The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. I, Nos. 1-4, 1867

by Various

NOTES ON RAPHAEL’S “TRANSFIGURATION.”

[Read before the St. Louis Art Society in November, 1866.]

I. THE ENGRAVING.

He who studies the “Transfiguration” of Raphael is fortunate if he has access to the engraving of it by Raphael Morghen. This engraver, as one learns from the Encyclopædia, was a Florentine, and executed this—his most elaborate work—in 1795, from a drawing of Tofanelli, after having discovered that a copy he had partly finished from another drawing, was very inadequate when compared with the original.

Upon comparison with engravings by other artists, it seems to me that this engraving has not received all the praise it deserves; I refer especially to the seizing of the “motives” of the picture, which are so essential in a work of great scope, to give it the requisite unity. What the engraver has achieved in the present instance, I hope to be able to show in some degree. But one will not be able to verify my results if he takes up an engraving by a less fortunate artist; e.g.: one by Pavoni, of recent origin.

II. HISTORICAL.

It is currently reported that Raphael painted the “Transfiguration” at the instance of Cardinal Giulio de Medici, and that in honor of the latter he introduced the two saints—Julian and Lawrence—on the mount; St. Julian suggesting the ill-fated Giuliano de Medici, the Cardinal’s father, and St. Lawrence representing his uncle, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” the greatest of the Medici line, and greatest man of his time in Italy. “The haughty Michael Angelo refused to enter the lists in person against Raphael, but put forward as a fitting rival Sebastian del Piombo, a Venetian.” Raphael painted, as his masterpiece, the “Transfiguration,” and Sebastian, with the help of Michael Angelo, painted the “Raising of Lazarus.” In 1520, before the picture was quite finished, Raphael died. His favorite disciple, Giulio Romano, finished the lower part of the picture (especially the demoniac) in the spirit of Raphael, who had completed the upper portion and most of the lower.

III. LEGEND.

The Legend portrayed here—slightly varying from the one in the New Testament, but not contradicting it—is as follows: Christ goes out with his twelve disciples to Mount Tabor,(?) and, leaving the nine others at the foot, ascends with the favored three to the summit, where the scene of the Transfiguration takes place. While this transpires, the family group approach with the demoniac, seeking help from a miraculous source.

Raphael has added to this legend the circumstance that two sympathetic strangers, passing that way up the mount, carry to the Beatified One the intelligence of the event below, and solicit his immediate and gracious interference.

The Testament account leads us to suppose the scene to be Mount Tabor, southeast of Nazareth, at whose base he had healed many, a few days before, and where he had held many conversations with his disciples. “On the following day, when they were come down, they met the family,” says Luke; but Matthew and Mark do not fix so precisely the day.

IV. CHARACTERIZATION.

It may be safely affirmed that there is scarcely a picture in existence in which the individualities are more strongly marked by internal essential characteristics.

Above, there is no figure to be mistaken: Christ floats toward the source of light—the Invisible Father, by whom all is made visible that is visible. On the right, Moses appears in strong contrast to Elias on the left—the former the law-giver, and the latter the spontaneous, fiery, eagle-eyed prophet.

On the mountain top—prostrate beneath, are the three disciples—one recognizes on the right hand, John, gracefully bending his face down from the overpowering light, while on the left James buries his face in his humility. But Peter, the bold one, is fain to gaze directly on the splendor. He turns his face up in the act, but is, as on another occasion, mistaken in his estimate of his own endurance, and is obliged to cover his eyes, involuntarily, with his hand.

Below the mount, are two opposed groups. On the right, coming from the hamlet in the distance, is the family group, of which a demoniac boy forms the centre. They, without doubt, saw Christ pass on his way to this solitude, and, at length, concluded to follow him and test his might which had been “noised abroad” in that region. It is easy to see the relationship of the whole group. First the boy, actually “possessed,” or a maniac; then his father—a man evidently predisposed to insanity—supporting and restraining him. Kneeling at the right of the boy is his mother, whose fair Grecian face has become haggard with the trials she has endured from her son. Just beyond her is her brother, and in the shade of the mountain, is her father. In the foreground is her sister. Back of the father, to the right, is seen an uncle (on the father’s side) of the demoniac boy, whose features and gestures show him to be a simpleton, and near him is seen the face of the father’s sister, also a weak-minded person. The parents of the father are not to be seen, for the obvious reason that old age is not a characteristic of persons predisposed to insanity. Again, it is marked that in a family thus predisposed, some will be brilliant to a degree resembling genius, and others will be simpletons. The whole group at the right are supplicating the nine disciples, in the most earnest manner, for relief. The disciples, grouped on the left, are full of sympathy, but their looks tell plainly that they can do nothing. One, at the left and near the front, holds the books of the Law in his right hand, but the letter needs the spirit to give life, and the mere Law of Moses does not help the demoniac, and only excites the sorrowful indignation of the beautiful sister in the foreground.

The curious student of the New Testament may succeed in identifying the different disciples: Andrew, holding the books of the Law, is Peter’s brother, and bears a family resemblance. Judas, at the extreme left, cannot be mistaken. Matthew looks over the shoulder of Bartholomew, who is pointing to the demoniac; while Thomas—distinguished by his youthful appearance—bends over toward the boy with a look of intense interest. Simon (?), kneeling between Thomas and Bartholomew, is indicating to the mother, by the gesture with his left hand, the absence of the Master. Philip, whose face is turned towards Judas, is pointing to the scene on the mount, and apparently suggesting the propriety of going for the absent one. James, the son of Alpheus, resembles Christ in features, and stands behind Jude, his brother, who points up to the mount while looking at the father.

V. ORGANIC UNITY.

(a) Doubtless every true work of art should have what is called an “organic unity.” That is to say, all the parts of the work should be related to each other in such a way that a harmony of design arises. Two entirely unrelated things brought into the piece would form two centres of attraction and hence divide the work into two different works. It should be so constituted that the study of one part leads to all the other parts as being necessarily implied in it. This common life of the whole work is the central idea which necessitates all the parts, and hence makes the work an organism instead of a mere conglomerate or mechanical aggregate,—a fortuitous concourse of atoms which would make a chaos only.

(b) This central idea, however, cannot be represented in a work of art without contrasts, and hence there must be antitheses present.

(c) And these antitheses must be again reduced to unity by the manifest dependence of each side upon the central idea.

What is the central idea of this picture?

(a) Almost every thoughtful person that has examined it, has said: “Here is the Divine in contrast with the Human, and the dependence of the latter upon the former.” This may be stated in a variety of ways. The Infinite is there above, and the Finite here below seeking it.

(b) The grandest antithesis is that between the two parts of the Picture, the above and the below. The transfigured Christ, there, dazzling with light; below, the shadow of mortal life, only illuminated by such rays as come from above. There, serenity; and here, rending calamity.

Then there are minor antitheses.

(1) Above we have a Twofold. The three celestial light-seekers who soar rapturously to the invisible source of light, and below them, the three disciples swooning beneath the power of the celestial vision. (2) Then below the mountain we have a similar contrast in the two groups; the one broken in spirit by the calamity that “pierces their own souls,” and the other group powerfully affected by sympathy, and feeling keenly their impotence during the absence of their Lord.

Again even, there appear other antitheses. So completely does the idea penetrate the material in this work of art, that everywhere we see the mirror of the whole. In the highest and most celestial we have the antithesis of Christ and the twain; Moses the law or letter, Elias the spirit or the prophet, and Christ the living unity. Even Christ himself, though comparatively the point of repose of the whole picture, is a contrast of soul striving against the visible body. So, too, the antitheses of the three disciples, John, Peter, James,—grace, strength, and humility. Everywhere the subject is exhaustively treated; the family in its different members, the disciples with the different shades of sympathy and concern. (The maniac boy is a perfect picture of a being, torn asunder by violent internal contradiction.)

(c) The unity is no less remarkable. First, the absolute unity of the piece, is the transfigured Christ. To it, mediately or immediately, everything refers. All the light in the picture streams thence. All the action in the piece has its motive power in Him;—first, the two celestials soar to gaze in his light; then the three disciples are expressing, by the posture of every limb, the intense effect of the same light. On the left, the mediating strangers stand imploring Christ to descend and be merciful to the miserable of this life. Below, the disciples are painfully reminded of Him absent, by the present need of his all-healing power, and their gestures refer to his stay on the mountain top; while the group at the right, are frantic in supplications for his assistance.

Besides the central unity, we find minor unities that do not contradict the higher unity, for the reason that they are only reflections of it, and each one carries us, of its own accord, to the higher unity, and loses itself in it. To illustrate: Below, the immediate unity of all (centre of interest) is the maniac boy, and yet he convulsively points to the miraculous scene above, and the perfect unrest exhibited in his attitude repels the soul irresistibly to seek another unity. The Christ above, gives us a comparatively serene point of repose, while the unity of the Below or finite side of the picture is an absolute antagonism, hurling us beyond to the higher unity.

Before the approach of the distressed family, the others were intently listening to the grave and elderly disciple, Andrew, who was reading and expounding the Scriptures to them. This was a different unity, and would have clashed with the organic unity of the piece; the approach of the boy brings in a new unity, which immediately reflects all to the higher unity.

VI. SENSE AND REASON VS. UNDERSTANDING.

At this point a few reflections are suggested to render more obvious, certain higher phases in the unity of this work of art, which must now be considered.

A work of art, it will be conceded, must, first of all, appeal to the senses. Equally, too, its content must be an idea of the Reason, and this is not so readily granted by every one. But if there were no idea of the Reason in it, there would be no unity to the work, and it could not be distinguished from any other work not a work of art. Between the Reason and the Senses there lies a broad realm, called the “Understanding” by modern speculative writers. It was formerly called the “discursive intellect.” The Understanding applies the criterion “use.” It does not know beauty, or, indeed, anything which is for itself; it knows only what is good for something else. In a work of art, after it has asked what it is good for, it proceeds to construe it all into prose, for it is the prose faculty. It must have the picture tell us what is the external fact in nature, and not trouble us with any transcendental imaginative products. It wants imitation of nature merely.

But the artist frequently neglects this faculty, and shocks it to the uttermost by such things as the abridged mountain in this picture, or the shadow cast toward the sun, that Eckermann tells of.

The artist must never violate the sensuous harmony, nor fail to have the deeper unity of the Idea. It is evident that the sensuous side is always cared for by Raphael.

Here are some of the effects in the picture that are purely sensuous and yet of such a kind that they immediately call up the idea. The source of light in the picture is Christ’s form; below, it is reflected in the garments of the conspicuous figure in the foreground. Above, is Christ; opposite and below, a female that suggests the Madonna. In the same manner Elias, or the inspired prophet, is the opposite to the maniac boy; the former inspired by the celestial; the latter, by the demonic. So Moses, the law-giver, is antithetic to the old disciple that has the roll of the Law in his hand. So, too, in the posture, Elias floats freely, while Moses is brought against the tree, and mars the impression of free self-support. The heavy tables of the Law seem to draw him down, while Elias seems to have difficulty in descending sufficiently to place himself in subordination to Christ.

Even the contradiction that the understanding finds in the abridgment of the mountain, is corrected sensuously by the perspective at the right, and the shade that the edge of the rock casts which isolates the above so completely from the below.

We see that Raphael has brought them to a secluded spot just near the top of the mountain. The view of the distant vale tells us as effectually that this is a mountain top as could be done by a full length painting of it. Hence the criticism rests upon a misunderstanding of the fact Raphael has portrayed.

VII. ROMANTIC vs. CLASSIC.

Finally, we must recur to those distinctions so much talked of, in order to introduce the consideration of the grandest strokes of genius which Raphael has displayed in this work.

The distinction of Classic and Romantic Art, of Greek Art from Christian: the former is characterized by a complete repose, or equilibrium between the Sense and Reason—or between matter and form. The idea seems completely expressed, and the expression completely adequate to the idea.

But in Christian Art we do not find this equilibrium; but everywhere we find an intimation that the idea is too transcendent for the matter to express. Hence, Romantic Art is self contradictory—it expresses the inadequacy of expression.

“I have that within which passeth show;

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”

In Gothic Architecture, all strives upward and seems to derive its support from above (i. e. the Spiritual, light). All Romantic Art points to a beyond. The Madonnas seem to say: “I am a beyond which cannot be represented in a sensuous form;” “a saintly contempt for the flesh hovers about their features,” as some one has expressed it.

But in this picture, Christ himself, no more a child in the Madonna’s arms, but even in his meridian glory, looks beyond, and expresses dependence on a Being who is not and cannot be represented. His face is serene, beatific; he is at unity with this Absolute Being, but the unity is an internal one, and his upraised gaze towards the source of light is a plain statement that the True which supports him is not a sensuous one. “God dwelleth not in temples made with hands; but those who would approach Him must do it in spirit and in truth.”

This is the idea which belongs to the method of all modern Art; but Raphael has not left this as the general spirit of the picture merely, but has emphasized it in a way that exhibits the happy temper of his genius in dealing with refractory subjects. And this last point has proved too much for his critics. Reference is made to the two saints painted at the left. How fine it would be, thought the Cardinal de Medici, to have St. Lawrence and St. Julian painted in there, to commemorate my father and uncle! They can represent mediators, and thereby connect the two parts of the picture more closely!

Of course, Raphael put them in there! “Alas!” say his critics, “what a fatal mistake! What have those two figures to do there but to mar the work! All for the gratification of a selfish pride!”

Always trust an Artist to dispose of the Finite; he, of all men, knows how to digest it and subordinate it to the idea.

Raphael wanted just such figures in just that place. Of course, the most natural thing in the world that could happen, would be the ascent of some one to bear the message to Christ that there was need of him below. But what is the effect of that upon the work as a piece of Romantic Art? It would destroy that characteristic, if permitted in certain forms. Raphael, however, seizes upon this incident to show the entire spiritual character of the upper part of the picture. The disciples are dazzled so, that even the firm Peter cannot endure the light at all. Is this a physical light? Look at the messengers that have come up the mountain! Do their eyes indicate anything bright, not to say dazzling? They stand there with supplicating looks and gestures, but see no transfiguration. It must be confessed, Cardinal de Medici, that your uncle and father are not much complimented, after all; they are merely natural men, and have no inner sense by which to see the Eternal Verities that illume the mystery of existence! Even if you are Cardinal, and they were Popes’ counselors, they never saw anything higher in Religion than what should add comfort to us here below!

No! The transfiguration, as Raphael clearly tells us, was a Spiritual one: Christ, on the mountain with his favored three disciples, opened up such celestial clearness in his exposition of the truth, that they saw Moses and Elias, as it were, combined in one Person, and a new Heaven and a new Earth arose before them, and they were lost in that revelation of infinite splendor.

In closing, a remark forces itself upon us with reference to the comparative merits of Raphael and Michael Angelo.

Raphael is the perfection of Romantic Art. Michael Angelo is almost a Greek. His paintings all seem to be pictures of statuary. In his grandest—The Last Judgment—we have the visible presence as the highest. Art with him could represent the Absolute. With Raphael it could only, in its loftiest flights, express its own impotence.

Whether we are to consider Raphael or Michael Angelo as the higher artist, must be decided by an investigation of the merits of the “Last Judgment.”

INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER I.

The object of this series is to furnish, in as popular a form as possible, a course of discipline for those who are beginning the study of philosophy. Strictly popular, in the sense the word is used—i. e. signifying that which holds fast to the ordinary consciousness of men, and does not take flights beyond—I am well aware, no philosophy can be. The nearest approach to it that can be made, consists in starting from the common external views, and drawing them into the speculative, step by step. For this purpose the method of definitions and axioms, with deductions therefrom, as employed by Spinoza, is more appropriate at first, and afterwards a gradual approach to the Dialectic, or true philosophic method. In the mathematical method (that of Spinoza just alluded to) the content may be speculative, but its form, never. Hence the student of philosophy needs only to turn his attention to the content at first; when that becomes in a measure familiar, he can then the more readily pass over to the true form of the speculative content, and thus achieve complete insight. A course of discipline in the speculative content, though under an inadequate form, would make a grand preparation for the study of Hegel or Plato; while a study of these, or, in short, of any writers who employ speculative methods in treating speculative content—a study of these without previous acquaintance with the content is well nigh fruitless. One needs only to read the comments of translators of Plato upon his speculative passages, or the prevailing verdicts upon Hegel, to be satisfied on this point.

The course that I shall here present will embody my own experience, to a great extent, in the chronological order of its development. Each lesson will endeavor to present an aperçu derived from some great philosopher. Those coming later will presuppose the earlier ones, and frequently throw new light upon them.

As one who undertakes the manufacture of an elegant piece of furniture needs carefully elaborated tools for that end, so must the thinker who wishes to comprehend the universe be equipped with the tools of thought, or else he will come off as poorly as he who should undertake to make a carved mahogany chair with no tools except his teeth and finger nails. What complicated machinery is required to transmute the rough ores into an American watch! And yet how common is the delusion that no elaboration of tools of thought is required to enable the commonest mind to manipulate the highest subjects of investigation. The alchemy that turned base metal into gold is only a symbol of that cunning alchemy of thought that by means of the philosopher’s stone (scientific method) dissolves the base facts of experience into universal truths.

The uninitiated regards the philosophic treatment of a theme as difficult solely by reason of its technical terms. “If I only understood your use of words, I think I should find no difficulty in your thought.” He supposes that under those bizarre terms there lurks only the meaning that he and others put into ordinary phrases. He does not seem to think that the concepts likewise are new. It is just as though an Indian were to say to the carpenter, “I could make as good work as you, if I only had the secret of using my finger-nails and teeth as you do the plane and saw.” Speculative philosophy—it cannot be too early inculcated—does not “conceal under cumbrous terminology views which men ordinarily hold.” The ordinary reflection would say that Being is the ground of thought, while speculative philosophy would say that thought is the ground of Being; whether of other being, or of itself as being—for it is causa sui.

Let us now address ourselves to the task of elaborating our technique—the tools of thought—and see what new worlds become accessible through our mental telescopes and microscopes, our analytical scalpels and psychological plummets.

I.—A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI.

A priori, as applied to knowledge, signifies that which belongs to the nature of the mind itself. Knowledge which is before experience, or not dependent on it, is a priori.

A posteriori or empirical knowledge is derived from experience.

A criterion to be applied in order to test the application of these categories to any knowledge in question, is to be found in universality and necessity. If the truth expressed has universal and necessary validity it must be a priori, for it could not have been derived from experience. Of empirical knowledge we can only say: “It is true so far as experience has extended.” Of a priori knowledge, on the contrary, we affirm: “It is universally and necessarily true and no experience of its opposite can possibly occur; from the very nature of things it must be so.”

II.—ANALYTICAL AND SYNTHETICAL.

A judgment which, in the predicate, adds nothing new to the subject, is said to be analytical, as e. g. “Horse is an animal;”—the concept “animal” is already contained in that of “horse.”

Synthetical judgments, on the contrary, add in the predicate something new to the conception of the subject, as e. g. “This rose is red,” or “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line;”—in the first judgment we have “red” added to the general concept “rose;” while in the second example we have straightness, which is quality, added to shortest, which is quantity.

III.—APODEICTICAL.

Omitting the consideration of a posteriori knowledge for the present, let us investigate the a priori in order to learn something of the constitution of the intelligence which knows—always a proper subject for philosophy. Since, moreover, the a priori analytical (“A horse is an animal”) adds nothing to our knowledge, we may confine ourselves, as Kant does, to a priori synthetical knowledge. The axioms of mathematics are of this character. They are universal and necessary in their application, and we know this without making a single practical experiment. “Only one straight line can be drawn between two points,” or the proposition: “The sum of the three angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles,”—these are true in all possible experiences, and hence transcend any actual experience. Take any a posteriori judgment, e. g. “All bodies are heavy,” and we see at once that it implies the restriction, “So far as we have experienced,” or else is a mere analytical judgment. The universal and necessary is sometimes called the apodeictical. The conception of the apodeictical lies at the basis of all true philosophical thinking. He who does not distinguish between apodeictic and contingent judgments must pause here until he can do so.

IV. SPACE AND TIME.

In order to give a more exhaustive application to our technique, let us seek the universal conditions of experience. The mathematical truths that we quoted relate to Space, and similar ones relate to Time. No experience would be possible without presupposing Time and Space as its logical condition. Indeed, we should never conceive our sensations to have an origin outside of ourselves and in distinct objects, unless we had the conception of Space a priori by which to render it possible. Instead, therefore, of our being able to generalize particular experiences, and collect therefrom the idea of Space and Time in general, we must have added the idea of Space and Time to our sensation before it could possibly become an experience at all. This becomes more clear when we recur to the apodeictic nature of Space and Time. Time and Space are thought as infinites, i. e. they can only be limited by themselves, and hence are universally continuous. But no such conception as infinite can be derived analytically from an object of experience, for it does not contain it. All objects of experience must be within Time and Space, and not vice versa. All that is limited in extent and duration presupposes Time and Space as its logical condition, and this we know, not from the senses but from the constitution of Reason itself. “The third side of a triangle is less than the sum of the two other sides.” This we never measured, and yet we are certain that we cannot be mistaken about it. It is so in all triangles, present, past, future, actual, or possible. If this was an inference a posteriori, we could only say: “It has been found to be so in all cases that have been measured and reported to us.”

V. MIND.

Mind has a certain a priori constitution; this is our inference. It must be so, or else we could never have any experience whatever. It is the only way in which the possibility of apodeictic knowledge can be accounted for. What I do not get from without I must get from within, if I have it at all. Mind, it would seem from this, cannot be, according to its nature, a finite affair—a thing with properties. Were it limited in Time or Space, it could never (without transcending itself) conceive Time and Space as universally continuous or infinite. Mind is not within Time and Space, it is as universal and necessary as the apodeictic judgments it forms, and hence it is the substantial essence of all that exists. Time and Space are the logical conditions of finite existences, and Mind is the logical condition of Time and Space. Hence it is ridiculous to speak of my mind and your mind, for mind is rather the universal substrate of all individuality than owned by any particular individual.

These results are so startling to the one who first begins to think, that he is tempted to reject the whole. If he does not do this, but scrutinizes the whole fabric keenly, he will discover what he supposes to be fallacies. We cannot anticipate the answer to his objections here, for his objections arise from his inability to distinguish between his imagination and his thinking and this must be treated of in the next chapter. Here, we can only interpose an earnest request to the reader to persevere and thoroughly refute the whole argument before he leaves it. But this is only one and the most elementary position from which the philosophic traveller sees the Eternal Verities. Every perfect analysis—no matter what the subject be—will bring us to the same result, though the degrees of concreteness will vary,—some leaving the solution in an abstract and vague form,—others again arriving at a complete and satisfactory view of the matter in detail.

SEED LIFE.
BY E. V.

Ah! woe for the endless stirring,

The hunger for air and light,

The fire of the blazing noonday

Wrapped round in a chilling night!

The muffled throb of an instinct

That is kin to the mystic To Be;

Strong muscles, cut with their fetters,

As they writhe with claim to be free.

A voice that cries out in the silence,

And is choked in a stifling air;

Arms full of an endless reaching,

While the “Nay” stands everywhere.

The burning of conscious selfhood,

That fights with pitiless fate!

God grant that deliverance stay not,

Till it come at last too late;

Till the crushed out instinct waver,

And fainter and fainter grow,

And by suicide, through unusing,

Seek freedom from its woe.

Oh! despair of constant losing

The life that is clutched in vain!

Is it death or a joyous growing

That shall put an end to pain?

A DIALOGUE ON IMMORTALITY.
BY ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.
(Translated from the German, by Chas. L. Bernays.)

