[64] Hegel puts it in the rather obscure and contradictory way that the human figure is represented as "still having the most unique form of subjective intensity (Das eigenste Innre der Subjectivität) outside it."
[65] That is, the mythological history of the God.
[66] Lit., "Which alone is able to apply itself (that is, to the work of interpretation) in a variety of directions."
CHAPTER II
THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SUBLIME
The perspicuity that has no riddles to expound, which is the object of symbolic art and veritably the mark of Spirit self-clothed to the perfect measure of its own substance, can only be attained on condition that first and foremost the significance be presented to consciousness distinct and separate from all the phenomena of external existence. To the union of both immediately envisaged we have traced the absence of art among the ancient Parsees. The contradiction involved in their severation, followed by the association which it then stimulated under the mode of immediacy, was the source of the fantastic type of Hindoo symbolism. Finally, we have seen that in Egypt, too, the free and unfettered recognition of the Inward principle and a significance essentially independent from the phenomenon was lacking; and this resulted in the mystery and obscurity of a symbolism still more complete.
The first decisive act of purification, or, in other words, express separation of the essential substance[67] from the sensuous present, that is from the empirical facts of external appearance, we must accordingly seek for in the Sublime, which exalts the Absolute above every form of immediate existence, and thereby effects that initiatory mode of its abstract liberation which is the basis of the spiritual content. As Spirit in its concreteness the significance is not yet apprehended; but it is, however, conceived as an Inwardness essentially existent, reposing on its own resources, and of such a nature that purely finite phenomena are alone inadequate to express its truth.