Through this enlarged conception the Absolute is for the first time essentially concrete, that is self-determination, and thereby essential unity, whose particular antitheses, as parts of a process, appear to consciousness as the different determinations of one and the same God. For the necessity of giving essential definition to the absolute significance is just that which at this stage it is felt to be of first importance to satisfy. All the significances up to this point persisted by virtue of their abstract character as absolutely undefined and consequently void of content, or were merged, when in a converse direction they tended to clear distinction, immediately in the Being of Nature, or fell into a conflict in respect to their configuration which gave them no repose and reconciliation. This twofold defect we have now to remove, both by showing the advance of Thought regarded as itself an ideal process, and by illustrating that advance by means of particular facts of the mind and institutions of nations on the objective plane of history.
And in the first place we may observe a more intimate bond of association is set up between the Inward and Outward aspect of consciousness in the increased recognition that every determination of the Absolute is already essentially an inchoate movement in the direction of expression. For every determination is essentially distinction[57]. The External, however, is as such always defined and distinct, and consequently there is thus an aspect immediately presented, according to which the External is manifested in a form more adequate to the significance than was possible under the modes of conception as yet examined. The first definition, however, and essential negation of the Absolute inevitably falls short of the free self-determination of Spirit as Spirit. It is merely the immediate negation of itself. This immediate and consequently natural negation in its most comprehensive form of statement is Death. The Absolute is consequently apprehended now in a way that it is compelled to submit itself to this form of negation as a part of the essential determination of its own notion, in other words it is obliged to enter the path of extinction, and we observe consequently the glorification of Death and grief in the first instance made present to the national consciousness as the death of the dying sensuous material. The death of Nature is cognized as a necessary part[58] of the life of the Absolute. The Absolute, however, on the one hand, in order to be subject to this phase of Death, must be posited already as determinate existence; and, equally from another point of view, must not be suffered to remain in the annihilation of Death, but must be held to re-establish itself in an essentially positive unity on a yet higher plane of existence. Death is consequently not accepted here as constituting the entire significance, but merely one aspect of the same. And though no doubt the Absolute is in one sense viewed as a cessation of its immediate existence, a passage over and beyond and a passing away, yet it is quite as much in the reverse sense conceived as a return upon itself, as a resurrection, as an eternal process of Divine realization rendered possible by virtue of this evolutional principle of negation. For Death is capable of a twofold meaning. Under the first it is the immediate passing away of the natural; under the second Death is the extinction of the exclusively natural and thereby the birth of a higher type, that is, spiritual, from which the merely natural falls away in the sense, that Spirit possesses in itself this phase as an essential phase of its own substance.
For this reason, secondly, the form of Nature can no longer be accepted in the immediacy of sensuous existence as adequate to the significance referred to it, because the significance of the External consists just in this, that it must die in the form of its real existence and rise again.
On the same ground, thirdly, the mere conflict between significance and form and that ferment of the imagination, which was the fantastic product of Hindoo conceptions, drop away. The significance is, it is true, even now not yet fully and with absolute clarity cognized in its pure unity free from all sense-presented reality, so that it could be set forth in real contrast with the form of its actual embodiment; conversely, however, the form itself, this particular, object, that is, whether in its glorified shape of grandiosity or in any other more conspicuous form of caricature, as an image of animal life, a human personification, event or action, is not taken to envisage for immediate sense an adequate existence of the Absolute. This corrupt form of identity is already surpassed as fully to the extent that it still falls behind that other complete deliverance. And in the place of both of these extremes we have asserted that kind of representation, which we have above already described as the real symbolical. On the one hand it is now able to appear for the reason that the Inward, or that which is conceived as significance, is no longer something which merely, as in Hindoo conceptions, comes and passes away, at one moment is absorbed immediately in externality, at another is withdrawn from the same into the solitude of abstraction, but it begins to make itself independently secure against the mere reality of Nature. And on the other hand the symbol is now forced to seek some form of plastic shape. That is to say, although the significance, identical in every way with that which has hitherto obtained, possesses as a phasal condition of its content the negation of the Natural, yet the true Inward now for the first time shows a definite tendency to wrest its way from that Natural, and is consequently itself still swallowed up within the external mode of appearance, so that it is unable independently to be brought home to consciousness in its clear universality without having previously had to comply with the form of external reality.
Now the kind of configuration which is implied by the notion of that which generally constitutes the fundamental significance in symbolism, may be described in the following terms, namely, we find in it that the definite forms of Nature, human activities and so forth, neither—to express one aspect of it—represent or signify merely themselves severally in their isolated natural characteristics, nor—to emphasize the other aspect—bring their immediate form to consciousness as the Divine actually visible to sense. They are rather employed to suggest that same Divine through qualities which they possess cognate with a significance of more comprehensive range. For this reason it is just that universal dialectic of Life, its origin, growth, collapse in and awakening from Death, which also in this connection supplies the appropriate content for the true symbolic type; and this is so because we find in almost every province of natural and spiritual life certain phenomena, which presuppose this process as the basis of their existence, and consequently can be utilized as means of giving a visible body to such significant aspects and of pointing by suggestion to the same, a real affinity being actually inherent between the two sides. Thus plants spring from their seed, sprout, grow, bring forth fruit; the fruit corrupts and produces fresh seed. In the same way the sun rises to a low elevation in winter; in Spring he mounts on high, until we have his meridian reached in summer; it is then that he pours forth his richest blessing or exerts the greatest destructive force; after that he inclines once more towards the horizon. The various stages of human life, too, childhood, youth, maturity, and old age, illustrate precisely the same universal process. But in a special sense specific localities such as the Nile-valley are adapted to the closer particularization in the direction indicated.
