that world of appearance, the mode of its existence there will assert itself, as the mobility, reaction, and animating force of life itself in contact and transfusion with the material complex which surrounds it. Man is, however, in virtue of his self-consciousness a world in himself[367], and as such is differentiated from the external world of Nature which confronts him; and this external world is equally with himself a rounded whole whose unity asserts itself in the principle of causality. This self-exclusion of these two worlds is, however, only apparent; they are in their separation essentially related, and it is precisely this association which constitutes concrete reality, whose artistic embodiment is the content of the Ideal. And this brings us once more to the question already mooted, namely, in what semblance or form the external material which we find in this mutually related world we have referred to as concrete reality[368] can be presented to us by art in a manner consistent with the Ideal of art. We will once more accept the triple division of our subject-matter, and examine a work of art from three distinct points of view. _First_, there is the material of externality accepted in the bare abstractness of its forms, such as space, figure, time, colour, which we must consider relatively to the artistic form most adapted to it. _Secondly_, we must consider externality in its full and actualized concreteness, as above explained, a mode of reality which imperatively requires in a work of art that it should be in close affiliation with the subjective content of the spiritual life of man immediately related to it. _Thirdly_, our consideration will be directed to the important fact that a work of art is created for the delight of human perceptions, for a public in short, which justly claims that the objects of art should bring home to it the interests of its spiritual life, its real beliefs, emotions, and ideas, so that it may enter with a genuine response into their artistic presentation. 1. THE CONDITION OF EXTERNALITY IN ITS SIMPLE ABSTRACTNESS