In opposition to this formal particularity of character we have the external conformation of situations, events, and actions. For the reason, moreover, that the inward spirituality of romance stands generally in an indifferent relation to that which is external the actual phenomenon[262] appears in the present case independently free, that is as neither permeated by the spiritual content of human aims and actions nor clothed in modes adequate to retain them. By reason of its unrelated and loose mode of manifestation it therefore enforces the contingency of natural processes[263], circumstances, the sequence of events, and manner of its realization as _the unexpected._[264] In the _third_ place, and finally, the severation of the two factors asserts itself, the complete identity of which supplies us with the real notion of art. This is consequently the dismemberment and dissolution of art itself. On the one hand we find that art passes to a representation of wholly commonplace reality, to the reflection of objects precisely as they appear in their contingent isolation and its equally singular characteristics. Its interest is now wholly absorbed in reproducing this objective existence by means of the technical ability of the artist. On the other hand we have, in what is a mode of conception and representation entirely dependent on the accidental idiosyncracy of the artist himself, that is in humour, a complete reversal of the pictorial style above mentioned. For in _humour_ we meet with the perversion and overthrow of all that is objectively solid in reality; it works through the wit and play of wholly personal points of view, and if carried to an extreme amounts to the triumph of the creative power of the artist's soul over every content and every form. 1. THE SELF-SUBSISTENCY OR INDEPENDENCE OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER