer is not a petition of
this type. It is an exaltation of the heart to the Absolute, which
is assumed to be essentially Love, and as such possesses nothing
independently[267]. The devotion itself is the gift, the petition
itself is the blessedness. For although prayer may contain a petition
for some particular thing, yet it is not this particular thing which
is the true purport of the prayer; rather the essential truth of it is
the conviction that the petition will be heard, and not heard in its
relation to the particular request so much as to the absolute trust
that God will apportion that which is best for me to receive. And thus
even in such a connection prayer is itself its own satisfaction, the
enjoyment, the express feeling and consciousness of eternal Love, which
not only with its ray of illumination shines through the object[268]
of prayer and its situation, but in fact constitutes the situation and
what is there actually or is thereby manifested. It is this type of
supplication which we find exemplified by Pope Sixtus in the picture
of Raphael already mentioned[269], no less than by Santa Barbara in
the same picture, and by many other representations of the prayers of
apostles and saints, of Saint Francis[270] and the like at the foot of
the Cross, where we find in the place of the suffering of Christ, or
the dismay, doubt, and despair of the disciples the love and adoration
of God, and the prayer that loses itself in Him is selected as the
significant content. We find such rendered with particular force for
the most part on the countenances of aged men marked strongly with the
sufferings and experience of life in the earlier period of painting,
faces that appear to be portraits, souls permeated with devotional
feeling to such an extent that this attitude of prayer does not merely
appear to be experienced at this particular moment, but rather they
are presented us as pious and saintlike persons whose entire life,
thought, instinct, and volition is one prayer, and whose expression
despite of all the truth of their portraiture may be summed up wholly
in this assurance and peace of Love. It is otherwise, however, among
many of the earlier German and Flemish masters. The subject of the
altar picture in Cologne Cathedral is the adoring kings and patrons of
Cologne. We find this subject too frequently selected by the school of
Van Eyck. In such examples the persons who adore are frequently famous
individuals, princes, as, for instance, in a well-known adoration
picture, which has been taken for the work of Van Eyck, critics have
identified two of the kings with portraits of Philip of Burgundy and
Charles the Bold. In the case of personages of this type we see that
they are something more than saints, have affairs in the world, and
only go to mass on Sunday or in the early morning, but during the rest
of the week or for the rest of the day have other business to look
after. And more particularly in our Flemish or German pictures the
patrons are pious knights, God-fearing housewives with their sons and
daughters. They resemble Martha who fares hither and thither and is
concerned with matters of external or mundane significance, rather than
Mary who has selected once and for all the best part. Their piety is
not deficient, it is true, in intensity and soul; but we do not find
here the song of Love which is at once the beginning and end of it,
and which is perforce not merely an exaltation, a prayer, or thanks
for a gift received, but is as much its unique life as that of the
nightingale.

We may summarize the distinction which can be drawn generally in
pictures of this kind between saints and worshippers on the one hand,
and pious members of the Christian community as they actually appeared
on the other, in the statement that the worshippers, more especially in
Italian pictures, disclose in the expression of their piety a complete
harmony of external and spiritual condition. It is their very soul
which we find written for the most part on their countenances, which
are not permitted to express anything opposed to the emotions of their
heart. In the actual conditions of life this is not always the case. An
infant, for example, when it weeps, more particularly when beginning to
do so, quite apart from the fact that we know its grief is not worth
the trouble of crying over, often makes us smile with its ugly faces.
And in the same way old folk pucker up their face when they laugh,
because the lines of their features are too pronounced, cold, and stiff
to accommodate themselves readily to an unreserved and natural laugh
or a friendly smile. The art of painting should endeavour to avoid
this incompatibility between the emotions of piety expressed and the
sensuous forms which have to express them, and, so far as possible,
produce a harmony between the soul and its external mode of expression.
And this in the highest degree was effected by the Italians; the
Germans and Flemish were less successful, because the main object in
their work was living portraiture.

I will add one further remark, that this devotion of the soul ought
not to reach the point of the actual cry of anxiety, that cry of
tribulation and desire, such as the Psalms and many Lutheran hymns
express, and we may illustrate it with the old words: "As the hart
crieth for the water-brooks, so crieth my soul for Thee." We may
rather indicate it as a gradual melting away, not to that attenuation
of sweetness perhaps we associate with the nun, but at any rate a
surrender of the soul, and an enjoyment and satisfaction in such
surrender. For that travail of faith, that anxious troubling of soul,
that doubt and desperation which persists in disunion, such a type of
hypochondriacal piety which never is certain whether it is still sin,
whether there has been repentance and pardon is complete, a surrender,
in which the soul can never advance a step, and is always betraying the
fact by his anxiety, such a state is not compatible with the beauty
of the romantic Ideal. We much prefer that the eye of devotion should
raise its look of yearning heavenwards, although it is both more
artistic and gives us yet more satisfaction when it is centred on some
present object of adoration, whether it be the Virgin Mother, Christ,
or saint. It is a facile thing, only too facile, to attach to a picture
a spiritual interest, by making its central figure gaze heavenwards,
anywhere beyond the world, just as we find that nowadays people are
only too ready to make use of an equally facile way of proving God
and religion to be the foundation of society by quoting texts of the
Bible rather than establishing such a basis on the reason of actual
reality. Such a gaze of countenance upwards becomes in the pictures of
Guido Reni[271], for example, a pure mannerism. The Assumption of the
Virgin, too, which we find at Munich, has been much eulogized by its
admirers and critics, and we may admit that the exalted character of
its transfiguration, the absorption and surrender of the soul in the
heavenly vision, and indeed the entire pose of the ascending figure,
to say nothing of the brilliance and beauty of the colouring, is most
impressive. But for myself I find such representations which depict
the Virgin Mother in her own daydream of love and blessedness with her
glance centred on her babe still more appropriate to her truth. The
other type of yearning and strain, with its upward gaze heavenwards, is
somewhat too near to our modern sentimentalism.

A _further_ aspect of importance is concerned with the entrance of
the principle of negation into the spiritual devotion of Love. The
disciples, saints, and martyrs, have to pass through, in some measure
as an experience of their souls, and in part, too, as one of their
external life, that way of suffering along which the Christ in the
history of His Passion passed before them.

This suffering lies to some extent on the confines of art. Painting can
very easily overstep this boundary, in so far, that is, as it accepts
for its subject-matter the horrors and terrors of the _bodily_ torture,
whether it be in flaying, or burning, or crucifixion, and its pains.
This it is not permitted to do, if it is not to forsake the spiritual
Ideal. This is not solely due to the fact that to present martyrs
under such conditions to our sight is not beautiful to the sense, nor
because our nerves nowadays are too keenly strung, but on the better
ground that this material aspect is not the really important one.
The true content we have to follow with sympathy and which should be
depicted is the _spiritual_ experience, the soul in all that it suffers
through Love, and not the direct bodily pain of a certain individual,
the grief for the sufferings of another, or the anguish felt personally
for personal demerit. The endurance of martyrs in physical tortures
is an endurance which carries with it merely physical pain: what the
spiritual Ideal looks for is the trial of the soul in its own domain,
its own peculiar suffering, the wounds of its love, the repentance,
mourning, anguish, and penance of its heart.

But we must add that in depicting this pain of soul the _positive_
aspect must not wholly be absent. The soul must be assured of the
actual and essentially consummated reconciliation between mankind
and God, and only experience anxiety that this eternal salvation be
realized as a truth in itself. In this connection we not unfrequently
meet with repentant people, martyrs, and monks, who, despite of their
assuredness of an objective atonement, partly are overwhelmed with
sorrow for a heart whose entire surrender they deem to be right, and
partly have already made such complete surrender, and yet are always
for realizing such reconciliation anew, and consequently for ever
imposing on themselves the burden of penances. And we find, therefore,
in the artistic treatment of such situations a twofold point of
departure. In other words, the artist may, to start with, presuppose in
his subject an open disposition, freedom, cheerfulness, and decision
of spirit, such as carries with ease life and the yoke of the actual
world and knows how to readily deal with the same, then he may fitly
associate with such painful experiences a native nobility, grace,
freshness, freedom, and beauty of form. When, on the contrary, his
work is based upon a natural sense that is more refractory, defiant,
savage, and limited, the conflict of the spirit in overcoming the flesh
and the world, and securing to itself the religion of salvation will
necessarily imply more severe travail. In cases of such obstinacy of
soul, therefore, the harsher reflections of force and stability are
more apparent, the scars of the wounds which have been inflicted on an
obstinacy of this type are more visible and enduring, and the beauty
of the physical result tends to vanish[272].

_Thirdly_, that positive aspect of atonement, the _transfigurement_
that results from grief's travail, the blessedness that comes of
repentance may be independently accepted as the subject of artistic
presentment though it may readily pass into false conceptions.

Such, then, are the main distinguishing characteristics of the absolute
spiritual Ideal regarded as the essential content of romantic painting.
It forms the material of its most successful and solemn creations,
works that are immortal by virtue of the depth of their contemplation;
and when the representation of essential truth is thereby expressed
they are nothing less than the most exalted expansion of the soul to
its heaven of bliss, the most intimate and complete revelation of ideal
life that an artist can bring before our vision.

Following this pre-eminently religious sphere of artistic production we
have still to investigate two further fields of its activity.

(_β_) In direct contrast to the province of religion we have that
which, if we consider it in its isolated abstraction, is equally
destitute of the life of soul and God, Nature in its simplest terms,
and regarded more definitely in its connection with painting, Nature's
_landscape._ We have stated the character of the object of religion to
be such that in it the _substantive_ ideality of the soul expresses
therein the indwelling sense of Love as united to the Absolute[273].
This inward ideality has, however, a further content. It is able to
discover in that which is wholly external an accord with soul-life,
and can recognize in the objective world as such traits which have
an affinity with what is spiritual. Regarded in their immediacy, no
doubt, hills, mountains, woods, valleys, streams, meadows, sunlight,
moon, and the starry heavens, are simply perceived to be the natural
objects they are. But, in the _first_ place, these objects have to
start with an _independent_ interest, in so far as it is the free
life of Nature, which appears in them, and produces a sense of fellow
feeling in the individual as one who shares that life himself; and,
_secondly_, the particular changes of Nature's moods bring about states
in the soul which correspond to such moods. It is possible for man
to follow with his own life this animation of Nature and partake in
this harmony of soul with its environment, and feel thereby at home in
Nature. Just as the Arcadians spoke of a Pan, who made them shudder
and frightened in the gloaming of the forest, in the same way the
varied conditions of Nature's landscape in its gentle blithesomeness,
its balmy repose, its spring-freshness, its wintry chill, its morning
awakening and evening rest find their counterfeits in states of the
soul. The tranquil depth of the ocean, the possibility that its depths
may break forth with infinite power is akin to soul movements, just as
conversely the roaring, upwelling, foaming, and break of storm-tossed
waves stir the soul with concordant music. It is an ideal significance
of this kind that the art of painting accepts as its object. And for
this reason it is not natural objects merely as such in their external
form and association which ought to constitute its true content, so
that painting is nothing more than a mere imitation, but rather the
animation of Nature's life, which interfuses it throughout and which
is able to bring into prominence and assert with more vividness in the
scenes of Nature reproduced the characteristic affinity of specific
conditions of this life with particular spiritual states--it is a vital
participation in Nature of this kind which gives us the meeting-point,
steeped as it is in the soul-life and temperament of the artist, by
means of which Nature may become the content of painting not merely as
environment, but as possessing a distinct individuality[274].

(_γ_) There is yet further a _third_ type of idealization which we find
partly in the case where objects wholly insignificant are detached from
the position they occupy in the landscape, and, partly, in scenes of
human life, which may appear to us not merely as wholly accidental as
thus selected, but even of a kind that is both mean and commonplace.
I have already found an opportunity for an attempt to justify the
artistic selection of such subjects[275]. I will in connection with
painting merely add the following remarks to our former discussion.

The art of painting is not merely concerned with the inward life
of the soul, but with that ideal element that is essentially
_particularized_[276]. This latter type of ideality for the reason
that particularity is its principle is not content to rest satisfied
with the absolute object of religion, and as little will merely accept
from the external world Nature's vitality and its defined character
as landscape; rather it insists on partaking of everything, in which
man as an isolated individual soul can take a rational interest and
find pleasure. Even in the case of its representations of religious
material art, in proportion as it develops, it attaches such more
closely to terrestrial conditions and the objects of actual vision,
giving to its content the complete presence of natural existence, so
that we ultimately find that the aspect of sensuous existence is most
important and the interest of devotional life only so in a subordinate
degree. For here, too, art receives the task to work out the Ideal in
its fullest realization, in other words, to present to our senses that
which is originally detached from them, to carry over objects taken
from the remoteness of past life into present life and unite them with
that present human life.

At our present stage of human evolution it is the ideality which we
find in actual life as it faces us, in the circumstances of daily
experience, the most common and the most trivial, which is the actual
content.

(_αα_) If we inquire, then, what it is that makes a content of this
kind, otherwise so poverty-stricken and indifferent, compatible with
the claims of art, we must reply that it is the substantive core that
is contained and made valid therein, in general terms the vitality and
delight of self-subsistent existence, exemplified in the greatest
variety of its aims and interests. The life of mankind is always in
the immediate Present. What a man may do in each moment thereof is
something specific, and its justification consists in the fact that
he carries through all his engagements, the least no less than the
greatest, with heart and soul. In this way he is united with each
particular incident, and, by infusing into each the entire force of
his individuality, appears to identify his whole existence with such.
This coalescence[277] produces that harmony of the individual with
the specific character of his immediate activity in the circumstances
that are nearest him, which is itself a mode of ideality, and which
communicates in such a case to the subsistency of an existence, which
is an exclusive and perfected whole, its attractive character. The
interest, therefore, that we derive from representations of this kind
is not to be attributed to the subject-matter, but rather to this
animating soul, which by itself, and independently of that wherein
it is disclosed as vital, finds an echo in every uncorrupted nature,
in every free spirit, and is for the same an object of sympathy and
delight. We must not, therefore, impair our enjoyment on the ground
that the demand is made of us to admire such works of art under the
aspect of their _likeness_ to _Nature_ so-called and such illusive
imitation[278]. This demand, which works of this kind appear at first
blush to support, is itself merely a deception which fails to hit the
real point. For an admiration of this type is solely deducible from
the wholly external comparison of a work of art and a work of Nature,
and is only associated with the similarity of the counterfeit with an
object or fact presented us, whereas the real content here and the
artistic quality in the composition and execution is the coalescence
of the matter portrayed _with its own substance_, which is the reality
as independently depicted in its vital characterization. According to
the principle of illusion, for instance, the portraits of Denner are
entitled to our praise, which are, no doubt, imitations of Nature, but
for the most part fail entirely to present us that vital animation on
which we lay the main stress in these cases, and are mainly concerned
with depicting hair, wrinkles, and generally every kind of trait which,
without exactly being indicative of a corpse, are equally remote from
the human physiognomy depicted as alive.

Moreover, if we permit ourselves to level down our enjoyment through
superficial thoughts of the above fashionable kind, believing subjects
of this type to be mean and unworthy of our contemplation, we accept
the content by doing so in a form other than that in which art offers
them us. In other words we merely associate with them the relation
in which we stand to them according to our personal needs, pleasure,
such education as we otherwise possess and other objects we have
before us, that is to say we merely conceive them in respect to their
_external purport_, throughout which it is our own requirements which
are the vital thing we aim at for ourselves, and the matter of all
importance. The life of the subject-matter itself, however, is thereby
destroyed, in so far, that is, as the sole object of its existence
appears to be that of a means simply, or lapses into a thing of no
moment at all, just because we personally have no need for it. A gleam
of sunlight, for example, which falls upon a room we enter through
an open door, a part of the country we travel through, a sempstress,
a maid we happen to see busily engaged, one and all we may regard
with indifference, because we suffer them to pass by remote from the
thoughts and interests which are bound up with them, and consequently
in our soliloquy, or conversation with another will not suffer the
situations which actually lie before us to speak a word in the current
of our own thoughts and speech; or we cast what is merely a passing
glance at them, the summary of which does not amount to more than the
remark, "how pleasant, fine, or ugly they are." Thus we are charmed
with the joviality of dance of peasants, while we merely glance at
it superficially, or turn away from it with contempt, because we are
hostile to "every sort of barbarism." We treat in a similar way the
human countenances we come across in our daily life, or which we
happen to chance upon. Our own personal point of view, and the various
matters which engage us are for ever being interposed. _We_ are forced
to address this or that person in a certain way, we have affairs to
despatch, we have certain things to consider, thoughts that affect
our relation to such a person; we observe him under the particular
circumstances of our knowledge; we regulate our conversation relatively
to that, or we are silent upon it, if he may be likely to resent
it--in short we have always in our minds the man's business, station,
and status, and our attitude to and business with him, remaining in
a wholly practical relation, or in a position of indifference and
preoccupied inattention. Art, however, when it depicts such real
life, wholly changes our attitude to it; it cuts away once and for
all all practical deviations[279], such as we are wont to associate
with such material; it places us simply in the attitude of abstract
contemplation to it; and in the like degree it does away with its
indifference, and directs our otherwise preoccupied attention wholly
to the situation portrayed; upon which we must collect and concentrate
all our faculties, if we are to enjoy it. Sculpture, in particular, by
virtue of its ideal mode of production from the first strikes off all
practical relation to the object to the extent that its product at once
betrays the fact that it does not belong to this reality. Painting, on
the contrary, carries us wholly into the presence of the daily life
with which we are in immediate contact, but it furthermore destroys
all the threads of practical necessity, attraction, inclination, or
disinclination, which draw us to such a Present, or the reverse,
and forces us to approach those objects more intimately as ends to
themselves in their own particular phase or mode of life. What we
meet with here is just the opposite to that which Herr von Schlegel,
for example, in the tale of Pygmalion, expresses so very prosily as
the return of the completed work of art to common life, that is to a
relation of a man's own inclinations and an actual enjoyment, a return
which is the very opposite of that alienation, in which the work of
art places the objects delineated in their relation to our practical
necessities, and, precisely by doing so, sets forth before us their own
independent life and appearance.

(_ββ_) Just as, then, art, in this particular sphere, re-establishes
the forfeited independence of a content, which we otherwise failed to
preserve in its unique characteristics, in the same way, _secondly_,
it is able to secure in stability such objects as may happen to
appear in actual existence in a form we are not accustomed to respect
simply as such. The higher Nature stretches in its organization and
shifting appearance the more it resembles the actor who only serves the
present need. In this connection I have already emphasized the fact
as a triumph of art over reality, namely, that it is able to fix that
which is most evanescent. This power of art in attaching permanence
to _momentary_ things applies not only to the sudden flash of life
we find concentrated in certain situations, but also to the magical
effect of its external presentment in the rapid changes of its colour.
A troop of horsemen, for example, may alter every moment in the mode
of its grouping, and the mutual relation of each rider within it. If
we were one of such we should have something else to do than consider
the lively effect of such changes. We should have to mount, dismount,
make up our haversack, eat, drink, rest, groom, drink and feed our
horses: or, if we looked on as ordinary folk, we should look at such
with wholly different interests. We should want to know what they are
there for, what nationality they are, for what reason they have left
their barracks, and so forth. The painter, on the contrary, smuggles
off the most volatile of the movements, the most evanescent expressions
of countenance, the most momentary gleams of colour apparent in such
motion, and places such before us solely in virtue of its interest
in the animation of such phenomena which without it would vanish.
For especially it is the play of the colouring, not treated merely
as flat tint, but in its lights and shadows, and in the prominence
or subordination of the objects painted which is the reason that the
representation appears lifelike, a fact which we are accustomed to
observe in works of art less than such an aspect deserves, bringing
as it does art first clearly to our minds. And, moreover, the artist
preferably accepts in depicting these natural relations the effort of
following the least detail, and making his work concrete, definite
and stamped with individuality, endeavouring as he does to secure for
his subject-matter the individuality which phenomenal life itself
supplies in its most momentary flashes; and yet withal does not so
much seek for such a detail merely as imitated closely to strike our
senses with its directness, but rather to furnish a definite image to
the imagination in which at the same time the ideality of the entire
composition remains active.

(_γγ_) The more insignificant the objects are, in comparison with
the material of religion, which this particular phase of painting
accepts for its content, to that very extent it is just this quality
of _artistic_ creation, the manner of observation, conception,
elaboration, the vitality communicated by the artist to his work by
all his individual faculties, in short the soul and living enthusiasm
of his execution, which constitute a prominent aspect of its interest,
and are part of its content. That which the subject treated is under
his workmanship must, however, substantially remain what it is in
fact and is capable of being. We believe, indeed, that we look upon
something different, and novel, because in actual life we do not pay
the same detailed attention to similar situations, and their manner of
colouring. Looked at on the reverse side no doubt we have something,
too, that is new added to such ordinary subjects, namely, just this
very enthusiasm, artistic insight and spirit, the soul, in which the
artist handles them, adapts them to his uses, and by doing so infuses
the enthusiasm of his activity like the breath of a new life throughout
all his work[280].

Such, then, are the essential points of view, which it was necessary to
discuss in regard to the content of painting.

(_b_) The _second_ aspect which we have next in order to examine is
connected with the more particular modes of definition, to which the
sensuous material, in so far as it has to accept in itself a given
content, has to accommodate itself.

(_α_) The _first_ of these of importance is the _linear perspective._
This is introduced as necessary, because painting has only the
superficies at its disposal and no longer, as was the case with the
bas-relief of antique sculpture, can extend its figures side by side on
one and the same plane, but has to proceed to a mode of presentation,
which finds it necessary to make the remoteness of its objects in
all their spatial dimensions merely appear as such to our senses. For
the art of painting has to unfold the content it selects, to place
the same in its various movement before our eyes, and to associate in
different ways its figures with the landscape of external Nature, its
buildings and so forth, in a wholly distinct grade of literalness to
that which sculpture in the relief is able to secure. And that which
painting in this respect cannot place before us in its actual degree of
remoteness in the realistic manner of sculpture it must present under
the illusion of reality. What we have first to notice here consists
in this that the _single_ surface which confronts painting is divided
into distinct planes, apparently remote from one another, and by this
means the contrasts of a near foreground and a remote background are
secured, which furthermore are linked together by means of a middle
distance. Inasmuch as the objects are, the more distant they are from
the vision, proportionately reduced in size, and this deduction follows
in Nature itself optical laws capable of mathematical determination,
the art of painting, too, has on its part to follow the same rules,
which, by virtue of the fact that objects are set forth on one surface,
are applicable here in a particular way. And this is the rational
ground of the so-called linear or mathematical perspective in the art
of painting, whose more detailed exposition, however, it is not our
business here to discuss.

(_β_) In the _second_ place, however, objects are not only placed
at a certain distance from one another, but they also differ in
_shape._ This particular mode of their spatial limitation by virtue
of which every object is made visible in its particular form is the
subject-matter of _draughtsmanship._ The art of drawing gives us for
the first time not merely the comparative distance of objects from
one another, but their respective configuration. Its most important
principle is _accuracy_ of form and relative distance, which of
course in the first instance is not as yet associated with ideal[281]
expression, but related simply to external appearance, and consequently
forms the purely external framework[282], an accuracy, however, which,
more particularly in the case of organic forms and their varied
movements, is on account of the fore-shortenings thereby rendered
necessary one of extreme difficulty. In so far as these two aspects
are related purely to _form_ and its spatial totality they constitute
the _plastic_ or sculpturesque features in painting, which this art,
for the very reason that it expresses what is most ideal in its
significance by means of external form, can as little dispense with as
it can in another respect remain solely content with. For its supreme
task is the employment of colour, and in such a way that in all that
is truly painting distance and shape only attain and discover their
genuine presentment by virtue of the distinctions of colour.

(_γ_) It is, therefore, _colour_, and the art of colouring, which
make the painter a painter. We dwell with pleasure, no doubt, on the
drawing, and exceptionally so on the study or sketch, as on that
which pre-eminently betrays the quality of genius; but however rich
with invention and imagination, with whatever directness the soul of
an artist may assert itself in such studies by reason of the more
transparent and mobile shell of their form, yet the fact remains
to be painting we must have colour, if the work is not to continue
abstract from the point of view of its sensuous material in the vital
individuality and articulation of its objects. We must, however, at
the same time admit that drawings and dry point drawings from the
hand of great masters such as Raphael and Albrecht Dürer are of real
importance. In fact from a certain point of view we may say that it is
just these hand drawings which carry with them the finest interest. We
find here the wonderful result that the entire spirit of the master is
expressed directly in such manual facility, a facility which places
with the greatest ease, in instantaneous work, without any preliminary
essays, the essential substance of the master's conception. The border
drawings of Dürer, for example, in the Prayer-book of the Munich
library, are of indescribable ideality and freedom. Idea and execution
appear in such a case to be one and the same thing, whereas in finished
pictures we cannot avoid the sense that the consummate result is only
secured after repeated over-paintings, a continuous process of advance
and finish.

In despite of this, however, it is only through its employment of
colour that the art of painting is able to give a real and vital
presentment to the wealth of soul-life. All the schools of painting
have, however, not retained the art of colouring at the same high
level. It is a significant fact that we may, with an exception here
and there, assert that it is only the Venetians and the Dutch[283] who
have become consummate masters in their use of it. Both peoples were
linked to the sea-coast, both situated on a low-lying land divided by
fens, streams, and canals. In the case of the Dutch we may find an
explanation in the fact that, on account of their having so perpetually
a cloud-covered horizon, their conception of a gray background became
fixed in their minds, and owing to this very gloomy prepossession they
were the more driven to study colour in all its effects and variety of
lighting, shadow, and chiaroscuro, to emphasize this and to discover
in this the main task of their artistic efforts. In contrast to that
of the Venetians and the Dutch the painting of the Italians generally,
if we except that of Correggio and one or two others, appears to be
more dry, sapless, cold, and lifeless. Looked at more closely we may
emphasize the following points in connection with the art of colouring
as the most important.

(_αα_) In the _first_ place we have the abstract basis of all colour
in _light_ and _dark._ When we posit this contrast and its transitions
by themselves without further distinctions of colour effect, we
get thereby simply the contrasts supplied us by white as light and
black as shadow together with their transitional grades and nuances,
contrasts which offer to the art of drawing its integrating quality,
appertaining as they do to the real plastic character of form, and
producing the prominence, retreat, rondure, and distance of objects.
We may incidentally mention in this connection the art of engraving on
the plate which is wholly concerned with light and shadow as such[284].
Apart from the infinite assiduity and labour it implies we find in
this highly valuable art, at the point of its supreme attainment, soul
intimately associated with the utility of great variety of form[285],
a variety which the art of bookbinding also possesses. Such an art,
however, is not wholly occupied with effects of light and shade as that
of simple draughtsmanship is; it endeavours further in its elaboration
to become distinctly a rival of painting, and in addition to light and
shade such as is purely the effect of illumination, also strives to
express those distinctions of more emphatic light and darkness which
are primarily the result of local colour; we find, for example, in
a copperplate engraving that an attempt is made by its use of light
effects to render visible the distinction between blond and black hair.

In painting, however, as already remarked, mere light and darkness
only supply the fundamental basis, albeit such a foundation is of
the greatest importance. For it is this contrast and only this which
defines the comparative prominence and retirement, the rondure, and
generally the actual appearance of form as sensuous shape, all that
we understand by _modelling._ Masters of colour in this respect
simply carry the process to the most extreme contrasts of the most
brilliant light and the deepest shadow, and merely produce thereby
their grand effects. Such contrasts are, however, only permissible in
so far as they avoid harshness, that is, in so far as they are made
within the limits of a just interplay of intermediate tones and colour
transitions, which bind the entire composition in a fluid unity and
render the finest gradations of tint possible. If such contrasts are
entirely absent the entire effect will be flat, because it is precisely
this distinction between that which is more brilliant and more obscure
which gives emphatic prominence to particular aspects of the work
and a like subordination to others. And especially in the case of
compositions having a large content, and where the distance between
objects is considerable, it is necessary to introduce the deepest
shadow in order to make the scale of light and shadow a broad one.

With regard to the closer definition of light and shade we find that
this depends more than anything else upon the mode of _lighting_
accepted by the artist. The light of day, that of morning, noon, and
evening, sunlight or moonlight, a clear or clouded sky, the light of
tempest, candle-light, a light that is veiled, or falls upon the object
or diffuses itself gradually, every conceivable mode of lighting, in
short, is possible, and the cause of every kind of effect. In treating
a subject of public interest, full of incident, a situation that at
once appeals to our common sense, the question of external lighting is
of subordinate importance. The artist will avail himself here with most
advantage of ordinary daylight, if, that is, the demands of dramatic
vividness, and a desire to emphasize particular figures and groups, or
to throw into the background others, do not render a less usual mode of
lighting necessary, which may fall in more readily with such objects.

The great painters of the earlier school have consequently as a rule
made little use of such contrasts or specific schemes of lighting.
And they did rightly, inasmuch as their emphasis was rather on the
spiritual aspect as such than on the sensuous impression of their
pictures. And on account of the pre-eminent ideality and spiritual
significance of the content they were able to dispense with the aspect
of their work which inclined more or less to the material side. In the
case of landscapes, on the contrary, and subjects of less importance
taken from ordinary life, the question of lighting makes a very
different appeal. In these important artistic and, often, artificial
and mysterious effects are indispensable. In the landscape the bold
contrasts between large masses in illumination and other parts in the
strongest shadow will receive their full effect, but tend also to
develop the artistic mannerism. Conversely we find, more especially
in the treatment of landscape, reflections of light, the flash and
its counterfeit, that wonderful echo of light, which arises from the
interplay of light and dark, and offers an ample and progressive
subject of study both to the artist and the spectator. Such a scheme
of lighting, which the artist has either by direct imitation or
imaginatively conceived in his work, can, however, by itself only be
a transient one, which is subject to rapid change. However sudden or
uncommon the lighting thus permanently retained may be, the artist must
see in the treatment of his composition, even though it be as full of
movement as possible, that the whole, despite all its variety, is not
injured by mere restlessness and wavering motive, but is throughout
clear and marked with unity.

(_ββ_) In accordance with what has already been stated the art of
painting, however, has not merely to express light and dark in its
purely abstract intension, but to add to it the distinctions of colour.
Light and shadow must be coloured light and shadow. We have therefore
in the _second_ place to discuss colour simply.

The _first_ point we have to deal with here is the _brightness_ and
_obscurity_ of particular colours respectively to one another, that
is in so far as they are operative as light and dark in their varied
relations, and either emphasize or suppress and impair their individual
effect. Red, for example, and still more yellow, is at an equal grade
of intensity more brilliant than blue. This is dependent upon the
nature of the colours themselves, which in recent times Goethe has
for the first time fully explained[286]. In other words, we find
that in blue _shadow_ is of main significance, which, in its first
operation through a brighter, but not as yet fully transparent medium,
appears to our sight as blue. The sky, for example, is dark, and on
the highest mountains it is yet darker. Seen through a transparent
but thick medium, such as the atmosphere of its lower planes is, it
appears as blue, and its brightness increases in proportion as the
air is less transparent. In the case of yellow, on the contrary,
essential brightness works through a density, which, however, suffers
this brightness to shine through it. Smoke, for example, is such an
obscuring medium; looked at in front of anything black which works
its way through it, it appears of a bluish tint, and before anything
bright it appears yellow and reddish. Genuine red is the actively
royal and concrete colour, in which blue and yellow, themselves also
extremes of opposition, press together in fusion, We may also regard
green as such a union, not, however, in a unity that is concrete, but
merely as a difference that is cancelled, as a medium of satiated and
tranquillized neutrality[287]. These colours are the purest, simplest,
and original _cardinal_ colours. We may consequently find a symbolical
significance in the way that the old masters made use of them.
Especially is this so in their use of blue and red. Blue corresponds
with the milder, sensuous, more tranquil aspect, a contemplation which
is rich in feeling, in so far as it has obscurity for its principle,
and offers no resistance, whereas the brightness therein rather
suggests that which resists, produces, is alive and blithesome. Red
corresponds with what is masculine, dominant, and royal, green with
that which is indifferent and neutral. According to such symbolism for
example, the Virgin Mary is frequently clothed in red where she is
enthroned, and set before us as queen of heaven; where she is depicted
as mother, she wears a blue mantle[288]. All the other colours in
their endless variety must be regarded as mere modifications of the
above, in which we must recognize a certain degree of shadow fused
with the cardinal colours. In this sense no painter would call violet
a colour[289]. Furthermore all these colours, in their mutual relation
to each other, are respectively of greater brightness or obscurity,
a fact that the artist must bear in mind if he is not to fail in
getting the just tone which any particular section of his modelling or
distance effects ought to have. In other words we have here a source
of exceptional difficulty. In the countenance, for example, the lip is
red, the eyebrow dark, black, brown, or, if blonde, at least darker as
such than the lip; in the same way the cheeks with their reddish tint
are more brilliant in colour than the nose, with its main impression
of yellow, brownish, or greenish tint. Such portions of the face can
readily receive a greater brightness and intensity owing to this local
colour than is consonant with their modelling as parts of the whole.
In sculpture, indeed in mere drawing too, such parts of a composition
receive their light and shadow wholly in reference to their particular
form and its manner of lighting. A painter on the contrary must
accept their local colouring, and this disturbs such a relation. Such
a difficulty is even more obvious between objects more removed from
one another. For the ordinary vision of sight it is our mind which
determines the distance and form of such objects, not merely by means
of their colour appearance, but also on a variety of other grounds. In
painting, however, all that we have before us is colour, which as such
is able to interfere with that which is demanded by mere brightness and
darkness as such. The art of the painter, therefore, consists in his
ability to resolve this contradiction, and so to arrange his colours
that neither in their local tints, nor in their mutual relation in
any other way, they impair the modelling as a whole. Only if success
is secured in both respects are we likely to see the actual shape and
colour of the objects realized in perfection. With what consummate
art, for example, have the Dutch painted the sheen of satin dresses
with all their variety of reflections and gradations of shadow in
their folds, or the flash of silver, gold, copper, vessels of glass
and velvet; and in the same way we may mention the lighting a Van Eyck
gives to his jewels, gold borders, and metals. The colours by means of
which the flash of gold is presented have nothing of metallic about
them: looked at closely we merely see yellow, which by itself is of
no great brightness. The entire effect is due on the one hand to the
prominence of the form, and on the other to the contiguity of the
mutual gradations of distinct colour tones.

A further aspect in the _second_ place is the _harmony_ of the
colouring.

