1. The ideal, under the most elevated form, is the divine idea, the divine such as the imagination can represent it under sensuous forms; such is the Greek ideal of the divinities of Polytheism; such the Christian ideal in its highest purity, under the form of God the Father, of Christ, of the Virgin, of the Apostles, etc. It is given above all to sculpture and painting, to present us the image of it. Its essential characteristics are calmness, majesty, serenity. 2. In a degree less elevated, but more determined, in the circle of human life, the ideal appears to us, with man, as the victory of the eternal principles which fill the human heart, the triumph of the noble part of the soul over the inferior and passionate. The noble, the excellent, the perfect, in the human soul, is the moral and divine principle which is manifested in it, which governs its will, and causes it to accomplish grand actions; this is the true source of self-sacrifice and of heroism. 3. But the idea, when it is manifested in the real world, can be developed only under the form of _action_. Now, action itself has for its condition a conflict between principles and persons, divided as to interests, ideas, passions, and characters. It is this especially that is represented by poetry—the art _par excellence_, the only art which can reproduce an action in its successive phases, with its complications, its sudden turns of fortune, its catastrophe and its denouement. _Action_, if one considers it more closely, includes the following conditions: 1st. A world which serves it as a basis and theatre, _a form of society_ which renders it possible, and is favorable to the development of ideal figures. 2d. A determinate situation, in which the personages are placed who render necessary the conflict between opposing interests and passions, whence a collision may arise. 3d. An action, properly so called, which develops itself in its essential moments, which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This action, in order to afford a high interest, should revolve upon ideas of an elevated order, which inspire and sustain the personages, ennobling their passions, and forming the basis of their character. Hegel treats, in a general manner, each of these points, which will appear anew, under a more special form, in the study of poetry, and particularly of epic and dramatic poetry.