Читать книгу The Philosophy of Fine Art - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - Страница 16

The true object of our inquiry is the beauty of art viewed as the only reality adequate to the Idea of beauty. We have hitherto treated the beauty of Nature as the first mode of the existence of the beautiful. We have now to inquire more closely into that which distinguishes natural beauty from that of art.

As an abstract proposition we may affirm that the Ideal is beauty in its rounded completeness. Nature, on the contrary, brings before us beauty in its incompleteness. Such abstract predicates do not, however, help us much, for our real problem is rather to explain exactly what it is which makes the difference between the completeness of the one from the incompleteness of the other. Our inquiry therefore hinges on the question how it comes about that Nature is necessarily incomplete as a mode of beauty and how this incompleteness is asserted. When we have answered that we shall be in a better position to deduce both the necessity and essential significance of the Ideal.

We have already in following the process of Nature up to its culminating manifestation in animal life drawn attention to the modes of beauty revealed in that process. It is now of the first importance that we fix our attention more definitely on the culminating phase of that evolution where we find subjectivity and individuality presented to us in the living organism.

We have already referred to the beautiful as the Idea in a manner identical to that we employ when we speak of the good and true as the Idea, in the sense, that is to say, where we characterize the Idea as the wholly substantial and universal, the absolute substance—with no sensuous material therewith—of reality, in short, the consistency of the world. Determined more strictly, however, as already pointed out, the Idea is not merely substantiality and universality, but the unity of the notion and its reality, just that, the notion revealed 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 and passions. Regarded in this way it is obvious that even in the human body the inner life of soul has not found its complete reflection in all parts of its external realization.

(c) The same defect is apparent on the higher plane of the spiritual world and its organizations, if we consider such under the aspect of life as immediately presented. The more extensive and the richer their configurations are, the more we shall find that the fundamental object of the inner life of such totalities requires other means co-operative with such externality for its adequate expression. Such organizations no doubt appear in immediate reality as organic wholes in which definite purpose is realized, and the realization of such purpose is manifested by the mediation of voluntary effort. Every centre of such a spiritual organism, such as the State or the family, that is to say each individual organic totality, is in possession of a will capable of such exercise, and appears in unity with the other members of the same organism; but the one inner soul of this nexus, the freedom and reason of the aim of all is not visible in external reality as such in the absolute freedom of its subjective and universal principle of life, nor is it thus manifested in every part.

The same thing may be observed in particular actions and events, where we find a similar organic totality present. The inner motive from which they proceed is not wholly made visible upon the external surface of their actual presence. What we do find is a total presentment of fact, whose most fundamental ground of unity and vitality still remains hidden from sight.

Finally, when we consider from the same point of view any single individual we are confronted with the same truth. Every human person is a self-rounded totality, held together by the central unity of life. In the immediate envisagement of reality, that is in his life, action, avoidance of action, desires and impulses, he only appears in a fragmentary way; none the less it is only from a general survey of all his actions or sufferings that we are able to form an estimate of character. The centre of unity which thus concentrates to a point the entire subject-matter of our extended survey is not as such either visible or directly apprehended.

2. The second point of importance to which we would draw attention is this. With the immediate appearance of individuality the Idea, as we have already indicated, receives determinate existence. Through this very immediacy however it becomes interwoven with the complexity of the external world, is conditioned by the limitations of external circumstance and the relative character of means and ends which are found there, in one word is carried into the finitude of external Nature. For though immediate singularity is in the first place a fully rounded off unity, it is for the same reason only self-exclusive as a centre of negation opposed to others, and is, by virtue of its immediate singularity, influenced by, no less than related to, a totality of real existence other than its own, upon which it is dependent in a thousand different ways. The Idea, in short, is in this very immediacy realized in every direction as individual distinction. It is consequently now merely a reflex of the inherent energy of the notion which binds all individual existence, that of Nature no less than mind in reciprocal correlation263. Such a relation to the existences themselves is a purely external one, and appears also to them as a single external necessity uniting each part of the manifold in one shifting complexus of interrelated reciprocity. The immediacy of determinate existence is therefore, as thus regarded, a system of necessary relations between apparently self-subsistent individual things and forces, in which each singular entity is committed as a means to the service of ends foreign to it, or itself is compelled to utilize that which is external to itself as such a means. And inasmuch as the Idea is under this aspect wholly realized on the ground of externality, there appears at the same time the unrestrained play of every caprice and accident, no less than the uncontrolled discharge of the burden of indigence. Singularity as immediate appearance lives and moves in the realm of unfreedom.

