Chapter XII: Part II (1)

OF THE GENERAL FORMS OF ART AND ITS HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT.

The first part of Hegel’s Æsthetics contains the questions relating to the nature of art in general. The second unfolds its principal forms in the different historic epochs. It is a species of philosophy of the history of art, and contains a great number of views and descriptions which cannot appear in this analysis. We shall take so much the more care, without suffering ourselves to be turned aside by details, to indicate plainly the course of the ideas, and to omit nothing essential.

The idea of the Beautiful, or the Ideal, manifests itself under three essential and fundamental forms—the _symbolic_, the _classic_, and the _romantic_. They represent the three grand epochs of history—the oriental, the Greek, and the modern.

In the East, thought, still vague and indeterminate, seeks its true expression and cannot find it. In the presence of the phenomena of nature and of human life, spirit, in its infancy, incapable of seizing the true sense of things, and of comprehending itself, exhausts itself in vain efforts to express certain grand, but confused or obscure conceptions. Instead of uniting and blending together in a harmonious whole the content and the form, the idea and its image, it attains only a rude and superficial approximation, and the result is the symbol with its enigmatic and mysterious meaning.

In classic art, on the contrary, this harmonious blending of the form and the idea is accomplished. Intelligence, having taken cognizance of itself and of its freedom, capable of self-control, of penetrating the significance of the phenomena of the universe, and of interpreting its laws, finds here also the exact correspondence, the measure and the proportion which are the characteristics of beauty. Art creates works which represent the beautiful under its purest and most perfect form.

But spirit can not rest in this precise accord of the form and the idea, in which the infinite and the finite blend. When it comes to be reflected upon itself, to penetrate farther into the depths of its inner nature, to take cognizance of its spirituality and its freedom, then the idea of the infinite appears to it stripped of the natural forms which envelop it. This idea, present in all its conceptions, can no longer be perfectly expressed by the forms of the finite world; it transcends them, and then this unity, which constitutes the characteristic of classic art, is broken. External forms, sensuous images, are no longer adequate to the expression of the soul and its free spirituality.

I. Of Symbolic Art.

After these general considerations, Hegel treats successively the different forms of art. Before speaking of symbolic art, he furnishes an exposition of the _symbol_ in general.

The symbol is an image which represents an idea. It is distinguished from the signs of language in this, that between the image, and the idea which it represents, there is a natural relation, not an arbitrary or conventional one. It is thus that the lion is the symbol of courage; the circle, of eternity; the triangle, of the Trinity.

The symbol, however, does not represent the idea perfectly, but by a single side. The lion is not merely courageous; the fox, cunning. Whence it follows that the symbol, having many meanings, is equivocal. This ambiguity ceases only when the two terms are conceived separately and then brought into relation; the symbol then gives place to _comparison_.

Thus conceived, the symbol, with its enigmatic and mysterious character, is peculiarly adapted to an entire epoch of history, to oriental art and its extraordinary creations. It characterizes that order of monuments and emblems by which the people of the East have sought to express their ideas, and have been able to do it only in an equivocal and obscure manner. These works of art present to us, instead of beauty and regularity, a strange, imposing, fantastic aspect.

In the development of this form of art in the East, many degrees are noticeable. Let us first examine its origin.

The sentiment of art, like the religious sentiment or scientific curiosity, is born of _wonder_. The man who is astonished at nothing lives in a state of imbecility and stupidity. This state ceases when his spirit, freeing itself from matter and from physical wants, is struck by the spectacle of the phenomena of nature, and seeks their meaning, when it has the presentiment of something grand and mysterious in them, of a concealed power which is revealed there.

Then it experiences also the need of representing that inner sentiment of a general and universal power. Particular objects—the elements, the sea, rivers, mountains—lose their immediate sense and significance, and become for spirit images of this invisible power.

It is then that art appears; it arises from the necessity of representing this idea by sensuous images, addressed at once to the senses and the spirit.

The idea of an absolute power, in religions, is manifested at first by the worship of physical objects. The Divinity is identified with nature itself. But this rude worship cannot endure. Instead of seeing the absolute in real objects, man conceives it as a distinct and universal being; he seizes, although very imperfectly, the relation which unites this invisible principle to the objects of nature; he fashions an image, a symbol designed to represent it. Art is then the interpreter of religious ideas.

Such is art in its origin; the symbolic form is born with it. Let us now follow it in the successive stages of its development, and indicate its progress in the East before it attained to the Greek ideal.

That which characterizes symbolic art is that it strives in vain to discover pure conceptions, and a mode of representation which befits them. It is the conflict between the content and the form, both imperfect and heterogeneous. Hence the incessant struggle of these two elements of art, which vainly seek to harmonize. The stages of its development exhibit the successive phases or modes of this struggle.

At the outset, however, this conflict does not yet exist, or art is not conscious of it. The point of departure is a unity yet undivided, in whose depths the discord between the two principles ferments. Thus the creations of art, but little distinct from the objects of nature, are as yet scarcely symbols.

The end of this epoch is the disappearance of the symbol. It takes place by the reflective separation of the two terms. The idea being clearly conceived, the symbol on its side being perceived as distinct from the idea, from their conjunction arises the _reflex_ symbol, or the comparison, the allegory, etc.