Philalethes.—I could tell you that, after your death, you will be what you were previous to your birth; I could tell you that we are never born, and that we only seem to die—that we have always been precisely the same that we are now, and that we shall always remain the same—that Time is the apparatus which prevents us from being aware of all this; I could tell you that our consciousness stands always in the centre of Time—never on one of its termini; and that any one among us, therefore, has the immovable centre of the whole infinite Time in himself. I then could tell you that those who, by that knowledge, are assured that the present time always originates in ourselves, can never doubt the indestructibility of their own essence.

Thrasymachus.—All of that is too long and too ambiguous for me. Tell me, briefly, what I shall be after death.

Phil.—All and nothing.

Thras.—There we are! Instead of a solution to the problem you give me a contradiction; that is an old trick.

Phil.—To answer transcendental questions in language that is only made for immanent perceptions, may in fact lead us into contradictions.

Thras.—What do you mean by “transcendental” and “immanent” perceptions?

Phil.—Well! Transcendental perception is rather the knowledge, which, by exceeding any possibility of experience, tends to discover the essence of things as they are by themselves; immanent perception it is, if it keeps inside of the limits of experience. In this case, it can only speak of appearances. You, as an individual, end with your death. Yet individuality is not your true and final essence, but only a mere appearance of it. It is not the thing in itself, but only its appearance, established in the form of time, thereby having a beginning and an end. That which is essential in you, knows neither of beginning nor ending, nor of Time itself; it knows no limits such as belong to a given individuality, but exists in all and in each. In the first sense, therefore, you will become nothing after your death; in the second sense, you are and remain all. For that reason I said you would be all and nothing. You desired a short answer, and I believe that hardly a more correct answer could be given briefly. No wonder, too, that it contains a contradiction; for your life is in Time, while your immortality is in Eternity.

Thras.—Without the continuation of my individuality, I would not give a farthing for all your “immortality.”

Phil.—Perhaps you could have it even cheaper. Suppose that I warrant to you the continuation of your individuality, but under the condition that a perfectly unconscious slumber of death for three months should precede its resuscitation.

Thras.—Well, I accept the condition.

Phil.—Now, in an absolutely unconscious condition, we have no measure of time; hence it is perfectly indifferent whether, whilst we lie asleep in death in the unconscious world, three months or ten thousand years are passing away. We do not know either of the one or of the other, and have to accept some one’s word with regard to the duration of our sleep, when we awake. Hence it is indifferent to you whether your individuality is given back to you after three months or after ten thousand years.

Thras.—That I cannot deny.

Phil.—Now, suppose that after ten thousand years, one had forgotten to awake you at all, then I believe that the long, long state of non-being would become so habitual to you that your misfortune could hardly be very great. Certain it is, any way, that you would know nothing of it; nay, you would even console yourself very easily, if you were aware that the secret mechanism which now keeps your actual appearance in motion, had not ceased during all the ten thousand years for a single moment to establish and to move other beings of the same kind.

Thras.—In that manner you mean to cheat me out of my individuality, do you? I will not be fooled in that way. I have bargained for the continuation of my individuality, and none of your motives can console me for the loss of that; I have it at heart, and I never will abandon it.

Phil.—It seems that you hold individuality to be so noble, so perfect, so incomparable, that there can be nothing superior to it; you therefore would not like to exchange it for another one, though in that, you could live with greater ease and perfection.

Thras.—Let my individuality be as it may, it is always myself. It is I—I myself—who want to be. That is the individuality which I insist upon, and not such a one as needs argument to convince me that it may be my own or a better one.

Phil.—Only look about you! That which cries out—“I, I myself, wish to exist”—that is not yourself alone, but all that has the least vestige of consciousness. Hence this desire of yours, is just that which is not individual, but common rather to all without exception; it does not originate in individuality, but in the very nature of existence itself; it is essential to anybody who lives, nay, it is that through which it is at all; it seems to belong only to the individual because it can become conscious only in the individual. What cries in us so loud for existence, does so only through the mediation of the individual; immediately and essentially it is the will to exist or to live, and this will is one and the same in all of us. Our existence being only the free work of the will, existence can never fail to belong to it, as far, at least, as that eternally dissatisfied will, can be satisfied. The individualities are indifferent to the will; it never speaks of them; though it seems to the individual, who, in himself is the immediate percipient of it, as if it spoke only of his own individuality. The consequence is, that the individual cares for his own existence with so great anxiety, and that he thereby secures the preservation of his kind. Hence it follows that individuality is no perfection, but rather a restriction or imperfection; to get rid of it is not a loss but a gain. Hence, if you would not appear at once childish and ridiculous, you should abandon that care for mere individuality; for childish and ridiculous it will appear when you perceive your own essence to be the universal will to live.

Thras.—You yourself and all philosophers are childish and ridiculous, and in fact it is only for a momentary diversion that a man of good common sense ever consents to squander away an idle hour with the like of you. I leave your talk for weightier matters.

[The reader will perceive by the positions here assumed that Schopenhauer has a truly speculative stand-point; that he holds self-determination to be the only substantial (or abiding) reality. But while Aristotle and those like him have seized this more definitely as the self-conscious thinking, it is evident that Schopenhauer seizes it only from its immediate side, i. e. as the will. On this account he meets with some difficulty in solving the problem of immortality, and leaves the question of conscious identity hereafter, not a little obscure. Hegel, on the contrary, for whom Schopenhauer everywhere evinces a hearty contempt, does not leave the individual in any doubt as to his destiny, but shows how individuality and universality coincide in self-consciousness, so that the desire for eternal existence is fully satisfied. This is the legitimate result that Philalethes arrives at in his last speech, when he makes the individuality a product of the will; for if the will is the essential that he holds it to be, and the product of its activity is individuality, of course individuality belongs eternally to it. At the close of his Philosophy of Nature, (Encyclopædia, vol. II.,) Hegel shows how death which follows life in the mere animal—and in man as mere animal—enters consciousness as one of its necessary elements, and hence does not stand opposed to it as it does to animal life. Conscious being (Spirit or Mind as it may be called,) is therefore immortal because it contains already, within itself, its limits or determinations, and thus cannot, like finite things, encounter dissolution through external ones.—Ed.]

GOETHE’S THEORY OF COLORS.
From an exposition given before the St. Louis Philosophical Society, Nov. 2nd, 1866.

I.—Color arises through the reciprocal action of light and darkness.

(a.) When a light object is seen through a medium that dims it, it appears of different degrees of yellow; if the medium is dark or dense, the color is orange, or approaches red. Examples: the sun seen in the morning through a slightly hazy atmosphere appears yellow, but if the air is thick with mist or smoke the sun looks red.

(b.) On the other hand a dark object, seen through a medium slightly illuminated, looks blue. If the medium is very strongly illuminated, the blue approaches a light blue; if less so, then indigo; if still less, the deep violet appears. Examples: a mountain situated at a great distance, from which very few rays of light come, looks blue, because we see it through a light medium, the air illuminated by the sun. The sky at high altitudes appears of a deep violet; at still higher ones, almost perfectly black; at lower ones, of a faint blue. Smoke—an illuminated medium—appears blue against a dark ground, but yellow or fiery against a light ground.

(c.) The process of bluing steel is a fine illustration of Goethe’s theory. The steel is polished so that it reflects light like a mirror. On placing it in the charcoal furnace a film of oxydization begins to form so that the light is reflected through this dimming medium; this gives a straw color. Then, as the film thickens, the color deepens, passing through red to blue and indigo.

(d.) The prism is the grand instrument in the experimental field of research into light. The current theory that light, when pure, is composed of seven colors, is derived from supposed actual verifications with this instrument. The Goethean explanation is by far the simplest, and, in the end, it propounds a question which the Newtonian theory cannot answer without admitting the truth of Goethe’s theory.

II.—The phenomenon of refraction is produced by interposing different transparent media between the luminous object and the illuminated one, in such a manner that there arises an apparent displacement of one of the objects as viewed from the other. By means of a prism the displacement is caused to lack uniformity; one part of the light image is displaced more than another part; several images, as it were, being formed with different degrees of displacement, so that they together make an image whose edges are blurred in the line of displacement. If the displacement were perfectly uniform, no color would arise, as is demonstrated by the achromatic prism or lens. The difference of degrees of refraction causes the elongation of the image into a spectrum, and hence a mingling of the edges of the image with the outlying dark surface of the wall, (which dark surface is essential to the production of the ordinary spectrum). Its rationale is the following:

(a) The light image refracted by the prism is extended over the dark on one side, while the dark on the other side is extended over it.

(b) The bright over the dark produces the blue in different degrees. The side nearest the dark being the deepest or violet, and the side nearest the light image being the lightest blue.

(c) On the other side, the dark over light produces yellow in different degrees; nearest the dark we have the deepest color, (orange approaching to red) and on the side nearest the light, the light yellow or saffron tint.

(d) If the image is large and but little refracted (as with a water prism) there will appear between the two opposite colored edges a colorless image, proving that the colors arise from the mingling of the light and dark edges, and not from any peculiar property of the prism which should “decompose the ray of light,” as the current theory expresses it. If the latter theory were correct the decomposition would be throughout, and the whole image be colored.

(e) If the image is a small one, or it is very strongly refracted, the colored edges come together in the middle, and the mingling of the light yellow with the light blue produces green—a new color which did not appear so long as the light ground appeared in the middle.

(f) If the refraction is still stronger, the edges of the opposite colors lap still more, and the green vanishes. The Newtonian theory cannot explain this, but it is to be expected according to Goethe’s theory.

(g) According to Goethe’s theory, if the object were a dark one instead of a light one, and were refracted on a light surface, the order of colors would be reversed on each edge of the image. This is the same experiment as one makes by looking through a prism at the bar of a window appearing against the sky. Where in the light image we had the yellow colors we should now expect the blue, for now it is dark over light where before it was light over dark. So, also, where we had blue we should now have yellow. This experiment may be so conducted that the current doctrine that violet is refracted the most, and red the least, shall be refuted.

(h) This constitutes the experimentum crucis. If the prism be a large water prism, and a black strip be pasted across the middle of it, parallel with its axis, so that in the midst of the image a dark shadow intervenes, the spectrum appears inverted in the middle, so that the red is seen where the green would otherwise appear, and those rays supposed to be the least refrangible are found refracted the most.

(i) When the two colored edges do not meet in this latter experiment, we have blue, indigo, violet, as the order on one side; and on the other, orange, yellow, saffron; the deeper colors being next to the dark image. If the two colored edges come together the union of the orange with the violet produces the perfect red (called by Goethe “purpur”).

(j) The best method of making experiments is not the one that Newton employed—that of a dark room and a pencil of light—but it is better to look at dark and bright stripes on grounds of the opposite hue, or at the bars of a window, the prism being held in the hand of the investigator. In the Newtonian form of the experiment one is apt to forget the importance of the dark edge where it meets the light.

[For further information on this interesting subject the English reader is referred to Eastlake’s translation of Goethe’s Philosophy of Colors, published in London.]

THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
Vol. I. 1867. No. 2.

SECOND PART OF GOETHE’S FAUST.
[Translated from Rosenkrantz’s “Deutsche Literatur,” by D. J. Snider.]

Goethe began nothing if the whole of the work did not hover before his mind. By this determinateness of plan he preserved a most persevering attachment to the materials of which he had once laid hold; they were elements of his existence, which for him were immortal, because they constituted his inmost being. He could put off their execution for years, and still be certain that his love for them would return, that his interest in them would animate him anew. Through this depth of conception he preserved fresh to the end his original purpose; he needed not to fear that the fire of the first enthusiasm would go out; at the most different times he could take up his work again with youthful zeal and strength. Thus in the circle of his poetical labors, two conceptions that are in internal opposition to one another, accompanied him through his whole life. The one portrays a talented but fickle man, who, in want of culture, attaches himself to this person, then to that one, in order to become spiritually independent. This struggle carries him into the breadth of life, into manifold relations whose spirit he longs to seize and appropriate; such is Wilhelm Meister. The other is the picture of an absolutely independent personality that has cultivated its lordly power in solitary loftiness, and aspires boldly to subject the world to itself; such is Faust. In the development of both subjects there is a decisive turning-point which is marked in the first by the “Travels;” in the second, by the Second Part of the Tragedy. Up to this point, both in Wilhelm Meister and in Faust, subjective conditions prevail, which gradually purify themselves to higher views and aims. For the one, the betrothal with Natalia closes the world of wild, youthful desire; for the other, the death of Margaret has the same effect. The one steps into civil society and its manifold activity, with the earnest endeavor to comprehend all its elements, to acquire, preserve, and beautify property, and to assist in illuminating and ennobling social relations; the other takes likewise a practical turn, but from the summit of Society, from the stand-point of the State itself. If, therefore, in the apprenticeship and First Part of the Tragedy, on account of the excess of subjective conditions, a closer connection of the character and a passionate pathos are necessary, there appears, on the contrary, in the Travels and Second part of the Tragedy a thoughtfulness which moderates everything—a cool designingness; the particular elements are sharply characterized, but the personages seem rather as supporters of universal aims, in the accomplishment of which their own personality is submerged; the Universal and its language is their pathos, and the interest in their history, that before was so remarkably fascinating, is blunted of its keenness.

We have seen Faust grow, fragment by fragment, before our eyes. So long as there existed only a First Part, two views arose. The one maintained that it was in this incompleteness what it should be, a wonderful Torso; that this magnificent poem only as a fragment could reflect the World in order to indicate that Man is able to grasp the Universe in a one-sided, incomplete manner only; that as the poet touched the mysteries of the World, but did not give a complete solution, so the Enigmatical, the Prophetic, is that which is truly poetic, infinitely charming, really mystic. This view was considered as genial, particularly because it left to every one free play—in fact, invited every one in his imagination to fill up the outlines; for it could not be defended from a philosophic nor from an artistic standpoint. Knowing seeks not half knowledge, Art aims not at halfness of execution. If Dante in his Divine Comedy had neglected any element of nature or of history, if he had not wrought out all with equal perseverance in corresponding proportion, could it be said that his poem would stand higher without this completion? Or conversely, shall we praise it as a merit that Novalis’ Ofterdingen has remained mere fragments and sketches? This would be the same as if we should admire the Cologne Cathedral less than we now do were it complete. Another view supposed that a Second Part was indeed possible, and the question arose, in what manner shall this possibility be thought? Here again two opposite opinions showed themselves. According to the one, Faust must perish; reconciliation with God would be unbecoming to the northern nature of this Titanic character; the teeth-gnashing defiance, the insatiate restlessness, the crushing doubt, the heaven-deriding fierceness, must send him to hell. In this the spirit of the old legend was expressed as it was at the time of the Reformation—for in the middle ages the redemption of the sinner through the intercession of the Virgin Mary first appeared—as the Volksbuch simply but strikingly narrates it, as the Englishman, Marlowe, has dramatized it so excellently in his Doctor Faustus. But all this was not applicable to the Faust of Goethe, for the poet had in his mind an alteration of the old legend, and so another party maintained that Faust must be saved. This party also asserted that the indication of the poet in the Prologue led to the same conclusion; that God could not lose his bet against the Devil; that the destruction of Faust would be blasphemous irony on Divine Providence. This assertion of the necessity of Faust’s reconciliation found much favor in a time, like ours, which has renounced not indeed the consciousness and recognition of Evil, but the belief in a separate extra-human Devil; which purposes not merely the punishment but also the improvement of the criminal; which seeks even to annul the death penalty, and transfer the atonement for murder to the inner conscience and to the effacing power of the Mind. But how was Poetry to exhibit such a transition from internal strife to celestial peace? Some supposed, as Hinrichs, that since Faust’s despair resulted originally from science, which did not furnish to him that which it had at first promised, and since his childish faith had been destroyed by scepticism, he must be saved through the scientific comprehension of Truth, of the Christian Religion; that speculative Philosophy must again reconcile him with God, with the World, and with himself. They confessed indeed that this process—study and speculation—cannot be represented in poetry, and therefore a Second Part of Faust was not to be expected. Others, especially poets, took Faust in a more general sense; he was to penetrate not only Science but Life in its entirety; the most manifold action was to move him, and the sweat of labor was to be the penance which should bring him peace and furnish the clearness promised by the Lord. Several sought to complete the work—all with indifferent success.

In what manner the poet himself would add a Second Part to the First, what standpoint he himself would take, remained a secret. Now it is unsealed; the poem is unrolled before us complete; with wondering look we stand before it, with a beating heart we read it, and with modest anxiety, excited by a thousand feelings and misgivings, we venture cursorily to indicate the design of the great Master; for years shall pass away before the meaning of the all-comprehensive poem shall be unveiled completely in its details. Still this explanation of particulars in poetry is a subordinate matter. The main tendency of a poem must be seen upon its face, and it would be a sorry work if it did not excite a living interest the first time that it was offered to the enjoyment of a people—if this interest should result from microscopic explanations and fine unravelling of concealed allusions—if enthusiasm should not arise from the poetry as well as from the learning and acuteness of the poet. Such particulars, which are hard to understand, almost every great poem will furnish; latterly, the explanatory observations on epic poems have become even stereotyped; it must be possible to disregard them; through ignorance of them nothing essential must be lost.

The First Part had shown us Faust in his still cell, engaged in the study of all sciences. The results of his investigation did not satisfy the boundless seeker, and as an experiment he bound himself to the Devil to see if the latter could not slake his burning thirst.

Thus he rushed into Life. Earthly enjoyment surrounded him, Love enchained him, Desire drove him to sudden, to bad deeds; in the mad Walpurgisnach he reached the summit of waste worldliness. But deeper than the Devil supposed, Faust felt for his Margaret; he desired to save the unfortunate girl, but he was obliged to learn that this was impossible, but that only endurance of the punishment of crime could restore the harassed mind to peace. The simple story of love held everything together here in a dramatic form. The Prologue in Heaven, the Witch-kitchen, the Walpurgisnacht, and several contemplative scenes, could be left out, and there still would remain a theatrical Whole of remarkable effect.

The relation to Margaret—her death—had elevated Faust above everything subjective. In the continuation of his life, objective relations alone could constitute the motive of action. The living fresh breath of the First Part resulted just from this fact, that everything objective, universal, was seized from the point of subjective interest; in the Second Part the Universal, the Objective, stands out prominently; subjective interests appear only under the presupposition of the Objective; the form becomes allegorical.

A story, an action which rounds itself off to completion, is wanting, and therefore the dramatic warmth which pulsates through every scene of the First Part is no longer felt. The unity which is traced through the web of the manifold situations, is the universal tendency of Faust to create a satisfaction for himself through work. Mephistopheles has no longer the position of a being superior by his great understanding and immovable coldness, who bitterly mocks Faust’s striving, but he appears rather as a powerful companion who skillfully procures the material means for the aims of Faust, and, in all his activity, only awaits the moment when Faust shall finally acknowledge himself to be satisfied. But the striving of Faust is infinite; each goal, when once reached, is again passed by; nowhere does he rest, not in Society, not in Nature, not in Art, not in War, not in Industry; only the thought of Freedom itself, the presentiment of the happiness of standing with a free people upon a free soil wrung from the sea, thrills the old man with a momentary satisfaction—and he dies. Upon pictures and woodcuts of the middle ages representations of dying persons are found, in which the Devil on one side of the death-bed and angels on the other await eagerly the departing soul to pull it to themselves. Goethe has revived this old idea of a jealousy and strife between the angels and the Devil for Man. Mephistopheles, with his horde of devils, struggles to carry away the soul of Faust to hell, but he forgets himself in unnatural lust, and the angels bear the immortal part of Faust to that height where rest and illumination of the dying begin.

Such an allegorical foundation could not be developed otherwise than in huge masses; the division of each mass in itself, so that all the elements of the thought lying at the bottom should appear, was the proper object of the composition. The First Part could also be called allegorical, in so far as it reflected the universal Essence of Spirit in the Individual; but it could not be said of it in any other sense than of every poem; Allegory in its stricter sense was not to be found; the shapes had all flesh and blood, and no design was felt. In the Second Part everything passes over into the really Allegorical, to which Goethe, the older he grew, seems to have had the greater inclination; the Xenien, the Trilogie der Leidenschaft, the Lieder zur Loge, the Maskenzüge, Epimenides Erwachen, the cultivation of the Eastern manners, all proceeded from a didactic turn which delighted in expressing itself in gnomes, pictures, and symbolical forms. With wonderful acuteness, Goethe has always been able to seize the characteristic determinations, and unfold them in neat, living language; however, it lies in the nature of such poems that they exercise the reflective faculty more than the heart, and it was easy to foresee that the Second Part of Faust would never acquire the popularity of the First Part; that it would not, as the latter, charm the nation, and educate the people to a consciousness of itself, but that it would always have a sort of esoteric existence. Many will be repelled by the mythological learning of the second and third acts; and the more so, as they do not see themselves recompensed by the dialectic of an action; however, we would unhesitatingly defend the poet against this reproach; a poem which has to compass the immeasurable material of the world, cannot be limited in this respect. What learning has not Dante supposed in his readers? Humbly have we sought it, in order to acquire an understanding of his poem, in the certainty of being richly rewarded; the censure which has been cast upon it for this reason has effected nothing. Indeed, such fault-finders would here forget what the first acknowledged Part of Faust has compelled them to learn. With this difference of plan, the style must also change. Instead of dramatic pathos, because action is wanting, description, explanation, indication, have become necessary; and instead of the lively exchange of dialogue, the lyrical portion has become more prominent, in order to embody with simplicity the elements of the powerful world-life. The descriptions of nature deserve to be mentioned in particular. The most wanton fancy, the deepest feeling, the most accurate knowledge, and the closest observation into the individual, prevail in all these pictures with an indescribable charm. We shall now give a short account of the contents of each act. In a more complete exposition we would point out the places in which the power of the particular developments centers; in these outlines it is our design to confine ourselves to tracing out the universal meaning. To exhibit by single verses and songs the wonderful beauty of the language, particularly in the lyrical portions, would seem to us as superfluous as the effort to prove the existence of a divine Providence by anecdotes of strange coincidences.

The first act brings us into social life; a multitude of shapes pass by us—the most different wishes, opinions and humors are heard; still, a secret unity, which we shall note even more closely, pervades the confused tumult. In a delightful spot, lying upon the flowery sward, we see Faust alone, tormented by deep pangs, seeking rest and slumber. Out of pure pity, indifferent whether the unfortunate man is holy or wicked, elves hover around him and fan him to sleep, in order that the past may be sunk into the Lethe of forgetfulness; otherwise, a continuance of life and endeavor is impossible. The mind has the power to free itself from the past, and throw it behind itself, and treat it as if it had never been. The secret of renewing ourselves perpetually consists in this, that we can destroy ourselves within ourselves, and, as a veritable Phœnix, be resurrected from the ashes of self-immolation. Still, this negative action suffices not for our freedom; the Positive must be united to us; there must arise, with “tremendous quaking,” the sun of new activity and fresh endeavor, whereby the stillness of nightly repose, the evanishment of all thoughts and feelings which had become stable, passes away in refreshing slumber. Faust awakened, feels every pulse of nature beating with fresh life. The glare of the pure sunlight dazzles him—the fall of waters through the chasms of the rock depicts to him his own unrest; but from the sunlight and silvery vapor of the whirlpool there is created the richly colored rainbow, which is always quietly glistening, but is forever shifting: it is Life. After this solitary encouragement to new venture and endeavor, the court of the Emperor receives us, where a merry masquerade is about to take place. But first, from all sides, the prosaic complaints of the Chancellor, the Steward, the Commander-in-Chief, the Treasurer, fall upon the ear of the Emperor; money, the cement of all relations, is wanting to the State; for commerce, for pleasure, for luxury, money is the indispensable basis. At this point, Mephistopheles presses forward to the place of the old court-fool, who has just disappeared, and excites the hope of bringing to light concealed treasure. To the Chancellor this way seems not exactly Christian, the multitude raises a murmur of suspicion, the Astrologer discusses the possibility—and the proposition is adopted. After this hopeful prospect, the masquerade can come off without any secret anxieties disturbing their merriment. The nature of the company is represented in a lively manner. No one is what he seems to be; each has thrown over himself a concealing garment; each knows of the other that he is not that which his appearance or his language indicates; this effort to hide his own being, to pretend and to dream himself into something different from himself—to make himself a riddle to others in all openness, is the deepest, most piquant charm of social interests.