I have already observed that the very nature of the facts necessitates
that colour should have itself an articulated system. And this complete
result should appear. No fundamental colour should be wholly omitted,
otherwise our sense of this integrated whole is lost. To an exceptional
degree the old Italian masters and the Dutch satisfy us in this
respect. We find in their pictures blue, yellow, red, and green[290].
It is this completeness which supplies the basis of our colour harmony.
The colours, moreover, must be so arranged that not merely their
artistic contrast, but also their mediation and resolution, and a
repose and reconciliation as the result of such, is made visible to the
sight. Such effective contrast and repose in conciliated extremes is
brought about partly by the way the colours are associated, and partly
by the degree of intensity which characterizes each colour. In early
painting it was principally the Dutch school[291], which employed the
cardinal colours in their purity and their unimpaired brilliance, by
which means the harmony is rendered more difficult by reason of the
emphasis laid on contrast, but when secured should be pleasing to the
eye. Where, however, the decisive character and force of colour is
insisted on the nature of the subject-matter itself should be more
definite and simple. And by attending to this a higher degree of
harmony between colouring and content is also obtained. The important
personages, for instance, must receive the colour that is most
emphatic, and in their characterization, their entire deportment and
expression should appear more imposing than the subordinate figures,
who will receive merely the composite colours. In landscape painting
the contrast of pure cardinal colours is less pronounced. In scenes,
on the contrary, in which human figures are of most importance, and
more particularly where drapery occupies large spaces of canvas, the
more simple colours will be in their right place. In such we have a
scene taken from the world of spiritual life, in which that which is
inorganic, the natural environment, is more abstract, in other words
must not appear in its natural completeness and isolated manner of
effect, and the varied tints of landscape in all the profusion of
their gradations are less suitable. As a rule the landscape is not
so entirely fitted to the environment of human scenes as a room, or
generally that which is architectural, inasmuch as situations which
take place in the open air are in general not accepted from a class in
which the life of soul without considerable reserve is manifested. If
a man is placed before us with the open landscape around him it should
appear simply as environment. And in cases of this type it is right
to make use of colours that are exceptionally prominent. But the use
of such involves also boldness and power of execution. Sickly sweet,
overpowered[292], doting faces are not the kind for such treatment.
Such soft expressions, such over-diluted countenances, which, ever
since Mengs gave them as people are wont to think typical of ideality,
would be entirely pulverized by such decision of colour. In recent
times and among us Germans, weak faces which have essentially nothing
to say[293], carefully posed in ways that imagine themselves to possess
grace, simplicity, and imposing character, are all the fashion. This
lack of distinction, on the side of spiritual characterization, has
its counterpart in and indeed produces a similar lack of definition
in colour and tone, so that all colours are run together in one
confusion, and forceless condition of mutilation and evaporization, and
no real emphasis is laid on any. You cannot say that one suppresses
another exactly, but then none adds contrast to another. It is no
doubt a colour harmony of a kind, and frequently it impresses with
its excessive sweetness and flattering endearment, but the note of
distinction is absent. In this connection Goethe thus expresses himself
in his observations added to the translation of Diderot's essay on
painting: "Critics do not by any means admit that it is easier to make
weak colour harmonious than a strong scheme: but it stands to reason
when colour is strong, when colours are placed before us vividly,
in that case the eye will experience their harmony or discord with
greater vividness. If, however, we weaken our colours, employ some with
brilliance, others in fusion, others in obscure squalour, then it is
obvious no one will be able to say whether the picture he looks at is
harmonious or not. One thing in any case we can say of it, it lacks
distinction."

With harmony of colour, however, we have not by any means attained the
goal of the art of colouring. To reach this consummate effect, in the
_third_ place, several other aspects must not be neglected. In this
respect I will restrict my observations to three points, first, the
so-called _atmospheric perspective_, secondly, _flesh-colour_, and in
conclusion, the magic of _colour brilliancy._[294]

Linear perspective is connected in the first instance merely with
the different degrees of size, which the lines of objects possess in
their greater or less remoteness from the human eye. This alteration
and reduction of form is, however, not the only thing painting has
to reproduce. In Nature everything is affected by the presence of
atmosphere, not merely between different objects, but even different
parts of them, a difference which asserts itself in colour. This tone
of colour which thus as it were evaporates with the distance is what
constitutes _atmospheric perspective_, in so far as thereby objects
are modified partly in deliberate outline, and partly in respect to
their light and shadow and general colouring. As a rule people think
that what is nearest to the eye in the foreground is brightest, and
what lies in the background is more obscure; in truth the matter is
otherwise[295]. But lights and shadows in the foreground are strongest,
in other words the contrast between light and shade has a more powerful
effect, and outlines are more defined near to the spectator. In
proportion, however, to the degree of their remoteness, they lose in
definition of colour and form, because the contrast of their light and
shadow is gradually reduced, until finally everything disappears in
transpicuous gray. Different schemes of lighting, however, necessitate
in this respect various modes of treatment. In landscape painting more
especially, but also in other compositions, which present large spaces,
atmospheric perspective is of first importance, and the great masters
of colour have carried out by this means the most bewitching effects.

The most difficult achievement in colouring, the ideal and consummation
of its art, is the colour effect of the human flesh[296], which unites
in its perfection all other colour tones, without permitting any
particular one to be singly prominent. The healthy red in the cheeks of
youth is, no doubt, pure carmine without any admixture of blue, violet,
or yellow, but this red is itself only a flush, or rather a sheen,
which appears to rise on the surface, and imperceptibly passes into the
prevailing flesh-tints. And this is an ideal[297] commixture of all the
fundamental colours. Through the transparent yellow of the skin the red
of the arteries and the blue of the veins is visible, and along with
the light and shade and all the variety of sheen and reflection we have
further tones of gray, brown, even green, which at first sight appear
as contrary to Nature, but for all that may contribute to the justness
and truth of the effect. Moreover, this composite treatment of many
apparent tints is wholly without sheen as such, that is, it reflects
nothing alien to it on its surface; its vital quality is entirely a
result of itself and the living thing it is. It is this rendering of
that which is the life shining through the organic integument which
constitutes the main difficulty. We may compare it to a lake in the
evening glow, in which we behold the objects that it reflects[298] no
less than the clear depth and native character of water. The flash of
metal combines on the contrary, no doubt, both light of its own and
transparency, jewels both flash and are translucent, and something
similar is seen in the case of velvet and silk-stuffs, but none of
these approaches the life-conferred interfusion of colours apparent
on the surface of the living flesh. The skin of animals, whether hair
or hide, wool, and so forth, are in like manner of the most varied
colouring, but it is a colour capable of more direct and independent
definition in its parts, so that the variety is rather the result
of different surfaces and planes, it is not a single transfusion
and suffusion of many colours such as human flesh is. The nearest
approach to it perhaps is the interplay of colour visible in the
bunch of grapes, or the exquisitely tender gradations of translucent
colour in the rose. And yet even this last example is unable to give
us the counterfeit of ideal animation[299] which flesh-colour should
possess. It is this volatile emanation of the soul exhibited on a
non-transparent surface which is one of the most difficult problems of
painting. For this ideality, this reflex of the inward life of soul
must not appear on a surface as imported there, must not be pasted
there as so many streaks, hatchings, and so forth of material colour,
but seem to us itself to belong to the living whole[300], a transparent
depth, as the blue of heaven, which offers our vision no repellent
surface, but one in which we are infallibly invited to unfold. Already
Diderot, in the essay on painting translated by Goethe, expressed
himself as follows on this head: "He who once has truly felt and
secured the apparition of flesh-colour is far on his way to perfect
victory. Thousands of painters have died without such a feeling, and
many thousands more will die without doing so."

In so far as the material is concerned, by means of which this
untransparent vitality of flesh is reproduced, the first medium to
declare its suitability for such an effect was the oil-pigment. Work
in mosaics is of all the least fitting to present us such a composite
effect. Its permanency is no doubt a recommendation, but inasmuch
as it can only express colour gradations through variously coloured
glass cubes or stones placed in juxtaposition, it is wholly unable to
reproduce the intermingling flow of one unified presentment of many
colours. Fresco and tempera painting carry us considerably further in
this direction. Yet in the case of fresco-painting the colours are
put on the wet plaster with too great rapidity, so that, on the one
hand, the greatest facility and sureness of brushwork is an essential,
and, on the other, the work has to be carried out with broad adjacent
strokes, which on account of their drying so rapidly do not admit of
a fine degree of finish[301]. The same kind of difficulty meets us in
the case of tempera-painting, a process[302] which no doubt admits of
great lucidity of expression[303] and beautiful contrasts of light
and shadow, yet for all that, by reason of the fact that its medium
dries so quickly, is less adapted to the fusion and elaboration of its
effects, and necessitates an articulate surface made up of definite
strokes of the brush. The oil pigment, on the contrary, not only
permits of the most tender and subtle melting together and elaborate
fusion of colour effect, so that transitions are so imperceptible we
cannot say where one colour begins and where it leaves off, but it is,
where its component elements are properly fused and the execution of it
is as it should be, itself remarkable for a luminous quality like that
of precious stones, and it can, by virtue of its distinctions between
opaque or transparent colours[304], reproduce in a far higher degree
than tempera painting the translucency of different layers of colour.

The _third_ and last point for our consideration in this connection
is the emanation[305] and _mystery_ of colour in its entire effect.
This witchery of colour appearance will mainly be found, where the
substantive ideality of objects has become an effusion of spirit which
enters into the scheme and treatment of its coloured presentment. In
general, we may say that the magic consists in a handling of colour
by means of which we obtain an interplay of scenic effect which is
devoid of defined articulation as such, which is, in fact, simply the
result of moulding of colour in the finest degree of fluency, a fusion
of coloured material, an interplay of reflected points which pass
into one another, and are so fine and evanescent in their gradations,
so full of vital cohesion that the medium here seems already to have
entered that of musical sound. From the point of view of modelling
the mastery of chiaroscuro is part of this magic result, an aspect of
the art in which among the Italians Leonardo da Vinci and, above all,
Correggio were supreme. While introducing the very deepest shadow, the
transparency of this is not only preserved, but is carried through
imperceptible gradations to the most brilliant light. By this means
roundness in the moulding of form is complete; there is no harshness
of line or limit, but all is equable transition. Light and shadow are
not here merely in their immediate effect as such, but gleam through
one another much as a spiritual force is operative through an external
shell. It is just an effect like this we find in the artistic treatment
of colour, and the Dutch were no less than others consummate masters
of this. By virtue of this ideality, this mutual relation between the
parts, this interfusion of reflections and colour scintillations, this
alternation and evanescence of transitional tones, a breath of soul and
vitality is throughout communicated in the brilliancy, depth, the mild
and juicy illumination of colour. It is this which gives us the magic
effect of a masterpiece of colour; it is the unique gift of the genius
of the artist who is himself the magician.

(_γγ_) And this brings us to the last point we have to discuss on this
part of our subject.

We started with the _linear perspective_, we passed on then to
_drawing_ and concluded with _colour_; _first_ considering light and
shade in its relation to modelling, and, _secondly_, viewing it as
colour simply, or more accurately, as the mutual relation between
degrees of brightness and darkness in colours, regarding it, moreover,
in its aspects of harmony, atmospheric perspective, flesh-colour
and magical effect. We have now to consider more directly[306] the
_creative impulse_ of the artist in bringing about such colour effects.

The ordinary view is that the art of painting follows definite rules
in attaining its results. This is, however, only true of the linear
perspective, being as it is a wholly geometrical science, and even
in this case rules must not obtrude themselves in their abstract
stringency, if we are to preserve all that essentially contributes to
our art. And, in the second place, we shall find that artistic drawing
accommodates itself even less readily than perspective to universal
rules, but least of all is this true of colouring. Sense of colour
ought to be an artistic instinct or quality, should be as much a unique
way of looking at and composing existing tones of colour, as it should
be an essential aspect of creative power and invention. On account
of this personal equation in the production of colour, the way, that
is, the artist looks at and is active in the making of his world, the
immense variety which we find in different modes of treating, it is no
mere caprice and favourite mannerism of colouring, which is absent from
the facts _in rerum natura_, but lies in the nature of the case. Goethe
supplies us with an example of personal experience which, as confided
in his "Dichtung und Wahrheit," illustrates what I mean: "As I returned
to my cobbler's house [he had just visited the Dresden Gallery] once
more to take lunch I could scarce trust the evidence of my eyes. I
believed myself to see before me a picture of Van Ostade[307], so
complete it was, that you might have hung it there and then in the
Gallery. Composition of subject-matter, light, shadow, brown tone
of the whole, all that is admirable in this artist's pictures I saw
actually before me. It was the first time that I was aware, to such a
high degree of the power which I subsequently exercised with intention,
the power of seeing, that is, with the eyes of the particular artist,
to whose works I had just happened to devote exceptional attention.
This facility afforded me great enjoyment, but also increased the
desire from time to time to persevere in the exercise of a talent
which Nature seemed ungracious enough to disallow me[308]." This
variety in the manner of colouring is exceptionally conspicuous in the
painting of human flesh, quite apart from all modifications rendered
necessary by the mode of lighting, age, sex, situation, and the like
considerations. And for the rest, whether the subject depicted be
daily life, outside or within the interior of private houses, taverns,
churches, or other buildings, or it be that of Nature's landscape,
with its wealth of objects and colour, which finds more or less
accurate reflection in the personal essay of any particular painter,
the result cannot fail to illustrate this varied play of form and
colour effect[309], which will infallibly appear, due as it is to the
manner in which each comprehends, reproduces, and creates his own work
according to his own outlook, experience and imaginative powers.

(_c_) We have hitherto, in discussing the several points of view which
are given effect to in the art of painting, referred, _firstly_, to its
content, and _secondly_ to the sensuous medium in which such content
can be built up. We have in conclusion to define the mode under which
the artist is bound to conceive and execute his content as a painter
and under the conditions of his particular medium. We will divide the
very considerable matter which such an investigation implies in the
following manner:

_First_, we have to deal with the more _general_ distinctions in forms
of _conception_, which it will be necessary to classify and follow in
their progressive advance to richer manifestations of life.

_Secondly_, we shall have to direct attention to the more definite
aspects, which, within these general types of conception, are more
directly referable to genuine pictorial _composition_, that is, the
artistic motives apparent in the particular situation and manner of
grouping selected.

_Lastly_, we propose to review rapidly the mode of _characterization_,
which results from distinctions of subject-matter no less than modes of
conception.

(_α_) With respect to the most generally prevailing modes of artistic
conception[310], we shall find these are in some measure due to the
content which has to be depicted, and in part are referable to the
course of the art's evolution, which does not from the first seek to
elaborate all that is apparent in any subject, but rather through a
variety of stages and transitions makes itself fully mistress of Life
and its manifestations.

(_αα_) The first position which the art of painting is able to secure
still betrays its origin from sculpture and architecture: in the
_entire mode_ of its conception it is still in close association with
these arts. And this will pre-eminently be the case where the artist
restricts himself to individual figures, which he does not place before
us in the vital connections of an essentially concrete situation,
but in the simple independence of its self-repose. Out of the many
sources of content which I have indicated as adapted to painting, we
shall find religious subjects, Christ, his apostles, and the like are
exceptionally suited to such abstract treatment. Such figures as these
must necessarily be assumed to possess sufficient significance in
their isolation, to be complete in themselves, and to unfold an object
sufficiently substantive of adoration and love. Belonging to this
type, particularly in early art, we meet with examples of Christ or
his saints isolated without definite situation and environment. If we
do find the latter it mainly consists in architectural embellishments,
particularly Gothic; this is frequently the case in early Flemish or
upper German art[311]. In this relation to architecture, among the
columns and arches of which such figures as the twelve apostles and
others are frequently composed, painting does not as yet attain to the
life-like actuality of its later development, and we find that even the
figures still retain in some measure a character which inclines to the
statuesque, or to some extent do not move beyond such a general type
as we find indicated in its fundamentals by Byzantine painting. For
isolated figures of this character, devoid of any background or only
retaining a purely architectonic outline, a more severe simplicity of
colour, and a more emphatic brilliancy, is as it should be. The oldest
school of painters have consequently employed a single-tinted ground of
gold instead of a rich natural landscape, a ground which the colours
of drapery have to confront, and to which they are compelled to adapt
themselves; these are consequently more decisive and glaring than the
colours employed in the periods of Art's finest bloom, just as we find
as a rule that simple vivid colours such as red, blue, and the rest are
most pleasing to uncultivated people.

To this earliest type of conception it is that for the most part the
miracle-working pictures belong. To such as to something stupendous
man is merely placed in a relation of stupidity, from which the aspect
of their artistic merit vanishes, so that they are not brought nearer
to his conscious life in friendly guise in accordance with their vital
humanity and beauty, and the very pictures which are most revered in a
religious sense are from an artistic standpoint the most execrable.

If, however, isolated figures of this type do not supply an object
for devotion or interest as being already complete and independent
personality, their execution, carried out as it is in consonance
with the principle of statuesque conception, has no meaning at all.
Portraits, for example, are of interest to relatives who know the
man thus portrayed and his individuality. But where the personages
thus depicted are forgotten or unknown the sympathy which is excited
by their portraiture in a given action or situation, which gives
definite content to a particular character, is of a wholly different
kind to that which we find in the entirely simple type of conception
above referred to. Really great portraits, when they face us in the
fullest wealth of life all the means of art can display, possess in
this wealth itself the power to stand forth from and step out of their
frames. In looking at the portraits of Van Dyck, for example, more
particularly when the pose of the figure is not wholly full face, but
slightly turned away, the frame has struck me like the door of the
world, which the man before me enters. When consequently individuals
do not possess, as saints, angels and the like do, a characterization
which is in itself sufficiently complete and acknowledged, and are only
interesting by virtue of the definite character of a given situation,
some single circumstance or particular action, it is not suitable to
present them as independent figures. As an example of this the last
work of Kügelchen in Dresden was a composition of four heads, half
figures, namely, Christ, John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, and the
Prodigal Son. So far as Christ and John the Evangelist are concerned I
found the conception quite appropriate. But in the case of the Baptist,
and in every respect in that of the Prodigal Son, I failed to connect
with them the authentic character which could justify a treatment of
them as half-length portraits. In such cases it is essential to place
the figures in a condition of action or incident, or at least to show
them in situations, by means of which, in vital association with
external environment, they can assert the individuality which marks an
essentially exclusive whole. The head of the Prodigal Son in the above
picture expresses no doubt, very finely too, pain, profound repentance
and remorse, but the only indication we have given us that this is the
repentance of the Prodigal Son is a very diminutive herd of swine in
the foreground. Instead of a symbolical reference of this kind we ought
to see him among his swine, or at least in some other scene of his
life. The Prodigal Son, in short, does not possess for us any further
general characterization complete as such in our minds and only exists,
in so far as he is not purely allegorical, in the well-known scenes of
Biblical narrative. He should be depicted to us as leaving his father's
house, or in his misery, his repentance and return, that is, in the
concrete facts of the tale. Those swine put in the foreground do not
carry us much further than a label with "The Prodigal Son" written on
it.

(_ββ_) And generally it is obvious that painting, for the reason that
its function is to accept as its content the wealth of soul-life in all
its detail, is, to a yet greater extent than sculpture, unable to rest
satisfied with that repose on itself which is without defined situation
and the conception of a character taken by itself and alone simply. It
is bound to make the effort to exhibit such self-subsistency and its
content in specific situation, variety, and distinction of character
viewed in their mutual relations and in association with their
environment. It is, in fact, just this departure from purely eclectic
and traditional types, from the architectonic composition of figures
and the statuesque mode of conception; it is just this liberation from
all that is devoid of movement and action, this striving after a living
human expression, a characteristic individuality; it is this investment
of a content with all the detail of the ideal and external condition
that affects it which constitutes the advance of the art, in virtue of
which it secures its own unique point of view. Consequently to painting
as to no other plastic art is it not merely permitted, but it is even
required from it, that it should unfold dramatic realization, and by
the composition of its figures display their activity in a distinctly
emphasized situation.

(_γγ_) And, in the _third_ place, closely connected with this
absorption in the complete wealth of existing life and the dramatic
movement of circumstance and character, we are aware of the importance
which is increasingly attached, both in conception and execution, to
the individuality and the vital wealth of the colour aspect of all
objects, in so far as in painting we attain to the supremest effects of
vital truth which are capable of being expressed purely by colour.

This magical result of appearance can, however, be carried to such
a pitch, that in contrast to it the exhibition of content becomes a
matter of indifference, and painting tends to pass over, in the mere
charm and perfume of its colour tones, and the contrast, fusion, and
play of their harmonies, into the art of music, precisely as sculpture,
in the elaboration of its reliefs, tends to associate itself with
painting.

(_β_) What we have in the first instance now to pass in review are the
particular lines[312] that pictorial _composition_ is constrained to
adhere to in its productions when presenting to us a definite situation
and the more immediate motives referable to it by virtue of the way it
concentrates and groups together various figures and natural objects in
one self-exclusive whole.

(_αα_) What is of fundamental and pre-eminent importance here is the
happy selection of a situation adapted to the art.

In this respect the imaginative powers of the painter possess an
immeasurable field to select from, a field whose limits extend from
the simplest situation[313] of an object insignificant in itself,
such as a wreath of flowers, or a wineglass composed with plates,
bread, and certain fruits, to rich compositions of important public
events, political actions, coronation fêtes, battles, or even the Last
Judgment, in which God the Father, Christ, his apostles, the heavenly
legions, nay, our entire humanity, and earth, heaven, and hell are
brought together. And here a closer inspection will show us that we
must clearly distinguish what is truly pictorial on the one hand from
that which is sculpturesque, and on the other from what is poetical in
the sense that it is only poetry that can fully express it.

The essential difference between a _pictorial_, and _sculpturesque_
situation consists, as we have already seen, in this, that the
main function of sculpture is to place before us that which is
self-subsistent in its tranquillity, without conflict under conditions
that do not affect it, in which distinctness of definition is not the
main demand, it is only in the relief that it really begins to approach
a group composition, and an epic expanse of figures begins to represent
actions involving motion, and which imply collision of opposing forces.
The art of painting, on the contrary, only thoroughly takes up its
proper task, when it moves away from figures composed independently
of their more concrete relations, moves away from a situation that
is deficient in its elaboration, in order that it may thus pass into
the sphere of living movement, human conditions, passions, conflicts,
actions in persistent association with external environment, and even
in its composition of natural landscape is able to retain firmly
this definite structure of a given situation and its most lifelike
individuality. It was for this reason that from the first we maintained
that painting was called upon to effect the exposition of character,
soul, and ideal qualities, not in the way that this spiritual world
enables us to recognize it directly in its external shape, but in the
way it evolves and expresses its actual substance by means of _actions._

And the truth we have just mentioned is that which brings painting
into closer relation with _poetry._ Both arts have in this respect an
advantage[314], and from another point of view, also a disadvantage.
Painting is unable to give us the development of a situation, event, or
action, as poetry or music, that is to say, in a _series_ of changes;
it can only embody one moment of time. A simple reflection is deducible
from this, namely, that we must in this one moment have placed before
us the substance of the situation or action in its entirety, the very
bloom of it; consequently, that moment should be selected in which all
that preceded and followed it is concentrated in one point. In the case
of a battle, for example, this moment will be that of victory. The
conflict is still apparent, but its decisive conclusion is equally so.
The artist is able, therefore, to retain as it were the residue of the
Past, which, in the very act of withdrawal and disappearance, still
asserts itself in the Present, and furthermore can suggest what has yet
to be evolved as the immediate result of a given situation. I cannot,
however, here enlarge further on this head. The painter, however,
together with this disadvantage as against the poet, is to this extent
advantaged in that he can bring the precise scene before our vision
in all the appearance of its reality, can depict it perfectly in all
its detail. "_Ut pictura poesis erit_" is no doubt a favourite saying
which is particularly and pertinaciously advanced by theorists, and is
no doubt actually accepted and exemplified by narrative poetry in its
descriptions of the seasons, its flowers, and its landscapes. Detailed
transcription of such objects and situations is, however, not only a
very dry and tedious affair, and indeed, so far from being exhaustive,
always leaves something more to say. It is, further, contrasted with
painting, only a confusing result, because it is forced to present as
a successive series of ideas what painting sets before our vision once
and for all, so that we constantly tend to forget what has gone before
and lose it from our minds, despite the fact that it should be held
in essential relation with that which follows, inasmuch as under the
spatial condition it is in fact a part of it, and only is significant
in this association and this immediacy. It is, however, just in this
contemporaneous exposition of detail that the painter can restore that
which, in respect to the progressive series of past and future events,
he fails to secure.

There is, however, another respect in which painting yields place to
poetry and music, and that is in its lyrical quality. The art of poetry
can not only develop emotions and ideas generally as such respectively,
but also in their transitions, movement, and increased intensity. In
respect to concentrated intensity this is yet more the case in music,
which is essentially concerned with soul-movement. To represent this
painting has nothing beyond the expression of face and pose; and if it
does exclusively direct its effort, to what is actually lyrical, it
misconceives the means at hand. However much the soul's passion may
be expressed in the play of the countenance or bodily movement, such
expression should not be directly referable to emotion as such, but
to emotions in so far as they are present, with a _definite_ mode of
expression, in an event or action. The fact that it reveals ideality in
external form therefore does not connote the abstract meaning that it
makes the nature of the soul visible by means of physiognomy and form,
under the mode of which it expresses soul-life; it is rather just the
individual situation of an action, passion in some specific outburst
thereof, by means of which the emotion is unfolded and recognized.
When, therefore, it is attempted to interpret the poetical quality
of painting under the assumption that it should express the soul's
emotion directly, without a motive and action more near to it in facial
expression and pose, all that we do in such a case is to throw the art
back upon an abstraction, which its effort should precisely strive to
be rid of; we ask of it, in short, that it should master the peculiar
and just contribution of poetry; and if it attempts to do this the
result will be a barren and stale one.

I particularly insist on this point because in the exhibition of art
we had here last year (1828) several pictures from the so-called
Düsseldorf school have received much attention, the painters of which,
while displaying in their work considerable knowledge and technical
ability, have laid almost exclusive stress on this ideal aspect, on
material that is only capable of adequate presentment in poetry. The
content, for the most part borrowed from poems of Goethe or from
Shakespeare, Ariosto, and Tasso, may be generally indicated as the
ideal emotion of Love. As a rule the most capable of these pictures set
before us a pair of lovers, Romeo and Juliet, for example, or Rinaldo
and Armida, without any further situation, so that these couples have
nothing more to do and express except the fact that they are in love
with each other, in other words, they share a mutual attraction, gaze
on each other as lovers, and as lovers look yet again. Naturally in
such a case the main expression must be concentrated in the mouth and
eyes; and we may add that our Rinaldo has been so placed relatively
to his spider legs that he looks very much as though he did not know
what to do with them. They are extensions which are entirely without
meaning. Sculpture, as we have seen, dispenses with the glance of
eye, the soul-flash; painting, on the other hand, seizes on this
potent means of expression, but it must not focus everything at this
one point, it should not make the fire or the refluent languor and
yearning of the eye or soft friendliness of lips the soul and centre
of expression without any other motives. Equally defective was the
fisherman of Hübner, the theme of which was borrowed from that famous
poem of Goethe, which depicts with such wonderful depth and charm of
feeling the indefinite yearning for the repose, coolness and purity
of water. The naked fisher lad, who in this picture is being drawn
into the water, has, just as the male figures in the other pictures
have, a very prosaic looking face, such as we could not imagine, if
the features were in repose, to be capable of profound or beautiful
emotions. And, as a rule, we cannot assert of these figures, whether
male or female, that they are beautiful in a healthy sense; they, on
the contrary, merely betray the nervous excitement, weakness, and
disease of Love and emotional life generally, which people have no
business to repeat and which we would willingly, whether in life or
Art, be spared. To the same class of conception belongs the way that
Schadow, the master of this school, has depicted Goethe's Mignon. The
character of Mignon is wholly poetical. What makes her interesting is
her Past, the severity of her destiny as it affects both her inward
and outward life, the conflict of her Italian, wholly excited passion
in a soul which is still obscure to itself, which can neither decide
upon a course of action or object, and which, being this mystery
to itself, merges itself in such and yet can do itself no good. It
is this self-expression wholly divided in itself and yet retiring
into itself, and only letting us see its confusion in isolated and
unrelated eruptions, which creates the awful interest we cannot fail
to experience in her. Such a network of contradictions we may no
doubt imagine in our minds, but the art of painting is wholly unable
to, present it to us, as Schadow has attempted to do, simply by
means of Mignon's form and physiognomy, without defining further any
situation or action. We may, therefore, assert generally that the
above-mentioned pictures are conceived without any real insight for
situations, motives, and expression. It is, in short, an inseparable
condition of genuine artistic representations of painting that the
entire subject-matter should be grasped with imaginative power,
should be made visible to us in figurative form, which is expressed
and manifests its ideal quality through a series of feeling, that
is, through an action, which is of such significance to the emotion,
that each and everything in the work of art appears to be entirely
appropriated by the imagination to express the content selected. The
old Italian painters have to a conspicuous degree, no less than their
modern fraternity, depicted love-scenes, and in part borrowed the
material from poetry; but they have known how to clothe the same with
imagination and delight. Cupid and Psyche, Cupid and Venus, Pluto's
rape of Proserpine, the rape of the Sabine women, such and other
similar subjects the old masters depicted in lifelike and definite
situations, in scenes properly motived and not merely as simple emotion
conceived without imaginative grasp, without action. They have also
borrowed love scenes from the Old Testament. We may find an example
in the Dresden Gallery, a picture of Giorgione, in which Jacob, after
his long journey, greets Rachel, presses her hand and kisses her; in
the distance there stand a pair of youths by a spring, busily engaged
in watering their herds, which are feeding, a large number of them, in
the dale. Another picture presents to us Isaac and Rebecca. Rebecca
gives Abraham's carls water to drink and is recognized in doing so.
In the same way scenes are taken from Ariosto; we have Medor, for
example, writing the name of Angelica on the edge of a spring. When,
therefore, people nowadays refer to poetry in painting, this can only
mean, as already insisted, that we must grasp a subject imaginatively
and suffer emotions to unfold themselves in action; it excludes the
idea of securing feeling simply as such or endeavouring thus to express
it. Even poetry, which is capable of expressing emotion in its ideal or
spiritual substance, is unfolded in ideas, images, and descriptions.
If this art was content to abide by a mere "I love thee," repeated
eternally, as its entire expression, such a consummation no doubt,
might prove highly agreeable to those masters who have talked so much
about the poetry of poetry, but it would be the blankest prose for all
that. For art generally in its relation to emotion consists in the
apprehension and enjoyment of the same by means of the imagination,
which in poetry displays passion in its conceptions, and satisfies us
in their expression, whether that expression be lyrical, or conveyed
in epical events, or dramatic action. As a presentment of the inward
life of soul, however, in painting the mouth, eye, and pose, do not
alone suffice; we must have the total objective realization in its
concreteness to make valid and vouch for such ideality.

The main thing, then, in a picture is that it present to us a
situation, the scene of some action. And closely associated with this
we have the primary law of _intelligibility._ In this respect religious
subjects possess the supreme advantage, that they are universally
known. The annunciation of the angel, the adoration of the shepherds or
of the three kings, the repose in the flight to Egypt, the crucifixion,
burial, resurrection, no less than the legends of the saints, were
well known subjects with the public, for whom such pictures were
painted, albeit to our own generation the stories of the martyrs are
removed to some distance. For a particular church, for example, it was
mainly the biography of its patrons or its guardian saints which was
represented. Consequently it was not always the painters themselves
who selected such subjects; particular circumstances rendered such
selection inevitable for particular altars, chapels, and cloisters, so
that the place where they are exhibited in itself contributes to their
elucidation. And this is, in part, necessary, for in painting we do not
find speech, words, and names, by which interpretation of poetry may be
materially assisted to say nothing of all its other means. And in the
same way in a royal residence, council-hall, or parliament-building,
scenes of great events, important situations taken from the history of
the state, city, and building in which they are found are there, and
receive a just recognition in the place for which they were originally
painted. It is hardly likely, for instance, that in painting a picture
for one of our palaces an artist would select a subject borrowed from
English or Chinese history, or from the life of King Mithridates. It
is otherwise in picture galleries, where we have all kinds of subjects
brought together that we could wish to buy or possess as examples of
fine works of art. In such a case, of course, the peculiar relation of
any picture to a definite locale, no less than its intelligibility, so
far as it is thereby promoted, disappears. The same thing is true of
the private collection. The collector brings together just what he can
get; the principle is that of a public gallery, and his love of art or
caprice may extend in other directions.

Allegorical pictures are far inferior to those of historical content
in the matter of intelligibility; they are, moreover, for the reason
that the ideal vitality and emphatic characterization of the figures
must in great measure pass out of them, indefinite, and not motive to
enthusiasm. Landscapes and situations borrowed from the reality of
daily life, are, on the contrary, no less clear in their substantial
import than, in respect to their characterization, dramatic variety,
movement and wealth of existence, they supply a highly favourable
opportunity for inventive power and executive ability.

(_ββ_) To render the defined situation of a picture intelligible, in so
far as the artist is called upon to do this, the mere fact of its local
place of exposition and a general knowledge of its subject will not
suffice. As a general rule, these are purely external relations, under
which the work as a work of art is less affected. The main point of
real importance consists, on the contrary, in this that the artist be
sufficiently endowed in artistic sense and general talent to bring into
prominence and give form to the varied motives, which such a situation
contains, with all the bounty of invention. Every action, in which
the ideal world is manifested in that which is external, possesses
immediate modes of expression, sensuous results and relations, which,
in so far as they are actually the activities of spirit, betray and
reflect its emotion, and consequently can be utilized with the greatest
advantage as motives which contribute to the intelligibility of the
work no less than its individual character. It is, for example, a
frequent criticism of the Transfiguration picture of Raphael, that
the composition is cut up into two unrelated parts; and this from an
_objective_ standpoint is the case. We have the transfiguration on
the hill and the incident of the possessed child in the foreground.
From an ideal[315] point of view, however, an association of supreme
significance is undoubtedly present. For, on the one hand, the sensuous
transfiguration of Christ is just this very exaltation of himself
above the earth and his removal from his disciples, a removal which as
such separation ought to be made visible; and from a further point of
view the majesty of Christ is in this, an actual and particular case,
to the highest degree emphasized by the fact that the disciples are
unable to heal the possessed child without the assistance of their
Master. In this instance, therefore, this twofold action is throughout
motived, and the association is enforced before our eyes, both in its
external and ideal aspect, by the incident that a disciple expressly
points to Christ who is removed from them, and in doing so suggests the
profounder truth of the Son of God to be at the same time on Earth,
in accordance with the truth of that saying, "If two are gathered
together in my name I am in the midst of them." I will give yet another
illustration. Goethe on one occasion gave as a subject for a prize
exhibition the representation of Achilles in female garments at the
coming of Odysseus. In one drawing Achilles glances at the helmet of
the armed hero, his heart fires up at the sight, and in consequence
of this emotion the pearl necklace is broken which he wears round the
neck. A lad seeks for and picks up the pieces from the ground. Such is
an example of admirable motive.

Moreover, the artist finds he has to a more or less extent large
spaces to fill in; he requires landscape as background, lighting,
architectonic surrounding, and he has to introduce incidental figures
and objects and so forth. All this material he should apply, in so far
as it can be so adapted, as motives in the situation, and bring this
external matter into unity with his subject in such a way that it is no
longer insignificant. Two princes or patriarchs shake hands. If this
is indicative of a peace treaty, and the seal upon the same, warriors,
armed bands, and the like, preparations for a sacrifice to solemnize
the pact, will be an obviously fitting environment. If such people
happen to meet each other with a similar welcome on a journey, other
motives will be necessary. To invent the same in a way that attaches
real significance and individualization to the action, this it is which
more than anything else will test the artistic insight of the painter
so far as this aspect of his work is concerned. And in order to promote
this not a few artists have also attached symbolical relations between
background and the main action. In the composition, for example, of
the Adoration of the three Kings, we not unfrequently find the holy
Infant in His cradle beneath a ruined roof, around Him the walls of a
building falling in decay, and in the background the commencement of
a cathedral. The falling stone-work and the rising cathedral directly
suggest the victory of the Christian church over paganism[316]. In the
same way we find, not unfrequently, in pictures, more especially of
the Van Eyck school, which depict the greeting of the angel Gabriel to
Mary, flowering lilies like stamens. They indicate the maidenhood of
the mother of God.

(_γγ_) Inasmuch as in the _third_ place the art of painting, by
virtue of the principle of ideal and external variety, in which it is
bound to give clear definition to situations, events, conflicts, and
actions, is forced to deal on its way with many kinds of distinction
and contradiction in its subject-matter, whether purely natural objects
or human figures, and, moreover, receives the task to subdivide this
composite content, and create of it one harmonious whole, a way of
posing and _grouping_ its figures artistically, becomes one of the
most important and necessary claims made upon it. Among the crowd of
particular rules and definitions, however, which are applicable to
this subject, what we are able to affirm in its most general terms can
only be valid in quite a formal way, and I will merely draw attention
shortly to a few of the main points.

The earliest mode of composition still remains entirely architectonic,
a homogeneous juxtaposition of figures or a regular opposition and
symmetrical arrangement, not merely of the figures themselves, but
also their posture and movements. We may add that at this stage the
pyramidal form of grouping is much in favour. When the subject is the
Crucifixion of our Lord such shapes follow as a matter of course.
Christ is suspended on high from the cross, and at the sides we have
a group of the disciples, Mary the mother, or saints. In pictures of
the Madonna also, in which Mary is seated with her Child on a raised
throne, and we find adoring apostles, martyrs, and so forth, beneath
them on either side we have a further illustration of this form. Even
in the Sistine Madonna picture this mode of grouping is still in its
fundamental features retained. And, generally, it brings repose to the
eye because the pyramids, by virtue of its apex, makes the otherwise
dispersed association coherent, giving an external point of unity to
the group[317].

