(a) With this object in view we will first enumerate the diverse attempts which have been made to apprehend the beautiful in thought, placing each in the order which will best assist a critical verdict. We have already contributed something to this in our introduction. And, moreover, we may add that the mere inquiry what others have contributed either rightly or wrongly to our subject, at least with the hope of ascertaining something really instructive to an exposition which claims to be wholly scientific, will not assist us much. So far from this being so we must preface our remarks with the admission that, in the opinion of many, the beautiful, for the very reason that it is the beautiful, does not admit of such intellectual apprehension, is, in short, no object intelligible to human thought. To such a thesis we must for the present—in our response to those who at this time of day contend that all Truth is ultimately incomprehensible, and only the finiteness of the phenomenal and the contingent matters of temporal existence is within our mental grasp—reply that it is precisely Truth, and Truth alone, which is to be thus comprehended, and for this reason that it possesses the absolute notion, or, more succinctly, the Idea for its basic support. Now beauty is no other than a particular determination under which the True is expressed and revealed to us; and it lies open to the fullest comprehension of thought in so far as such can equip it with the armoury of the concrete notion. It is quite true that no idea has suffered more severely in our own time from misconceptions than this which we call the notion in its fullest explication. One is only too often misunderstood to mean a determination which is abstract and one sided, or at least a conception of the analytical understanding. As thus understood neither the totality of Truth nor the idea of beauty as a concrete whole can be brought home to a thinking consciousness. But the idea of beauty, as we have already observed, and shall seek to make more intelligible as we proceed, is no such abstraction of the mind: rather it may be defined as the absolute notion in its self-evolved concreteness, or still more specifically defined, the absolute Idea.
(b) And, further, we cannot more succinctly define the absolute Idea, in the above use of the expression, than by saying it is mind (Spirit): and we may add that the mind thus referred to is not mind regarded as finite, that is, subject to the conditions and limitations of sense-perception, but the universal and absolute Intelligence[175], which, out of its own free activity, determines Truth in the profoundest signification of the term. To the ordinary consciousness of everyday life the object of perception, no doubt, breaks away from mind, as though our thought stood in opposition to Nature, which receives from us a validity equal at least to the consciousness which perceives it. But in this way of looking at Nature and the conscious subject as two neighbours set over against one another in territories equally self-subsistent it is only the finite and limited mind, not that which it is as an infinite substance and in its notional truth, which is apprehended. Nature is not thus to be set over against absolute Mind, either as conjoint with a sphere of the Real of equal worth, or as an independent boundary thereto. Rather the aspect which Nature appears to hold in this respect is that which mind or spirit itself sets up, and of which it becomes the product as a Nature in which limit and boundary are themselves determining constituents. In fact, Mind in its absolute or infinite substance can only be apprehended as this free activity, which is manifested in self-development through differentiation. This object, this other, through which such differentiation proceeds, is regarded in such opposition as Nature, but as the object of intelligence it is quite as much indebted to Mind for the free gift and fulness of its own essential substance. We must therefore conceive Nature as herself containing in potency the absolute Idea. She is that Idea in apparent shape, which mind, in its synthetic power, posits as the object opposed to itself. She is so far a product, a creation. The truth of Nature therefore is simply the determination by mind of its own substance, its ideality and power of determination, through a process which no doubt begins with a separation of itself into two factors which apparently negate each other, but which, by the very activity of such negation and separation, passes beyond the contradiction it implies to a unity which heals the fracture. Instead of finding our-elves opposed to a limit and a barrier we have a totality in which the parts which opposed each other are fused together by the free universality of mind. This ideality, in other words this infinite power of determination[176], is that which constitutes the profound notion of Mind's subjectivity. As subjectivity mind is, in the first instance, merely Nature, Mind, or Spirit that is not explicitly unfolded, mind which has not arrived at the grasp of its true notion. Nature is here set up in opposition to Mind, not as an object which itself has created, but as one whose limits it fails to overcome, an object, moreover, which, as assumed to be already subsisting in independence, Mind remains alongside of in the internal seclusion of knowledge and volition, and is only able to constitute the other side of Nature. The finiteness of scientific theory, no less than that of practical life, is to be, found in this limited mode of consciousness, where intelligence is restricted to the use of finite categories and the formal "ought" in the realization of ethical perfection[177]. We find here, as we have pointed out was the case with Nature, that the phenomenal is not adequate to the essential truth of that which