(a) The individual animal is, for example, fettered wholly within the bounds of its natural environment of air, water and land. Its entire way of living, the mode of its self-nourishment, everything that concerns it, is thereby determined. It is this which differentiates with such variety the species of animal life. We find, moreover, intermediate strains, such as swimming birds and suckling animals, which live in the water, amphibious species and others which still further mediate between the more obviously generic. These are, however, mere confusions of race, and indicate no higher mediation of considerable range. Throughout we find the animal subject in its self-preservation to the absolute necessities of external nature, cold, drought, or insufficient supply of the means of nourishment. Under this despotic dominion it is liable through the parsimony of circumstance to lose the fulness of external form, the blossom of its beauty, in short to become as it were the reflex of starving Nature herself. External conditions fix imperatively the measure of beauty it either preserves or forfeits.

(b) The human organism, in its particular bodily existence is subject, if not in the same measure, to external forces of Nature, and is compelled to face the same contingencies, deficient livelihoods, and every kind of harassing disease and misery.

(c) If we carry investigation further to that still higher plane of immediate reality where spiritual interests are predominant we shall find this dependence on external condition for the first time emphasized in its full relativity. Here we are face to face with the prose of human existence in its entire length and breadth. The contrast already noticed between ends subservient to purely physical wants, and those profounder aims of spiritual life, and the conflict which tends to inflict a loss on one side or the other, already opens our view of it. Add to this every individual man, in order to preserve himself as such, is compelled to make himself in many ways subservient to others, and the limited aims of others, and on the other hand, in order to satisfy his own narrow interests, to accept the service of others as a mere means for their fulfilment. The individual, then, as he appears in the prose-life of everyday existence, is not therefore active out of his own particular totality, nor is he intelligible so much in virtue of himself as in virtue of that which he is not264. For individual man stands in a relation of dependence to the influences, laws, organizations and other social relations of civic life which he finds already existing around him, and to which he must submit whether he forfeit his own independent soul-life thereby or not. And more than this, each separate individual is not presented to others as such totality, but is only reflected in whatever isolated interest they may happen at the time to possess in his actions, desires, and opinions. And what interests mankind mainly is some relation to their own particular thoughts and aims. Even historically important actions and events, with which the community is expressly associated, appear in this field of relative appearances merely as a manifold of isolated efforts. It is a varied collection to which each contributes as he may, with aims by no means identical, some of which meet with success while others miscarry, and indeed, be they ever so fortunate, are significant in a very subordinate degree if we consider them as contributions to the wellbeing of all. What the majority may carry through, in contrast with the entire aggregate of events and the end applicable to all265, to which it furnishes its quota, is after all a mere patch; nay, even men of eminent standing, who feel and are fully conscious of the universal passage of events266, as their own world, are for all that clearly immeshed in the same net of particular circumstances, conditions, and a thousand other hindrances involved in their relative position. On all these grounds it is plain that in this sphere of exterior life the individual world is unable to offer us the vision of that independent and complete freedom of the living principle, such as is essential to the true notion of beauty. It is, of course, true that the immediate appearance of human reality and its events and organizations is not without system, and as such is a totality of activities; but this whole is rather in its appearance a mere mass of isolated fragments. Moreover the practical concerns of such activities are divided and subdivided into countless parts, and in such a way that each single part is in touch with the merest fraction of all; and, in short, however much individuals may remain steadfast to their own purposes, and only bring forth to the light that which their own interest has employed as a means, the self-subsistence and freedom of their will remains more or less of a formal character, determined by external circumstance or accident, and constantly thwarted by natural causes267.

