Thirdly, and finally, we shall find that sculpture avails itself of various types of presentation and material, and expands to a world of productions, in which, either under one aspect or another, the symbolical or romantic types also definitely assert themselves, albeit it is the classical which constitutes the true point of centre between them in plastic art[131].
CHAPTER I
THE PRINCIPLE OF GENUINE SCULPTURE
Sculpture, to put the matter in general terms, conceives the astounding project of making Spirit imagine itself in an exclusively material medium, and so shape this external medium that it is presented to itself in such and recognizes the presentment to be the objective form adequate to its ideal substance.
In this respect our inquiry will take the following directions.
First, we have the question what kind of spiritual life is capable of being reproduced in this material of a form entirely sensuous and spatial.
Secondly, we have to ask in what manner the forms of the spatial condition have to be modified in order to permit us a recognition of the spiritual in the bodily shape of beauty.
What we have generally to consider here is the unity between the ordo rerum extensarum and that of the ordo rerum idearum, the primal fair union of soul and body, in so far as spiritual ideality is expressed by sculpture exclusively in its bodily existence.