Chapter X: Introduction: I (6)

[Footnote 41: The German words are _machen_ and _nachmachen._ We have no exact equivalents.]

[Footnote 42: _Lit._, "to fill out (_ausfüllen_) in complete equipment."]

[Footnote 43: _Individuelle._]

[Footnote 44: The German will admit of the interpretation that the reference is merely to genius, but I think Hegel clearly means that neither one nor the other can be thus conjured up.]

[Footnote 45: At the end of the first main division of the work.]

[Footnote 46: One of Meredith's correspondents has put the question with all gravity whether he considered inspiration could be assisted by wine drinking. With equal gravity our humourist replied that though wine might be something of a restorative after mental effort it was not his experience that it contributed to first-rate artistic work. He actually mentions the case of Schiller. Though I have read somewhere that this poet used to be inspired by the smell of rotten apples I do not recollect reading that he favoured the champagne bottle. Meredith also mentions the case of Hoffmann, and adds that the type of his work does not increase our respect for the precedent.]

[Footnote 47: _Eine äusserliche Arbeit._ A craftsmanship which has to deal with the outside surface. We may translate "external craftsmanship"; but the translation in the text gives the meaning best, I think.]

[Footnote 48: _Keinen geistigen Stoff._ Professor Bosanquet translates "spiritual content." I imagine the emphasis to be mainly on the absence of positive ideas available to knowledge. In any case Hegel appears to press his point of contrast too far. Men of genius such as Mozart (who was probably in his mind) and Schubert may bear him out. But on the other hand we have a Keats, Shelley, and Raphael. Genius matures rapidly, but the greatest works of musical art no less than any other imply a real maturity of mind at least, and more than is here assumed of, I should say, a rich experience. Mozart, of course, upsets any theory, and it is questionable even whether Mozart is really an exception. It depends on the point of view from which we are estimating the intelligible content of music as an expression of soul-life.]

[Footnote 49: The "Iphigenie" was completed in Goethe's thirty-eighth year, fourteen years later than "Götz." The bulk of his more important works are of the same date or later. Schiller's "Wallenstein" was completed after his thirty-fifth year.]

[Footnote 50: This is surely not quite accurate. The medium of painting in the sense that speech or writing is the medium of poetry is not canvas or panel but oil or other colour. Canvas would correspond with the blank pages of a book.]

[Footnote 51: Free, that is, from accidental and irrelevant matter.]

[Footnote 52: Professor Bosanquet translates _sinnliche_ here as "sensitive." I am inclined to think that Hegel here rather leaves out of sight the fact that in the process of Nature we have sensitive organic life no less than unconscious inorganic. His contrast is rather between the conscious life of man and unconscious nature, the conscious life that is not self-conscious being for the object of the contrast treated as equivalent to unconscious. He would also apparently ignore the fact that man himself and the higher beauty which attaches to him is also from ope point of view a part of the natural process.]

[Footnote 53: That is, apart from purely personal ends in its pursuit, which are accidental to its essential notion.]

[Footnote 54: That is, in the medium of conscious life.]

[Footnote 55: _Einmal._ They are there, but they do not know they are there.]

[Footnote 56: _Aus geistiger Bildung, i.e._, a high level of mental culture is necessary before the advent of civilized manners and customs in which spiritual life is reflected with real refinement and directness.]

[Footnote 57: _Bedürfniss zur Kunst._]

[Footnote 58: _Lit._, "In the form of the most abstract single subjectivity." That is to say, that the main fact about it is that it is felt; but, except in respect to intensity, it cannot be described as an object of thought with defining attributes, It is abstract individual sensation.]

[Footnote 59: By the expression _Kreis_ Hegel would mean rather an indefinite sphere than a definite circle. The simile is perhaps not very apt. The idea, apparently, is of a sphere of feeling, that is, such as being self-complete, but is so abstract or indefinable that the introduction into it of positive ideas such as justice, etc., are the mere entrance of spectral forms which vanish in such an indefinable medium, without disclosing their nature. They are felt but not cognized for what they really are.]

[Footnote 60: _Blinder_, blind in the sense that it is not guided by deliberate and self-conscious reason, _i.e._, mere animal instinct.]

[Footnote 61: A difficult sentence to translate. I have followed Professor Bosanquet in assuming that the substantive with which _mangelhaft_ agrees must be borrowed from the following sentence, though it seems also to be carried on in a loose kind of way from the previous sentence (_Gesckmacksinn._) The entire sentence is built, as we have it, on the further confusion that there are two parallels which before the sentence ends are regarded as one! That is to say, the general critical sense is contrasted with the critique of particular works of art and further the defect of that general sense in its neglect of _universal_ principles is further contrasted with the way the specific critique deals with _particular_ works. I hardly think, however, that my admirable predecessor is justified in ignoring the comparative degree of _bestimmteres_, or in his translation of _Zeug_ as "power." I take it to mean the material of actual works of art. The sentence is a good example of, some of the difficulties of Hegel translation.]

[Footnote 62: _Die Sache._ The subject-matter in its most real sense as "content."]

[Footnote 63: That is, the so-called "good taste."]

[Footnote 64: _Begriff._ Concrete notional Idea.]

[Footnote 65: That is, in his physical form.]

[Footnote 66: Hegel is here considering desire abstractedly, that is, on its own account (_als solche._) It may of course in its turn subserve a rational purpose, such as the preservation of health or life. But the contrast here is between the relation of appetite, and that of the theoretic faculty to objects.]