appears; what we receive is still the confusing medley of abilities, passions, intentions, opinions, and talents, which no sooner make themselves felt than they are displaced, working at cross purposes as often against as on the side of each other, in a strife between volition, opinion, and reflection, which brings to the surface every phase of fortuitous experience in all its confusing variety. It is the standpoint of the entirely finite, temporal, contradictory, and for that reason transitory, unsatisfied, and unreconciled spirit. For the satisfactions which obtain in such a consciousness, through the finiteness which inseparably clings to its entire outlook, itself so limited and confused, are of a purely relative and isolated validity. It is inevitable that consciousness, volition, and thought should make an effort to rise above this condition and seek for the universality, unity, and satisfaction which it eventually finds in the infinite substance of Spirit and its Truth. This unity and satisfaction, to which mind is carried forward by the impulse of its own ideal activity, transmuting the raw material of its finite conditions, constitutes the first revelation of that which the world of appearances is under a more notional grasp of it. Mind grasps its finiteness as the negation of its own essential substance, and is aware of its infinity. And this essential truth of the finite mind is the absolute Mind or Spirit. In this form of self-consciousness mind is merely actualized as absolute negativity. The element of finitude which it confronts is apprehended as such and annulled. In this, the highest sphere of its activity, mind becomes the object of volition. The Absolute itself becomes the object of mind. Spirit, as self-consciousness, differentiates itself as the knowing subject from the absolute Spirit as the object of knowledge. Mind in this latter sense, in contradistinction from mind which has not overcome the conditions of finite perception, may therefore be defined as a finite mind in possession of the principle of differentiation from its true object. In the higher and more speculative consideration of truth, however, it is the absolute mind itself, which, in order to unfold explicitly the knowledge of itself, essentially becomes a principle of differentiation to itself, and thereby posits the finitude of mind, within which it becomes for itself absolute object of the knowledge of itself. It is now absolute mind within the ideal community[178] which belongs to it, the actual Absolute of itself in the form of Mind and knowledge[179].
This is, in fact, the starting-point of the Philosophy of Fine Art. For the idea of Fine Art is neither the logical Idea, absolute Thought, that is, which develops itself in the medium of its freest activity, nor is it the Idea of Nature apprehended under more finite categories. Its province is rather that of Mind untrammelled by either the judgments or the actions of the finite spirit.
(c) The realm of Fine Art is the realm of absolute Spirit. We can but briefly indicate the reason why this is so. A fully philosophical proof belongs rather to treatises which immediately deal with those questions of philosophy we have noticed already, by which we mean those which treat of Logic, whose content, as above explained, is that of the absolute Idea, or the philosophy of Nature, or lastly, the philosophy of Mind in its determinate spheres of finitude. For in these sciences the object is to show not merely how the logical Idea presupposes the objective particularity of Nature as a vehicle to its determinate existence, but also how it is capable of passing from such externality to mind, and, finally, of freeing itself from all the finitude that clings to it and of attaining to Spirit in its eternal concreteness and truth.
From such a point of view, which is also applicable to art when regarded in all the fulness of worth it in truth implies, we are justified in associating it with the self-same province which belongs to religion and speculative philosophy. In every direction in which Mind or Spirit becomes identical with the absolute Mind it frees itself from the restricting limits of its positive existence, and, while liberating itself from the contingent relations, which pertain to it in its temporal existence, and the finite content of its objects and interests, is made aware of and discloses the entire wealth of reality it contains.
It may be of service here to expand more completely the position which Art thus occupies in its relation respectively to the life of Nature and Spirit.
A survey of the entire field of human existence presents to the ordinary consciousness of mankind the widest variety of interests and means of satisfaction. There is, in the first instance, the complex system of purely physical necessities, to the satisfaction of which the whole economy of industrial enterprise, through all its complicated tissue of commerce, merchandize, and technical crafts, is actively pursued. If we raise the level of our review to a more spiritual range, we are confronted with the world where rights are established and enforced, the world of legislative enactment, family life, division of social classes, in a word, the concrete living organism of the State. And more than this, there is the religious want, which asserts itself in the hearts of particular men and women, and finds its satisfaction in the life of a church. Finally, there is the many-sided and intricately specialized activity of scientific research, the organized effort to integrate all knowledge, and the comprehension which that knowledge implies, in one all-embracing system. Within this latter are comprised the activities of the fine arts, the interest, that is to say, in beauty, and which derives its spiritual nutriment in the realization of that beauty in plastic shapes.
