We have already seen what the essence of the Ideal is in our general consideration of the beauty of art. Here we are to take it merely in the special sense appropriate to the _classic_ Ideal, whose notion has already presented itself in its general features in its association with the notion of the _classical_ art-type. For the Ideal, of which we have now to speak, consists simply in this, that classical art in very truth attains to and sets before us that which exposes its most intimate notion. As content it grasps on this particular plane the spiritual, in so far as this Spirit attracts Nature and her powers to its own appropriate realm, and sets itself before us in exposition not as mere inwardness and dominion over Nature, but furthermore accepts as its proper form, human shape, deed, and action, through which the spiritual shines forth clearly in perfect freedom, and the form penetrates with its life into the sensuous material not merely as into a mode of externality symbolically significant, but as actually into a determinate existence, which is the adequate existence of Spirit. We may divide up, then, the present chapter into the following sections: We have in the _first_ place to consider the _general_ character of the classic Ideal, which possesses what is pertinent to humanity in its form no less than its content, and elaborates both sides in the completest consistency one with the other. _Secondly_, however, forasmuch as here the human is absorbed wholly into the bodily shape and external appearance, it becomes the _definite_ external shape, which in its conformity is merely a defined content. Since, therefore, we have the Ideal before us at the same time as _particularity_, there arises a definite number of _particular_ gods and powers in the shape of human existence. _Thirdly_, this particularity does not persist in the abstraction of _one_ type of definition, whose essential character would constitute the entire content and the one-sided principle for its representation; but rather it is quite as much essentially a totality and the _individual_ unity and congruity which is applicable to such. Without this repletion such particularity would remain cold and empty; the vitality of Life would fail it, a contingency which is impossible to the Ideal in any relation whatever. We have now to consider more narrowly the Ideal of classical art according to these three aspects of universality, particularity, and individual singularity. 1. THE IDEAL OF CLASSICAL ART GENERALLY