[Footnote 67: _Sein Objekt._ The object in which he finds himself; rather this, I think, than that which he has created.]

[Footnote 68: _Innerlich_, _i.e._, in the world of mind as contrasted with that of the sensuous _vorhandene._]

[Footnote 69: Hegel or his editors have "in a converse way." This is obviously a mistake. In both examples the point is that the object is _preserved_ as against _desire_ with its destruction, and the _contemplative intelligence_ with its ideal transformation.]

[Footnote 70: _Ein ideelles._ The meaning is, I think, that the _materia_ is stamped with the hall-mark of deliberate artistic purpose. The ideality, though relatively jejune on such a work as the pyramids, in the higher reaches of art such as poetry and music affects of course the medium itself, the musical chord being pure ideality. Professor Bosanquet's translation omits this and the previous sentence, probably by an oversight. But it is also possible that this thinker conceived the statement _as here expressed_ to be misleading, or at least open to misconception. In architecture and even painting it is obvious, from a certain point of view, the sensuous _materia_, if directed to an artistic end, remains none the less the material borrowed from natural fact though the fact as natural may be modified in its form. Painting may _represent_ the semblance, but it employs a medium simply sensuous. Hegel has mainly before his attention here obviously the arts of painting, poetry, and music.]

[Footnote 71: They are _theoretical_ because as applied to a work of art they imply the presence of the contemplative faculty. In a later section of the work Hegel makes a more complete analysis of what is implied in the sense of hearing as applied to musical composition and in the colour sense. In both cases it is obvious the mind contributes to the facts cognized. Hearing is, however, from Hegel's point of view the most _ideal_ of the two, and he conceives the position of the ears itself points to this distinction.]

[Footnote 72: It may at least be questioned whether the ground given here of this distinction, or part of it, is strictly accurate. It may be said that our sense of sight and hearing are both in contact with the waves of the medium, the vibration of which produces the impression we call sound or light. The most obvious distinction then appears to be that the natural object is left as it is by hearing and sight. This at least holds good as against taste. But at least it may be questioned, I think, whether the sense of touch may not be the source of artistic enjoyment, certainly in the case of the blind. And the sense of smell at least leaves objects as they are, and some may contend that it is a source of enjoyment of the beauty of Nature. Hegel would reply, of course, that no works of human art are enjoyed by such means. The main ground is, however, that sight and hearing are the senses closest to intelligence.]

[Footnote 73: By _Anschauungen_ Hegel apparently has in mind all the ideas of poetry. We should certainly rather have expected the word _Vorstellungen_, the word used being rather "visible perceptions." But the three words here seem generally to denote the subject-matter of painting, music, and poetry.]

[Footnote 74: Lit., "Operative in the artist viewed (_i.e._, the artist) as the personal energy (_Subjektivität_) which creates." Professor Bosanquet's translation "as a productive state of the person" would appear to make "the sensuous side" a subjective state of the artist. But apart from construction, can we speak of this as a "state"? It is modified by his energy--but it can hardly be regarded as a part of it.]

[Footnote 75: I find it impossible to fix any one English equivalent to Hegel's use of the words _Einbildungskraft_, _Phantasie_, or _Vorstellung_, in the sense at least that fancy, imagination, or phantasy have been used and defined by famous English writers. Generally speaking, I should say that _Phantasie_, or as it is called sometimes "artistic" or "creative" _Phantasie_, stands for the most intellectual faculty, though _Vorstellung_ is also used in much the same sense. But it is impossible to arrive at any clear distinction such as was originally made so profoundly by Ruskin between fancy, the instrument of poetical talent, the surface gift, and imagination or, as he called it, _penetrative_ imagination, which summarizes all the powers of a genius and personality and enters into the heart of the subject-matter by an illuminating flash which _reveals_ reality rather than illustrates by means of image. The present passage appears to me even more unsatisfactory than the more carefully digested analysis at the end of Part I, when Hegel discusses the artist. It not merely ignores the indispensable presence of imagination in the pioneers of science, but appears to myself to confuse talent as the natural gift of a man with the mode in which it is exercised in presenting ideas in sensuous imagery, or at least makes the former depend on the latter. Professor Bosanquet translates _Phantasie_ here by "fancy." But "fancy" is, in our way of looking at it, precisely not the faculty which _distinctively_ belongs to "the great mind and the big heart or soul," though other parts of the description are more applicable. And in short, as I say, to fix definite English equivalents to Hegel's phraseology appears to me impossible.]

[Footnote 76: _Die Phantasie_.]

[Footnote 77: This is, I presume, Hegel's way of putting the simple fact, that much of the process of artistic production is unconscious. One man instinctively draws, or picks up his notes on the piano, another cannot. I think Hegel rather refers to this _original_ talent than the much more important one in which genius, right into maturity, rides over difficulties without knowing how it does so. Such happy or even miraculous effects--such as artists sometimes playfully call them--are obviously in part, if only in part, the result of profound artistic experience. He is dealing almost exclusively with the natural bias, which makes one man naturally an artist, whether creative or executant, and is absent from another. He hardly approaches the question what constitutes the artist of genius as contrasted with the man of natural talent.]

[Footnote 78: This confirms the conclusion above.]

[Footnote 79: _Für sich._ If merely admired as imitation and nothing more.]

[Footnote 80: _Zur Ekelhaftigkeit._ "Sickeningly like" is Professor Bosanquet's closer translation. The expression "damnably like" is not unknown.]