Within the limits, however, of such a generally abstract symmetrical
composition, the pose of the figures may be marked in detail by great
vividness and individuality, and equally the general expression and
movement. The artist, while using in combination the means of his art,
will have his several planes, whereby he is able more definitely to
emphasize the more important figures as against the others; and he can
in addition avail himself of his scheme of lighting and colour. The way
he will arrange his groups to arrive at this result is sufficiently
obvious. He will not, of course, place his main figures at the sides,
or place subordinate ones in positions which are likely to attract the
highest attention. And similarly he will throw the strongest light on
objects which are part of the most significant content, rather than
leave them in shadow, and emphasize with such strong light and the most
conspicuous tints objects which are incidental.

In the case he adopts a method of grouping less symmetrical, and
thereby more life-like, the artist will have to take especial pains not
to make the figures press too closely on each other, which results
in a confusion not unfrequently noticeable in certain pictures; we
should not be under the necessity of having first to identify limbs and
discover which belong to which, whether they be arms, legs, or other
properties, such as drapery, armour, and so forth. It will, on the
contrary, be wisest in the case of larger compositions, in the first
instance no doubt, to separate the whole into component parts easily
ascertained, but, at the same time, not to isolate them in dispersion
entirely. And particularly will this be advisable where we have scenes
and situations, which on their own account naturally tend to a broad
and disunited effect such as the gathering of manna in the wilderness,
market-fairs, and similar subjects.

On the above subject I must restrict myself here to these very general
observations.

(_γ_) Having thus, _firstly_, dealt with the general types of pictorial
composition, and, _secondly_, with a composition from the point of
view of selection of situations, arrangement of motives and grouping,
we will now add a few remarks upon the mode of _characterization_, by
means of which painting is to be distinguished from sculpture and its
ideal plastic character.

(_αα_) I have several times previously taken occasion to remark,
that in painting the ideal and external _particularity_ of soul-life
is admitted in its freedom, and consequently is not necessarily
that typical beauty of individualization which is inseparable from
the Ideal itself, but one which is suffered to expand in every
direction of particular appearance, by virtue of which we obtain
that which in modern parlance is called _characteristic._ Critics
have generally referred to "the characteristic" thus understood as
the distinctive mark of modern art in its contrast to the antique;
and, in the significance we are here attaching to the term, no doubt
the above contrast is just. According to our modern criterion Zeus,
Apollo, Diana, and the rest are really not characters at all in this
sense, although we cannot fail to admire their infinitely lofty,
plastic, and ideal individualities. We already find a more articulate
individualization is approached by the Homeric Achilles, the Agamemnon
and Clytemnestra of Aeschylus[318], or the Odysseus, Antigone, and
Ismene in the type of spiritual development which by word and deed
Sophocles unfolds to us, a definition in which these figures subsist in
what appears to be consonant with their substantive nature, so that we
can no doubt discover the presentment of character in the antique if
we are prepared to call such creations characters. Still in Agamemnon,
Ajax, Odysseus, and the rest, the individualization remains throughout
of a generalized type, the character of a prince, of frantic rage, of
cunning in its more abstract determinacy. The individual aspect is in
the result closely intertwined with the general conception, and the
character is merged in an individualization of ideal import. The art
of painting, on the contrary, which does not restrain particularity
within the limits of such ideality, is more than anything else occupied
with developing the entire variety of that aspect of particularization
which is accidental, so that what we have now set before us, instead of
those plastic ideals of gods and men, is _particular people_ viewed in
all the varied appearance of their accidental qualities. Consequently
perfection of corporeal form, and the fully realized consonancy of
the spiritual or ideal aspect with its free and sane existence, in a
word, all that in sculpture we referred to as ideal beauty, in the
art of painting neither make the same claim upon us, nor generally
are regarded as the matter of most importance, inasmuch as now it is
the ideality of soul-life itself, and its manifestation as conscious
life which forms the centre of interest. In this more ideal sphere
that realm of Nature is not so profoundly insistent. Piety of heart,
religion of soul can, no less than ethical sense, and activity in
fact did in the Silenus face of Socrates, find a dwelling in a bodily
form which, viewed on the outside simply, is ugly and distorted. No
doubt in expressing spiritual beauty, the artist will avoid what is
essentially ugly in external form, or will find a way to subdue and
illumine it in the power of the soul which breaks through it, but he
cannot for all that entirely dispense with ugliness[319]. For the
content of painting, as we have above depicted it at length, includes
within itself an aspect, for which it is precisely the abnormal and
distorted traits of human figures and physiognomy, which are most able
to express. This is no other than the sphere of what is bad and evil,
which in religious subjects we find mainly represented by the common
soldiers, who take a part in the passion of Christ, or by the sinners
and devils in hell. Michelangelo was pre-eminent in his delineation of
devils. In his imaginative realization, though we find he passes beyond
the scale of ordinary human life, yet at the same time an affinity with
it is retained. However much notwithstanding the impersonations which
painting sets before us necessarily disclose an essentially complete
whole of characteristic realization, we will not go so far as to
maintain that we cannot find in them an analogue of that which we refer
to as the Ideal in the most plastic type of art[320]. In religious
subjects, no doubt, the feature of all importance is that of pure Love.
This is exceptionally so in the case of the Virgin mother, whose entire
life reposes in this love; it is more or less the same thing with the
women who accompany the Master, and with John, the disciple of Love. In
the expression of this we may also find the sensuous beauty of forms
associated, as is the case with Raphael's conceptions. Such a close
affinity must not, however, assert itself merely as formal beauty, but
must be spiritually made vital through the most intimate expression of
soul-life, and thereby transfigured; and this spiritual penetration
must make itself felt as the real object and content. The conception,
too, of beauty, has its real opportunity in the stories of Christ's
childhood and those of John the Baptist. In the case of the other
historical persons, whether apostles, saints, disciples, or wise men
of antiquity, this expression of an emphasized intensity of soul-life
is rather simply an affair of particular critical situations, apart
from which they are mainly placed before us as independent characters
of the actual world of experience, endowed with force and endurance of
courage, faith and action, so that what most determines the gist of
their characters in all its variety is an earnest and worthy manliness.
They are not ideals of gods, but entirely individualized human
ideals; not simply men, as they ought to be, but human ideals[321],
as they actually are in a certain place, to which neither particular
definition of character is wanting, nor yet a real association
between such particularity and the universal type which completes
them. Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, in his famous Last
Supper, have supplied examples of this type, in the composition of
which we find an entirely different quality of worth, majesty and
nobility present than in those presented by other painters[322]. This
is precisely the point at which painting meets on the same ground with
the ancients, without, however, sacrificing the character of its own
province.

(_ββ_) Inasmuch, moreover, as the art of painting, to the fullest
extent among the plastic arts, acknowledges the claim of the specific
form, and the individualized characterization to assert itself, so
above all we find here the transition to real _portraiture._ We should
be therefore wholly in the wrong if we condemned portrait painting
as incompatible with the lofty aims of art. Who indeed could desire
to lose the great number of excellent portraits painted by the great
masters? Who is not, quite apart from the artistic merits of such
works, curious to have definitely substantiated to their vision this
actual counterfeit of the idea of famous personalities, their genius,
and their exploits, which they may have otherwise had to accept from
history. For even the greatest and most highly placed man was, or is,
a veritable individual, and we desire to see in visible shape this
individuality, and the spiritual impression of it in all its most
actual and vital characteristics. But apart from objects, which lie
outside the purview of art, we may assert in a real sense, that the
advances in painting from its imperfect essays consist in nothing so
much as this very elaboration of the _portrait._ It was, in the first
instance, the pious and devotional sense which brought into prominence
the ideal life of soul. A yet finer art added new life to this sense by
adding to its product reality of expression and individual existence;
and with this profounder penetration into external fact the inward
life of spirit, the expression of which was its main object, was also
enhanced and deepened. In order, however, that the portrait should
be a genuine work of art the unity of the spiritual individuality
must, as I have already stated, be stamped upon it, and the spiritual
impression of the characterization must be the one mainly emphasized
and made prominent. Every feature of the countenance contributes
to this result in a conspicuous degree, and the fine instinct for
detecting such in the artist will declare itself by the way in which
he makes visible the unique impression of any personality by seizing
and emphasizing precisely those traits, and parts in which this
distinctive personal quality is expressed in its clearest and most
vitally pregnant embodiment. In this respect a portrait may be very
true to Nature, executed with the greatest perseverance, and yet
entirely devoid of life, while a mere sketch[323], a few outlines from
the hand of a master, may be infinitely more vivacious and arresting
in its truth. Such a study should, however, by indicating the lines or
features of real significance, reflect that character in its structural
completeness[324], if on the simplest scale, which the previous
lifeless execution and insistence upon crude fact glosses over and
renders invisible. The most advisable course, as a rule, is to maintain
a happy mean between such studies, and purely natural imitation. The
masterly portraits of Titian are of this type. The impression such
make on us is that of a complete personality. We get from them an
idea of spiritual vitality, such as actual experience is unable to
supply. The effect is similar to that afforded by the description of
great actions and events in the hands of a truly artistic historian.
We obtain from such a much loftier and vitally true picture of the
facts than any we could have taken from the direct evidence of our
senses. Concrete reality is so overburdened with the phenomenal, that
is incidental or accidental detail, that we frequently cannot see the
forest for the trees, and often the most important fact slips by us as
a thing of common or daily occurrence. It is the indwelling insight
and genius of the writer which first adds the quality of greatness
to events or actions, presenting them fully in a truly historical
composition, which rejects what is purely external, and only brings
into prominence that through which that ideal substance is vitally
unfolded. In this way, too, the painter should place before us the
mind[325] and character of the impersonation by means of his art. If
success is fully attained we may affirm that a portrait of this qualify
is more to the mark, more like the personality thus conceived than the
real man himself is. Albrecht Dürer has also executed portraits of
this character. With a few technical means the traits are emphasized
with such simplicity, definition, and dignity, that we wholly believe
ourselves to be facing spiritual life itself. The longer we look at
such a picture, the more profoundly we penetrate into it, the more it
is revealed to us. It reminds one of a clear-cut drawing, instinct
with genius, which completely gives expression to the characteristic,
and for the rest is merely executive in its colour and outlines in
so far as the same may make the characterization more intelligible,
apparent, and finished as a whole, without entering into all the
importunate detail of the facts of natural life. In the same way also
Nature in her landscape paints every leaf, branch, and blade to the
last shadow of a line or tint. Landscape painting, on the contrary,
has no business to attempt such elaboration, but may only follow her
subject to a principle of treatment, in which the expression of the
whole is involved, which emphasizes detail, but nevertheless does not
copy slavishly such particulars in all their threads, irregularities
and so forth, assuming it is to remain essentially characteristic
and individual work. In the human face the drawing of _Nature_ is
the framework of bone in its harsh lines, around which the softer
ones are disposed and continue in various accidental details. Truly
characteristic _portraiture_, however, despite all the importance we may
rightly attach to these well defined lines, consists in other traits
indicated with equal force, the countenance in short as _elaborated by
the creative artist._[326] In this sense we may say of the portrait
that it not only can, but that it ought to flatter, inasmuch as it
neglects what pertains to Nature's contingency, and only accepts that
which contributes to the characteristic content of the individual
portrayed, his most unique and most intimate self. Nowadays we find it
the fashion to give every kind of face just a ripple of a smile, to
emphasize its amiability, a very questionable fashion indeed, and one
hard to restrain within the limit imposed. Charming, no doubt; but the
merely polite amiability of social intercourse is not a fundamental
trait of any character, and becomes in the hands of many artists only
too readily the most insipid kind of sweetness.

(_γγ_) However compatible with portraiture the course of painting
may be in all its modes of production it should, however, make the
particular features of the face, the specific forms, ways of posing,
grouping, and schemes of colour consonant with the actual situation, in
which it composes its figures and natural objects in order to express a
content. For it is just this content in this particular situation which
should be portrayed.

Out of the infinitely diversified detail which in this connection we
might examine I will only touch upon one point of vital importance. It
is this that the situation may either be on its own account a passing
one, and the emotion expressed by it of a momentary character, so that
one and the same individual could express many similar ones in addition
and also feelings in contrast with it, or the situation and emotion
strikes at the very heart of a character, which thereby discloses
its entire and most intimate nature. Situations and emotions of this
latter type are the truly momentous crises in characterization[327].
In the situations, for example, in which I have already referred to
the Madonna, one finds nothing, however essentially complete the
individualization of the Mother of God may be in its composition,
which is not a real factor in the embracing compass of her soul and
character. In this case, too, the characterization is such that it is
_self_-evident that she does not exist apart from what she can express
in this specific circumstance. Supreme masters consequently have
painted the Madonna in such immortal maternal situations or phases.
Other masters have still retained in her character the expression of
ordinary life otherwise experienced and actual. This expression may be
very beautiful and life-like, but this form, the like features, and a
similar expression would be equally applicable to other interests and
relations of marriage lore. We are consequently inclined to regard
a figure of this type from yet other points of view than that of a
Madonna, whereas in the supremest works we are unable to make room
for any other thoughts but that which the situation awakens in us.
It is on this ground that I admire so strongly the Mary Magdalene of
Correggio in Dresden, and it will for ever awake such admiration.
We have here the repentant sinner, but we cannot fail to see that
sinfulness is not here the point of serious consideration[328]; it is
assumed she was essentially noble and could not have been capable of
bad passions and actions. Her profound and intimately self-imposed
restraint therefore can only be a return to that which she really is,
what is no momentary situation, but her entire nature. Throughout this
entire composition, whether we look at form, facial expression, dress,
pose, or environment, the artist has therefore not in the slightest
degree laid a stress on those circumstances, which might indicate sin
and culpability; she has lost the consciousness of those times, and
is entirely absorbed in her present condition, and this faith, this
instinct, this absorption appears to be her real and complete character.

Such a complete reciprocity between soul-life and external
surroundings, determinacy of character and situation, the masters
of Italy have illustrated with exceptional beauty. In the example
I have already referred to of Kügelchen's picture of the Prodigal
Son, on the contrary, we have no doubt the remorse of repentance and
grief expressed to the life; but the artist has failed to secure the
unity of the entire character, which, apart from such an aspect of
it, he possessed, and of the actual conditions under which such was
depicted to us. If we examine quietly such features, we can only find
in them the physiognomy of any one we might chance to meet on the
Dresden bridge or anywhere else. In the case of a real coalescence of
character with the expression of a specific situation such a result
would be impossible; just as, in true genre-painting, even where
the concentration is upon the most fleeting moments of time, the
realization is too vivid to leave room for the notion that the figures
before us could ever be otherwise placed or could have received other
traits or an altered type of expression.

These, then, are the main points we have to consider in respect to
the content and the artistic treatment in the sensuous material of
painting, the surface, that is, and colour.



3. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PAINTING


In our consideration of this _third_ section of our subject we are
unable to confine ourselves, as we have hitherto done, to a wholly
general examination of the content and purport appropriate to painting,
and the mode of configuration, which follows from its principle, for
in so far as this art is built up on the particularity of characters
and their situation, and upon form and its pose, colour, and so
forth, we are compelled to fix in our minds and discuss the _actual
reality_ of this art's separate productions. No study of painting is
complete that does not take into its survey and is unable to enjoy
and criticize the pictures themselves, in which the aspects of it we
have examined are enforced. This is a general rule in the case of all
art, but it applies with exceptional force to painting among those we
have up to the present considered. In the case of architecture and
sculpture, where the embrace of the content is more restricted, the
means of exposition and configuration are to a less extent stamped
with wealth and distinctive modification, and the particular aspects
of their definition are simpler and more radical, we can more readily
avail ourselves of copies, descriptions, and casts. It is essential
in dealing with the art of painting that we should see the actual
works themselves. In this case mere descriptions, however important
they may be in a subsidiary sense, will not suffice. In the infinite
variety, however, of its explication, the various aspects of which are
united in particular works of art, these works appear to us in the
first instance as a mere motley array, which, by reason of the fact
that our review of it is based upon no principle of classification,
is only to a small extent able to disclose to us the unique quality
of individual pictures. And it follows from this that galleries, as
a rule, if we are not already able to connect with each picture our
knowledge of the country, period, school, and master to which it
belongs, is simply a collection without meaning, in which we lose
ourselves. The most profitable arrangement for study and enjoyment with
our eyes is therefore an exhibition based on _historical sequence._ A
collection of this kind, co-ordinated in relation to such a principle,
unique and invaluable of its class, we shall shortly be able to admire
in the picture gallery of the royal museum in this city[329]. In
this we shall not only possess a historical survey of the technique
of art in its stages of development, but shall have set before our
minds, as an essential process with a history, that articulation of
its ideal content in the distinctions of its schools, their various
subject-matter, and their different modes of artistic conception and
treatment. It is only through having given us a survey as consonant
as this is with that vital process that we can form an idea from its
origins in traditional and eclectic types, of the living growth of
art, its search after expression and individual characteristic, its
liberation from the inactive and tranquil station of its figures, that
we can appreciate its progress to dramatic movement, grouping, and all
the wealth and witchery of its colour, or finally learn to distinguish
its schools, which either to some extent treat similar subject-matter
in a way peculiar to themselves, or are distinct from each other by
reasons of the variety of their respective content.

A historical development of painting such as that referred to is of as
great importance to _scientific_ observation and exposition as it is
to accurate study. The content of art as I have presented it, namely,
the elaboration of its material, the distinct and fundamental changes
in the mode of its conception, we find all this and more receives thus
for the first time its concrete coherence in a sequence and under
a classification which corresponds with the facts. It is therefore
incumbent on us to glance at this process, if only by way of emphasis
to what most immediately arrests attention.

In general the advance consists in this, that it originates in
_religious_ subjects conceived still in a _typical_ way, with simple
architectonic arrangement and unelaborated colour. After this, in
an increasing degree of fusion with religious situations, we get
actuality, vital beauty of form, individuality, depth of penetration,
charm and witchery of colouring, until Art finally turns its attention
to the world itself, makes itself master of Nature, the daily
occurrence of ordinary life, or what is of significance in national
history whether present or past, or portraiture and anything else
down to the merest trifle and the least significant fact, and with
an enthusiasm equal to that it devoted to the religious ideal, and
pre-eminently in this sphere secures not merely the most consummate
result of technical accomplishment, but also a treatment and execution
which is most full of life and personality. This progress is followed
in clearest outline if we take in succession the schools of Byzantine,
Italian, Flemish, Dutch, and German painting, after noting the most
prominent features of which briefly we shall finally indicate the
transition to the art of music[330].

(_a_) In our review of Byzantine painting we may remark to start with
that the practice of painting among the Greeks was to a definable
degree always carried on; and examples of antique work contributed
to the greater excellence of its results relatively to posture,
draping, and other respects. On the other hand the touch of Nature
and life wholly vanished from this art; in facial types it adhered
strictly to tradition; in its figures and modes of expression it
was conventional and rigid; in its general composition more or less
architectonic. We find no trace of natural environment and a landscape
background. The modelling, by means of light and shadow, brilliance
and obscurity, and their fusion, no less than perspective and the
art of lifelike grouping, either were not elaborated at all, or to a
very slight extent. By reason of this strict adherence to a single
acknowledged type independent artistic production had little room for
its exercise. The art of painting and mosaic frequently degenerated
into a mere craft, and became thereby lifeless and devoid of spirit,
albeit such craftsmen, equally with the workers on antique vases,
possessed excellent examples of previous work, which they could imitate
so far as pose and the folding of drapery was concerned. A similar
type of painting spread its sombre influence over the ravaged West
and more particularly in Italy. Here, however, although in the first
instance with beginnings of little strength, we are even at an early
date conscious of an effort to break away from inflexible forms and
modes of expression, and to face, at first, however, in a rough and
ready way, a development of loftier aim. Of Byzantine pictures we
may, on the contrary, affirm, as Herr von Rumohr[331] has maintained
of Greek Madonnas and images of Christ that "it is obvious even in
the most favoured examples, their origin was that of the mosaic, and
artistic elaboration was rejected from the first." In other words[332]
the Italians endeavoured even before the period of their independent
art development in painting, and in contrast to the Byzantines to
approximate to a more spiritual conception of Christian subjects.
The writer above-named draws attention also as noteworthy support of
his contention to the manner in which the later Greeks and Italians
respectively represented Christ on crucifixes. According to this writer
"the Greeks, to whom the sight of terrible bodily suffering was of
common occurrence, conceived the Saviour suspended on the Cross with
the entire weight of his body, the lower part of the body swollen and
the slackened knees bent to the left, the bowed head contending with
the pains of an awful death. Their subject was consequently in its
essentials bodily suffering. The Italians, on the contrary, in their
more ancient monuments, while we must not overlook the fact that the
representation of the Virgin Mary with her Child no less than the
Crucified is only of rare occurrence, were accustomed to depict the
figure of the Saviour on the cross adopting, so it appears to us,
the idea of the victory of the spiritual, not as in the former case
the death of the body. And this unquestionably nobler conception
asserts itself at an early date in the more favoured parts of Western
Europe[333]." With this sketch I must here rest content.

(_b_) We have, however, _secondly_, another characteristic of art to
consider in the earlier development of Italian painting. Apart from
the religious content of the Old and New Testament and the biographies
of martyrs and saints, it borrows its subjects in the main from Greek
mythology, very seldom, that is, from the events of national history,
or, if we except portraits, from the reality of contemporary life,
and equally rarely, and only at a late stage and exceptionally, from
natural landscape. Now that which it before all contributes to its
conception and artistic elaboration of the subject-matter of religion
is the _vital reality_ of spiritual and corporeal existence, relatively
to which at this stage all its forms are embodied and endowed with
animation. For this vitality the essential principle on the spiritual
side is that natural delightfulness, and on the corporeal side is
that beauty which is consonant with physical form, a beauty which
independently, as beautiful form, already displays innocence, buoyancy,
maidenhood, natural grace of temperament, nobility, imagination,
and a loving soul. If there is further added to a _naturel_ of this
type the exaltation and adornment of the soul in virtue of the ideal
intimacy of religion and the spiritual characteristics of a profounder
piety established as a vitalizing principle of soul-life in this
essentially more admitted and inviolable province of spiritual
redemption[334],--in such a case we have presented to us thereby an
original harmony of form and its expression, which, wherever it is
perfected, vividly reminds us in this sphere of romantic art and
Christian art of the pure Ideal of art. No doubt also within a new
accord of this type the inward life of the heart will be predominant;
but this inward experience is a more happy, a purer heaven of the
soul, the way of return to which form what is sensuous and finite, and
the return to God, albeit the passage may be through a travail in the
profounder anguish of repentance and death, is, however, less saturated
with trouble and its insistency. And the reason of this is that the
pain is concentrated in the sphere of soul, of idea, of faith, without
making a descent into the region of passionate desire, intractable
savagery, obstinate self-seeking and sin, and only arriving at the
hardly won victory through smiting down such enemies of the blessed
state. It is rather a transition of ideal permanence[335], a pain of
the inward life, which feels itself as such suffering rather simply
in virtue of its enthusiasm, a suffering of more abstract type, more
spiritually abundant, which has as little need to brush away bodily
anguish as we have to seek signs in the characterization of its bodily
presence and physiognomy of obstinacy, uncouthness, crookedness, or the
traits of superficial and mean natures, in which an obstinate conflict
is first necessary, before such are meet to express real religious
feeling[336] and piety. This more benign[337] intimacy of soul, this
more original consonancy of exterior forms to ideal experience of this
kind is what creates the charming clarity and the untroubled delight,
which the genuinely beautiful works of Italian painting excite and
supply. Just as we say of instrumental music that there is tone and
melody in it, so, too, we find that the pure song of soul floats here
in melodious fusion over the entire configuration and all its forms.
And as in the music of the Italians and in the tones of their song,
when the pure strains ring forth without a forced utterance, in every
separate note and inflection of sound and melody, it is simply the
delight of the voice itself which rings out; so, too, such an intimate
personal enjoyment of the loving soul is the fundamental tone of their
painting[338]. It is the same intimacy, clarity, and freedom which
meet us again in the great Italian poets. To start with this artistic
resonance of rhymes in their terzets, canzonets, sonnets, and stanzas,
this accord, which is not merely satisfied to allay its thirst for
reverberation in the one repetition, but repeats the echo three times
and more, this is itself a euphony which streams forth on its own
account and for the sake of its own enjoyment. And a like freedom is
stamped upon the spiritual content. In Petrarch's sonnets, sestets, and
canzonets it is not so much the actual possession of their subject,
after which the heart yearns; it is not the consideration and emotion
which are involved in the actual content of the poem as such, and which
is therein necessarily expressed; rather it is the expression itself
which constitutes the source of enjoyment. It is the self-delight of
Love, which seeks its bliss in its own mourning, its laments, its
descriptions, memories, and experience; a yearning, which is satisfied
in itself as such, and with the image, the spirit of those it loves,
is already in full possession of the soul, with which it longs to
unite itself. Dante, too, when conducted by his master Virgil through
hell and hell-fire, gazes at what is the culmination of horror, of
awfulness; he is fearful, he often bursts into tears, but he strides
on comforted and tranquil, without affright and anxiety, without the
sullenness and embitterment which implies "these things should not
be thus." Nay, even his damned in hell receive the blessedness of
eternity. _Io eterno duro_ is inscribed over the gates of hell. They
are what they are, without repentance and longing; they do not speak
of their sufferings; they are as immaterial to us as they are to them,
for they endure for ever. Rather they are absorbed simply in their
personal experience and actions, secure of themselves as rooted in the
same interests, without lamentation and without yearning[339].

When we have grasped this trait of happy independence and freedom of
the soul in love we shall understand the character of the greatest
Italian painters. It is in this freedom that they are masters of the
detail of expression, and situation. On the wings of this tranquillity
of soul they can maintain their sovereignty over form, beauty, and
colour. In their most defined presentation of reality and character,
while remaining wholly on the earth and often only producing portraits,
or appearing to produce such, what we have are pictures of another sun,
another spring. They are roses which are equally heavenly blossoms.
And, consequently, we find that in their beauty we do not have merely
beauty of form, we do not have only the sensuous unity of soul
impressed on sensuous corporeal shapes; we are confronted with this
very trait of reconciled Love in every mode, feature, and individuality
of character. It is the butterfly, the Psyche[340], which in the
sunlight of its heaven, even hovers round stunted flowers[341]. It is
only by virtue of this rich, free, and rounded beauty that they are
able to unfold the ideals of the antique art's more recent perfection.

Italian art has, however, not immediately and from the first attained
to such a point of perfection; it had in truth a long road to traverse
before it arrived there. And yet, despite this, the purity and
innocence of its piety, the largeness of the entire conception, the
unassuming beauty of form, this intimate revelation of soul[342], are
frequently and above all in the case of the old Italian masters most
conspicuous where the technical elaboration is still wholly incomplete.
In the previous century it was fashionable to depreciate these earlier
masters, and place them on one side as clumsy, dull, and barren[343].
It is only in more recent times that they have been once more rescued
from oblivion by savants and artists; but the wonder and imitation thus
awakened has run off into the excess of a preference which tends to
deny the advances of a further development in mode of conception and
presentment, and can only lead astray in the opposite direction.

In drawing the reader's more close attention to the more important
phases in the development of Italian art up to this period of its
fullest perfection, I will only briefly emphasize the following points
which immediately concern the characterization of the essential aspects
of painting and its modes of expression.

(_α_) After the earliest stage of rawness and barbarism the Italians
moved forward with a fresh impetus from that in the main craftsmanship
type of art which was planted by the Byzantines. The compass of
subjects depicted was, however, not extensive, and the distinctive
features of the type were austerity, solemnity, and religious
loftiness. But even at this stage--I am quoting the conclusions of
Herr von Rumohr--who is generally recognized as an authority upon
these earlier periods[344], Duccio, the Sienese, and Cimabue, the
Florentine, endeavoured to assimilate the few remains of antique
drawing, which was grounded on laws of perspective and anatomical
precision, and so far as possible, to rejuvenate the same in their own
genius. They "instinctively recognized the value of such drawings, but
strove to soften the extreme insistence[345] of their ossification,
comparing such insufficiently comprehended traits with the life such
as we find it in fact or suggestion when face to face with their own
productions[345]." Such are merely the first and mediating efforts of
art to rise from the inflexibility of a type to lifelike and individual
expression.

(_β_) The _further_ step of advance consists in the complete severation
from those previous Greek examples, in the full acceptance, relatively
both to the entire conception and execution of what is distinctively
human and individual, and along with this in the profounder suitability
of human characters and forms which was gradually evolved to express
the religious content thus to be expressed.

(_αα_) It is here before all we must draw attention to the great
influence which Giotto and his pupils exercised. Giotto, along with the
changes he effected in respect to modes of conception and composition,
brought about a reform in the art of preparing colours. The later
Greeks probably, such at least is the result of chemical analysis, made
use of wax either as a medium of colour, or as a kind of varnish[346],
and from this we get the yellow-green and obscure general tone, which
is not sufficiently explained by the action of lamplight[347]. Giotto
wholly dispensed with this glutinous medium of the Greek painters, and
used instead, when preparing his colours[348], the clarified milk of
young shoots, unripe figs, and other less oliginous limes[349], which
Italian painters of the early Middle Ages had used, very likely even
before they strenuously imitated the Byzantines[350]. A medium of this
kind had no darkening effect on the colours, but left their luminosity
and clarity unimpaired. Still more important was the reform effected by
Giotto in Italian painting with respect to selection of subjects and
their manner of presentment. Ghiberti himself praises Giotto for having
abandoned the rude style of the Greeks, and without leaning in this
direction to an excess having introduced the truth and grace of Nature.
Boccaccio, too, says of him that Nature is unable to create anything
that Giotto could not imitate to the point of deception[351]. In
Byzantine pictures we can hardly detect a trace of natural appearance.
It was Giotto, then, who concentrated his attention on what is present
and actual, and compared the forms and effects which he undertook to
exhibit with Life as it existed around him. And we may associate with
this tendency the fact that during the times of Giotto not only do we
find that the state of society was more free and intent on enjoyment,
but that the veneration of several later saints took its rise then,
saints whose lives more or less fell in that period[352]. It was such
Giotto utilized particularly in emphasizing the truthful presentment of
the subjects of his art; there was, in fact, thus the further demand
suggested by the content itself that he should bring into prominence
the natural features of the bodily presence and exhibit more defined
characterization, action, passion, situation, pose, and movement. What
we find, however, to a relative degree disappears from this attempt
is that imposing religious seriousness which is the fundamental
characteristic of the phase of art which it followed[353]. The things
of the world receive a stage and a wider opportunity for expression;
and this is illustrated by the way Giotto, under the influence of his
age, found room for burlesque along with so much that was pathetic.
In this connection Herr von Rumohr states rightly, "Under conditions
of this description I am at a loss to understand how certain critics,
who have exclusively insisted on this feature of Giotto's work, can so
overestimate Giotto's tendency and performance by claiming it as the
most sublime effort of modern art[354]." It is a great service of the
above-named critic to have once more placed in a true light the point
of view from which Giotto can be justly appreciated; he throughout
makes us careful to see, that in this tendency of Giotto to humanize
and towards realism he never really, as a rule, advances beyond a
comparatively subordinate stage in the process.

(_ββ_) The advance of painting continued under the manner of
conception for which Giotto was in the main responsible. The typical
representation of Christ, the apostles, and the more important
events which are reported us by the evangelists, were more and more
thrust into the background. Yet in another direction the embrace of
subject-matter was for that reason extended. As our author expresses
it: "All artists engaged in depicting the various phases in the life
of latter-day saints, such as their previous worldliness, the sudden
awakening of conscience, their entrance into the life of piety and
asceticism, the miracles of their lives, more particularly after their
decease, in the representation of which, as is to be expected from
the external conditions of the art, the expression of the effect upon
the living exceeded any suggestion of invisible powder[355]." Add
to this that the events of the Life and Passion of Christ were not
neglected. The birth and education of Christ, the Madonna with her
Child were exceptionally favoured subjects, and were invested with a
more life-like domesticity, touched with a more intimate tenderness,
revealed to us in the medium of human feeling, and, moreover, to quote
yet further: "In the problems[356] suggested by the Passion it was
not so much the sublime and the triumph as simply the pathetic aspect
which was emphasized, a direct consequence of the enthusiastic wave of
sympathy with the earthly sufferings of the Saviour, to which Saint
Francis, both by example and teaching, had communicated a vital energy
hitherto unheard of."

In respect to a yet further advance towards the middle of the fifteenth
century, we have to lay exceptional stress on two names, Masaccio and
Fiesole. In the progressive steps through which the religious content
was vividly carried into the living forms of the human figure and
the animated expression of human traits Herr von Rumohr[357] draws
attention to two essential aspects as of most importance. The one is
the increase of rondure in all forms to which it applies; the other
he indicates as "a profounder penetration into the articulation, the
consistency, the most varied phases of the charm and significance
of the features of the human countenance." Masaccio and Angelico da
Fiesole between them were the first to contribute effectively to
the solution of this artistic problem, the difficulty of which in
its entirety exceeded the powers of any one artist of that period.
"Masaccio was mainly occupied with the problem of chiaroscuro, and the
rounding and effective articulations of groups of figures. Angelico da
Fiesole, on the other hand, devoted himself to sounding the depths of
ideal coherence, that indwelling significance of human features, the
mine of whose treasure he was the first to open to painting[358]." The
effort of Masaccio was not so much one in the direction of grace as
in that of imposing conception, manliness, and under the instinctive
need for unity of the entire composition. The impulse of Fra Angelico
was that of religious intensity, a love severed from the world, a
cloistral purity of emotion, an exaltation and consecration of the
soul. Vasari assures us in his account of him that he never commenced
work without prayer, and never depicted the sufferings of the Redeemer
without bursting into tears[359]. We have, then as aspects of this
advance of painting a more exalted vitality and realism: but, on the
other hand, the depth of piety, the ingenuous devotion of the soul
in its faith overran itself and overpowered the freedom, dexterity,
naturalism, and beauty of the composition, pose, drapery, and colour.
If the later development was able to attain to a far more exalted and
complete expression of the spiritual consciousness, yet the epoch we
are now considering has never been surpassed in purity and innocence
of religious feeling and serious depth of conception. Many pictures of
this time may very well, by reason of the fact that the forms of life,
which are used to depict the religious intensity of soul-life, do not
appear fully adequate to this expression, give us something like a
repulse; from the point of view, however, of spiritual emotion, which
is the most vital source of these works of art, we have still less
reason to fail to acknowledge the naive purity, the intimacy with the
most profound depths of the truly religious content, the assuredness
of faithful love even under oppression and in grief, and oft, too,
the charm of innocence and blessedness, inasmuch as the epochs that
followed it, however much in other aspects of artistic perfection
they made a step forwards, yet for all that never secured again the
perfection of these previous excellencies, when once it had been lost.

(_γγ_) A _third_ aspect attaches to the further development of the
art, in addition to those already discussed, which may be described
as the wider embrace of it relatively to the subjects accepted
for presentation by the new impulse. Just as what was regarded as
sacred had from the very commencement of Italian painting approached
more closely to reality by reason of the fact that men whose lives
fell about the time of the painters themselves were declared to be
saints, so too Art received into its own sphere other aspects of
reality and present life. Starting from that earliest phase of pure
spirituality and piety, an art whose aim was wholly absorbed in the
expression of such religious emotions, painting proceeded more and
more to associate the external life of the world with its religious
subject-matter. The gladsome, forceful self-reliance of the citizen
in the midst of his professional career, the business and the craft
that was bound up with such qualities, the freedom, the manly courage
and patriotism, in one word, his weal in the vital activities of
the Present, all this newly-awakened sense of human delight in the
virtues of civil life and its cheer and humour[360], this harmonized
sympathy with what was actual in both its aspects of ideal life[361]
and the external framework of the same, all this it was which entered
now into his artistic conceptions and modes of presenting such and
was made valid therein. It is in this spirit that the enthusiasm
for landscape backgrounds, views of cities, environment of church
buildings and palaces becomes a real instinct of artistic life; the
living portraits of famous savants, friends, statesmen, artists, and
other persons remarkable in their day for their wit and vivacity find
a place in religious compositions; traits borrowed from both civil and
domestic life are utilized with a greater or less degree of freedom
and dexterity; and if, no doubt, the spiritual aspect of the religious
content remained the foundation of all, yet the expression of piety was
no longer exclusively isolate, but is linked together with the more
ample life of reality and the open stage of the world[362]. No doubt we
must add that by reason of this tendency the expression of religious
concentration and its intimate piety is weakened, but art required also
this worldly element in order to arrive at its culminating point.