This is the prose of the world, as presented to our own consciousness no less than to that of others; a world of finitude and change, a world immeshed in relation and submerged beneath the pressure of necessity, a world from which no individual can extricate himself. The central paradox of life confronts every unit of the living whole. On the one hand there is the impulse of individuality to perfect its isolated unity in self-exclusion; on the other there is the necessary condition of dependence on others from which none may claim immunity. However prolonged the struggle to overcome this contradiction may be the effort of that interminable battle only terminates with life itself.

3. Thirdly, the immediate singularity of the worlds of Nature and Mind is not merely conditioned by dependence on others, but is deficient in any complete self-subsistency owing to its confined nature, or with more accuracy, because it is particularized in its own specific mode of manifestation.

(a) We will explain our meaning further. Every single specimen of life in the animal world is from the first fettered by a definite, that is to say, a restricted and constant species, beyond the limits of which it cannot pass. There is in the spiritual world, no doubt, a general picture of life and its organization, which floats vaguely before our vision; but in the real world, which is one with Nature, this universal organism breaks up into a multitude of particulars, each of which possesses the determinate type of form and grade of cultivation in which it is related to a definite portion of the social organism. In addition to this and within these insuperable limits, we find the pressure of that element of contingency, as regards general condition or external environment, predominantly asserted both uniquely and in haphazard fashion throughout every one of those individual units. Such a state of things disturbs our vision of the self-subsistency and freedom, which the idea of true beauty imperatively requires.

(b) As already observed, it is unquestionably true that Spirit discovers in its own bodily organism the notion of life completely realized. This is so much the case that, in contrast with it, the forms of the animal world appear not only as incomplete, but in inferior species as even pitiable objects. The human organism is also, however, broken up, if to a less, degree, in racial subdivisions and the ascending grades of beauty which distinguish such races. Moreover, in addition to this obviously very general line of demarcation, we have presented to us all the accidental variety of qualities, peculiar to distinct families and their interfusion with one another, such as modes of life, facial expression, and general demeanour. We must further associate with such characteristic traits, which all of them emphasize a condition of essentially unfree particularity, those peculiarities which are inseparable from activity employed in the endless round of commercial life or professional career; qualities which find their ultimate expression in the specific habits or idiosyncracies of any exceptionally marked character or temperament, or, as the reverse side of the picture, in the various confusions of arrested development. Poverty, care, anger, coldness, and indifference, the rage of passion, the obstinate retention of narrow purposes, indications of change and division in the spiritual world, entire dependence on that of Nature—in one word all that is implied in the transitory condition of human life—leaves its indelible, if quite incalculable, expression on the varied surface of the faces of mankind. Who has not crossed weather-beaten types of such, on which the storm of all the passions has imprinted its disturbing wave; or others, where the coldness and superficiality of the soul within is all the impression we receive; or, lastly, as the final verdict of self-absorbed particularity268, cases in which the general type seems almost totally to have disappeared. There is no end to the caprice of the human features. Speaking generally, we would associate with this ground the fact that the beauty of children most arrests us. In their faces we find all pronounced idiosyncracies slumber as it were beneath a quiet veil; no dominating passion as yet ravages their soul; not one of the thousand interests of the grown man has engraved for ever the expression of its necessity on these mobile features. This envisaged innocence of the child, however, though we may discover in its flexible animation the possibility of Life's completed fulness, obviously fails to reveal those profounder indications of a spirit which has been carried forward to explore the range of its own recesses and to make its life one with rational purpose.