[Footnote 81: I think with Professor Bosanquet that _phantastischen_ is here not "fantastic" but strictly derived from _Phantasie_ in its sense of imagination. "Completely," of course, as involving no direct imitation of Nature.]

[Footnote 82: Formal, _i.e._, implying no creative supplement from the artist, purely mechanical.]

[Footnote 83: It would be both instructive and interesting to discuss if, and how far, and by virtue of what, that distinct type of modern art known as "still life," such as a few objects of the library, or even a shell or two and so on up to more important organic life was excluded from this condemnation. It is quite clear that Ruskin would have a good deal to say that would imply important qualification.]

[Footnote 84: _Begeisterung._ I think this must be the meaning. Inspiration hardly makes sense. It is art that is inspired, not those who attend the celebration.]

[Footnote 85: _Im Innersten_ is I think here obviously to be taken with the verb, not with the substantives.]

[Footnote 86: _Ueberhaupt._]

[Footnote 87: The meaning of _in diesem Gebiete_ is, I presume, the actual world. But if so it is simply otiose, and I have left it out.]

[Footnote 88: _Bestimmung._ The translation given appears to be the sense, though we should rather say weaken a _man_ from the pursuit of a definite course. Professor Bosanquet, who translates the word "aim" a little lower down, evades the word here.]

[Footnote 89: _Raisonnirende_ here and _raissonnement_ below have a depreciatory sense--and signify ordinary reasoning in the first instance and the methods of the popular secularist in the second.]

[Footnote 90: A sentence omitted by Professor Bosanquet, and it seems to amount to little more than a more generalized statement of what has gone before. The end of art both directly and indirectly concerns its subject-matter, or rather, as Hegel puts it, the need of the notion or Idea of it carries us to a further end beyond the end shared in common by its particular content.]

[Footnote 91: I follow Professor Bosanquet in his translation of the words _als Allgemeines für sich zu zuerden_; but I am not sure that the more literal translation is not simply as the words stand, the sense being not to be self-conscious of himself (_für sich_) as the universal principle, to be aware of this property, but rather as universal principle to become _for_ himself, _i.e._ "independent of desire."]

[Footnote 92: _Einheit_--unity to the point of fusion, identity.]

[Footnote 93: _Unmittelbaren Befangenheit._ "Sunkenness" is Professor Bosanquet's translation.]

[Footnote 94: _Theoretic_ as a direct transcript of _θεώρια, θεωρειν._]

[Footnote 95: _Gesichtspunkte._ The various points of view necessary to arrive at such a general conclusion.]

[Footnote 96: Though not entirely confident I am right in accepting the words _zu bringen_ as a repetition of the _hervorzubringen_ just before, the alternative of Professor Bosanquet which takes the words _wird zu bringen seyn_ as equivalent to _gebracht seyn sollte_ certainly appears to me no direct translation.]

[Footnote 97: "Poets aim at utility and entertainment alike."]

[Footnote 98: I think that Hegel in his use of _erste_ here rather refers to the fact of past history than a fact in the individual history of nations. "Art is, in the early days of history, the instructress of nations," gives, I think, his meaning. It is the first instructress in the history of nations.]

[Footnote 99: I venture to think if Professor Bosanquet's translation were the right one the German would be _ein in sich selbst gebrochenes._ I do not think _in ihm selbst_ can be a German rendering of "in itself." But I admit the translation is tempting whether Hegel had in his mind the "house divided against itself" or not.]

[Footnote 100: Lit., "the spiritual universal," _i.e._, the universal substance of its ideal content.]

[Footnote 101: Precisely as Ruskin, for example, in his "Modern Painters" condemns both Titian and Tintoret, not because they painted the _Paradise_ or the _Assunta_, to produce fine paintings, or even because they did not or did themselves believe in the truth of their subject-matter, but because they did not paint _in order to make converts_, an extraordinary lapse of judgment.]

[Footnote 102: _Im besten Sinne des Wortes._]

[Footnote 103: Professor Bosanquet points out in a note on this passage (p. 101) that _Sittlichkeit_ here, which he translates, as I have done, "respectability," is the _habit_ of virtue, without the reflective aspiration after goodness as an ideal. Of course there is no depreciation in the use of the term. It is simply the morality of ordinary people, who do generally what their neighbours think the right thing. The word _moralität_ and _moralisch_, which I have only been able to translate by a paraphrase, is the morality of the standpoint discussed, which is very much that of Kant or "Duty for duty's sake" in Bradley's "Ethical Studies."]

[Footnote 104: That is the contingency of the world of Nature as contrasted with the essential stability of mind or spirit.]

[Footnote 105: Lit., "To satisfy itself in its _real_ or independent self (_für sich_)." It cannot identify itself with either side as its wholly real self made therein explicit. It is neither fish nor fowl.]

[Footnote 106: _Bestimmüngen_ may here be a reference to man's broadest spiritual characterizations as one of the human family, the race, the nation, and so forth, or, as I think, a reference to his vocation, future destiny, general welfare.]

[Footnote 107: _An und für sich Wahre._]

[Footnote 108: _Unbefangenen_, _i.e._, the naïve outlook of ordinary life.]