The company will have enjoyment—it unites itself with devotion to the festive play, and banishes rough egotism, whose casual outbreaks the watchful herald sharply reproves; but still, in the heart of every one, there remains some intention, which is directed to the accomplishment of earthly aims. The young Florentine women want to please; the mother wishes her daughter to make the conquest of a husband; the fishermen and bird-catchers are trying their skill; the wood-chopper, buffoons, and parasites, are endeavoring, as well as they can, to make themselves valid; the drunkard forgets everything over his bottle; the poets, who could sing of any theme, drown each other’s voices in their zeal to be heard, and to the satirist there scarcely remains an opportunity for a dry sarcasm. The following allegorical figures represent to us the inner powers which determine social life. First, the Graces appear, for the first demand of society is to behave with decency; more earnest are the Parcæ, the continuous change of duration—still, they work only mechanically; but the Furies, although they come as beautiful maids, work dynamically through the excitement of the passions. Here the aim is to conquer. Victoria is throned high upon a sure-footed elephant, which Wisdom guides with skilful wand, while Fear and Hope go along on each side; between these the Deed wavers until it has reached the proud repose of victory. But as soon as this happens, the quarrelsome, hateful Thersites breaks forth, to soil the glory with his biting sneer. But his derision effects nothing. The Herald, as the regulating Understanding, and as distributive Justice, can reconcile the differences and mistakes which have arisen, and he strikes the scoffer in such a manner that he bursts and turns into an adder and a bat. Gradually the company returns to its external foundation; the feeling of Wealth must secure to it inexhaustible pleasure. But Wealth is two-fold: the earthly, money—the heavenly, poetry. Both must be united in society, if it would not feel weak and weary. The Boy Driver, that is, Poetry, which knows how to bring forth the Infinite in all the relations of life, and through the same to expand, elevate and pacify the heart, is acknowledged by Plutus, the God of common riches, as the one who can bestow that which he himself is too poor to give. In the proud fullness of youth, bounding lightly around with a whip in his hand, the lovely Genius who rules all hearts, drives with horses of winged speed through the crowd. The buffoon of Plutus, lean Avarice, is merrily ridiculed by the women; Poetry, warned by the fatherly love of Plutus, withdraws from the tumult which arises for the possession of the golden treasures. Gnomes, Giants, Satyrs, Nymphs, press on with bacchantic frenzy; earthly desire glows through the company, and it celebrates great Pan, Nature, as its God, as the Giver of powerful Wealth and fierce Lust. A whirling tumult threatens to seize hold of everybody—a huge tongue of flame darts over all; but the majesty of the Emperor, the self-conscious dignity of man, puts an end to the juggling game of the half-unchained Earth-spirit, and restores spiritual self-possession.

Still Mephistopheles keeps the promise which he has made. He succeeds in revivifying the company by fresh sums of money, obtained in conformity with his nature, not by unearthing buried treasures from the heart of the mountains by means of the wishing-rod, but by making paper-money! It is not, indeed, real coin, but the effect is the same, for in society everything rests upon the caprice of acceptance; its own life and preservation are thereby guaranteed by itself, and its authority, here represented by the Emperor, has infinite power. The paper notes, this money stamped by the airy imagination, spread everywhere confidence and lively enjoyment. It is evident that the means of prosperity have not been wanting, nor stores of eatables and drinkables, but a form was needed to set the accumulated materials in motion, and to weave them into the changes of circulation. With delight, the Chancellor, Steward, Commander-in-Chief, Treasurer, report the flourishing condition of the army and the citizens; presents without stint give rise to the wildest luxury, which extends from the nobles of the realm down to the page and fool, and in such joyfulness everybody can unhesitatingly look about him for new means of pleasure. Because the company has its essence in the production of the notes, its internal must strive for the artistic; every one feels best when he, though known, remains unrecognized, and thus a theatrical tendency developes itself. For here the matter has nothing to do with the dramatic as real art, in reference to the egotism which binds the company together. The theatre collects the idle multitude, and it has nothing to do but to see, to hear, to compare, and to judge. Theatrical enjoyment surpasses all other kinds in comfort, and is at the same time the most varied. The Emperor wishes that the great magician, Faust, should play a drama before himself and the court, and show Paris and Helen. To this design Mephistopheles can give no direct aid; in a dark gallery he declares, in conversation with Faust, that the latter himself must create the shapes, and therefore must go to the Mothers. Faust shudders at their names. Mephistopheles gives him a small but important key, with which he must enter the shadowy realm of the Mothers for a glowing tripod, and bring back the same; by burning incense upon it, he would be able to create whatever shape he wished. As a reason why he is unable to form them, Mephistopheles says expressly that he is in the service of big-necked dwarfs and witches, and not of heroines, and that the Heathen have their own Hell, with which he, the Christian and romantic Devil, has nothing to do. And yet he possesses the key to it, and hence it is not unknown to him. And why does Faust shudder at the names of the Mothers? Who are these women who are spoken of so mysteriously? If it were said, the Imagination, Mothers would be an inept expression; if it were said, the Past, Present and Future, Faust’s shuddering could not be sufficiently accounted for, since how should Time frighten him who has already lived through the terrors of Death? From the predicates which are attached to the Mothers, how they everlastingly occupy the busy mind with all the forms of creation; how from the shades which surround them in thousand-fold variety, from the Being which is Nothing, All becomes; how from their empty, most lonely depth the living existence comes forth to the surface of Appearance; from such designations scarcely anything else can be understood by the realm of the Mothers than the world of Pure Thought. This explanation might startle at the first glance, but we need only put Idea for Thought—we need only remember the Idea-world of Plato in order to comprehend the matter better. The eternal thoughts, the Ideas, are they not the still, shadowy abyss, in which blooming Life buds, into whose dark, agitated depths it sends down its roots? Mephistopheles has the key; for the Understanding, which is negative Determination, is necessary in order not to perish in the infinite universality of Thought; it is itself, however, only the Negative, and therefore cannot bring the actual Idea, Beauty, to appearance, but he, in his devilish barrenness, must hand this work over to Faust; he can only recommend to the latter moderation, so as not to lose himself among the phantoms, and he is curious to know whether Faust will return. But Faust shudders because he is not to experience earthly solitude alone, like that of the boundless ocean, when yet star follows star, and wave follows wave; the deepest solitude of the creative spirit, the retirement into the invisible, yet almighty Thought, the sinking into the eternal Idea is demanded of him. Whoever has had the boldness of this Thought—whoever has ventured to penetrate into the magic circle of the Logical, and its world-subduing Dialectic, into this most simple element of infinite formation and transformation, has overcome all, and has nothing more to fear, as the Homunculus afterwards expresses it, because he has beheld the naked essence, because Necessity has stripped herself to his gaze. But it is also to be observed that the tripod is mentioned, for by this there is an evident allusion to subjective Enthusiasm and individual Imagination, by which the Idea in Art is brought out of its universality to the determinate existence of concrete Appearance. Beauty is identical in content with Truth, but its form belongs to the sphere of the Sensuous.—While Faust is striving after Beauty, Mephistopheles is besieged by women in the illuminated halls, to improve their looks and assist them in their love affairs. After this delicate point is settled, no superstition is too excessive, no sympathetic cure too strange—as, for example, a tread of the foot—and the knave fools them until they, with a love-lorn page, become too much for him.—Next the stage, by its decorations, which represents Grecian architecture, causes a discussion of the antique and romantic taste; Mephistopheles has humorously taken possession of the prompter’s box, and so the entertainment goes on in parlor fashion, till Faust actually appears, and Paris and Helen, in the name of the all-powerful Mothers, are formed from the incense which ascends in magic power. The Public indulges itself in an outpouring of egotistical criticism; the men despise the unmanly Paris, and interest themselves deeply in the charms of Helen; the women ridicule the coquettish beauty with envious moralizing, and fall in love for the nonce with the fair youth. But as Paris is about to lead away Helen, Faust, seized with the deepest passion for her wonderful beauty, falls upon the stage and destroys his own work. The phantoms vanish; still the purpose remains to obtain Helen; that is, the artist must hold on to the Ideal, but he must know that it is the Ideal. Faust confuses it with common Actuality, and he has to learn that absolute Beauty is not of an earthly, but of a fleeting, etherial nature.

The second act brings us away from our well-known German home to the bottom of the sea and its mysterious secrets. Faust is in search of Helen; where else can he find her, perfect Beauty, than in Greece? But first he seeks her, and meets therefore mere shapes, which unfold themselves from natural existence, which are not yet actual humanity. Indeed, since he seeks natural Beauty—for spiritual Beauty he has already enjoyed in the heavenly disposition of Margaret—the whole realm of Nature opens upon us; all the elements appear in succession; the rocks upon which the earnest Sphinxes rest, in which the Ants, Dactyls, Gnomes work, give the surrounding ground; the moist waters contain in their bosom the seeds of all things. The holy fire infolds it with eager flame: according to the old legend, Venus sprang from the foam of the sea.—Next we find ourselves at Wittenberg, in the ancient dwelling, where it is easy to see by the cob-webs, dried-up ink, tarnished paper, and dust, that many years have passed since Faust went out into the world. Mephistopheles, from the old coat in which he once instructed the knowledge-seeking pupil, shakes out the lice and crickets which swarm around the old master with a joyful greeting, as also Parseeism makes Ahriman the father of all vermin. Faust lies on his bed, sleeps and dreams the lustful story of Leda, which, in the end, is nothing more than the most decent and hence producible representation of generation. While Mephistopheles in a humorous, and as well as the Devil can, even in an idyllic manner, amuses himself, while he inquires sympathetically after Wagner of the present Famulus, a pupil who, in the meanwhile, has become a Baccalaureate, comes storming in, in order to see what the master is doing who formerly inculcated such wise doctrines, and in order to show what a prodigiously reasonable man he has himself become. A persiflage of many expressions of the modern German Natural Philosophy seems recognizable in this talk. Despising age, praising himself as the dawn of a new life, he spouts his Idealism, by means of which he creates everything, Sun, Moon and Stars, purely by the absoluteness of subjective Thought. Mephistopheles, though the pupil assails him bitterly, listens to his wise speeches with lamb-like patience, and after this refreshing scene, goes into Wagner’s laboratory. The good man has stayed at home, and has applied himself to Chemistry, to create, through its processes, men. To his tender, humane, respectable, intelligent mind, the common way of begetting children is too vulgar and unworthy of spirit. Science must create man; a real materialism will produce him. Mephistopheles comes along just at this time, to whom Wagner beckons silence, and whispers anxiously to him his undertaking, as in the glass retort the hermaphroditic boy, the Homunculus, begins to stir. But alas! the Artificial requires enclosed space. The poor fellow can live only in the glass retort, the outer world is too rough for him, and still he has the greatest desire to be actually born. A longing, universal feeling for natural life sparkles from him with clear brilliancy, and cousin Mephistopheles takes him along to the classic Walpurgisnacht, where Homunculus hopes to find a favorable moment. Mephistopheles is related to the little man for this reason, because the latter is only the product of nature, because God’s breath has not been breathed into him as into a real man.

After these ironical scenes, the fearful night of the Pharsalian Fields succeeds, where the antique world terminated its free life. This plain, associated with dark remembrances and bloody shadows, is the scene of the Classical Walpurgisnacht. Goethe could choose no other spot, for just upon this battle-field the spirit of Greek and Roman antiquity ceased to be a living actuality. As an external reason, it is well known that Thessaly was to the ancients the land of wizards, and especially of witches, so that from this point of view the parallel with the German Blocksberg is very striking. Faust, driven by impatience to obtain Helen, is in the beginning sent from place to place to learn her residence, until Chiron takes him upon the neck which had once borne that most loving beauty, and with a passing sneer at the conjectural troubles of the Philologist, tells him of the Argonauts, of the most beautiful man, of Hercules, until he stops his wild course at the dwelling of the prophetic Manto, who promises to lead Faust to Helen on Olympus. Mephistopheles wanders in the meanwhile among Sphinxes, Griffons, Sirens, etc. To him, the Devil of the Christian and Germanic world, this classic ground is not at all pleasing; he longs for the excellent Blocksberg of the North, and its ghostly visages; with the Lamiæ indeed he resolves to have his own sport, but is roguishly bemocked; finally, he comes to the horrible Phorcyads, and after their pattern he equips himself with one eye and a tusk for his own amusement; that is, he becomes the absolutely Ugly, while Faust is wooing the highest Beauty. In the Christian world the Devil is also represented as fundamentally ugly and repulsive; but he can also, under all forms, appear as an angel of light. In the Art-world, on the contrary, he can be known only as the Ugly. In all these scenes there is a mingling of the High and the Low, of the Horrible and the Ridiculous, of vexation and whimsicality, of the Enigmatical and the Perspicuous, so that no better contradictions could be wished for a Walpurgisnacht. The Homunculus on his part is ceaselessly striving to come to birth, and betakes himself to Thales and Anaxagoras, who dispute whether the world arose in a dry or wet way. Thales leads the little man to Nereus, who, however, refuses to aid the seeker, partly because he has become angry with men, who, like Paris and Ulysses, have always acted against his advice, and partly because he is about to celebrate a great feast. Afterwards they go to Proteus, who at first is also reticent, but soon takes an interest in Homunculus, as he beholds his shining brilliancy, for he feels that he is related to the changing fire, and gives warning that as the latter can become everything, he should be careful about becoming a man, for it is the most miserable of all existences. In the meanwhile, the Peneios roars; the earth-shaking Seismos breaks forth with a loud noise; the silent and industrious mountain-spirits become wakeful. But always more clearly the water declares itself as the womb of all things; the festive train of the Telchines points to the hoary Cabiri; bewitchingly resound the songs of the Sirens; Hippocamps, Tritons, Nereids, Pselli and Marsi arise from the green, pearl-decked ground; the throne of Nereus and Galatea arches over the crystalline depths; at their feet the eager Homunculus falls to pieces, and all-moving Eros in darting flames streams forth. Ravishing songs float aloft, celebrating the holy elements, which the ever-creating Love holds together and purifies. Thales is just as little in the right as Anaxagoras; together, both are right, for Nature is kindled to perpetual new life by the marriage of Fire and Water.

The difference between this Walpurgisnacht and the one in the First Part lies in the fact, that the principle of the latter is the relation of Spirit to God. In the Christian world the first question is, what is the position of man towards God; therefore there appear forms which are self-contradictory, lacerated spiritually, torn in pieces by the curse of condemnation to all torture. Classic Life has for its basis the relation to Nature; the mysterious Cabiri were only the master-workmen of Nature. Nature finds in man her highest goal; in his fair figure, in the majesty of his form she ends her striving; and therefore the contradictions of the classic Walpurgisnacht are not so foreign to Mephistopheles, who has to do with Good and Bad, that he does not feel his contact with them, but still they are not native to him. The general contradiction which we meet with, and which also in Mephistopheles expresses itself by the cloven foot at least, is the union of the human and animal frame; the human is at first only half existent, on earth in Sphinxes, Oreads, Sirens, Centaurs; in water, in Hippocamps, Tritons, Nymphs, Dorids, etc. For the fair bodies of the latter still share the moist luxuriance of their element. Thus Nature expands itself in innumerable creations in order to purify itself in man, in the self-conscious spirit, in order to pacify and shut off in him the infinite impulse to formation, because it passes beyond him to no new form. He is the embodied image of God. The inclosed Homunculus, with his fiery trembling eagerness to pass over into an independent actuality, is, as it were, the serio-comic representation of this tendency, until he breaks the narrow glass, and now is what he should be, the union of the elements, for this is Eros according to the most ancient Greek conception, as we still find even in the Philosophers.

In the third act Goethe has adhered to the old legend, according to which, Faust, by means of Mephistopheles, obtained Helen as a concubine, and begat a son, Justus Faustus. Certainly, the employment of this feature was very difficult; and still, even in our days, a poet, L. Bechstein, in his Faust, has been wrecked upon this rock. He has Helen marry Faust; they beget a child; but finally, when Faust makes his will, and turns away unlovingly from wife and child, it is discovered that the Grecian Helen, who in the copperplates is also costumed completely in the antique manner, is a German countess of real flesh and blood, who has been substituted by the Devil; an undeceiving which ought to excite the deepest sympathy. Goethe has finely idealized this legend; he has expressed therein the union of the romantic and classic arts. The third act, this Phantasmagory, is perhaps the most perfect of all, and executed in the liveliest manner. As noble as is the diction of the first and second acts, especially in the lyrical portions, it is here nevertheless by far surpassed. Such a majesty and simplicity, such strength and mildness, unity and variety, in so small a space, are astonishing. First resounds the interchange of the dignity of Æschylus and Sophocles, with the sharp-steeled wit of Aristophanes; then is heard the tone of the Spanish romances, an agreeable, iambic measure, a sweet, ravishing melody; finally, new styles break forth, like the fragments of a prophecy; ancient and modern rhythms clash, and the harmony is destroyed.—Helen returns, after the burning of Troy, to the home of her spouse, Menelaus; the stewardess, aged, wrinkled, ugly, but experienced and intelligent, Phorcyas, receives her mistress in the citadel by command. Opposed to Beauty, as was before said, Mephistopheles can only appear as ugliness, because in the realm of beautiful forms, the Ugly is the Wicked. There arises a quarrel between the graceful, yet pretentious youth of the Chorus, and world-wise, yet stubborn Old Age. Helen has to appease it, and she learns with horror from Phorcyas that Menelaus is going to sacrifice her.—Still, (as on the one hand Grecian fugitives, after the conquest of Constantinople, instilled everywhere into German Life the taste for classic Beauty, and as, on the other hand, one of the Ottomans in Theophania—like Faust—won a Helen, and thereby everywhere arose a striving after the appropriation of the Antique,) the old stewardess saves her, and bears her through the air together with her beautiful train, to the Gothic citadel of Faust, where the humble and graceful behavior of the iron men towards the women, in striking contrast to their hard treatment on the banks of the Eurotas, at once wins the female heart. The watchman of the tower, Lynceus, lost in wondering delight over the approaching beauty, forgets to announce her, and has brought upon himself a heavy punishment; but Helen, the cause of his misdemeanor, is to be judge in his case, and she pardons him.

Faust and all his vassals do homage to the powerful beauty, in whom the antique pathos soon disappears. In the new surroundings, in the mutual exchange of quick and confiding love, the sweet rhyme soon flows from their kissing lips. An attack of Menelaus interrupts the loving courtship; but Valor, which in the battle for Beauty and favor of the ladies, seeks its highest honor and purport, is unconquerable, and the swift might of the army victoriously opposes Menelaus. Christian chivalry protects the jewel of beauty which has fled to it for safety, against all barbarism pressing on from the East.—Thus the days of the lovers pass rapidly away in secret grottoes amid pastoral dalliance; as once Mars refreshed himself in the arms of Venus, so in the Middle Ages knights passed gladly from the storm of war to the sweet service of women in quiet trustfulness. Yet the son whom they beget, longs to free himself from this idle, Arcadian life. The nature of both the mother and the father drives him forward, and soon consummates the matter. Beautiful and graceful as Helen, the insatiate longing for freedom glows in him as in Faust. He strikes the lyre with wonderful, enchanting power; he revels wildly amid applauding maidens; he rushes from the bottom of the valley to the tops of the mountains, to see far out into the world, and to breathe freely in the free air. His elastic desire raises him, a second Icarus, high in the clouds; but he soon falls dead at the feet of the parents, while an aureola, like a comet, streaks the Heavens. Thus perished Lord Byron. He is a poet more romantic than Goethe, to whom, however, Art gave no final satisfaction, because he had a sympathy for the sufferings of nations and of mankind, which called him pressingly to action. His poems are full of this striving. In them he weeps away his grief for freedom. Walter Scott, who never passed out of the Middle Ages, is read more than Byron. But Byron is more powerful than he, because the Idea took deeper root, and that demoniacal character concentrated in itself all the struggles of our agitated time. Divine poesy softened not the wild sorrow of his heart, and the sacrifice of himself for the freedom of a beloved people and land could not reproduce classic Beauty. The fair mother, who evidently did not understand the stormy, self-conscious character of her son, sinks after him into the lower world. As everything in this phantasmagory is allegorical, I ask whether this can mean anything else than that freedom is necessary for beauty, and beauty also for freedom? Euphorion is boundless in his striving; the warnings of the parents avail not. He topples over into destruction. But Helen, i.e. Beauty, cannot survive him, for all beauty is the expression of freedom, of independence, although it does not need to know the fact. Only Faust, who unites all in himself, who strives to reach beyond Nature and Art, Present and Past, that is, the knowing of the True, survives her; upon her garments, which expand like a cloud, he moves forth. What remains now, since the impulse of spiritual Life, the clarification of Nature in Art, the immediate spiritual Beauty, have vanished? Nothing but Nature in her nakedness, whose choruses of Oreads, Dryads and Nymphs swarm forth into the mountains, woods and vineyards, for bacchantic revelry; an invention which belongs to the highest effort of all poetry. It is a great kindness in the Devil, when Phorcyas at last discloses herself as Mephistopheles, and where there is need, offers herself as commentator.

The life of Art, of Beauty, darkens like a mist; upon the height of the mountain, Faust steps out of the departing cloud, and looks after it as it changes to other forms. His restless mind longs for new activity. He wants to battle with the waters, and from them win land; that is, the land shall be his own peculiar property, since he brings it forth artificially. As that money which he gave to the Emperor was not coined from any metal, but was a product of Thought; as that Beauty which charmed him was sought with trouble, and wrung from Nature, and as he, seizing the sword for the protection of Beauty, exchanged Love for the labor of chivalry,—so the land, the new product of his endeavor, not yet is, but he will first create it by means of his activity. A war of the Emperor with a pretender gives him an opportunity to realize his wish. He supports the Emperor in the decisive battle. Mephistopheles is indifferent to the Right and to freedom; the material gain of the war is the principal thing with him; so he takes along the three mighty robbers, Bully, Havequick and Holdfast. (See 2d Samuel, 23: 8.) The elements must also fight—the battle is won—and the grateful Emperor grants the request of Faust to leave the sea-shore for his possession. The State is again pacified by the destruction of the pretender; a rich booty in his camp repays many an injury; the four principal offices promise a joyful entertainment; but the Church comes in to claim possession of the ground, capital and interest, in order that the Emperor may be purified from the guilt of having had dealings with the suspicious magician. Humbly the Emperor promises all; but as the archbishop demands tithe from the strand of the sea which is not yet in existence, the Emperor turns away in great displeasure. The boundless rapacity of the Church causes the State to rise up against it. This act has not the lyrical fire of the previous ones; the action, if the war can thus be called, is diffuse; the battle, as broad as it is, is without real tension; the three robbers are allegorically true, if we look at the meaning which they express, but are in other respects not very attractive. In all the brilliant particulars, profound thoughts, striking turns, piquant wit, and wise arrangement, there is still wanting the living breath, the internal connection to exhibit a complete picture of the war. And still, from some indications, we may believe that this tediousness is designed, in order to portray ironically the dull uniformity, the spiritual waste of external political life, and the littleness of Egotism. For it must be remembered that the war is a civil war—the genuine poetic war, where people is against people, falls into Phantasmagory. The last scene would be in this respect the most successful. The continued persistency of the spiritual lord to obtain in the name of the heavenly church, earthly possessions, the original acquiescence of the Emperor, but his final displeasure at the boundless shamelessness of the priest, are excellently portrayed, and the pretentious pomp of the Alexandrine has never done better service.

