THE FORMAL SELF-SUBSISTENCY OF INDIVIDUAL PARTICULARITIES
If we take a glance back on the territory we have passed through, we see in the first instance that the object of our investigation was the life of the soul[256] in its most absolute capacity, in other words, consciousness in its mediation with God, the universal process of the self-reconciling spirit. The abstraction of this point of view consisted in this that the soul by an effort of abnegation withdrew itself from all that was secular, purely natural and human—even when the same had ethical features, and for this reason possessed a claim upon us—into its own distinctive domain in order to satisfy its yearning for the pure heaven of spirit. Secondly, we found ourselves able, it is true, to bring into view the human consciousness without this factor of abstract negation which was included in that mediation, in other words, positively in its independence and as related to others[257], but the content of this secular infinitude as such was none the less only the personal self-subsistency of honour, the intensiveness[258] of love and the vassalage of fidelity, a content which, no doubt, may appear before us in many relations, in a many-folded variety and many gradations of feeling and passion, subject to the most extensive changes of external condition, yet for all that only propounds just this personal independence and inwardness within such examples. The third aspect, then, which we have now left us to examine is the mode and manner in which that further material of human existence, both on the side of its inward and its external life, that is to say, Nature and its apprehension and significance for soul-life, is able to enter into the romantic type of art. We have here to deal with the world of particular objects, determinate existence generally, regarded in its unfettered independence, and which, in so far as it does not appear transparent to religion and spiritual synthesis, bringing it into unity with the Absolute, asserts itself on its own foothold and declares its self-subsistence in its own kingdom.
In this third province of the romantic type of art consequently the purely religious material and chivalry with those lofty views and aims that we found it brings to birth from its spiritual womb[259], but which were not directly concordant with anything visible in the reality of the existing world, have vanished. The new object of satisfaction is a thirst for this actual presence itself, a delight in the facts of existence, a contentment of the soul with the dwelling that confronts it, with the finitude of our humanity, and what is finite, particular, and the true counterfeit of such generally. Man is intent to recreate for his own world the world as he actually finds it, although such may imply a sacrifice of the Beauty and ideality of the content and manifestation will reflect it as it stands before him endowed with life in his art, will have that present life before his eyes as the work of his own mind. The religion of Christianity as we have already seen has not sprung up from the soil of the imagination as was the case with the divinities of the East and Greece, whether we consider them relatively to form or content. It is the imagination which fashions the vital significance out of its own resources in order to promote the unity between the reality of soul life with the perfected embodiment of the same. In classical art this complete coalescence is actually attained. In the Christian religion, on the other hand, the secular aspect in its exclusive character is from the first accepted for just that which it really is as an essential factor of the Ideal; and the soul of man finds satisfaction in the ordinary and contingent presence of the external world without the necessary interposition of beauty. But man is nevertheless in the first instance reconciled to God only by implication, and as a possible result. All men are called to the blessed condition, but few are chosen; and the soul for which both the kingdom of heaven and that of this world still remain as a "beyond" is constrained to renounce both that which is spiritual in the external world and its own presence therein. The point of departure is from a distance infinitely remote from that world; and to make this reality, which in the first instance is simply surrendered, a positive constituent of that which is man's own, in other words to bring about this rediscovery of himself and his volition in his own present life, from which all takes its rise, this it is which supplies us first with a terminating point in the elaboration of romantic art, and is the final outlook to which the spiritual penetration of man is carried and on which it is concentrated.