[Footnote 109: Professor Bosanquet merely translates _are not_ and _are_ in italic as in the text, which of course, except that he adds a comma after _are_, is a literal translation. But the sense, as I understand it, is that the writer says it is not in the sense that these two contradictories do not exist _at all_ (_i.e._, as relative reality), but rather in the sense that in _philosophical thought_ which grasps their essence they are not only present but present as reconciled factors of one truth. Professor Bosanquet's translation appears to me to amount to this: that all Hegel maintains is that the sense he means is not that such contradictory elements are _not_ reconciled, but in the sense that they _are_ reconciled. Perhaps this is his view. But if so, I fail to see the importance of the antithesis, which appears to me between _gar nicht sind_ and _in Versöhnung sind._ Hegel before had expressly said that such contradictory sides were reconciled in philosophy, so I do not see why he should so emphatically repeat himself. The comma, of course, may be a misprint.]

[Footnote 110: _Begriff._ Notion, or concrete Idea of it.]

[Footnote 111: Of that world in its opposition to reason.]

[Footnote 112: _Der Mensch als er geht und steht._ The man in ordinary conditions—-the _average_ man, however, rather than the _natural_ man, which carries slightly different associations.]

[Footnote 113: The difference between a material instrument, which is a mere means to an end conceived by the craftsman, such as a plough for ploughing, a rake for raking, and a purpose inseparable from the organic whole as a mouth for eating, for without life the organism collapses.]

[Footnote 114: _Für sich._]

[Footnote 115: In his history of Aesthetic in Germany Lötze disputes this. It seems to some extent a question of definition. In Hegel's view a dead body is not a human body in the full sense, but the _corpse_ of a man. A hand separated from the body, whether we call it a hand or not, is no longer, whatever it may be, a living member, its essential significance as a hand has disappeared. It was only a hand in its coherence as part of a larger whole. It may still for a time preserve the semblance of its life, but it is cut off as the withered leaf. These are facts at least that are undeniable, and the objection appears to me based on a misunderstanding. A hand is only _an und für sich_ human when it is part of a living man. What is the organic reality in the complete sense is the man as a _whole._ The hand is merely the extremity of one of his arms. You may call a dead hand a hand if you like. The point is what was implied in the fact that you called it a hand at all whether alive or dead.]

[Footnote 116: That is, by Kant, of course.]

[Footnote 117: By _Verwicklung_ I understand the general evolution of ideal philosophy which the defects of the Kantian Critique stimulated. Professor Bosanquet apparently limits it to a perplexity personal to Schiller. I doubt whether the word will bear this.]

[Footnote 118: That is, the concrete idea of humanity as a collective aggregate.]

[Footnote 119: That is, intelligence as asserted by a society of human beings as public opinion, etc.]

[Footnote 120: _Die Ineinsbildung._]

[Footnote 121: "Grace and Dignity."]

[Footnote 122: _Gesinnungen._ "Sentimental views" is probably what is implied.]

[Footnote 123: _Alle Sache._]

[Footnote 124: Professor Bosanquet is clearly right in his view that the order of the words here should be reversed. The words _an und für sich_ are obviously the wider explication of _in sick selbst_, the auxiliary, as not unfrequently in Hegel, being almost equivalent to _nämlich._ Whether a misprint or an oversight I have translated subject to this correction.]

[Footnote 125: I presume the revelation is not merely that of visible shape or even mainly.]

[Footnote 126: _Das alles aus sich setzende und auflösende Ich._ The three points emphasized by Hegel in Fichte's "Philosophy" are: (_a_) The Ego is abstract; (_b_) Everything is a _show_ for it; (_c_) Its own acts are a semblance.]

[Footnote 127: Hegel uses the word _Eitelkeit_ and _eitle_ in their double sense of empty-nothingness--futility and vain or conceited. This cannot be readily reproduced in English.]

[Footnote 128: _Schönseligkeit._ Borrowed no doubt from Goethe's notion of a "fair soul."]

[Footnote 129: Like the "vaulting ambition" of Shakespeare which falls on the other side, is _über sich selbst._]

[Footnote 130: _Haltung._ Professor Bosanquet translates this "conduct." I rather think it refers to "bearing, demeanour." They are, as we say, "featureless, flaccid figures."]

[Footnote 131: _Läppische._ I am not quite sure what is exactly meant. Professor Bosanquet translates it "grotesque." But the word is a provincial form of _Schlaff_ apparently--loose, flaccid and so childish, trifling.]

[Footnote 132: _Moment._ A phase in an evolutionary, or, as it is here, a dialectical process. A momentary feature of it.]

[Footnote 133: This final section is called the Division of the Subject.]

[Footnote 134: _Subjektivität._ That is, the ideality of consciousness, or thought.]

[Footnote 135: Professor Bosanquet, in his note on this passage, expresses the opinion that Hegel when he writes thus is referring "To the self-consciousness of individual human beings as constituting, and reflecting on, an ideal unity between them." This no doubt, as he suggests, does put a somewhat unnatural meaning on the word "person" or "subjekt." No doubt there is a sense in which we can ascribe personality to a state, or nation, in the concrete unity of its life. But while admitting that unity such as this, which is not sensuous but ideal, can be "effective and actual," I find it difficult to conclude that Hegel did himself hold that the unity of the Divine Being was _merely_ identical with the unity or totality of concrete human life as reflected upon by single individuals. How far is human life as a whole on this Earth a unity or totality at all? That question has been discussed by Professor Bradley and others with very different conclusions. Nay, how far does human existence itself exhaust the actually present realization or self-realization of self-conscious Spirit or Intelligence? Whatever maybe the wisest answer to such and other questions I can hardly think that Hegel would have accepted Professor Bosanquet's interpretation as completely adequate.]