In the fifth act we behold a wanderer, who is saved from shipwreck, and brought to the house of an aged couple, Philemon and Baucis. He visits the old people, eats at their frugal table, sees them still happy in their limited sphere, but listens with astonishment to them, as they tell of the improvements of their rich neighbor, and they express the fear of being ousted by him. Still, they pull the little bell of their chapel to kneel and pray with accustomed ceremony in presence of the ancient God.—The neighbor is Faust. He has raised dams, dug canals, built palaces, laid out ornamental gardens, educated the people, sent out navies. The Industry of our time occupies him unceasingly; he revels in the wealth of trade, in the turmoil of men, in the commerce of the world. That those aged people still have property in the middle of his possessions is extremely disagreeable to him, for just this little spot where the old mossy church stands, the sound of whose bell pierces his heart, where the airy lindens unfold themselves to the breeze, he would like to have as a belvedere to look over all his creations at a glance. Like a good man whose head is always full of plans, he means well to the people, and is willing to give them larger possessions where they can quietly await death, and he sends Mephistopheles to treat with them. But the aged people, who care not for eating and drinking, but for comfort, will not leave their happy hut; their refusal brings on disputes, and the dwelling, together with the aged couple and the lindens, perishes by fire in this conflict between the active Understanding and the poetry of Feeling, which, in the routine of pious custom, clings to what is old. Faust is vexed over the turn which affairs have taken, particularly over the loss of the beautiful lindens, but consoles himself with the purpose to build in their stead a watch-tower. Then before the palace, appear in the night, announcing death, four hoary women, Starvation, Want, Guilt and Care, as the Furies who accompany the external prosperity of our industrial century. Still, Care can only press through the key-hole of the chamber of the rich man, and places herself with fearful suddenness at his side. The Negative of Thought is to be excluded by no walls. But Faust immediately collects himself again; with impressive clearness he declares his opinion of life, of the value of the earthly Present; Care he hates, and does not recognize it as an independent existence. She will nevertheless make herself known to him at the end of his life, and passes over his face and makes him blind. Still, Faust expresses no solicitude, though deprived of his eyes by Care; no alteration is noticed in him, he is bent only upon his aims; the energy of his tension remains uniform: Spirit, Thought, is the true eye; though the external one is blinded, the internal one remains open and wakeful. The transition from this point to the conclusion is properly this: that from the activity of the finite Understanding, only a Finite can result. All industry, for whose development Mephistopheles is so serviceable, as he once was in war, cannot still the hunger of Spirit for Spirit. Industry creates only an aggregate of prosperity, no true happiness. Our century is truly great in industrial activity. But it should only be the means, the point of entrance for real freedom, which is within itself the Infinite. And Faust has to come to this, even on the brink of the grave. Mephistopheles, after this affair with Care, causes the grave of the old man to be dug by the shaking Lemures. Faust supposes, as he hears the noise of the spades, that his workmen are busily employed. Eagerly he talks over his plans with Mephistopheles, and at last he glows at the good fortune of standing upon free ground with a free people. Daily he feels that man must conquer Freedom and Life anew, and the presentiment that the traces of his uninterrupted striving would not perish in the Ages, is the highest moment of his whole existence. This confession of satisfaction kills him, and he falls to the earth dead. After trying everything, after turning from himself to the future of the race, after working unceasingly, he has ripened to the acknowledgement that the Individual only in the Whole, that Man only in the freedom of humanity can have repose. Mephistopheles believes that he has won his bet, causes the jaws of Hell to appear, and commands the Devils to look to the soul of Faust. But Angels come, strewing roses from above; the roses, the flowers of Love, cause pain where they fall; the Devils and Mephistopheles himself complain uproariously. He lashes himself with the falling roses, which cling to his neck like pitch and brimstone, and burn deeper than Hell-fire. First, he berates the Angels as hypocritical puppets, yet, more closely observed, he finds that they are most lovely youths. Only the long cloaks fit them too modestly, for, from behind particularly, the rascals had a very desirable look. While he is seeking out a tall fellow for himself, and is plunged wholly in his pederastic lust, the Angels carry away the immortal part of Faust to Heaven. Mephistopheles now reproaches himself with the greatest bitterness, because he has destroyed, through so trivial a desire, the fruits of so long a labor. This reductio ad absurdum of the Devil must be considered as one of the happiest strokes of humor. The holy innocence of the Angels is not for him; he sees only their fine bodies; his lowness carries him into the Unnatural and Accidental, just where his greatest interest and egotism come in play. This result will surprise most people; but if they consider the nature of the Devil, it will be wholly satisfactory; in all cunning he is at last bemocked as a fool, and he destroys himself through himself.

In conclusion, we see a woody, rocky wilderness, settled with hermits. It is not Heaven itself, but the transition to the same, where the soul is united to perfect clearness and happiness. Hence we find the glowing devotion and repentance of the Pater ecstaticus, the contemplation of the Pater profundus, the wrestling of the Pater serapticus, who, taking into his eyes the holy little boys because their organs are too weak for the Earth, shows them trees, rocks, waterfalls. The Angels bring in Faust, who, as Doctor Marianus, in the highest and purest cell, with burning prayer to the approaching queen of Heaven, seeks for grace. Around Maria is a choir of penitents, among whom are the Magna Peccatrix, the Mulier Samaritana, and Maria Ægyptiaca. They pray for the earthly soul; and one of the penitents, once called Margaret, kneeling, ventures a special intercession. The Mater Gloriosa appoints Margaret to lead the soul of Faust to higher spheres, for he shall follow her in anticipation. A fervent prayer streams from the lips of Doctor Marianus; the Chorus mysticus concludes with the assurance of the certainty of bliss through educating, purifying love. Aspiration, the Eternal feminine, is in Faust, however deeply he penetrates into every sphere of worldly activity. The analogy between Margaret and the Beatrice of Dante is here undeniable; also, the farther progress of Faust’s life we must consider similar, as he, like Dante, grows in the knowledge and feeling of the Divine till he arrives at its complete intuition; Dante beholds the Trinity perfectly free and independent, without being led farther by anybody. From this point of view, that the poet wanted to exhibit reconciliation as becoming, as a product of infinite growth, is found the justification of the fact that he alludes so slightly to God the Father, and to Christ the Redeemer, and, instead, brings out so prominently the worship of the Virgin, and the devotion of Woman. Devotion has a passive element which finds its fittest poetical support in women. These elements agree also very well with the rest of the poem, since Goethe, throughout the entire drama, has preserved the costume of the Middle Ages; otherwise, on account of the evident Protestant tendency of Faust, it would be difficult to find a necessary connection with the other parts of the poem.

As regards the history of Faust in itself, dramatically considered, the first four acts could perhaps be entirely omitted. The fifth, as it shows us that all striving, if its content is not religion, (the freedom of the Spirit,) can give no internal satisfaction, as it shows us that in the earnest striving after freedom, however much we may err, still the path to Heaven is open, and is only closed to him who does not strive, would have sufficiently exhibited the reconciliation. But Goethe wants to show not only this conclusion, which was all the legend demanded of him, but also the becoming of this result. Faust was for him and through him for the nation, and indeed for Europe, the representative of the world-comprehending, self-conscious internality of Spirit, and therefore he caused all the elements of the World to crystallize around this centre. Thus the acts of the Second Part are pictures, which, like frescoes, are painted beside one another upon the same wall, and Faust has actually become what was so often before said of him, a perfect manifestation of the Universe.

If we now cast a glance back to what we said in the beginning, of the opposition between the characters of Wilhelm Meister and Faust, that the former was the determined from without, the latter the self-determining from within, we can also seize this opposition so that Meister is always in pursuit of Culture, Faust of Freedom. Meister is therefore always desirous of new impressions, in order to have them work upon himself, extend his knowledge, complete his character. His capacity and zeal for Culture, the variety of the former, the diligence of the latter, forced him to a certain tameness and complaisance in relation to others. Faust on the contrary will himself work. He will possess only what he himself creates. Just for this reason he binds himself to the Devil, because the latter has the greatest worldly power, which Faust applies unsparingly for his own purposes, so that the Devil in reality finds in him a hard, whimsical, insatiate master. To Wilhelm the acquaintance of the Devil would indeed have been very interesting from a moral, psychological and æsthetic point of view, but he never would have formed a fraternity with him. This autonomia and autarkia of Faust have given a powerful impulse to the German people, and German literature. But if, in the continuation of Faust, there was an expectation of the same Titanic nature, it was disappointed. The monstrosity of the tendencies however, does not cease; a man must be blind not to see them. But in the place of pleasure, after the catastrophe with Margaret, an active participation in the world enters; a feature which Klinger and others have retained. But Labor in itself can still give no satisfaction, but its content, too, must be considered. Or rather, the external objectivity of Labor is indifferent; whether one is savant, artist, soldier, courtier, priest, manufacturer, merchant, etc., is a mere accident; whether he wills Freedom or not, is not accidental, for Spirit is in and for itself, free. With the narrow studio, in fellowship with Wagner, Faust begins; with Trade, with contests about boundaries, with his look upon the sea, which unites the nations, he ends his career.

In the World, Freedom indeed realizes itself, but as absolute, it can only come to existence in God.

It is therefore right when Goethe makes the transition from civil to religious freedom. Men cannot accomplish more than the realization of the freedom of the nations, for Mankind has its concrete existence only in the nations; if the nations are free, it is also free. Faust must thus be enraptured by this thought in the highest degree. But with it, he departs from the world—Heaven has opened itself above him. But, though Heaven sheds its grace, and lovingly receives the striving soul which has erred, still it demands repentance and complete purification from what is earthly. This struggle, this wrestling of the soul, I find expressed in the most sublime manner in the songs of the hermits and the choruses, and do not know what our time has produced superior in spiritual power, as well as in unwavering hope, though I must confess that I am not well enough versed in the fertile modern lyric literature of Pietism, to say whether such pearls are to be found in it.

Moreover, it is evident that the pliable Meister, and the stubborn Faust, are the two sides which were united in Goethe’s genius. He was a poet, and became a courtier; he was a courtier, and remained a poet. But in a more extensive sense this opposition is found in all modern nations, particularly among the Germans. They wish to obtain culture, and therefore shun no kind of society if they are improved. But they wish also to be free. They love culture so deeply that they, perhaps, for a while, have forgotten freedom. But then the Spirit warns them. They sigh, like Faust, that they have sat so long in a gloomy cell over Philosophy, Theology, etc. With the fierceness of lions, they throw all culture aside for the sake of freedom, and in noble delusion form an alliance—even with the Devil.

A CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS.
[Translated from the German of J. G. Fichte, by A. E. Kroeger.]

[Note. Below we give to our readers the translation of another Introduction to the Science of Knowledge, written by Fichte immediately after the one published in our previous number. Whereas that first Introduction was written for readers who have as yet no philosophical system of their own, the present one is intended more particularly for those who have set philosophical notions, of which they require to be disabused.—Editor.]

I believe the first introduction published in this Journal to be perfectly sufficient for unprejudiced readers, i. e. for readers who give themselves up to the writer without preconceived opinions, who, if they do not assist him, also do not resist him in his endeavors to carry them along. It is otherwise with readers who have already a philosophical system. Such readers have adopted certain maxims from their system, which have become fundamental principles for them; and whatsoever is not produced according to these maxims, is now pronounced false by them without further investigation, and without even reading such productions: it is pronounced false, because it has been produced in violation of their universally valid method. Unless this class of readers is to be abandoned altogether—and why should it be?—it is, above all, necessary to remove the obstacle which deprives us of their attention; or, in other words, to make them distrust their maxims.

Such a preliminary investigation concerning the method, is, above all, necessary in regard to the Science of Knowledge, the whole structure and significance whereof differs utterly from the structure and significance of all philosophical systems which have hitherto been current. The authors of these previous systems started from some conception or another; and utterly careless whence they got it, or out of what material they composed it, they then proceeded to analyze it, to combine it with others, regarding the origin whereof they were equally unconcerned; and this their argumentation itself is their philosophy. Hence their philosophy consists in their own thinking. Quite different does the Science of Knowledge proceed. That which this Science makes the object of its thinking, is not a dead conception, remaining passive under the investigation, and receiving life only from it, but is rather itself living and active; generating out of itself and through itself cognitions, which the philosopher merely observes in their genesis. His business in the whole affair is nothing further than to place that living object of his investigation in proper activity, and to observe, grasp and comprehend this its activity as a Unit. He undertakes an experiment. It is his business to place the object in a position which permits the observation he wishes to make; it is his business to attend to all the manifestations of the object in this experiment, to follow them and connect them in proper order; but it is not his business to cause the manifestations in the object. That is the business of the object itself: and he would work directly contrary to his purpose if he did not allow the object full freedom to develop itself—if he undertook but the least interference in this, its self-developing.

The philosopher of the first mentioned sort, on the contrary, does just the reverse. He produces a product of art. In working out his object he only takes into consideration its matter, and pays no attention to an internal self-developing power thereof. Nay, this power must be deadened before he undertakes his work, or else it might resist his labor. It is from the dead matter, therefore, that he produces something, and solely by means of his own power, in accordance with his previously resolved-upon conception.

While thus in the Science of Knowledge there are two utterly distinct series of mental activity—that of the Ego, which the philosopher observes, and that of the observations of the philosopher—all other philosophical systems have only one series of thinking, viz: that of the thoughts of the philosopher, for his object is not introduced as thinking at all.

One of the chief grounds of so many objections to and misunderstandings of the Science of Knowledge lies in this: that these two series of thinking have not been held apart, or that what belonged to the one has been taken to belong to the other. This error occurred because Philosophy was held to consist only of one series. The act of one who produces a work of art is most certainly—since his object is not active—the appearance itself; but the description of him who has undertaken an experiment, is not the appearance itself, but the conception thereof.[^[1]]

After this preliminary remark, the further application whereof we shall examine in the course of our article, let us now ask: how does the Science of Knowledge proceed to solve its problem?

The question it will have to answer, is, as we well know, the following: Whence comes the system of those representations which are accompanied by the feeling of necessity? Or, how do we to come claim objective validity for what is only subjective? Or, since objective validity is generally characterized as being, how do we come to accept a being? Now, since this question starts from a reflection that returns into itself—starts from the observation, that the immediate object of consciousness is after all merely consciousness itself,—it seems clear enough that the question can speak of no other being than of a being for us. It would be indeed a complete contradiction, to mistake it for a question concerning some being which had no relation to our consciousness. Nevertheless, the philosophers of our philosophical age are of all things most apt to plunge into such absurd contradictions.

The proposed question, how is a being for us possible? abstracts itself from all being; i. e. it must not be understood, as if the question posited a not-being; for in that case the conception of being would only be negated, but not abstracted from. On the contrary, the question does not entertain the conception of being at all, either positively or negatively. The proposed question asks for the ground of the predicate of being, whether it be applied positively or negatively; but all ground lies beyond the grounded, i. e. is opposed to it. The answer must, therefore, if it is to be an answer to this question, also abstract from all being. To maintain, a priori, in advance of an attempt, that such an abstraction is impossible in the answer, because it is impossible in itself, would be to maintain likewise, that such an abstraction is impossible in the question; and hence, that the question itself is not possible, and that the problem of a science of metaphysics, as the science which is to solve the problem of the ground of being for us, is not a problem for human reason.

That such an abstraction, and hence such a question, is contrary to reason, cannot be proven by objective grounds to those who maintain its possibility; for the latter assert that the possibility and necessity of the question is grounded upon the highest law of reason—that of self-determination, (Practical legislation,) under which all other laws of reason are subsumed, and from which they are all derived, but at the same time determined and limited to the sphere of their validity. They acknowledge the arguments of their opponents willingly enough, but deny their application to the present case; with what justice, their opponents can determine only by placing themselves upon the basis of this highest law, but hence, also, upon the basis of an answer to the disputed question, by which act they would cease to be opponents. Their opposition, indeed, can only arise from a subjective defect—from the consciousness that they never raised this question, and never felt the need of an answer to it. Against this their position, no objective grounds can, on the other hand, be made valid, by those who insist on an answer to the question; for the doubt, which raises that question, is grounded upon previous acts of freedom, which no demonstration can compel from any one.

III.

Let us now ask: Who is it that undertakes the demanded abstraction from all being? or, in which of the two series does it occur? Evidently, in the series of philosophical argumentation, for another series does not exist.

That, to which the philosopher holds, and from which he promises to explain all that is to be explained, is the consciousness, the subject. This subject he will, therefore, have to comprehend free from all representation of being, in order first to show up in it the ground of all being—of course, for itself. But if he abstracts from all being of and for the subject, nothing pertains to it but an acting. Particularly in relation to being is it the acting. The philosopher will, therefore, have to comprehend it in its acting, and from this point the aforementioned double series will first arise.

The fundamental assertion of the philosopher, as such, is this: as soon as the Ego is for itself, there necessarily arises for it at the same time an external being; the ground of the latter lies in the former; the latter is conditioned by the former. Self-consciousness and consciousness of a Something which is not that Self, is necessarily united; but the former is the conditioning and the latter the conditioned. To prove this assertion—not, perhaps, by argumentation, as valid for a system of a being in itself, but by observation of the original proceeding of reason, as valid for reason—the philosopher will have to show, firstly, how the Ego is and becomes for itself; and secondly, that this its own being for itself is not possible, unless at the same time there arises for it an external being, which is not it.

The first question, therefore, would be: how is the Ego for itself? and the first postulate: think thyself! construe the conception of thyself, and observe how thou proceedest in this construction.

The philosopher affirms that every one who will but do so, must necessarily discover that in the thinking of that conception, his activity, as intelligence, returns into itself, makes itself its own object.

If this is correct and admitted, the manner of the construction of the Ego, the manner of its being for itself, (and we never speak of another being,) is known; and the philosopher may then proceed to prove that this act is not possible without another act, whereby there arises for the Ego an external being.

It is thus, indeed, that the Science of Knowledge proceeds. Let us now consider with what justice it so proceeds.

IV.

First of all: what in the described act belongs to the philosopher, as philosopher, and what belongs to the Ego he is to observe? To the Ego nothing but the return to itself; everything else to the description of the philosopher, for whom, as mere fact, the system of all experience, which in its genesis the Ego is now to produce under his observation, has already existence.

The Ego returns into itself, is the assertion. Has it not then already being in advance of this return into itself, and independently thereof? Nay, must it not already be for itself, if merely for the possibility of making itself the object of its action? Again, if this is so, does not the whole philosophy presuppose what it ought first to explain?

I answer by no means. First through this act, and only by means of it—by means of an acting upon an acting—does the Ego originally come to be for itself. It is only for the philosopher that it has previous existence as a fact, because the philosopher has already gone through the whole experience. He must express himself as he does, to be but understood, and he can so express himself, because he long since has comprehended all the conceptions necessary thereunto.

Now, to return to the observed Ego: what is this its return into itself? Under what class of modifications of consciousness is it to be posited? It is no comprehending, for a comprehending first arises through the opposition of a non-Ego, and by the determining of the Ego in this opposition. Hence it is a mere contemplation. It is therefore not consciousness, not even self-consciousness. Indeed, it is precisely because this act alone produces no consciousness, that we proceed to another act, through which a non-Ego originates for us, and that a progress of philosophical argumentation and the required deduction of the system of experience becomes possible. That act only places the Ego in the possibility of self-consciousness—and thus of all other consciousness—but does not generate real consciousness. That act is but a part of the whole act of the intelligence, whereby it effects its consciousness; a part which only the philosopher separates from the whole act, but which is not originally so separated in the Ego.

But how about the philosopher, as such? This self-constructing Ego is none other than his own. He can contemplate that act of the Ego only in himself, and, in order to contemplate it, must realize it. He produces that act arbitrarily and with freedom.

But—this question may and has been raised—if your whole philosophy is erected upon something produced by an act of mere arbitrariness, does it not then become a mere creature of the brain, a pure imaginary picture? How is the philosopher going to secure to this purely subjective act its objectivity? How will he secure to that which is purely empirical and a moment of time—i. e. the time in which the philosopher philosophizes—its originality? How can he prove that his present free thinking in the midst of the series of his representations does correspond to the necessary thinking, whereby he first became for himself, and through which the whole series of his representations has been started?

I answer: this act is in its nature objective. I am for myself; this is a fact. Now I could have thus come to be for myself only through an act, for I am free; and only through this thus determined act, for only through it do I become for myself every moment, and through every other act something quite different is produced. That acting, indeed, is the very conception of the Ego; and the conception of the Ego is the conception of that acting; both conceptions are quite the same; and that conception of the Ego can mean and can not be made to mean anything, but what has been stated. It is so, because I make it so. The philosopher only makes clear to himself what he really thinks and has ever thought, when he thinks or thought himself; but that he does think himself is to him immediate fact of consciousness. That question, concerning the objectivity is grounded on the very curious presupposition that the Ego is something else than its own thought of itself, and that something else than this thought and outside of it—God may know what they do mean!—is again the ground of it, concerning the actual nature of which outside something they are very much troubled. Hence if they ask for such an objective validity of the thought, or for a connection between this object and the subject, I cheerfully confess that the Science of Knowledge can give them no instruction concerning it. If they choose to, they may themselves enter, in this or any other case, upon the discovery of such a connection, until they, perhaps, will recollect that this Unknown which they are hunting, is, after all, again their thought, and that whatsoever they may invent as its ground, will also be their thought, and thus ad infinitum; and that, indeed, they cannot speak of or question about anything without at the same time thinking it.

Now, in this act, which is arbitrary and in time, for the philosopher as such, but which is for the Ego—which he constructs, by virtue of his just deduced right, for the sake of subsequent observations and conclusions—necessarily and originally; in this act, I say, the philosopher looks at himself, and immediately contemplates his own acting; he knows what he does, because he does it. Does a consciousness thereof arise in him? Without doubt; for he not only contemplates, but comprehends also. He comprehends his act, as an acting generally, of which he has already a conception by virtue of his previous experience; and as this determined, into itself returning acting, as which he contemplates it in himself. By this characteristic determination he elevates it above the sphere of general acting.

What acting may be, can only be contemplated, not developed from and through conceptions; but that which this contemplation contains is comprehended by the mere opposition of pure being. Acting is not being, and being is not acting. Mere conception affords no other determination for each link; their real essence is only discovered in contemplation.

Now this whole procedure of the philosopher appears to me, at least, very possible, very easy, and even natural; and I can scarcely conceive how it can appear otherwise to my readers, and how they can see in it anything mysterious and marvellous. Every one, let us hope, can think himself. He will also, let us hope, learn that by being required to thus think himself he is required to perform an act, dependent upon his own activity, an internal act; and that if he realizes this demand, if he really affects himself through self-activity, he also most surely acts thus. Let us further hope that he will be able to distinguish this kind of acting from its opposite, the acting whereby he thinks external objects, and that he will find in the latter sort of thinking the thinking and the thought to be opposites, (the activity, therefore, tending upon something distinct from itself,) while in the former thinking both were one and the same, (and hence the activity a return into itself.) He will comprehend, it is to be hoped, that—since the thought of himself arises only in this manner, (an opposite thinking producing a quite different thought)—the thought of himself is nothing but the thought of this act, and the word Ego nothing but the designation of this act—that Ego and an into itself returning activity are completely identical conceptions. He will understand, let us hope, that if he but for the present problematically presupposes with transcendental Idealism that all consciousness rests upon and is dependent upon self-consciousness, he must also think that return into itself as preceding and conditioning all other acts of consciousness; indeed as the primary act of the subject; and, since there is nothing for him which is not in his consciousness, and since everything else in his consciousness is conditioned by this act, and therefore cannot condition the act in the same respect,—as an act, utterly unconditioned and hence absolute for him; and he will thus further understand, that the above problematical presupposition and this thinking of the Ego as originally posited through itself, are again quite identical; and that hence transcendental Idealism, if it proceeds systematically, can proceed in no other manner than it does in the Science of Knowledge.