We may regard, then, immediate existence, both in the purely physical and spiritual sense of the term, as a finitude, or more justly as a finitude which does not satisfy its notion and for this very reason declares its finitude. For the notion, and more concretely still, the Idea, is essentially independent and free. Purely animal life, although as Life it is the Idea, is no manifestation of infinity as such or freedom. This is alone possible under conditions, where we find the notion penetrate so completely the reality which is adequate to it, that it finds itself entirely at home therein, with no extraneous matter, to disturb its possession. Then alone do we find it a really free and concrete individuality. The natural life, on the contrary, is unable to overcome the element of feeling to which it is attached, and which renders it incapable of penetrating the entire reality which enrings it. It finds itself, moreover, immediately conditioned in itself, restricted in its range and dependent, a result which is due to the fact that its freedom is not truly self-determinate, but conditioned by the external: object. And the same thing is true of the immediate and finite reality of the spirit world in its knowledge, volitional action, and fateful history. For although in this latter case we find centres of unity expressed which have a real significance, neither these any more than the particularities they unite have truth as they stand by themselves; but only that truth which, in their reciprocal relation to each other, they manifest as constituent parts of a whole. And this whole, albeit in a sense adequate to its notion, does not correspond to it in such a way as to manifest itself in its full totality269, which consequently still remains aloof from such envisagement, or rather, is only apprehended in the ideal world of thought. In other words, the notion finds no fully adequate presentation in external reality, such as is powerful enough to marshal homogeneously all the numberless fragments of particularity, and to concentrate them into one expression and one single form.

(c) This, then, is the fundamental reason which prevents Spirit itself, on the finite planes of determinate existence, and under the restricting conditions of its externality and necessity, from rediscovering the immediate vision and enjoyment of its freedom. It is consequently driven by its absence to seek that vision in a higher sphere. That sphere is art, and its realization is the Ideal.

We have thus seen that it is the defects of immediate reality which drive us forward inevitably to the idea of the beauty of art. We are further under an obligation to prove that its fundamental object270 is to manifest here on this very plane of rational reality and in its freedom the envisagement of life, and, most important of all, the life of Spirit. Here, then, we have at last the external revealed to us in a form adequate to the notion. Here, for the first time, truth is lifted up from its environment of temporal conditions, from its running to and fro among the whirl of finite particularity, and attains repose; nay, more than this, discovers an external form, from which the hunger of Nature and the prose of life no longer stare at us. Here at last we have a form worthy of substantial truth, which is wholly self-contained and self-dependent, determining with freedom its own content, and not driven from such self-assertion by the weight of that of others.

201. Als Beseelung sich kund gäbe. The reference is to the second class which follows rather than truly animates life. The sun is such an animating principle. How far modern physics with its investigations of the laws of motion that obtain among the chemical atoms of any specific form of matter and its denial of all dead matter would have modified Hegel's view is an interesting question.

202. Wir wollen betrachten. Hegel seems to be conscious himself that there is something fanciful in this interpretation of the significance of what is simply an arbitrary, if systematic, arrangement of bodies according to natural laws.

203. Ein besonderes Moment. See note [191] on p. 152. I think what Hegel means here is that every body as a vehicle of light reflects the mode in which the identity of the notion as system in the different parts asserts itself.

204. In other words what should be phasal elements (Momente) of a whole integrated within that unity remain independent units. They are not Momente in the full sense.

205. Als bloss real unterschiedener. The meaning is that the distinction is only in the totality, not as in the former case in a body which though part of a system, could be viewed as an independent body like the sun.

206. Gewöhnliches Bewustseyn, i.e., the ordinary view of understanding (Verstand) and sense-perception.

207. Blosser Zusammenhang. Fortuitous is rather too strong. He means a bond of union cemented by one principle without which either side fails to possess its specific character, e.g., the human body apart from the human soul its animate individuality, ceases to be human.

208. Als Begriff seyende Begriff. The reference I take to be to the logical or dialectical movement of the Idea.

209. Viele tausend empfindende, or centres of feeling.

210. Die realen Unterschiede, i. e., the distinctions of the body viewed as part of the physical process of Nature.

211. Zu ihrer subjektiven Einheit, that is to say, their unity with the notion of Life as objectively realized in Nature, subjective only in the sense that it is ideal, not apprehended by sense-perception as such.