These principles having been laid down _a priori_, Hegel seeks among the people of the East the forms of art which correspond to these various degrees of oriental symbolism. He finds them chiefly among the ancient Persians, in India, and in Egypt.

1. _Persian Art._—At the first moment of the history of art, the divine principle, God, appears identified with nature and man. In the worship of the Lama, for example, a real man is adored as God. In other religions the sun, the mountains, the rivers, the moon, and animals, are also the objects of religious worship.

The spectacle of this unity of God and nature is presented to us in the most striking manner in the life and religion of the ancient Persians, in the Zend-Avesta.

In the religion of Zoroaster, light is God himself. God is not distinguished from light viewed as a simple expression, an emblem or sensuous image of the Divinity. If light is taken in the sense of the good and just Being, of the conserving principle of the Universe, which diffuses everywhere life and its blessings, it is not merely an image of the good principle; the sovereign good itself is light. It is the same with the opposition of light and darkness, the latter being considered as the impure element in every thing—the hideous, the bad, the principle of death and destruction.

Hegel seeks to demonstrate this opinion by an analysis of the principal ideas which form the content of the Zend-Avesta.

According to him, the worship which the Zend-Avesta describes, is still less symbolic. All the ceremonies which it imposes as a religious duty upon the Parsees are those serious occupations that seek to extend to all, purity in the physical and moral sense. One does not find here any of those symbolic dances which imitate the course of the stars or any of those religious acts which have no value except as images and signs of general conceptions. There is, then, in it no art properly so-called. Compared with ruder images or with the insignificant idols of other peoples, the worship of light, as pure and universal substance, presents something beautiful, elevated, grand, more conformable to the nature of the supreme good and of truth. But this conception remains vague; the imagination creates neither a profound idea nor a new form. If we see appearing general types, and the forms which correspond to them, it is the result of an artificial combination, not a work of poetry and art.

Thus this unity of the invisible principle and visible objects, constitutes only the first form of the symbol in art. To attain to the symbolic form properly so-called, it is necessary that the distinction and the separation of the two terms appear clearly indicated and represented to us. It is this which takes place in the religion, art, and poetry of India, which Hegel calls the symbolic of the _imagination_.

2. _Indian Art._—The character of the monuments which betray a more advanced form and a superior degree of art, is then the separation of the two terms. Intelligence forms abstract conceptions, and seeks forms which express them. Imagination, properly so-called, is born; art truly begins. It is not, however, yet the true symbol.

What we encounter at first are the productions of an imagination which is in a state of complete ferment and agitation. In the first attempt of the human spirit to separate the elements and to reunite them, its thought is still confused and vague. The principle of things is not conceived in its spiritual nature; the ideas concerning God are empty abstractions; at the same time the forms which represent Him bear a character exclusively sensuous and material. Still plunged in the contemplation of the sensuous world, having neither measure nor fixed rule to determine reality, man exhausts himself in useless efforts to penetrate the general meaning of the universe, and can employ, to express the profoundest thoughts, only rude images and representations, in which there flashes out the opposition between the idea and the form. The imagination passes thus from one extreme to the other, lifting itself very high to plunge yet lower, wandering without support, without guide, and without aim, in a world of representations at once imposing, fantastic and grotesque.

Hegel characterizes the Indian mythology, and the art which corresponds to it, thus: “In the midst of these abrupt and inconsiderate leaps, of this passage from one excess to another, if we find anything of grandeur and an imposing character in these conceptions, we see afterwards the universal being, precipitated into the most ignoble forms of the sensuous world. The imagination can escape from this contradiction only by extending indefinitely the dimensions of the form. It wanders amid gigantic creations, characterized by the absence of all measure, and loses itself in the vague or the arbitrary.”

Hegel develops and confirms these propositions, by following the Indian imagination in the principal points which distinguish its art, its poetry, and its mythology. He makes it apparent that, in spite of the fertility, the splendor, and the grandeur of these conceptions, the Indians have never had a clear idea of persons and events—a faculty for history; that in this continual mingling of the finite and the infinite, there appears the complete absence of practical intelligence and reason. Thought is suffered to run after the most extravagant and monstrous chimeras that the imagination can bring forth. Thus the conception of Brahma is the abstract idea of being with neither life nor reality, deprived of real form and personality. From this idealism pushed to the extreme, the intelligence precipitates itself into the most unbridled naturalism. It deifies objects of nature, the animals. The divinity appears under the form of an idiot man, deified because he belongs to a caste. Each individual, because he is born in that caste, represents Brahma in person. The union of man with God is lowered to the level of a simply material fact. Thence also the _rôle_ which the law of the generation of beings plays in this religion, which gives rise to the most obscene representations. Hegel, at the same time, sets forth the contradictions which swarm in this religion, and the confusion which reigns in all this mythology. He establishes a parallel between the Indian trinity and the Christian Trinity, and shows their difference. The three persons of this trinity are not persons; each of them is an abstraction in relation to the others; whence it follows that if this trinity has any analogy with the Christian Trinity, it is inferior to it, and we ought to be guarded against recognizing the Christian tenet in it.