This contemplation of himself, which is required of the philosopher, in his realization of the act, through which the Ego arises for him, I call intellectual contemplation. It is the immediate consciousness that I act and what I act; it is that through which I know something, because I do it. That there is such a power of intellectual contemplation cannot be demonstrated by conceptions, nor can conception show what it is. Every one must find it immediately in himself, or he will never learn to know it. The requirement that we ought to show it what it is by argumentation, is more marvellous than would be the requirement of a blind person, to explain to him, without his needing to use sight, what colors are.

But it can be certainly proven to everyone in his own confessed experience, that this intellectual contemplation does occur in every moment of his consciousness. I can take no step, cannot move hand or foot, without the intellectual contemplation of my self-consciousness in these acts; only through this contemplation do I know that I do it, only through it do I distinguish my acting and in it myself from the given object of my acting. Everyone who ascribes an activity to himself appeals to this contemplation. In it is the source of life, and without it is death.

But this contemplation never occurs alone, as a complete act of consciousness, as indeed sensuous contemplation also never occurs alone nor completes consciousness; both contemplations must be comprehended. Not only this, but the intellectual contemplation is also always connected with a sensuous contemplation. I cannot find myself acting without finding an object upon which I act, and this object in a sensuous contemplation which I comprehend; nor without sketching an image of what I intend to produce by my act, which image I also comprehend. Now, then, how do I know and how can I know what I intend to produce, if I do not immediately contemplate myself in this sketching of the image which I intend to produce, i. e. in this sketching of the conception of my purpose, which sketching is certainly an act. Only the totality of this condition in uniting a given manifold completes consciousness. I become conscious only of the conceptions, both of the object upon which I act, and of the purpose I intend to accomplish; but I do not become conscious of the contemplations which are at the bottom of both conceptions.

Perhaps it is only this which the zealous opponents of intellectual contemplation wish to insist upon; namely, that that contemplation is only possible in connection with a sensuous contemplation; and surely the Science of Knowledge is not going to deny it. But this is no reason why they should deny intellectual contemplation. For with the same right we might deny sensuous contemplation, since it also is possible only in connection with intellectual contemplation; for whatsoever is to become my representation must be related to me, and the consciousness (I) occurs only through intellectual contemplation. (It is a remarkable fact of our modern history of philosophy, that it has not been noticed as yet how all that may be objected to intellectual contemplation can also be objected to sensuous contemplation, and that thus the arguments of its opponents turn against themselves.)

But if it must be admitted that there is no immediate, isolated consciousness of intellectual contemplation, how does the philosopher arrive at a knowledge and isolated representation thereof? I answer, doubtless in the same manner in which he arrives at the isolated representation of sensuous contemplation, by drawing a conclusion from the evident facts of consciousness. This conclusion runs as follows: I propose to myself, to think this or that, and the required thought arises; I propose to myself, to do this or that, and the representation that it is being done arises. This is a fact of consciousness. If I look at it by the light of the laws of mere sensuous consciousness, it involves no more than has just been stated, i. e. a sequence of certain representations. I become conscious only of this sequence, in a series of time movements, and only such a time sequence can I assert. I can merely state—I know that if I propose to myself a certain thought, with the characteristic that it is to have existence, the representation of this thought, with the characteristic that it really has existence, follows; or, that the representation of a certain manifestation, as one which ought to occur, is immediately followed in time by the representation of the same manifestation as one which really did occur. But I can, on no account, state that the first representation contains the real ground of the second one which followed; or, that by thinking the first one the second one became real for me. I merely remain passive, the placid scene upon which representations follow representations, and am, on no account, the active principle which produces them. Still I constantly assume the latter, and cannot relinquish that assumption without relinquishing my self. What justifies me in it? In the sensuous ingredients I have mentioned, there is no ground to justify such an assumption; hence it is a peculiar and immediate consciousness, that is to say, a contemplation, and not a sensuous contemplation, which views a material and permanent being, but a contemplation of a pure activity, which is not permanent but progressive, not a being but a life.

The philosopher, therefore, discovers this intellectual contemplation as fact of consciousness, (for him it is a fact; for the original Ego a fact and act both together—a deed-act,) and he thus discovers it not immediately, as an isolated part of his consciousness, but by distinguishing and separating what in common consciousness occurs in unseparated union.

Quite a different problem it is to explain this intellectual contemplation, which is here presupposed as fact, in its possibility, and by means of this explanation to defend it against the charge of deception and deceptiveness, which is raised by dogmatism; or, in other words, to prove the faith in the reality of this intellectual contemplation, from which faith transcendental idealism confessedly starts—by a something still higher; and to show up the interest which leads us to place faith in its reality, or in the system of Reason. This is accomplished by showing up the Moral Law in us, in which the Ego is characterized as elevated through it above all the original modifications, as impelled by an absolute, or in itself, (in the Ego,) grounded activity; and by which the Ego is thus discovered to be an absolute Active. In the consciousness of this law, which doubtless is an immediate consciousness, and not derived from something else, the contemplation of self-activity and freedom is grounded. I am given to myself through myself as something, which is to be active in a certain manner; hence, I am given to myself through myself as something active generally; I have the life in myself, and take it from out of myself. Only through this medium of the Moral Law do I see MYSELF; and if I see myself through that law, I necessarily see myself as self-active; and it is thus that there arises in a consciousness—which otherwise would only be the consciousness of a sequence of my representations—the utterly foreign ingredient of an activity of myself.

This intellectual contemplation is the only stand-point for all Philosophy. From it all that occurs in consciousness may be explained, but only from it. Without self-consciousness there is no consciousness at all; but self-consciousness is only possible in the way we have shown, i. e. I am only active. Beyond it I cannot be driven; my philosophy then becomes altogether independent of all arbitrariness, and a product of stern necessity; i. e. in so far as necessity exists for free Reason; it becomes a product of practical necessity. I can not go beyond this stand-point, because conscience says I shall not go beyond it; and thus transcendental idealism shows itself up to be the only moral philosophy—the philosophy wherein speculation and moral law are intimately united. Conscience says: I shall start in my thinking from the pure Ego, and shall think it absolutely self-active; not as determined by the things, but as determining the things.

The conception of activity which becomes possible only through this intellectual contemplation of the self-active Ego, is the only one which unites both the worlds that exist for us—the sensuous and the intelligible world. Whatsoever is opposed to my activity—and I must oppose something to it, for I am finite—is the sensuous, and whatsoever is to arise through my activity is the intelligible (moral) world.

I should like to know how those who smile so contemptuously whenever the words “intellectual contemplation” is mentioned, think the consciousness of the moral law; or how they are enabled to entertain such conceptions as those of Virtue, of Right, &c., which they doubtless do entertain. According to them there are only two contemplations a priori—Time and Space. They surely form these conceptions of Virtue, &c., in Time, (the form of the inner sense,) but they certainly do not hold them to be time itself, but merely a certain filling up of time. What is it, then, wherewith they fill up time, and get a basis for the construction of those conceptions? There is nothing left to them but Space; and hence their conceptions of Virtue, Right, &c., are perhaps quadrangular and circular; just as all the other conceptions which they construct, (for instance, that of a tree or of an animal,) are nothing but limitations of Space. But they do not conceive their Virtue and their Right in this manner. What, then, is the basis of their construction? If they attend properly, they will discover that this basis is activity in general, or freedom. Both of these conceptions of virtue and right are to them certain limitations of their general activity, exactly as their sensuous conceptions are limitations of space. How, then, do they arrive at this basis of their construction? We will hope that they have not derived activity from the dead permanency of matter, nor freedom from the mechanism of nature. They have obtained it, therefore, from immediate contemplation, and thus they confess a third contemplation besides their own two.

It is, therefore, by no means so unimportant, as it appears to be to some, whether philosophy starts from a fact or from a deed-act, (i. e. from an activity, which presupposes no object, but produces it itself, and in which, therefore, the acting is immediately deed.) If philosophy starts from a fact, it places itself in the midst of being and finity, and will find it difficult to discover therefrom a road to the infinite and super-sensuous; but if it starts from a deed-act, it places itself at once in the point which unites both worlds and from which both can be overlooked at one glance.

[Translators frequently use the term “intuition” for what I have here called “contemplation;” “Deed-Act” is my rendering of “That-Handlung.” A. E. K.]

NOTES ON MILTON’S LYCIDAS.
BY ANNA C. BRACKETT.

Every work of art, whether in sculpture, painting, or music, must have a definite content; and only in having such has it any claim to be so called. This content must be spiritual; that is, it must come from the inner spirit of the artist, and translate itself by means of the work into spirit in the spectator or listener. Only in the recognition of this inner meaning which lives behind the outside and shimmers through it, can consist the difference between the impression made on me by the sight of a beautiful painting, and that produced on an inferior animal, as the retina of his eye paints with equal accuracy the same object. For what is this sense of beauty which thrills through me, while the dog at my side looks at the same thing and sees nothing in seeing all which the eye can grasp? Is it not the response in me to the informing spirit behind all the outward appearance?

But if this sense of beauty stops in passive enjoyment, if the sense of sight or of hearing is simply to be intoxicated with the feast spread before it, we must confess that our appreciation of beauty is a very sensuous thing. Content though some may be, simply to enjoy, in the minds of others the fascination of the senses only provokes unrest. We say with Goethe: “I would fain understand that which interests me in so extraordinary a manner;” for this work of art, the product of mind, touches me in a wonderful way, and must be of universal essence. Let me seek the reason, and if I find it, it will be another step towards “the solvent word.”

Again, in a true work of art this content must be essentially one; that is, one profound thought to which all others, though they may be visible, must be gracefully subordinate; otherwise we are lost in a multiplicity of details, and miss the unity which is the sole sign of the creative mind.

Nor need we always be anxious as to whether the artist consciously meant to say thus and so. Has there ever lived a true artist who has not “builded better than he knew”? If this were not so, all works of art would lose their significance in the course of time. Are the half-uttered meanings of the statues of the Egyptian gods behind or before us to-day? Do they not perplex us with prophecies rather than remembrances as we wander amazed among them through the halls of the British Museum? A whole nation striving to say the one word, and dying before it was uttered! Have we heard it clearly yet?

The world goes on translating as it gains new words with which to carry on the work. It is not so much the artist that is before his age as the divine afflatus guiding his hand which leads not only the age but him. Through that divine inspiration he speaks, and he says mysterious words which perhaps must wait for centuries to be understood. In that fact lies his right to his title; in that, alone, lies the right of his production to be called a work of art.

Doubtless all readers are familiar with Dr. Johnson’s criticisms on Milton’s Lycidas, and these we might pass by without comment, for it would evidently be as impossible for Dr. Johnson’s mind to comprehend or be touched by the poetry of Lycidas as for a ponderous sledge-hammer to be conscious of the soft, perfume-laden air through which it might move. The monody is censured by him because of its irregularly recurring rhymes, and in the same breath we are told that it is so full of art that the author could not have felt sorrow while writing it. We know how intricately the rhymes are woven in Milton’s sonnets, where he seems to have taken all pains to select the most difficult arrangements, and to carry them through without deviation, and we say only that the first criticism contradicts the last. But some more appreciative critics, while touched by the beauty, repeat the same, and say there is “more poetry than sorrow” in the poem. More poetry than sorrow! Sorrow is the grand key note, and strikes in always over and through all the beauty and poetry like a wailing chord in a symphony, that is never absent long, and ever and anon drowns out all the rest. Sorrow, pure and simple, is the thread on which all the beautiful fancies are strung. It runs through and connects them all, and there is not a paragraph in the whole poem that is not pierced by it. It is the occasion, the motive, the inner inspiration, and the mastery over it is the conclusion of all. Around it, the constant centre, group themselves all the lovely pictures, and they all face it and are subordinate to it.

The soul of the poet is so tossed by the immediate sorrow that it surrenders itself entirely to it, and so, losing its will, is taken possession of by whatever thought, evoked by the spell of association, rises in his mind; as when he speaks of Camus and St. Peter. Ever and anon the will makes an effort to free itself and to determine its own course, but again and again the wave of sorrow sweeps up, and the vainly struggling will goes down before it.

Nothing lay closer to Milton’s heart than the interests of what he believed the true church; and nothing touched him more than the abuses which were then prevalent in the church of England. In the safe harbor of his father’s country home, resting on his oars before the appointed time for the race in which he was to give away all his strength and joy, surrounded and inspired by the fresh, pure air from the granite rocks of Puritanism, all his growing strength was gathering its energies for the struggle. This just indignation and honest protest must find its way in the poem through the grief that sweeps over him, and which, because so deep, touches and vivifies all his deepest thoughts. But even that strong under current of conviction has no power long to steady him against the wave of sorrow which breaks above his head, none the less powerful because it breaks in a line of white and shivers itself into drops which flash diamond colors in the warm and pure sunlight of his cultured imagination. More poetry than sorrow? Then there is more poetry in Lycidas than in any other poem of the same length in our language.

It would be impossible here to go through the poem with the close care to all little points which is necessary to enable one fully to comprehend its exquisite beauty and finish. It is like one of Beethoven’s symphonies, where at first we are so occupied with the one grand thought that we surrender ourselves entirely to it, and think ourselves completely satisfied. But as we appropriate that more and more fully, within and around it wonderful melodies start and twine, and this experience is repeated again and again till the music seems almost infinite in its content. Let us, then, briefly go over the burden of the monody, our chief effort being to show how perfectly at one it is throughout, how natural the seemingly abrupt changes,—only pausing now and then to speak of some special beauty which is so marked that one cannot pass it by in silence. If we succeed in showing a continued and natural thought in the whole and a satisfactory solution for the collision which gives rise to the poem, our end will have been accomplished.

Milton begins in due order by giving, as prelude, his reason for singing. But he has written only seven full lines before, in the eighth, the key-note is struck by the force of sorrow, which, after saying “Lycidas is dead,” lingers on the strain and repeats, to heighten the grief, “dead ere his prime.” The next line, the ninth, is still more pathetic in its echoing repetition and its added cause for mourning. (In passing, let us say that the effect is greatly increased in reading this line if the first word be strongly emphasized.) Because he hath not left his peer, all should sing for him. No more excuse is needed. Sorrow pleases itself in calling up the neglected form, and then passionately turns to the only solace that it can have—“Some melodious tear.”

This, of course, brings the image of the Muses, and as that thought comes, once more we have a new attempt at a formal beginning in the second paragraph (line 15). First, is the invocation, and then, recurring to the first thought, Milton says it is peculiarly appropriate for him to sing of Lycidas. Why? Because they had been so long together, and as the thought of happier things arises, the sweet memories, linked by the chain of association, come thronging so tumultuously that he forgets himself in reverie. The music, at first slow and sweet, grows more and more strong and rapid till even the rustic dance-measure comes in merrily. Most naturally here the key-note is again struck by the force of contrast, and the despair of the sorrow that wakes from the forgetfulness of pleasant dreams to the consciousness of loss, strikes as rapidly its minor chords till it seems as if hope were entirely lost.

Nothing is more unreasonable than this despair of sorrow. Tossed in its own wild passion, it sees nothing clearly, and seeking for some adequate cause, heaps blindly unmerited reproaches on anything, on all things. So, recoiling before its power, stung with its pain, the poet turns reproachfully to the nymphs, blaming them for their negligence. But before the words are fairly uttered he realizes his folly. Lycidas was beloved by them, but if Calliope could not save even her own son, how powerless are they against the step of inevitable fate! This strikes deep down in the thunder of the bass notes, and the thought comes which perhaps cannot be more powerfully expressed than by the old Hebrew refrain, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” After all, why seek for anything, even for fame? Man’s destiny is ruled by irresponsible necessity. Life is worth nothing, and would it not be better, instead of “scorning delights and living laborious days,” to yield one’s self to the pleasures of the passing moment? “All is vanity and vexation of spirit.” When any soul reaches this point, it seems as if help must come from outside of itself or it will go irrevocably down. Sorrow, despair, are always represented by darkness. Is it an accident that the celestial notes which first strike through the descending bass, come from the god of light, Phœbus Apollo? Clear, and sweet, and sudden, they cleave the closing shadows, the sunlight comes in again, and the music climbs up and grows serenely steady.

Relieved from this Inferno the soul comes once more to self-consciousness, and in its effort to guide itself, what more natural than that it should recur to the idea expressed in the fiftieth line, and attempt to make something like order by carrying out that idea. Reason takes command, and the strain flows smoothly, till, by the exercise of her power, the true cause of the misfortune is recognized and a just indignation (line 100) takes its place. But in yielding to this, the immediate feeling regains possession, reason resigns her sway, and the soul is set afloat again on the uncertain sea of association. See how sudden and sweet the transition from fiery reproach and invective to the gentlest tenderness, in line 102. It begins with a thunder peal and dies out in a wail of affection, expressed by the one word “sacred.” This forms the connection between this paragraph and the next, a delicate yet perfect link, for as all his love overflows in that one word, the old happier days come up again; and where should these memories carry him but to the university where they had found so much common pleasure and inspiration. Here the sorrow, before entirely personal, becomes wider as the singer feels that others grieve with him for lost talent and power.

Were they not both destined for the church for which their university studies were only a preparation? Most naturally the subtle chain of association brings up the thought of the great apostle with the keys of heaven and hell. How sorely the church needed true teachers! The earnest spirit that was ready to assail every form of wrong, eagerly followed out the thought which was in the future to burn into its very life. From line 113 to line 131 notice the succession of feelings. A sense of irreparable loss—indignation—mark the three words, “creep,” “intrude,” and “climb,” no one of which could be spared. Then comes disgust, expressed by “Blind mouths.” Ruskin, in his “Kings’ Treasures,” very happily observes that no epithet could be more sweeping than this, for as the office of a bishop is to oversee the flock, and that of a pastor to feed it, the utter want of all qualification for the sacred office is here most forcibly expressed. Contempt follows; then pity for those who, desiring food, are fed only with wind; detestation of the secret and corrupt practices of the Romish church; and finally hope, coming through the possible execution of Archbishop Laud, whose death, it seemed to the young Puritan, was the only thing needed to bring back truth, simplicity and safety. Drifting with these emotions the singer has followed the lead of his fancies, and just as before, when light came with healing for his despair, Hope recalls him to himself, till he returns again in line 132, as in line 85, to the regular style of his poem. He is as one who, waking from wildering dreams, collects his fugitive thoughts, and tries to settle them down for the necessary routine of the day. A more regular and plainly accented strain, recognized as heard before, comes into the music, as he pleases himself in fancying that the sad consolation is still left him of ornamenting the hearse. It is useless to speak of the exquisite finish of these lines, or of how often one word, as “fresh” for instance, in line 138, calls up before the mind such pictures that one lingers and lingers over the passage, as the poet’s fancy in vain effort lingered, striving to forget his sorrow. This strain comes in like some of the repeating melodies in the second part of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, where it seems as if the soul had found a new, sweet thought, and was turning it over and over as loth to pause, and as in sudden hope of some relief through its potency. But the heavy key-note strikes again through it all, in line 154, with a crash that drowns all the sweetness and beauty. We hear the rush of the cruel, insatiate sea, as its waves dash against the shore of the stormy Hebrides, and the conflict of wave and wind takes possession of us. What thought is more desolate than that of a solitary human form, tossed hither and thither in the vast immensity of ocean! Perhaps, even now, it floats by “the great vision of the guarded mount.” It seems to the poet that all should turn toward England in her sorrow, and it pains him to think of St. Michael’s steadfast eyes gazing across the waves of the bay toward “Namancos and Bayona’s hold.” “Rather turn hither and let even your heavenly face relax with human grief, and ye, unheeding monsters of the deep, have pity and bear him gently over the roughening waves.” This he says because he feels his own impotence. All the love he bears Lycidas cannot serve him now; he is lost, and helpless, and alone, and uncared for. By opposition here, the light strikes in once more, and now with a clearer, fuller glow than at either previous time. At first (line 76) it came in the form of trust in “all-judging Jove”; then (line 130) in hope, through belief in impersonal justice; now it takes the form of Christian faith. The music mounts higher and higher into celestial harmonies, losing entirely its original character, and sounds like a majestic choral of triumph and peace.

This properly ends the poem with line 185. There is nothing more to be said. The tendency is all upward, and the collisions are overcome. One knows that here, and here for the first time, have we reached a movement that is self-sustained. There is no more danger of being carried off our basis by any wave of despairing sorrow. The soul has found a solution at last, and it knows that it is a trustworthy one.

The music is finished; but now, that nothing may be wanting for perfect effect, we have the scenery added, and this in such word-painting as has never been surpassed. Who could ever weary of line 187—“While the still morn went out with sandals gray,”—either for its melody or for its subtle appeal to our senses of hearing and sight? And the slowly growing and dying day! Who else has ever so “touched the tender stops” of imagination?

But these woods and pastures are too full of haunting memories; we seek for newer ones, where the soul, relieved from the associations which perpetually call up the loss of the human and now lifeless embodiment of spirit, shall be free to think only of the eternal holding and possessing which can be sundered by no accident of time or space.

ANALYSIS OF HEGEL’S ÆSTHETICS.
[Translated from the French of M. Ch. Bénard, by J. A. Martling.]
Part II.
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.

But a contradiction presents itself between the spirit and the material form. This harmonious whole conceals a principle of destruction which will make itself felt more and more. We may perceive in these figures an air of sadness in the midst of greatness. Though absorbed in themselves, calm and serene, they lack freedom from care and inward satisfaction; something cold and impassive is found in their features, especially if we compare them with the vivacity of modern sentiment. This divine peace, this indifference to all that is mortal and transient, forms a contrast with the moral greatness and the corporeal form. These placid divinities complain both of their felicity and of their physical existence. We read upon their features the destiny which weighs them down.

Now, what is the particular art most appropriate to represent this ideal? Evidently it is sculpture. It alone is capable of showing us those ideal figures in their eternal repose, of expressing the perfect harmony of the spiritual principle and the sensuous form. To it has been confided the mission of realizing this ideal in its purity, its greatness, and its perfection.

Poetry, above all, dramatic poetry, which makes the gods act, and draws them into strife and combat contrary to their greatness and their dignity, is much less capable of answering this purpose.

If we consider these divinities in their particular, and no longer in their general character, we see that they form a plurality, a whole, a totality, which is polytheism. Each particular god, while having his proper and original character, is himself a complete whole; he also possesses the distinctive qualities of the other divinities. Hence the richness of these characters. It is for this reason that the Greek polytheism does not present a systematic whole. Olympus is composed of a multitude of distinct gods, who do not form an established hierarchy. Rank is not rigorously fixed, whence the liberty, the serenity, the independence of the personages. Without this apparent contradiction, the divinities would be embarrassed by one another, shackled in their development and power. In place of being true persons, they would be only allegorical beings, or personified abstractions.

