[138] Entgöttert—a mode from which the Divine is removed.
CHAPTER I
THE COMING INTO BEING OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL
In the notion of free Spirit is contained immediately that aspect of the process of intelligence we may describe as self-introspection, return upon the self, of being explicit as an object existing for the self and in a determinate place, although this penetration into the realm of subjectivity, as we have already observed, does not either necessarily proceed to the length of making the subject essentially self-substantive in its negative aspect as against all that is concrete in Spirit and presented us as the stability of Nature, nor to that absolute reconciliation which constitutes, the freedom of the infinite subjectivity in truth. With the freedom of Spirit, however, in whatever form it may appear, is generally associated the elimination of that which is purely natural, regarded as that which is the Other in contrast to Spirit. Spirit must in the first instance essentially withdraw itself from Nature, uplift itself over, her boundaries and overcome them, ere it can prevail with unfettered movement within those bounds as within an element that is opposed to it, and can build itself up in a positive mode of existence truly indicative of its own freedom. If we further ask for a closer definition of the object through the transcendence of which Spirit attains to its self-substantive form in classical art we shall find this object is not Nature merely as such, but rather a Nature that is already throughout suffused with the significations of Spirit, in other words the symbolic type of art, which made use of the immediately natural form as a means of expressing the Absolute, its artistic consciousness either seeing in animals and so forth the presence of gods, or striving vainly under false modes toward the true unity of the spiritual and the natural. It is through the removal and reformation of this defective association that the Ideal for the first time presents itself as the Ideal, and is forced to develop consequently this process of transcendence within its own sphere as a phase of its own necessary evolution. Such a consideration at once enables us to dispose of the question whether the Greeks received this religion from extraneous sources or no. We have already seen that subordinate conceptions are necessarily presupposed in the very notion of classical art. These, in so far as they in truth appear and are presented as factors of human history, are, as opposed to the higher form, which strives to pass beyond them, the actual starting-point of the new self-evolving art. And this is so, though in the particular case of Greek mythology there is not throughout historical evidence for these preliminary data. The relation, however, of the Greek spirit to these presupposed data is essentially a relation of construction and in the first instance of transformation. If this were not so the conceptions and forms of the same had remained as they were. It is true that Herodotus says, in a passage already cited, of Homer and Hesiod, that they had created their gods for the Greeks, but he also speaks expressly of particular gods, how this or that one was Egyptian or some other form: the poetic activity does not therefore exclude the reception of material from other sources, but merely suggests an essential transformation. For the Greeks possessed mythological conceptions before the time in which Herodotus places those original poets.
If we inquire further into the more obvious aspects of this necessary transformation of that which is undoubtedly involved with, but at first still alien from, the Ideal, we find it set before us in naïve form as content of mythology itself. The main fact of Greek theology is this, that it creates itself and constitutes itself from that which has gone before, which takes its place in the origins and process of its own generic history. Incidental to this origination, in so far as the gods are taken to be spiritual individualities in determinate bodily shape, we find, on the one hand, that Spirit, instead of giving visibility to its essence in that which is purely vital and animal, regards life rather as an attribute which is insufficient[139], as its unhappiness and death, and, on the other, that it is in the living thing that it triumphs over the elements of Nature and its confused reproduction. Conversely, however, it is equally necessary for the Ideal of the classic gods, not merely to stand over against Nature and its elemental powers as individual spirit in its finite and abstract seclusion, but to possess itself the elements of the universal natural life notionally as a phasal moment in the vital constitution of Spirit. As the essence of the gods is essentially universal, and in this very universality they are defined as individuals, it follows also that the aspect of their bodily presence must essentially include at the same time the natural as the essential and wide-reaching power of Nature, and as vital activity intertwined with spirituality itself.
In this respect we may differentiate the process of embodiment followed by the classical art-form under the following points of view.
The first concerns the degradation of that which is purely animal, and the removal of the same from the sphere of free and pure Beauty.
The second more important aspect is related to the elemental itself, in the first instance conceived as gods put before us as powers of Nature, through whose conquest alone the genuine race of gods can attain to undisputed mastery, that is in the war between the ancient and new gods. But this negative tendency becomes, then, in the third place, after Spirit has secured its free right, to the same extent once again an affirmative force, and elemental Nature constitutes an aspect of godhead permeated with individualized spirituality in order to re-establish even the animal organism, though here only of an attributive and external sign. Following the above points of view we will now, if still at no great length, endeavour to emphasize the more definite traits, which here come under consideration.