Examining next the part which corresponds to Greek polytheism, he demonstrates likewise its inferiority; he makes apparent the confusion of those innumerable theogonies and cosmogonies which contradict and destroy themselves; and where, in fine, the idea of natural and not of spiritual generation is uppermost, where obscenity is frequently pushed to the last degree. In the Greek fables, in the theogony of Hesiod in particular, one frequently obtains at least a glimpse of a moral meaning. All is more clear and more explicit, more strongly coherent, and we do not remain shut up in the circle of the divinities of nature.

Nevertheless, in refusing to Indian art the idea of the truly beautiful, and indeed of the truly sublime, Hegel recognizes that it offers to us, principally in its poetry, “scenes of human life, full of attractiveness and sweetness, many agreeable images and tender sentiments, most brilliant descriptions of nature, charming features of childlike simplicity and artless innocence in love; at the same time, occasionally, much grandeur and nobleness.”

But as to that which concerns fundamental conceptions in their totality, the spiritual cannot disengage itself from the sensuous. We encounter the most insipid triviality in connection with the most elevated situations—a complete absence of precision and proportion. The sublime is only the measureless; and as to whatever lies at the foundation of the myth, the imagination, dizzy, and incapable of mastering the flight of the thought, loses itself in the fantastic, or brings forth only enigmas which have no significance for reason.

3. _Egyptian Art._—Thus the creations of the Indian imagination appear to realize only imperfectly the idea of the symbolic form itself. It is in Egypt, among the monuments of Egyptian art, that we find the type of the true symbol. It is thus characterized:

In the first stage of art, we started from the confusion and identity of content and form, of spirit and nature. Next form and content are separated and opposed. Imagination has sought vainly to combine them, and is successful only in making clear their disproportion. In order that thought may be free, it is necessary that it get rid of its material form—that it destroy it. The _moment_ of destruction, of negation, or annihilation, is then necessary in order that spirit arrive at consciousness of itself and its spirituality. This idea of death as a _moment_ of the divine nature is already contained in the Indian religion; but it is only a changing, a transformation, and an abstraction. The gods are annihilated and pass the one into the other, and all in their turn into a single being—Brahma, the universal being. In the Persian religion the two principles, negative and positive—Ormuzd and Ahriman—exist separately and remain separated. Now this principle of negation, of death and resurrection, as moments and attributes of the divine nature, constitutes the foundation of a new religion; this thought is expressed in it by the forms of its worship, and appears in all its conceptions and monuments. It is the fundamental characteristic of the art and religion of Egypt. Thus we see the glorification of death and of suffering, as the annihilation of sensuous nature, appear in the consciousness of peoples in the worships of Asia Minor, of Phrygia and Phoenicia.

But if death is a necessary “moment” in the life of the absolute, it does not rest in that annihilation; this is, in order to pass to a superior existence, to arrive, after the destruction of visible existence, by resurrection, at divine immortality. Death is only the birth of a more elevated principle and the triumph of spirit.

Henceforth, physical form, in art, loses its independent value and its separate existence; still further, the conflict of form and idea ought to cease. Form is subordinated to idea. That fermentation of the imagination which produces the fantastic, quiets itself and is calm. The previous conceptions are replaced by a mode of representation, enigmatic, it is true, but superior, and which offers to us the true character of the symbol.

The idea begins to assert itself. On its side, the symbol takes a form more precise; the spiritual principle is revealed more clearly, and frees itself from physical nature, although it cannot yet appear in all its clearness.

The following mode of representation corresponds to this idea of symbolic art: in the first place, the forms of nature and human actions express something other than themselves; they reveal the divine principle by qualities which are in real analogy with it. The phenomena and the laws of nature, which, in the different kingdoms, represent life, birth, growth, death and the resurrection of beings, are preferred. Such are the germination and the growth of plants, the phases of the course of the sun, the succession of the seasons, the phenomena of the increase and decrease of the Nile, etc. Here, because of the real resemblance and of natural analogies, the fantastic is abandoned. One observes a more intelligent choice of symbolic forms. There is an imagination which already knows how to regulate itself and to control itself—which shows more of calmness and reason.

Here then appears a higher conciliation of idea and form, and at the same time an extraordinary tendency towards art, an irresistible inclination which is satisfied in a manner wholly symbolic, but superior to the previous modes. It is the proper tendency towards art, and principally towards the figurative arts. Hence the necessity of finding and fashioning a form, an emblem which may express the idea and may be subordinated to it; of creating a work which may reveal to spirit a general conception; of presenting a spectacle which may show that these forms have been chosen for the purpose of expressing profound ideas.

This emblematic or symbolic combination can be effected in various ways. The most abstract expression is number. The symbolism of numbers plays a very important part in Egyptian art. The sacred numbers recur unceasingly in flights of steps, columns, etc. There are, moreover, symbolic figures traced in space, the windings of the labyrinth, the sacred dances which represent the movements of the heavenly bodies. In a higher grade is placed the human form, already moulded to a higher perfection than in India. A general symbol sums up the principal idea; it is the phœnix, which consumes itself and rises from its ashes.

In the myths which serve for the transition, as those of Asia Minor—in the myth of Adonis mourned by Venus; in that of Castor and Pollux, and in the fable of Proserpine, this idea of death and resurrection is very apparent.

It is Egypt, above all, which has symbolized this idea. Egypt is the land of the symbol. However, the problems are not resolved. The enigmas of Egyptian art were enigmas to the Egyptians themselves.