212. Nähere. I think Hegel uses nähe in the idiomatic sense in which he uses it in the phrase (p. 150) when he speaks of Nature as das nächst Daseyn der Idee, i.e., most elementary, more near to it when the notion first presses out of abstraction into totality.

213. Lötze apparently disputes this distinction, but it appears to me very clear.

214. Seyn. The logical terms are here employed in their technical Hegelian sense. Seyn is "being" as part of a process, it is rather a tendency to become than a particular or determinate being (daseyn.)

215. Das Negiren, the negation of them as entirely independent structures.

216. Des Idealisirens, e.g., the principle of ideality which is in one aspect of it negation.

217. Affirmatives Fürsichseyn, e.g., the explicit ideal totality of Life apart from the process.

218. Bilderin.

219. Das Innere, otherwise called subjective (see note above) and meaning what is not externally visible as materia, though it may be visible indirectly as explained further on.

220. The rather difficult German here is: Da nun aber in der Objektivität der Begriff als Begriff die sich auf sich beziehende in ihrer Realität für sich seyende Subjektivität ist. The comma after Begriff is clearly a misprint.

221. The words here are das subjektive Fürsichseyn, i.e., the self-conclusion of an explicit whole in virtue of a principle of ideal unity (i.e., life) asserted, throughout.

222. Ein Beharrendes,> one that persists in an inert form.

223. Hegel uses the word scheinen both for the ideal manifestation of the Idea in the object and the appearance of material reality reduced by it to mere "show" (herabgesetzt zum scheinen), i.e., deprived of its independent reality. This introduces a slight confusion I have endeavoured to avoid by using different terms.

224. Unseres Verstandes. We supply the notion of intelligent purpose.

225. That is, the assumed subordination of all organs to one definite end.

226. Sichbewegens. The emphasis is of course on the self. But even then the statement is rather an excess. For it seems difficult to attribute all the beauty visible in the spontaneous movements of so many living creatures, notably that of birds, to their purely formal character. At least there is something given by such motion analogous to the impression we receive from music and the dance; they are gesetzmässig in short.

227. Zufällig—capricious as opposed to a uniform principle. There is, however, one apparent bond of external similarity, between the majority of such members, namely, their covering of skin; this not merely relates the cheek to the neck, for example, but to some extent destroys the distinction.

228. Physical parts, that is to say.

229. That is to say, it is based on a purely limited experience which does not necessarily concern the true nature of the objects perceived.

230. Stangen. The word may express the branches on which the flowers are carried or the stamens they carry at their apex.

231. Geistreich, "intelligent," i.e., an ingenious way of regarding such facts.

232. Dies wunderbare Wort.

233. The use of the word Sinn to which Hegel here alludes is not quite identical with our word Sense. In the English use of the term there is more stress on the materia presented to sense-perception and perhaps less reference to intellect when the word is employed in such an expression as "That man has sense." However, Milton has "What surmounts the reach of human sense," and no doubt both are employed very similarly in many writers.

234. Bleibt bei der Ahnung.

235. Naiver Weise, a common epithet of Hegel to denote freedom from all philosophical prepossessions, a frank and simple attitude of reception.

236. Betrachtung appears to imply in its contrast with Anschauung the presence of that intuitive sense or imaginative co-ordination above discussed.

237. Gestaltende Macht, i.e., plastic force.

238. This account of the criterium to be adopted in determining beauty in the animal creation is open to some criticism. Mobility is no doubt one element of beauty, but it is only one. Professor Bosanquet points out in his criticism of the passage ("Hist, of Aesthetik," p. 338) that it amounts to the assertion that ugliness is purely relative. The defect is not only due, it seems to me, to Hegel's insufficient regard for Nature as a modern painter would so regard it, but it may be traced also to his manifest preference for motion in all the manifestations of Nature.

