In the second chapter that significance, which has hitherto been more or less obscured by its particular sensuous form, has at last wrested its way to freedom, and its independent character is brought clearly to consciousness. With this victory the relation of real symbolism is dissolved; we have instead, through the way in which the absolute significance[30] is cognized as the universal substance interpenetrating the entire extension of the visible world, the art of the absolute essence[31] in the form of a symbolism of the sublime; and this now takes the place of purely symbolical and fantastic suggestions, deformities, and riddles.
We have here mainly two points of view to distinguish which are based upon differences in the relation of the substantive essence, that is the Absolute and Divine, to the finitude of the apparent. Or rather we may say that this relation is capable of being twofold, both positive and negative, although in both forms, inasmuch as it is in either case universal substance, which has to appear, it is not the particular form and import of the objective facts, but their general principle of animation and their position relatively to this substance which is made visible to sense.
A. In the first phase or type this relation is so conceived, that substance, here the All and the One delivered from every form of particularity, is immanent in the determinate phenomena as the animating principle which brings them into being and is their life; and moreover, it is affirmatively and immediately present to the vision in this immanence, and is comprehended, and made the object of representation by the individual who surrenders himself to its presence through the adoring self-absorption in this indwelling essence of the entire world of contingent and material things. In this point of view we have the art of the Pantheism which possesses the Sublime as its inherent principle, an art such as we find it in its elementary stage in India, then elaborated in all its splendour in Mohammedanism and its artistic mysticism, and finally with still profounder significance reappearing in certain manifestations of Christian mysticism.
B. The negative relation on the other hand of true Sublimity we must look for in Hebraic poetry. In this poetry of the Glorious, which is only concerned to celebrate and exalt the unimaginable Lord of the heavens and the earth that it may employ His entire creation as the passing instrument of His Power, as the messengers of His Glory, as the delight and ornament of His Greatness, this service of His Creation, be it never so magnificent[32], is deliberately posited as negative, and this for the reason that it is unable to discover any adequate or positively sufficient expression for the Power and Dominion of the Highest, and is only able to attain a genuine satisfaction by means of the subjection of the creature, which in the feeling and admission of its unworthiness is alone able with adequacy to express its insignificance[33].
THIRD CHAPTER
Through this independent self-assertion of significance, made thus transparent to consciousness in its isolated simplicity, the severation of the same from the imaged appearance, whose incommensurability over against it has already been accepted, is now essentially complete; and albeit, along with the fact of this conscious separation, both form and import may still persist in the relation of an intimate affinity, a necessity which is implied in the fact of their being symbolical art, yet this relation no longer attaches to either import or form, but is placed now in a third mode of conception, which according to its own point of view, carries relations of similarity with both these sides[34], and in reliance on these relations makes visible and declares the independently transparent significance by means of the cognate and particular image.
Owing to this change the image, instead of remaining as it was previously the unique expression of the Absolute, becomes now merely an ornament, and we thereby discover a relation which ceases to correspond with the notion of beauty. In other words image and significance, instead of being moulded one within the other, confront each other as opposites, precisely, in fact, as was the case in genuine symbolism, though then the process remained incomplete. Consequently works of art which are based on this form are of subordinate rank, and their content is unable to comprise the Absolute itself, and is necessarily restricted to circumstances and occurrences of narrower range. For this reason the forms which are now under discussion are for the most part merely used occasionally and by way of diversion.
More closely considered we have in this chapter to distinguish between three principal stages of our process.
A. To the first we appropriate those types of presentation commonly known as Fable, Parable, and Apologue. In these the severation of form and significance, which constitutes the characteristic trait of the entire sphere to which this chapter refers, is not as yet expressly recognized; that is to say, the subjective aspect of the comparison is not yet fully emphasized; consequently also the representation of the particular and concrete phenomenon, through which the universal significance is finally to declare itself, still remains the predominant factor.