In so far as the form of this new content is concerned we have already observed that romantic art from its first initiation was infected with the contradiction that the essentially infinite mode of the self-conscious life is, in its independence, incapable of being united with the external material, and is bound to remain in such separation. This independent opposition of both aspects and the withdrawal of the inwardness of spirit into its own domain is that which constitutes the content of romance. These two aspects are continually separated anew by self-rehabilitation[260], until at length they fall entirely apart, and thereby demonstrate that we must search for some other field than Art to secure their absolute union. And by this falling apart we find that these aspects in their relation to art are formal; in other words they fail to appear as a totality in that complete type of unity which was secured to them by the Classic Ideal. Classical art is placed in a region of stable figures, that is in the midst of a mythology and its irresoluble types perfected by art. The resolution of the classical form is consequently brought about—as we found in discussing its transition to the romantic form—leaving out of our present consideration the generally more restricted territory of the comic and satyric modes—by an over-elaboration in the direction of all that pleases the senses or an imitation which loses itself in the deadly frost of a pedantic learning, till it at length entirely degenerates into a negligent and inferior technique. The objects of art remain, however, the same throughout the process, and merely play truant to the earlier intelligent mode of production with a presentation that is increasingly more spiritless and a purely traditional and mechanical technique. The progress and conclusion of romantic art on the contrary is the resolution of the material of art within its own boundaries[261] altogether, a material which falls apart into its elements, an increase of freedom in the several parts, along with which process and in contrast to the previous case, the individual craftsmanship and artistic mode of presentment is enhanced; and in proportion as the substantive content tends to break up to that extent attains a fuller perfection.
We may now attempt a more specific subdivision of this the final chapter of this part of our subject in the following terms.
In the first place we have before us the self-subsistency of character, which is, however, a particular one, that is, a definite individual self-absorbed in its world, its specific qualities and aims.
In opposition to this formal particularity of character we have the external conformation of situations, events, and actions. For the reason, moreover, that the inward spirituality of romance stands generally in an indifferent relation to that which is external the actual phenomenon[262] appears in the present case independently free, that is as neither permeated by the spiritual content of human aims and actions nor clothed in modes adequate to retain them. By reason of its unrelated and loose mode of manifestation it therefore enforces the contingency of natural processes[263], circumstances, the sequence of events, and manner of its realization as the unexpected.[264]
In the third place, and finally, the severation of the two factors asserts itself, the complete identity of which supplies us with the real notion of art. This is consequently the dismemberment and dissolution of art itself. On the one hand we find that art passes to a representation of wholly commonplace reality, to the reflection of objects precisely as they appear in their contingent isolation and its equally singular characteristics. Its interest is now wholly absorbed in reproducing this objective existence by means of the technical ability of the artist. On the other hand we have, in what is a mode of conception and representation entirely dependent on the accidental idiosyncracy of the artist himself, that is in humour, a complete reversal of the pictorial style above mentioned. For in humour we meet with the perversion and overthrow of all that is objectively solid in reality; it works through the wit and play of wholly personal points of view, and if carried to an extreme amounts to the triumph of the creative power of the artist's soul over every content and every form.
1. THE SELF-SUBSISTENCY OR INDEPENDENCE OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER
The fundamental determinant of our present subject-matter is once again that infinitude implied in the very nature of the human consciousness which was our point of departure in the romantic type of art. The new accretions we have now, however, to add to our conception of this mode of self-subsistent infinity consist partly in the particularity of content, which constitutes the world of the individual mind, as to a further aspect of it in the immediate coalescence of the ego with this its particularity, its wishes and objects, and thirdly, in the living individuality, in which the substantive character is self-determined. We are not, therefore, entitled to understand under the expression "character" as now employed that which the Italians represented in their masks. The Italian masks are also no doubt definite characters, but this definition is only presented by them in its abstraction and generality, without a personal individuality. The characters, on the other hand, of the type under discussion are each of them a character unique in itself, an independent whole, an individual person[265]. If we have, therefore, occasion here to refer to the formalism and abstraction of character, such an expression is entirely relative to the fact that the fundamental content, the world of such a character appears, on the one hand, as restricted and to that extent abstract, and, on the other, as qualified by accidental causes. What the individual is is not carried or sustained by virtue of what is substantive or essentially self-accredited[266] in its content, but through the naked personality asserted by the character, which consequently reposes formally on its own individual self-subsistency rather than on its content and its independently secured pathos.