(_γ_) Out of this fusion of the more embracing reality of life with
the ideal material of religious emotion arose a new problem for
genius to solve, the complete solution of which was reserved for the
great masters of the sixteenth century. The supreme aim now was to
bring the intimate life of soul, the seriousness and the loftiness
of religious emotion into harmony with the animation, the actual
presence of characters and forms both in its corporeal and spiritual
aspect, in order that the bodily configuration in its pose, movement,
and colour, may not simply remain an external framework, but become
itself essentially an expression of spirit and life, and by virtue of
that expression, made throughout all its parts wholly the reflex of
soul-life no less than of external form, reveal a beauty without break
or interruption.

Among the masters of most distinction, who set before themselves such
an aim, we should pre-eminently mention Leonardo da Vinci. It was he,
who, by virtue of his artistic thoroughness, his almost over-refined
passion for detail, his exquisite delicacy of mind and feeling, not
only penetrated further than any other[363] into the mysteries of the
human form and the secrets of its expression, but, through his equally
profound knowledge of all the technique of a painter, attained to an
extraordinary infallibility in the employment of all the means that his
researches and practice had placed within his reach. And, along with
this, he was able to retain a reverential seriousness in composing his
religious subjects, so that his figures, however much they present to
us the ideal of a more complete and rounded actuality, and disclose
the expression of sweet, smiling joyfulness in facial traits and the
delicate rhythm of drapery, do not thereby dispense with the dignity,
which the worth and truth of religion demand[364].

The most unflecked quality[365] of perfection reached in this direction
was, however, that first attained by Raphael. Herr von Rumohr assigns
more particularly to the artists of the Umbrian School dating from
the middle of the fifteenth century a mysterious fascination, which
no sympathetic nature can resist, and endeavours to find the source
of this attraction in the depth and tenderness of feeling no less
than the marvellous unity into which these painters knew how to bring
memories from the oldest essays of Christian art of a style only very
partially understood by them[366] with the milder conceptions of a
later time, and in this respect proved themselves superior to the
Tuscan, Lombard, and Venetian fellow artists of that period[367]. It
was just this expression of "flawless purity of soul and absolute
surrender to the yearning and enthusiastic flow of tender feeling" to
which Pietro Perugino, the master of Raphael, devoted his artistic
efforts, and succeeded by doing so in fusing the objectivity and
vitality of external forms, throughout all its actual realization and
in every detail, an aim which had previously received the most marked
attention in the elaborate work of the Florentines. Starting from
the work of Perugino, to whose artistic taste and style he appears
to have consistently adhered in his early work, Raphael proceeded
yet further to realize to the most consummate degree the demand of
the ideal above indicated. In other words we find united in him the
highest ecclesiastical feeling for the themes of religious art and a
complete knowledge and enthusiastic respect for natural phenomena in
all the animation of their colour and shape together with an insight
fully as great for the beauty of the antique. This great admiration
for the idealistic beauty of the ancients did not bring him in any
way to imitate and adapt to his work the forms which Greek sculpture
had elaborated in their perfection. What he seized from it was simply
the general principle of their free beauty which in his hands was
throughout suffused with a more individual vitality more applicable
to his art and with a type of expression more deeply informed with
soul-life, and at the same time with an open, blithesome clarity and
thoroughness, in all the detail of the presentment that up to his
time was as yet unknown among Italian artists. In the elaboration and
consistent fusion and coherence of this ideal atmosphere he reached
the highest point of his attainment. On the other hand, in the magical
charm of chiaroscuro, in the exquisite tenderness and grace of
soul-expression, of forms, movements, and grouping, it is Correggio
who most excels, while the incomparable greatness of Titian consists
in the wealth of natural life that he displays, the illuminating
bloom, fervency, warmth, and power of his colour. We know nothing more
delightful than the _naïveté_ of Correggio's not so much natural as
religious and spiritual grace, nothing more sweet than his smiling,
unconscious beauty and innocence[368].

The artistic perfection of these great masters is a culminating point
of art such as could only be mastered by one nation in the course of
historical development.

(_c_) _Thirdly_, in so far as the question is that of German painting
we may affiliate that which is entirely German with that of Flemish
or Dutch painters. The general distinction between the above schools
and that of the Italians, consists in this, that neither the Germans
nor the painters of the Netherlands were willing as a creation of
their own to attain to the free ideal forms and modes of expression
characteristic of Italian art, or were able to progress to that
spiritually transfigured type of beauty which is essentially the result
of such. What they did elaborate, however, was, in one aspect of it,
the expression of depth of emotion and the austere seclusion of the
individual soul, and, from another point of view, they attach to this
intensity of faith the separate definition of individual character in
the broader significance of it, that is to say, one which does not
merely disclose the fact of its close interest with the claims of faith
and salvation, but also shows how the individuals represented are
affected by the concerns of the world, how they are buffeted by the
cares of life, and in this severe ordeal have gained worldly wisdom,
fidelity, consistency, straightforwardness, the constancy of chivalry
and the sterling character of good citizens. Agreeably to this more
restricted and depressed vision of the detail of life we find here,
and it is particularly conspicuous in the German school, from the
beginning, in deliberate contrast with the purer forms and characters
of the Italians, rather the expression of a formal obstinacy of
stubborn natures, which either oppose themselves to God with energetic
defiance and brutal wilfulness, or are forced to impose restraint on
themselves in order that they may, with sore travail, wrest themselves
from their limitations and uncouthness, and fight their way to the
reconciliation of religion; consequently the deep wounds which they
inflict on their spiritual life inevitably contribute to the visible
expression of their piety. In illustrating this more closely I will
merely draw attention to certain prominent features, which are
important indications of the contrast between the older Flemish school
and the upper German and more recent Dutch masters of the seventeenth
century.

(_α_) Among the early Flemish masters, the brothers Van Eyck, Hubert,
and John are exceptionally distinguished in the early half of the
fifteenth century, and it is only recently that their true merits
have once more been established. It is now an established fact that
they discovered, or at least they were the first to fully perfect,
the process of oil-painting. Looking at the great advance they made
we must now assume that a distinct series of stages in the course of
this progress to its culmination could be set forth. We have, however,
no historical array of works of art preserved for us whereby we could
illustrate such a gradual process. We are face to face at one moment of
time with the beginning and final consummation. For painting of greater
excellence than that of these two brothers it is almost impossible
to imagine. Moreover, the works that have come down to us, in which
the mere type is already dispensed with and overcome, not merely
display a grand mastery in drawing, arrangement, grouping, ideal and
exterior characterization, enthusiasm, clarity, harmony, and delicacy
of colouring, dignity and repose of composition; but we must add that
the entire wealth of painting respectively to nature's environment,
architectonic accessories, backgrounds, splendour and variety of
material, drapery, style of weapons, ornamentation, and much besides,
is already treated with such fidelity, with such an instinctive sense
of what is pictorial, and with such a technical virtuosity, that even
later centuries, at any rate from the point of view of thoroughness
and truth, have been unable to produce any more consummate result. We
are, however, more strongly attracted by the master works of Italian
painting, if we contrast them with this Flemish school, because the
Italians, along with the completest expression of soul-life and the
religious sense, retain throughout the ideal of spiritual freedom and
imaginative beauty. The figures of Flemish art delight us, no doubt,
by virtue of their innocence, _naïveté_, and piety; nay, in the depth
of their emotional life they, in some measure, surpass the work of the
most excellent Italian artists; but the Flemish masters have never been
able to attain to a beauty of form and a freedom of soul comparable
with that of the Italians. Their Christ-babes are, in particular, badly
modelled; and for the rest their characters, whether men or women,
however strongly, subject to their dominant expression of religious
fervour, they may display a sterling character in their relation to
secular interests sanctified by the depth of their faith, nevertheless
appear to us lacking in a significance which can exalt itself over
such a piety, or rather, as dominated by it, do not appear able at the
same time to be essentially free, instinct with imagination and the
enterprise of superior qualities.

(_β_) A further aspect we shall do well to consider is the transition
from the more tranquil, reverential piety to the representation of
martyrdoms, and, in general, what is not beautiful in reality. It is
more particularly the North German masters who excel in scenes borrowed
from the Passion in which they emphasize the savagery of the soldiery,
the evil aspects of the mocking, the fierceness of the hate against
Christ during the course of His sufferings, with particular insistence
on features of ugliness and distortion, and which are intended to
denote external forms correspondent with the depravity of spirit. The
tranquil and beautiful activity of an unassuming personal piety is
thrown into the background, and the movements which are inseparable
from the situations above mentioned unfold us hideous distortions,
expressions of ferocity, and all the unbridled exhibition of passions.
Where we have the contending tumult and the uncouthness of characters
presented with such detail, it is not surprising that such pictures are
defective in the ideal harmony of their composition no less than their
colour, so that, more especially where a taste for old German paintings
first crops up, critics when thus confronted with what is, as a rule,
an inferior class of technical accomplishment, fall into many mistakes
when determining the date of their production. Thus it has been
maintained that they are previous to the more consummate pictures of
the Van Eyck period, although, for the most part, they hail from a more
recent time. However, the Upper German masters were not exclusively
occupied with works of this type, but have likewise treated a variety
of religious subjects, and, indeed--Albrecht Dürer, with others,
exemplifies this--even in scenes from Christ's Passion, have understood
how effectively to grapple with the extremes of pure savagery, and even
when treating such themes to preserve an ideal nobility and an external
independence[369] and freedom.

(_γ_) Finally, the development of German and Flemish art is
characterized in a complete identification of itself with the
_ordinary_ life of the Present; and, along with this, in a unified
system of the most varied modes of presentation, which, both in
respect to their content and technique, are distinct from one another
and independently elaborated. We have seen already the advance made
by Italian painting from the simple nobility of devotion to an
ever-increasing assertion of secular motive, which here, however, as
we pointed out in the case of Raphael, was in some measure permeated
by ecclesiastical prepossessions, and in part limited by the coherent
principle of antique beauty. We may add that the later course of
this school is not so much a dissolution of that unity in the
representation of every kind of subject-matter under the predominant
interest of the colourist as a more superficial disposition, or
rather, eclectic imitation of styles of draughtsmanship and painting.
German and Flemish art, on the contrary, has in the most definite and
exceptional degree traversed the entire scheme of content and modes
of treatment, starting from its wholly traditional church pictures,
single figures and half lengths, then on to thoughtful, pious, and
devotional subjects, until we come to that animation and extension of
the same in larger compositions and scenes, in which, however, the
free characterization of figure, the heightened vitality effected by
means of processions, retinues, incidental personages, embellishment
of garments and utensils, wealth of portraiture, architectural works,
environment, views of churches, cities, streams, forests, mountains,
is still conceived and executed as a whole subject to religious
motivation. This focal centre still persists; but we find that the
range of subjects, which had hitherto been held together in unity,
is broken into division, and the separate parts become, in the
specific singularity and contingent character of their alternations or
independent modifications, subject to every possible type of conception
and pictorial execution[370].

In order to arrive at a full appreciation of this aspect of art's
development in the present context, for we have already referred to
the point, we will pass briefly in review the national conditions
which were operative in the change. We are under the necessity to
justify, as we shall attempt to do in the following observations, a
transition from direct relations to the Church and the outlook and
pictorial modes of piety to a delight in the world simply, that is to
say, to the objects and particular phenomena of Nature, to domestic
life in its dignity, congeniality, and peaceful seclusion, to an
enjoyment of national festivities and processions, rustic dances, the
games and follies attendant upon church fêtes. Now the Reformation had
thoroughly penetrated Holland. The Dutch had become Protestants and
overcome the despotism of the Spanish Crown and Church. And what is
more we do not, if we consider the political condition here, either
find a distinguished nobility which drives forth its princes and
tyrants, or imposes laws on them, nor yet an agricultural people,
oppressed peasantry, who break free as the Swiss have done, but rather
a population which, in by far the largest proportion of it, if we
except the few brave souls that tilled the soil and its more than brave
heroes of the sea, consisted of citizens of the town, men of business,
well-to-do burghers, men who, rejoicing in their ordinary avocations,
entertained no lofty pretensions, but, as became their courage and
intelligence, with audacious reliance in God, stood up to defend the
freedom of their hardly-won liberties and the particular privileges
of their provinces, cities, and guilds, dared to oppose themselves to
all hazards without fear of the transcendent prestige of the Spanish
dominion over half the world, to bravely let their blood flow for
such an aim, and by virtue of this righteous boldness and endurance
victoriously secured both their religious and civic independence. And
if we may brand any single condition of soul-life as distinctively
_deutsch_, it is just this loyal, well-to-do, and genial citizenship,
which, in a self-respect that is without pride, in a piety which is not
merely absorbed in enthusiasm and devotion, but which is concretely
pious in the affairs of the world[371] and is homely and contented in
its abundance, remains neat and clean, and in persistent carefulness
and contentment under all circumstances, armed with its own enduring
sense of independence and freedom, is able, with loyalty to its former
life, to preserve the sterling character of its forefathers unimpaired.
This intelligent and artistically endowed people furthermore seeks
its enjoyment in the pictorial presentment of its vigorous, justly
co-ordinated, satisfying, and comfortable existence; it is all for
taking a renewed delight by means of its pictures in the cleanliness
under all conditions of its towns, houses, and domestic arrangements,
of enjoying thus its household felicity, its wealth, the generous
adornment of its wives and children, the splendour of its civic
feasts, the boldness of its seamen, the fame of its merchandise and
the shipping, in which it rides over all the seas of the world. And
it is just this instinct of orderly and cheerful existence, which the
Dutch masters emphasize also in their landscape subjects. In one word,
in all their pictorial accomplishment they succeed in combining with
freedom, and truth of conception, with their enthusiasm for what is in
appearance of inferior and momentary significance, with the freshness
of open vision and the concentration of their entire soul on all that
is most stamped with the seclusion and limitations of their life, the
most ample freedom of artistic composition, no less than the finest
feeling for accessories and the most perfect effects of studious
elaboration. From one point of view this school of painting has
developed to an incomparable degree the magic and mystery of lighting
and colour[372] generally in its scenes borrowed from war and military
life, in its tavern jollifications, in its weddings and other rustic
fêtes, in its pictures of domestic life, in its portraits, landscapes,
animals, flowers, and the rest. From another aspect it has elaborated
with a similar excellence the characterization which penetrates to
the heart of life in all the truth of which Art is capable. And
although its insistence on the insignificant and contingent includes
the expression of what is boorish, rude, and common, yet these scenes
are so permeated throughout with ingenuous lustiness and jollity,
that it is not the common in its meanness and naughtiness so much as
the gaiety and joviality which creates the artistic subject and its
content. We do not look at mean feelings and passions, but simply
what is boorish, in the sense of being rustic, near to nature, in
the poorer classes, a quality which connotes geniality, waggishness,
and comedy. In short the Ideal itself is not wholly absent from this
unperturbed easy-way-of-life. It is the Sabbath of Life, which brings
all to one level and removes all badness, simply as such. Men who are
thus so whole-heartedly of good temper can neither be wholly bad nor
mean. In this respect it is not one and the same thing, whether evil
is of purely momentary appearance in a character, or lies at its root
and essence. In the work of these Dutch painters what is humorous in a
situation cancels what is evil, and it is at once clear to us that the
characters could be something other than that in the guise of which
they are for the time being set before us[373]. A gaiety and comedy of
this description contributes much to the invaluable character of these
pictures. If pictures of this rollicking type are attempted nowadays,
the painter, as a rule, only places before us what is essentially
mean, coarse and bad without the illuminating atmosphere of a comic
situation[374]. A bad wife rails at her tipsy husband in the tavern
with all her might. In a scene of this kind we have only put before us,
as I have already remarked, the bald facts that the man is a dissipated
brute and the woman a rating wench.

If we look at the Dutch masters in this light we shall no longer
entertain the view that the art of painting should have said goodbye to
such subjects altogether, and merely confined itself to depicting the
gods of old, myths, and fables, or even Madonna pictures, crucifixions,
martyrs, popes, and saints of both sexes. What is a vital ingredient
of every work of art is inseparable also from painting, and this is
the observance of what generally concerns our humanity, the spirit
and characterization of man, in other words what man is and what
_each_ individual is. This vital grasp of the conscious life of human
nature and the external forms of its appearance, this naive delight
and artistic freedom, this freshness and cheerfulness of imaginative
sympathy, this absolute directness of execution is what constitutes
the poetry that underlies the work of the majority of the Dutch
painters of this period. In their paintings we may study and acquaint
ourselves with human nature and mankind. Nowadays, however, our artist
only too frequently will confront us with portraits and historical
pictures, at which we have only to cast a bare glance, and we see that,
while flatly contradicting the wildest dream of what is possible in
mankind or anyone in particular, he neither knows aught at all about
man or his natural colour, nor yet the modes of composition[375] in
which we may justly express that humanity[376].

[Footnote 214: _Die gesammte Menschen-brust._]

[Footnote 215: _Die in sich gediegene Individualität des Gottes._]

[Footnote 216: _Betrachtung_, here implying thought rather than vision.]

[Footnote 217: That is a unity which dissolves all difference.]

[Footnote 218: _Als Inneres._]

[Footnote 219: _Als Reflexion in sich._ Probably Hegel means simply the
ultimate fact of self-conscious life--which is to find itself in Nature
as the antithesis of the synthetic unity of the ego. This is developed
in the latter half of the sentence.]

[Footnote 220: Lit., "Is not an essentially persistent and stereotyped
(_Erstarrtes_, stiffened) individual."]

[Footnote 221: Less than sculpture.]

[Footnote 222: He may mean type of art generally, but I think the
reference here is simply to painting. The passage is an important one.]

[Footnote 223: I presume Hegel uses the word _seeligkeit_ in the
ordinary sense, not "soulfulness." The close relation with _Schmertz_
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 249: _Grossartigkeit._]

[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 275: See vol. I, p. 220.]

[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 281: _Geistigen Ausdrück._]

[Footnote 282: _Grundlage._]

[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
that by itself, that is, accepted as a real mode of objectivity, tone,
in contrast to the material of the plastic arts, is wholly abstract.
Stone and colour receive the forms of an extensive and varied world
of objects, and place them before us in their actual existence. Tones
are unable to do this. For musical expression therefore it is only
the inner life of soul that is wholly devoid of an object which is
appropriate, in other words, the abstract personal experience simply.
This is our entirely empty ego, the self without further content. The
fundamental task of music will therefore consist in giving a resonant
reflection, not to objectivity in its ordinary material sense, but to
the mode and modifications under which the most intimate self of the
soul, from the point of view of its subjective life and ideality, is
essentially moved.

3. We may say the same of the _effect_ of music. The paramount claim
of that, too, is the direct contact with the most intimate ideality of
conscious life. It is more than any other the art of the soul, and is
immediately addressed to that. The art of painting, no doubt, as we
have observed, is able to express in physiognomy and facial traits with
other things the inner life and its activity, the moods and passions
of the heart, the situations, conflicts, and fatalities of the soul;
what, however, we have before us in pictures are objective appearances,
from which the self of contemplation, in its most ideal self-identity,
is still held distinctly apart. However much we become absorbed in or
penetrate into the object, the situation, the character, the forms
of a statue or a picture, admire a work of art, lose ourselves in or
possess ourselves with it, the fact still remains that these works of
art are and remain objects of independent subsistency, in respect to
which it is quite impossible for us to escape the relation of external
observation disappears. In music, however, this distinction disappears.
Its content is that which is itself essentially a part of our own
personal[385] life, and its expression does not result at the same
time in an objective mode of spatial _persistency_, but discloses, in
virtue of the continuity and freedom of its flight as it appears and
vanishes[386], that it is a manifestation, which, instead of possessing
itself an independent consistency, is dependent for its support on the
ideality of conscious life, and only can exist for that inward realm.
Tone is therefore no doubt a mode of both expression and externality;
but it is an expression which inevitably disappears precisely at the
point of and in virtue of becoming externality. At the very moment
that our organ of sense receives the sound it is gone. The impression
that should be given is at once transferred to the tablets of memory.
The tones merely resound in the depths of the soul, which are thereby
seized upon in their ideal substance, and suffused with emotion. This
ideality of content and mode of expression in the sense that it is
devoid of all external object defines the purely _formal_ aspect of
music. It has no doubt a content, but it is not a content such as we
mean when referring either to the plastic arts or poetry. What it
lacks is just this configuration of an objective other-to-itself,
whether we mean by such actual external phenomena, or the objectivity
of intellectual ideas and images. We may indicate the course of our
further examination as follows:

In the _first_ place we have to define more accurately the _general_
character of music and its effect in contradistinction to the other
arts, not merely from the point of view of its material, but also from
that of its form, which the spiritual content accepts.

_Secondly_, we shall have to discuss the particular _distinctions_, in
which musical tones and their modes[387] are developed and mediated
partly in respect to their temporal duration, and partly in relation to
the qualitative distinctions of their actual resonance.

_Thirdly_, and in conclusion, music possesses a relation to
the content, which it expresses, either by being associated as
an accompaniment[388] with emotions, ideas, and considerations
independently expressed by word of mouth, or by its free expansion
within its own domain in unfettered independence.

In proposing now, however, after having thus in a general way specified
the principle and division of the subject-matter of Music, to enter
into a more detailed examination of its particular aspects, we are
inevitably confronted with a peculiar difficulty. In other words, for
the reason that the musical medium of tone and ideality, in which the
content moves as a process, is of so abstract and formal a character,
it is impossible for us to attempt such a closer survey without at
the same time broaching technical formulae and definitions such as
belong to the relations of tone-measure or distinctions that apply to
different instruments, scales, or chords. I must admit to no expert
knowledge in this sphere of musical science, and can only offer my
apologies for being unable to do more than limit myself to more general
points of view and a few isolated observations.



1. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF MUSIC


The essential points of view which are of general importance in a
survey of music we may examine under the following heads of division:

_First_, we have to compare music on the one hand with the plastic
arts, and on the other with poetry.

_Secondly_, we shall by means of the above comparison be in a better
position to understand the way in which music is able to master and
disclose a given content.

_Thirdly_, and as a result of the latter inquiry, we may with more
accuracy explain the peculiar effect which the art of music, in
contradistinction to the other arts, exercises on the soul.

(_a_) With regard to the first point we should, if we are desirous of
setting it forth clearly in its specific individuality, compare music
with the other two arts from three distinct points of view.

(_α_) And, _first_, it may be observed that it stands in a relation of
affinity to _architecture_, although it is in strong contrast with it.

(_αα_) Our meaning is this. In the art of building the content which
should be made apparent in architectonic forms, does not, as is
the case in works of sculpture and painting, wholly enter into the
configuration, but remains distinct from it as an external environment;
so, too, in music, under its aspect of the most specifically romantic
art, the classical identity of ideality and its external existence
receives its resolution in a similar, if converse, way to that in
which architecture, as the symbolical type of presentation, was not
as yet wholly able to secure such a unity. For this ideality of
Spirit proceeds from what is purely the concentration of soul-life,
to ideas and images and the forms of such, as elaborated by the
imagination, whereas the art of music is throughout more occupied in
expressing merely the element of feeling and furthermore surrounds
the independently expressed ideas of the mind with the melodic chime
of emotions, just as architecture in its province places around the
statues of the god, no doubt in an unyielding way, the reasonable forms
of its columns, walls, and entablatures[389].

(_ββ_) In this way tone and its formative combinations is for
the first time a medium _created_ by art and entirely artistic
expression of a wholly different type from that we find in painting
and sculpture acting through the material of the human body and its
pose and physiognomy. In this respect, too, music may be more nearly
compared with architecture, which does not accept its forms from what
is actually presented, but as the creation of human invention, in
order to inform them, partly according to the laws of gravity, and in
part according to the rules of symmetry and harmonious coordination.
Music does the same thing in its own sphere, in so far as it from one
point of view follows the harmonious laws of tone which depend on
quantitative relations independently of the expression of emotion,
and in another aspect of it, in the recurrence of time and rhythm
no less than in the further development of the tones themselves, in
many respects is subject to the forms of regularity and symmetry.
Consequently we find operative in music not merely the profoundest
ideality and soul, but the most rigorous, rationality. It unites, in
fact, two extremes, which readily lend themselves to emphatic contrast
in their independent self-assertion. In this aspect of independence
music more particularly assumes an architectonic character when we find
in it a coherent temple of harmony of its own creatively composed and
co-ordinated according to the laws of music, and released from the
direct expression of soul-life[390].

(_γγ_) Despite all this similarity, however, the art of tones moves
to quite as large a degree in a sphere wholly opposed to that of
architecture. We find, no doubt, in both arts as a basis quantitative
or more accurately measure relations; the material, however, which
in each case is informed, agreeably to such relations, is totally
different. Architecture attaches itself to the heavy sensuous material
in its tranquil juxtaposition and external form in Space. Music, on
the contrary, lays hold of the tone-spirit[391] as it rings freely out
of the spatial material in the qualitative distinctions of musical
sound and in the flow of a movement subject to the condition of time.
For this reason the works of both arts belong to two entirely distinct
spheres of spiritual activity. The art of building places in an
enduring form its colossal constructions for external contemplation in
symbolical forms. The swiftly evanescent world of tones, on the other
hand, directly penetrates through the ears of man to the depths of his
soul, attuning the same in concordant emotional sympathy.

(_β_) And if we, in the second place, consider the closer relation
of music to the two other plastic arts[392], we shall find that the
similarity and distinction, which attaches to such a comparison, is in
some measure founded upon the truths already enunciated.

(_αα_) Of these music is furthest removed from sculpture; and this is
not merely so in respect to material and type of configuration, but
also in that of the completed coalescence of its ideal and external
aspects. There is in short a closer affinity between painting and
music. In part this is due to the predominant ideality of expression
exemplified in both; in part it is referable to treatment of material,
in which, as we have already seen, it is permissible for the art of
painting to approach the very boundary of music itself. Painting has,
however, for its aim in common with sculpture the representation of
an objective form in Space, and is restricted in its material to the
actual form of things already present outside the sphere of art. It is
unquestionably true that neither in the case of the painter nor the
sculptor do we accept a human countenance, a position of the human
body, the outlines of a mountain, the leafage of a tree precisely in
the forms they present to us as here or there in Nature; in both cases
we are bound to justify what we have before us under the conditions of
the art in question, to adapt it to a particular situation, no less
than to employ it as a means of expressing the inevitable artistic
result of the entire content of the work. We have, therefore, in both
cases on the one hand an independently recognized content, which has
to receive artistic individualization, and, on the other, we are
confronted with the forms of Nature as they are similarly presented
in isolation; and the artist is bound, if he be truly an artist, and
seek to unite these two sources of inspiration in his composition,
to discover in both the material and support[393] for his conception
and execution. In short, he will, acting in the first instance on the
security of such general principles[394], endeavour on the one hand to
fill out with more concrete detail the generality of his imaginative
idea, and on the other to idealize and spiritualize the human or any
other of the forms of Nature, which are submitted to serve him as
particular models. The musician, on the contrary, it is true, does
not abstract from all and every content, but finds the same in a
text, which he sets to music, or with absolute freedom gives musical
utterance to some definite mood in the form of a theme, which he
proceeds to elaborate. The actual region, however, of his compositions
remains the more formal ideality, in other words pure tones, and his
absorption of content becomes rather a _retreat_ into the free life of
his own soul, a voyage of discovery into that, and in many departments
of music even a confirmation, that he as artist is free of the content.
If we are in a general way permitted to regard human activity in the
realm of the beautiful as a liberation of the soul, as a release from
constraint and restriction, in short to consider that art does actually
alleviate the most overpowering and tragic catastrophies[395] by
means of the creations it offers to our contemplation and enjoyment,
it is the art of music which conducts us to the final summit of that
ascent to freedom. Or in other language that which the plastic arts
secure through the objective fact of a plastic beauty, which displays
the entirety of human life, human nature as such, its universal and
ideal significance, in the detail of its particularity, without losing
that essential harmony, this effect music must produce in a wholly
different manner. The plastic artist need only _exhibit_, in that which
is enclosed in the conception, what _was already therein from the
first_, so that every detail in its essential determinacy is merely
a closer explication of the totality which already floats before the
mind in virtue of the content which is there to exhibit it. A figure,
for example, in a plastic work of art, requires in this or that
situation a body, hands, feet, bust, a head with a given expression,
a given pose, other figures, or other aspects to which it is related
as a whole, etc., and all these aspects presuppose the others, in
making collectively essentially complete work. The elaboration of the
theme is in such a case merely a more accurate analysis of that which
already itself essentially contains it, and the more elaborate the
picture is, which thereby confronts us, the more concentrated is the
unity, and the stronger becomes the connection of the parts. The most
consummate expression of detail must be, if the work of art is the best
class, at the same time an elucidation of the highest form of unity.
No doubt the ideal articulation and rounding off in a whole, in which
the one part follows inevitably from another, ought to be present in
a musical composition. But in some measure the execution here is of a
totally different type, and moreover we can only accept the unity in a
restricted sense.

(_ββ_) In a musical theme the significance which has to be expressed
is already exhausted[396]. If it is repeated or carried on to
further oppositions and mediations these repetitions, modulations,
and elaborations by means of other scales may very readily appear
superfluous, and rather are appertinent to the purely musical
development and the assimilation of the varied content of harmonic
progressions which are neither demanded by the content itself[397], nor
remain dependent upon it, whereas in the plastic arts the execution of
the detail and the passage to it is simply and always a more accurate
exhibition and analysis of the content itself.

But of course it is impossible to deny that another theme is actually
motived by the way a theme is developed, and each of them, then, in
their alternation or their interfusion progress, change, are at one
time suppressed, at another emphasized, and by their victory or defeat
are able to make a content explicit in its more definite features,
oppositions, transitions, developments, and resolutions. But in this
case, too, the unity is not made more profound and concentrated by
virtue of such elaboration as is the case in sculpture and painting,
but is rather an expansion, an extension, a correlative series[398],
an addition of remoteness or a return, for which the content, which is
thus expressed, remains no doubt the universal centrum, yet does not
keep the whole so securely together as we find it is possible to do in
the plastic arts, particularly where their subject-matter is confined
to the human organism.

(_γγ_) Looked at from this point of view the art of music, as
contrasted with the other arts, lies too close to the medium of that
formal freedom of soul life, and thereby cannot fail to a greater
or less degree to be diverted beyond what is actually presented, in
other words the content[399]. The recollection of a theme proposed
is likewise a self-revealment[400] of the artist, in other words is
an ideal realization, to the effect that this self is the artist, and
he may progress just as he likes, and by what by-paths he likes. But
on the other hand the free exercise of imaginative caprice of the
above description is expressly to be distinguished from a musical
composition which is essentially conclusive, that is to say, which
constitutes a fundamentally self-integrated totality. In the free
improvization[401] the absence of restrictions is itself an object, so
that the artist is able to assert his caprice in the acceptance of any
material he chooses, to interweave acknowledged melodies and motives in
his improvized productions, to emphasize some new aspect of such, to
elaborate them in a variety of modifications, or make them steps in his
progression to other material, and advance from thence in the same way
to developments of still more arresting contrasts.

In general, however, a musical composition determines the freedom of
the composer, either by limiting it to a more self-contained execution,
and the observance of what we may describe as a more plastic unity, or
by permitting him with the full force of his personality and caprice
to pass at every point into more or less important digressions, to let
spontaneous ideas travel hither and thither as they please, to lay
stress for the moment on this or that motive, and then once more to
drown it in an overwhelming torrent. While, then, the study of Nature's
forms is essential to both painter and sculptor, the art of music can
look for no such fixed body of fact outside its own prescribed forms,
with which it would be forced to comply. The extent of the regularity
and necessity of its formal character is almost wholly determined
within the sphere of tone itself, which does not come into so close an
association[402] with the definition of the content that is therein
reposed, and consequently in respect to deviations beyond the same
permits for the most part a considerable opportunity for the free play
of the characteristic impulse of the composer.

And this is the main point of view, from which we may contract music
with the strictly plastic arts.

(_γ_) Looked at from _another_ aspect music is, in the third
place[403], most nearly affiliated to _poetry_; both in fact make use
of the same sensuous medium, that is, tone. Despite this, however,
these arts are very strongly distinct from one another not only in
virtue of the mode of treating tones in each case, but also in respect
to their different modes of expression.

(_αα_) In poetry, as we have found already in our general
differentiation of the several arts, tone is not as such elicited and
artistically produced by various humanly constructed instruments,
but the articulate sound of the human organ of speech is reduced
to the mere symbol of speech, retaining thereby nothing more
than the value of a sign of ideas, which is by itself devoid of
significance. Consequently we find here that tone remains throughout a
self-subsistent sensuous entity, which, as the mere symbol of emotions,
ideas, and thoughts, possesses the externality and _objectivity_ which
is _inherent in itself_ simply in virtue of the fact that is a _sign_
and nothing more. For the true objectivity of the soul-life as such
does not consist in utterance and words, but in this fact, that I, as
subject, am aware of a thought, a feeling, and so forth, that further
I confront it as an object, and in this way have it present to the
imagination, or forthwith develop for myself what is implicit in a
thought or a conception, setting forth in a series the external and
spiritual relations of the given content, and relating the particular
features of it to one another. Unquestionably we think throughout
in language, without, however, needing actual speech as spoken.
By reason of this ability to dispense with speech-utterance in its
sensuous aspect as contrasted with the spiritual content of ideas,
etc., to elucidate which they[404] are employed, tone receives once
more self-subsistency. In the art of painting no doubt colour and its
arrangement, regarded simply as colour, is likewise by itself without
significance, and in the same way, as contrasted with the spiritual
embodied, thereby a self-substantive sensuous medium; but we get no
painting from colour simply as such: we must first attach to it form
and its expression. With these spiritually animated forms colouring is
brought into an association by many degrees more constrained than that
which pertains to uttered speech and its coalescing result of words
with ideas.

If we will now look at the distinction between the poetical and musical
use of tones we shall find that music does not depress the tone sound
to the mere speech-utterance, but creates out of tone simply its own
independent medium, so that, in so far as there is musical tone, it is
treated as the object of the art[405]. And on account of this the realm
of tone, inasmuch as it cannot serve merely as a symbol, is by virtue
of this emancipated function of its life[406] able to attain to a mode
of configuration, which makes the form that is its peculiar possession,
that is to say, the modes of tone as artistically developed, its
fundamental aim and object. In recent times especially, the art of
music, by its wresting itself from all content that is independently
lucid, has withdrawn into the depths of its own medium. But on this
very account and to this extent it has lost its compelling power[407]
over the soul, inasmuch as the enjoyment, which is thus offered, is
only applicable to one aspect of art, in other words, is only an
interest in the purely musical characteristics of the composition and
its artistic dexterity, an aspect which wholly concerns the musical
expert, and is less connected with the universal human interest in art.

(_ββ_) All that poetry loses, however, in external objectivity by
being able to place on one side its sensuous medium, in so far as
that can be wholly dispensed with by art, it secures for itself, in
the ideal objectivity of its vision and ideas, which poetical speech
presents to soul and mind. For it is the function of imagination to
clothe these concepts, emotions, and thoughts in a world that is
itself essentially complete[408] with its events, actions, moods,
and exhibitions of passion, and by this means it creates works, into
which the entire fabric of reality, both in its external aspect as
phenomena and in the ideal significance of its content, is brought
home to the emotions, vision, and imagination of spiritual life. It
is this type of objectivity which the art of music, in so far as it
asserts its independent claims in its own province, is compelled to
renounce. In other words, the realm of tone possesses, no doubt, as I
have already indicated, a relation to the soul, and an alliance which
is consonant with its spiritual movement; but it fails to pass beyond
a sympathetic relation which is always of an indefinite character,
albeit in this aspect of it a musical composition, if originating in
the soul-life itself, and permeated by genius and emotions of a rich
quality, cannot fail to react on our nature with an equivalent power
and variety. In the case of a content and the ideal and personal
creation such as poetry implies our emotions pass more completely out
of their elementary medium of undefined conscious life into the more
concrete vision and more universal[409] imagination which is embodied
in such content. This may also be the effect of a musical composition,
so soon as the emotions which it excites in ourselves by virtue of its
own nature and the artistic energy that animates it are involved more
closely in ourselves with a distinct vision and ideas, and thereby
present to consciousness the tangible definition of soul-impressions
in a more stable outlook and more universally accepted ideas. This
is, however, _our_ imagination and vision, which no doubt has been
suggested by the musical work, but which has not been itself directly
disclosed by virtue of the artistic elaboration of musical tones.
Poetry, on the contrary, expresses emotions, perceptions, and ideas as
they are[410], and is further able to delineate a picture of external
objects, although it cannot itself either attain to the plastic clarity
of sculpture and painting or the spiritual intimacy of music, and is
consequently obliged to call as auxiliary to its powers the direct
vision we otherwise receive through the senses and the speechless
apprehension of soul-life in music.

(_γγ_) _Thirdly_, however, the art of music does not confine itself
to this independent position over against that of poetry and the
spiritual content of conscious life. It allies itself with a clearly
expressed content already completely elaborated by poetry, and as the
accompaniment of emotions, opinions, events, and actions. If, however,
the musical aspect of such a work of art remains the fundamental and
predominant one, the poetry, whether in the form of poem, drama, or
any other, has no right to assert an independent claim of its own
therein. And as a general rule in this association, of music and poetry
the preponderance of one art is injurious to the other. If therefore
the text, a poetical creation, possesses a fully independent value
of its own, the support to be expected from music should be merely
an insignificant one, as we find, for example, was the case with
the dramatic choruses of the ancients where the music was nothing
more than an incidental accompaniment. If, conversely, the music is
composed with a more independent individuality of its own, then the
text in its turn should be of a more superficially poetical execution,
and should as an independent production confine itself to emotions
of a general character and ideas depicted on universal lines. The
poetical elaboration of profound thoughts is as little appropriate to
a good musical text as is the delineation of the objects of external
Nature or descriptive poetry generally. Songs, operatic arias, the
texts of oratorios, and so forth may be consequently, so far as the
detail of their execution as poetry is concerned, jejune and of a
certain degree of mediocrity. The poet must not make his merits as
poet too conspicuous if the musician is to find in his text a genuine
opportunity. In this respect it is especially the Italians, such as
Metastasio and others, who have displayed the greatest skill, while
Schiller's poems, which were never written with such an object in
view at all, have been shown to be ill adapted and indeed useless for
musical composition[411]. In cases where the music receives a more
artistic elaboration, the audience understands next to nothing of the
text, and this is more particularly so with our German speech and
pronunciation[412]. For this reason it is not in the interest of music
that the weight of interest should be reposed in the text. An Italian
audience, for example, chatters away during the unimportant scenes of
an opera, takes refreshment, plays cards, and so on; but the instant
an aria of emphatic appeal or an important musical movement begins,
every section of it is all attention. We Germans, on the contrary,
take the greatest interest in the fortunes and speeches of the princes
and princesses of opera with attendants, squires, intimates, and
waiting-maids, and we do not doubt there are many among us still
who regret the fact, when the singing begins, that the interest is
interrupted, and take their refuge in conversation.

In religious music also the text is either for the most part a
well-known _credo_, or a selection of single psalms, so that the words
are regarded as merely an incitement to a musical commentary, which
possesses an independent style peculiar to itself, that is to say one
which not merely is used to expound the text, but which for the most
part simply emphasizes the universal character of the content much in
the same way that painting selects its material from sacred history.

(_b_) The second aspect of our present inquiry is that of the
distinction that obtains between the way in which the art of music
lays hold of its subject-matter as contrasted with the other arts,
the form, that is, in which, whether it be as an accompaniment or
independently of a given text, it is able to apprehend and express a
particular content. As to this I have already observed that music is
not only more capable than the other arts of liberating itself from
an actual text, but also from the expression of a definite content,
in order that it may find its satisfaction in an essentially complete
series of combinations, modifications, contrasts, and modulations,
which are comprised within the realm of absolute music[413]. In such a
case, however, music is empty, without significance, and is, for the
reason that one fundamental aspect of art, namely spiritual content
and expression, is absent, not really genuine music at all. It is only
when that which is of spiritual import is adequately expressed in the
sensuous medium of tones and their varied configuration that music
attains entirely to its position as a true art, and irrespective of
the fact whether this content receives an independent and more direct
definition by means of words, or is perforce emotionally realized from
the tone music itself and its harmonic relations and melodic animation.

(_α_) In this respect the unique function of music consists in this,
that whatever its content may be it is not so created by the art for
human apprehension as though it either was held by consciousness as
a _general concept_ is so contained, or as definite external form is
ordinarily presented to our perception, or as such receives its more
complete reflection in the artistic counterfeit, but rather in the
way in which a content is made a living thing in the sphere of the
_personal soul._ To make this essentially veiled life and in weaved
motion ring forth through the independent texture of tones, or attach
itself to expressed words and ideas, and to steep such ideas in this
very medium, in order to re-emphasize anew the same for feeling and
sympathy, such is the difficult task assigned to the art of music.

(_αα_) The life of soul itself is consequently the form in which music
is able to grasp its content, and thereby seeks to absorb within itself
everything that can generally enter into the shrine of the soul and
above all disclose itself under the veils of emotional movement. But
from this it necessarily follows that the art of music must not attempt
to minister to sense-perception, but must restrict its effort to making
soul-life intelligible to soul, whether this is effected by its making
the substantive and ideal depth of a content as such penetrate to the
very core of soul itself, or by its preferring to disclose the life and
motion of a content in the soul of some particular person, so that this
inward life of itself becomes its actual object.

(_ββ_) This abstract inwardness of soul is in the most intimate sense
differentiated, under the mode in which music is related to it, by
_feelings_ in other words the self-expanding medium of the personal
subject, which unquestionably moves in a content, but suffers the same
to persist in this direct self-seclusion of the Ego, and in a relation
to the Ego, that is, void of externality. Consequently feeling is
throughout simply all the envelope of that content, and it is the
sphere which is claimed by music[414].

(_γγ_) It is a province which unfolds in expanse the expression of
every kind of emotion, and every shade of joyfulness, merriment, jest,
caprice, jubilation and laughter of the soul, every gradation of
anguish, trouble, melancholy, lament, sorrow, pain, longing and the
like, no less than those of reverence, adoration, and love fall within
the appropriate limits of its expression.

(_β_) Tone as interjection, as the cry of grief, as sigh and laughter,
is already, outside the province of art, the most immediately vital
expression of soul-conditions and feelings, the ah and oh of the soul.
We find in it a self-production and objectivity of soul as such, an
expression which stands intermediately between unconscious absorption
and the self-return to thoughts ideally determinate, a disclosure,
which has no relation to external fact, but is confined to the
contemplative state, just as the bird, too, in its song possesses this
enjoyment and this production of its inner self.

The purely natural expression, however, of interjections is not as
yet music, for though these outcries are no doubt no intentionally
articulate sign of ideas as speech is and consequently express no
conceived content in its generalized form as concept, but give vent to
a mood and emotion in and through tone itself, a state which is reposed
immediately in similar tones and opens the heart in the outburst of
the same, yet this emancipation is not one which is promoted by art.
The art of music must on the contrary bring the emotions into tone
relations of definite structure, and wean the expression of Nature of
its wildness, its uncouth deliverance, and ameliorate it.

We may perhaps say that interjections constitute the point of departure
of music; but it is only music when an interjection in the form of a
cadenza, and in this respect it has to elaborate its senuous material
artistically in a higher degree than either painting or poetry before
it is qualified to express the content of spirit. We shall have to
examine later on more narrowly the particular way in which the content
of music is worked up to such a pitch of adaptability; at present
I will merely repeat the observation that the tones are themselves
essentially a totality of differences, which are capable of disuniting
and uniting themselves in the most varied kinds of immediate concords,
essential discords, oppositions and transitions. To these opposed and
united tones, no less than the differentiation of their movements and
transitions, their entry, their progression, their conflict, their
self-resolution and their disappearance, the ideal character both of
this or that content and of the emotions, in the form whereof both
heart and soul obtains the mastery of such content, corresponds in
closer or more remote affinity, so that the like tone relations,
apprehended and informed conformably thereto, disclose the animated
expression of that which is present to Spirit as definable content.

The medium of tone asserts itself as more cognate with the ideally
simple essence of a content than the senuous material previously
dealt with for this reason that tone instead of making itself secure
in spatial form and coming to a halt as the varied presentment of
juxtaposition and extension, is comprised in the ideal realm of _Time_,
and for this reason does not progress to a condition under which simple
ideality and concrete bodily shape and appearance are differentiated.
And this is equally true of the form of the _feeling_ of a content
whose expression mainly falls upon the art of music. In other words in
sense-perception and conception we have already, as in self-conscious
thought, the necessary distinction between the perceiving, conceiving
and thinking Ego and the object of perception, conception, and thought.
In emotion, however, this distinction is resolved, or rather it is
never propounded, but the content is interwoven with the inner life
without such division. When consequently music is united as an art of
accompaniment with poetry, or conversely poetry is united with music
as an interpreter to its elucidation, in such a case music is unable
to render conspicuous in an external form or to reflect with intention
ideas and thoughts as they are thus apprehended by self-consciousness;
it is obliged as stated either to offer the simple character of a
content in true relations to feeling, as they are cognate with the
ideal relation of this content, or to seek more nearly to express, by
means of tones which accompany and give intensity to poetry, that
feeling itself, which the content of perceptions and ideas can arouse
in the spirit that is both sympathetic and imaginative.

(_c_) Following the course of these remarks it is possible in the
_third_ place to form an estimate of the unrivalled power which is
thereby directly exercised by music on the soul, which is neither
carried forward to the vision of reason, nor diverts consciousness in
isolated points of view, but is accustomed to live within the ideal
range and secluded depths of pure emotion. For it is precisely this
sphere, the intimacy of soul-life, the abstract appropriation of its
own realm, which is grasped by music, which thereby sets in movement
the source of these ideal changes, namely, the heart and soul, which
we may consider at this concentrated focus and centre of our entire
manhood.

(_α_) In a particular sense sculpture endows its art products with a
wholly independent subsistency, an objectivity essentially exclusive
whether we regard it from the point of view of its content, or that
of its external art-manifestation. Its content is the substantive
being of the life of Spirit possessed no doubt with individual
vitality, but along with this reposing in self-subsistent coherence
on itself; its form is the material configuration under the condition
of space. For this reason a work of sculpture retains as an object of
sense-perception the highest degree of self-subsistency. A picture,
as we have already pointed out in our consideration of the art of
painting, comes into closer contact with the spectator. In part this is
due to the essentially more subjective[415] content thereby depicted;
in part it is referable to the fact that it is merely the show of
reality which it displays, thereby making us aware that it is not a
thing independently substantive, but rather essentially something
intended for something else, and exclusively so, in other words for the
human vision and soul. Yet even in the case of a picture we have still
left us a freedom more independent it fails to absorb; even here we
have still only to do with an object externally presented, which only
reaches us through sense perception, and only thus excites our emotion
and imagination. The spectator may consequently approach the work of
art as he likes; he may observe this or that aspect of it; he may
analyse the whole, as it throughout persists confronting him, may make
it the object of various reflections, and in short remain throughout at
liberty to continue his independent review of it.

(_αα_) The musical work of art, on the contrary, no doubt, as such a
work, posits in like manner the incipiency of a distinction between
the work itself and the individual that enjoys it; that is to say in
its actually resonant tones it receives a sensuous existence that
is distinct from the soul of the listener. But on the one hand this
opposition does not proceed, as in the case of the plastic arts, to
an external subsistency in Space and the visibility of a mode of
objectivity that coheres independently, but on the contrary makes
its real existence vanish in the immediate passage through Time. On
the other hand the art of music does not make the separation of its
external material from its spiritual content in the same way that
poetry does so, in which the aspect of idea is elaborated with more
definite independence from the sound of speech[416], and more cut off
as it is than any of the arts from this aspect of externality, issues
as such in a unique progression of mental ideas constructed by the
imagination. No doubt the observation may readily be made here that,
agreeably with what I have already stated, the art of music is able
to conversely to release tones from their content and thereby give
them independent form; this liberation is, however, not that which
really falls within Art's province, which on the contrary wholly
consists in employing harmonious and melodic motion for the expression
of the content originally selected and the emotions, which the same
is qualified to excite. Inasmuch as, therefore, musical expression
has for its content the inward life itself, the ideal significance
of fact and emotion, and a tone-world which, at least in art, does
not proceed to spatial configuration, and in its sensuous existence
is wholly evanescent, it follows that music directly penetrates with
its movements to the ideal _habitat_ of all the fluctuations of
soul-life. In other words it seizes on consciousness, where it is no
longer confronted with an object, and in the loss of this freedom
from the flood of tones as it streams on is itself whirled away with
it[417]. Yet there is here, too, by reason of the divers directions
which music may separately follow, an effect of varied character. In
other words, when a more profound content, or, to put it generally, an
expression more steeped in soul, is absent, we may find as a result
that we experience on the one hand delight in the purely sensuous sound
and harmony without any further emotional movement, or, on the other
hand, we follow the course of the harmony and melody with our critical
judgment, a progression by which the inmost heart of us is no further
touched or affected. Or rather we may say that pre-eminently in the
case of music there is such a purely critical analysis, for which there
is nothing else presented in the work of art to evoke it beyond the
skill of an expert in its laboured production[418]. If we, however,
withdraw ourselves from this critical science, and give ourselves up
unreservedly, we become entirely possessed with the musical composition
and are carried with it quite independently of the power, which the art
of it simply as art exercises upon us. And the peculiar power of music
is an _elementary_ force, that is to say it lies in the element _of
tone_, in which the art here moves.

(_ββ_) The individual is not only carried away by this medium in
virtue of the character of its exposition in any particular case,
or simply drawn to it by the specific content thereof; but, viewed
simply as self-conscious subject, the core and centre of his spiritual
existence is interwoven with the work and himself placed in active
relations with it. We have, for example, in the emphasis of the music's
current rhythms, an opportunity to beat in time with it, or unite
our voices with the melody, and in the case of dance-music at least,
we may associate the movement of our legs. And, generally speaking,
the claim is made upon us as distinct _personalities._ Conversely,
in the case of purely methodical action, which, in so far as it is
subject to time relations, is compatible with a distinct beat in
virtue of its regularity and possesses no further content, we require
on the one hand an expression of this regularity as such in order
that this action shall be present to the individual under a mode that
is itself subjective; and, on the other, we require a more intimate
realization of this rhythm. Both requirements are supplied by the
musical accompaniment. This is effected, for instance, by music as
associated with the march of soldiers. Such arouses the soul to the
rhythmical beat of the march, makes the individual full of the fact of
his marching[419] and steeps him in the harmonious action of it. In
something of the same sense the unregulated bustle of a _table d'hôte_
and the unsatisfactory excitement it arouses annoys many people. Such
feel that the moving up and down, the clatter and chatter should be
subject to rule, and as we have in our eating and drinking an empty
space of time to deal with, we should have that emptiness filled up
for us. Such, therefore, is also an occasion among many others when
music will help us considerably, suggesting as it does other thoughts,
recreations, and ideas.

(_γγ_) In these instances we are made aware of the connection between
the individual soul with _Time_ simply, a condition in which the
medium of music consists. In other words the inward life regarded
as subjective unity is the active negation of the indifferent[420]
juxtaposition in Space, and thereby _negative_ unity. In the first
instance, however, this identity remains in itself entirely _abstract_
and void of content, and consists merely in this that it makes itself
an object, though it then annuls this objectivity, which is itself of
a wholly ideal type and of the same character which the subject of
consciousness is, in order thereby to enforce itself as subjective
unity. An ideal negative activity of the same kind in its sphere
of _externality_ is Time. For in the _first_ place it effaces the
indifferent _co-extension_ of the spatial condition and concentrates
the continuity of the same in the _point_ of Time, the Now. The point
of time, however, _secondly_, discloses itself at the same time as
_negation_ of itself; in other words _this_ Now no sooner is than it
annuls itself in another Now, and by doing this makes apparent its
negative activity. _Thirdly_, we no doubt do not get, on account
of externality[421], in whose element Time is in motion, the truly
_subjective_ unity of the first point of Time with the next, to which
the Now by self-effacement proceeds, but the Now remains throughout in
its change always the same[422]. For for every point of Time is a Now,
and is as undifferentiated from the other Now, taken as the bare point
of Time, as is the abstract Ego from the object, relatively to which
it annuls itself[423], and in which it falls into self-coalescence,
for the reason that this object is itself merely the empty Ego. The
actual Ego itself, too, belongs yet more closely to Time, with which
it coalesces, in so far as it is, if we abstract from the concrete
content of consciousness and self-consciousness, nothing but this empty
movement which posits itself as another and then cancels the exchange,
in other words cancels itself, in order thereby to conserve the Ego and
here only the abstract[424] Ego therein. Ego is in Time, and Time is
the being of the conscious subject itself. Inasmuch, then, as Time and
not the spatial condition as such supplies the essential element, in
which tone secures existence in respect to its validity as music, and
the time of tone is likewise that of the conscious subject, for this
reason tone, by virtue of this fundamental condition of it, penetrates
into the self of conscious life, seizes hold of the same in virtue of
the most simple aspect of its existence, and places the Ego in movement
by means of the motion in Time and its rhythm; while in addition to
this the other configuration of tones, as the expression of emotions,
brings yet further a more definite material to enrich the unity of
consciousness, a wealth by which it is at once affected and carried
forward.

We find, then, that the fundamental ground for the elementary might of
the art of music is of this nature.

(_β_) In order, however, that music may exercise its full effect we
must have something more than the purely abstract tone in its movement
in Time. The _further_ aspect we have to attach to it is a _content_,
an emotional wealth steeped in spirit presented to the soul, and the
expression, the soul of this content in tones.

We have no right, then, to entertain any exaggerated[425] opinion of
the sovereign might of music simply as music, about which ancient
writers, both sacred and profane, have told us so many fabulous tales.
If we go back to the miracles which Orpheus performed as a pioneer
of civilization we find indeed that tones and their movements spread
their influence to the wild creatures, which encircled him shorn of
their wildness, but they did not extend to humankind, who required
the content of a nobler strain. It is something of this latter kind
that we must attach to the hymns ascribed to Orpheus, which, in the
form we have received from tradition, even though it be not their
original one, support mythological and other ideas. In a similar way,
too, the warlike songs of Tyrtaeus are famous, by means of which, so
we are told, the Lacedaemonians, after long and fruitless conflicts,
were stirred up to an irresistible enthusiasm and finally were wholly
victorious over the Messenians. In this case, too, the content of
the ideas which these elegies excited was the main thing, although
pre-eminently in the case of barbaric peoples and in times of deeply
moved passions we cannot deny that the musical aspect of them exercised
a real force and effect. The pipes of the Highlanders contribute
essentially to the animation of their courage, and the power of the
Marseillaise as sung in the French Revolution is undeniable. The real
source of enthusiasm is, however, to be looked for in the definite
idea, in the true interest of the Spirit with which a nation is
steeped, and which can be exalted to a more direct and living feeling
when the notes of music, the rhythm and the melody carry along whoever
may give himself up to them. In our own days, however, we can hardly
hold that music is capable by itself of evoking such a courageous
temper and contempt of death. Almost all armies nowadays have excellent
regimental music, which calls the soldiers to their duties, releases
them from such, gives life to the march and incites them to the attack.
No one, however, dreams of beating the enemy with such means. The
courage of the field of battle does not come with the blast of trumpets
and the beat of drums, and it will indeed take a host of trombones
before a fort will tumble in ruin at their blast like the walls of a
Jericho. It is the enthusiasm born of ideas, cannon, and the genius of
generals which are the main thing now rather than music, and this can
only act as a support of the forces which have already filled and taken
hold of the soul.

(_γ_) In conclusion, we may point out in respect to the personal
effect of musical sound there is an aspect which is referable to the
particular manner in which the musical work of art approaches us in
its distinction from other works of art. In other words, inasmuch
as musical tones do not as buildings of construction, statues, and
pictures possess independently a permanent objective consistency, but
vanish in the act of passing by the musical work of art requires in
virtue of the fact of this purely momentary existence a continuously
repeated _reproduction._ And what is more, the necessity of such a
renewal of life points to a further more profound significance. For, in
so far as it is the personal soul itself, which music accepts for its
content with the object, to make manifest itself not as external form
and objectively subsistent product, to this extent the expression of
it must also assert itself immediately in the form of a communication
disclosed by a _living_ person, in which that person reposes his entire
and unique personality. This is to the fullest extent the case in the
song of the human voice, but it is relatively so in all instrumental
music, which can only be executed by means of a practised artist and
his living and spiritual no less than technical powers as such.

It is only by virtue of this personal relation in respect to the
active effect of the musical work of art that the significance of the
subjective aspect of music is substantiated, which, however, too, it is
possible in this direction to carry to the extreme length of isolation
in the case, that is, where the personal virtuosity of the reproduction
as such is made the exclusive focus and content of the enjoyment to be
derived.

With the above observations I will now close what I have to say with
regard to the general character of music.



2. THE PARTICULAR DEFINITION OF THE MEANS OF EXPRESSION IN MUSIC


We have hitherto contemplated music purely under the aspect, that
its function is to embody and give life to tone as the musical
expression of the personal life of soul; we have now to ask ourselves
the further question, by reason of what it is both possible and
necessary that tones are no purely natural outcry of emotion but
the articulate artistic expression of the same. For feeling as such
possesses a content; tone regarded as mere tone is without such. It
must consequently first be rendered capable by means of an artistic
treatment of essentially assimilating the expression of an ideal life.
Speaking generally, we may establish the following conclusions on this
head.

Every tone is a substantive, essentially accepted real thing,
which, however, is neither articulated nor consciously apprehended
in a living unity, as is the case with the animal or human form,
nor from the further point of view demonstrates in itself, as a
particular member of the bodily organism, or any isolated trait of
the animated body, whether in its spiritual or physical aspect, that
this individualization can only exist in vital association with the
other limbs and traits, and secure thus its meaning, significance, and
expression. Viewed according to external material, a picture no doubt
consists in single strokes and colours, which can also independently
exist, but the real material on the other hand, which first creates a
work of art from such strokes and colours, the lines and surfaces that
is to say of the form, have only a meaning when viewed as a concrete
totality. The _separate_ tone, on the contrary, is _independently
substantive_ and can also be animated up to a certain degree by means
of emotion and receive a definite expression.

Conversely, however, inasmuch as tone is no purely indefinite rustle
and sound, but only possesses in general musical validity by virtue
of its clear definition and pure tonality, it stands immediately, by
reason of this definite articulation, not merely according to its
actual sound, but also its temporal duration, in a relation to _other_
tones; nay, this _relation_ is that which first contributes to it its
real and actual definition and along with this its difference and
contrast as opposed to other tones or its unity with such.

In presence of the more relative self-subsistency this relation,
however, remains as something _external_ to the tones, so that the
relations into which they are brought do not appertain to the single
tones under the mode of _their notion_, as we find such in the members
of the animal and human organism, or also in the forms of natural
landscape. The coalescence of different tones in different relations is
consequently something which albeit not contradictory to the essence
of tone, is, however, in the first instance _artificial_, and not
otherwise presented in Nature. Such a relation proceeds to that extent
from a _third party_ and only exists for such, namely, for the person
who apprehends[426] it.

On account of this externality of the relation the definition of
tones and their co-ordination subsist in the relation of _quantity_,
in relations of number, which of course have their foundation in the
nature of tone itself, yet are employed by music in a system which is,
in the first instance, discovered by Art and modified[427] in the most
varied manner.

From this point of view it is not essential vitality, regarded as
organic unity, which constitutes the foundation of music, but equality,
inequality, etc., and generally the form of the understanding[428],
as it is asserted in quantitative relations. If we consequently speak
definitely of musical tones we indicate the same purely by numerical
relations as also by letters selected at will by virtue of which we are
accustomed to indicate the tones according to such relations.

In such a reference back to mere quantities and their intelligible,
external definition music possesses its most pronounced affinity with
architecture, inasmuch as it, just as this latter art does, builds up
its inventions upon the secure basis and scheme of proportions, a basis
which does not essentially expand and coalesce through vital unity in
an organically free articulation, in which the remaining differentiated
parts are given with the one aspect of definition, but only begins to
grow into free art in the further elaborations, which are enabled by it
to arise out of the aforesaid conditions.

Although architecture carries the process of liberation no further than
a harmony of forms and the characteristic animation of a mysterious
eurhythmy, music, on the contrary, for the reason that it has for
its content the most intimate, personal, and free life and essence
of the soul, strides into and emphasizes the profoundest opposition
that exists between this free life of soul and those quantitative
relations on which it is based. It is, however, unable to persist in
this opposition; rather it is its difficult function to overcome it as
essentially as it accepts it, by assigning to the free movements of the
soul, which it expresses, a more secure foundation and basis by means
of these necessary proportions, a basis on which it then, however,
gives movement to and develops the inner life in the freedom which
for the first time receives its fulness of content by virtue of such
fundamental necessity[429].

In this respect there are in the first instance two aspects of tone
we should distinguish, according to which it is artistically to be
employed. First, we have the abstract foundation, the universal but
not as yet _physically_ specified element, that is, _Time_, in the
domain of which tone falls. After that we get sound itself, the _real_
distinction of tones, not merely according to aspects referable to the
difference of the sensuous material, which sounds, but also in that
aspect of the tones themselves as they are related to one another,
whether in their singularity or as a whole. To such we must then adjoin
_thirdly_, the _soul_, which gives animation to the tones, rounds
them off in a free totality, and gives to them a spiritual expression
in their temporal movement and their real sound. By virtue of these
aspects we receive for their more definite classification a series of
stages as follows.

_First_, we have to occupy our attention with the purely temporal
duration and movement, which it is the function of art not merely to
leave to chance in their arrangement, but to determine according
to definite measures, and to render various by virtue of their
differences, and once more again to establish their unity in these
distinctions. From this we deduce the necessity for _time-measure_,
_beat_, and _rhythm._

_Secondly_, however, music has not merely to deal with abstract time
and the relations of longer or shorter duration, musical phrase and
so forth, but with the concrete time of their _sound_ according to
definite tones, which consequently are not merely distinct from one
another according to their duration. This difference reposes, in the
first place, on the specific quality of their sensuous material, by
reason of whose oscillations the tone is produced; on the other hand
it depends on the different number of such oscillations, in which the
resonant bodies oscillate in an equal measure of time. And furthermore
these differences assert themselves as essential aspects for the
relation of tones in their concord, opposition, and mediation. We may
give this portion of our subject the general designation of the theory
of _harmony._

_Thirdly_, and finally, it is the _melody_, by virtue of which on
these foundations of a beat characterized by rhythmical vitality and
of distinctions and movements of harmony itself that the realm of
tones is unitedly discharged in a spiritually free mode of expression,
and conducts us thereby to the final main section of our subject,
which will undertake to consider music in its concrete unity with the
spiritual content it is intended to express in beat, harmony, and
rhythm.


(_a_) _Time-measure, Beat, Rhythm_

So far as in the _first_ place the purely _temporal_ aspect of musical
tone is concerned, we have _first_ to discuss the necessity, which
generally in musical time is the dominant factor. _Secondly_, we shall
consider beat under the aspect of time-measure wholly regulated under
scientific rule. _Thirdly_, we shall treat of the rhythm, under which
a start is made in animating this abstract rule by the prominence or
subordination it attains to definite divisions of time.

(_α_) The figures of sculpture and painting are placed side by side
in space and present the extension of reality in actual or apparent
totality. Music, however, can only place before us tones in so far as
it makes a body under the spatial condition tremble, setting the same
in an oscillating motion. These oscillations only affect art under the
aspect, that they follow one another; and for this reason the sensuous
material generally only enters into music with the _temporal_ duration
of its movement instead of taking with it its spatial form. No doubt
that motion of a body is always present in space, so that painting and
sculpture have the right to exhibit the appearance of movement, albeit
their figures are in their reality at rest. In respect to this aspect
of Space, however, music does not accept movement, and there remains
consequently as part of its configuration only the time, into which the
oscillation of the body falls.

(_αα_) Time, however, in consequence of what we have already
above considered, is not as Space is, the positive condition of
juxtaposition, but on the contrary _negative_ externality. As
juxtaposition, which is cancelled, it is the point of passage, and
as negative activity it is the abrogation of this point of time in
another, which is itself immediately cancelled, and becomes another and
so on continuously. In the continuous series of these points of time
every single tone not merely is asserted independently as single, but
is brought from a further point of view into quantitative association
with other tones, by which process Time is referable to _number._
Conversely, however, for the reason that time is the unbroken rise and
passage of such points of time, which, regarded as mere points of time,
possess in this unparticularized abstraction no distinction one to
another, for this reason to a like extent time appears as the equable
stream, and the duration essentially undifferentiated.

(_ββ_) In this indeterminacy, however, music is unable to leave
time. Rather it is compelled to define it more narrowly, to give it
a measure, and regulate its stream according to the rules of such a
measure. By virtue of this regular treatment we get the _time-measure_
of tones. And here at once arises the question, wherefore then once and
for all music requires such measure. The necessity of definite periods
of time may be evolved from this fact, that time stands in the closest
affinity with, the self in its simplicity, which apprehends, and has
a right to apprehend, its inward life through the medium of tones;
time, in fact, regarded as externality, essentially possesses the
same principle, which is active in the Ego as the abstract foundation
of all that pertains to the soul and spirit. If, then, it is the
simple self, which as soul-life has to be made objective in music,
so, too, the universal medium of this objectivity must be treated
conformably to the principle of that subjective life. The Ego, however,
is not the indefinite continuance and the unbroken[430] duration,
but is only self-identity when we regard it as an aggregate and a
return upon itself[431]. The assertion of itself, wherein it becomes
object, is doubled back in the being thus self-for-itself; and it is
only through this relation to itself that it becomes self-feeling,
self-consciousness and so forth. In this aggregate, however, we find
essentially a _breaking off_ of the purely indefinite change, such
as we held time to be in the first instance, in which the rise and
suppression, the disappearance and renewal of the points of time were
nothing but a wholly formal passage from every now to another present
of similar character, and consequently nothing but an uninterrupted
progression. In contrast to this empty process the self is that which
itself _persists by itself_, the totality whereof essentially breaks
up the undefined series of time points, creates an infraction into the
abstract _continuity_, freeing the Ego, which recollects itself in this
process of discrete division and finds itself again therein, from what
is a purely external process of change.

(_γγ_) The duration of a tone does not, agreeably to this principle,
pass away in a process of relative indeterminacy, but emphasizes with
its beginning and end, which accordingly is a definite beginning and
cessation, the series of the time moments, which, apart from it, are
not thus distinguishable. If, however[432], many tones follow one
after another, and every one of them receives a duration which can
be separately distinguished from each other, then we must assume
that instead of having that original _indefinite_ series _devoid of
content_, we only once more get by a converse process the fortuitous,
and, along with this to a like extent, the _indefinite variety_ of
particular quantities. This unregulated rambling about contradicts
quite as much the unity of the Ego as the abstract progress forward;
and it can only find itself reflected and satisfied in such a varied
mode of definition in so far as single quantities are brought under
_one_ unifying principle, which for the reason that it subsumes the
_particular parts_ under its synthetic embrace, must itself be a
_definite unity_, yet in the first instance as merely an identity of
external application can only persist as one of an external type.

(_β_) And this carries us to the further principle of coordination
which we find in the _time-beat._

(_αα_) The first thing to be considered here consists in this, that,
as stated, distinct divisions of time are united in a unity, in which
the Ego independently creates its identity with itself. Inasmuch as the
Ego in the first instance only supplies the foundation as _abstract_
self this equability, in respect to the advance of time and its tones,
can only assert itself as operative under the mode of a uniformity that
is itself abstract, that is to say as the _uniform repetition_ of the
same unity of time. Agreeably to the same principle the beat according
to its simple definition can only consist in this, that it establishes
a definite unity of time as measure and rule not merely for the
deliberate[433] breaking up of the time-series held previously without
such distinction, but also for the equally capricious duration of
single tones, which are now apprehended together under a definite bond
of union, and that it permits this measure of time to be continuously
renewed in abstract uniformity. In this respect time-beat possesses
the same function as the principle of symmetry in architecture, as,
for instance, when this places side by side columns of similar height
and thickness at intervals of equal distance, or co-ordinates a row
of windows, which possess a definite size, under the principle of
equality. We find present in this case, too, an assured distinction
of parts and a repetition in every way complete. In this uniformity
self-consciousness discovers itself once more as unity, in so far
as it in part recognizes its own equality in the co-ordination of a
fortuitous variety; partly, too, in the return of the same unity, it is
recalled to the fact that it has already been there, and precisely by
means of its return asserts itself as the prevailing principle[434].
The satisfaction, however, which the Ego receives through the time-beat
in this rediscovery of itself is all the more complete because the
unity and regularity do neither apply to time or tones as such, but
are something which is wholly appertinent to the Ego, and is carried
into the time relation by the same as a means of self-satisfaction.
We do not find this abstract identity in what is wholly of Nature.
Even the heavenly bodies retain no regular time-measure[435] in their
motions, but accelerate or retard their course, so that they do not
pass over equal spaces in identical periods of time. The same thing
may be said of falling bodies, with the motion of projectiles, etc.,
and we may add that animal life to a still less degree regulates
its running, springing, and seizing of objects on the principle of
an exact recurrence of one definite time-measure. In this respect
the time-measure of living things proceeds far more completely from
spiritual initiative than the regular definitions of size applicable to
architecture for which we may more readily discover analogies in Nature.

(_ββ_) If, however, the Ego is to return upon itself by means of the
time-beat by thus appropriating throughout an identity which it itself
is and which proceeds from itself, we imply in this, in order that the
distinct unity may be felt as a principle, that in a similar degree
what is presented to it should be that which is _unregulated_ and _not
uniform._ It is in short only through the fact that the definite beat
of the measure prevails over and co-ordinates what is capriciously
unequal, that it asserts itself as unity and regulating principle of a
fortuitous variety. It must consequently appropriate the same within
itself, and suffer uniformity to appear in that which is not so. This
it is which first gives to the time-beat its specific and essential
definition to be asserted too in contrast to other measurements of
time, which can be repeated relatively to the same principle.

(_γγ_) By reason of this the multiplicity which is enclosed in a given
time-measure possesses its definite _standard_ according to which it is
divided and co-ordinated. From this we arrive, in the _third_ place,
at distinct _kinds_ of _time-measure._ The first thing of importance
to notice in this connection is the division of time according to
either an _even_ or an _uneven_ number of equally divided parts. Of
the first kind we have, for example, the two-four and the four-four
time. In these even number is predominant. Of the opposite kind is the
three-four time, in which the co-ordinate divisions constitute a unity
of equal parts, of course, but in a number that is uneven. Both types
are to be found united in six-eight time, to take an example, which
no doubt numerically appears to be similar to the four-four time, but
as a fact, however, does not fall into three but into two divisions,
of which, however, the one no less than the other, relatively to its
closer aspect of division, accepts three, that is an uneven number, as
its principle.

A particularization of this kind constitutes the constantly repeated
principle of every particular measure of time. However much
notwithstanding the definite time-measure is bound to control the
_variety_ of the time-duration and its longer or shorter sections, we
must not therefore extend its effective power to the length that it
places this variety in subjection in a wholly abstract way, that in
short, for example, in the four-four measure only four notes of equal
length as fourths can appear, in the three-four time only three, and so
forth. The regularity restricts itself to this, that as, for instance,
in the four-four time the sum of the separate notes are only equal
to four equal parts, which may not only be divided into eighths and
sixteenths, but conversely may again contract into less divisions, and
indeed are capable moreover of more diffuse division.