In so far, then, as that which is purely fantastic is displaced by these more fundamental traits of affinity and the more intimate applicability of the expression to the import it expresses there arises a thoughtful process of selection with reference to the comparative congruity or incongruity of the symbolizing forms, and the intoxicated eddy to and fro which prevailed is laid to rest in a more intelligent circumspection.
We consequently observe that a union more at one with itself reappears in the place of that which we found in the first stage of our process, subject, however, to this characteristic difference, that the identity of the significance with its objectively real existence is no longer one immediately envisaged, but one that is set up out of the difference and consequently not one previously discovered, rather we should say a mode of union that is the product of mind (Spirit). That which, in its most general terms, we call the Inward begins at this point to assume the solidity of self-subsistence, to be conscious of itself; it seeks for its counterfeit in the objects of Nature, which on their part possess a similar reflection in the life and destinies of Spirit. Out of this eager movement to recognize the one side in the other, and by means of the external to bring for itself visibly to sense and the imaginative faculty the significance, as also to envisage by virtue of that Inward the significance of the external shapes through a union in which both sides are associated, we get that vast impulse of art which finds its satisfaction through means which are purely symbolical. Only when the Inward is free and is driven forward to make clear to the imaginative vision in real form what it essentially is, and to have before itself this very vision, moreover, in the form of an external work, do we find that the genuine impulse of art, and the particularly plastic arts, begins to be a living fact. Then it is that the necessity is felt to clothe the Inward with a form not merely previously discovered from the resources of spiritual activity, but rather one that is minted out of spirit (mind) for the first time. In the symbol, then, there is a second form created, which, however, is not independently valid for itself as its main purpose, but is rather employed to envisage the significance, and stands consequently in a dependent relation to the same.
It were possible to apprehend the above relation in such a way as though the significance were that point from which the artistic consciousness starts on its journey, and that only after having found this it begins to look round for means to express its universal conceptions through external phenomena cognate in their affinity to such conceptions. This, however, is not the way that real symbolic art proceeds. For its characteristic distinction consists in this, that its penetration fails as yet to grasp the significances in their independent consistency, independent, that is, from every mode of externality. For this reason its point of departure is rather from that which is immediately presented and its concrete existence in Nature and Spirit. This it thereupon, in the first instance, expands to the measure of the universality of such significances, whose determination such objective real existence contains only under more restricted conditions, adding this wider range in order that it may create a form from Spirit, which is to make that universality visible to consciousness in this particular reality when once it is set forth clearly before perception. Regarded as symbolical forms, therefore, the images of art have not as yet attained a form truly adequate to Spirit, inasmuch as Spirit itself is not as yet at this stage essentially clear and thereby free Spirit; but we have at least here embodiments, which essentially proclaim the fact to us, that they are not merely selected to represent simply themselves, but are intended to point to significances of profounder intension and more—comprehensive range. That which is purely natural and sensuous asserts itself as fact and nothing beside; the symbolical work of art, however, whether it be the phenomena of Nature or the human figure that it makes visible to the eye, points at the same time over and outside such facts to something further, which, however, must possess an intimate root of affinity with the images that are thus displayed, and an essential bond of relation with them. This association between the concrete form and its universal significance may conceivably be present in many different ways. At one time the emphasis will be laid on the external aspect, and it will consequently be more obscure; at another, however, the basis of affinity will be more pronounced as in the case when the universality, which is to be symbolized, constitutes, in fact, the essential content of the concrete phenomenon. In this case naturally it is a much simpler matter to grasp the symbolic character of the object.
The most abstract mode of expression in this respect is number, which, however, it is only possible to use as an indication of a further meaning beyond that it ordinarily elucidates when this significance is itself, essentially numerical. The numbers seven and twelve are frequently met with in Egyptian architecture, because seven is the number of the planets, and twelve is that of the lunar revolutions or the number of feet that the water of the Nile must necessarily rise in order to fructify the land. Such a number is then regarded as sacred in so far as it is present as a determinant in the great elementary relations, which are revered as forces in the whole life of Nature. Twelve steps or seven pillars are to this extent symbolical. The same kind of numerical symbolism has an extensive influence upon the form of widely famous mythologies. The twelve labours of Hercules, for example, appear to contain a reference to the twelve months of the year; for if Hercules under one aspect of the myth is no doubt presented to us as the thoroughly human impersonation of a hero, in another he unquestionably indicates a significance of Nature under a symbolized form, and, in fact, is a personification of the course of the sun.
In a further and more complete sense symbolical configurations of space, labyrinthine passages, and such like carry a symbolical image of the course of the planets, just as dances, too, in virtue of their complex evolutions symbolically express the motion of the great elementary bodies.