are merely accidental features in the impersonation. It is just this stable aspect of life which it is the part of sculpture to present as the unique being and determinate substance of individuality. Yet we must not suppose that it creates allegories out of such general qualities. It rather builds up true individuals, which it conceives and informs as essentially complete and enclosed within their objective spiritual presence, in their self-subsistent repose, delivered thereby from all antagonism as against external objects. In the presentment of an individuality of this character by sculpture what is truly substantive is throughout the essential foundation, and neither purely subjective self-knowledge and emotion, nor a superficial and mutable singularity[136] must be permitted in any way to be predominant, but what is eternal in the godlike and our humanity should, divested of all the caprice and contingency of the particular self[137], be set before our eyes in its unimpaired clarity. (_b_) The further point we would draw attention to consists in this, that the content of sculpture, for the reason that its material requires an external presentment in the complete form of the three spatial dimensions, is also unable to be a _spiritual content_ as such, that is, the ideality self-enclosed within and absorbed into itself, but rather in the sense that it is only _explicit_ in its opposed factor, in other words, the _bodily form._ The negation of what is external is already implied in the ideal subjective consciousness, and can therefore have no place here, where what is divine and human is accepted as content with exclusive reference to its objective characteristics. And it is only this self-absorbed objective aspect, which does not comprise ideal subjectivity in the strict sense[138], that gives free play to an externality conditioned in all its three dimensions, and is capable of being associated with such a spatial totality. For these reasons it is incumbent on sculpture that it only accept out of the objective content of Spirit that which admits of the fullest expression in external and bodily shape; if it do otherwise it simply selects a content which its specific material is unable to assimilate or to unite with an adequate mode of exposition. 2. THE BEAUTIFUL FORM OF SCULPTURE We must now inquire into the nature of the bodily _forms_ which are adapted to give an impression of a content of this kind.