[75] This I take to be the point of the contrast between the words scheinen and erscheinen.
CHAPTER III
THE CONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM OF THE COMPARATIVE TYPE OF ART
The result we have now arrived at in the above consideration of the Sublime, and in contradistinction to the strictly unpremeditated type of symbolization, consists partly in the separation of its own independent Inwardness, consciously apprehended in its quality of significance, from the concrete appearance that is thereby distinguished from it, partly also in the direct or indirect affirmation of the incompatibility of the two above mentioned aspects to one another, by which it appears that the significance as the universal passes beyond the particular fact and its singularity. But in the imagination of pantheism, no less than in the type of the Sublime, the real content, that is the One universal substance of all concrete existence, was unable to be presented to imaginative vision or sense-perception without some relation to created existence, albeit created under a mode inadequate to express the essence of that Unity. This relation, however, was attached to the substance itself, which, in the negativity of its accidents, supplied the proof of its Wisdom, Goodness, Power, and Justice[76]. For this reason the relation between significance and content is also in the case of the Sublime, at least in a general way, of a kind that is both essential and necessary, and the two sides thus linked with each other are not yet, in the strict sense of the term, external to each other. It is, however, inevitable, for the reason that it is implicitly present in symbolism, that this externality should come to be directly posited and appear in the forms we have now to consider in this concluding chapter on the art of symbolism. We may summarily describe them as conscious[77] symbolism, or, in a still more direct way, the comparative type of art.
In other words, what we understand by conscious symbolism is this, that the significance is not merely independently cognized, but is expressly set forth as distinct from the external mode, in which it is represented. The significance then appears, as in the case of the Sublime, to receive an independent expression which is not essentially in the actual embodiment given to it under the mode employed[78]. The relation, however, of both to one another no longer continues to be, as in the type last examined, a mode of relation which is fundamentally due to the significance itself, but is a more or less haphazard association, which may generally be expressed as the product of the subjectivity of the poet, the absorption of his spirit in an external object, the result of his wit or invention; a mode, in short, which enables the poet at one time rather to make a beginning directly from a sensible phenomenon, and to imagine for it from his own mind a spiritual significance cognate with it, and at another to select in preference as his point of departure the real or only relatively personal idea, with a view to embodying the same, or even to do nothing more than relate one image with another, which presents characteristic features of resemblance.
This kind of linking together must consequently be distinguished from that still naïve and unconscious symbolism in virtue of the fact that now the individual recognizes the inward essence of the significances he adopts for the content of his creation no less than, the positive nature of the external objects, which he employs as means of comparison for the more direct presentment of the same, placing both in this juxtaposition with clear intention owing to the similarity he has discovered between them. The distinction, on the other hand, between the present type and that of the Sublime is rather to be traced to the fact that though under one aspect it may be true that the separation and juxtaposition of the significances with their concrete shaping in the work of art is itself set forth in express relief to a less or higher degree, yet, on the other hand, for the reason that it is no longer the Absolute itself that is accepted as content, but any defined and restricted significance whatever, the typical relation of the Sublime falls away, and in its place a relation is set up within the act of severance thus intentionally made between the real significance and its embodiment, a relation which in effect produces the very result in the sphere of premeditated comparison that we found unconscious symbolism in its own way proposed as an object.
In one word, so far as content is here concerned, the Absolute itself, the Lord of creation, can no longer be conceived as the significance which Art seeks after. That this is so is rendered inevitable by the already obvious fact that on account of the severation of more concrete existence from the notion, and further, if only under the mode of comparison, the juxtaposition of both sides thus separated, the category of finitude is there and then accepted by the artistic consciousness, in so far as it conceives this form as the real and ultimate one; and for this reason, moreover, the imagined significances, being selected wholly from the sphere of the finite, have no further association whatever with the Absolute as the fundamental significance of all created things. Sacred poetry stands out in entire contrast to this, for in this God is the exclusive significance of all things; as set over against Him, they have no stability at all, but vanish or are nothing. If, however, the significance is able to discover its image and parallel of resemblance in that which is itself essentially restricted and finite, it follows that it must itself to that extent be limited in its range, as, in fact, it is in the type of symbolic conception which now occupies our attention, where that which is found is nothing more than an image, necessarily external to the content, selected purely at random by the poet for the sake of the similarity it presents to the content, and as such regarded as relatively adequate thereto. For this reason there is but one trait left us in the comparative type of art, which is also shared by that of the Sublime, and it is this that every image, instead of embodying the fact and significance directly under a mode adequate to their full reality, is only taken to present an image and similitude of either.
For these reasons this kind of symbolization is, if we conceive it apart as an independent whole, a generic class of subordinate rank. The form which it supplies is merely the descriptive selection of a portion of sensuous existence immediately perceived, or of a prosaic idea of the mind[79], in other words, the significance is expressly to be distinguished from it. And, further, in a measure such an employment of comparison in works of art, which are shaped out of homogeneous material, and in their specific form constitute an indivisible whole, can only assert itself as relatively valid, that is, as mere ornament and accessory, such as we find it, in fact, in the genuine products of classic and romantic art.