Thirdly, that positive aspect of atonement, the transfigurement that results from grief's travail, the blessedness that comes of repentance may be independently accepted as the subject of artistic presentment though it may readily pass into false conceptions.
Such, then, are the main distinguishing characteristics of the absolute spiritual Ideal regarded as the essential content of romantic painting. It forms the material of its most successful and solemn creations, works that are immortal by virtue of the depth of their contemplation; and when the representation of essential truth is thereby expressed they are nothing less than the most exalted expansion of the soul to its heaven of bliss, the most intimate and complete revelation of ideal life that an artist can bring before our vision.
Following this pre-eminently religious sphere of artistic production we have still to investigate two further fields of its activity.
(β) In direct contrast to the province of religion we have that which, if we consider it in its isolated abstraction, is equally destitute of the life of soul and God, Nature in its simplest terms, and regarded more definitely in its connection with painting, Nature's landscape. We have stated the character of the object of religion to be such that in it the substantive ideality of the soul expresses therein the indwelling sense of Love as united to the Absolute[273]. This inward ideality has, however, a further content. It is able to discover in that which is wholly external an accord with soul-life, and can recognize in the objective world as such traits which have an affinity with what is spiritual. Regarded in their immediacy, no doubt, hills, mountains, woods, valleys, streams, meadows, sunlight, moon, and the starry heavens, are simply perceived to be the natural objects they are. But, in the first place, these objects have to start with an independent interest, in so far as it is the free life of Nature, which appears in them, and produces a sense of fellow feeling in the individual as one who shares that life himself; and, secondly, the particular changes of Nature's moods bring about states in the soul which correspond to such moods. It is possible for man to follow with his own life this animation of Nature and partake in this harmony of soul with its environment, and feel thereby at home in Nature. Just as the Arcadians spoke of a Pan, who made them shudder and frightened in the gloaming of the forest, in the same way the varied conditions of Nature's landscape in its gentle blithesomeness, its balmy repose, its spring-freshness, its wintry chill, its morning awakening and evening rest find their counterfeits in states of the soul. The tranquil depth of the ocean, the possibility that its depths may break forth with infinite power is akin to soul movements, just as conversely the roaring, upwelling, foaming, and break of storm-tossed waves stir the soul with concordant music. It is an ideal significance of this kind that the art of painting accepts as its object. And for this reason it is not natural objects merely as such in their external form and association which ought to constitute its true content, so that painting is nothing more than a mere imitation, but rather the animation of Nature's life, which interfuses it throughout and which is able to bring into prominence and assert with more vividness in the scenes of Nature reproduced the characteristic affinity of specific conditions of this life with particular spiritual states—it is a vital participation in Nature of this kind which gives us the meeting-point, steeped as it is in the soul-life and temperament of the artist, by means of which Nature may become the content of painting not merely as environment, but as possessing a distinct individuality[274].
(γ) There is yet further a third type of idealization which we find partly in the case where objects wholly insignificant are detached from the position they occupy in the landscape, and, partly, in scenes of human life, which may appear to us not merely as wholly accidental as thus selected, but even of a kind that is both mean and commonplace. I have already found an opportunity for an attempt to justify the artistic selection of such subjects[275]. I will in connection with painting merely add the following remarks to our former discussion.
The art of painting is not merely concerned with the inward life of the soul, but with that ideal element that is essentially particularized[276]. This latter type of ideality for the reason that particularity is its principle is not content to rest satisfied with the absolute object of religion, and as little will merely accept from the external world Nature's vitality and its defined character as landscape; rather it insists on partaking of everything, in which man as an isolated individual soul can take a rational interest and find pleasure. Even in the case of its representations of religious material art, in proportion as it develops, it attaches such more closely to terrestrial conditions and the objects of actual vision, giving to its content the complete presence of natural existence, so that we ultimately find that the aspect of sensuous existence is most important and the interest of devotional life only so in a subordinate degree. For here, too, art receives the task to work out the Ideal in its fullest realization, in other words, to present to our senses that which is originally detached from them, to carry over objects taken from the remoteness of past life into present life and unite them with that present human life.
At our present stage of human evolution it is the ideality which we find in actual life as it faces us, in the circumstances of daily experience, the most common and the most trivial, which is the actual content.
(αα) If we inquire, then, what it is that makes a content of this kind, otherwise so poverty-stricken and indifferent, compatible with the claims of art, we must reply that it is the substantive core that is contained and made valid therein, in general terms the vitality and delight of self-subsistent existence, exemplified in the greatest variety of its aims and interests. The life of mankind is always in the immediate Present. What a man may do in each moment thereof is something specific, and its justification consists in the fact that he carries through all his engagements, the least no less than the greatest, with heart and soul. In this way he is united with each particular incident, and, by infusing into each the entire force of his individuality, appears to identify his whole existence with such. This coalescence[277] produces that harmony of the individual with the specific character of his immediate activity in the circumstances that are nearest him, which is itself a mode of ideality, and which communicates in such a case to the subsistency of an existence, which is an exclusive and perfected whole, its attractive character. The interest, therefore, that we derive from representations of this kind is not to be attributed to the subject-matter, but rather to this animating soul, which by itself, and independently of that wherein it is disclosed as vital, finds an echo in every uncorrupted nature, in every free spirit, and is for the same an object of sympathy and delight. We must not, therefore, impair our enjoyment on the ground that the demand is made of us to admire such works of art under the aspect of their likeness to Nature so-called and such illusive imitation[278]. This demand, which works of this kind appear at first blush to support, is itself merely a deception which fails to hit the real point. For an admiration of this type is solely deducible from the wholly external comparison of a work of art and a work of Nature, and is only associated with the similarity of the counterfeit with an object or fact presented us, whereas the real content here and the artistic quality in the composition and execution is the coalescence of the matter portrayed with its own substance, which is the reality as independently depicted in its vital characterization. According to the principle of illusion, for instance, the portraits of Denner are entitled to our praise, which are, no doubt, imitations of Nature, but for the most part fail entirely to present us that vital animation on which we lay the main stress in these cases, and are mainly concerned with depicting hair, wrinkles, and generally every kind of trait which, without exactly being indicative of a corpse, are equally remote from the human physiognomy depicted as alive.
