The pyramid, image of symbolic art, is a species of envelope, cut in crystalline form, which conceals a mystic object, an invisible being. Hence, also, the exterior, superstitious side of worship, an excess difficult to escape, the adoration of the divine principle in animals, a gross worship which is no longer even symbolic.
Hieroglyphic writing, another form of Egyptian art, is itself in great part symbolic, since it makes ideas known by images borrowed from nature, and which have some analogy with those ideas.
But a defect betrays itself, especially in the representations of the human form. In fact, though a mysterious and spiritual force is there revealed, it is not true personality. The internal principle fails; action and impulse come from without. Such are the statues of Memnon, which are animate, have a voice, and give forth a sound, only when struck by the rays of the sun. It is not the human voice which comes from within—an echo of the soul. This free principle which animates the human form, remains here concealed, wrapped up, mute, without proper spontaneity, and is only animated under the influence of nature.
A superior form is that of the Myth of Osiris, the Egyptian god, par excellence—that god who is engendered, born, dies and is resuscitated. In this myth, which offers various significations, physical, historical, moral, and religious or metaphysical, is shown the superiority of these conceptions over those of Indian art.
In general, in Egyptian art, there is revealed a profounder, more spiritual, and more moral character. The human form is no longer a simple, abstract personification. Religion and art attempt to spiritualize themselves; they do not attain their object, but they catch sight of it and aspire to it. From this imperfection arises the absence of freedom in the human form. The human figure still remains without expression, colossal, serious, rigid. Thus is explained those attitudes of the Egyptian statues, the arms stiff, pressed against the body, without grace, without movement, and without life, but absorbed in profound thought, and full of seriousness.
Hence also the complication of the elements and symbols, which are intermingled and reflected the one in the other; a thing which indicates the freedom of spirit, but also an absence of clearness and definiteness. Hence the obscure, enigmatic character of those symbols, which always cause scholars to despair—enigmas to the Egyptians themselves. These emblems involve a multitude of profound meanings. They remain there as a testimony of fruitless efforts of spirit to comprehend itself, a symbolism full of mysteries, a vast enigma represented by a symbol which sums up all these enigmas—the sphinx. This enigma Egypt will propose to Greece, who herself will make of it the problems of religion and philosophy. The sense of this enigma, never solved, and yet always solving, is “Man, know thyself.”—Such is the maxim which Greece inscribed on the front of her temples, the problem which she presented to her sages as the very end of wisdom.
4. Hebrew Poetry.—In this review of the different forms of art and of worship among the different nations of the east, mention should be made of a religion which is characterized precisely by the rejection of all symbol, and in this respect is little favorable to art, but whose poetry bears the impress of grandeur and sublimity. And thus Hegel designates Hebrew Poetry by the title of Art of the Sublime. At the same time he casts a glance upon Mahometan pantheism, which also proscribes images, and banishes from its temples every figurative representation of the Divinity.
The sublime, as Kant has well described it, is the attempt to express the infinite in the finite, without finding any sensuous form which is capable of representing it. It is the infinite, manifested under a form which, making clear this opposition, reveals the immeasurable grandeur of the infinite as surpassing all representation in finite forms.
Now, here, two points of view are to be distinguished. Either the infinite is the Absolute Being conceived by thought, as the immanent substance of things, or it is the Infinite Being as distinct from the beings of the real world, but elevating itself above them by the entire distance which separates it from the finite, so that, compared with it, they are only pure nothing. God is thus purified from all contact, from all participation with sensuous existence, which disappears and is annihilated in his presence.
To the first point of view corresponds oriental pantheism. God is there conceived as the absolute Being, immanent in objects the most diverse, in the sun, the sea, the rivers, the trees, etc.