A transition such as this could not take its point of departure from Art; the contrast between the old and the new would have been too disparate. The God of revealed religion, in respect to content and form, is very God in truth, in contrast with whom all rivals would become mere creations of the imagination, whom it would be quite impossible to compare with Him on equal terms. The old and new gods of classical art, on the contrary, originate in both cases independently from the ground of the imagination. They have only such reality from the finite Spirit as enables them to be conceived and represented as potencies of Nature and Spirit; the contradiction and conflict they declare, is taken seriously. If, however, the transition from the Greek gods to the God of Christendom were portrayed in the first instance by Art, the representation of such a war of gods could not in this direct form be enforced in all seriousness. (_b_) Consequently this strife and transition becomes also, in more recent times, primarily an accidental, isolated subject-matter of art, which can claim to create no true epoch, and has been able in this form to embody no fundamental phase in the line of the entire development of art. We will recall here in this connection, if incidentally, a few of the more famous examples of this nature. We frequently hear in more recent times the lament over the submergence of Greek art, and a yearning towards Greek gods and heroes is not infrequently the theme of our poets[198]. This lamentation is expressed emphatically as in direct opposition to Christendom; and though it is, no doubt, generally granted that it contains the higher truth, the qualification is added that, so far as art is concerned, the transition is only to be regretted. This is the theme of Schiller's "Gods of Greece"; and it is worth our while, even in the present inquiry, to consider this poem, not merely as poetry in the beauty of its exposition, its musical rhythm, its vivid pictures, or in the charm of its regretful mood, which was the motive force in its creation, but also in order to examine the content. Schiller's pathos is always true, no less than poignant, and the result of profound reflection.