However this may be in the East, the Egyptians, among eastern nations, are the truly artistic people. They show an indefatigable activity in satisfying that longing for symbolic representation which torments them. But their monuments remain mysterious and mute. The spirit has not yet found the form which is appropriate to it; it does not yet know how to speak the clear and intelligible language of spirit. “They were, above all, an architectural people; they excavated the soil, scooped out lakes, and, with their instinct of art, elevated gigantic structures into the light of day, and executed under the soil works equally immense. It was the occupation, the life of this people, which covered the land with monuments, nowhere else in so great quantity and under forms so varied.”

If we wish to characterize in a more precise manner the monuments of Egyptian art, and to penetrate the sense of them, we discover the following aspects:

In the first place, the principal idea, the idea of death, is conceived as a “moment” of the life of spirit, not as a principle of evil; this is the opposite of the Persian dualism. Nor is there an absorption of beings into the universal Being, as in the Indian religion. The invisible preserves its existence and its personality; it preserves even its physical form. Hence the embalmings, the worship of the dead. Moreover, the imagination is lifted higher than this visible duration. Among the Egyptians, for the first time, appears the clear distinction of soul and body, and the dogma of immortality. This idea, nevertheless, is still imperfect, for they accord an equal importance to the duration of the body and that of the soul.

Such is the conception which serves as a foundation for Egyptian art, and which betrays itself under a multitude of symbolic forms. It is in this idea that we must seek the meaning of the works of Egyptian architecture. Two worlds—the world of the living and that of the dead; two architectures—the one on the surface of the ground, the other subterranean. The labyrinths, the tombs, and, above all, the pyramids, represent this idea.

The pyramid, image of symbolic art, is a species of envelope, cut in crystalline form, which conceals a mystic object, an invisible being. Hence, also, the exterior, superstitious side of worship, an excess difficult to escape, the adoration of the divine principle in animals, a gross worship which is no longer even symbolic.

Hieroglyphic writing, another form of Egyptian art, is itself in great part symbolic, since it makes ideas known by images borrowed from nature, and which have some analogy with those ideas.

But a defect betrays itself, especially in the representations of the human form. In fact, though a mysterious and spiritual force is there revealed, it is not true personality. The internal principle fails; action and impulse come from without. Such are the statues of Memnon, which are animate, have a voice, and give forth a sound, only when struck by the rays of the sun. It is not the human voice which comes from within—an echo of the soul. This free principle which animates the human form, remains here concealed, wrapped up, mute, without proper spontaneity, and is only animated under the influence of nature.

A superior form is that of the Myth of Osiris, the Egyptian god, _par excellence_—that god who is engendered, born, dies and is resuscitated. In this myth, which offers various significations, physical, historical, moral, and religious or metaphysical, is shown the superiority of these conceptions over those of Indian art.

In general, in Egyptian art, there is revealed a profounder, more spiritual, and more moral character. The human form is no longer a simple, abstract personification. Religion and art attempt to spiritualize themselves; they do not attain their object, but they catch sight of it and aspire to it. From this imperfection arises the absence of freedom in the human form. The human figure still remains without expression, colossal, serious, rigid. Thus is explained those attitudes of the Egyptian statues, the arms stiff, pressed against the body, without grace, without movement, and without life, but absorbed in profound thought, and full of seriousness.

Hence also the complication of the elements and symbols, which are intermingled and reflected the one in the other; a thing which indicates the freedom of spirit, but also an absence of clearness and definiteness. Hence the obscure, enigmatic character of those symbols, which always cause scholars to despair—enigmas to the Egyptians themselves. These emblems involve a multitude of profound meanings. They remain there as a testimony of fruitless efforts of spirit to comprehend itself, a symbolism full of mysteries, a vast enigma represented by a symbol which sums up all these enigmas—the sphinx. This enigma Egypt will propose to Greece, who herself will make of it the problems of religion and philosophy. The sense of this enigma, never solved, and yet always solving, is “Man, _know thyself_.”—Such is the maxim which Greece inscribed on the front of her temples, the problem which she presented to her sages as the very end of wisdom.

4. _Hebrew Poetry._—In this review of the different forms of art and of worship among the different nations of the east, mention should be made of a religion which is characterized precisely by the rejection of all symbol, and in this respect is little favorable to art, but whose poetry bears the impress of grandeur and sublimity. And thus Hegel designates Hebrew Poetry by the title of _Art of the Sublime_. At the same time he casts a glance upon Mahometan pantheism, which also proscribes images, and banishes from its temples every figurative representation of the Divinity.

The sublime, as Kant has well described it, is the attempt to express the infinite in the finite, without finding any sensuous form which is capable of representing it. It is the infinite, manifested under a form which, making clear this opposition, reveals the immeasurable grandeur of the infinite as surpassing all representation in finite forms.

Now, here, two points of view are to be distinguished. Either the infinite is the Absolute Being conceived by thought, as the immanent substance of things, or it is the Infinite Being as distinct from the beings of the real world, but elevating itself above them by the entire distance which separates it from the finite, so that, compared with it, they are only pure nothing. God is thus purified from all contact, from all participation with sensuous existence, which disappears and is annihilated in his presence.