239. Schnabelthier, otherwise called the duck-billed platyptis, a mammal found in Australia, much the size of an otter, with the horny beak of a duck and paws formed for swimming.

240. Getrübt, we have the word trüben above, translated there "troubled," life merely seen through the thick veil of instinctive sense.

241. That is, the unity manifested is as abstract from all concrete totality as the form itself.

242. This shows clearly that symmetry is only in an analogous way applicable to musical tones.

243. In other words, uniformity is outside the purely qualitative relation, whereas symmetry is not so.

244. Beseelte Lebendigkeit, lit., the insouled life-principle.

245. Lit., "Is continually thrust out into the external." Its activity as life is directed outward.

246. Was schon im Sichverzehren begriffen ist. I think the distinction implied is that in smell we are in actual contact with a part of the object. The same thing would, however, be true of sight according to former theory exploded by Newton's hypothesis.

247. Gesetzmässigkeit. I cannot think of an English word that quite reproduces it. I am not sure that either conformity to rule or law singly quite expresses it. It implies both.

248. As in uniformity.

249. As in symmetry.

250. That is to say, apart from symbolical meaning, it possesses no hidden law to be discovered in the relation of part to part.

251. The words are die grosse und kleine Axe von wesentlichem Unterschiede. These refer primarily, it appears, to the axes of an ellipse, but the expression may possibly include the axes of a parabola parallel to the sides of a cone. However I admit frankly I find the words von wesentlichem Unterschiede difficult to interpret closely.

252. In the text grossen, obviously a misprint.

253. The incorrectness of this statement according to more recent analysis does not, of course, affect the argument.

254. Nicht einseitig. I think the meaning here is that colour is not an abstract idea for independent qualities, but is the generic notion of a really existing totality.

255. Alles melodische, primarily, organic, of course.

256. Namely, that of abstract unity.

257. Hegel expresses this rather differently by saying that they tend to pass over into pink (röthliche) or orange (gelbliche) and green. I have put the same statement rather more directly.

258. I think this is the meaning of the words aber nur äusserlich, d.h., nicht beschmützt. Violet, however, is now regarded as a cardinal colour. It may also be doubted whether the difficulty of harmonizing pure colour is as Hegel states it.

259. This of course is a very questionable position from the point of view of aesthetic taste no less than the conformity of our sight to natural objects. The obvious retort is, it all depends what the nature of the green is. Why is there such a preponderance of green in Nature as we find it?

260. That is to say, under the Platonic view of universal.

261. So I have interpreted the words, Die Subjectivität nun aber liegt in der Negativen Einheit als Ideellsetzen der Unterschiede und ihres realen Bestehens.

262. Das Insichseyn, i.e., the incipient singularity of a feeling subject.

263. I have translated the words bleibt nur die innre Macht "merely a reflex of the inherent energy," etc. I do not pretend thereby to clear up all the difficulties of this paragraph. I would rather remind the general reader that in this entire discussion of the principle of individuality and its modes of real existence we are face to face with one the fundamental difficulties of the Hegelian philosophy, the passage of the Idea to Nature. Readers who wish to see difficulties more fully developed on this aspect of Hegel's thought should read Professor Seth's interesting and on the whole moderately worded criticism contained in his little book "Hegelianism and Personality" (Blackwood and Sons; see particularly Lecture IV, Thought and Reality).

264. Aus Anderem, e.g., the not-self of experience.

265. Des totalen Zwecks.

266. I think the expression das Ganze der Sache means this rather than the entire "organic whole of living reality."

267. It is well for the general reader to remember that we have here no full account of what constitutes the content of a free will. The emphasis throughout is on human activity as exercised in a world conditioned in its external aspect by necessary laws of Nature.

268. The reference here must I think he mainly, perhaps wholly, to the distorted face of the criminal, outcast, or insane classes. But it is just possible that a certain type of aggressive genius may also be denoted.

269. The totality of the notion.

270. Beruf, i.e., that which it professes to do.