(_γ_) The further, however, this elastic mode of differentiation is
carried the more necessary it is that the essential divisions of the
time should be asserted as predominant and also should be indicated in
an effective way as an illustration of the fundamental principle of
their co-ordination. This is carried out by the _rhythm_, which first
gives vital significance to time-measure and the beat. With respect to
this vitalization[436] we may distinguish the following points.

(_αα_) In the first place we have _accent_, which to a greater or less
degree attaches in an audible way to definite divisions of time, while
others pass by on the other hand without an accent. By virtue of such
emphasis, or lack of emphasis, which is itself of various kinds, every
particular measure of time possesses its particular rhythm, which is
placed in exact association with the specific mode of division to which
its rhythm applies. The four-four time, for instance, in which an even
number is the principle of division, has a twofold arsis; on the other
hand there is that on the first note or fourth division, and then,
though in weaker power, on the third. The first is called on account of
its stronger accentuation, the _strong_ accent, the second in contrast
to it the _weak_ one. In the three-four time the accent rests entirely
on the first fourth, in six-eight time on the contrary it is on the
first of the eight divisions and the fourth, so that in this case the
twofold accent asserts a division of equal length in two halves.

(_ββ_) In so far as music is an accompaniment rhythm is brought into
essential relation with _poetry._ In the most general way I will on
this merely venture the observation that the accents of the musical
beat ought not to directly contradict those of the metre. If, for
example, one of the unaccentuated syllables, relatively to the rhythm
of the verse, is placed in a strong accent of the beat, while the
arsis, or it may be the caesura, falls in one of the weak accents of
the music, then we get a false opposition between the rhythm of the
poetry and that of the music which it is better to avoid. We may affirm
the same thing with regard to the long and short syllables. These also
ought in general to fall into harmony with the duration of the tones,
so that the longer syllables are coincident with the longer notes, the
shorter with the shorter, albeit this accordance is not to be pressed
with absolute precision, inasmuch as music is frequently permitted
greater play for the duration of its long notes, no less than for the
exuberant subdivision of the same.

(_γγ_) In the _third_ place we may at once in anticipation observe
that we have to distinguish the animated _rhythm of melody_ from the
abstractly considered and severely regular return of the beat rhythm.
In this respect music possesses a similar and, in fact, yet greater
freedom than poetry. In poetry the beginning and termination of
_words_[437] need not necessarily coincide with the beginning and end
of the verse feet; rather a thoroughgoing coincidence of this nature
gives us a verse that halts and is without caesura. And, furthermore,
the beginning and ending of the sentences and periods ought not
throughout to mark the beginning and conclusion of a verse. On the
contrary, a period will terminate more satisfactorily in the beginning
or even in the middle and near the last feet of the verse. From which
point we begin with a new one which carries the first verse into the
one that follows. The same thing holds good in the case of music
relatively to its time-beat and rhythm. The melody and its different
phrases[438] need not absolutely commence with the fall of a beat
and close with the conclusion of another: such may in a general way
move freely to this extent that the main-arsis of the melody may be
incident to that portion of a musical beat, on which, relatively to
its ordinary rhythm, no such emphasis applies; whereas, conversely,
a tone, which in the natural process of the melody would necessarily
receive no accentuated prominence, may quite conceivably be placed
in the strong accent of the time-measure, which requires an arsis,
so that consequently such a tone, relatively to the time-rhythm, has
a different effect from that which the same tone claims to assert as
distinct from that rhythm and purely in the melody. This opposition,
however, asserts itself most strongly in so-called syncopations. If,
on the other hand, the melody absolutely adheres in its rhythms and
divisions to the time rhythm it tends to drag, and lacks warmth and
invention. In short, what is required is a freedom from the pedantry
of metre and the barbarism of a uniform rhythm. A deficiency in more
free movement readily increases the limpness and sluggishness to the
point of actual gloom and depression; and in this way, too, many
of our popular melodies possess aspects of mournfulness, drag and
burden, in so far as the soul merely possesses a means of advance
as its expression more monotonous than itself, and in virtue of
such is constrained to consign to it also the doleful emotions of a
broken heart. The speech of Southern peoples, on the other hand, more
especially the Italian, offers a rich field for a rhythm and flow
of melody which is more notable for its variety and movement. And
it is precisely here that we mark an essential distinction between
German and Italian music. The uniform coldness of the Iambic mode of
scansion, which recurs in so many German songs, kills the free and
jubilant impulse of the melody, and restrains any further rise and
devolution[439]. In more recent times Reichard and others, owing to
this very fact that they have said goodbye to this iambic drone, have
imported into their lyrical compositions a new and rhythmical life,
although we still find traces of the former type in some of their
songs. However, we do not only mark the influence of the iambic rhythm
in songs, but also in many of our most important musical compositions.
Even in the Messiah of Handel the composition does not only in many
arias and choruses follow the meaning of the words with declamatory
truth, but also adheres to the fall of the iambic rhythm, partly in the
distinction simply that it makes between its long and short duration,
partly in the fact that the protraction of the iambic rhythm requires a
more elevated tone than the corresponding short syllable in the metre.
I have no doubt this is one of the characteristic features of Handelian
music, owing to which we Germans feel so much at home with the same,
quite apart from its excellences in other respects, its majestic swing,
its victorious onward movement, the wealth it discloses of profoundly
religious no less than more simple idyllic emotions. This rhythmical
substance of the melody comes more directly to our sense of hearing
than that of the Italians, who are inclined to find in it a want of
freedom, as something, too, that strikes the ear as strange and alien.

(_β_) _Harmony_

The further aspect, in virtue of which alone the abstract basis of
time-beat and rhythm receives its fulfilment, and thereby is enabled
to become actually concrete music is the kingdom of tones regarded as
such. This more essential domain of music is dominated by the laws
of _harmony._ We have here a further elementary fact to deal with.
In other words, a material substance[440] does not only through its
oscillation for art emerge from the mere visible reproduction of
its _spatial_ form, and is carried further into the elaboration of
its configuration _in Time_[441], but it produces _distinct_ sounds
according to its particular physical constitution no less than its
different length and brevity and number of vibrations through which it
passes in a given period of time, and consequently in this respect,
too, Art is compelled to take account of it and give it form agreeably
to its own nature.

With regard, then, to this second element we have to emphasize with
more accuracy three main points.

The _first_ one presented to our consideration is the difference
between the various _instruments_, whose invention and elaboration has
been found essential to create that totality of musical sound, which
in respect to musical sound constitutes a sphere of different tones
independently of all distinction of the relation of pitch whether it be
a high or a low one.

_Secondly_, however, musical tone is, quite apart from the different
peculiarities of either instruments or the human voice, itself an
articulated totality of different tones, tone-series, and scales, which
in the first instance repose on quantitative relations, and in the
determination of these relations are tones which it is the function
of every instrument and the human voice, according to its specific
quality, to produce in less or greater completeness.

_Thirdly_, music neither consists in single intervals nor in purely
abstract series of tones, that is, keys unrelated to each other,
but is a concrete interfusion of opposed or mediating sound, which
necessitates a forward progression and a passage from one point
to another. This juxtaposition and change does not depend on mere
contingency and caprice, but is subject to definite rules, which
constitute the necessary foundation of all true music.

In passing now to the more detailed consideration of these several
points of view I am forced, as already stated, to limit myself for the
most part to the most general observations.

(_α_) Sculpture and painting discover their sensuous material, such
as wood, stone, metals, and the like, or colours and other media of
that type more or less straight to hand, or, at least, they are only
compelled to elaborate the same in a subordinate degree, in order to
adapt them to the uses of art.

(_αα_) Music, on the contrary, which throughout is set in motion
through a medium artificially prepared for the purposes of art from
the first, must necessarily pass through a distinctly more difficult
preparation before the production of musical tones is secured. With the
exception of the human voice, which returns us Nature in her immediacy,
Music is compelled itself to create all its other instruments of
genuine musical tone throughout before it can exist as an art.

(_ββ_) With regard to these means as such we have already above formed
our conception of the _timbre_ proper to them in the sense that it
is the result of a vibration of the spatial medium, is the first
excitation thereof of ideal import, which enforces itself as such in
contradistinction to the purely sensuous juxtaposition, and, by virtue
of this negation of spatial reality, asserts itself as the ideal unity
of all the physical qualities of specific gravity and the purely
sensuous type of corporeal coalescence. If we inquire further as to
the qualitative peculiarities of the medium thus made to emit musical
sound we shall find that in its character as material substance no
less than as artificially constructed, it varies greatly. We may have
a longitudinal or oscillating[442] column of air, which is limited
by a fixed channel of wood or metal, or we may have a longitudinally
stretched string of gut or metal, or in other cases a stretched surface
of parchment or a bell of glass or metal. In this connection we may
draw attention to the following distinguishing features. In the _first_
place it is the _lineal_ direction[443] which is mainly predominant,
and produces the instruments most effective in musical employment;
and this is so whether, as in the case of wind-instruments, the main
principle is represented by a column of air which is relatively more
deficient in cohesion or by a material line adapted to tension, but
of sufficient elasticity to be made to vibrate, as is the case with
stringed instruments.

_Secondly_, we have the principle of surface rather than line
represented in instruments of inferior significance, such as the
kettle-drum, bell, and harmonica. There is, in fact, a subtle sympathy
between the self-audible principle of ideality and that type of
rectilinear tone[444], which, by virtue of its essentially simple
subjectivity, demands the resonant vibration of simple line extension
rather than that of the broad and round surface. In other words,
ideality is as subject this spiritual point, which is made audible
in tone as its _mode of expression._ But the closest approach to the
exposition and expression of the mere _punctum_ is not the surface, but
the simple linear direction. From this point of view broad or round
surfaces are not adapted to the requirements and enforcement of such
audibility. In the case of the kettle-drum we have a skin stretched
over a kettle or basin, which by being struck at a single point sets
the entire surface vibrating with a muffled sound. Though a musical
sound, it is one which from its very nature, as belonging to such an
instrument, it is impossible to bring either to clear definition or any
considerable degree of variety. We find a difficulty of an opposite
type in the case of the harmonica and the bells of glass which are set
in vibration in it. In this case it is the concentrated intensity of
tone which fails to project itself, and which is of such an affecting
character that not a few, when hearing it, receive actual nervous
pain. But, despite this specific effect, this instrument is unable to
give permanent pleasure and is with difficulty combined with other
instruments on the rare occasions such an attempt is made. We find the
same defect on the side of differentiation of tone in the bell and a
similar punctually repeated stroke as in the case of the kettle-drum.
The ring of a bell, however, is not so muffled as in the latter; it
rings out clearly, although its persistent reverberation is more the
mere echo of the single beat as struck at regular intervals.

_Thirdly_, the human voice may be regarded in respect to the tones
emitted as the most complete instrument of all. It unites in itself
the characteristics of both the wind instrument and the string. That
is to say we have here in one aspect of it a column of air which
vibrates, and, further, by virtue of the muscles, the principle of a
string under tension. Just as we saw in the case of the colour inherent
in the human skin, we had what was in its aspect of ideal unity, the
most essentially perfect presentment of colour, so, too, we may affirm
of the human voice that it contains the ideal compass of sound, all
that in other instruments is differentiated in its several composite
parts. We have here the perfect tone, which is capable of blending
in the most facile and beautiful way with all other instruments. Add
to this that the human voice is to be apprehended as the essential
tone of the soul itself, as the concordant sound which by virtue
of its nature expresses the ideal character of the inner life, and
most immediately directs such expression. In the case of all other
instruments on the contrary we find that a material thing is set
in vibration, which, in the use that is made of it, is placed in a
relation of indifference to and outside of the soul and its emotion.
In the human song, however, it is the human body itself from which
the soul breaks into utterance. For this reason, too, the human voice
is unfolded, in accord with the subjective temperament and emotion,
in a vast manifold of particularity. And this variety, if we consider
its distinguishing features sufficiently generalized, is based on
national or other natural relations. Thus, for example, we find that
the Italians are pre-eminently the people among whom we meet with
the most beautiful voices. An important feature of this beauty is
to start with the content of the sound simply as sound, its pure
metallic quality, which neither fines away in mere keenness or vitreous
attenuation, nor maintains a persistent muffled and hollow character,
but, at the same time, though never carried to the point of tremolo
in its tone, preserves in the compact body of its tone something of
the vital vibration of the soul itself. Above all else the purity of
voice-production is most essential, or in other words we must have no
foreign element of sound asserted alongside of the freest expression of
essential tone.

(_γγ_) Such a totality of instruments the art of music can employ,
either in separation or complete combination. In the latter case
of late years we may note an exceptional artistic development. The
difficulty of such artistic collaboration is enormous. Every instrument
possesses a character of its own, which is not directly congenial to
the peculiarity of some other instrument. It follows from this that
whether we are considering the harmonious co-operation of various
instruments of different type, or the effective production of some
particular quality of sound such as that of wind or strings, or the
sudden blast of trombones, or the successive alternations of change
that are inseparable from the music of a large choir, in all such cases
knowledge, circumspection, experience, and imaginative endowment are
indispensable, in order that, in every example of the kind, whether
of tonal quality, transition, opposition, progression, or mediation,
we do not lose sight of an ideal significance, the soul and emotional
value of the music. For example, I find in the symphonies of Mozart,
who was a great master of instrumentation and its sense-appealing,
that is its vital no less than luminous variety, a sort of alternation
between the different instruments which frequently resembles in its
dramatic interplay a kind of dialogue. In one aspect of this the
character of some particular type of instrument is carried to a point,
which anticipates and prepares the way for that of another; looked at
in another way, one kind of instrument replies to another; or asserts
some typical mode of expression which is denied to the instrument it
follows, so that in the most graceful fashion we thus get a kind of
conversation of appeal and response, which has its beginning, advance
and consummation.

(_β_) The _second_ material which enlists our attention is no longer
the physical quality asserted in the sound, but the essential
definition of the tone itself, and its relation to other tones. This
objective relation, whereby musical tone in the first instance, not
merely in its essential and emphatically defined singularity, but
also in its fundamental relation to simultaneously persistent tones,
expatiates, constitutes the actual _harmonious_ element of music,
and is based, regarded under its own original physical conditions,
upon _quantitative differences_ and numerical proportions. A closer
examination of the contents of this system of harmony presents, as
understood to-day, the following points of importance.

_First_, we have _separate_ tones in their definite metrical relation,
and associated with other tones. This is the theory of particular
_intervals._

_Secondly_, there is the connected series of tones or notes in their
simplest form of succession, in which one tone immediately leads up to
another; such are the _scales._

_Thirdly_, we have the distinctive characteristics of these scales,
which, in so far as each starts from a different tone, as its
fundamental tone, is thereby differentiated into the particular _keys_
distinct from each other, and into the system of keys which they
constitute.

(_αα_) The particular notes do not only receive their tone, but also
the more inclusively positive[445] determination of such sound by
virtue of a corporeal substance in vibration. In order to get at this
determinacy we have to define the type of vibration itself not in
any chance or capricious manner, but once for all as it essentially
is. The column of air, for example, or the string or surface under
tension, which produces sound possesses invariably a certain length or
extension. If we take a string, for instance, and fasten it between two
points, and set the part of it thus stretched in vibration, the points
of initial importance to discover are the thickness of the string, and
the degree of tension. If we have these two aspects identical in the
case of two strings then the all-important question follows, as was
first noticed by Pythagoras, what is the string's length, the reason
being that strings, in other respects identical, if of different
lengths give a different number of vibrations in the same interval
of time. The difference of one of these numbers from another and the
relation of any one to another constitutes the fundamental ground for
the distinction and relation between different tones in their degrees
of pitch as high or low. Doubtless when we listen to notes thus
related our perception carries little resemblance to one of numerical
relations. It is not necessary for us to know anything of numbers and
arithmetical proportions; and indeed when we do actually perceive a
string vibrating, such vibration passes away without our being able
to apprehend the numerical relation, while of course it is equally
unnecessary for us to glance at the body in vibration at all, in order
to receive the impression of its tone. An association, therefore,
between the tone and its numerical relations may very possibly at first
sight strike us, not merely as incredible, but we may receive the
impression that its acceptance implies that our sense of hearing and
ideal apprehension of harmonies suffer even depreciation when we look
for their cause in that which is purely quantitative. However this may
be, it is an undoubted fact that the numerical relation of vibrations
in identical periods of time is the foundation of the specific
definition of tones. The fact that our sense of hearing is essentially
simple is no valid objection. The apparently simple impression, no
less than the complex may, in respect to its essential character
and existence, carry within its compass other aspects essentially
multifold and related fundamentally to something different. When we
perceive, for example, blue or yellow, green or red, in the specific
purity of these colours, we receive in like manner the appearance of
a perfectly simple determinacy, whereas violet readily is decomposed
into its constituent colours of blue and red. Despite this fact the
pure blue is not a simple fact, but a distinct correlation and fusion
of light and shadow[446]. Religious emotions, a sense of right in any
particular case, appear to us in the same way as simple; nevertheless
all religious feeling, every impression that partakes of this sense
of right, is related to ourselves in entirely different ways, though
producing this simple feeling as its point of unity.

In just such a manner, then, tone is based upon a manifold, however
much we hear and perceive it as something entirely ultimate; a varied
nature, which, for the reason that musical tone comes into being
by means of the vibration of a body, and thereby together with its
vibrations is subject to temporal condition, is deducible from the
numerical relation of this oscillation in _time_, in other words from
the _determinate number_ of vibrations in a given period. I propose
to draw attention merely to the following points in respect to this
deduction.

_Tones that accord_ in the fullest sense, and on hearing which a
distinction is not perceptible as opposition, are those in the case of
which the numerical relation of their vibrations is of the _simplest_
character; those on the contrary which are not so out and out accordant
possess proportionate numbers more _complex._ As an example of the
first kind we have _octaves._ In other words, if we tune a string,
where we shall have the keynote given us by a definite number of
vibrations, and then halve the same; in that case this second half will
give us in the same time precisely the same number of vibrations as
the previous entire string[447]. Similarly in the case of _fifths_ we
have _three_ vibrations to two of the keynote; in the case of _thirds_
we have _five_ to _four_ of the keynote. In the case of seconds and
sevenths we have a different kind of proportion; here to _eight_
vibrations of the keynote we have in the former case _nine_ and in the
latter _fifteen._

(_ββ_) Inasmuch then--we have already referred to this--as these
relations cannot be posited as we like, but disclose an ideal necessity
for their particular aspects[448], no less than the totality they
together constitute, for the like reason the particular intervals,
which are fixed by such numerical relations, do not persist in their
relation of indifference to each other, but are inevitably comprised
together in and as a whole. The first form of this totality of notes
thus created is, however, as yet no _concrete_ concord of different
notes, but an entirely abstract series of a system, a series of notes
related under the most elementary mode to each other, and their
position within the totality thus comprised. This is no other than
the simple series of notes known as scales. The fundamental basis of
this is the tonic, which repeats itself in its octave, and is extended
through the remaining six notes placed between these limits, which by
virtue of the fact that the keynote directly falls into unison with its
octave makes a return upon itself. The remaining notes of the scale
either harmonize completely[449] with the keynote, as is the case with
the fifth and the third, or possess a more fundamental distinction of
sound in conflict with it, as is the case with seconds and sevenths,
and take their place consequently in a definite series, which, however,
I do not now propose to discuss or explain further.

(_γγ_) _Thirdly_, in these scales we find the source of different
_keys._ In other words, every note of the scale can, in its turn,
be posited as the keynote of a fresh series of notes, which is
co-ordinated precisely as the first is. With the development of
the scale through an increase of notes the number of keys has
correspondingly increased. Modern music avails itself of a larger
variety of keys than that of the ancients. Further, inasmuch as
generally the different notes of the scales, as already observed,
are related to one another in unobstructed harmony, or a relation
that deviates from such immediacy in a more fundamental way, it
follows that the different series which arise from these notes, taken
severally as keynotes, either display a closer relation of affinity,
and consequently permit of a passage readily from one to another, or,
on account of their alien character, do not so admit of this. Add to
this that the keys are divided from each other by the distinction
of hardness and softness, that is, as major or minor tonality; in
conclusion they possess, in virtue of their key-note, from which
they are generated, a definite character, which of itself responds
to a particular kind of emotion, such as lamentation, joy, mourning,
and so forth. In this particular even writers in ancient times have
anticipated much on the subject of distinction between the keys, and
applied their theory in many ways to actual composition.

(_γ_) The _third_ important matter, with the discussion of which we may
conclude our brief remarks upon the theory of harmony, is concerned
with the simultaneous concord of the notes themselves, in other words,
the _system of chords._

(_αα_) We have no doubt already seen that the intervals constitute a
whole; this totality, however, is in the first instance comprised in
the scales and the keys merely in the form of an associated series, in
the succession whereof each note is asserted separately in isolation.
In consequence the tonal sound remained abstract, because we find here
that it is only one particular and determinate tone that is asserted.
In so far, however, as the notes in fact are what they are[450] merely
in virtue of their relation to one another, it follows necessarily that
their tonal modality should attain also an existence as this concrete
body of tone itself, in other words different notes will have to
coalesce in one and the same body of tone. In this conjoint fusion, in
the composition of which, however, the mere number of notes capable of
such coalescence is not the essential point, for we may have a unity of
this kind with merely two[451], we possess our definition of _chords._
For inasmuch as the different notes are not definable for what they
are as a result of caprice or chance, but are necessarily regulated
by virtue of an ideal principle and co-ordinated in their actual
succession, it follows that a regularity of similar character will have
to declare itself in the chords, in order that we may determine what
kind of associations will be adapted to musical composition, and what
on the contrary must be excluded. It is these rules which first give us
the theory of harmony in the full sense; and it is according to this
we find again that the chords are embraced in an essentially regulated
system.

(_ββ_) In this system chords are particularized and distinguished in
their passage from one to another, inasmuch as it is clearly _defined_
notes which thus sound together. We have consequently to consider as
an immediate fact a totality of separately distinguishable chords. In
attempting the most general classification of these we shall find that
the original distinctions we cursorily alluded to in our discussion of
intervals, scales, and keys will once again serve us.

In other words the _first_ kind of chords are those in which notes
come together, which are completely consonant. In the musical effect
of these consequently there is no opposition, no contradiction
perceptible; the consonance remains completely undisturbed. Such is
the case in the so-called _consonant_ chords, the foundation of which
is supplied by the _triad._ This confessedly is generated from the
key-note, the third, the mediant[452] and the fifth or dominant. In
these we find the notion of harmony expressed in its simplest form, or
rather the intrinsic idea of harmony generally. For we have a totality
of distinct notes under consideration, which assert this distinction
while they also declare an undisturbed unity.

We have here an immediate identity, which moreover is not without the
element of separation and mediation, albeit this mediation is not at
the same time limited by the self-subsistency of different tones[453],
satisfied with the mere transitional passage from one note to another
in the relation of a series, but the unity is here an actual one and a
return in immediacy upon itself.

But in the _second_ place we may observe as a further incident of
distinct types of the triad, which I cannot now examine in more detail,
the deliberate appearance of a deeper mode of opposition. We have,
however, already at an earlier stage seen that the scales contain
over and above those notes, which coalesce without opposition, others
which annul such consonance. Examples of these are the diminished
and augmented seventh. Inasmuch as these notes equally belong to the
totality of tones, they too will necessarily find an entrance into the
triad form. And when this happens it follows that the immediate unity
and consonance above mentioned is disturbed, to the extent that we
have added a tone essentially of another character, by means of which
for the first time we meet with a _genuine difference_ which actually
asserts itself as contradiction. In this way we have the true depth of
musical tone really asserted. It proceeds to contradictions that are
fundamental and does not flinch from the acerbity[454] or fracture they
involve. And, in fact, the notion in its truth is no doubt essential
unity; but it is not only immediate unity, but one which ideally is
disrupt, which falls into contradictions. In this sense I have for
example in my Logic developed the notion as subjectivity, but at
the same time disclosed how this subjectivity, as ideal transparent
unity, is resolved in that which confronts it in opposition, namely,
objectivity. And further such subjectivity regarded as itself wholly
ideal is nothing more than a one-sided and abstract presentment of
it, which as such retains a something else, an opposed other over
against it, namely, objectivity, and only becomes subjectivity in the
profounder significance of its truth, in so far as it enters into this
opposing other-than-itself, overcomes it and resolves it. And for
this reason in the world of reality it is to the higher natures that
power is given to endure the pain of that fundamental contradiction of
conscious life and to overcome it. In order that music therefore may as
an art express the ideal significance no less than purely subjective
emotion of the profoundest content, that of religion for example, and
above all that of the Christian religion, in which the profoundest
depth of suffering is an essential constituent, it must possess the
means within its empire of tone to depict such a conflict of opposing
forces. And a means of this kind it does possess in the so-called
dissonant chords of the seventh and ninth[455]. The function of these,
however, I cannot venture further to discuss here.

Looking, however, from a general point of view at the nature of these
chords I would draw attention to the _further_ important point, that
they hold what is contradictory, under the mode of contradiction
already explained, in one and the same unity. That, however, what is
contradictory as such should remain in unity is a contradiction in
terms and unintelligible. The very nature and notion of a contradiction
assumes that assured repose in it and what it implies is impossible.
On the contrary it is as such self-destructive. Harmony is therefore
unable to remain in chords of this character; our ear and feeling, in
order to obtain satisfaction, imperatively demands their resolution.
To the extent of this contradiction we are inevitably impelled to seek
a _resolution_ of dissonance and a return to the consonant triad. And
this motion, as the return of the principle of identity upon itself,
is the movement of truth in the widest sense. In the art of music,
however, this completed identity is only possible as a succession
of its moments in time, which appears consequently as a series, but
declares its collective dependence in this that a necessary movement of
an advance, which is essentially self-caused and a movement of change
belonging to its very nature, is thereby asserted.

(_γγ_) And this suggests a _third_ point it may be as well to draw
attention to. In other words just as the scale was an essentially
co-ordinate, albeit in the first instance still abstract series
of tones, so too the chords do not persist in their isolation and
self-consistency, but possess an ideal relation to one another, and a
necessary impulse to change and progress. In this advance, although
the same can be changed and extended to a far more considerable extent
than in the scales, yet again mere caprice is not more possible in the
one case than the other. The transition of chord to chord is effected
in part by the nature of the chords themselves, and in part by the
keys, to which these chords lead us. It is in virtue of this that the
theory of music has established many rules, to enumerate and adequately
explain which would, however, extend our survey into much too difficult
and discursive matters. I must therefore rest content with having
confined myself to a few observations of most general interest.

(_c_) _Melody_

Taking now a glance in retrospect on that which, as connected with the
means of musical expression, has already engaged our attention, it will
be seen that first in order came the mode of configuration appropriate
to the _temporal_ duration of tones considered as time-measure, beat,
and rhythm. We then proceeded to discuss the _actual tones_ of musical
sound themselves; _first_, that is to say, in the sound produced by
musical instruments and the human voice; _secondly_, in the fixed and
determinate measure of the intervals, and the abstract succession of
notes that are subject to them in the scale and the various keys;
_thirdly_, in the rules which appertain to the different chords and
their conjoint progression. The concluding subject, which still remains
for us to consider, and in which those previous to it discover their
synthetic unity, and disclose in the same the fundamental form by
virtue of which tones are for the first time in veritable freedom and
union unfolded and coordinated, is _melody._

In other words, harmony possesses merely the essential relations,
which establish the law of necessity in the world of tone; but these
are not in themselves, any more than beat and rhythm are, actually
music: they are rather the substantive basis, the foundation of rule
and principle, upon which the soul in its freedom expatiates. The
poetry of music, that speech of human souls, which pours forth the
ideal atmosphere and the pain of emotional life, and in this overflow
is raised with a sense of alleviation above the natural constraint of
feeling, by making present to the soul that which actually affects it
strongly; by enabling it freely to dally round its essential being, and
by liberating it by this very means from the oppression of joys and
sufferings--well, this power of soul-expression in the domain of music
is in the first instance melody[456]. It is this concluding section
of our inquiry, in so far as it constitutes the more supremely poetic
aspect of music, the realm of its really artistic creations, while
availing itself of the elements previously discussed, which obviously
possesses an exceptional claim to our attention. Unfortunately it is
just in this direction that we find ourselves confronted with the
difficulties already adverted to. In other words, to mention one of
them, a detailed and scientific treatment of the subject implies a more
accurate knowledge of the laws of composition, and a totally different
sort of acquaintance with the masterpieces of musical composition to
any I possess or indeed am able to secure, for we seldom hear anything
of a definite or conclusive character on this head either from musical
experts or practical musicians, from the latter, only too frequently
men of very average intelligence, least of all. And we may further
observe that it is a characteristic of the art of music itself, that we
should find the task of presenting and expounding particular detail in
general terms a less easy matter than in the case of the other arts.
It is true enough that music, as other arts, deals essentially with a
spiritual content, and propounds the ideality of this subject-matter,
or the ideal movements of emotional life, as the object of its
expression: yet for all that this content remains more indefinite
in outline and more vague, for just this very reason that it is
apprehended with exclusive regard to its ideality, or is reflected in
sound as subjective feeling; and the transitional states of music are
not in each case at the same time the change of a particular emotion
or idea, a thought or an individual form, but are merely a musical
progression, which consists in self-exposition or play, and avails
itself of artistic method for this purpose. I will consequently limit
myself merely to the following general observations, which have fallen
in my way and strike me as of interest.

(_α_) From a certain point of view, no doubt, melody, in its free
disclosure of musical tone, floats independent of beat, rhythm, and
harmony; but none the less the only means employed in its realization
are just these rhythmical and metrically constructed movements of tone
in their essentially necessary relations. The movement of melody,
therefore, is inseparable from the means employed to create it, and, if
merely opposed to the practical necessity of the subjection of these
means to rule, is unable to exist at all. In this intimate association
between melody and harmony, however, no real surrender of freedom is
involved: what melody is thus emancipated from is a purely capricious
fancy of the composer exercised in odd or eccentric progressions and
transitions. It is united by this very association to a stable and
self-consistent art. Genuine liberty is not opposed to the principle
of necessity as a foreign and therefore oppressive and suppressive
power; rather it possesses in the substantive character of the same
what is a constituent of and identical with the core of its being; in
following the demands of it it therefore is only conforming to its own
laws, acting in accordance with its own nature. And in fact it is by
the rejection of such proscriptions and only then that it proves an
alien to its nature, untrue to itself. Conversely, it is sufficiently
obvious that beat, rhythm, and harmony are, taken independently, merely
abstractions, which as thus isolated have no musical[457] significance,
and are able only to acquire real existence as music in virtue of
melody, and as within the domain of this, supplying moments to or
aspects in its realization. It is precisely in the manner that the
distinction between melody and harmony is thus effectively mediated and
resolved that the secret power of great compositions is disclosed.

(_β_)_Secondly_, in this question of the _individual_ character of
melody the following points appear to me of importance.

(_αα_) In the _first_ place, melody may be restricted, if we consider
its harmonious progression, to a very simple compass of chords and
keys, extended within the embrace of tone-relations destitute of all
opposition in their harmonious fusion, which it employs merely as the
fundamental ground on which to develop its more appropriate form and
movement. Song melodies, for instance, which be it understood are not
on that account in the least superficial, but may express the depths
of soul-life, as a rule are motived by constructive harmony of this
most simple character. They do not propound the more difficult problems
of chords and keys in so far as they deal with such things and their
modulation at all. They are mainly satisfied with obtaining a simple
harmonious accompaniment, which is not carried to the point of serious
opposition, and consequently requires few resolutions in order to
recover the final impression of unity. Such a mode of composition no
doubt may lead to superficial results, such as we find in a great many
modern Italian and French melodies. In such cases the development
of the harmony is entirely superficial. The composer endeavours to
substitute for the genuine demand of his work in this aspect of it
a merely piquant charm of rhythm or flavour of some kind. Generally
speaking, none the less the emptiness of a melody is not the inevitable
result of a simple harmonic basis.

(_ββ_) A further distinction consists in this that melody in the case
supposed is no longer developed, as in our previous example, merely in
the exposition of separate notes composed upon a relatively independent
harmonic progression, regarded simply as the base of it: in the
melody now under consideration every separate note of the melody is
substantially complete as a concrete whole In a chord. In this manner
it, on the one hand, includes a world of tones, and from another it
is so closely interwoven with the movement of the harmony, that it is
now impossible to retain the distinction previously accepted between a
melody unfolded in relative independence, and a harmony which supplies
the emphatic pauses of the accompaniment and its more fixed and
determinate musical basis. Harmony and melody are here one and the same
compact whole, and a modification of the one implies a correspondent
and necessary alteration of the other[458]. This may be pre-eminently
illustrated by chorales written in four parts. In like manner the
same melody can be so interwoven in the varied vocal expression of its
parts, that this interlacery itself creates a harmonic progression; or
we may have different melodies in a similar way elaborated harmonically
in association, so that the union of particular notes of these melodies
produces musical harmony. We often, for example, meet with this in the
compositions of Sebastian Bach. In such cases the music progresses by
means of parts that vary greatly from one another in their character
and movement, which appear to associate or inter-thread with each other
on independent lines, yet retain at the same time an essential harmonic
relation to each other. A necessary and coherent union is thereby
asserted.

(_γγ_) In composition of this kind it is not merely necessary for music
which has any claim to profundity to be developed to the bare limits
of undisturbed consonance, nay, even first to pass beyond it in order
that it may return thereto: rather the first simple mode of concord
will have to be rent asunder in dissonances. It is only through such
conflict that the profounder combinations and mysteries of music in
which an independent necessity reposes, discovers their source and
ground; and for the same reason it is only in such profounder harmonic
progressions that the arresting moments of melody originate. A bold
style of musical composition will consequently part company with a
purely consonant progression. It will pass into the sphere of opposing
forces, will summon to its aid the most discordant contrasts, and
disclose its unique power amid the tumult of all the resources of
harmony, the conflicts of which it is equally able to calm, wholly
confident in its ability to celebrate finally the grateful triumph of
melodic tranquillity. We have in short here a battle waged between
freedom and necessity; a conflict between the freedom of inventive
genius, seeking to yield itself to its upward flight, and the
necessary constraint of those harmonic conditions, which it is forced
to acknowledge as the means of its expression, and in which its own
ideal significance is reflected. On the other hand if the harmony, the
employment, that is, of all its resources, the unrelenting nature
of its conflict in the disposal of them and in its attitude to them
is the main interest, the composition may very easily become heavy
and overweighted with science, in so far at least as the freedom of
movement is really impaired, or at least we are not allowed to feel the
complete effect of its triumph.

(_γ_) To put the matter in other words, in every genuine melody a truly
melodic, songful impulse, which is its essential type as music, must
declare itself as predominant and independent, as something which it
neither forgets nor loses in the plenitude of its expression. Thus
regarded melody presents, no doubt, an infinite power of adaptation
and coordination in the progressive motion of tones, but the mode or
form of this must be such that throughout we are made aware of an
essentially complete and self-subsistent whole. This totality contains,
it is true, a varied complexity, and implies in itself a forward
advance; but it must for all that, regarded as a whole, be beyond
all doubt rounded off and secure. It must therefore have a distinct
beginning and termination to the extent at least that the intermediate
part of it may be simply presented as the mediating link between that
beginning and end. Only as such a movement, asserted with unmistakable
emphasis, itself self-differentiated and returning on its own unity,
does the melody of music reflect the free self-consciousness[459] of
soul-life, whose expression it ought to be; only as thus perfected can
music, in its own peculiar medium of ideality, enforce expression in
its pure immediacy, or avail itself of the ideal freedom of that mode
of expression which is the untarnished reflection of the inner life, an
expression which, despite its subordination to the necessary laws of
harmony, enables the soul to perceive a more exalted vision.



