(α) It is their concentrated individuality which presents to us the most general and at the same time most complete idea of their intrinsic character, in so far, that is, as this individuality is brought together out of the variety of accidental traits, isolated actions, and events into the one focus of their simple and self-exclusive unity.
(αα) What appeals to us in these gods is first of all the spiritual and substantive individuality, which, withdrawn into itself as it is out of the motley show of the particular medium of necessity, and, the many-purposed unrest of the finite condition, reposes on its own inviolable universality, as on an eternal and intelligible foundation. It is only thus that the gods appear as the imperishable powers, whose untroubled rule is made visible to us not in the particular event in its evolution with somewhat else and external to it, but freely in its own unchangeableness and intrinsic worth.
(ββ) Conversely, however, they are not by any means the bare abstraction of spiritual generalities, and thereby so-called general Ideals, but in so far as they are individuals they appear as one Ideal, an essentially of itself determinate existence, and consequently one that is defined, in other words one that as Spirit possesses characterization. Without character we can have no individuality. From this point of view we find, as we have already indicated previously, that there is at the root of these spiritual gods a definite natural force, with which a definite ethical consistency[187] is blended, such as imposes on every particular god distinct bounds to the sphere of his activity. The manifold aspects and traits which are forthcoming by reason of this characterization as particular persons, being in this way concentrated in the point of a true self-identity, constitute the characters of the gods.
(γγ) In the true Ideal, however, this definition ought just as little to terminate in the blunt restriction of pure one sidedness, but must at the same time appear as withdrawn into the universality of the godhead. In just such a way, then, every god, by carrying in his own person this defined character as divine and as bound up with that as universal individuality, is in part of a definite type, and in part is all in all, and floats, as it were, precisely midway between mere universality and equally abstract singularity. And this is what gives to the genuine Ideal of classical art its infinite security and repose, its untroubled blessedness and unimpaired freedom.
(β) Add to this that as beauty of classical art the essentially self-articulate divine character is not only spiritual, but fully as much plastic form which appears externally in its bodily presence to the eye no less than to the mind.
(αα) This beauty, inasmuch as it possesses not merely the natural or animal aspect in its spiritual personification, but includes as its content that which is spiritual in its adequate mode of existence, can only take up what is symbolical in its incidental aspect and under those relations in which it appears as purely natural. Its real external expression is the form that is peculiar to mind and only mind, in so far as its ideal character reveals itself as existent truth, and pours itself wholly through that form.
(ββ) From another point of view classical beauty is debarred from giving expression to the Sublime. For it is only the abstract universal, which attaches to itself no inclusion such as is self-defined, but merely a negative determinacy relatively to particularity in general, and along with this is resolute in its antagonism to every form of embodiment which presents us with the aspect of the Sublime. Classical beauty, on the contrary, carries spiritual individuality into the very heart of what is at the same time its natural existence, and elucidates the ideal content wholly in the material of its external appearance.
(γγ) For this very reason, however, it is essential that the external form quite as much as the spiritual, which creates for itself therein its home and dwelling, should be liberated from all dependence on Nature and derangement, all finitude, all that is of fleeting character, all that is exclusively concerned with the sensuous presence, and should purify and exalt that definition of it which discloses affinity with the determinate character of the god into free commerce with the universal forms of the human figure. The stainless externality alone, from which every hint of weakness and relativity has been removed, and every flick of capricious particularity wiped off, is able to represent the Spirit's ideality, which should sink itself in it and secure an embodiment from it.
(γ) For the reason, however, that the gods are forced once more from the defined limits of character into the universal wave, the self-subsistency of Spirit as repose on itself, and as the security of itself in its external form has to discover a real reflection also in its manifestation.