The art of painting marks the beginning of this final totality. It converts the external form itself entirely into an expression of what is ideal[23], which within the limits of the environing world not merely reproduces the ideal self-containedness of the Absolute, but also brings to the vision the same as essentially a personal possession[24] in its spiritual existence, volition, feeling, action, in its activity and relation to another, and consequently also in its sufferings, pain, death, in the entire series of passions and satisfaction. Its object is for this reason no longer God simply, that is, as object of the human consciousness, but this consciousness itself, God, that is, either in His reality present in the action and suffering of individual life, or as spirit of the community, as the spiritual related through feeling to itself, soul-life in its resignation, its sacrifice of, or joy and blessedness in, life and action within the limits of the natural world. As a means to the presentation of this content the art of painting is bound to utilize the external phenomenon in respect to its form, not merely the human organism, but also Nature in its simplicity in so far as the same suffers what is of spirit to shine through with clarity. It is, however, unable to utilize as material physical matter and its spatial existence just as it is; it is compelled, in working it up into its forms, essentially to idealize the same. The first step by means of which the sensuous material is raised in this respect to confront mind[25], consists, on the one hand, in the uplifting of the actual sensuous appearance, whose visibility is converted into the mere show by art, and on the other in colour by means of the distinctions, transitions, and modulations of which this transformation is effected. The art of painting, consequently, in order to express the soul in its ideality, resolves the three dimensions of space into that of superficies as that which most intimately asserts the ideality of what is external, and represents spatial distance and form by means of the phenomena of colour. For painting is not concerned with producing mere visibility in its general significance, but with that form of visibility which, if it is ideally produced, is also quite as much essentially particularized. In sculpture and the art of building forms are visible by means of external light. In the art of painting, on the contrary, the material which is itself essentially obscure possesses intrinsically within itself its inward or ideal, light in short. It is itself transfused in its own medium, and mere light is to that extent essentially obscured. The unity, however, and blending of light and dark is colour[26].
Secondly, the art of music offers a contrast to that of painting in one and the same sphere as the latter. Its real element is the ideal realm as such, emotion in its formless independence, capable of asserting itself not in externality and its reality, but purely through the external medium which disappears immediately when it is expressed and thereby cancels itself. Its content consequently consists of the internal life of Spirit in its immediate, essential subjective unity, emotion simply; its material is musical tone, its form and configuration, the concord, discord, harmony, contrast, opposition, and resolution of such tones according to the laws of their quantitative intervals respectively and their artistically elaborated time measure.
Finally, in the third place, after painting and music we get the art of speech, poetry in its general terms, the absolutely genuine art of Spirit and its expression as such. For everything which the human consciousness conceives and spiritually embodies in the chamber of spirit speech is able to accept, express, and bring imaginatively before us, and only speech is thus able. In respect to its content, therefore, poetry is the richest and its boundaries are the widest. But in proportion as it gains as the vehicle of Spirit it loses on the side of the material object. In other words, for the reason that it neither works for the perception of the sense as the plastic arts, nor merely for the ideal emotion, as music does, but is concerned to create its spiritual significances under the form of its own spiritual medium merely for the conception and contemplation of mind, the material through which its constructive activity is asserted only retains for it the value of a means, however much it may be elaborated in an artistic sense, by which Spirit is expressed for Spirit, and no longer counts as a sensuous mode of existence, in which the spiritual content is capable of finding a reality adequate to it. Such a means can in the light of our previous consideration only be tone regarded as the still relatively most adequate material of spiritual expression. Tone here, however, does not in the present case preserve, as was the case with music, an independent validity of its own for which the unique and essential aim of art could be exhausted in finding an artistic form, but conversely is entirely steeped in the world of Spirit and the definite content of conception and contemplation, and appears simply as the external symbol of this content. So far as the embodiment which the poetry receives is concerned, in this respect poetry may claim to include the whole field of art in the sense, that is, that it repeats in its own province the modes of presentation adopted by the other arts, which is only in a qualified degree the case with painting and music.
In other words poetry gives, on the one hand, as epic poetry the form of objectivity to its content, which no doubt here does not, as in the plastic arts, attain to an external existence. It is none the less a world conceived by the mind in the form of the objective world and represented as objective for the individual imagination. This it is which constitutes human speech as such, which finds satisfaction in its own content and its expression by means of speech.
On the other hand, however, poetry is conversely to an equal degree speech of the soul, the ideal medium, which, as that inward content returns to itself, is lyrical poetry, which invokes the aid of music in order to penetrate yet more deeply the world of souls and emotion.