As to their sensuous representation, sculpture is, moreover, the art best adapted to express this particular characteristic of the nature of the gods. By combining with immovable grandeur the individuality of features peculiar to each of them, it fixes in their statues the most perfect expression of their character, and determines its definite form. Sculpture, here again, is more ideal than poetry. It offers a more determined and fixed form, while poetry mingles with it a crowd of actions, of histories and accidental particulars. Sculpture creates absolute and eternal models; it has fixed the type of true, classic beauty, which is the basis of all other productions of Greek genius, and is here the central point of art.

But in order to represent the gods in their true individuality, it does not suffice to distinguish them by certain particular attributes. Moreover, classic art does not confine itself to representing these personages as immovable and self-absorbed; it shows them also in movement and in action. The character of the gods then particularizes itself, and exhibits the special features of which the physiognomy of each god is composed. This is the accidental, positive, historic side, which figures in mythology and also in art, as an accessory but necessary element.

These materials are furnished by history or fable. They are the antecedents, the local particulars, which give to the gods their living individuality and originality. Some are borrowed from the symbolic religions, which preserve a vestige thereof in the new creation; the symbolic element is absorbed in the new myth. Others have a national origin, which, again, is connected with heroic times and foreign traditions. Others, finally, spring from local circumstances, relating to the propagation of the myths, to their formation, to the usages and ceremonies of worship, etc. All these materials fashioned by art, give to the Greek gods the appearance, the interest, and the charm, of living humanity. But this traditional side, which in its origin had a symbolic sense, loses it little by little; it is designed only to complete the individuality of the gods, to give to them a more human and more sensuous form, to add, through details frequently unworthy of divine majesty, the side of the arbitrary and accidental. Sculpture, which represents the pure ideal, ought, without wholly excluding it in fact, to allow it to appear as little as possible; it represents it as accessory in the head-dress, the arms, the ornaments, the external attributes. Another source for the more precise determination of the character of the gods is their intervention in the actions and circumstances of human life. Here the imagination of the poet expands itself as an inexhaustible source in a crowd of particular histories, of traits of character and actions, attributed to the gods. The problem of art consists in combining, in a natural and living manner, the actions of divine personages and human actions, in such a manner that the gods appear as the general cause of what man himself accomplishes. The gods, thus, are the internal principles which reside in the depths of the human soul; its own passions, in so far as they are elevated, and its personal thought; or it is the necessity of the situation, the force of circumstances, from whose fatal action man suffers. It is this which pierces through all the situations where Homer causes the gods to intervene, and through the manner in which they influence events.

But through this side, the gods of classic art abandon, more and more, the silent serenity of the ideal, to descend into the multiplicity of individual situations, of actions, and into the conflict of human passions. Classic art thus finds itself drawn to the last degree of individualization; it falls into the agreeable and the graceful. The divine is absorbed in the finite which is addressed exclusively to the sensibility and no longer satisfies thought. Imagination and art, seizing this side and exaggerating it more and more, corrupt religion itself. The severe ideal gives place to merely sensuous beauty and harmony; it removes itself more and more from the eternal ideas which form the ground of religion and art, and these are dragged down to ruin.

3. In fact, independently of the external causes which have occasioned the decadence of Greek art and precipitated its downfall, many internal causes, in the very nature of the Greek ideal, rendered that downfall inevitable. In the first place, the Greek gods, as we have seen, bear in themselves the germ of their destruction, and the defect which they conceal is unveiled by the representations of classic art itself. The plurality of the gods and their diversity makes them already accidental existences; this multiplicity cannot satisfy reason. Thought dissolves them and makes them return to a single divinity. Moreover, the gods do not remain in their eternal repose; they enter into action, take part in the interests, in the passions, and mingle in the collisions of human life. The multitude of relations in which they are engaged, as actors in this drama, destroys their divine majesty; contradicts their grandeur, their dignity, their beauty. In the true ideal itself, that of sculpture, we observe something, the inanimate, impassive, cold, a serious air of silent mournfulness, which indicates that something higher weighs them down—destiny, supreme unity, blind divinity, the immutable fate to which gods and men are alike subject.

But the principal cause is, that absolute necessity making no integral part of their personality, and being foreign to them, the particular individual side is no longer restrained in its downward course; it is developed more and more without hindrance and without limit. They suffer themselves to be drawn into the external accidents of human life, and fall into all the imperfections of anthropomorphism. Hence the ruin of these beautiful divinities of art is inevitable. The moral consciousness turns away from them and rejects them. The gods, it is true, are ethical persons, but under the human and corporeal form. Now, true morality appears only in the conscience, and under a purely spiritual form. The point of view of the beautiful is neither that of religion nor that of morality. The infinite, invisible spirituality is the divine for the religious consciousness. For the moral consciousness, the good is an idea, a conception, an obligation, which commands the sacrifice of sense. It is in vain, then, to be enthusiastic over Greek art and beauty, to admire those beautiful divinities. The soul does not recognize herself wholly in the object of her contemplation or her worship. What she conceives as the true ideal is a God, spiritual, infinite, absolute, personal, endowed with moral qualities, with justice, goodness, etc.

It is this whose image the gods of Greek polytheism, in spite of their beauty, do not present us.

As to the transition from the Greek mythology to a new religion and a new art, it could no longer be effected in the domain of the imagination. In the origin of Greek art, the transition appears under the form of a conflict between the old and the new gods, in the very domain of art and imagination. Here it is upon the more serious territory of history that this revolution is accomplished. The new idea appears, not as a revelation of art, nor under the form of myth and of fable, but in history itself, by the course of events, by the appearance of God himself upon earth, where he was born, lived, and arose from the dead. Here is a field of ideas which Art did not invent, and which it finds too high for it. The gods of classic art have existence only in the imagination; they were visible only in stone and wood; they were not both flesh and spirit. This real existence of God in flesh and spirit, Christianity, for the first time, showed in the life and actions of a God present among men. This transition cannot, then, be accomplished in the domain of art, because the God of revealed religion is the real and living God. Compared with him, his adversaries are only imaginary beings, who cannot be taken seriously and meet him on the field of history. The opposition and conflict cannot, then, present the character of a serious strife, and be represented as such by Art or Poetry. Therefore, always, whenever any one has attempted to make of this subject, among moderns, a poetic theme, he has done it in an impious and frivolous manner, as in “The War of the Gods,” by Parny.

On the other hand, it would be useless to regret, as has been frequently done in prose and in verse, the loss of the Greek ideal and pagan mythology, as being more favorable to art and poetry than the Christian faith, to which is granted a higher moral verity, while it is regarded as inferior in respect to art and the Beautiful.

Christianity has a poetry and an art of its own; an ideal essentially different from the Greek ideal and art. Here all parallel is superficial. Polytheism is anthropomorphism. The gods of Greece are beautiful divinities under the human form. As soon as reason has comprehended God as Spirit and as Infinite Being, there appear other ideas, other sentiments, other demands, which ancient art is incapable of satisfying, to which it cannot attain, which call, consequently, for a new art, a new poetry. Thus, regrets are superfluous; comparison has no more any significance, it is only a text for declamation. What one could object to seriously in Christianity, its tendencies to mysticism, to asceticism, which, in fact, are hostile to art, are only exaggerations of its principle. But the thought which constitutes the ground of Christianity, and true Christian sentiment, far from being opposed to art, are very favorable to it. Hence springs up a new art, inferior, it is true, in certain respects, to antique art—in sculpture, for example—but which is superior in other respects, as is its idea when compared with the pagan idea.

In all this, we are making but a resumé of the ideas of the author. We must do him the justice to say, that wherever he speaks of Christian art, he does it worthily, and exhibits a spirit free from all sectarian prejudice.

If we cast, meanwhile, a glance at the external causes which have brought about this decadence, it is easy to discover them in the situations of ancient society, which prophesy the downfall of both art and religion. We discover the vices of that social order where the state was everything, the individual nothing by himself. This is the radical vice of the Greek state. In such an identification of man and the state, the rights of the individual are ignored. The latter, then, seeks to open for himself a distinct and independent way, separates himself from the public interest, pursues his own ends, and finally labors for the ruin of the state. Hence the egoism which undermines this society little by little, and the ever-increasing excesses of demagoguism.

On the other hand, there arises in the souls of the best a longing for a higher freedom in a state organized upon the basis of justice and right. In the meantime man falls back upon himself, and deserting the written law, religious and civil, takes his conscience for the rule of his acts. Socrates marks the advent of this idea. In Rome, in the last years of the republic, there appears, among energetic spirits, this antagonism and this detachment from society. Noble characters present to us the spectacle of private virtues by the side of feebleness and corruption in public morals.

This protest of moral consciousness against the increasing corruption finds expression in art itself; it creates a form of poetry which corresponds to it, satire.

According to Hegel, satire, in fact, belongs peculiarly to the Romans; it is at least the distinctive and original characteristic, the salient feature, of their poetry and literature. “The spirit of the Roman world is the dominance of the dead letter, the destruction of beauty, the absence of serenity in manners, the ebbing of the domestic and natural affections—in general, the sacrifice of individuality, which devotes itself to the state, the tranquil greatness in obedience to law. The principle of this political virtue, in its frigid and austere rudeness, subdued national individualities abroad, while at home the law was developed with the same rigor and the same exactitude of forms, even to the point of attaining perfection. But this principle was contrary to true art. So one finds at Rome no art which presents a character of beauty, of liberty, of grandeur. The Romans received and learned from the Greeks sculpture, painting, music, epic lyric and dramatic poetry. What is regarded as indigenous among them is the comic farces, the fescennines and atellanes. The Romans can claim as belonging to them in particular only the forms of art which, in their principle, are prosaic, such as the didactic poem. But before all we must place satire.”

III. Of Romantic Art.

This expression, employed here to designate modern art, in its opposition to Greek or classic art, bears nothing of the unfavorable sense which it has in our language and literature, where it has become the synonym of a liberty pushed even to license, and of a contempt for all law. Romantic art, which, in its highest development, is also Christian art, has laws and principles as necessary as classic art. But the idea which it expresses being different, its conditions are also; it obeys other rules, while observing those that are the basis of all art and the very essence of the beautiful.

Hegel, in a general manner, thus characterizes this form of art, contrasting it with antique art, the study of which we have just left.

In classic art, the spirit constitutes the content of the representation; but it is combined with the sensuous or material form in such a manner that it is harmonized perfectly with it, and does not surpass it. Art reached its perfection when it accomplished this happy accord, when the spirit idealized nature and made of it a faithful image of itself. It is thus that classic art was the perfect representation of the ideal, the reign of beauty.

But there is something higher than the beautiful manifestation of spirit under the sensuous form. The spirit ought to abandon this accord with nature, to retire into itself, to find the true harmony in its own world, the spiritual world of the soul and the conscience. Now, that development of the spirit, which not being able to satisfy itself in the world of sense, seeks a higher harmony in itself, is the fundamental principle of romantic art.

Here beauty of form is no longer the supreme thing; beauty, in this sense, remains something inferior, subordinate; it gives place to the spiritual beauty which dwells in the recesses of the soul, in the depths of its infinite nature.

Now in order thus to take possession of itself, it is essential that spirit have a consciousness of its relation to God, and of its union with Him; that not only the divine principle reveal itself under a form true and worthy of it, but that the human soul, on its part, lift itself toward God, that it feel itself filled with His essence, that the Divinity descend into the bosom of humanity. The anthropomorphism of Greek thought ought to disappear, in order to give place to anthropomorphism of a higher order.

Hence all the divinities of polytheism will be absorbed in a single Deity. God has no longer anything in common with those individual personages who had their attributes and their distinct rôles, and formed a whole, free, although subject to destiny.

At the same time God does not remain shut up in the depths of his being; he appears in the real world also; he opens his treasures and unfolds them in creation. He is, notwithstanding, revealed less in nature than in the moral world, or that of liberty. In fine, God is not an ideal, created by the imagination; he manifests himself under the features of living humanity.

If we compare, in this respect, romantic art with classic art, we see that Sculpture no longer suffices to express this idea. We should vainly seek in the image of the gods fashioned by sculpture that which announces the true personality, the clear consciousness of self and reflected will. In the external this defect is betrayed by the absence of the eye, that mirror of the soul. Sculpture is deprived of the glance, the ray of the soul emanating from within. On the other hand, the spirit entering into relation with external objects, this immobility of sculpture no longer responds to the longing for activity, which calls for exercise in a more extended career. The representation ought to embrace a vaster field of objects, and of physical and moral situations.

As to the manner in which this principle is developed and realized, romantic art presents certain striking differences from antique art.

In the first place, as has been said, instead of the ideal divinities, which exist only for the imagination, and are only human nature idealized, it is God himself who makes himself man, and passes through all the phases of human life, birth, suffering, death, and resurrection. Such is the fundamental idea which art represents, even in the circle of religion.

The result of this religious conception is to give also to art, as the principal ground of its representations, strife, conflict, sorrow and death, the profound grief which the nothingness of life, physical and moral suffering, inspire. Is not all this, in fact, an essential part of the history of the God-Man, who must be presented as a model to humanity? Is it not the means of being drawn near to God, of resembling him, and of being united to him? Man ought then to strip off his finite nature, to renounce that which is a mere nothing, and, through this negation of the real life, propose to himself the attainment of what God realized in his mortal life.

The infinite sorrow of this sacrifice, this idea of suffering and of death, which were almost banished from classic art, find, for the first time, their necessary place in Christian art. Among the Greeks death has no seriousness, because man attaches no great importance to his personality and his spiritual nature. On the other hand, now that the soul has an infinite value, death becomes terrible. Terror in the presence of death and the annihilation of our being, is imprinted strongly on our souls. So also among the Greeks, especially before the time of Socrates, the idea of immortality was not profound; they scarcely conceived of life as separable from physical existence. In the Christian faith, on the contrary, death is only the resurrection of the spirit, the harmony of the soul with itself, the true life. It is only by freeing itself from the bonds of its earthly existence that it can enter upon the possession of its true nature.

Such are the principal ideas which form the religious ground of romantic or Christian Art. In spite of some explanations which recall the special system of the author, one cannot deny that they are expressed with power and truthfulness.

Meanwhile, beyond the religious sphere, there are developing certain interests which belong to the mundane life, and which form also the object of the representations of art; they are the passions, the collisions, the joys and the sufferings which bear a terrestrial or purely human character, but in which appear notwithstanding the very principle which distinguishes modern thought, to-wit: a more vivid, more energetic, and more profound sentiment of human personality, or, as the author calls it, subjectivity.

Romantic art differs no less from classic art in the form or the mode of representation, than in the ideas which constitute the content of its works. And, in the first place, one necessary consequence of the preceding principle is, the new point of view under which nature or the physical world is viewed. The objects of nature lose their importance; or, at least, they cease to be divine. They have neither the symbolic signification which oriental art gave them, nor the particular aspect in virtue of which they were animated and personified in Greek art and mythology. Nature is effaced; she retires to a lower plane; the universe is condensed to a single point, in the focus of the human soul. That, absorbed in a single thought, the thought of uniting itself to God, beholds the world vanish, or regards it with an indifferent eye. We see also appearing a heroism wholly different from antique heroism, a heroism of submission and resignation.

But, on the other hand, precisely through the very fact, that all is concentrated in the focus of the human soul, the circle of ideas is found to be infinitely enlarged. The interior history of the soul is developed under a thousand diverse forms, borrowed from human life. It beams forth, and art seizes anew upon nature, which serves as adornment and as a theatre for the activity of the spirit. Hence the history of the human heart becomes infinitely richer than it was in ancient art and poetry. The increasing multitude of situations, of interests, and of passions, forms a domain as much more vast as spirit has descended farther into itself. All degrees, all phases of life, all humanity and its developments, become inexhaustible material for the representations of art.

Nevertheless, art occupies here only a secondary place; as it is incapable of revealing the content of the dogma, religion constitutes still more its essential basis. There is therefore preserved the priority and superiority which faith claims over the conceptions of the imagination.

From this there results an important consequence and a characteristic difference for modern art. It is that in the representation of sensuous forms, art no longer fears to admit into itself the real with its imperfections and its faults. The beautiful is no longer the essential thing; the ugly occupies a much larger place in its creations. Here, then, vanishes that ideal beauty which elevates the forms of the real world above the mortal condition, and replaces it with blooming youth. This free vitality in its infinite calmness—this divine breath which animates matter—romantic art has no longer, for essential aim, to represent these. On the contrary, it turns its back on this culminating point of classic beauty; it accords, indeed, to the ugly a limitless rôle in its creations. It permits all objects to pass into representation in spite of their accidental character. Nevertheless, those objects which are indifferent or commonplace, have value only so far as the sentiments of the soul are reflected in them. But at the highest point of its development art expresses only spirit—pure, invisible spirituality. We feel that it seeks to strip itself of all external forms, to mount into a region superior to sense, where nothing strikes the eye, where no sound longer vibrates upon the ear.

Furthermore, we can say, on comparing in this respect ancient with modern art, that the fundamental trait of romantic or Christian art is the musical element, the lyric accent in poetry. The lyric accent resounds everywhere, even in epic and dramatic poetry. In the figurative arts this characteristic makes itself felt, as a breath of the soul and an atmosphere of feeling.

After having thus determined the general character of romantic art, Hegel studies it more in detail; he considers it, successively, under a two-fold point of view, the religious and the profane; he follows it in its development, and points out the causes which have brought about its decadence. He concludes by some considerations upon the present state of art and its future.

Let us analyze rapidly the principal ideas contained in these chapters.

1st. As to what concerns the religious side, which we have thus far been considering, Hegel, developing its principle, establishes a parallel between the religious idea in classic and romantic art; for romantic art has also its ideal, which, as we have seen already, differs essentially from the antique idea.

Greek beauty shows the soul wholly identified with the corporeal form. In romantic art beauty no more resides in the idealization of the sensuous form, but in the soul itself. Undoubtedly one ought still to demand a certain agreement between the reality and the idea; but the determinate form is indifferent, it is not purified from all the accidents of real existence. The immortal gods in presenting themselves to our eyes under the human form, do not partake of its wants and miseries. On the contrary, the God of Christian art is not a solitary God, a stranger to the conditions of mortal life; he makes himself man, and shares the miseries and the sufferings of humanity. The representation of religious love is the most favorable subject for the beautiful creations of Christian art.

Thus, in the first place, love in God is represented by the history of Christ’s redemption, by the various phases of his life, of his passion, of his death, and of his resurrection. In the second place, love in man, the union of the human soul with God, appears in the holy family, in the maternal love of the Virgin, and in the love of the disciples. Finally, love in humanity is manifested by the spirit of the Church, that is to say, by the Spirit of God present in the society of the faithful, by the return of humanity to God, death to terrestrial life, martyrdom, repentance and conversion, the miracles and the legends.

Such are the principal subjects which form the ground of religious art. It is the Christian ideal in whatever in it is most elevated. Art seizes it and seeks to express it—but does this only imperfectly. Art is here necessarily surpassed by the religious thought, and ought to recognize its own insufficiency.

If we pass from the religious to the profane ideal, it presents itself to us under two different forms. The one, although representing human personality, yet develops noble and elevated sentiments, which combine with moral or religious ideas. The other shows us only persons who display, in the pursuit of purely human and positive interests, independence and energy of character. The first is represented by chivalry. When we come to examine the nature and the principle of the chivalric ideal, we see that what constitutes its content is, in fact, personality. Here, man abandons the state of inner sanctification, the contemplative for the active life. He casts his eyes about him and seeks a theatre for his activity. The fundamental principle is always the same, the soul, the human person, pursuing the infinite. But it turns toward another sphere, that of action and real life. The Ego is replete with self only, with its individuality, which, in its eyes, is of infinite value. It attaches little importance to general ideas, to interests, to enterprises which have for object general order. Three sentiments, in the main, present this personal and individual character, honor, love, and fidelity. Moreover, separate or united, they form, aside from the religious relationships which can be reflected in them, the true content of chivalry.

The author analyzes these three sentiments; he shows in what they differ from the analogous sentiments or qualities in antique art. He endeavors, above all, to prove that they represent, in fact, the side of human personality, with its infinite and ideal character. Thus honor does not resemble bravery, which exposes itself for a common cause. Honor fights only to make itself known or respected, to guarantee the inviolability of the individual person. In like manner love, also, which constitutes the centre of the circle, is only the accidental passion of one person for another person. Even when this passion is idealized by the imagination and ennobled by depth of sentiment, it is not yet the ethical bond of the family and of marriage. Fidelity presents the moral character in a higher degree, since it is disinterested; but it is not addressed to the general good of society in itself; it attaches itself exclusively to the person of a master. Chivalric fidelity understands perfectly well, besides, how to preserve its advantages and its rights, the independence and the honor of the person, who is always only conditionally bound. The basis of these three sentiments is, then, free personality. This is the most beautiful part of the circle which is found beyond religion, properly so-called. All here has for immediate end, man, with whom we can sympathize through the side of personal independence. These sentiments are, moreover, susceptible of being placed in connection with religion in a multitude of ways, as they are able to preserve their independent character.

“This form of romantic art was developed in the East and in the West, but especially in the West, that land of reflection, of the concentration of the spirit upon itself. In the East was accomplished the first expansion of liberty, the first attempt toward enfranchisement from the finite. It was Mahometanism which first swept from the ancient soil all idolatry, and religions born of the imagination. But it absorbed this internal liberty to such a degree that the entire world for it was effaced; plunged in an intoxication of ecstacy, the oriental tastes in contemplation the delights of love, calmness, and felicity.” (Page 456.)

3. We have seen human personality developing itself upon the theatre of real life, and there displaying noble, generous sentiments, such as honor, love and fidelity. Meanwhile it is in the sphere of real life and of purely human interests that liberty and independence of character appear to us. The ideal here consists only in energy and perseverance of will, and passion as well as independence of character. Religion and chivalry disappear with their high conceptions, their noble sentiments, and their thoroughly ideal objects. On the contrary, what characterizes the new wants, is the thirst for the joys of the present life, the ardent pursuit of human interests in what in them is actual, determined, or positive. In like manner, in the figurative arts, man wishes objects to be represented in their palpable and visible reality.

The destruction of classic art commenced with the predominance of the agreeable, and it ended with satire. Romantic art ends in the exaggeration of the principle of personality, deprived of a substantial and moral content, and thenceforth abandoned to caprice, to the arbitrary, to fancy and excess of passion. There is left further to the imagination of the poet only to paint forcibly and with depth these characters; to the artist, only to imitate the real; to the spirit, to exhibit its rigor in piquant combinations and contrasts.

This tendency is revealed under three principal forms: 1st, Independence of individual character, pursuing its proper ends, its particular designs, without moral or religious aim; 2d, the exaggeration of the chivalric principle, and the spirit of adventure; 3d, the separation of the elements, the union of which constitutes the very idea of art, through the destruction of art itself,—that is to say, the predilection for common reality, the imitation of the real, mechanical ability, caprice, fancy, and humor.

The first of these three points furnishes to Hegel the occasion for a remarkable estimate of the characters of Shakspeare, which represent, in an eminent degree, this phase of the Romantic ideal. The distinctive trait of character of the dramatis personæ of Shakspeare is, in fact, the energy and obstinate perseverance of a will which is exclusively devoted to a specific end, and concentrates all its efforts for the purpose of realizing it. There is here no question either of religion or of moral ideas. They are characters placed singly face to face with each other, and their designs, which they have spontaneously conceived, and the execution of which they pursue with the unyielding obstinacy of passion. Macbeth, Othello, Richard III., are such characters. Others, as Romeo, Juliet, and Miranda, are distinguished by an absorption of soul in a unique, profound, but purely personal sentiment, which furnishes them an occasion for displaying an admirable wealth of qualities. The most restricted and most common, still interest us by a certain consistency in their acts, a certain brilliancy, an enthusiasm, a freedom of imagination, a spirit superior to circumstances, which causes us to overlook whatever there is common in their action and discourse.

