The situation expressed in general terms is in one aspect of it the circumstance _particularized_ to the point of _definite character_, and under this characterization it is, to put it another way, the stimulating impulse to a particular expression of content, which it is the function of artistic presentation to transmute into a specific form of existence. Looked at from this latter point of view especially the situation offers a wide field for contemplation, inasmuch as it has ever been one of the most essential objects of art to discover situations of real interest, that is to say, of such a kind as will present to us the profound and weighty interest, the truest content of spiritual life. The requirements of the several arts in this respect no doubt differ. Sculpture, for example, is pre-eminently limited in its reference to the inwardly detailed variety of situations. Painting and music are already operative in a freer and more comprehensive medium. Finally, we are least able among them all to exhaust the possibilities of poetry in this respect. Since we have not yet arrived at that portion of our subject where we deal directly with the specific arts, it will be sufficient here to draw attention to a few of the most general aspects of that inquiry, which we may subdivide in the following manner. _First_, we would observe that the situation still retains the form of _universality_ and thereby of _indeterminacy_, so long as it is undeveloped and without definite characterization; we have, consequently, at first present before us a situation which is without situation. For the form of indeterminacy is itself only _one_ form as opposed to its contradiction of determinacy, and is shown to be, by virtue of this very contrast, a one-sided aspect which as such possesses a determinate relation. _Secondly_, however, the situation passes in separation away from this universality, and becomes certainly determinate to that extent, but at first with a determinacy which produces no destructive consequences, that is to say, it is one which offers no stimulus to _active opposition_ and its necessary resolution. _Thirdly_, we find the element of _disunion_ in all its vigour creating by the definition of its opposed characteristics the essence of the situation, which thereby is carried into a _collision_, which again proceeds to reactions, and, as such, forms the point of departure to the conception of artistic action properly so called. We may, in fact, characterize the situation generally as the _intermediate plane_ between the universal world-condition still in a state of equilibrium, and the concrete action unfolded in all its tendency to movement and reaction, a position which gives to it the characteristics of both extremes, and enables us to pass over from the one to the other. _(a) The Absence of Situation_[315]