[Footnote 136: _Fackeldistel_. "Torch thistle," a plant of the genus Cereus.]

[Footnote 137: Or, "as mind and in mind."]

[Footnote 138: That is to say, presents to itself to conscious grasp of itself as such Art-spirit (_als künstlerischer._)]

[Footnote 139: The two evolutions here alluded to are (i) that of a particular way of regarding Nature, man, and God in a particular age and nation such as the Egyptian, Greek, and Christian viewed in express relation to art; (ii) The several arts--sculpture, music, poetry, etc., each on their own foundation and viewed relatively to the former evolution.]

[Footnote 140: The point, of course, is that the different media of the several arts are inherently, and in virtue of the fact that we have not here _mere_ matter as opposed to that which is intellectual rather than sensuous, but matter in which the notional concept is already essentially present or pregnant (sound is, for instance, more ideal than the spatial matter of architecture), adapted to the particular arts in which they serve as the medium of expression.]

[Footnote 141: Professor Bosanquet explains these "plastic forms" (_Gestaltungs formen_) as the various modifications of the subject-matter of art (Trans., p. 140 note). I am not quite sure of the meaning here intended. It would apparently identify the term with the _Gebilde_ referred to in the third division. I should myself rather incline to think that Hegel had mainly in his mind the specific general types, that is, the three relations of the Idea itself to its external configuration, viewed as a historical evolution, which Hegel calls symbolic, classical, and romantic. Perhaps this is what Professor Bosanquet means. But in that case it does not appear to me so much the subject-matter as the generic forms in the shaping of that matter.]

[Footnote 142: _Das wahrhaft Innere._ That is, the inward of the truth of conscious life.]

[Footnote 143: Means apparently the notion in its absolute sense.]

[Footnote 144: Because it represents spirit as independent of an appropriate bodily form.]

[Footnote 145: What appears to be denoted by _Geistigkeit_ is the generic term of intelligence--that activity of conscious life which does not necessarily make us think of a single individual--the common nature of all spirit.]

[Footnote 146: By _Innerlichkeit_, which might also be rendered as pure ideality, what is signified is that in a mental state there are no parts outside of each other.]

[Footnote 147: _Subjekt_, _i.e._, the individual Ego of self-consciousness.]

[Footnote 148: _Das subjective Innere,_ lit., the subjective inner state.]

[Footnote 149: _Geistigkeit._ Professor Bosanquet translates it here "intellectual being."]

[Footnote 150: The distinction between a percipient and an external object falls away. The content displayed is part of the soul-life itself.]

[Footnote 151: Professor Bosanquet apparently assumes a negative has slipped out. But the text probably is correct in the rather awkward form in which it stands.]

[Footnote 152: Thus poetry is primarily a romantic art, but in the Epic it is affiliated with the objective character of classical art, or we may say that there is a romantic and classical type of architecture, though the art is primarily symbolic.]

[Footnote 153: _Gestalt._ Plastic power is perhaps a better translation.]

[Footnote 154: He means that in architecture the building is merely a shrine or environment of the image of the god.]

[Footnote 155: Infinite, of course, in the concrete sense of rounded in itself, as the circle, or, still more, the living organism.]

[Footnote 156: Lit., "which is not also that of the spiritual sphere."]

[Footnote 157: That is, an object limited only in space.]

[Footnote 158: _Subjektivität._ The particularization in romantic art implies the presence of an ideal element imported by the soul of the artist, which appeals directly to the soul in its emotional life. Compare a picture by an Italian master with a Greek statue.]

[Footnote 159: Lit., "A multiplicity of isolated examples of inwardness."]

[Footnote 160: That is, in the life shared by all as one community actuated by a common purpose.]

[Footnote 161: As in sculpture.]

[Footnote 162: Professor Bosanquet's note is here (Trans., p. 166) "Posited or laid down to be ideal. This almost is equal to made _to be_ in the sense of _not being._ In other words musical sound is "ideal" as existing, _quâ_ work of art, in memory only, the moment in which it is actually heard being fugitive. A picture is equally so in respect of the third dimension, which has to be read into it. Poetry is almost wholly ideal, uses hardly any sensuous element, and appeals almost wholly to what exists in the _mind._"]

[Footnote 163: By particularization is meant the variety in the material of colours, musical tones, and ideas, which latter are really quite as much the medium of poetry as written language. The _sensuous_ medium is here an abstract sign and, as Hegel would contend, nothing more than this.]

[Footnote 164: Reference, of course, to Hegel's unfortunate acceptance of Goethe's theory of colour.]

[Footnote 165: The colour of art is not merely ideal as applied to only two dimensions of space, but also is "subjective" in the artistic treatment of it under a definite "scheme." It is not clear whether Hegel alludes also to this; apparently not, though it is the most important feature. In fact, even assuming his theory of light to be correct, it is difficult entirely to follow his distinction between the appearance of colour on a flat or a round surface. As _natural_ colour the one would be as ideal as the other. Only regarded as a composition would painting present distinction.]

[Footnote 166: It is obvious that the reference here is mainly to an intentional appeal to the human soul through the content of the composition. But the appeal may also be made through the technique and artistic treatment of the medium itself.]

