The Philosophy of Fine Art. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

to us as notion in its coincident objectivity. It was Plato who, as we have remarked in our introduction, posited the Idea as that which was alone true and universal, and, indeed, as the one concrete Universal. The Platonic Idea is, however, not itself as yet the concrete real, for apprehended under the notion and its universality it is already coincident with the real. Apprehended, however, only in its universality260, it is not realized, realized, that is to say, as Truth in its self-determinate realization. It is still only the potency of such self-realization. But just as the notion is not the notion of real existence without its full objectivity, in the same way the Idea without its realization in the objective world is not the Idea in its Truth as existent reality. The Idea must proceed to such realization, which is only present itself for the first time in a really existent subjectivity adequate to the notion, and its ideal unity and self-determination. In the generic species we find its reality first manifested as free and concrete individuality. Life only exists as a living thing; goodness is only realized in particular men; and all truth is simply the consciousness of knowledge—Spirit which has come to its own vital inheritance. Only the concrete singularity is both true and really existent, mere abstract universality and particularity is not so. This self-subsistent actuality, this subjectivity is the point on which everything turns, and which we must fully grasp in its significance. Subjectivity may be defined as ideal determination by virtue of a principle of ideal unity which asserts itself through negation of the differences presented to it as consistent parts of one objective reality261. The unity of the Idea and its realization is the negative unity of the Idea as such and its reality; it is at once and at the same time the subsumption and deposition in a unified content of the difference asserted on either side. Only in this active process is the unity of the Idea affirmatively determined in its full activity, a unity and subjectivity whose process of self-determination is infinite. We have consequently to apprehend the Idea of the beautiful in its realized mode of existence as essentially concrete subjectivity and, moreover, as individual substantiality, by virtue of which it is the Idea really existent, possessing the form of its reality in concrete and individual singularity.

      But here we must distinguish between two distinct modes of singularity or individuality, namely, that which is immediately presented us by Nature and that which is predicated of mind (spirit). In both forms it is given determinate existence, and consequently is in both substantive content, the Idea in short, and in the particular sphere of our inquiry for both forms the Idea as beauty. Viewed in this way we may affirm if we please that the beautiful of Nature has a similar content with that of the Ideal. In contradistinction, however, to such a point of view we must not fail to observe that the difference of form, in which the Idea herein attains reality, that is to say the difference between the individuality which prevails in the spheres of Nature and Spirit, the difference asserted in its respective appearance, this it is which constitutes an essential distinction. As we shall see, the real point of our inquiry is this, namely, which of these two forms is really the one most adequate to the Idea, for it is obvious that it is only in the entirely adequate form that the totality of the Idea is in its full content explicitly realized. This is the more immediate point we have now to examine in so far as the difference between natural beauty and the Ideal falls into line with the formal differentiation of singularity.

      Immediate singularity is no doubt primarily found in the domain of Spirit no less than in Nature as such. For, in the first place, Spirit is possessed of an external existence in bodily form; secondly, even in spiritual relations, Spirit, in the first instance, only exists in its union with immediate reality. Subdividing our inquiry in conformity with such facts, we will consider the nature of immediate singularity from three different points of view.

1. (a) We have already seen that the animal organism preserves its determinate existence through a persistent evolutionary process of its own in opposition to an environing inorganic Nature, which it assimilates by means of consumption and digestion, compelling thereby what is external to submit to that process, and asserting its own independent existence by so doing. We found at the same time that this living process is a system of activities, which is realized in a system of organs, whose functional action consists in those very activities. The one and single aim of this homogeneous system is the self-preservation of the living totality thereof through such a process. The animal life consists, therefore, in a life of sensuous impulses, whose general course and satisfaction is realized in the above-mentioned organic system. The living organism is for this reason articulated in its parts under a teleological principle, and the principle or end subserved is self-preservation. Life is immanent in every member; they are united to life, and life is one with them. And the net result of this animate process is that the animal is maintained as a thing conscious of itself as an individual subject of feeling, life and the self-enjoyment its singularity procures for it. We have only to compare animal life with plant life to see the difference implied in the absence of such a sense-consciousness. The plant simply brings to the birth new specimens of its species, without even being able to concentrate any single one on that point of negation, which constitutes self-singularity. We must, however, add that even in the animal organism and its life we never have actually before our eyes the true manifestation of this centre of unity, but rather simply the manifold of its members. Life is still too deficient on the side of freedom and in opposition to the mere caprice of sense-life to manifest such a subjective individuality as is capable of breaking through the external envisagement of its organic parts. The vital centre of such activities in the animal organism still remains veiled from vision, and all that we see are the mere outlines of the figure, and this for the most part concealed from our view by feathers, scales, hair, fur, or spines. There can be no question that coverings of this nature, though characteristic of the animal world, are coverings which partake of the form of the vegetable world. And it is precisely at this point that the beauty of animal life declares its essential insufficiency. That which the organism makes most visible to us is not the soul-principle. That which is directed outward and throughout appears is not the life within, but rather formations accepted from a lower plane of existence than the essential embodiment of life. The animal is only fully alive beneath that outer crust, and consequently for this very reason that its inwardness262 is not wholly made real in a form adequate to reveal it, we are unable to see the principle of Life everywhere shine freely through it; it remains only an inwardness, and the shell is external only unpermeated by the vital principle.

      (b) The human body, in virtue of its more exalted station, presents us with a striking contrast. In this we are everywhere reminded that man is in possession of a unity of feeling, a soul. The human skin is not covered over plant-like with an apparently lifeless sheath; the pulsation of the blood is visible throughout the entire surface; the beating heart of life is everywhere at the same time apparent; and we have in this outward manifestation, as it were, the real fount Of life made visible, the turgor vitae as it streams from its centre. In the same way the human skin, sensitive throughout in its minutest parts, reveals to us the morbidezza of its colouring, those tints of flesh-colour and vein-colour which are the despair of an artist. On the other hand, however much the human body presents, as the apparent mirror of Life, a contrast with that of animals, it undoubtedly expresses also the natural process of self-preservation in the subdivision of the skin, and the indentations, wrinkles, pores, small hairs and veins which we find attach thereto. In fact the skin itself, though permitting the inner life to shine through it, is none the less an external protection of that life, a means obviously intended for such self-preservation. The supreme significance, however, of the contrast here presented is traceable in this extraordinary sensitiveness of the human cuticle, which, although not absolutely the seat of feeling itself, alone renders such feeling possible. But at the same time even in this direction we are made conscious of the defect, that this sensitiveness does not penetrate as a vital impulse of concentrated emphasis equally through all the members. We find in the human body itself certain organs whose form is entirely appropriate to mere animal functions, while others give a more adequate expression to the entire soul-life, its feelings