(d) The question becomes inevitable how far a spiritual want of this kind is bound up as a necessary element in the life of man and his world-history. In the first instance these two spheres[180] appear simply as immediate factors of our entire survey. It is, however, the requirement of philosophy to probe more deeply into that which binds them as essential and necessarily interacting constituents of one organic whole. For on closer inspection it will be found that they do not stand in relation to one another on the mere basis of utility; rather we shall discover that only through the one we shall fully comprehend the other. In other words, the one circle overlaps the other, in the sense that the higher forms of its activity are found to be a part of the other; and that which is of less value in its own province is lifted into a finer atmosphere; and what had failed to free itself from its original bounds is now enlarged to liberty through the profounder satisfaction it receives in the widening of the range of its interests[181]. And it is this which makes clear the necessity of the ideal bond.
We will recall now for a moment the analysis we established of the notion of the beautiful and that of art generally. Two opposed aspects come under notice. In the first place we have a content, an end, a significance; and in addition to that we get the artistic expression of the same, the appearance and realization of such content; and, thirdly, these two aspects of the artistic product so pass into each other that the rationality or particularity is nothing short of the expression of the artistic purpose, nothing more or less is given us than the essential expression of the entire content. What we designate as content, "significance," is just this simplicity of idea, the work of art resolved into its simplest yet most comprehensive determinants, as it exists for mind in contrast with the actual work executed. As an example we may summarize the content of a book from a few words or sentences the book contains, and nothing may be necessary to expound the content of that book sufficiently in its general import. This simple idea, the thesis or main problem of our book, which forms the fundamental basis on which the entire structure is built, is the abstract significance. It is only the detailed exposition which gives us the concrete totality.
Both sides, however, of this opposition do not stand in an indifferent or purely external relation one to the other, as, for instance, is the case when we contrast with it the particular content of an abstract mathematical figure, such as a triangle or an ellipse, to which the external particularity of its size or figure is related without affecting its significance. Rather in the former case we shall find that the content of its form, taken in abstraction in itself, possesses a determinate impulse in the direction of realization and thereby concreteness. There is in it essentially the "should" of purpose. However strongly form is here posited in independence, we are unable to rest satisfied with such abstraction, and ask for something more. This is at first apprehended merely as an unsatisfied want, a desire in the conscious subject, which strives to annul itself and secure satisfaction. From such a standpoint all we can say is that the content is purely self-contained, or subjective, over against which the objective other-than-itself is placed in opposition in such a way as to emphasize the desire to make the subjective content objective. Such a conflict between the subjective content and the objective, reality which confronts it, no less than the mere impulse to transcend the opposition, is a universal characteristic of the determination of all self-conscious life[182]. Even that aspect of human life which we call physical, and still more that world of man's spiritual aims and interests depends on this necessity to carry forward that which is at first purely subjective and ideal into the objective world, that a fuller satisfaction in its essential substance may be realized. But so long as the content of aims and interests is merely and at first apprehended in the one-sided form of subjective consciousness, and that one-sidedness is apprehended as a mere limit, this loss makes itself simply felt as unrest or pain. It is a negative something which is bound to resolve itself as such negativity, and, in order to remove the sense of defect, exerts an impulse to transcend the barrier itself, already an object of consciousness and thought. And, moreover, this transcendency does not merely amount to this, that the objective "other" ceases to be an opposed factor to the general subjective consciousness: rather in the more determinate connection, this defect of subjective thought is itself and within itself a defect and negation which involves an impulse to negate and pass beyond. In other words the conscious subject is implicitly and according to its essential notion the complete whole[183], that is, not merely what is inward, but the realization no less of that which is inward or ideal in and through what is without. If we assume that it exists only abstractly in one form we have to face the contradiction that whereas it is, according to its concrete notion the whole, yet according to its mode of existence it remains merely one side of that totality. It is only through the entire resolution of such a contradiction that life becomes affirmative. To pass through each phase of this opposition, contradiction and its final abrogation is the higher and legitimate demand of conscious life. That which remains always affirmative, is, and remains, without life. Life is built upon negation and pain. It is only by crushing out such contradictions in the crucible of fuller life and knowledge that it remains in its affirmative substance. If it anchor wholly on contradiction without such a possibility of resolution it must be infallibly wrecked thereon.