3. THE RELATION BETWEEN MEANS OF EXPRESSION IN MUSIC AND ITS CONTENT


After passing in review the general nature of musical art we considered
the particular aspects according to which notes and their duration in
time secured their necessary form. Having now arrived in our discussion
of melody at the confines of a world of free artistic invention and
actual musical composition, what we have now to deal with is a
_content_, which, under its rhythm, harmony, and melody, is capable of
receiving an expression conformable to art's requirements. After fixing
clearly in our minds general modes of this expression we shall as our
conclusion be in an advantageous position to review the different
provinces of musical composition. With these objects before us we may
in the first instance advert to the following important distinction.

On the one side music may be, as already observed, in the nature of
an _accompaniment._ This is the case where its spiritual content is
not merely seized in the abstract ideality of its significance, or
as individual emotion, but enters into the movement of the music
subordinate to the significance it has already received from idea and
words. As a type of music opposed to this we have the composition which
is disconnected with any such content already prepared for it; music
in this case establishes itself in its own proper sphere, so that
it either, if it still is forced to deal with a definitely received
content, resolves the same wholly in melodies and their harmonic
development, or asserts its _absolute independence_ in the medium
of musical tone simply and its harmonic or melodic configuration.
We have already seen that a similar distinction is apparent in a
wholly different section of our inquiry. I refer to the case of
architecture considered either as an independent art, or in the service
it renders to that of building generally. But in music the mode of
its accompaniment is of an essentially freer type than that of our
illustration; it is far more intimately united with its content than is
ever possible in the case of architecture.

In the actual domain of art this distinction marks the difference
between _vocal_ and _instrumental_ music. We are not, however, entitled
to accept it in the purely external interpretation of it, as though
in vocal music it was merely the sound of the human voice, while in
instrumental music it was the more varied tones of the many distinct
instruments which were made serviceable. We must not in other words
overlook the fact that the voice expresses at the same time in its song
deliberate speech, presenting us the ideas of a specific content, so
that music, regarded as the _word that is sung_, if the twofold aspect
of the same in tone and human speech is not to fall into a condition
of indifference or absence of relation, is obviously bound, so far as
the art enables it to do so, to supply its musical expression to this
_content_, which as such _content_ is brought before the receptive
faculties in its nearest approach to definition, and no longer is
left unrelated in more indefinite feeling. In so far, however, as
the presented content, as libretto, is, despite of the above union,
independently ascertainable in legible form, and is also consequently
distinguishable in the mind itself from its musical expression, to this
extent the music attached to a libretto is an _accompaniment_, whereas
in sculpture and painting the unfolded content does not already attain
to any presentment independently of its artistic form. At the same time
we must be careful not to go to the other extreme and entertain an idea
of such accompaniment, as though its entire purpose were one solely
of subordination; the truth is precisely the reverse. The libretto is
written in the interest of the music, and has no further importance
save in so far as it brings home to the mind a more intimate knowledge
of the actual subject the artist has selected for his work. Music
maintains this freedom pre-eminently by virtue of the fact that it does
not apprehend the content in the manner the libretto may be assumed to
make it intelligible. Rather it exhibits its mastery of a medium, to
which sense-perception and imaginative idea do not belong[460]. In this
respect I have already, when discussing the general characteristics
of music, pointed out that music expresses the principle of ideality
in its intrinsic quality. The ideality of soul-life, however, may
be of a _twofold_ type. That is to say, to accept an object in its
_ideal presentation_[461] may, in the first place, mean that we do
not conceive it in its actual appearance in the phenomenal world,
but relatively to its _ideal significance._ We may, however, mean by
this, secondly, that a content is expressed as we find it realized in
the experience of personal _emotion._ Both forms of idealization are
represented in the art of music. I will therefore endeavour to explain
in more detail how this comes about.

In old church music, take the movement of a _crucifixus est_ for
example, we find that the profound meanings unfolded in the central
idea of the Passion regarded as Christ's suffering, death, and burial,
are severally so conceived, that it is not simply one merely _personal_
feeling of sympathy or individual pain over these facts that is
expressed, but along with this the very facts themselves, or in other
words the depth of their significance is motived by the harmony of the
music and its melodic progression. It is, of course, true that even
here the impression is one which acts upon the emotion of those who
hear it. We do not actually _perceive_ the pain of the crucified, we do
not merely receive a general _idea_ of it; the aim is throughout that
we experience in the depths of our being the ideal substance of this
death and this divine suffering, that we absorb with heart and soul its
reality, so that it becomes as it were a part of ourselves, permeating
our entire conscious life to the exclusion of everything else. And in
like manner must the soul of the composer, if his work is to disclose
such a power of impress upon others, entirely lose itself in these
facts and only in them. It must not merely have experienced a personal
emotion of them. It must accept as its aim the task of making in its
music the facts themselves live again for the ideal sense.

Conversely, I may read a text, a libretto, which narrates an event,
places before me an action, gives to feelings the impress of speech,
and thereby become moved even to tears in my profoundest being. This
effect of _personal_ emotion, which may attend all human action and
conduct, every expression of inner life, and further may be excited
by the perception of every such event and by participation in the
presentment of such, the art of music is able to regulate; by so
doing it ameliorates, tranquilizes and idealizes by its influence the
fellow-feeling in the listener who finds himself attuned to it. In both
cases, therefore, the content rings through the inner life, in which
music, for the very reason that it subdues consciousness in the simple
attitude of rapt attention[462], is able to restrain the unfettered
range of thought, imagination, sensation, and passage beyond the true
boundary-line of the subject on hand. Music, in short, keeps the soul
absorbed in a particular content, fructifies its energy therein, and
moves and fills the life of feeling up to the brim within these limits.

Such is our conception and description, so far as the present occasion
permits, of the manner of which music, as an accompaniment, when
dealing with a definite content which is, as previously explained, set
before it by means of a libretto, elaborates that aspect of it we have
termed ideality. Inasmuch, however, as music is pre-eminently called
up to do this in vocal music, and the human voice is added to this
associated with instruments, it is customary to speak of instrumental
music in a special sense as the music of accompaniment. It is no doubt
true that it accompanies the voice, and should not either assert
unqualified independence or claim an unqualified precedency. But for
all that vocal music is placed, as thus associated, in a more direct
relation still under the definition previously given of an accompanying
tone. The voice expresses words articulate to the mind; and song is
merely a fresh or additional modification of the content of these
words, or in other words it is the explication of them in the language
of the emotions. In the case of instrumental music, if taken by itself,
the expression of imaged idea vanishes, and such music must necessarily
confine itself to the means and modes of purely musical expression[463].

The discussion of these points suggests a _third_ one, which, in
conclusion, it is well not to overlook. I have previously drawn
attention to the fact that the reality of a musical composition, in
its full and vital embodiment, depends on a continually repeated
reproduction. In this respect it is at a disadvantage as compared
with sculpture and painting. The sculptor, no less than the painter,
conceives a given work and executes it throughout. The entire artistic
activity implied therein is centred in one single individual, and
by this means absolute reciprocity between the creative idea and
its execution is secured. The architect, on the contrary, is in a
less favourable position, who, in carrying through all the variety
of structure in a building, has to entrust such work to other hands
than his own. The composer in a similar way, must leave the execution
of his work to other hands and voices. But in his case there is
this difference, that the execution, from the point of view of mere
technique, no less than that of the vital spirit of his work, itself
demands an artistic activity, not one of mere craftsmanship. In this
respect we may in our own time, no less than previously in that of
the older Italian opera, whereas in other arts there has been little
or nothing fresh of the kind, point to a marvellous advance in two
respects in music. The first is to be noted in the conception, the
second in the increased virtuosity of execution. It is due to these
results the very notion of what music implies and is able to perform
has, even in the case of acknowledged experts, been increasingly
enlarged[464].

We may now briefly summarize the heads of the concluding sections of
this portion of our work.

_First_, we shall investigate more carefully music regarded as
_accompaniment_, and raise the question with what modes of expression
in a given content it is as a rule most compatible.

_Secondly_, it will be necessary to consider this question more closely
as viewed in relation to musical composition that is _exclusively
independent._

_Thirdly_, our conclusion will be reached with a few observations upon
artistic _execution._


(_a_) _Music as Accompaniment_

It follows, as a necessary result of what I have already described
as being the relative position of libretto and music, that, in this
sphere of its activity, musical expression is compelled to concern
itself far more exclusively with a defined content than in the
alternative case where it is able to surrender itself without restraint
to its own movement and inspiration. A libretto offers us to start
with definite ideas, and compels the attention to forsake that field
of more visionary emotion destitute of distinct idea, in which we are
permitted to range without interruption, and are not forced to abandon
our licence to receive from pure music whatever chance impression or
wave of emotion it may arouse. In this act of artistic interlacery
with words, however, it is not right that music should carry its
loyalty so far as to impair the free course of its progressions, even
though it do so with the object of emphasizing the full character of
what is contained in the libretto. To do this is to employ the mere
pedantry of learning, to adapt means of musical expression for the most
faithful presentment possible of a content which is not in the first
instance its own, but supplied it externally. It is to accept this
artificial result rather than the creation of a real self-subsistent
work of art. And to that extent we have here evidenced a definite check
and hindrance to free artistic activity. It is equally wrong in the
opposite extreme that music should, as is almost invariably the fashion
with modern Italian composers, wholly emancipate itself from the
contents of the libretto, as though its specific character were only a
bond, and with no other aim than that of approaching independent music
as closely as possible. The true function of such music is this. It
ought to steep itself in the meaning of the expressed words, situation,
or action, and by virtue of such impregnation, ideally conceived,
discover therefrom a vitally arresting expression, and elaborate
the same in terms congenial to art. That is the course followed by
all great masters. They appropriate everything of vital interest in
the words; but the stream of their music, the tranquil flow of the
composition, remains for all that as free as ever. We acknowledge the
natural growth of the music no less than its affinity to the text it
illustrates. We would draw attention to _three_ distinct types of
expression all illustrative of this free spirit.

(_α_) To start with, there is that aspect of musical expression which
we may describe as the truly _melodic._ We have here simply emotion,
the utterance of soul itself, which, apart from anything else, finds
self-enjoyment in such expression.

(_αα_) The domain here, in which the composer moves, is coincident with
the human heart and the moods of the soul; and melody, which is the
pure musical utterance of this inward world, is in the most profound
sense the soul of music. Musical tone only attains to expression
that is really vital when emotion is embodied in it or reflected in
sound from it. Connected with this the purely natural cry of feeling,
whatever it may be, of horror, for example, or the sobbing of grief, or
the exclamation or outburst of uncontrolled jubilation, are themselves
highly expressive; and indeed I have already referred to them as the
starting-point of music, subject of course to the statement that art
is unable to accept them under the mode of purely natural utterance.
Here, too, we find a distinction between music and painting. The art of
painting is frequently able to produce the most beautiful and artistic
effect by its realization in every respect of the actual form, the
colour and animation of a particular human being in some definite
situation and environment, and its complete reflection of all that it
has thus assimilated and received in its bare vitality. The truth of
Nature, if presented conformably to artistic truth, is here entirely
justified. But the art of music ought not thus to repeat emotional
expression in the form it assumes as a purely natural utterance of
passion; what it should do is to vitalize with the emotional forces
musical sound elaborated under the definite conditions of its tonal
progression, and to this extent resolve the expression in a medium of
sound wholly created by art and inseparable from the artistic purpose,
a medium in which the mere cry becomes a series of musical tones with a
definite progression, the transitions and course of which are subject
to the laws of harmony and unfolded in the completeness of a melodic
phrase.

(_ββ_) The essential significance of this melodic quality and its
bearing on the human spirit is best apprehended if we view the latter
as a whole. The fine arts of sculpture and painting give an objective
existence to the ideality of soul-life; moreover, they liberate
the mind from this externality of their presentation in so far as,
from a certain point of view, it discovers itself therein as an
ideal, spiritual work, and from another everything which partakes
of adventitious singularity[465], of capricious idea, opinion, and
reflection, is rejected, the content thereof being placed before us
in its entirely appropriate individuality. The art of music, on the
contrary, as we have repeatedly pointed out, possesses as a means to
such objectivity merely the element of the soul-life itself, by means
of which that which purely belongs to this enters into conversation
with itself, and as expressed in the utterance of emotion itself
returns, as it were, upon itself. Music is spirit or soul, which ring
forth in their untrammelled immediacy, and derive satisfaction in this
record of their self-knowledge. As a fine art, however, it is its
necessary function to regulate the expression of such life no less
than its effects. It ought not to permit that expression to be whirled
away in bacchantic thunder and tumult, or be left in the distraction
of despair, but retain the blessed freedom of its deliverance in the
extremity of sorrow no less than the jubilant outburst of delight.
And this is the character of truly ideal music, the utterance of
melody such as we find it in Palestrina, Durante, Lotti, Pergolese,
Glück, Haydn, and Mozart. Tranquillity of soul is never lost in the
compositions of these masters. Grief is no doubt often expressed, but
the resolution is always there; the luminous sense of proportion never
breaks down in extremes: everything finds its due place knit together
in the whole; joy is never suffered to degenerate into unseemly uproar
and even lamentation carries with it the most benign repose. I have
already, when discussing Italian painting, emphasized the fact, that
a spirit of reconciliation is not wanting even in extreme examples
of sorrow and distraction of soul; by virtue of this, even where we
have tears and suffering, some trait of tranquillity and assurance is
preserved; the tenderness and grace which assert themselves in the
harlequin's rôle illustrates the same truth. In like manner a feeling
for nature and the endowment of musical expression is preeminently
a characteristic of the Italians. In their earlier church music we
find that, along with the deepest devotional feeling, the sense of
reconciliation is expressed in its purity; and though grief may stir
the soul most profoundly, yet beauty and rapturous joy, the simple
greatness and impress of an imagination which discovers delight in
its own varied expatiation, is equally present. It is a beauty of
an apparently sensuous type, so that it is not unusual to refer to
such melodious contentment as a purely sensuous enjoyment. But it is
sometimes overlooked that it is precisely in this realm of the senses
that art discovers its life and movement, and thereby transfers Spirit
to a sphere in which, as in the world of Nature, this essential wave of
self-satisfaction is throughout the fundamental tone.

(_γγ_) Albeit, therefore, _particularity_ of emotional content must
be duly represented, yet it is right that music, while permitting
passion and imagination to stream forth in its harmonies, should at
the same time lift the soul that is absorbed in such emotion over the
same, enable it to hover around such content, and in short create an
atmosphere wherein the recovery from such an absorption, and the pure
reflection of itself is possible. This it is which gives us in fact
the really melodious character to song-music. The important feature
of it is not merely the progression of determinate emotion such as we
indicate by the words love, yearning, jollity, and so forth; it is
rather that inward sense, which presides over it, which expatiates
in its suffering no less than its delight, and finds satisfaction in
doing so. Precisely as the bird in the brake, the lark on high sings
its glad and touching song for the mere sake of singing, an outburst
of Nature herself, having no further thought or intention whatever,
it is just the same with human song and the expression of its melody.
Consistently with this not infrequently Italian music, in which this
truth is pre-eminently emphasized, will, just as poetry will, pass into
mere melodious sound simply, and can readily appear to part company
with the emotional stimulus and its particular mode of expression, or
even in fact do so, for the very good reason that its object is the
enjoyment of art by itself, and the contentment of all who thus are
able to enjoy themselves. And apart from the Italians this is more or
less the characteristic of all right melody. The specific nature of the
expression, albeit present also, passes away, in so far as our hearts
are absorbed in what we appropriate rather as our own, than in that
which belongs to another, a something beyond us. By reason of this and
this alone--it is much as we receive the impression of pure light--we
are admitted to the most intimate conception of ideal blessedness and
attuned spirits.

(_β_) In the art of sculpture the predominant impression is ideal
beauty or self-repose. Painting, on the other hand, already presents
a movement in the direction of specific characterization, and the
emphasis it attaches to articulate expression is an essential feature
of its executive purpose. In a similar fashion the art of music is
unable to rest satisfied with melodious expression as above indicated.
The purely emotional grasp by the soul of its intrinsic nature, and the
play in musical sound of this apprehension is, regarded as the mere
atonement of mood, when we take it strictly, too general and abstract.
It is inseparable from the danger not merely of an alienation from the
more careful interpretation of the content expressed in the libretto,
but of that of becoming generally empty and trivial. If sorrow, joy,
yearning, and so forth are to find adequate reflection in melody, the
soul that is actual and concrete only comes by such emotions in the
downright reality of the same as involved in a veritable content,
that is, in particular situations, events, actions, and so on. If,
for example, a song arouses the emotion of mourning, the lament at a
loss, we inevitably ask ourselves, what is the nature of that loss.
Is it, shall we say, the loss of life with all its many interests?
Is it a loss of youth, happiness, wife, beloved, children, friends,
or anything else? For this reason it is further incumbent upon music
that it should of itself differentiate in like manner its mode of
expression when dealing with a _specific_ content and the _various
relations_ and situations, which the soul has experienced, and the
more ideal or intimate life of which it seeks to reflect in its
harmonies. Music in short is not primarily concerned with the bare form
of the inward soul, but with that innermost life as replenished, the
specific content of which is most closely related to the particular
character of the emotion roused, so that the mode of the expression
will, or should, inevitably assert itself with essential differences,
according to the varied nature of the content. In a similar way the
soul, precisely in the degree that it takes a headlong plunge into
any distracting experience, proceeds through an accumulating series of
effects, and, in opposition to our previously described state of benign
self-contentment, passes through conflicts and distraction, wrestlings
with passions, and in short reaches an extreme of division, for which
the mode of expression hitherto observed is no longer adequate.

Now what we mean by the detail of the content is just that which is
supplied by the _libretto_ or words. In the case of a simple melody,
which is less concerned with this specific character, the more defined
characteristics of the _libretto_ are appreciably of less importance.
A song, for instance, although it essentially implies as a poem and
text a whole of variedly motived moods, perceptions, and ideas, none
the less as a rule asserts throughout one fundamental progression of
emotion; it is primarily one chord of the soul that it emphasizes. To
grasp this, and to reflect the same in the language of music, this
is what such song-melody is mainly called upon to do. Consequently
we may have identically the same music through all the verses of our
poem, although the meaning they carry admits of much variety; and
what is more, this very repetition, so far from proving injurious to
the effect, may serve to enforce and enhance it. We may see the same
thing in a landscape, where, too, the most varied objects confront
the vision, and yet for all that the prevailing mood and aspect of
Nature, which animates the whole, is one and the same. It is just such
a prevailing tone that ought to assert itself in the song, and this,
though it only applies strictly to some of the verses, but does not so
apply to others; and the reason of this is that here the specific sense
of the words is not to be taken as of most importance. What comes first
is the simple melody that floats freely over all variety of content. In
the case of many compositions which infringe this principle, and which
start every fresh verse with a novel melody, which not unfrequently
varies from the preceding one in beat, rhythm, and even scale, it is
quite impossible to understand why, if such essential modifications
were really inevitable, the poem itself ought not to have been altered
in metre, rhythm, and rhyme, through all its verses.

(_αα_) What is, however, appropriate for the song, which is a genuine
melodious utterance of the soul, is not applicable to every kind of
musical expression. It is necessary, therefore, to draw attention to
a _further_ aspect in contrast to pure melody as such, one of equal
importance, and by virtue of which alone song is really brought into
line with accompanying music. We find this in that mode of expression
which is dominant in the _recitative._ Here we have no independently
exclusive melody, which at the same time reflects the fundamental mood
of the content, in the elaboration of which soul-life, as at home
with itself, receives back in musical sound some portion of its ideal
activity; rather in the case before us the content of the words, to the
full compass of its specific character, is imprinted upon the musical
expression, the import of which no less than the course it determines;
and this is so whether we regard it from the point of view of the
elevation or profundity which distinguishes it, or the prominence
or subordination of its particular features. By such means music,
as contrasted with melodic expression, approximates to an emphatic
declamation, one accurately corresponding with the movement of the
words, whether the view we take of them be that of their meaning, or
that of their syntactical arrangement. And in so far as it adds also,
as a novel element, the aspect of a more exalted emotion, it stands
midway between the pure melody and poetical speech. Conformably to
such a station, therefore, we have a free accentuation, which adheres
strenuously to the specific sense of particular words. Moreover it
is not necessary for the libretto in this case to be written in
any particular metre, nor need the musical exposition, as the pure
melody does in a like case, follow beat and rhythm with absolute
precision; rather the music under this condition of it, that is in its
acceleration, suspension, or pause in particular progressions, or rapid
passage over such, is entitled to adapt itself freely to the emotion
aroused by the meaning of the words. For the same reason the modulation
is not so restricted as in the case of melody. Precisely as the text
which it attempts to express may suggest, it may begin, proceed, pause,
break off, begin again, or stop with absolute licence. Unexpected
accents, progressions only partially mediated, sudden transitions
and resolutions are equally permissible; and, in direct contrast to
the continuous stream of melodious music, provided always that the
libretto's content requires it, this latter mode of expression is
equally in its place, though delivered in fragments, and torn asunder
by passionate emotion.

(_ββ_) Being of this character this form of declamatory expression,
known as recitative, is suitable for tranquil statement of situation,
or facts, no less than the presentment of the entire compass of the
emotions, under which the distraction of the soul in exceptional
circumstances is depicted, and which in its soul-full harmonies stirs
the heart sympathetically with its every movement. The recitative
is first mainly applicable to the oratorio, either as the declamed
narration, or the more vivacious presentment of instantaneous
occurrence; or, secondly, we find it in dramatic song, in which case
it can appropriately express every shade of parenthetical statement,
no less than every sort of passion, it matters not whether the result
be expressed in abrupt, curtailed, or fragmentary variation, or with
aphoristic violence, or in a dialogue of rapid lightning flashes
and counter flashes, or in a more continuous stream. In both these
provinces of epic or dramatic poetry, we may add that instrumental
music is a possible accompaniment. Its function in either case
is either quite simply to emphasize the pauses in the harmonic
progression, or to interrupt the course of melody with incidental
music, which, agreeably to the general import of the former, depicts in
musical language other aspects and movements of the situation.

(_γγ_) What, however, we find defective in this declamatory recitative
is just the qualities which are essentially characteristic of the pure
melody; these are the definite articulation and unification of its
parts, the expression of that spiritual homogeneity or unity of which
we have spoken, that which, it is true, is confined in a particular
content, but at the same time asserts its own sense of unity in that
content, being enabled to do this through its refusal to be distracted
or broken up by its absorption in particular aspects of it, or rather,
instead of this, still retaining in them as predominant its ideal
coalescence. For this reason the art of music cannot rest satisfied,
even where we are dealing with the more sharply defined features
of the libretto proposed, with such recitative of declamation; nor
in general can it remain content with the unmediated _difference_
between the pure melody, which, in comparison with it and as above
explained, floats over the particularity of the words, and the
recitative, whose task it is so far as possible to identify itself
with it. On the contrary we must look for some mode of _mediation_
between these extremes. We may compare with this new type of unity a
constituent which entered into our consideration of the distinction
between harmony and melody. This harmony was acknowledged as being not
merely the general, but to a like extent the essentially specific and
particularized foundation of melody; and far from the latter being
thereby deprived of its freedom of movement, we found that it only
thus secured for the same a power and definition comparable to that
the human organism secures by virtue of its consistent bone-structure,
which only impedes inappropriate postures and movements, while it adds
stability and security to the right ones.

This brings us to the final point of view of our discussion of music as
an accompaniment.

(_γ_) This _third_ mode of expression consists in this that the melodic
song, which accompanies words, is also involved in their particularized
substance, and thereby is not permitted to remain wholly indifferent
to the principle of most force in recitative; rather it appropriates
this with the result that while it repairs its own defects in clear
definition, it confers on the characteristic recitative an organic
articulation and a unified self-consistency. For, as already observed,
even that which is throughout melody is impossible without a certain
defined content. When, therefore, I mainly emphasized the fact that in
all and every mode of it the tranquil self-reflection of the soul's
own essential substance and ideal unity is the mode of expression
peculiarly that of simple melody, inasmuch as, musically considered, it
presents a similar unity and a similarly complete return upon itself, I
did so because I then had in view this aspect as the distinctive point
of contrast between the pure melody and the recitative. It is, however,
further incumbent on the melodic phrase to bring it about that its
mode come into actual possession of that which in the first instance
appears necessarily to have its movement outside it, and by means of
this replenishment, in so far as it then is equally of a declamatory
or a melodic character, for the first time attain to a truly concrete
expression. It follows also from the converse point of view that the
declamatory part of it is no longer independently aloof from it,
but finds its own one-sidedness supplemented in like manner by the
accretion of melodic expression. This is what constitutes the necessary
condition of such concrete unity. In order to examine this more closely
we had better keep distinct the following points of view.

_First_, it will be as well to glance at the kind of _libretto_, or
text, which is adapted to musical composition, and for this reason that
it has been now proved that clear definition in the content of words
adapted to music and its expression is of essential importance.

_Secondly_, we have now introduced as a fresh constituent of
_composition_ declamatory characterization; it will therefore be
necessary to consider this in its relation to the principle, which we,
in the first instance, identified as that of melody.

_Thirdly_, we must endeavour to specify the more prominent _modes_
under which we may review this type of musical expression.

(_αα_) Music[466] is not merely in a general way an accompaniment of
the content of a work in a sphere which already engages our attention,
but it is part of its function, as already observed, to define still
further the characterization of such a work. It is consequently an
injurious assumption that the construction of the libretto is a matter
of indifference to the musical composition. We find, on the contrary,
that really distinguished musical compositions presuppose an excellent
libretto, carefully selected by the composers or actually written by
them. It is impossible that an artist should treat with indifference
the material with which he is dealing and a musician least of all,
precisely in the degree that poetry has already worked out and settled
for him the epic, lyrical, or dramatic configuration of the content in
question.

What is of first importance in the construction of a good
text is this that its content should be stamped by essential
_self-consistency._[467] It is impossible that music should conjure
forth an artistic product of real strength and penetration from what
is commonplace, trivial, barren, or absurd. With all the spices and
seasonings in the world your musical chef will never make a hare
pie out of a roasted cat. In the case of song compositions no doubt
the nature of the words is less decisive, yet even here we require
words with a really genuine content. From a further point of view,
however, it is equally necessary that such a content should not tax
our reflection too much, or aspire to philosophical profundity, as is
rather the case with the lyrics of Schiller. In such an example the
extraordinary range of pathos exceeds the musical expression of lyrical
emotion. The same thing may be said of the choruses of Aeschylus
and Sophocles. The penetrative power here displayed in imaginative
conception is so exceptional, they are so elaborate in their detail
whether regarded in their scenic or ideal presentment, they are already
so absolutely complete as poetry that we have nothing left for music
to add to them[468]. We have literally no room left us for any further
play or exposition of ideal significance or movement beyond that
already presented. The more modern material and mode of treatment we
find in the so-called romantic poetry are in their type the strongest
contrast to these. Their pretension, as a rule, is that of being naive
and popular; but we only too frequently find a _naïveté_ which is
finical, artificial, and stilted. Instead of pure and genuine emotions
we get a _simplicitas_ that is nothing but feeling worked upon and
acting under the constraint of reflection; a false kind of yearning
and affectation, which is far too complaisant with dulness, stupidity,
and vulgarity, and is equally blind to the defects of passions, envy,
licence, and even devilish wickedness wholly without ideal content;
which is, moreover, as self-satisfied with its assumed excellence in
the one case as it is with the dissolution and baseness of the other.
Emotion that is spontaneous, simple, thorough, penetrative, is here
entirely absent, and music, in any attempt to reproduce it, can suffer
no greater injury. We may therefore accept the fact that neither mere
depth of thought, nor the vanity or worthlessness of mere emotion can
give us a satisfactory content. On the contrary what is most adapted
for music is a certain intermediate type of poetry, which we Germans
are loth even to admit as poetry, and the true feeling and talent for
which is more largely possessed by Italians and Frenchmen. It is a
poetry of a genuine lyrical quality, extremely simple, which indicates
situations and emotions in a few words. Where it is more dramatic it
remains luminous and vital without too involved a development; detail
is not so much elaborated, but it is rather, as a rule, concerned to
supply general effects, than the completely articulate results of a
poet's activity. We find here that the composer receives, in accordance
with his demand, merely the general foundation, upon which he can,
in subordination to his own invention, and his own threshing out of
motives of every kind, erect his building, treating many aspects of the
subject as part of his own life and movement. For inasmuch as music
has to adapt itself to words, these words should not particularize
the picture too closely; if they do the musical declamation becomes
absorbed in trifles, lacking in a common impulse, too contracted in
the direction of particular features, and the unity and general effect
is impaired. In this direction people are only too frequently at fault
when expressing an opinion upon the excellence or insufficiency of a
libretto. It is one of the most common verdicts, for example, that
the libretto of the Magic Flute is hopelessly bad, though this piece
of manufacture is nevertheless among the best of opera librettos.
Among the many wildly fantastic and commonplace productions of his
pen Schickaneder has in this for once hit the right track. The empire
of Night, with its queen, the empire of the Sun, these mysteries,
these initiations, this Wisdom, Love, these ordeals, and with it all
this typically world-wise ethic, excellent in the breadth of its
applicability--all this when combined with the depth, the bewitching
loveliness and soul of the music expands and floods our imagination,
and warms the heart.

To mention further examples, the old Latin texts of great masses and
other services are unrivalled for religious music. This is in part
due to the fact that they set before us in the greatest simplicity
and brevity the most general content of religious faith, in part also
to this that they present in the same spirit the varied stages of
emotion that accompany the substance of this in the consciousness of
the community of the faithful, and by doing both offer the musician a
wide field for his own particular development. The great Requiem and
many selections from the Psalms are equally serviceable. In a similar
way Handel welded his texts, partly from religious dogmas themselves,
but, above all, from scriptural passages and situations of symbolical
import, into a completely consistent whole.

In the field of lyrical poetry the more suitable for this purpose are
the emotional and shorter poems, in particular the simple ones, in
content no less than speech, steeped in emotion, which penetrate into
one prevailing mood or affection, or those too of lighter and more gay
character. There is hardly a nation that does not possess such. In the
sphere of drama I will only mention Metastasio, and with him Marmontel
the Frenchman, who, himself richly emotional, cultured, and lovable,
instructed Piccini in French, and knew so wisely how to combine in the
drama grace and vivacity with the skill and interest of the action and
development. But before all else we shall do well to emphasize the
libretti of the famous operas of Glück. Without exception we shall
find their motives simple. The content they offer to the emotions is
in a sphere the most sterling of all, depicting as they do the love of
mother, wife, sister, friendship, honour, and so forth, and permitting
these simple motives and the form of their essential collisions to
unfold in an atmosphere of tranquillity. And for this reason the
passion they disclose is throughout pure, great, noble, and of plastic
simplicity.

(_ββ_) It is, then, the function of music, by the characterization of
its expression no less than its wealth of pure melody, fittingly to
reproduce a content of the above nature. And that we may obtain such
a result it is not merely necessary that the text contain in itself
earnestness of heart, the comic and tragic greatness of human passion,
the depth of religious idea and emotion, the powers and fatalities
that the human breast discloses, the composer also on his part must be
absorbed wholly in the composition, and must have lived in and through
it heart and soul.

What is equally important is the relation under which what is
characteristic and melodious in such music is on either hand
associated. The main point appears to be, that as between them it
is the melodic expression which without exception, as the factor of
synthetic unity, which gains the day, rather than that which tends
to distract and break up the whole into particular characterization.
To take an example of the latter case from modern dramatic music,
the effect often sought for here is one of powerful contrasts, and
this is brought about by forcing into one continuous stream of music,
under the conditions of conflict permitted to the art, contrasted
passions. We have, it may be, expressed for us jollity, marriage,
and festive associations, intermingled with which we may have hate,
revenge, hostility, so that for result we are presented a fine uproar
in which joviality, delight, dance-music, passionate scolding, and
the very extremes of distraction are all involved. But contrasts of
interrupted life such as these are, and which tumble us from one side
to another, without any principle of union, are opposed to harmonious
beauty precisely in the degree that the point of opposition in such
characterization is acutely emphasized, and any return of the melody
to a real self-repose and self-enjoyment is out of the question. And
in general the union of the melodic and characteristic features of
such music readily incurs the risk of overstepping the finely drawn
boundaries of musical beauty, more especially when the intention is
to express force, selfishness, evil, impetuosity, and other extremes
of exclusive passion of a similar nature. The moment that music is
involved in its abstract task of such characteristic limitation it can
hardly avoid making for chaos, becoming, that is to say, more acute,
unpliable, and, in fact, thoroughly unmelodious and unmusical, to the
extent even of sheer misuse of discord.

A similar result will be found if we look at the _different_ features
of characterization generally. I mean that if these are strongly
emphasized in their independent form the connection between themselves
and other traits is readily weakened and their self-subsistency in
repose is at once evident: but in musical exposition our difficulty is,
we have an essential movement throughout, and it is in this progression
that we are forced to look for the relation of stability; this being so
the isolation of effect cannot fail to act injuriously on the flow and
unity of the music.

Genuine beauty in music consists, under the aspect now being
discussed, in this, that while there is no doubt a movement towards
characterization out of that which is simply melodic, yet within the
sphere of this more defined articulation[469], the melodic aspect
is still maintained as the sustaining soul and unity, much as we
find in what is most characteristic in the paintings of Raphael the
fundamental tone of beauty is throughout conserved. Melody is then not
without definite significance, but in all such definition betrays a
coalescing and suffusing principle of life, and more characteristic
detail presents itself merely as the emphasized prominence of certain
aspects, which are none the less always and essentially fused again
in this medium of unity and animation. To hit off the just mean in
this respect is, however, a more difficult task for music than the
other arts, for the reason that music surrenders itself more readily
to such antagonistic modes of expression. For this reason criticism
over musical composition is almost always divided into two camps.
The one attaches most importance to the melodic structure, the other
prefers further advance in characterization. Handel, for example, who
frequently in his operas insisted on having certain lyrical episodes
emphasized acutely, had to face many a tussle on this head with Italian
singers, and was finally compelled, when the public ranged itself on
the side of the Italians, to confine himself wholly to the composition
of oratorios, in which field his genius pre-eminently asserted itself.
In the time of Glück also the long and vehement controversy between
the supporters of Glück and Piccini is famous. Rousseau also in his
turn insisted on the superiority of the more melodious Italian music
as compared with the deficiency in this respect of the earlier French
composers. We have in our own days the same old controversy waged for
or against Rossini and the more modern Italian school. The opponents of
the former condemn his music as if it were so much empty ear-tickling;
if we, however, assimilate his melodies more generously we shall find
that there is much in this music of real feeling and genius; it is not
without a real message to our faculties, although it does not make any
claim to the characteristic effects, which are more especially dear
to our severe German musical sense. And indeed it must be admitted
that only too often Rossini says good-bye to his libretto, and gives
free vent to his melodies, precisely as his mood dictates, so that
we have nothing left us but the alternative either to stick to the
subject-matter and grumble over the music that is indifferent to it,
or abandon the former and take our hearty delight in the inspired
irrelevances of the composer and the soul which they reveal[470].

(_γγ_) I will now in conclusion briefly summarize the most notable
_forms_ of music regarded as accompaniment.

_First_, in the order of our classification we may mention
_ecclesiastical_ music. Music of this type, in so far as it is not
concerned with the personal emotion of individuals, but with the
substantive content of emotion in its widest compass, or shall we say
the universal emotion of the community viewed collectively, is in
a large measure throughout of _epical_ consistency, even though it
instructs us in no events in so many words. How an artistic conception
is able to be epical in significance, though we have in it no narrative
of event, we shall endeavour to explain at a later stage when we come
to deal more closely with epic poetry. This fundamentally religious
music is among the profoundest and most impressive creations that Art
can bring into being in any sphere whatever. Its true position, in so
far, that is, as it is associated with the sacerdotal petition for the
community, we find in the cult of _Roman Catholicism_, conjoint with
the Mass, and more generally as a means of musical devotion attendant
to the most varied ecclesiastical functions and festivals. Protestants
can also boast of musicians of the profoundest gifts not merely as
religious men, but also in the sterling character and opulence of
their imaginative resource or executive ability. Sebastian Bach here
stands before us as the master of masters. For the first time in our
own day we have been taught to appreciate at something like its value
the great genius of this man, his truly protestant, robust temper, and
withal his profound erudition. Of first importance we may observe in
this connection, and in contrast to the direction followed by the music
of Catholicism, the emergence in complete form of the oratorio, in the
first instance out of the Passion music. Nowadays, of course, music
for Protestantism is no longer so closely associated with the cult of
religion, nor so essentially a part of its services; and indeed it is
often more a matter of exercise in musical scholarship than a really
vital creation.

