If we view this stage generally as a whole we find on the one hand already as wholly independent the elaborate but formless significance, for the artistic shaping of which all that we can now supply is an external ornament selected at caprice to set it off. On the other side we have the external mode pure and simple. That is to say, instead of being mediated in its identity with that on which it is imposed by the fact that this is its own essentially cognate significance it can now only be accepted and described in the aspect of its self-subsistence over against this _centrum_ of significance, and consequently only as mere externality. From the above contrasted aspects we may differentiate in abstract terms _didactic_ from _descriptive_ poetry, a distinction which so far at least as the didactic is concerned is only to be made good under the poetic type for the reason that this alone is able to bring before us the significance in its abstract universality. Inasmuch, however, as the notion of art does not consist in the dissociation, but the identification of significance and form we find even at this stage not only a complete separation, but also in line with that, a relation asserted between the sides thus opposed. This relation, however, now that the partition line of symbolism has already been _crossed_, is no longer of a symbolic nature, and is therefore an attempt to abolish the fundamental characteristics of that type, namely, the incompatibility, and at the same time the self-subsistence of form and content, a position that all the previous types were unable to transcend. Owing, however, to the separation of the two sides, which thus make for unity, being already presupposed by this type this attempt can only be looked upon as a mere aspiration[119], to completely satisfy which in all that it involves is reserved for a more perfect type of art, namely, the classical. We will now briefly glance at these supplementary forms, in order to make our passage from them to the real type above mentioned more fully intelligible. 1. THE DIDACTIC POEM