But this class, where Shakspeare excels, is extremely difficult to treat. To writers of mediocrity, the quicksand is inevitable. They risk, in fact, falling into the insipid, the insignificant, the trivial, or the repulsive, as a crowd of imitators have proven.

It has been vouchsafed only to a few great masters to possess enough genius and taste to seize here the true and the beautiful, to redeem the insignificance or vulgarity of the content by enthusiasm and talent, by the force and energy of their pencil and by a profound knowledge of human passions.

One of the characteristics of romantic art is, that, in the religious sphere, the soul, finding for itself satisfaction in itself, has no need to develop itself in the external world. On the other hand, when the religious idea no longer makes itself felt, and when the free will is no longer dependent, except on itself, the dramatis personæ pursue aims wholly individual in a world where all appears arbitrary and accidental, and which seems abandoned to itself and delivered up to chance. In its irregular pace, it presents a complication of events, which intermingle without order and without cohesion.

Moreover, this is the form which events affect in romantic, in opposition to classic art, where the actions and events are bound to a common end, to a true and necessary principle which determines the form, the character, and the mode of development of external circumstances. In romantic art, also, we find general interests, moral ideas; but they do not ostensibly determine events; they are not the ordering and regulating principle. These events, on the contrary, preserve their free course, and affect an accidental form.

Such is the character of the greater part of the grand events in the middle ages, the crusades, for example, which the author names for this reason, and which were the grand adventures of the Christian world.

Whatever may be the judgment which one forms upon the crusades and the different motives which caused them to be undertaken, it cannot be denied, that with an elevated religious aim—the deliverance of the holy sepulchre—there were mingled other interested and material motives, and that the religious and the profane aim did not contradict nor corrupt the other. As to their general form, the crusades present utter absence of unity. They are undertaken by masses, by multitudes, who enter upon a particular expedition according to their good pleasure, and their individual caprice. The lack of unity, the absence of plan and direction, causes the enterprises to fail, and the efforts and endeavors are wasted in individual exploits.

In another domain, that of profane life, the road is open also to a crowd of adventurers, whose object is more or less imaginary, and whose principle is love, honor, or fidelity. To battle for the glory of a name, to fly to the succor of innocence, to accomplish the most marvellous things for the honor of one’s lady, such is the motive of the greater part of the beautiful exploits which the romances of chivalry or the poems of this epoch and subsequent epochs celebrate.

These vices of chivalry cause its ruin. We find the most faithful picture of it in the poems of Ariosto and Cervantes.

But what best marks the destruction of romantic art and of chivalry is the modern romance, that form of literature which takes their place. The romance is chivalry applied to real life; it is a protest against the real, it is the ideal in a society where all is fixed, regulated in advance by laws, by usages contrary to the free development of the natural longings and sentiments of the soul; it is the chivalry of common life. The same principle which caused a search for adventures throws the personages into the most diverse and the most extraordinary situations. The imagination, disgusted with that which is, cuts out for itself a world according to its fancy, and creates for itself an ideal wherein it can forget social customs, laws, positive interests. The young men and young women, above all, feel the want of such aliment for the heart, or of such distraction against ennui. Ripe age succeeds youth; the young man marries and enters upon positive interests. Such is also the dénoûement of the greater part of romances, where prose succeeds poetry, the real, the ideal.

The destruction of romantic art is announced by symptoms still more striking, by the imitation of the real, and the appearance of the humorous style, which occupies more and more space in art and literature. The artist and the poet can there display much talent, enthusiasm and spirit; but these two styles are no less striking indexes of an epoch of decadence.

It is, above all, the humorous style which marks this decadence, by the absence of all fixed principle and all rule. It is a pure play of the imagination which combines, according to its liking, the most different objects, alters and overturns relations, tortures itself to discover novel and extraordinary conceptions. The author places himself above the subject, regards himself as freed from all conditions imposed by the nature of the content as well as the form, and imagines that all depends on his wit and the power of his genius. It is to be observed, that what Hegel calls the downfall of art in general, and of romantic art in particular, is precisely what we call the romantic school in the art and literature of our time.

Such are the fundamental forms which art presents in its historic development. If the art of the renaissance, or modern art properly so called, finds no place in this sketch, it is because it does not constitute an original and fundamental form. The renaissance is a return to Greek art; and as to modern art, it is allied to both Greek and Christian.

But it remains for us to present some conclusions upon the future destiny of art—a point of highest interest, to which this review of the forms and monuments of the past must lead. The conclusions of the author, which we shall consider elsewhere, are far from answering to what we might have expected from so remarkable a historic picture.

What are, indeed, these conclusions? The first is, that the rôle of art, to speak properly, is finished—at least, its original and distinct rôle. The circle of the ideas and beliefs of humanity is completed. Art has invested them with the forms which it was capable of giving them. In the future, it ought, then, to occupy a secondary place. After having finished its independent career, it becomes an obscure satellite of science and philosophy, in which are absorbed both religion and art. This thought is not thus definitely formulated, but it is clearly enough indicated. Art, in revealing thought, has itself contributed to the destruction of other forms, and to its own downfall. The new art ought to be elevated above all the particular forms which it has already expressed. “Art ceases to be attached to a determinate circle of ideas and forms; it consecrates itself to a new worship, that of humanity. All that the heart of man includes within its own immensity—its joys and its sufferings, its interests, its actions, its destinies—become the domain of art.” Thus the content is human nature; the form a free combination of all the forms of the past. We shall hereafter consider this new eclecticism in art.

Hegel points out, in concluding, a final form of literature and poetry, which is the unequivocal index of the absence of peculiar, elevated and profound ideas, and of original forms—that sentimental poetry, light or descriptive, which to-day floods the literary world and the drawing-rooms with its verses; compositions without life and without content, without originality or true inspiration; a common-place and vague expression of all sentiment, full of aspirations and empty of ideas, where, through all, there makes itself recognized an imitation of some illustrious geniuses—themselves misled in false and perilous ways; a sort of current money, analogous to the epistolary style. Everybody is poet; and there is scarcely one true poet. “Wherever the faculties of the soul and the forms of language have received a certain degree of culture, there is no person who cannot, if he take the fancy, express in verse some situation of the soul, as any one is in condition to write a letter.”

Such a style, thus universally diffused, and reproduced under a thousand forms, although with different shadings, easily becomes fastidious.

CHAPTER II.

We hope to see those necessities of thought which underlie all Philosophical systems. We set out to account for all the diversities of opinion, and to see identity in the world of thought. But necessity in the realm of thought may be phenomenal. If there be anything which is given out as fixed, we must try its validity.

Many of the “impossibilities” of thought are easily shown to rest upon ignorance of psychological appliances. The person is not able because he does not know how—just as in other things. We must take care that we do not confound the incapacity of ignorance with the necessity of thought. (The reader will find an example of this in Sir Wm. Hamilton’s “Metaphysics,” page 527.) One of these “incapacities” arises from neglecting the following:

Among the first distinctions to be learned by the student in philosophy is that between the imaginative form of thinking and pure thinking. The former is a sensuous grade of thinking which uses images, while the latter is a more developed stage, and is able to think objects in and for themselves. Spinoza’s statement of this distinction applied to the thinking of the Infinite—his “Infinitum imaginationis” and “Infinitum actu vel rationis”—has been frequently alluded to by those who treat of this subject.

At first one might suppose that when finite things are the subject of thought, it would make little difference whether the first or second form of thinking is employed. This is, however, a great error. The Philosopher must always “think things under the form of eternity” if he would think the truth.

Imagination pictures objects. It represents to itself only the bounded. If it tries to realize the conception of infinitude, it represents a limited somewhat, and then Reflection or the Understanding (a form of thought lying between Imagination and Reason) passes beyond the limits, and annuls them. This process may be continued indefinitely, or until Reason (or pure thinking) comes in and solves the dilemma. Thus we have a dialogue resulting somewhat as follows:

Imagination. Come and see the Infinite just as I have pictured it.

Understanding. [Peeping cautiously about it.] Where is your frame? Ah! I see it now, clearly. How is this! Your frame does not include all. There is a “beyond” to your picture. I cannot tell whether you intend the inside or outside for your picture of the Infinite, I see it on both.

Imag. [Tries to extend the frame, but with the same result as before.] I believe you are right! I am well nigh exhausted by my efforts to include the unlimited.

Un. Ah! you see the Infinite is merely the negative of the finite or positive. It is the negative of those conditions which you place there in order to have any representation at all.

[While the Understanding proceeds to deliver a course of wise saws and moral reflections on the “inability of the Finite to grasp the Infinite,” sitting apart upon its bipod—for tripod it has none, one of the legs being broken—it self-complacently and oracularly admonishes the human mind to cultivate humility; Imagination drops her brush and pencil in confusion at these words. Very opportunely Reason steps in and takes an impartial survey of the scene.]

Reason. Did you say that the Infinite is unknowable?

Un. Yes. “To think is to limit, and hence to think the Infinite is to limit it, and thus to destroy it.”

Reason. Apply your remarks to Space. Is not Space infinite?

Un. If I attempt to realize Space, I conceive a bounded, but I at once perceive that I have placed my limits within Space, and hence my realization is inadequate. The Infinite, therefore, seems to be a beyond to my clear conception.

Reason. Indeed! When you reflect on Space do you not perceive that it is of such a nature that it can be limited only by itself? Do not all its limits imply Space to exist in?

Un. Yes, that is the difficulty.

Reason. I do not see the “difficulty.” If Space can be limited only by itself, its limit continues it, instead of bounding it. Hence it is universally continuous or infinite.

Un. But a mere negative.

Reason. No, not a mere negative, but the negative of all negation, and hence truly affirmative. It is the exhibition of the utter impossibility of any negative to it. All attempts to limit it, continue it. It is its own other. Its negative is itself. Here, then, we have a truly affirmative infinite in contradistinction to the negative infinite—the “infinite progress” that you and Imagination were engaged upon when I came in.

Un. What you say seems to me a distinction in words merely.

Reason. Doubtless. All distinctions are merely in words until one has learned to see them independent of words. But you must go and mend that tripod on which you are sitting; for how can one think at ease and exhaustively, when he is all the time propping up his basis from without?

Un. I cannot understand you. [Exit.]

Note.

It will be well to consider what application is to be made of these distinctions to the mind itself, whose form is consciousness. In self-knowing, or consciousness, the subject knows itself—it is its own object. Thus in this phase of activity we have the affirmative Infinite. The subject is its own object—is continued by its other or object. This is merely suggested here—it will be developed hereafter.

CHAPTER III.

In the first chapter we attained—or at least made the attempt to attain—some insight into the relation which Mind bears to Time and Space. It appeared that Mind is a Transcendent, i. e. something which Time and Space inhere in, rather than a somewhat, conditioned by them. Although this result agrees entirely with the religious instincts of man, which assert the immortality of the soul, and the unsubstantiality of the existences within Time and Space, yet as a logical result of thinking, it seems at first very unreliable. The disciplined thinker will indeed find the distinctions “a priori and a posteriori” inadequately treated; but his emendations will only make the results there established more wide-sweeping and conclusive.

In the second chapter we learned caution with respect to the manner of attempting to realize in our minds the results of thought. If we have always been in the habit of regarding Mind as a property or attribute of the individual, we have conceived it not according to its true nature, but have allowed Imagination to mingle its activity in the thinking of that which is of a universal nature. Thus we are prone to say to ourselves: “How can a mere attribute like Mind be the logical condition of the solid realities of Space and Time?” In this we have quietly assumed the whole point at issue. No system of thinking which went to work logically ever proved the Mind to be an attribute; only very elementary grades of thinking, which have a way of assuming in their premises what they draw out analytically in their conclusions, ever set up this dogma. This will become clearer at every step as we proceed.

We will now pursue a path similar to that followed in the first chapter, and see what more we can learn of the nature of Mind. We will endeavor to learn more definitely what constitutes its a priori activity, in order, as there indicated, to achieve our object. Thus our present search is after the “Categories” and their significance. Taking the word category here in the sense of “a priori determination of thought,” the first question is: “Do any categories exist? Are there any thoughts which belong to the nature of mind itself?” It is the same question that Locke discusses under the head of “Innate ideas.”

I.

“Every act of knowing or cognizing is the translating of an unknown somewhat into a known, as a scholar translates a new language into his own.” If he did not already understand one language, he could never translate the new one. In the act of knowing, the object becomes known in so far as I am able to recognise predicates as belonging to it. “This is red;” unless I know already what “red” means, I do not cognize the object by predicating red of it. “Red is a color;” unless I know what “color” means, I have not said anything intelligible—I have not expressed an act of cognition. The object becomes known to us in so far as we recognize its predicates—and hence we could never know anything unless we had at least one predicate or conception with which to commence. If we have one predicate through which we cognize some object, that act of cognition gives us a new predicate; for it has dissolved or “translated” a somewhat, that before was unknown, into a known; the “not-me” has, to that extent, become the “me.” Without any predicates to begin with, all objects would remain forever outside of our consciousness. Even consciousness itself would be impossible, for the very act of self-cognition implies that the predicate “myself” is well known. It is an act of identification: “I am myself;” the subject is, as predicate, completely known or dissolved back into the subject. I cognize myself as myself; there is no alien element left standing over against me. Thus we are able to say that there must be an a priori category in order to render possible any act of knowing whatever. Moreover, we see that this category must be identical with the Ego itself, for the reason that the process of cognition is at the same time a recognition; it predicates only what it recognizes. Thus, fundamentally, in knowing, Reason knows itself. Self-consciousness is the basis of knowledge. This will throw light on the first chapter; but let us first confirm this position by a psychological analysis.

II.

What is the permanent element in thought?—It can easily be found in language—its external manifestation. Logic tells us that the expression of thought involves always a subject and predicate. Think what you please, say what you please, and your thought or assertion consists of a subject and predicate—positive or negative—joined by the copula, is. “Man lives” is equivalent to “man is living.” “Man” and “living” are joined by the word “is.” If we abstract all content from thought, and take its pure form in order to see the permanent, we shall have “is” the copula,—or putting a letter for subject and attribute, we shall have “a is a,” (or “a is b,”) for the universal form of thought. The mental act is expressed by “is.” In this empty “is” we have the category of pure Being, which is the “summum genus” of categories. Any predicate other than being will be found to contain being plus determinations, and hence can be subsumed under being. We shall get new light on this subject if we examine the ordinary doctrine of explanation.

III.

In order to explain something, we subsume it under a more general. Thus we say: “Horse is an animal;” and, “An animal is an organic being,” &c. A definition contains not only this subsumption, but also a statement of the specific difference. We define quadruped by subsuming it, (“It is an animal”) and giving the specific difference (“which has four feet”).

As we approach the “summum genus,” the predicates become more and more empty; “they become more extensive in their application, and less comprehensive in their content.” Thus they approach pure simplicity, which is attained in the “summum genus.” This pure simple, which is the limit of subsumption and abstraction, is pure Being—Being devoid of all determinateness. When we have arrived at Being, subsuming becomes simple identifying—Being is Being, or a is a—and this is precisely the same activity that we found self-consciousness to consist of in our first analysis, (I.) and the same activity that we found all mental acts to consist of in our second analysis, (II.).

IV.

Therefore, we may affirm on these grounds, that the “summum genus,” or primitive category, is the Ego itself in its simplest activity as the “is” (or pure being if taken substantively).

Thus it happens that when the Mind comes to cognize an object, it must first of all recognize itself in it in its simplest activity,—it must know that the object is. We cannot know anything else of an object without presupposing the knowledge of its existence.

At this point it is evident that this category is not derived from experience in the sense of an impression from without. It is the activity of the Ego itself, and is its (the Ego’s) first self-externalization (or its first becoming object to itself—its first act of self-consciousness). The essential activity of the Ego itself consists in recognizing itself, and this involves self-separation, and then the annulling of this separation in the same act. For in knowing myself as an object I separate the Ego from itself, but in the very act of knowing it I make it identical again. Here are two negative processes involved in knowing, and these are indivisibly one:—first, the negative act of separation—secondly, the negative act of annulling the separation by the act of recognition. That the application of categories to the external world is a process of self-recognition, is now clear: we know, in so far as we recognize predicates in the object,—we say “The Rose is, it is red, it is round, it is fragrant, &c.” In this we separate what belongs to the rose from it, and place it outside of it, and then, through the act of predication, unite it again. “The Rose is” contains merely the recognition of being but being is separated from it and joined to it in the act of predication. Thus we see that the fundamental act of self-consciousness, which is a self-separation and self-identification united in one act of recognition,—we see that this fundamental act is repeated in all acts of knowing. We do not know even the rose without separating it from itself, and identifying the two sides thus formed. (This contains a deeper thought which we may suggest here. That the act of knowing puts all objects into this crucible, is an intimation on its part that no object can possess true, abiding being, without this ability to separate itself from itself in the process of self-identification. Whatever cannot do this is no essence, but may be only an element of a process in which it ceaselessly loses its identity. But we shall recur to this again.)

Doubtless we could follow out this activity through various steps, and deduce all the categories of pure thought. This is what Plato has done in part; what Fichte has done in his Science of Knowledge, (“Wissenschaftslehre”) and Hegel in his Logic. A science of these pure intelligibles unlocks the secret of the Universe; it furnishes that “Royal Road” to all knowledge; it is the far-famed Philosopher’s Stone that alone can transmute the base dross of mere talent into genius.

V.

Let us be content if at the close of this chapter we can affirm still more positively the conclusions of our first. Through a consideration of the a priori knowledge of Time and Space, and their logical priority, as conditions, to the world of experience, we inferred the transcendency of Mind. Upon further investigation, we have now discovered that there are other forms of the Mind more primordial than Space and Time, and more essentially related to its activity; for all the categories of pure thought—Being, Negation, &c.,—are applicable to Space and to Time, and hence more universal than either of them alone; these categories of pure thought, moreover, as before remarked, could never have been derived from experience. Experience is not possible without presupposing these predicates. “They are the tools of intelligence through which it cognizes.” If we hold by this stand-point exclusively, we may say, with Kant, that we furnish the subjective forms in knowing, and for this reason cannot know the “thing in itself.” If these categories are merely subjective—i. e. given in the constitution of the Mind itself—and we do not know what the “thing in itself” may be, yet we can come safely out of all skepticism here by considering the universal nature of these categories or “forms of the mind.” For if Being, Negation and Existence are forms of mind and purely subjective, so that they do not belong to the “thing in itself,” it is evident that such an object cannot be or exist, or in any way have validity, either positively or negatively. Thus it is seen from the nature of mind here exhibited, that Mind is the noumenon or “thing in itself” which Philosophy seeks, and thus our third chapter confirms our first.

Note.

The Materialism of the present day holds that thought is a modification of force, correlated with heat, light, electricity, &c., in short, that organization produces ideas. If so, we are placed within a narrow idealism, and can only say of what is held for truth: “I am so correlated as to hold this view,—I shall be differently correlated to-morrow, perhaps, and hold another view.” Yet in this very statement the Ego takes the stand-point of universality—it speaks of possibilities—which it could never do, were it merely a correlate. For to hold a possibility is to be able to annul in thought the limits of the real, and hence to elevate itself to the point of universality. But this is self-correlation; we have a movement in a circle, and hence self-origination, and hence a spontaneous fountain of force. The Mind, in conceiving of the possible, annuls the real, and thus creates its own motives; its acting according to motives, is thus acting according to its own acts—an obvious circle again.

In fine, it is evident that the idealism which the correlationist logically falls into is as strict as that of any school of professed idealism which he is in the habit of condemning. The persistent force is the general idea of force, not found as any real force, for each real force is individualized in some particular way. But it is evident that a particular force cannot be correlated with force in general, but only with a special form like itself. But the general force is the only abiding one—each particular one is in a state of transition into another—a perpetual losing of individuality. Hence the true abiding force is not a real one existing objectively, but only an ideal one existing subjectively in thought. But through the fact that thought can seize the true and abiding which can exist for itself nowhere else, the correlationist is bound to infer the transcendency of Mind just like the idealist. Nay, more, when he comes to speak considerately, he will say that Mind, for the very reason that it thinks the true, abiding force, cannot be correlated with any determined force.

CHAPTER IV.

Philosophers usually begin to construct their systems in full view of their final principle. It would be absurd for one to commence a demonstration if he had no clear idea of what he intended to prove. From the final principle the system must be worked back to the beginning in the Philosopher’s mind before he can commence his demonstration. Usually the order of demonstration which he follows, is not the order of discovery; in such case his system proceeds by external reflections. All mathematical proof is of this order. One constructs his demonstration to lead from the known to the unknown, and uses many intermediate propositions that do not of necessity lead to the intended result. With another theorem in view, they might be used for steps to that, just as well. But there is a certain inherent development in all subjects when examined according to the highest method, that will lead one on to the exhaustive exposition of all that is involved therein. This is called the dialectic. This dialectic movement cannot be used as a philosophic instrument, unless one has seen the deepest aperçu of Science; if this is not the case, the dialectic will prove merely destructive and not constructive. It is therefore a mistake, as has been before remarked, to attempt to introduce the beginner of the study of Philosophy at once into the dialectic. The content of Philosophy must be first presented under its sensuous and reflective forms, and a gradual progress established. In this chapter an attempt will be made to approach again the ultimate principle which we have hitherto fixed only in a general manner as Mind. We will use the method of external reflection, and demonstrate three propositions: 1. There is an independent being; 2. That being is self-determined; 3. Self-determined being is in the form of personality, i. e. is an Ego.

I.

1. Dependent being, implying its complement upon which it depends, cannot be explained through itself, but through that upon which it depends.

2. This being upon which it depends cannot be also a dependent being, for the dependent being has no support of its own to lend to another; all that it has is borrowed. “A chain of dependent beings collapses into one dependent being. Dependence is not converted into independence by mere multiplication.”

3. The dependent, therefore, depends upon the independent, and has its explanation in it. Since all being is of one kind or the other, it follows that all being is independent, or a complemental element of it. Reciprocal dependence makes an independent including whole, which is the negative unity.

Definition.—One of the most important implements of the thinker is the comprehension of “negative unity.” It is a unity resulting from the reciprocal cancelling of elements; e. g. Salt is the negative unity of acid and alkali. It is called negative because it negates the independence of the elements within it. In the negative unity Air, the elements oxygen and nitrogen have their independence negated.

II.

1. The independent being cannot exist without determinations. Without these, it could not distinguish itself or be distinguished from nought.

2. Nor can the independent being be determined (i. e. limited or modified in any way) from without, or through another. For all that is determined through another is a dependent somewhat.

3. Hence the independent being can be only a self-determined. If self-determined, it can exist through itself.

Note.

Spinoza does not arrive at the third position, but, after considering the second, arrives at the first one, and concludes, since determination through another makes a somewhat finite, that the independent being must be undetermined. He does not happen to discover that there is another kind of determination, to-wit, self-determination, which can consist with independence. The method that he uses makes it entirely an accidental matter with him that he discovers what speculative results he does—the dialectic method would lead inevitably to self-determination, as we shall see later. It is Hegel’s aperçu that we have in the third position; with Spinoza the independent being remained an undetermined substance, but with Hegel it became a self-determining subject. All that Spinoza gets out of his substance he must get in an arbitrary manner; it does not follow from its definition that it shall have modes and attributes, but the contrary. This aperçu—that the independent being, i. e. every really existing, separate entity, is self-determined—is the central point of speculative philosophy. What self-determination involves, we shall see next.

III.

1. Self-determination implies that the constitution or nature be self-originated. There is nothing about a self-determined that is created by anything without.

