[162] Professor Bosanquet's note is here (Trans., p. 166) "Posited or laid down to be ideal. This almost is equal to made to be in the sense of not being. In other words musical sound is "ideal" as existing, quâ work of art, in memory only, the moment in which it is actually heard being fugitive. A picture is equally so in respect of the third dimension, which has to be read into it. Poetry is almost wholly ideal, uses hardly any sensuous element, and appeals almost wholly to what exists in the mind."
[163] By particularization is meant the variety in the material of colours, musical tones, and ideas, which latter are really quite as much the medium of poetry as written language. The sensuous medium is here an abstract sign and, as Hegel would contend, nothing more than this.
[164] Reference, of course, to Hegel's unfortunate acceptance of Goethe's theory of colour.
[165] The colour of art is not merely ideal as applied to only two dimensions of space, but also is "subjective" in the artistic treatment of it under a definite "scheme." It is not clear whether Hegel alludes also to this; apparently not, though it is the most important feature. In fact, even assuming his theory of light to be correct, it is difficult entirely to follow his distinction between the appearance of colour on a flat or a round surface. As natural colour the one would be as ideal as the other. Only regarded as a composition would painting present distinction.
[166] It is obvious that the reference here is mainly to an intentional appeal to the human soul through the content of the composition. But the appeal may also be made through the technique and artistic treatment of the medium itself.
[167] The parts of a chord are not in space, but are ideally cognized. Hegel describes this by saying that music idealizes space and concentrates it to a point. It would perhaps be more intelligible to say that it transmutes the positive effects of a material substance in motion into the positive and more ideal condition of time. The point which is continually negated is at least quâ music the point, or rather, moment, of a temporal process.
[168] By the indifferent externality of space is signified the fact that the parts of space, though external to each other, are not qualitatively distinguishable.
[169] Succession in time is "more ideal" than coexistence in space because it exists only as continuity in a conscious subject.
[170] Painting no doubt introduces ideal elements into the artistic composition of colour, but the colour still remains the appearance of a material thing or superficies.
[171] That is to say, music or harmony is based on a solid conformity to law on the part of its tones in their conjunction and succession, their structure and resolution.