of the Idea in external form, and as such invest it with reality. When we consequently compare such still inadequate forms of art with what most obviously presents itself for comparison, that is, the true Ideal, we must be careful not to use expressions commonly applicable to works of art that are failures, which either express nothing at all, or have discovered an incompetence to express what ought to have been expressed. Rather for every form of the Idea there is a definite mode of appearance, which clothes it precisely in one of those particular forms of art to which we have adverted, adequate in every respect thereto, and the defective or perfected character of which consists entirely in the relative truth or untruth of the determinate form, under which and through which the Idea is actually realized. For the content must first be clothed with reality and concreteness before it can attain to the form wholly adequate to its essential truth. As we have already indicated in the previous division of our subject-matter, we have three fundamental forms or types of art to examine. _First_, we have the _symbolical._ In this the Idea is still seeking for its true artistic expression, because it is here still essentially abstract and undetermined, and consequently has not mastered for itself the external appearance adequate to its own substance, but rather finds itself in unresolved opposition to the external objects in physical Nature and the world of mankind. And inasmuch as in this crude relation to objective existence it immediately surmises its own isolation, or is carried into some form of concrete existence by means, of universal characteristics which are void of all true definition, it vitiates and falsifies the actual forms of reality which it has found, and which it seizes in a wholly capricious way[3]. And, consequently, instead of being able to identify itself completely with the object, it can only assert a kind of accord, or rather a still abstract reflection of significance and figure, a mode of representation which, being neither complete in its artistic fusion, nor capable of being completed, suffers the object to emerge as reciprocally external, strange, and inadequate to itself as it was before.