2. Thus self-determined being exists dually—it is (a) as determining and (b) as determined. (a) As determining, it is the active, which contains merely the possibility of determinations; (b) as determined, it is the passive result—the matter upon which the subject acts.

3. But since both are the same being, each side returns into itself:—(a) as determining or active, it acts only upon its own determining, and (b) as passive or determined, it is, as result of the former, the self-same active itself. Hence its movement is a movement of self-recognition—a positing of distinction which is cancelled in the same act. (In self-recognition something is made an object, and identified with the subject in the same act.) Moreover, the determiner, on account of its pure generality, (i. e. its having no concrete determinations as yet,) can only be ideal—can only exist as the Ego exists in thought; not as a thing, but as a generic entity. The passive side can exist only as the self exists in consciousness—as that which is in opposition and yet in identity at the same time. No finite existence could endure this contradiction, for all such must possess a nature or constitution which is self-determined; if not, each finite could negate all its properties and qualities, and yet remain itself—just as the person does when he makes abstraction of all, in thinking of the Ego or pure self.

Thus we find again our former conclusion.—All finite or dependent things must originate in and depend upon independent or absolute being, which must be an Ego. The Ego has the form of Infinitude (see chapter II—the infinite is its own other).

Resumé. The first chapter states the premises which Kant lays down in his Transcendental Æsthetic, (Kritik der Reinen Vernunft) and draws the true logical conclusions which are positive and not negative, as he makes them. The second chapter gives the Spinozan distinction of the Infinite of the Imagination and Infinite of Reason. The third chapter gives the logical results which Kant should have drawn from his Transcendental Logic. The fourth chapter gives Spinoza’s fundamental position logically completed, and is the great fundamental position of Plato, Aristotle and Hegel, with reference to the Absolute.

MUSIC AS A FORM OF ART.
[Read before the St. Louis Art Society, February, 1867.]

I. Upon Art-Criticism.

A work of art is the product of the inspired moment of the artist. It is not to be supposed that he is able to give an account of his work in the terms of the understanding. Hence the artist is not in a strict sense a critic. The highest order of criticism must endeavor to exhibit the unity of the work by showing how the various motives unfold from the central thought. Of course, the artist must be rare who can see his work doubly—first sensuously, and then rationally. Only some Michael Angelo or Goethe can do this. The common artist sees the sensuous form as the highest possible revelation—to him his feeling is higher than the intellectual vision. And can we not all—critics as well as artists—sympathize with the statement that the mere calculating intellect, the cold understanding, “all light and no heat,” can never rise into the realm where art can be appreciated? It is only when we contemplate the truly speculative intellect—which is called “love” by the mystics, and by Swedenborg “Love and wisdom united in a Divine Essence,”—that we demur at this supreme elevation of feeling or sentiment. The art critic must have all the feeling side of his nature aroused, as the first condition of his interpretation; and, secondly, he must be able to dissolve into thought the emotions which arise from that side. If feeling were more exalted than thought, this would be impossible. Such, however, is the view of such critics as the Schlegels, who belong to the romantic school. They say that the intellect considers only abstractions, while the heart is affected by the concrete whole. “Spectres and goitred dwarfs” for the intellect, but “beauty’s rose” for the feeling heart. But this all rests on a misunderstanding. The true art critic does not undervalue feeling. It is to him the essential basis upon which he builds. Unless the work of art affects his feelings, he has nothing to think about; he can go no further; the work, to him, is not a work of art at all. But if he is aroused and charmed by it, if his emotional nature is stirred to its depths, and he feels inspired by those spiritual intimations of Eternity which true art always excites, then he has a content to work upon, and this thinking of his, amounts simply to a recognition in other forms, of this eternal element, that glows through the work of art.

Hence there is no collision between the artist and the critic, if both are true to their ideal.

It certainly is no injury to the work of art to show that it treats in some form the Problem of Life, which is the mystery of the Christian religion. It is no derogation to Beethoven to show how he has solved a problem in music, just as Shakspeare in poetry, and Michael Angelo in painting. Those who are content with the mere feeling, we must always respect if they really have the true art feeling, just as we respect the simple piety of the uneducated peasant. But we must not therefore underrate the conscious seizing of the same thing,—not place St. Augustine or Martin Luther below the simple-minded peasant. Moreover, as our society has for its aim the attainment of an insight into art in general, and not the exclusive enjoyment of any particular art, it is all the more important that we should hold by the only connecting link—the only universal element—thought. For thought has not only universal content, like feeling, but also universal form, which feeling has not.

Another reason that causes persons to object to art interpretation, is perhaps that such interpretation reminds them of the inevitable moral appended ad nauseam to the stories that delighted our childhood. But it must be remembered that these morals are put forward as the object of the stories. The art critic can never admit for one moment that it is the object of a work of art simply to be didactic. It is true that all art is a means of culture; but that is not its object. Its object is to combine the idea with a sensuous form, so as to embody, as it were, the Infinite; and any motive external to the work of art itself, is at once felt to be destructive to it.

II. Upon the Interpretation of Art.

1. The Infinite is not manifested within any particular sphere of finitude, but rather exhibits itself in the collision of a Finite with another Finite without it. For a Finite must by its very nature be limited from without, and the Infinite, therefore, not only includes any given finite sphere, but also its negation (or the other spheres which joined to it make up the whole).

2. “Art is the manifestation of the Infinite in the Finite,” it is said. Therefore, this must mean that art has for its province the treatment of the collisions that necessarily arise between one finite sphere and another.

3. In proportion as the collision portrayed by art is comprehensive, and a type of all collisions in the universe, is it a high work of art. If, then, the collision is on a small scale, and between low spheres, it is not a high work of art.

4. But whether the collision presented be of a high order or of a low order, it bears a general resemblance to every other collision—the Infinite is always like itself in all its manifestations. The lower the collision, the more it becomes merely symbolical as a work of art, and the less it adequately presents the Infinite.

Thus the lofty mountain peaks of Bierstadt, which rise up into the regions of clearness and sunshine, beyond the realms of change, do this, only because of a force that contradicts gravitation, which continually abases them. The contrast of the high with the low, of the clear and untrammelled with the dark and impeded, symbolizes, in the most natural manner, to every one, the higher conflicts of spirit. It strikes a chord that vibrates, unconsciously perhaps, but, nevertheless, inevitably. On the other hand, when we take the other extreme of painting, and look at the “Last Judgment” of Michael Angelo, or the “Transfiguration” of Raphael, we find comparatively no ambiguity; there the Infinite is visibly portrayed, and the collision in which it is displayed is evidently of the highest order.

5. Art, from its definition, must relate to Time and Space, and in proportion as the grosser elements are subordinated and the spiritual adequately manifested, we find that we approach a form of art wherein the form and matter are both the products of spirit.

Thus we have arts whose matter is taken from (a) Space, (b) Time, and (c) Language (the product of Spirit).

Space is the grossest material. We have on its plane, I. Architecture, II. Sculpture, and III. Painting. (In the latter, color and perspective give the artist power to represent distance and magnitude, and internality, without any one of them, in fact. Upon a piece of ivory no larger than a man’s hand a “Heart of the Andes” might be painted.) In Time we have IV. Music, while in Language we have V. Poetry (in the three forms of Epic, Lyric, and Dramatic) as the last and highest of the forms of Art.

6. An interpretation of a work of art should consist in a translation of it into the form of science. Hence, first, one must seize the general content of it—or the collision portrayed. Then, secondly, the form of art employed comes in, whether it be Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, or Poetry. Thirdly, the relation which the content has to the form, brings out the superior merits, or the limits and defects of the work of art in question. Thus, at the end, we have universalized the piece of art—digested it, as it were. A true interpretation does not destroy a work of art, but rather furnishes a guide to its highest enjoyment. We have the double pleasure of immediate sensuous enjoyment produced by the artistic execution, and the higher one of finding our rational nature mirrored therein so that we recognize the eternal nature of Spirit there manifested.

7. The peculiar nature of music, as contrasted with other arts, will, if exhibited, best prepare us for what we are to expect from it. The less definitely the mode of art allows its content to be seized, the wider may be its application. Landscape painting may have a very wide scope for its interpretation, while a drama of Goethe or Shakspeare definitely seizes the particulars of its collision, and leaves no doubt as to its sphere. So in the art of music, and especially instrumental music. Music does not portray an object directly, like the plastic arts, but it calls up the internal feeling which is caused by the object itself. It gives us, therefore, a reflection of our impressions excited in the immediate contemplation of the object. Thus we have a reflection of a reflection, as it were.

Since its material is Time rather than Space, we have this contrast with the plastic arts: Architecture, and more especially Sculpture and Painting, are obliged to select a special moment of time for the representation of the collision. As Goethe shows in the Laocoon, it will not do to select a moment at random, but that point of time must be chosen in which the collision has reached its height, and in which there is a tension of all the elements that enter the contest on both sides. A moment earlier, or a moment later, some of these elements would be eliminated from the problem, and the comprehensiveness of the work destroyed. When this proper moment is seized in Sculpture, as in the Laocoon, we can see what has been before the present moment, and easily tell what will come later. In Painting, through the fact that coloring enables more subtle effects to be wrought out, and deeper internal movements to be brought to the surface, we are not so closely confined to the “supreme moment” as in Sculpture. But it is in Music that we first get entirely free from that which confines the plastic arts. Since its form is time, it can convey the whole movement of the collision from its inception to its conclusion. Hence Music is superior to the Arts of Space, in that it can portray the internal creative process, rather than the dead results. It gives us the content in its whole process of development in a fluid form, while the Sculptor must fix it in a frigid form at a certain stage. Goethe and others have compared Music to Architecture—the latter is “frozen Music”; but they have not compared it to Sculpture nor Painting, for the reason that in these two arts there is a possibility of seizing the form of the individual more definitely, while in Architecture and Music the point of repose does not appear as the human form, but only as the more general one of self-relation or harmony. Thus quantitative ratios—mathematical laws—pervade and govern these two forms of Art.

8. Music, more definitely considered, arises from vibrations, producing waves in the atmosphere. The cohesive attraction of some body is attacked, and successful resistance is made; if not, there is no vibration. Thus the feeling of victory over a foreign foe is conveyed in the most elementary tones, and this is the distinction of tone from noise, in which there is the irregularity of disruption, and not the regularity of self-equality.

Again, in the obedience of the whole musical structure to its fundamental scale-note, we have something like the obedience of Architecture to Gravity. In order to make an exhibition of Gravity, a pillar is necessary; for the solid wall does not isolate sufficiently the function of support. With the pillar we can have exhibited the effects of Gravity drawing down to the earth, and of the support holding up the shelter. The pillar in classic art exhibits the equipoise of the two tendencies. In Romantic or Gothic Architecture it exhibits a preponderance of the aspiring tendency—the soaring aloft like the plant to reach the light—a contempt for mere gravity—slender pillars seeming to be let down from the roof, and to draw up something, rather than to support anything. On the other hand, in Symbolic Architecture, (as found in Egypt) we have the overwhelming power of gravity exhibited so as to crush out all humanity—the Pyramid, in whose shape Gravity has done its work. In Music we have continually the conflict of these two tendencies, the upward and downward. The Music that moves upward and shows its ground or point of repose in the octave above the scale-note of the basis, corresponds to the Gothic Architecture. This aspiring movement occurs again and again in chorals; it—like all romantic art—expresses the Christian solution of the problem of life.

III. Beethoven’s Sonata in C sharp minor.
(Opus 27, No. 2.)

The three movements of this sonata which Beethoven called a fantasie-sonata, are not arranged in the order commonly followed. Usually sonatas begin with an allegro or some quick movement, and pass over to a slow movement—an adagio or andante—and end in a quick movement. The content here treated could not allow this form, and hence it commences with what is usually the second movement. Its order is 1. Adagio, 2. Allegretto, 3. Finale (presto agitato).

(My rule with reference to the study of art may or may not be interesting to others; it is this:—always to select a masterpiece, so recognized, and keep it before me until it yields its secret, and in its light I am able to see common-place to be what it really is, and be no longer dazzled by it. It requires faith in the commonly received verdict of critics and an immense deal of patience, but in the end one is rewarded for his pains. Almost invariably I find immediate impressions of uncultured persons good for nothing. It requires long familiarity with the best things to learn to see them in their true excellence.)

This sonata is called by the Austrians the “Moonlight Sonata,” and this has become the popular name in America. It is said to have been written by Beethoven when he was recovering from the disappointment of his hopes in a love-episode that had an unfortunate termination. (See Marx’s “L. v. Beethoven, Leben und Schaffen.” From this magnificent work of Art-Criticism, I have drawn the outlines of the following interpretation.) The object of his affection was a certain young countess, Julia Guicciardi; and it appears from Beethoven’s letter to a friend at the time (about 1800) that the affection was mutual, but their difference in rank prevented a marriage. When this sonata appeared (in 1802) it was inscribed to her.

Adagio.

The first movement is a soft, floating movement, portraying the soul musing upon a memory of what has affected it deeply. The surrounding is dim, as seen in moonlight, and the soul is lit up by a reflected light—a glowing at the memory of a bliss that is past. It is not strange that this has been called the Moonlight Sonata, just for this feeling of borrowed light that pervades it. As we gaze into the moon of memory, we almost forget the reflection, and fancy that the sun of immediate consciousness is itself present. But anon a flitting cloudlet (a twinge of bitter regret) obscures the pale beam, or a glance at the landscape—not painted now with colors as in the daytime, but only clare-obscure—brings back to us the sense of our separation from the day and the real. Sadly the soft gliding movement continues, and distant and more distant grows the prospect of experiencing again the remembered happiness. Only for a passing moment can the throbbing soul realize in its dreams once more its full completeness, and the plaintive minor changes to major; but the spectral form of renunciation glides before its face, and the soul subsides into its grief, and yields to what is inevitable. Downward into the depths fall its hopes; only a sepulchral echo comes from the bass, and all is still. Marx calls this “the song of the renouncing soul.” It is filled with the feeling of separation and regret; but its slow, dreamy movement is not that of stern resolution, which should accompany renunciation. Accordingly we have

Allegretto.

The present and real returns; we no longer dwell on the past; “We must separate; only this is left.” In this movement we awake from the dream, and we feel the importance of the situation. Its content is “Farewell, then;” the phrase expressing this, lingers in its striving to shake off the grasp and get free. The hands will not let go each other. The phrase runs into the next and back to itself, and will not be cut off. In the trio there seems to be the echoing of sobs that come from the depth of the soul as the sorrowful words are repeated. The buried past still comes back and holds up its happy hours, while the shadows of the gloomy future hover before the two renunciants!

This movement is very short, and is followed by the

Finale (Presto agitato).

“No grief of the soul that can be conquered except through action,” says Goethe—and Beethoven expresses the same conviction in the somewhat sentimental correspondence with the fair countess. This third movement depicts the soul endeavoring to escape from itself; to cancel its individualism through contact with the real.

The first movement found the being of the soul involved with another—having, as it were, lost its essence. If the being upon which it depends reflects it back by a reciprocal dependence, it again becomes integral and independent. This cannot be; hence death or renunciation. But renunciation leaves the soul recoiling upon its finitude, and devoid of the universality it would have obtained by receiving its being through another which reciprocally depended upon it. Hence the necessity of Goethe’s and Beethoven’s solution—the soul must find surcease of sorrow through action, through will, or practical self-determination. Man becomes universal in his deed.

How fiercely the soul rushes into the world of action in this Finale! In its impetuosity it storms through life, and ever and anon falls down breathless before the collision which it encounters in leaping the chasms between the different spheres. In its swoon of exhaustion there comes up from the memory of the past the ghost of the lost love that has all the while accompanied him, though unnoticed, in his frantic race. Its hollow tones reverberate through his being, and he starts from his dream and drowns his memory anew in the storm of action. At times we are elevated to the creative moment of the artist, and feel its inspiration and lofty enthusiasm, but again and again the exhausted soul collapses, and the same abysmal crash comes in at the bass each time. The grimmest loneliness, that touches to the core, comes intruding itself upon our rapture. Only in the contest with the “last enemy” we feel at length that the soul has proved itself valid in a region where distinctions of rank sunder and divide no more.

This solution is not quite so satisfactory as could be desired. If we would realize the highest solution, we must study the Fifth Symphony, especially its second movement.

IV. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,
(Part II.)

Marx finds in this symphony the problem so often treated by Beethoven—the collision of freedom with fate. “Through night to day, through strife to victory!” Beethoven, in his conversation with Schindler, speaking of the first “motive” at the beginning, said, “Thus Fate knocks at the door.” This knocking of Fate comes in continually during the first movement. “We have an immense struggle portrayed. Life is a struggle—this seems to be the content of this movement.” The soul finds a solution to this and sings its pæan of joy.

In the second movement (andante) we have an expression of the more satisfactory solution of the Problem of Life, which we alluded to when speaking of the Sonata above.

It (“The storm-tossed soul”) has in that consoling thought reached the harbor of infinite rest—infinite rest in the sense of an “activity which is a true repose.”

The soul has found this solution, and repeats it over to assure itself of its reality (1, 1, 1, 7, 1, 2, 1—these are the notes which express it). Then it wishes to make the experience of the universality of this solution—it desires to try its validity in all the spheres where Fate ruled previously. It sets out and ascends the scale three steps at a time (5, 1, 1, 2, 3—1, 3, 3, 4, 5) it reaches 5 of the scale, and ought to reach 8 the next time. It looks up to it as the celestial sun which Gothic Architecture points toward and aspires after. Could it only get there, it would find true rest! But its command of this guiding thought is not yet quite perfect—it cannot wield it so as to fly across the abyss and reach that place of repose without a leap—a “mortal leap.” For the ascent by threes has reached a place where another three would bring it to 7 of the scale—the point of absolute unrest; to step four, is to contradict the rhythm or method of its procedure. It pauses, therefore, upon 5—it tries the next three thoughtfully twice, and then, hearing below once more the mocking tones of Fate, it springs over the chasm and clutches the support above, while through all the spheres there rings the sound of exultation.

But to reach the goal by a leap—to have no bridge across the gulf at the end of the road—is not a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. Hence we have a manifold endeavor—a striving to get at the true method, which wanders at first in the darkness, but comes at length to the light; it gets the proper form for its idea, and gives up its unwieldy method of threes (1, 2, 3—3, 4, 5), and ascends by the infinite form of 1, 3, 5—3, 5, 8—5, 8, 3, &c., which gives it a complete access to, and control over, all above and below.

The complete self-equipoise expressed in that solution which comes in at intervals through the whole, and the bold application of the first method, followed by the faltering when it comes to the defect—the grand exultation over the final discovery of the true method—all these are indescribably charming to the lover of music almost the first time he listens to this symphony, and they become upon repetition more and more suggestive of the highest that art can give.

THE ALCHEMISTS.
[“Remarks upon Alchemy and the Alchemists, showing that the Philosopher’s Stone was a Symbol.”—Published by James Miller, New York, 1867.]

We have referred in a previous article to the transition of Religion into Speculative Philosophy. The Mystics who present this phase of thought, “express themselves, not in those universal categories that the Spirit of the race has formed in language for its utterance, but they have recourse to symbols more or less ambiguous, and of insufficient universality to stand for the Archetypes themselves.” The Alchemists belong to this phase of spirit, and we propose to draw from the little book named at the head of our article, some of the evidences of this position. It is there shown that instead of the transmutation of metals, the regeneration of man was in view. Those much-abused men agreed that “The highest wisdom consists in this,” (quoting from the Arabic author, Alipili,) “for man to know himself, because in him God has placed his eternal Word, by which all things were made and upheld, to be his Light and Life, by which he is capable of knowing all things, both in time and eternity.” While they claim explicitly to have as object of their studies the mysteries of Spirit, they warn the reader against taking their remarks upon the metals in a literal sense, and speak of those who do so, as being in error. They describe their processes in such a way as to apply to man alone; pains seem to have been taken to word their descriptions so as to be utterly absurd when applied to anything else. In speaking of the “Stone,” they refer to three states, calling them black, white and red; giving minute descriptions of each, so as to leave no doubt that man is represented, first, as in a “fallen condition;” secondly, in a “repenting condition;” and thirdly, as “made perfect through grace.” This subordination of the outer to the inner, of the body to the soul, is the constantly recurring theme. Instead of seeking a thing not yet found—which would be the case with a stone for the transmutation of metals, they agree in describing the “Stone” as already known. They refer constantly to such speculative doctrines as “Nature is a whole everywhere,” showing that their subject possesses universality. This metal or mineral is described thus: “Minerals have their roots in the air, their heads and tops in the earth. Our Mercury is aërial; look for it, therefore, in the air and the earth.” The author of the work from which we quote the passage, says by way of comment: “In this passage ‘Minerals’ and ‘our Mercury’ refer to the same thing, and it is the subject of Alchemy, the Stone; and we may remember that Plato is said to have defined or described Man as a growth having his root in the air, his tops in the earth. Man walks indeed upon the surface of the earth, as if nothing impeded his vision of heaven; but he walks nevertheless at the bottom of the atmosphere, and between these two, his root in air, he must work out his salvation.” A great number of these “Hermetic writers” established their reputation for wit and wisdom by discoveries in the practical world, and it is difficult to believe that such men as Roger Bacon, Van Helmont, Ramond Lulli, Jerome Cardan, Geber, (“The Wise”), Avicenna, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and others not inferior, could have deceived themselves as the modern theory implies, viz: that they were searching a chemical recipe for the manufacture of gold. The symbolic form of statement was esteemed at that time as the highest form of popular exposition for the Infinite and the religious problems concerning God, the Soul and the Universe. It seems that those writers considered such words as “God,” “Spirit,” “Heaven,” and words of like deep import, as not signifying the thing intended only so far as the one who used them, comprehended them. Thus, if God was spoken of by one who sensuously imaged Him, here was idolatry, and the second commandment was broken. To the Platonist, “God” was the name of the Absolute Universal, and hence included subject as well as object in thinking. Hence if one objectified God by conceiving Him, he necessarily limited God, or rather, had no real knowledge of Him. Said Sextus, the Pythagorean: “Do not investigate the name of God, because you will not find it. For everything which is called by a name, receives its appellation from that which is more worthy than itself, so that it is one person that calls, and another that hears. Who is it, therefore, that has given a name to God? God, however, is not a name for God, but an indication of what we conceive of him.” From such passages we can see why the Alchemists called this “Ineffable One,” Mercury, Luna, Sol, Argent vive, Phœbus, Sulphur, Antimony, Elixir, Alcahest, Salt, and other whimsical names, letting the predicates applied determine the nature of what was meant. If a writer, speaking of “Alcahest,” should say that it is a somewhat that rises in the east, and sets in the west, gives light to the earth, and causes the growth of plants by its heat, &c., we should not misunderstand his meaning—it would be giving us the nature of the thing without the common name. Every one attaches some sort of significance to the words “Life,” “God,” “Reason,” “Instinct,” &c., and yet who comprehends them? It is evident that in most cases the word stands for the thing, and hence when one speaks of such things by name, the hearer yawns and looks listless, as if he thought: “Well, I know all about that—I learned that when a child, in the Catechism.” The Alchemists (and Du Fresnoy names nearly a thousand of these prolific writers) determined that no one should flatter himself that he knew the nature of the subject before he saw the predicates applied. Hence the strange names about which such spiritual doctrines were inculcated. “If we have concealed anything,” says Geber, “ye sons of learning, wonder not, for we have not concealed it from you, but have delivered it in such language as that it may be hid from evil men, and that the unjust and vile might not know it. But, ye sons of Truth, search, and you shall find this most excellent gift of God, which he has reserved for you.”