To the first point of view corresponds oriental pantheism. God is there conceived as the absolute Being, immanent in objects the most diverse, in the sun, the sea, the rivers, the trees, etc.

A conception like this cannot be expressed by the figurative arts, but only by poetry. Where pantheism is pure, it admits no sensuous representation and proscribes images. We find this pantheism in India. All the superior gods of the Indian mythology are absorbed in the Absolute unity, or in Brahm. Oriental pantheism is developed in a more formal and brilliant manner in Mahometanism, and in particular among the Persian Mahometans.

But the truly sublime is that which is represented by Hebrew poetry. Here, for the first time, God appears truly as Spirit, as the invisible Being in opposition to nature. On the other side, the entire universe, in spite of the richness and magnificence of its phenomena, compared with the Being supremely great, is nothing by itself. Simple creation of God, subject to his power, it only exists to manifest and glorify him.

Such is the idea which forms the ground of that poetry, the characteristic of which is sublimity. In the beautiful the idea pierces through the external reality of which it is the soul, and forms with it a harmonious unity. In the sublime, the visible reality, where the Infinite is manifested, is abased in its presence. This superiority, this exaltation of the Infinite over the finite, the infinite distance which separates them, is what the art of the sublime should express. It is religious art—preëminently, sacred art; its unique design is to celebrate the glory of God. This rôle, poetry alone can fill.

The prevailing idea of Hebrew poetry is God as master of the world, God in his independent existence and pure essence, inaccessible to sense and to all sensuous representation which does not correspond to his grandeur. God is the Creator of the universe. All gross ideas concerning the generation of beings give place to that of a spiritual creation: “Let there be light, and there was light.” That sentence indicates a creation by word—expression of thought and of will.

Creation then takes a new aspect, nature and man are no longer deified. To the infinite is clearly opposed the finite, which is no longer confounded with the divine principle as in the symbolic conceptions of other peoples. Situations and events are delineated more clearly. The characters assume a more fixed and precise meaning. They are human figures which offer no more anything fantastic and strange; they are perfectly intelligible and accessible to us.

On the other side, in spite of his powerlessness and his nothingness, man obtains here freer and more independent place than in other religions. The immutable character of the divine will gives birth to the idea of law to which man must be subject. His conduct becomes enlightened, fixed, regular. The perfect distinction of human and divine, of finite and infinite, brings in that of good and evil, and permits an enlightened choice. Merit and demerit is the consequence of it. To live according to justice in the fulfilment of law is the end of human existence, and it places man in direct communication with God. Here is the principle and explanation of his whole life, of his happiness and his misery. The events of life are considered as blessings, as recompenses, or as trials and chastisements.

Here also appears the miracle. Elsewhere, all was prodigious, and, by consequence, nothing was miraculous. The miracle supposes a regular succession, a constant order, and an interruption of that order. But the whole entire creation is a perpetual miracle, designed for the glorification and praise of God.

Such are the ideas which are expressed with so much splendor, elevation and poetry, in the Psalms—classic examples of the truly sublime—in the Prophets, and the sacred books in general. This recognition of the nothingness of things, of the greatness and omnipotence of God, of the unworthiness of man in his presence, the complaints, the lamentations, the outcry of the soul towards God, constitute their pathos and their sublimity.

Of the Reflex Symbol.

_Fable, Apologue, Allegory, etc._—We have run over the different forms which symbolism presents among the different people of the East, and we have seen it disappear in the sublime, which places the infinite so far above the finite that it can no longer be represented by sensuous forms, but only celebrated in its grandeur and its power.

Before passing to another epoch of art, Hegel points out, as a transition from the oriental symbol to the Greek ideal, a mixed form whose basis is _comparison_. This form, which also belongs principally to the East, is manifested in different kinds of poetry, such as _the fable_, _the apologue_, _the proverb_, _allegory_, and _comparison_, properly so-called.

The author develops in the following manner the nature of this form and the place which he assigns to it in the development of art:

In the symbol, properly so-called, the idea and the form, although distinct and even opposed, as in the sublime, are reunited by an essential and necessary tie; the two elements are not strangers to one another, and the spirit seizes the relation immediately. Now the separation of the two terms, which has already its beginning in the symbol, ought also to be clearly effected, and find its place in the development of art. And as spirit works no longer spontaneously, but with reflection, it is also in a reflective manner that it brings the two terms together. This form of art, whose basis is comparison, may be called the _reflexive symbolic_ in opposition to the _irreflexive_ symbolic, whose principal forms we have studied.

Thus, in this form of art, the connection of the two elements is no more, as heretofore, a connection founded upon the nature of the idea; it is more or less the result of an artificial combination which depends upon the will of the poet, or his vigor of imagination, and on his genius, for invention. Sometimes it starts from a sensuous phenomenon to which he lends a spiritual meaning, an idea, by making use of some analogy. Sometimes it is an idea which he seeks to clothe with a sensuous form, or with an image, by a certain resemblance.

This mode of conception is clear but superficial. In the East it plays a distinct part, or appears to prevail as one of the characteristic traits of oriental thought. Later, in the grand composition of classic or romantic poetry, it is subordinated; it furnishes ornaments and accessories, allegories, images and metaphors; it constitutes secondary varieties.