_Second_ in order we have _lyrical_ music, which expresses in melody
isolated moods, and for the most part should be disjoined from the
wholly characteristic or declamatory mode, although it may rightly
undertake to combine with its expression the specific content of the
words illustrated, whether their import be religious or otherwise.

Tempestuous passions, however, which neither issue in repose or
finality, the unresolved division of the heart, emotional distraction
destitute of all relief, such experiences are more suitably reproduced
as an integral part of _dramatic_ music; they are out of place in the
harmonious consistency of the lyrical mode.

This _dramatic_ form is then our _third_ and final division. The
tragedy of the ancients was associated with music; but this aspect
was not emphasized, and for this reason that in truly poetical works
precedence must necessarily be given to human speech and the poet's
own exposition of ideas and emotion; the only way music could in these
times assist--which in its harmonic and melodic expression had not as
yet reached that of a subsequent Christian era--was mainly from the
rhythmical point of view by heightening with increased animation the
musical sound of the poetical language, and thereby bringing the same
more home to the heart.

Dramatic music, however, receives a really independent position when
once the form of church music is essentially complete, and in lyrical
expression some degree of perfection has been attained. We find this
in our modern operas and operettas. It must be admitted that from
the point of view of song the _operetta_ is a half-way house of less
importance, one which mixes together with no vital connection speech
and song, what is musical and unmusical, the language of prose and that
of melody. It is a common objection no doubt that song in the drama is
without exception unnatural. Such an objection cannot be pressed, and
would be far less open to argument as against the opera, in which from
the first line to the last every idea, emotion, passion, and resolve is
accompanied by and expressed in song. On the contrary, it is rather the
operetta which still requires justification in so far as it introduces
music in which we have a more animated presentment of the emotions and
passions, or the latter are adapted for such presentment, while in
the juxtaposition of a confused melody of prosaic dialogue with these
artistically treated interludes of song we have what is a perpetual
embarrassment. In other words, the emancipation of art is incomplete.
In genuine _opera_, however, in which the action throughout receives
its musical analogue, we are once and for all transported into an ideal
world of art, the atmosphere of which is throughout the work maintained
in so far as the music accepts for its fundamental content the ideal
aspects of emotional stress, the particular phases of such in specific
situations, and the conflicts of passion, that it may, by virtue of
the more complete effects of its expression, add the final emphasis
they would otherwise have lost. Conversely in the _vaudeville_, where
airs already popular and well known are set to the more pointed and
arresting rhymes, singing is merely a self-imposed kind of irony. The
fact that there is singing at all is intended to be taken rather as
parody or amusement: here the main point is the meaning of the text and
its fun, and the singing has no sooner ceased than we laugh that it
should ever have commenced.

(_b_) _Independent Music_

We may compare melody, as an essentially self-contained and
self-supported whole, to plastic sculpture; in the more detailed
characterization of painting we shall find an analogous type to
that of musical declamation. And inasmuch as in the latter case we
have an aggregate of specific differentia unfolded such as the more
simple movement of the human voice is unable in all its variety
to express, the more all these many aspects of life enter into the
movement of the music, to that extent instrumental music is a necessary
accompaniment. In addition to this, as a _farther_ point of view,
whether in its relation to the music that accompanies a libretto, or
the characteristic expression of the words, we have to recognize in its
freedom a content of definite ideas, which is, as transmitted, wholly
independent of musical sound.

Now what constitutes the essential principle of music is the ideality
of the soul-life. But this innermost, or ideality of the concrete self
is the subjective state in its bare simplicity, that is, as defined by
no assured content, and for this reason not forced into motion either
one way or another, but reposing on its unity in unfettered freedom.
And if this subjective principle is to come entirely to its own in
music also it must rid itself of a traditional text, and in all purity,
out of its own resources, master its content, the movement and the kind
of expression, the unity and development of its creation, the carrying
out of a main conception, no less than all episodical or incidental
matter; and in doing this, for the reason that the significance of the
whole is not expressed in language, it must restrict its means to those
exclusively of musical value. And this is what does take place in the
sphere I have already described as _independent_ music. Music, as an
accompaniment, possesses that which it undertakes to express outside
its own domain; to this extent it is associated in its expression
with that which does not belong to it as music, but to an alien art,
poetry. If music is to be nothing but music simply, it must disengage
itself from this factor, which it has only borrowed elsewhere, detach
itself absolutely from the definite substance of language. Thus alone
it becomes entirely free. And this is the point we have now to examine
more closely.

We have already noticed the beginnings of such an emancipation within
the limits of music as an accompaniment. For though it is true that
in part here music was compelled by the force of poetical language
to be subservient, yet also in part it either moved in benign repose
over the more _limited_ characterization of the words or removed
itself entirely from the significance of ideas therein expressed, to
expatiate of its free will in the musical language of joy or sorrow.
The same result is apparent in its effect on an audience, the public
as we say, and more especially in its attitude to the music of drama.
In other words, an opera has many constituents. We have the local
condition, landscape and the rest, or the movement of the action, or
incidental episodes and pageants. From another point of view we are
confronted with human passions and their expression. In short, there
is a twofold content--namely, the external action and the soul-emotion
that corresponds. If we take the action simply we shall find that,
though it is that in which all the parts cohere, yet regarded merely
in its movement forward it is less adapted to musical expression and
mainly elaborated in recitative. With a content of this nature an
audience is not so arrested; its attention is particularly liable to
wander off from the dialogue of recitation, and to fix itself upon
the portion of the work that is really musical and melodious. We have
an exceptional illustration of this--I have already adverted to the
fact--in our modern Italian opera, which is from the first made to
fall in with the custom of the audience to engage in conversation, or
other ways of enjoying itself, during the chatter or trivialities of
the musical dialogue, and which only returns to that part of the music
which is truly music, with the full measure of sympathetic attention,
enjoyment, and delight. In this case we find, then, that composer,
no less than audience, barely fall short of bidding good-bye to the
libretto's substance altogether, and of treating music for the purposes
of enjoyment as an absolutely independent art.

(_α_) The true province of such independence is, however, not the
accompaniment of vocal music undeniably conditioned by a text, but
instrumental music simply. As already observed, the human voice is the
appropriate musical expression of man's inner life in its entirety, a
life also expressed in ideas and words, which therefore discovers in
its own voice and song its distinctive organ, so often as it seeks to
express and recover this inner world of its ideas permeated throughout
with the concentrated intensity of emotion. In the case of instruments
taken by themselves, however, this basis of an associated text of words
disappears; here we find an opening for the empire of a music that is
confined strictly to its own unassisted powers.

(_β_) Such a music of particular instruments presented us in quartets,
quintets, sextets, symphonies and the like, without text or vocal
music, remains unrelated to any movement of ideas independently
asserted, and is for this very reason compelled to have recourse to
emotions of a more indefinite character, emotions which in such music
can only be expressed in general terms. The aspect of importance
here, in short, is the varied motion of the music simply, the ups
and downs of the harmony or melody, the stream of sound through
its degrees of opposition, preponderance, emphasis, acuteness or
vivacity, the elaboration of a melodic phrase in every respect that
is suitable to the means of musical art, the musician-like fusion of
all the instruments as one _ensemble_ of tone, or in their succession,
alternation, and emphatic display of themselves and each other. It is
in this sphere pre-eminently that the distinction between the _ordinary
person_ and the _expert_ of music asserts itself. The ordinary man
likes best in music an expression of emotion and ideas that is at once
intelligible, that whereof the content is obvious; his predilection
is consequently for music under the mode of an accompaniment. The
connoisseur, on the contrary, who is able to follow the relation of
musical sounds and instruments as composition, enjoys the artistic
result of harmonious modulation, and its interwoven melodies and
transitions on its own merits. He is entirely absorbed by this alone,
and is interested in comparing the detail to which he listens with the
rules and principles he is fully able to apply to it, in order thus
to follow the performance with judgment and delight, although even in
his case it frequently happens that our modern type of virtuosity,
with variations in tempo or other nuances for which our connoisseur
is unprepared, will perplex him not a little. A complete satisfaction
of this kind comes rarely to the mere amateur. He is seized with the
vain desire to master this apparently phantomnal process of music, to
discover arresting points for his attention in the musical development,
and generally more definite ideas and a more detailed content in the
volume of sound that invades him. In this respect he seeks to attach to
music a symbolical significance, yet can find in the same little beyond
mysterious problems that vanish in the moment they are propounded,
which baffle his powers of solution and in general are capable of a
variety of interpretations.

The _composer_ is able, it is true, on his part to associate with
his work a definite significance, a content of specific ideas and
emotions, which are expressed articulately in movement that excludes
all else; conversely he can, in complete indifference to such a scheme,
devote himself to musical structure simply and the assertion of his
genius in such architectonic. Composition, however, of this character
readily tends to become defective both in the range of its conception
and emotional quality, and as a rule does not imply any profound
cultivation of mind or taste in other respects. And by reason of the
fact that such a content is not necessary, it frequently happens that
the gift of musical composition not merely will show considerable
development in very early age, but composers of eminence remain their
life long men of the poorest and most impoverished intellectual faculty
in other directions. More penetration of character may be assumed where
the composer even in instrumental music is equally attentive to both
aspects of composition; in other words, the expression of a content,
if necessarily less defined than in our previous mode, no less than
its musical structure, by which means it will be in his power at one
time to emphasize the melody, at another the depth and colour of the
harmony, or finally to fuse each with the other.

(_γ_) We have throughout posited subjectivity in its unconstrained
presentment within the limits of music as the general principle of this
type of composition. This independence of a content already proposed
to it from an alien source will, however, more or less assert itself
in opposition to mere caprice, though the restrictions under which
it admits it are not defined rigorously. For, albeit this type of
composition has its own rules and modes, the authority of which no
mere whim or fancy can reject, yet they are regulations which only
affect the broader aspects of music; in actual detail there is no end
to the opportunity which the inner content of soul-life[471], provided
it once accepts the boundaries fixed by the essential conditions of
musical composition, may discover for its otherwise free expatiation
and exposition. And, in fact, as a result of the elaboration of modes
congenial to this type, the caprice of individual composers asserts,
in contrast to the steady advance of purely melodic expression and
music in association with a definite text, a practically unrestrained
mastery in every sort of conceit, caprice, interlude, inspiriting
drollery, startling suspension, rapid transition, lightning flashes,
extraordinary surprises and effects.

(_c_) _The Artist as Executant_

In sculpture and painting we have a work of art presented us as an
external and independent _result_ of artistic activity; we do not
regard this activity itself as the actual creation of life[472]. It is,
however, necessary to the presentation of a musical work of art that we
should have an executant musician in co-operation, just as in dramatic
poetry we have the representative presence of living manhood as an
essential factor in this type of art's realization.

We have, then, reviewed musical composition under the two aspects, that
is to say, in so far as it sought to conform with a specific content,
or struck out on its own free path of independence. We may now in the
same way distinguish between two main types of purely executive art.
The one is wholly absorbed in the work of art on hand, and makes no
attempt to reproduce anything over and beyond this. The other, on the
contrary, is not simply reproductive; it actually creates expression,
delivery, in short the essential animation of the work, not merely from
the composition as composed, but predominantly from its own resources.

(_α_) In the case of the epic poem, wherein the poet seeks to unfold
an objective world of event and modes of action, the rhapsodist, who
recites it, has no occasion to do anything further than wholly withdraw
the expression of his own personality in the presence of the exploits
and events he brings home to us. The more reserved he is in this
respect the better; indeed such recitation is not incompatible with a
monotoned and unemphasized delivery. What is effective here is the fact
of the poem, the poetical execution, the narrative itself, not its
realization in voice and speech. This illustration will suggest to us
the _rationale_ for our first type of musical reproduction. In other
words, if the composition is in a similar way of a genuine objective
quality, in the sense that the composer has simply translated his
subject-matter, or the emotion that is absorbed with it, into musical
language, the artistic reproduction should retain the same objective
character. It is not merely true that here there is no reason for
the executant to import into it his idiosyncrasies; by doing so he
necessarily impairs the true artistic effect. He must subordinate
himself entirely to the character of the work, and prescribe to himself
simply this attitude of attention. On the other hand, he must not,
as is too frequently the case, confuse such an attitude with that
of the purely servile artisan, and lower himself to the level of an
organ-grinder. If such execution is to retain any artistic claim the
artist is bound to avoid leaving the impression of a musical automaton,
which merely repeats its prescribed lesson mechanically, and instead
to animate the entire work with the heart and soul of the composer
himself. The virtuosity of such a vital reproduction is restricted,
however, to the just elucidation of the technical difficulties
presented by the work, and in doing so the object will be not merely to
cover any appearance of triumph over an exacting task, but to portray
the freest movement under such conditions, and, in so far as superior
artistic endowment and experience can in the particular case manage
to do so, attain in the reproduction to the spiritual altitude of the
composer and reflect the same in actual performance.

(_β_) It is another matter when we come to deal with works of art,
in which personal idiosyncrasy and caprice are even by the composer
himself features brought into prominence, and where generally we
find the traces of such a clearly objective quality in expression,
the treatment of the harmonic or characteristic development less
pronounced. In such a case the _bravura_ of virtuosity is, it is our
first distinction, quite admissible; and over and above this executive
ability is not only limited to the reproduction of the actual score,
but may considerably amplify; an artist will _himself_ add to the
composition in his delivery, supplement defects, add substance to what
is comparatively superficial, import into parts a new life, and in
doing so assert independent judgment and invention. In the Italian
opera, for example, much is always left to the singer's discretion; in
particular where we have embellishments a more liberal opportunity of
display is granted, and in so far as the exposition of sound is further
removed from the mere interpretation of the libretto, the execution in
its independence becomes a more spontaneous flow of melody, in which
the soul of the singer is permitted to enjoy itself and exult in its
own free rapture. When therefore it is objected that Rossini for one
has made the singer's task too easy, the stricture is only in part
justified. The difficulty is none the less there, only he frequently
leaves it to the trained intelligence of the executant to work it out
for himself. If in the result we are conscious of the cooperation of
genius, the work as thus reproduced makes an exceptionally favourable
impression. We have not merely a _work of art_ reproduced, but we
are conscious at the same time of actual _musical creation._ In
this very present realization of life the external conditions of
artistic reproduction disappear, such as place, opportunity, the
local associations of a divine service, the content and intent of a
dramatical situation; we have no further need for, nor do we desire
any text, we have left us simply the unspecialized impulse of emotion,
in the element of which the soul of the artist can surrender itself
without let or hindrance to its own rapture, displaying thereby
inventive genius, the finest qualities of emotion, and a mastery of
technique; and in fact, provided we find the right spirit, ability, and
personal charm to justify it, it may venture to interrupt the flow of
melody itself with humour, caprice and virtuosity, and accept for once
the moods and suggestions of the moment.

(_γ_) This kind of virtuosity is yet more remarkable in cases where
the instrument is not the human voice, but one of _human invention._
By this I mean to say that such naturally in the kind of sound they
produce are further removed from the soul's direct expression;
they are in relation to that of an external object, apiece of dead
mechanism, and music is essentially a spiritual movement and activity.
When we find, therefore, this externality of the instrument vanishes
altogether, in the case, that is, where the music of the soul breaks
right through this alien crust of mechanism, by means of such
virtuosity, even an instrument of this character is transformed
into one as fully adapted to express the soul of the artist as it
is possible to conceive. Among the memories of my youth I can still
recall the case of an astonishing executant on the guitar, who in
his own eccentric fashion had composed huge battle-pieces for this
comparatively insignificant instrument. By profession, if I remember
rightly, he was a weaver, and in conversation he had little enough
to say for himself. But no sooner did he begin to play than one
wholly forgot the absurd pretensions of his composition, forgot these
precisely as he forgot all else but the music, and the marvellous
result he made of it by being totally absorbed body and soul in his
instrument, entirely witless of any form of nobler execution than that
expressed in the tones of a guitar[473].

A virtuosity of this type, in so far as it asserts such a unique
superiority, is not only a proof of extraordinary mastery over
material forces, but we receive from it as it strides victoriously
over difficulties apparently unplayable, even turns aside to add to
them, or in wayward mood breaks in upon us jestingly with I know not
what interruptions and surprises, and by original invention even
makes us enjoy what would otherwise be vulgar, is a direct reflection
of absolutely free soul-life[474]. It is quite true that a mere
charlatan[475] of this type is unable to produce original works of
art; but where real genius is part of the endowment we can have
extraordinary mastery in composition no less than over a particular
instrument, the limitations of which this virtuosity lays itself
out to overcome, and in audacious vindication of its triumph will
reproduce the artistic effects of other instruments entirely remote
in other hands from its own. It is an accomplishment of this kind
which delights us with our acutest sense of the life of music. And
this riddle of riddles we discover in the fact that a mere piece of
mechanical craft can become an instrument one with our life, which
enables us to follow, as through a flash of lightning, a power of ideal
conception no less than execution, by virtue of which the imagination
of genius penetrates to the core of life as instantaneously as it
vanishes therefrom.

Such, then, are the most essential features, which I have selected from
my own experience of music, the more general points of view which I
have detached from the subject and concentrated attention upon in the
present discussion.


[Footnote 377: _Ein festes Daseyn_, lit., an assured existence.]

[Footnote 378: We should not expect the plural. Hegel apparently
includes the transitional relief of sculpture.]

[Footnote 379: Lit., "But also strives to set itself back into the
previous condition." He refers to the mutual relation of tones.]

[Footnote 380: _In sich selbst Ideellgezetzte._ That is, posited as
ideal in the way music does with its object, as to which further
explanation is given below.]

[Footnote 381: It is difficult to follow closely this very technical
interpretation of musical sound, and a doubt may be perhaps permitted
as to whether it corresponds to the scientific facts. I mean it does
not appear fully to do justice to the reaction of the organ of human
hearing itself and the intelligence with which it is related upon
the sound waves that through such mediation are cognized as musical
sound. The ideality appears to me to be more complete than even Hegel's
theory would suggest, or, at any rate, some of his expressions. And
surely, too, in sight, though it may be true we see independent
objects, we only do so, in so far as their secondary qualities
are concerned, by virtue of a considerable action of what he here
calls _Seelenhaftigkeit._ But this is not the place for more than a
suggestion. The main points of contrast are in Hegel's interpretation
sufficiently obvious.]

[Footnote 382: _Des Körpers._ I am not sure that I quite follow the
meaning of this second moment of negation. If it means the reaction
or synthetic process of human hearing it removes in great measure the
objection above. We then have as the twofold negation the negation
by the ideality of sound and that through the human sense. But owing
to Hegel's use of _Material_ to indicate the medium which is subject
to oscillation, it would rather appear to mean that one vibration is
cancelled by another.]

[Footnote 383: _Das an und für sich schon etwas Ideelleres ist._ This
would correspond to the ideality of the first negation of spatial
condition.]

[Footnote 384: He means its own ideal existence. _Aufgeben_ must here
be used in the primary sense of "delivers." He does not mean that it
gives expression to the ideality of spirit; this is added by the next
clause.]

[Footnote 385: This is, I think, Hegel's meaning for _das an sich
selbst Subjektive._ Its content is also formally ideal or abstract as
above explained, but to express this he would rather have used the word
_ideell_ or _innerlich._ It is also, as I have pointed out, in great
measure ideal in the sense that as musical tone it is not natural even
in the qualified sense that colour is. It is even more dependent on the
human organism for its quality and synthesis. But I do not think Hegel
means subjective in this sense, but that it directly expresses human
emotion.]

[Footnote 386: Both ideas are contained in the word _Verschweben_,
which means to hover and slowly vanish away.]

[Footnote 387: _Figurationen._ Their modal combinations.]

[Footnote 388: It is obvious that in this respect music to some extent
infringes on the distinction Hegel has already pointed out between its
content and that of poetry.]

[Footnote 389: By _verständige Formen_ Hegel means, of course, forms
that express an artistic, that is, an intelligible purpose. The whole
passage is not very clearly expressed. The general meaning is, however,
that as architecture surrounds its statues with a medium of material
environment co-ordinated by artistic design and invention, so, too,
music in its medium of emotional content is equally indefinite and may
be used as an accompaniment (as architecture is a kind of accompaniment
to statuary) in the melodic play of its harmonies to definite ideas
in uttered speech. The reader of Browning will doubtless recollect
the fine use made of architecture as metaphorical illustration in the
poem "Abt Vogler." I think it was Schopenhauer who first spoke of
architecture as frozen music. But Schelling speaks of it in the same
way.]

[Footnote 390: I presume Hegel here refers primarily to scholastic
music, musical exercises intended to exhibit the structure of music.
The exercises, for example, of Cramer or Fuchs. Bach's forty-eight
fugues would occupy a transitional place.]

[Footnote 391: _Tonseele._ There is, of course, something almost mystic
in Hegel's conception of musical sound as the ideality issuing from the
material world.]

[Footnote 392: That is, sculpture and painting.]

[Footnote 393: By _Haltpunkte_ Hegel appears to mean material that will
act as stays and supports in contrast to those which are indifferent.]

[Footnote 394: I presume by _solchen festen Bestimmungen_ Hegel refers
to the general definition of artistic function just enunciated. But
the sense may possibly be, "while the point of departure is the stable
determinations of natural form."]

[Footnote 395: We are inevitably reminded of the release which Art was
to such men as Beethoven, Dante, Milton, and Blake.]

[Footnote 396: In the theme.]

[Footnote 397: It seems doubtful how how far a musician would accept
this at least in so far as it applies to classical music of the formal
type. The development, for instance, on the repetition of a theme in a
sonata is at least part of the formal content of the sonata movement as
a whole.]

[Footnote 398: _Ein Auseinandergehen._ Variations on a theme would be
a good example. But surely the development of a theme may do precisely
this in great measure, I mean disclose both the depth of it and its
concentration.]

[Footnote 399: No doubt this is so if we assume the content to be
mainly a theme, a motive. But the content of a movement includes the
development. The main difference after all is the fundamental one that
in music the content is unfolded in a time series and in the plastic
arts instantaneously in spatial form. And in poetry the apprehension is
also in a temporal series.]

[Footnote 400: It is impossible in English to reflect the play of words
between _Erinnerung_ (memory) and _Er-innerung_ (self-penetration or
ideal realization).]

[Footnote 401: I am not sure whether Hegel exactly means by
_Phantasiren_ what we understand as Improvization. But it is the
only form of music that strictly applies to his definition. Even the
rhapsodies of Liszt are controlled by the form, as in a sense all music
is.]

[Footnote 402: As the plastic arts. It certainly is not so closely
associated with a definition given outside it by Nature, that is, but
it is obviously very closely associated to the formal modes of music,
such as the laws of counterpoint, fugue, sonata, etc.]

[Footnote 403: The first is its relation to architecture, the second
that to the plastic arts.]

[Footnote 404: That is, the ideas. By "receiving self-subsistency"
Hegel means it maybe regarded independent of the art, something
essentially outside it.]

[Footnote 405: By _Ton_ Hegel means, of course, musical sound. The
object of music is music and ideas only in so far as they are expressed
in music.]

[Footnote 406: _In diesem Freiwerden._ In this free medium of its
existence.]

[Footnote 407: How far would Hegel have applied this criticism to the
great symphonies of his compatriots? I think it is obvious, at any
rate, that his criticism of pure music is somewhat lacking in sympathy.
Nowadays it is not even a wholly obvious fact that the song or the
opera are the most popular. The truth is that musical education, and
that is what the appreciation of programme or symphonic music implies,
has made enormous strides since his day. But his criticism will still
hold for many in regard to more modern developments in Strauss and his
school.]

[Footnote 408: By _fertig_ Hegel must mean here that the world of
poetry is one whose claims to independent coherence is generally
acknowledged.]

[Footnote 409: By "universal" Hegel appears to mean more universally
intelligible, He uses the same word in a like sense just below.]

[Footnote 410: If Hegel means to imply that pure music, in so far
as it presents ideas by suggestion, has any advantage over music
the effect of which is entirely a musical effect he is on dangerous
ground. The Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven may or may not be more
popular than Beethoven's other symphonies, but it is unquestionable
that its artistic merit depends exclusively on its claims as musical
composition. And indeed its worth as music suggestive of ideas is
mainly so great because, as Beethoven himself claimed, it is rather a
suggestion of emotional mood than the imitation of natural sounds or
the suggestion of distinct ideas. So far as popularity or universality
of appeal is concerned, he may be right. But this is obviously no
final test of the significance of music as compared with other arts,
though it may mark a distinguishing feature. And surely music expresses
emotions at least "as they are" (_selber_) more directly than poetry.
Poetry no doubt gives them as we express them in ordinary life. But
music makes us feel them as they are unexpressed in our souls, a still
higher grade of reality.]

[Footnote 411: Hegel probably never heard Beethoven's ninth symphony
with its "Song of Joy." As to its success as set to music there may be
two opinions, but the fact that it is the culmination of so celebrated
a composition is in itself a qualification of Hegel's statement.]

[Footnote 412: Both Mendelssohn and Schumann deplored the fact that
they could get no really good libretto and would unquestionably
not have received all the statements here without considerable
qualification. Hegel appears to be too dominated by the character of
Italian opera. German opera as further developed by Wagner and even
in the hands of Beethoven and Glück and Weber makes a very different
demand. It is unquestionably true that there must be a certain
reciprocity of quality between the two. But some of the finest music
has been written for some of the finest poetical language, namely that
of our Bible. Composers like Bach, Handel, and S. S. Wesley insisted on
having the very best form of their religious ideas they could obtain.]

[Footnote 413: Lit., "Within the purely musical realm of tones."
Hegel's strictures would only apply to the most formal kind of
exercises or studies. It would really be a misnomer to say that
Chopin's studies for the piano or Spohr's or even Kreutzer's exercises
for the violin wholly come under it.]

[Footnote 414: It is on this ground that Aristotle calls music the most
imitative art. They represent emotions directly without the mediatory
office of Nature's objectivity (_vide_ "Three Lectures on Aesthetic,"
by Bernard Bosanquet, p. 53).]

[Footnote 415: It is more subjective because the content is more ideal,
and more closely related to the artist's personal qualities.]

[Footnote 416: More definite than feeling and soul-life is from tone.]

[Footnote 417: That is, vanishes with the evanescence of the music.]

[Footnote 418: _Die Geschicklichkeit eines virtuosen Machwerks.
Machwerk_ is used, of course, in a depreciating sense. The contrast is
between it and a truly inspired composition.]

[Footnote 419: Lit., "Of the business on hand."]

[Footnote 420: _Gleichgültig._ I am not sure whether Hegel means
fortuitous in the sense that Nature in its abstraction is such, or
purely objective, _i.e._, no self-reflection, probably the latter. They
are "dead elements."]

[Footnote 421: That is, spatial externality.]

[Footnote 422: The meaning appears to me that apart from conscious life
which can contrast the fleeting moments of Time with its permanent
self-identity the process is without meaning--there is no process, it
is a παντά ρεῖ with no differentiation.]

[Footnote 423: It cancels itself in so far as it makes itself an
object. The dialectical movement of self-consciousness is here viewed
in the bare form of its original abstraction.]

[Footnote 424: _Das Ich als solches._]

[Footnote 425: _Abgeschmackte._ Not so much bad taste here as false
judgment.]

[Footnote 426: _Auffasst._ Hegel would appear to mean the intelligent
hearer rather than the composer, though the word would refer to either.
Even then it is not clear why music should not be said to exist by its
mere performance. But, of course, such presupposes the human executant,
and this is possibly what Hegel intends to imply.]

[Footnote 427: _Nüancirt._ Made subject to the nuances or modifications
introduced into such relations.]

[Footnote 428: _Verstand_ as contrasted with _Vernunft._ The analytical
faculty of science.]

[Footnote 429: That is, the quantitative basis.]

[Footnote 430: _Die haltungslose Dauer._ That is, a duration that is
unbroken by arresting points in its progress.]

[Footnote 431: That is, self-conscious, synthetic unity holding the
temporal process in relation to itself. It thus becomes not merely a
_werden_ but a _für sich seyn._ In contrast to the purely abstract
process the self is _das Bei sich selbstseyende_ _i.e._, that which
persists along with itself. This totality or aggregate of particulars
Hegel calls _Sammlung._ The analysis is really an analysis of the form
of conscious experience.]

[Footnote 432: This is the converse case of a series of definite points
of contrast, but unrelated by any integrating principle. I admit
frankly that I am not sure I have wholly seized the meaning in these
difficult paragraphs. I have adhered in my translation, therefore, as
closely as possible to the original.]

[Footnote 433: _Markirte._]

[Footnote 434: _Herrschende Regel._]

[Footnote 435: Because their orbits are elliptical and motion is
accelerated as they approach the focus.]

[Footnote 436: _Verlebendigung._]

[Footnote 437: He means of a specific collection of words, sentences.]

[Footnote 438: _Perioden._]

[Footnote 439: _Umschwung._ Perhaps all that is meant is the return to
the previous level, as we should speak of the rise and fall of voices.]

[Footnote 440: _Ein Körper._]

[Footnote 441: _Seiner zeitlichen Gestalt._]

[Footnote 442: _Gezwungene._ I presume the meaning is that the
oscillations are effected by a curved form of musical instrument.]

[Footnote 443: I am not sure there is not a certain confusion here.
Our text, at any rate, when speaking of wind instruments, refers to
the column of air as the medium of sound, but in the case of stringed
instruments draws attention rather to the thing which creates the
waves of vibration, the string itself. The nature of the timbre of
an instrument is no doubt an important one, but it may be questioned
whether this distinction between line or column and surface is very
satisfactory or sufficient.]

[Footnote 444: _Jenem linearen Tönen._ The expression appears to
me not very easy to interpret even from Hegel's own point of view.
In what sense can you call a musical tone linear? The theory here
stated, though ingenious enough, appears to me to miss the fundamental
question, what actually constitutes the timbre of an instrument,
in its assertion, for instance, of distantly related harmonies or
non-assertion of such. Even assuming that the form of the instrument,
or the part of it set into vibration, may partially explain this, it
is obvious, I think, that Hegel's manner of stating it is open to
considerable criticism.]

[Footnote 445: _Die näher abgeschlossene Bestimmtheit._ The meaning
seems to be that definition of them in which they stand out with most
distinctness from others.]

[Footnote 446: The comparison is unfortunate--in two respects. Violet
is a cardinal colour, and the theory of Goethe to which it refers is,
of course, untenable.]

[Footnote 447: The true scientific reason why octaves resemble each
other so much more closely than two notes at any other interval is
that the upper of two notes at an octave's distance is the first
"upper-partial" tone of the lower, and all its harmonies are also
harmonies of the lower note; the compound tone, for there is no
entirely simple tone, of the higher note contains no new sound, which
is not in the compound tone of the lower. This is not the case with two
notes at any other interval.]

[Footnote 448: _Ihre besonderen Seiten._ I presume this means what is
immediately called below the several intervals between note and note.]

[Footnote 449: There is really a distinction between the consonance of
the dominant and a major or minor third.]

[Footnote 450: That is, the third is only third in relation to the
key-note, or the leading-note only as the note previous to the octave.]

[Footnote 451: Three notes are really essential to any true chord.]

[Footnote 452: The mediant lies about midway between the tonic and
dominant as the third of the scale. The researches of Helmholtz
prove that the distinction between consonant or semi-consonant and
dissonant intervals is not arbitrary, but the result of the nature
of the intervals themselves. A musical tone is mostly a compound
one, containing, besides its principal tone, other tones with fixed
relations to the lowest note, called harmonics, or "upper partials."
Helmholtz has shown that when two of the earlier-produced and stronger
of these upper partial tones coincide in two notes sounded together,
the resulting tone is pure, free, that is, from the inequalities known
as "beats" (Prout, "Harmony," 10th ed., pp. 21, 22).]

[Footnote 453: As, of course, in the scale, notes independent of each
other.]

[Footnote 454: _Schärfe._]

[Footnote 455: The reader of Browning will recall how the poet in his
"Abt Vogler" exclaims "Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony
should be prized?" or speaks of blunting the minor into the ninth where
the musician "stands on alien ground, surveying awhile the heights."]

[Footnote 456: This extreme emphasis on melody must be read as further
explained lower down of melody in the wider sense. Even as thus
qualified it is rather an overstatement. It may be questioned whether
in the mind of a musician of genius the freedom of harmonic progression
is of a different quality to that of melodic. It may _appear_ no doubt
less spontaneous. But it is the task of the great artist to overcome
that appearance in one case as much as in the other.]

[Footnote 457: It may be doubted how far such a statement is true of
many chord progressions in modern music. It seems to me that this
notion of harmony as _für sich_ having no musical significance is, to
say the least, very misleading.]

[Footnote 458: This really is the point. Inspired harmony in its
progression unfolds what is really a tissue of melodic threads. The
complex musical structure of a Brahms symphony is a good example.]

[Footnote 459: Lit., "the free self-subsistency (_Beisichseyn_) of
subjective life."]

[Footnote 460: Hegel puts it the other way. What he means is that in
the medium of music we neither apprehend objects of sense nor ideas as
we receive them in imagination or thought.]

[Footnote 461: Hegel throughout uses the term _Innerlichkeit._ That
which is the Inmost is, in fact, the ideal. It is the _raison d'être_
and the notion itself.]

[Footnote 462: He means at the point proposed by the dramatic theme.
Hegel's words are literally "it subdues the subject (_i.e._, of
consciousness) referably to its simple concentration (_i.e._, on the
subject at hand)."]

[Footnote 463: The above distinction is hardly consonant with that
of customary parlance. We should rather say that the melody of the
song gave an utterance to the words, and the instrumentation was,
for the very reason that it was more independent, more directly an
accompaniment. But the point emphasized here seems to be the closeness
of the association. In this aspect, no doubt, the music actually
sung is more an accompaniment to the intelligible content. As a rule
accompaniment is generally used as the accompaniment of a song or
choral writing, and Hegel himself uses it in this sense previously.]

[Footnote 464: A general truth, no doubt. But not without qualification
if we consider the works and indeed the execution of such giants as
Bach and Handel.]

[Footnote 465: That is, particularity due to the idiosyncrasies of
the artist, and merely personal to him. But the statement applies to
classic art more strictly than modern.]

[Footnote 466: That is, music as an accompaniment.]

[Footnote 467: _Gediegenheit._ Something that rings true as a whole,
not a thing of patches.]

[Footnote 468: The music of Mendelssohn and others in this direction
will raise a doubt in some whether Hegel does not rather overstate his
case here.]

[Footnote 469: _Besonderung._ The relative isolation that is effected
by marked assertion.]

[Footnote 470: Throughout this discussion the personal bias of Hegel
for the Italian opera is obvious. In the light of the actual knowledge
of his day the wonder is that his own tastes permitted his being even
as fair as he is. It may be doubted whether he had any strong sense
for orchestral or chamber music at all. His reflections must be read
throughout with this reservation.]

[Footnote 471: Or, as Hegel more technically calls it, and I have above
translated it, "subjectivity."]

[Footnote 472: That is, dependent on living beings for its presentation
in every case.]

[Footnote 473: The execution of Paganini is, of course, the classic
example. But all cadenzas executed by a great artist, even though
carefully studied, express something of the spirit.]

[Footnote 474: Hegel means that such music expresses not so much
rational freedom as the fundamental independence of the self-conscious
principle.]

[Footnote 475: By _dürftiger Kopf_ I understand Hegel to mean the
headstrong charlatan as contrasted with the virtuoso who is also a
trained musician. Paganini had a vein of both in his composition. The
epithet _dürftig_, lit., thirsty, is, however, not very clear, and
in so far as it is, the emphasis would not be so much on quackery as
absence of all training.]



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