they occupy a station of complete tranquillity. The Greeks were fully conscious that it was the poets who were responsible for such apparitions; and if they believed in them their belief was connected directly with that spiritual aspect which is equally the possession of mankind, forasmuch as it is the universal, the very active and motive principle in the events thus presented. From whatever point of view, therefore, we consider the matter it is clear that it is totally unnecessary to import superstition either in our own views or in those of the Greeks before we can enjoy such poetical representations of their gods. (_b_) Such, then, is the general character of the classical Ideal, whose broader development we shall have to consider more succinctly when we examine the particular arts. Here we have only to add the observation that to whatever extent either gods or men are carried in their positive opposition to the particular and external, yet in classical art the affirmative ethical substratum must assert itself as maintained. The subjectivity remains throughout in union with the substantive content of its powers. Just as in Greek art the natural element is preserved in harmony with the spiritual and is likewise subordinated to the ideal content, though it be as adequate existence, the inward heart of our humanity ever presents itself also in a thorough identity with the genuine objectivity of Spirit, in other words, with the essential content of what is moral and true. Regarded from this point of view, the classic Ideal is unaware of the separation of ideality from external presentment and of the rending of the subjective and consequently abstract individual caprice in its various objects and passions, and it is no less so, on the other hand, of the abstract universal as thereby created. The foundations of character must, consequently, always be the substantive, and what is bad, sinful and evil in the self-housed dwelling of subjectivity is excluded from classical representations. And above all else the harshness, wickedness, meanness, and hideousness which finds a place in romantic art, will be wholly alien to it. It is true, we find many instances of transgression, matricide, patricide and other crimes against the love of family and piety treated as the subject-matter of Greek art; but they are not here regarded simply as atrocities, or, as a little while since it was the fashion among ourselves, as brought about by the inscrutability of a so-called fatality which imports the appearance of a necessary result. Rather, if such transgressions are committed by mankind and in part ordered and defended by the gods themselves, such actions are on every occasion presented to us from some point of view at least in a light which declares a certain justification truly arising out of the subject-matter itself.