[Footnote 167: The parts of a chord are not in space, but are ideally cognized. Hegel describes this by saying that music idealizes space and concentrates it to a point. It would perhaps be more intelligible to say that it transmutes the positive effects of a material substance in motion into the positive and more ideal condition of time. The point which is continually negated is at least _quâ_ music the point, or rather, moment, of a temporal process.]

[Footnote 168: By the indifferent externality of space is signified the fact that the parts of space, though external to each other, are not qualitatively distinguishable.]

[Footnote 169: Succession in time is "more ideal" than coexistence in space because it exists only as continuity in a conscious subject.]

[Footnote 170: Painting no doubt introduces ideal elements into the artistic composition of colour, but the colour still remains the appearance of a material thing or superficies.]

[Footnote 171: That is to say, music or harmony is based on a solid conformity to law on the part of its tones in their conjunction and succession, their structure and resolution.]

[Footnote 172: As in painting.]

[Footnote 173: The views here propounded suggest considerable criticism. It appears to me that the stress here laid upon the intelligible content of poetry as contrasted with the sensuous qualities of its form as modulated speech is certainly untenable. What we call the music of verse may unquestionably be most intimately associated with the ideal content expressed; but apart from the artistic collocation of language as sound no less than symbol we certainly do not get the art of poetry. Even where Hegel deals directly with rhythm and rhyme in the body of the treatise I think it is clear he underrates all that is implied in the difference between the musical expression of poetry as contrasted even with the sonorous language of mere prose. A further question upon which more doubt is permissible is how far the actual script in written or printed letters is not entitled to be regarded as at least in part the sensuous medium. No doubt the poem is not dependent upon it as a painting is upon colour, or the canvas which supports it, for it may be recited. But at least it is practically dependent upon it for its preservation. The point may very possibly appear, however, as nugatory or entirely unimportant, beside the question whether the medium of the art is not really imaginative idea rather than articulate speech.]

[Footnote 174: _Absolute Formen._ Adequate in the sense of being unconditionally so.]

FIRST PART

THE IDEA OF FINE ART, OR THE IDEAL

THE POSITION OF ART RELATIVELY TO FINITE REALITY, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY

The conclusion of the introduction brings within sight the more methodical exposition of our subject. It will in the first place be useful as a point of departure for a true philosophy of the beautiful to sum up shortly the position of Fine Art in its general relation to the Real, no less than to emphasize the salient features which distinguish the philosophy of Fine Art from other philosophical inquiries.

(_a_) With this object in view we will first enumerate the diverse attempts which have been made to apprehend the beautiful in thought, placing each in the order which will best assist a critical verdict. We have already contributed something to this in our introduction. And, moreover, we may add that the mere inquiry what others have contributed either rightly or wrongly to our subject, at least with the hope of ascertaining something really instructive to an exposition which claims to be wholly scientific, will not assist us much. So far from this being so we must preface our remarks with the admission that, in the opinion of many, the beautiful, for the very reason that it is the beautiful, does not admit of such intellectual apprehension, is, in short, no object intelligible to human thought. To such a thesis we must for the present--in our response to those who at this time of day contend that all Truth is ultimately incomprehensible, and only the finiteness of the phenomenal and the contingent matters of temporal existence is within our mental grasp--reply that it is precisely Truth, and Truth alone, which is to be thus _comprehended_, and for this reason that it possesses the absolute _notion_, or, more succinctly, the Idea for its basic support. Now beauty is no other than a particular determination under which the True is expressed and revealed to us; and it lies open to the fullest comprehension of thought in so far as such can equip it with the armoury of the concrete notion. It is quite true that no idea has suffered more severely in our own time from misconceptions than this which we call the notion in its fullest explication. One is only too often misunderstood to mean a determination which is abstract and one sided, or at least a conception of the analytical understanding. As thus understood neither the totality of Truth nor the idea of beauty as a concrete whole can be brought home to a thinking consciousness. But the idea of beauty, as we have already observed, and shall seek to make more intelligible as we proceed, is no such abstraction of the mind: rather it may be defined as the absolute notion in its self-evolved concreteness, or still more specifically defined, the absolute Idea.

