B. THE ART OF SUBLIMITY
The One substance, however, which is here conceived as the real significance of the entire universe, is only truly posited as substance where we find it suffered to retire into itself as pure Inwardness and substantive Power out of its presence and realization beneath the shifting forms of the phenomenal, and thereby is set forth in self-consistency as against all finitude. It is not till we come to this intuitive vision of the essence of God as absolutely Spiritual and apart from all image, and thus opposed to the things of the World and Nature, that the Spiritual is completely wrested from all that pertains to mere sense-perception and Nature, and delivered from determinate existence in the finite. While conversely, however, the absolute substance still maintains a relation to the phenomenal world from which it is reflected back upon itself. In this relation is now asserted that negative aspect already adverted to, which consists in this, that the entire universe, despite all the fulness, power, and glory of its phenomenal contents, is expressly affirmed in its relation to substance as that which is essentially of a purely negative subsistence, a creation of God, subject to His power and service. The world is therefore envisaged as the revelation of God, and He is the Goodness which permits the created thing that has no essential claim to exist, none the less to exist in relation to Himself, nay, further to have independent existence and thereby freely to conserve Him. This conservation on the part of the finitude, however, is without real substance, and in opposition to God the creature is here assumed to be that which passes away and is powerless, so that at the same time its claim to existence[72] is exhibited as a part of the goodness of the Creator, which not only veritably affirms the impotence of that which is essentially nothing apart from Himself, but thereby asserts His substance as the source of all Power. It is this relation, so far as it is set forth by art as the fundamental relation, both of content and form, which brings before us the art-type of the real Sublime. The Beauty of the Ideal and Sublimity no doubt present features of contrast. In the Ideal the Inward transpierces external reality, whose inward essence it really is under the mode at least, that both aspects are adequate to each other, and consequently appear to be in perfect fusion with one another. In the Sublime, on the contrary, the external existence, in which substance is envisaged for sense, is deposed in its opposition to that substance, such deposition and vassalage constituting the only mode, by means of which the God who is in His own seclusion without form, and in His positive essence incapable of being expressed by aught that is of the world and finite, can be envisualized by artistic means. The Sublime pre-supposes the significance in the self-subsistence of One, in relation to which externality is defined as in subjection, in so far as that Inward substance fails to appear, but its transcendent character is so asserted, that in the end nothing can be represented save just this essential and active transcendency[73].
In the symbol the mode of the external form was the main point emphasized. It must possess a significance, and yet fail completely to express it. In contrast to symbol of this kind and its obscure content we have now a significance in the absolute sense of the term conjoined with its full recognition. A work of art is now the actual discharge of pure essence conceived as the intensive purport of everything, of an essence, however, which deliberately affirms that very incompatibility of form to significance, which was only implicitly present in the symbol, to be the actually transcendent significance of God Himself within the sphere of worldly existence, and above all that is contained therein.
It is a significance which is therefore sublime in the work of art, which is exclusively concerned to express the same as thus explicitly declared. We may no doubt with justice accept the description of "sacred," as applicable generally to symbolical art, in so far as it accepts the Divine as comprised in the content of its productions; but the art of the Sublime alone can make good its claim to the distinction without any deduction, for it is here alone that God receives all the honour. In this sphere, owing to the fundamental character of the significance implied, the content is generally of a more restricted nature than that we find in genuine symbolism, whose relation to the Spiritual is that of an effort and nothing more, and which in the continuously shifting nature of its relations to to the world offers such a wide field, either for transformations of that which is spiritual into natural images, or of that which is essentially material under accordant fusion with the Spirit.
We find as nowhere else this art of the Sublime, as a mode of its original appearance, in the religious conceptions of the Hebrew race and their sacred poetry. We say poetry advisedly, because plastic art cannot possibly be in question here, where it is assumed that no image whatever is adequate to express the nature of the Divine, and that the part of poetry alone by means of the spoken or written word can be employed for such a purpose. A closer examination of this type of religious conception will secure to us the following points of view most worthy of our general attention.
1. If we look at the content of this poetry under the aspect of its most universal import, one of our first conclusions will be that God, as Lord of a world created to serve Him, is not conceived as incarnated in any form of the external, but rather as personality withdrawn from all determinate and worldly existence into the solitude of His pure Unity. For this reason that[74] which in genuine symbolism was still associated with supreme Unity, falls apart under the view we are considering into its twofold aspect, on one side the abstract subsistency of God, on the other the concrete existence of the world.
(a) Now God Himself as this pure self-subsistency of the One substance is essentially without form, and under this abstract conception cannot be brought closer to the envisagement of sense. That which therefore the imagination is able to seize at this stage is not the Divine content viewed under the aspect of its pure essence, inasmuch as this latter precludes the possibility of artistic representation under any form adequate to it whatever. The only content therefore that is left open to it is that of the relation of God to His created world.
(b) God is the creator of the universe. This is the purest expression of the Sublime itself. In other words we find that here for the first time all those fanciful conceptions of generation and purely physical procreation of external fact by God disappear. Each and all give place to the thought of creation by virtue of spiritual power and activity. "God spake: Let there be Light, and there was Light." A sentence dong ago cited, as a striking illustration of the Sublime by Longinus. And such indeed it is. The Lord of all, the One substance, proceeds, it is true, under the mode of self-expression; but the type of this bringing forth is the purest, nay, a mode of expression, aetherial so to speak, and without material form, the Word that is to say, the medium of thought as the ideal Power, in conjunction with whose mandate that it shall exist, the existing thing is veritably and immediately posited under the relation of tacit obedience.
(c) Into this created world, however, God is not conceived to pass over as into His reality; rather He abides withdrawn behind Himself, albeit this opposition supplies no secure ground for a logically developed dualism. For that which has been brought into being is His work, possesses no self-consistency as apart from Him. It is solely a witness to His Wisdom, Goodness, and Justice in general, just that and no more. The One is Lord over all; His dwelling is not in the facts of Nature. They are solely the accidents of His Greatness, without potency in themselves, which can indeed suffer the show of His essence to appear, but are unable to make the reality of it visible[75]. And this it is which constitutes the Sublime in its reference to the Divine.
2. Moreover, inasmuch as the one God is thus severed from the concreteness of the phenomenal world and posited in isolated fixity, while the externality of determinate existence is on its side defined and placed in subordination as the finite, both natural and human existence are now viewed under the novel aspect that they cannot be conceived as manifesting the Divine without at the same time making visible their essential finiteness.