Aesthetic Poetry | Page 5

the latest and highest theory of art and aesthetics issuing from Kant
and Schiller, and developed in the later philosophy of Hegel.
Our space only allows us to give a glance, first, at the metaphysics of
the beautiful as developed by Hegel in the first part of his 'Aesthetik,'
and then at the later development of the same system in recent writers
issuing from his school.
Hegel considers, first, the abstract idea of the beautiful; secondly,
beauty in nature; thirdly, beauty in art or the ideal; and he winds up
with an examination of the qualities of the artist.
His preliminary remarks are directed to show the relations of art to
religion and philosophy, and he shows that man's destination is an
infinite development. In real life he only satisfies his longing partially
and imperfectly by limited enjoyments. In science he finds a nobler
pleasure, and civil life opens a career for his activity; but he only finds
an imperfect pleasure in these pursuits. He cannot then find the ideal
after which he sighs. Then he rises to a higher sphere, where all
contradictions are effaced and the ideas of good and happiness are
realized in perfect accord and in constant harmony. This deep want of
the soul is satisfied in three ways: in art, in religion, and in philosophy.
Art is intended to make us contemplate the true and the infinite in
forms of sense. Yet even art does not fully satisfy the deepest need of

the soul. The soul wants to contemplate truth in its inmost
consciousness. Religion is placed above the dominion of art.
First, as to idea of the beautiful, Hegel begins by giving its
characteristics. It is infinite, and it is free; the contemplation of the
beautiful suffices to itself, it awakens no desire. The soul experiences
something like a godlike felicity and is transported into a sphere remote
from the miseries of life. This theory of the beautiful comes very near
that of Plato.
Secondly, as to beauty in nature. Physical beauty, considered externally,
presents itself successively under the aspects of regularity and of
symmetry, of conformity with a law, and of harmony, also of purity
and simplicity of matter.
Thirdly, beauty in art or the ideal is beauty in a higher degree of
perfection than real beauty. The ideal in art is not contrary to the real,
but the real idealized, purified, and perfectly expressed. The ideal is
also the soul arrived at the consciousness of itself, free and fully
enjoying its faculties; it is life, but spiritual life and spirit. Nor is the
ideal a cold abstraction, it is the spiritual principle under the form of a
living individuality freed from the laws of the finite. The ideal in its
highest form is the divine, as expressed in the Greek divinities; the
Christian ideal, as expressed in all its highest purity in God the Father,
the Christ, the Virgin. Its essential features are calm, majesty, serenity.
At a lower degree the ideal is in man the victory of the eternal
principles that fill the human heart, the triumph of the nobler part of the
soul, the moral and divine principle.
But the ideal manifested in the world becomes action, and action
implies a form of society, a determinate situation with collision, and an
action properly so called. The heroic age is the best society for the ideal
in action; in its determinate situation the ideal in action must appear as
the manifestation of moral power, and in action, properly so called, it
must contain three points in the ideal: first, general principles; secondly,
personages; thirdly, their character and their passions. Hegel winds up
by considering the qualities necessary in an artist: imagination, genius,

inspiration, originality, etc.
A recent exponent of Hegel's aesthetical ideas further developed
expresses himself thus on the nature of beauty:--
"After the bitterness of the world, the sweetness of art soothes and
refreshes us. This is the high value of the beautiful--that it solves the
contradiction of mind and matter, of the moral and sensuous world, in
harmony. Thus the beautiful and its representation in art procures for
intuition what philosophy gives to the cognitive insight and religion to
the believing frame of mind. Hence the delight with which Schiller's
wonderful poem on the Bell celebrates the accord of the inner and outer
life, the fulfilment of the longing and demands of the soul by the events
in nature. The externality of phenomena is removed in the beautiful; it
is raised into the circle of ideal existence; for it is recognized as the
revelation of the ideal, and thus transfigured it gives to the latter
additional splendor."
"Thus the beautiful is active, living unity, full existence without defect,
as Plato and Schelling have said, or as recent writers describe it; the