(_b_) And, further, we cannot more succinctly define the _absolute Idea_, in the above use of the expression, than by saying it is mind (Spirit): and we may add that the mind thus referred to is not mind regarded as finite, that is, subject to the conditions and limitations of sense-perception, but the universal and _absolute_ Intelligence[175], which, out of its own free activity, determines Truth in the profoundest signification of the term. To the ordinary consciousness of everyday life the object of perception, no doubt, breaks away from mind, as though our thought stood in opposition to Nature, which receives from us a validity equal at least to the consciousness which perceives it. But in this way of looking at Nature and the conscious subject as two neighbours set over against one another in territories equally self-subsistent it is only the finite and limited mind, not that which it is as an infinite substance and in its notional truth, which is apprehended. Nature is not thus to be set over against absolute Mind, either as conjoint with a sphere of the Real of equal worth, or as an independent boundary thereto. Rather the aspect which Nature appears to hold in this respect is that which mind or spirit itself sets up, and of which it becomes the product as a Nature in which limit and boundary are themselves determining constituents. In fact, Mind in its absolute or infinite substance can only be apprehended as this free activity, which is manifested in self-development through differentiation. This object, this _other_, through which such differentiation proceeds, is regarded in such opposition as Nature, but as the object of intelligence it is quite as much indebted to Mind for the free gift and fulness of its own essential substance. We must therefore conceive Nature as herself containing in potency the absolute Idea. She is that Idea in _apparent shape_, which mind, in its synthetic power, posits as the object opposed to itself. She is so far a product, a creation. The truth of Nature therefore is simply the determination by mind of its own substance, its ideality and power of determination, through a process which no doubt begins with a separation of itself into two factors which apparently negate each other, but which, by the very activity of such negation and separation, passes beyond the contradiction it implies to a unity which heals the fracture. Instead of finding our-elves opposed to a limit and a barrier we have a totality in which the parts which opposed each other are fused together by the free universality of mind. This ideality, in other words this infinite power of determination[176], is that which constitutes the profound notion of Mind's _subjectivity._ As subjectivity mind is, in the first instance, merely Nature, Mind, or Spirit that is _not explicitly_ unfolded, mind which has not arrived at the grasp of its true notion. Nature is here set up in opposition to Mind, not as an object which itself has created, but as one whose limits it fails to overcome, an object, moreover, which, as assumed to be already subsisting in independence, Mind remains alongside of in the internal seclusion of knowledge and volition, and is only able to constitute the other side of Nature. The finiteness of scientific theory, no less than that of practical life, is to be, found in this limited mode of consciousness, where intelligence is restricted to the use of finite categories and the formal "ought" in the realization of ethical perfection[177]. We find here, as we have pointed out was the case with Nature, that the phenomenal is not adequate to the essential truth of that which appears; what we receive is still the confusing medley of abilities, passions, intentions, opinions, and talents, which no sooner make themselves felt than they are displaced, working at cross purposes as often against as on the side of each other, in a strife between volition, opinion, and reflection, which brings to the surface every phase of fortuitous experience in all its confusing variety. It is the standpoint of the entirely finite, temporal, contradictory, and for that reason transitory, unsatisfied, and unreconciled spirit. For the satisfactions which obtain in such a consciousness, through the finiteness which inseparably clings to its entire outlook, itself so limited and confused, are of a purely relative and isolated validity. It is inevitable that consciousness, volition, and thought should make an effort to rise above this condition and seek for the universality, unity, and satisfaction which it eventually finds in the infinite substance of Spirit and its Truth. This unity and satisfaction, to which mind is carried forward by the impulse of its own ideal activity, transmuting the raw material of its finite conditions, constitutes the first revelation of that which the world of appearances is under a more notional grasp of it. Mind grasps its finiteness as the negation of its own essential substance, and is aware of its infinity. And this essential truth of the finite mind is the absolute Mind or Spirit. In this form of self-consciousness mind is merely actualized as absolute negativity. The element of finitude which it confronts is apprehended as such and annulled. In this, the highest sphere of its activity, mind becomes the object of volition. The Absolute itself becomes the _object_ of mind. Spirit, as self-consciousness, differentiates itself as the _knowing subject_ from the absolute Spirit as the _object_ of knowledge. Mind in this latter sense, in contradistinction from mind which has not overcome the conditions of finite perception, may therefore be defined as a finite mind in possession of the principle of differentiation from its true object. In the higher and more speculative consideration of truth, however, it is the _absolute mind itself_, which, in order to unfold explicitly the knowledge of itself, essentially becomes a principle of differentiation to itself, and thereby posits the finitude of mind, within which it becomes for itself absolute object of the knowledge of itself. It is now absolute mind within the ideal community[178] which belongs to it, the actual Absolute of itself in the form of Mind and knowledge[179].

This is, in fact, the starting-point of the Philosophy of Fine Art. For the idea of Fine Art is neither the _logical Idea_, absolute Thought, that is, which develops itself in the medium of its freest activity, nor is it the Idea of _Nature_ apprehended under more finite categories. Its province is rather that of Mind untrammelled by either the judgments or the actions of the _finite_ spirit.

(_c_) The realm of Fine Art is the realm of _absolute Spirit._ We can but briefly indicate the reason why this is so. A fully philosophical proof belongs rather to treatises which immediately deal with those questions of philosophy we have noticed already, by which we mean those which treat of Logic, whose content, as above explained, is that of the absolute Idea, or the philosophy of Nature, or lastly, the philosophy of Mind in its determinate spheres of finitude. For in these sciences the object is to show not merely how the logical Idea presupposes the objective particularity of Nature as a vehicle to its determinate existence, but also how it is capable of passing from such externality to mind, and, finally, of freeing itself from all the finitude that clings to it and of attaining to Spirit in its eternal concreteness and truth.

From such a point of view, which is also applicable to art when regarded in all the fulness of worth it in truth implies, we are justified in associating it with the self-same province which belongs to religion and speculative philosophy. In every direction in which Mind or Spirit becomes identical with the absolute Mind it frees itself from the restricting limits of its positive existence, and, while liberating itself from the contingent relations, which pertain to it in its temporal existence, and the finite content of its objects and interests, is made aware of and discloses the entire wealth of reality it contains.

It may be of service here to expand more completely the position which Art thus occupies in its relation respectively to the life of Nature and Spirit.