Hegel then divides this form of art, and classes the varieties to which it gives rise. He distinguishes, for this purpose, two points of view: first, the case when the sensuous fact is presented first to spirit, and spirit afterwards gives it a signification, as in the _fable_, the _parable_, the _apologue_, the _proverb_, the _metamorphoses_; second, the case where, on the other hand, it is the idea which appears first to the spirit, and the poet afterwards seeks to adapt to it an image, a sensuous form, by way of comparison. Such are the _enigma_, the _allegory_, the _metaphor_, the _image_, and the _comparison_.

We shall not follow the author in the developments which he thinks necessary to give to the analysis of each of these inferior forms of poetry or art.[2]

II. Of Classic Art.

The aim of art is to represent the ideal, that is to say, the perfect accord of the two elements of the beautiful, the idea and the sensuous form. Now this object symbolic art endeavors vainly to attain. Sometimes it is nature with its blind force which forms the ground of its representations; sometimes it is the spiritual Being, which it conceives in a vague manner, and which it personifies in inferior divinities. Between the idea and the form there is revealed a simple affinity, an external correspondence. The attempt to reconcile them makes clearer the opposition; or art, in wishing to express spirit, only creates obscure enigmas. Everywhere there is betrayed the absence of true personality and of freedom. For these are able to unfold, only with the clear consciousness of itself that spirit achieves. We have met, it is true, this idea of the nature of spirit as opposed to the sensuous world, clearly expressed in the religion and poetry of the Hebrew people. But what is born of this opposition is not the Beautiful, it is the Sublime. A living sentiment of personality is further manifest in the East, in the Arabic race. In the scorching deserts, in the midst of free space, it has ever been distinguished by this trait of independence and individuality, which betrays itself by hatred of the stranger, thirst for vengeance, a deliberate cruelty, also by love, by greatness of soul and devotion, and, above all, by passion for adventure. This race is also distinguished by a mind free and clear, ingenious and full of subtlety, lively, brilliant—of which it has given so many proofs in the arts and sciences. But we have here only a superficial side, devoid of profundity and universality; it is not true personality supported on a solid basis, on a knowledge of the spirit and of the moral nature.

All these elements, separate or united, cannot, then, present the Ideal. They are antecedents, conditions, and materials, and, together, offer nothing which corresponds to the idea of real beauty. This ideal beauty we shall find realized, for the first time, among the Greek race and in Classic art, which we now propose to characterize.

In order that the two elements of beauty may be perfectly harmonized, it is necessary that the first, the idea, be the spirit itself, possessed of the consciousness of its nature and of its free personality. If one is then asked, what is the form which corresponds to this idea, which expresses the personal, individual spirit, the only answer is, _the human form_, for it alone is capable of manifesting spirit.

Classic art, which represents free spirituality under an individual form, is then necessarily anthropomorphic. Anthropomorphism is its very essence, and we shall do it wrong to make of this a reproach. Christian art and the Christian religion are themselves anthropomorphic, and this they are in a still higher degree since God made himself really man, since Christ is not a mere divine personification conceived by the imagination, since he is both truly God and truly man. He passed through all the phases of earthly existence; he was born, he suffered, and he died. In classic art sensuous nature does not die, but it has no resurrection. Thus this religion does not fully satisfy the human soul. The Greek ideal has for basis an unchangeable harmony between the spirit and the sensuous form, the unalterable serenity of the immortal gods; but this calm is somewhat frigid and inanimate. Classic art did not take in the true essence of the divine nature, nor penetrate the depths of the soul. It could not unveil the innermost powers in their opposition, or re-establish their harmony. All this phase of existence, wickedness, misfortune, moral suffering, the revolt of the will, gnawings and rendings of the soul, were unknown to it. It did not pass beyond the proper domain of sensuous beauty; but it represented it perfectly.

This ideal of classic beauty was realized by the Greeks. The most favorable conditions for unfolding it were found combined among them. The geographical position, the genius of that people, its moral character, its political life, all could not but aid the accomplishment of that idea of classic beauty, whose characteristics are proportion, measure, and harmony. Placed between Asia and Europe, Greece realized the accord of personal liberty and public manners, of the State and the individual, of spirit general and particular. Its genius, a mixture of spontaneity and reflection, presented an equal fusion of contraries. The feeling of this auspicious harmony pierces through all the productions of the Greek mind. It was the moment of youth in the life of humanity—a fleeting age, a moment unique and irrevocable, like that of beauty in the individual.

Art attains then the culminating point of sensuous beauty under the form of plastic individuality. The worship of the Beautiful is the entire life of the Greek race. Thus religion and art are identified. All forms of Greek civilization are subordinate to art.

It is important here to determine the new position of the artist in the production of works of art.

Art appears here not as a production of nature, but as a creation of the individual spirit. It is the work of a free spirit which is conscious of itself, which is self-possessed, which has nothing vague or obscure in its thought, and finds itself hindered by no technical difficulty.

This new position of the Greek artist manifests itself in content, form, and technical skill.

With regard to the content, or the ideas which it ought to represent, in opposition to symbolic art, where the spirit gropes and seeks without power to arrive at a clear notion, the artist finds the idea already made in the dogma, the popular faith, and a complete, precise idea, of which he renders to himself an account. Nevertheless, he does not enslave himself with it; he accepts it, but reproduces it freely. The Greek artists received their subjects from the popular religion; which was an idea originally transmitted from the East, but already transformed in the consciousness of the people. They, in their turn, transformed it into the sense of the beautiful; they both reproduced and created it.

But it is above all upon the form that this free activity concentrates and exercises itself. While symbolic art wearies itself in seeking a thousand extraordinary forms to represent its ideas, having neither measure nor fixed rule, the Greek artist confines himself to his subject, the limits of which he respects. Then between the content and the form he establishes a perfect harmony, for, in elaborating the form, he also perfects the content. He frees them both from useless accessories, in order to adapt the one to the other. Henceforth he is not checked by an immovable and traditional type; he perfects the whole; for content and form are inseparable; he develops both in the serenity of inspiration.

As to the technical element, ability combined with inspiration belongs to the classic artist in the highest degree. Nothing restrains or embarrasses him. Here are no hindrances as in a stationary religion, where the forms are consecrated by usage; in Egypt, for example. And this ability is always increasing. Progress in the processes of art is necessary to the realization of pure beauty, and the perfect execution of works of genius.

After these general considerations upon classic art, Hegel studies it more in detail. He considers it 1st, in its development; 2d, in itself, as realization of the ideal; 3d, in the causes which have produced its downfall.

1. In what concerns the development of Greek art, the author dwells long upon the history and progress of mythology. This is because religion and art are confused. The central point of Greek art is Olympus and its beautiful divinities.

The following are what are, according to Hegel, the principal stages of the development of art, and of the Greek mythology.

The first stage of progress consists in a reaction against the Symbolic form, which it is interested in destroying. The Greek Gods came from the East; the Greeks borrowed their divinities from foreign religions. On the other hand, we can say they invented them: for invention does not exclude borrowing. They transformed the ideas contained in the anterior traditions. Now upon what had this transformation any bearing? In it is the history of polytheism and antique art, which follows a parallel course, and is inseparable from it.

The Grecian divinities are, first of all, moral personages invested with the human form. The first development consists, then, in rejecting those gross symbols, which, in the oriental naturalism, form the object of worship, and which disfigure the representations of art. This progress is marked by the degradation of the animal kingdom. It is clearly indicated in a great number of ceremonies and fables of polytheism, by sacrifices of animals, sacred hunts, and many of the exploits attributed to heroes, in particular the labors of Hercules. Some of the fables of Æsop have the same meaning. The metamorphoses of Ovid are also disfigured myths, or fables become burlesque, of which the content, easy to be recognized, contains the same idea.

This is the opposite of the manner in which the Egyptians considered animals. Nature, here, in place of being venerated and adored, is lowered and degraded. To wear an animal form is no longer deification; it is the punishment of a monstrous crime. The gods themselves are shamed by such a form, and they assume it only to satisfy the passions of the sensual nature. Such is the signification of many of the fables of Jupiter, as those of Danaë, of Europa, of Leda, of Ganymede. The representation of the generative principle in nature, which constitutes the content of the ancient mythologies, is here changed into a series of histories where the father of gods and men plays a rôle but little edifying, and frequently ridiculous. Finally, all that part of religion which relates to sensual desires is crowded into the background, and represented by subordinate divinities: Circe, who changes men into swine; Pan, Silenus, the Satyrs and the Fauns. The human form predominates, the animal being barely indicated by ears, by little horns, etc.

Another advance is to be noted in the _oracles_. The phenomena of nature, in place of being an object of admiration and worship, are only signs by which the gods make known their will to mortals. These prophetic signs become more and more simple, till at last it is, above all, the voice of man which is the organ of the oracle. The oracle is ambiguous, so that the man who receives it is obliged to interpret it, to blend his reason with it. In dramatic art, for example, man does not act solely by himself; he consults the gods, he obeys their will; but his will is confounded with theirs; a place is reserved for his liberty.

The distinction between the _old_ and the _new_ divinities marks still more this progress of moral liberty. Among the former, who personify the powers of nature, a gradation is already established. In the first place, the untamed and lower powers, Chaos, Tartarus, Erebus; then Uranus, Gea, the Giants and the Titans; in a higher rank, Prometheus, at first the friend of the new gods, the benefactor of men, then punished by Jupiter for that apparent beneficence; an inconsequence which is explained through this, that if Prometheus taught industry to men, he created an occasion of discords and dissensions, by not giving them instruction more elevated,—morality, the science of government, the guarantees of property. Such is the profound sense of that myth, and Plato thus explains it in his dialogues.

Another class of divinities equally ancient, but already ethical, although they recall the fatality of the physical laws, are the Eumenides, Dice, and the Furies. We see appearing here the ideas of right and justice, but of exclusive, absolute, strict, unconscious right, under the form of an implacable vengeance, or, like the ancient Nemesis, of a power which abases all that is high, and re-establishes equality by levelling; a thing which is the opposite of true justice.

Finally, this development of the classic ideal reveals itself more clearly in the _theogony_ and _genealogy_ of the gods, in their origin and their succession, by the abasement of the divinities of the previous races; in the hostility which flashes out between them, in the resolution which has carried away the sovereignty from the old to place it in the hands of the new divinities. Meanwhile the distinction develops itself to the point of engendering strife, and the conflict becomes the principal event of mythology.