Moreover, if we permit ourselves to level down our enjoyment through superficial thoughts of the above fashionable kind, believing subjects of this type to be mean and unworthy of our contemplation, we accept the content by doing so in a form other than that in which art offers them us. In other words we merely associate with them the relation in which we stand to them according to our personal needs, pleasure, such education as we otherwise possess and other objects we have before us, that is to say we merely conceive them in respect to their external purport, throughout which it is our own requirements which are the vital thing we aim at for ourselves, and the matter of all importance. The life of the subject-matter itself, however, is thereby destroyed, in so far, that is, as the sole object of its existence appears to be that of a means simply, or lapses into a thing of no moment at all, just because we personally have no need for it. A gleam of sunlight, for example, which falls upon a room we enter through an open door, a part of the country we travel through, a sempstress, a maid we happen to see busily engaged, one and all we may regard with indifference, because we suffer them to pass by remote from the thoughts and interests which are bound up with them, and consequently in our soliloquy, or conversation with another will not suffer the situations which actually lie before us to speak a word in the current of our own thoughts and speech; or we cast what is merely a passing glance at them, the summary of which does not amount to more than the remark, "how pleasant, fine, or ugly they are." Thus we are charmed with the joviality of dance of peasants, while we merely glance at it superficially, or turn away from it with contempt, because we are hostile to "every sort of barbarism." We treat in a similar way the human countenances we come across in our daily life, or which we happen to chance upon. Our own personal point of view, and the various matters which engage us are for ever being interposed. We are forced to address this or that person in a certain way, we have affairs to despatch, we have certain things to consider, thoughts that affect our relation to such a person; we observe him under the particular circumstances of our knowledge; we regulate our conversation relatively to that, or we are silent upon it, if he may be likely to resent it—in short we have always in our minds the man's business, station, and status, and our attitude to and business with him, remaining in a wholly practical relation, or in a position of indifference and preoccupied inattention. Art, however, when it depicts such real life, wholly changes our attitude to it; it cuts away once and for all all practical deviations[279], such as we are wont to associate with such material; it places us simply in the attitude of abstract contemplation to it; and in the like degree it does away with its indifference, and directs our otherwise preoccupied attention wholly to the situation portrayed; upon which we must collect and concentrate all our faculties, if we are to enjoy it. Sculpture, in particular, by virtue of its ideal mode of production from the first strikes off all practical relation to the object to the extent that its product at once betrays the fact that it does not belong to this reality. Painting, on the contrary, carries us wholly into the presence of the daily life with which we are in immediate contact, but it furthermore destroys all the threads of practical necessity, attraction, inclination, or disinclination, which draw us to such a Present, or the reverse, and forces us to approach those objects more intimately as ends to themselves in their own particular phase or mode of life. What we meet with here is just the opposite to that which Herr von Schlegel, for example, in the tale of Pygmalion, expresses so very prosily as the return of the completed work of art to common life, that is to a relation of a man's own inclinations and an actual enjoyment, a return which is the very opposite of that alienation, in which the work of art places the objects delineated in their relation to our practical necessities, and, precisely by doing so, sets forth before us their own independent life and appearance.
(ββ) Just as, then, art, in this particular sphere, re-establishes the forfeited independence of a content, which we otherwise failed to preserve in its unique characteristics, in the same way, secondly, it is able to secure in stability such objects as may happen to appear in actual existence in a form we are not accustomed to respect simply as such. The higher Nature stretches in its organization and shifting appearance the more it resembles the actor who only serves the present need. In this connection I have already emphasized the fact as a triumph of art over reality, namely, that it is able to fix that which is most evanescent. This power of art in attaching permanence to momentary things applies not only to the sudden flash of life we find concentrated in certain situations, but also to the magical effect of its external presentment in the rapid changes of its colour. A troop of horsemen, for example, may alter every moment in the mode of its grouping, and the mutual relation of each rider within it. If we were one of such we should have something else to do than consider the lively effect of such changes. We should have to mount, dismount, make up our haversack, eat, drink, rest, groom, drink and feed our horses: or, if we looked on as ordinary folk, we should look at such with wholly different interests. We should want to know what they are there for, what nationality they are, for what reason they have left their barracks, and so forth. The painter, on the contrary, smuggles off the most volatile of the movements, the most evanescent expressions of countenance, the most momentary gleams of colour apparent in such motion, and places such before us solely in virtue of its interest in the animation of such phenomena which without it would vanish. For especially it is the play of the colouring, not treated merely as flat tint, but in its lights and shadows, and in the prominence or subordination of the objects painted which is the reason that the representation appears lifelike, a fact which we are accustomed to observe in works of art less than such an aspect deserves, bringing as it does art first clearly to our minds. And, moreover, the artist preferably accepts in depicting these natural relations the effort of following the least detail, and making his work concrete, definite and stamped with individuality, endeavouring as he does to secure for his subject-matter the individuality which phenomenal life itself supplies in its most momentary flashes; and yet withal does not so much seek for such a detail merely as imitated closely to strike our senses with its directness, but rather to furnish a definite image to the imagination in which at the same time the ideality of the entire composition remains active.