When we find, then, that these two aspects, at first thus reconciled in one another by sculpture, are separated, that which we call self-introspective spirituality is not merely placed in opposition to that which is external, but also, in the domain of what is spiritual throughout, what is substantive and objective in that medium, in so far as it no longer continues to be retained in what is substantial individuality simply, is dissevered from the vital particularity of the conscious life, and all these aspects which have been hitherto held together in perfect fusion are relatively to each other and independently free, so that they can be treated too by art as free in this very way.
1. If we examine the content, then, we have through the above process, on the one hand, the substantive being of what is spiritual, the world of truth and eternity, the Divine in fact, which however here, in accordance with the principle of particularity, is comprehended and realized by art as a subject of consciousness, or as personality, as the Absolute, which is self-conscious in the medium of its infinite spiritual substance, as God in His Spirit and Truth. And in contrast to Him we have asserted the worldly and human condition of soul-life, which, regarded now as no longer in direct union with the intrinsic substance of Spirit, can unfold itself in all the fulness of that particularity which is simply human, and thereby permits the heart of man wherever and whenever represented[214], the entire wealth of our human mortality, to be open to art's acceptance.
The meeting-ground upon which these two aspects once more coalesce is the principle of subjectivity, which is common to both. The Absolute is, in virtue of this, disclosed to us to the full extent a living, actual, and equally human subject of consciousness, as the human and finite conscious life, viewed as spiritual, makes vital and real the absolute substance and truth, or in other words simply the Divine Spirit. The new bond of unity which is thus secured no longer, however, supports the character of that former immediacy, such as sculpture disclosed it; rather it is a union and reconciliation which asserts itself essentially as a mediation of opposed factors, and whose very notion makes its apprehension only possible in the realms of the soul and ideal life.
I have already, when the general subdivision of our science in its entire compass offered an opportunity for doing so, laid it down, that if the Ideal of sculpture sets forth in a sensuously present image the essential solidity[215] of the individuality of the God in the bodily form alone able to express that substance, the community thereupon essentially confronts such an object as the intelligent reflection of that unity. Spirit, however, that is wholly self-absorbed can only present the substance of Spirit under the mode of Spirit, in other words as a conscious subject, and receives thereby straightway the principle of the spiritual reconciliation of individual subjective life with God. As particular self, however, man also possesses his contingent natural existence, and a sphere of finite interests, needs, aims, and passions, whether it be more extensive or restricted, in which he is able to realize and satisfy his nature quite as much as he can in the same be absorbed in those ideas of God and the reconciliation with God.
2. Secondly, if we consider the aspect of the representation on its external side, we find that it is by virtue of its particularity at once self-subsistent and possesses a claim to stand forth in this independence, and this for the reason that the principle of subjectivity excludes that correspondence in its immediacy, and disallows to itself the absolute interfusion of the ideal and external aspects in every part and relation of it. For the subjective principle is here precisely that which comes to be, in self-subsistent seclusion, that inward life which retires from real or objective existence into the realm of the Ideal, the world of emotion, soul, heart, and contemplation[216]. This ideal life is manifested no doubt in its external form, under a mode, however, in which the external form itself appears, that is to say it is merely the outer shell of a conscious subject that is growing independently within. The hard and fast association of the bodily form and the life of Spirit in classical sculpture is not therefore carried to the point of an all-dissolving unity[217] but in so light and slack a coalescence that both aspects, albeit neither is present without the other, preserve in this connection their separate independence relatively to the other, or at least, if a profounder union is really secured, the spiritual aspect as that inward principle, which asserts its presence over and beyond its suffusion with the objective or external material, becomes the essentially illuminating focus of all. And it results from this that, to promote the enhancement of this relatively increased self-subsistency of the objective and material aspect,—we have in our mind mainly, no doubt, the extreme case of the representation of external Nature and its objects, even in their isolated and most exclusive particularity,—yet even in such a case and despite all realism in the presentment it is necessary that such counterfeits should permit a reflection of the artist's soul to be visible on their face. They should in other words suffer us to see the sympathy of Spirit in the manner of their artistic realization, and therewith discover to us the life of soul, the ideal life which is the vital breath of their co-ordination, the penetration of man's emotional life itself into this extreme type of external environment.
Speaking, then, generally, we may affirm that the principle of subjectivity carries with it as its inevitable result, on the one hand, that the wholly unconstrained union of Spirit with its corporeal frame should be given up, and the bodily aspect be asserted in a more or less negative relation over against the former, in order that the ideality of Spirit may be emphasized on the front of that external reality, and, on the other hand, in order to procure free scope for every separate feature of the variety, division, and movement of what is spiritual no less than what directly appeals to man's senses.
3. And, thirdly, this new principle has to establish itself in the sensuous material, of which art avails itself in its new manifestations.
(a) The material hitherto was matter simply, that is, the material of gravity in the content of its spatial extension, and no less was it form under its simplest and most abstract definition of configuration. Now that the subjective and at the same time the essentially particularized content of the soul is imported into this material, the spatial totality of such material will without question in some measure suffer loss in order that the former content may appear upon its face with its ideal mintage[218], and contrariwise will be converted from its immediately material guise to an appearance which is the product of mind or spirit; and, on the other hand, both in respect to form and its externally sensuous visibility, all the detail of what appears will be necessarily emphasized in the way that the new content requires. Art is, however, even now compelled in the first instance to move in the realm of the visible and sensuous, because, following the above course of our inquiry, though no doubt the inward or ideal is conceived as self-introspection[219], yet it has further to appear as a return of its own quality to itself from this very realm of externality and material shape, in short, as a return of itself to itself, which can only from the earliest point of view be portrayed in the objective existence of Nature and the corporeal existence of Spirit's life.
The first among the romantic arts will consequently have as its proper function to assert its content in the visible forms of the external human figure and the natural shape wherever disclosed, without, however, remaining bound to the sensuous ideality and abstract range of sculpture. This is the task and province of painting.