If we now inquire what are the means which enable the breast, the torso, the back, and the extremities to contribute to the expression of spirit and thereby to receive over and beyond a beautiful vitality, the breath of a spiritual life, we shall find the following:
In the first place there is the relation in which the limbs, in so far as that relation proceeds from the ideality of Spirit, and is freely determined by that ideality, are brought into juxtaposition.
Secondly, there is the motion and repose in their complete freedom and beauty of form.
Thirdly, this type of position and motion in their definite affiliation[165] and expression supplies the situation more closely, in which the Ideal, which can never consist purely in the Ideal of abstraction, is comprehended.
I will add yet further some general remarks on the above points.
(α) With regard to position of first importance is that aspect we have had already occasion to notice in a superficial way, namely, the upright position of man. The body of animals moves in a parallel line with the ground; mouth and eye follow the same direction, and the animal is unable independently to raise himself from this relation to gravity. The opposite is the case with mankind; the eye looking straight forward is placed in its natural direction, that is, in a right angle with the line of gravity and the body. Man is no doubt able to go on all fours just as animals do, and children do so in fact; but as soon as consciousness begins to awaken, man wrests himself from the animal chains of the earth, and stands up straight in free independence. This stansion is an act of will, for if we cease to try to stand our body collapses and falls to the ground. In this way the upright position possesses a spiritual significance, in so far as the self-elevation from the ground remains linked with the volition and thus with that which is spiritual and ideal; just as we are accustomed to say of an essentially free and independent man, who keeps his opinions, view's, principles, and aims unaffected by others, that he stands on his own feet.
The upright position is, however, not yet merely as such beautiful; it is only so by virtue of the freedom of its form. In other words if a man stands up only straight in an abstract way, letting his hands fall glued to his side with no interval of separation, his legs in the same way being close to each other, we receive an untoward expression of stiffness, even although in the first instance this is due to no compulsion. From this stiff effect we deduce on the one hand the abstract and likewise architectonic principle of uniformity, under which the limbs adhere together in the like position, and on the other hand we do not discover in it any determination derived from what is spiritual and the ideal principle. In such a case arms, legs, breast, body, all the members stand and hang just as though they had from the first grown there on man, without being brought by means of his spirit, his volition and emotions into a change of position. The same thing may be said of the sitting posture. Conversely also the squatting or perching on the ground is destitute of freedom for the reason that it suggests an attitude of subordination, dependence, and serfdom. The free position, on the contrary, avoids in a measure this abstract uniformity and angularity, and places the position under lines which approximate to the organic form; and to a further extent it suffers spiritual relations to shine through, so that by virtue of such a position the conditions and passions of the soul are cognizable. Only in this manner can the position pass as a genuine exhibition of Spirit.
In the application of positions as significant pose[166], it is necessary, however, that sculpture proceed with great circumspection, and it has thereby many a difficulty to overcome. On the one hand, no doubt, the reciprocal relation of the members is to be derived from the ideal principle of Spirit; on the other hand, however, this determination from the ideal side ought not to place the particular parts under a mode which contradicts the corporeal structure and the laws of the same, and thereby produce the impression of a constraint imposed on the members, or come into collision with the material of substance, in which sculpture is set the task to execute the artist's conceptions. And, in the third place, the pose must appear wholly spontaneous, as though the body received it of its own initiative, otherwise body and spirit have the appearance of being distinct and separable from each other, and are involved in the relative position of mere direction from one side and purely abstract obedience from the other, whereas both in sculpture ought rightly to constitute one and the same immediately congruent totality. This absence of constraint is here of the first importance. Spirit, as the ideal principle, must throughout transfuse the members, and these latter must in like degree essentially accept spirit and its determination as to the content of its own soul. As to the pose itself and its character, which we may empower to express the just attitude in ideal sculpture, we can readily infer from our previous exposition that it ought not be one wholly referable to change or instantaneous action. The representation of sculpture must produce no effect such as is seen in the case where men, while in the art of motion and action, were turned to stone or frozen by means of Hüon's horn. On the contrary, it is necessary that the posture, although it may without question point to some characteristic action, express for all that merely a beginning and preparation, an intention, or it must indicate the close of an action and a return from the same to the state of repose. The repose and self-subsistency of a spiritual life, which potentially encloses in itself an entire world, is the most suitable aspect for the ideal form of sculpture.
(β) And, in the second place, what we have observed of posture is equally applicable to motion. There is in sculpture as such less room for motion in the full sense of the term than other arts[167], just in so far as the same does not as yet advance to the mode of presentation which is more nearly related to an art whose sphere of effect is more extensive. The tranquil image of the god in his blessed self-seclusion is the presentment which it is its task mainly to set before us in all its essential freedom from conflict. A variety of movement is necessarily excluded from such. What we ought to have is rather a stansion or reclining posture of essential self-absorption[168]. This attitude of self wholly referable to self it is which does not proceed to a definite action, and by doing so does not contract its entire energy to the space of a single moment, making such of first importance, but rather persists in the continued equilibrium of tranquillity. We ought to be able to imagine that the figure of the gods will remain for ever in the same posture. The escape from self-subsistency, the plunging of individual life within the vortex of a particular action that implies conflict, the strain of the moment, which is unable to continue as such—such relations are foreign to the ideality of sculpture. We cross them rather where, in the case of groups and reliefs, the particular moments of an action are presented with a distinct inclination to the principle of painting. A result brought about by powerful effects, and their passing exhibition, no doubt exercises upon us an immediate impression; but after once having received it we do not readily return to it. For that which is so prominent in the presentation is the affair of a moment's passage, which we both observe and recognize in that moment, whereas the ideal fulness and freedom, what is infinite in its significance, in other words that which holds our attention permanently, is relegated to the background.