A survey of the entire field of human existence presents to the ordinary consciousness of mankind the widest variety of interests and means of satisfaction. There is, in the first instance, the complex system of purely physical necessities, to the satisfaction of which the whole economy of industrial enterprise, through all its complicated tissue of commerce, merchandize, and technical crafts, is actively pursued. If we raise the level of our review to a more spiritual range, we are confronted with the world where rights are established and enforced, the world of legislative enactment, family life, division of social classes, in a word, the concrete living organism of the State. And more than this, there is the religious want, which asserts itself in the hearts of particular men and women, and finds its satisfaction in the life of a church. Finally, there is the many-sided and intricately specialized activity of scientific research, the organized effort to integrate all knowledge, and the comprehension which that knowledge implies, in one all-embracing system. Within this latter are comprised the activities of the fine arts, the interest, that is to say, in beauty, and which derives its spiritual nutriment in the realization of that beauty in plastic shapes.

(_d_) The question becomes inevitable how far a spiritual want of this kind is bound up as a necessary element in the life of man and his world-history. In the first instance these two spheres[180] appear simply as immediate factors of our entire survey. It is, however, the requirement of philosophy to probe more deeply into that which binds them as essential and necessarily interacting constituents of one organic whole. For on closer inspection it will be found that they do not stand in relation to one another on the mere basis of utility; rather we shall discover that only through the one we shall fully comprehend the other. In other words, the one circle overlaps the other, in the sense that the higher forms of its activity are found to be a part of the other; and that which is of less value in its own province is lifted into a finer atmosphere; and what had failed to free itself from its original bounds is now enlarged to liberty through the profounder satisfaction it receives in the widening of the range of its interests[181]. And it is this which makes clear the necessity of the ideal bond.

We will recall now for a moment the analysis we established of the notion of the beautiful and that of art generally. Two opposed aspects come under notice. In the first place we have a content, an end, a significance; and in addition to that we get the artistic expression of the same, the appearance and realization of such content; and, thirdly, these two aspects of the artistic product so pass into each other that the rationality or particularity is nothing short of the expression of the artistic purpose, nothing more or less is given us than the essential expression of the entire content. What we designate as content, "significance," is just this simplicity of idea, the work of art resolved into its simplest yet most comprehensive determinants, as it exists for mind in contrast with the actual work executed. As an example we may summarize the content of a book from a few words or sentences the book contains, and nothing may be necessary to expound the content of that book sufficiently in its general import. This simple idea, the thesis or main problem of our book, which forms the fundamental basis on which the entire structure is built, is the abstract significance. It is only the detailed exposition which gives us the concrete totality.

Both sides, however, of this opposition do not stand in an indifferent or purely external relation one to the other, as, for instance, is the case when we contrast with it the particular content of an abstract mathematical figure, such as a triangle or an ellipse, to which the external particularity of its size or figure is related without affecting its significance. Rather in the former case we shall find that the content of its form, taken in abstraction in itself, possesses a determinate impulse in the direction of realization and thereby concreteness. There is in it essentially the "_should_" of purpose. However strongly form is here posited in independence, we are unable to rest satisfied with such abstraction, and ask for something more. This is at first apprehended merely as an unsatisfied want, a desire in the conscious subject, which strives to annul itself and secure satisfaction. From such a standpoint all we can say is that the content is purely self-contained, or _subjective_, over against which the objective other-than-itself is placed in opposition in such a way as to emphasize the desire to make the subjective content _objective._ Such a conflict between the subjective content and the objective, reality which confronts it, no less than the mere impulse to transcend the opposition, is a universal characteristic of the determination of all self-conscious life[182]. Even that aspect of human life which we call physical, and still more that world of man's spiritual aims and interests depends on this necessity to carry forward that which is at first purely subjective and ideal into the objective world, that a fuller satisfaction in its essential substance may be realized. But so long as the content of aims and interests is merely and at first apprehended in the one-sided form of subjective consciousness, and that one-sidedness is apprehended as a mere limit, this loss makes itself simply felt as unrest or pain. It is a negative something which is bound to resolve itself as such negativity, and, in order to remove the sense of defect, exerts an impulse to transcend the barrier itself, already an object of consciousness and thought. And, moreover, this transcendency does not merely amount to this, that the objective "other" ceases to be an opposed factor to the general subjective consciousness: rather in the more determinate connection, this defect of _subjective_ thought is itself and _within_ itself a defect and _negation_ which involves an impulse to negate and pass beyond. In other words the conscious subject is implicitly and according to its essential notion the _complete whole_[183], that is, not merely what is inward, but the realization no less of that which is inward or ideal in and through what is without. If we assume that it exists only abstractly in one form we have to face the contradiction that whereas it is, according to its concrete notion the whole, yet according to its mode of existence it remains merely one side of that totality. It is only through the entire resolution of such a contradiction that life becomes affirmative. To pass through each phase of this opposition, contradiction and its final abrogation is the higher and legitimate demand of conscious life. That which remains always affirmative, is, and remains, without life. Life is built upon negation and pain. It is only by crushing out such contradictions in the crucible of fuller life and knowledge that it remains in its affirmative substance. If it anchor wholly on contradiction without such a possibility of resolution it must be infallibly wrecked thereon.

Such, then, is the nature of these determinations of thought regarded in their abstraction to which it was necessary to draw attention at the present stage.

The most exalted content which lies within the grasp of self-conscious life may be concisely called _freedom._ Freedom is the highest determination of Spirit. In its formal aspect freedom, in its first instance, consists in this, that the subject thereof ceases to find a limit or barrier in the material which is set over against it; this is no longer an element foreign to it, but one in which it finds itself again. Even under this formal definition of it all necessity and misfortune disappears; the individual consciousness is reconciled with the world, finds satisfaction in such reconciliation, and all opposition and contradiction is thereby dissolved.