Here beauty of form is no longer the supreme thing; beauty, in this sense, remains something inferior, subordinate; it gives place to the spiritual beauty which dwells in the recesses of the soul, in the depths of its infinite nature. Now in order thus to take possession of itself, it is essential that spirit have a consciousness of its relation to God, and of its union with Him; that not only the divine principle reveal itself under a form true and worthy of it, but that the human soul, on its part, lift itself toward God, that it feel itself filled with His essence, that the Divinity descend into the bosom of humanity. The anthropomorphism of Greek thought ought to disappear, in order to give place to anthropomorphism of a higher order. Hence all the divinities of polytheism will be absorbed in a single Deity. God has no longer anything in common with those individual personages who had their attributes and their distinct rôles, and formed a whole, free, although subject to destiny. At the same time God does not remain shut up in the depths of his being; he appears in the real world also; he opens his treasures and unfolds them in creation. He is, notwithstanding, revealed less in nature than in the moral world, or that of liberty. In fine, God is not an ideal, created by the imagination; he manifests himself under the features of living humanity. If we compare, in this respect, romantic art with classic art, we see that Sculpture no longer suffices to express this idea. We should vainly seek in the image of the gods fashioned by sculpture that which announces the true personality, the clear consciousness of self and reflected will. In the external this defect is betrayed by the absence of the eye, that mirror of the soul. Sculpture is deprived of the glance, the ray of the soul emanating from within. On the other hand, the spirit entering into relation with external objects, this immobility of sculpture no longer responds to the longing for activity, which calls for exercise in a more extended career. The representation ought to embrace a vaster field of objects, and of physical and moral situations. As to the manner in which this principle is developed and realized, romantic art presents certain striking differences from antique art. In the first place, as has been said, instead of the ideal divinities, which exist only for the imagination, and are only human nature idealized, it is God himself who makes himself man, and passes through all the phases of human life, birth, suffering, death, and resurrection. Such is the fundamental idea which art represents, even in the circle of religion.