Finally, to take the third example, poetry proceeds through speech within the limits of a self-contained action, which it at the same time makes an object of its presentment, and consequently is able to ally itself closely to music, gesture, mimicry, and the dance. This is dramatic art, in which man, in all that the term implies[27], creatively presents the work of art which is the product of human life. These five arts form the system of realized and actual art, essentially determined by itself and differentiated as such. In addition to them there are no doubt other incomplete arts, for example, the arts of gardening and dance. These we shall only refer to incidentally as the opportunity recurs. A philosophical investigation must perforce restrict itself entirely to distinctions referable to the notion, and develop and grasp these adequate and veritable modes of embodiment. Nature and reality is not, it is true, confined to these circumscribed limits, but is more liberal in its movement, and we not unfrequently hear it made a matter of praise that in this respect the products of genius are perforce compelled to expand themselves beyond just such limitations. In Nature, however, transitional organisms of either hybrid or amphibian type, instead of emphasizing the spontaneity and excellence of Nature, merely demonstrate its inability to hold fast to the essential differentiations of species which are rooted in that process, or to prevent their deterioration before external conditions and influences. The same thing may be affirmed in art with regard to these intermediate forms, although the same are capable of producing much, too, that delights us, is full of charm and utility, albeit not in the highest class of perfection.
If we turn our attention now after these introductory remarks and considerations to the more specific examination of the separate arts, we shall find ourselves from another point of view in some difficulty. For inasmuch as we have hitherto concerned ourselves with art as such, the Ideal and the general types, under which its evolution according to its notion proceeds, it is imperative to pass over into the concrete existence of art, and by doing so into the world of experience. Here we find a condition very analogous to that we observe in Nature, the provinces of which are readily grasped in their generality and the necessary laws which distinguish them, in whose actual material existence, however, the individual objects and their species, not merely in the aspects which they present to observation, but also in the form under which they exist, are of such a wealth of variety that, as a part of the difficulty, they offer as feasible every conceivable way of approaching them; and in addition to this the philosophical notion, when we are desirous of applying the standard of its simple lines of distinction, appears as insufficient for this purpose and the mere grasp of thought incapable of taking in the breath of such fulness. If, however, we merely rest satisfied with mere description and superficial reflections we fall short no less of the object we have set before us, that is, a development which is both scientific and systematic. Added to which difficulties we have the further one that nowadays every particular art makes the independent demand for a special science, inasmuch as with the continuous growth of connoisseurship in art the range of such special knowledge has become ever more rich and extensive. This science of the connoisseur, or dilettante, has, however, in our own times become fashionable under the direct teaching of philosophy itself. It has, in short, been maintained that it is in art we must look for real religion, the discovery of truth and the Absolute, that, in short, it stands on a loftier pedestal than philosophy for the reason that it is not abstract, but receives at the same time the Idea in reality and for a contemplation and emotion which are concrete[28]. And on the other hand it is regarded nowadays as of august importance in art[29] to occupy one's attention with an infinite superfluity of detail of this kind, in the interests of which the demand is made from everyone that he should have observed some novelty or other. Such critical labour is a kind of learned trifling which may very readily be overdone. It causes, no doubt, considerable pleasure to examine works of art, to grasp the thoughts and reflections which such may suggest, to give currency to the points of view, which others have pointed out, and by this means to become judges and critics. The more rich, however, by this means, namely, that everybody is intent on having discovered on his own account something uniquely his own, a learning and process of reflection has become, the more every particular art, nay, every branch of the same, now renders necessary the completeness of a treatment of it from the individual's standpoint. As a corollary the historical aspect of such a survey and the criticism of works of art, which becomes inevitable, only add yet further to the learning and range of the subject. It is, moreover, essential before we take part in any discussion over the details of matters of artistic import that we should already have seen much and many times. Personally I have no doubt seen a considerable amount, but by no means all that is necessary to enable me to discuss the material of art exhaustively. All such difficulties, however, we may meet with the simple response that it does not lie within the aim of the present work to teach art-criticism, or to bring forward an historical review of such learning, or only to the extent such is necessary to apprehend on philosophical principles the essential and universal aspects of our subject, and their relation to the idea of the beautiful in its realization within the sensuous medium of art. If we keep this aim before us the variety of artistic effects we above indicated need cause us no embarrassment; for despite this complexity the essential character of the subject-matter according to its notional idea is the controlling factor; and although this is frequently lost in accidental matter by virtue of the medium in which it is realized, points of view are none the less in evidence, in which it is as clearly proclaimed. To grasp these aspects, and to develop them in a scientific way, is the very problem which it is the function of philosophy to elucidate.