This conflict is that of nature and spirit, and it is the law of the world. Under the historic form, it is the perfecting of human nature, the successive conquest of rights and property, the amelioration of laws and of the political constitution. In the religious representations, it is the triumph of the moral divinities over the powers of nature.

This combat is announced as the grandest catastrophe in the history of the world: moreover, this is not the subject of a particular myth; it is the principal, decisive fact, which constitutes the centre of this mythology.

The conclusion of all this in respect to the history of art and to the development of the ideal, is that art ought to act like mythology, and reject as unworthy all that is purely physical or animal, that which is confused, fantastic, or obscure, all gross mingling of the material and the spiritual. All these creations of an ill-regulated imagination find here no more place; they must flee before the light of the Soul. Art purifies itself of all caprice, fancy, or symbolic accessory, of every vague and confused idea.

In like manner, the new gods form an organized and established world. This unity affirms and perfects itself more in the later developments of plastic art and poetry.

Nevertheless, the old elements, driven back by the accession of moral forces, preserve a place at their side, or are combined with them. Such is, for example, the significance and the aim of the mysteries.

In the new divinities, who are ethical persons, there remains also an echo, a reflex of the powers of nature. They present, consequently, a combination of the physical and the ethical element, but the first is subordinate to the second. Thus, Neptune is the sea, but he is besides invoked as the god of navigation and the founder of cities; Apollo is the Sun, the god of light, but he is also the god of spiritual light, of science and of the oracles. In Jupiter, Diana, Hercules, and Venus, it is easy to discover the physical side combined with the moral sense.

Thus, in the new divinities, the elements of nature, after having been debased and degraded, reappear and are preserved. This is also true of the forms of the animal kingdom; but the symbolic sense is more and more lost. They figure no longer as accessories combined with the human form; but are reduced to mere emblems or attributes—indicating signs, as the eagle by the side of Jupiter, the peacock before Juno, the dove near Venus, where the principal myth is no more than an accidental fact, of little importance in the life of the god, and which, abandoned to the imagination of the poets, becomes the text of licentious histories.

2. After having considered the development of the ideal in Greek art, a development parallel to that of religion and mythology, we have to consider it in its principal characteristics, such as it has emanated from the creative activity or from the imagination of the poet and the artist.

This mythology has its origin in the previous religions, but its gods are the creation of Homer and Hesiod. Tradition furnished the materials; but the idea which each god ought to represent, and, besides, the form which expresses it in its purity and simplicity—this is what was not given. This ideal type the poets drew from their genius, discovering also the true form which befitted it. Thereby they were creators of that mythology which we admire in Greek art, and which is confounded with it.

The Greek gods have no less their origin in the spirit and the credences of the Greek people, and in the national belief; the poets were the interpreters of the general thought, of what there was most elevated in the imagination of the people. Henceforth, the artist, as we have seen above, takes a position wholly different from that which he held in the East. His inspiration is personal. His work is that of a free imagination, creating according to its own conceptions. The inspiration does not come from without; what they reveal is the ideas of the human spirit, what there is deepest in the heart of man. Also, the artists are truly poets; they fashion, according to their liking, the content and the form, in order to draw from them free and original figures. Tradition is shorn, in their hands, of all that is gross, symbolic, repulsive, and deformed; they eliminate the idea which they wish to illustrate, and individualize it under the human form. Such is the manner, free, though not arbitrary, in which the Greek artists proceed in the creation of their works.

They are poets, but also prophets and diviners. They represent human actions in divine actions, and, reciprocally, without having the clear and decided distinctions. They maintain the union, the accord, of the human and the divine. Such is the significance of the greater part of the apparitions of the gods in Homer, when the gods, for example, consult the heroes, or interfere in the combats.

Meanwhile, if we wish to understand the _nature of this ideal_, to determine, in a more precise manner, the character of the divinities of Greek art, the following remarks are suggested, considering them, at the same time, on the _general_, the _particular_, and the _individual_ sides.

The first attribute which distinguishes them is something general, substantial. The immortal gods are strangers to the miseries and to the agitations of human existence. They enjoy an unalterable calmness and serenity, from which they derive their repose and their majesty. They are not, however, vague abstractions, universal and purely ideal existences. To this character of generality is joined individuality. Each divinity has his traits and proper physiognomy, his particular rôle, his sphere of activity, determined and limited. A just measure, moreover, is here observed: the two elements, the general and the individual, are in perfect accord.

At the same time, this moral character is manifested under an external and corporeal form itself, its most perfect expression, in which appears the harmonious fusion of the external form with the internal principle animating it.

This physical form, as well as the spiritual principle which is manifested in it, is freed from all the accidents of material life, and from the miseries of finite existence. It is the human body with its beautiful proportions and their harmony; all announces beauty, liberty, grace. It is thus that this form, in its purity, corresponds to the spiritual and divine principle which is incarnate in it. Hence the nobleness, the grandeur, and the elevation of those figures, which have nothing in common with the wants of material life, and seem elevated above their bodily existence. They are immortal divinities with human features. The body, in spite of its beauty, appears as a superfluous appendage; and, nevertheless, it is an animated and living form which presents the indestructible harmony of the two principles, the soul and the body.