[Footnote 16: Infinite, that is, not in the temporal sense, but as a complete and self-realized whole.] [Footnote 17: Hegel calls it "the poetising subjectivity"; that is, the personal activity essential to poetic composition.] [Footnote 18: _Practischen_.] [Footnote 19: This appears to be the meaning of _des Naturells_.] [Footnote 20: This is perhaps less true of Goethe than it is of either Milton or Shakespeare. It is possible that Hegel thought more highly of the second part of "Faust" as art than do the majority of modern critics. But the truth is there, if subject to a good deal of qualification in respect to certain aspects of poetry. As Meredith says: "Verily now is our season of seed, Now in our Autumn." And Meredith was not one to do less than justice to the superb Dream of imaginative youth.] II THE EXPRESSION OF POETRY The field of vision which first will occupy our attention, but the boundless expanse of which we can only traverse with a few general observations, is that which concerns the poetic generally, the content no less than the mode of conception and organic association adapted to the poetic work of art. This background will help to emphasize the _second_ aspect of our subject, which is _poetic expression_ more strictly, the idea in the ideal objectivity of the word appropriated by it as symbol of the image, and the melodious vehicle of its speech. We may infer the nature of the relation between poetic expression generally and the mode of presentment proper to the other arts from our previous examination of the characteristics of the poetic art. Language and the sounds of words are neither a symbol of spiritual conceptions, nor an adequate mode of projecting ideality under the condition of spatial objectivity in the sense applicable to the corporeal forms of sculpture and painting, nor yet an intonation in musical sound of the entire soul. They are an abstract _sign_ simply. As the vehicle of the poetic image or conception, however, it is necessary that this side also, in theory no less than deliberate elaboration, appear as distinct from the kind of expression appropriate to prose. We may for this purpose emphasize with more detail three main points of distinction.