The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
2. _Secondly_, if we consider the aspect of the representation on its
_external_ side, we find that it is by virtue of its particularity
at once self-subsistent and possesses a claim to stand forth in
this independence, and this for the reason that the principle of
subjectivity excludes that correspondence in its immediacy, and
disallows to itself the absolute interfusion of the ideal and
external aspects in every part and relation of it. For the subjective
principle is here precisely that which comes to be, in self-subsistent
seclusion, that inward life which retires from real or objective
existence into the realm of the Ideal, the world of emotion, soul,
heart, and contemplation[216]. This ideal life is manifested no doubt
in its external form, under a mode, however, in which the external
form itself appears, that is to say it is _merely_ the outer shell
of a conscious subject that is growing _independently_ within. The
hard and fast association of the bodily form and the life of Spirit
in classical sculpture is not therefore carried to the point of an
all-dissolving unity[217] but in so light and slack a coalescence
that both aspects, albeit neither is present without the other,
preserve in this connection their separate independence relatively to
the other, or at least, if a profounder union is really secured, the
spiritual aspect as that inward principle, which asserts its presence
over and beyond its suffusion with the objective or external material,
becomes the essentially illuminating focus of all. And it results from
this that, to promote the enhancement of this relatively increased
self-subsistency of the objective and material aspect,--we have in
our mind mainly, no doubt, the extreme case of the representation
of external Nature and its objects, even in their isolated and most
exclusive particularity,--yet even in such a case and despite all
realism in the presentment it is necessary that such counterfeits
should permit a reflection of the artist's soul to be visible on
their face. They should in other words suffer us to see the sympathy
of Spirit in the manner of their artistic realization, and therewith
discover to us the life of soul, the ideal life which is the vital
breath of their co-ordination, the penetration of man's emotional life
itself into this extreme type of external environment.
Speaking, then, generally, we may affirm that the principle of
subjectivity carries with it as its inevitable result, on the one hand,
that the wholly unconstrained union of Spirit with its corporeal frame
should be given up, and the bodily aspect be asserted in a more or less
negative relation over against the former, in order that the ideality
of Spirit may be emphasized on the front of that external reality, and,
on the other hand, in order to procure free scope for every separate
feature of the variety, division, and movement of what is spiritual no
less than what directly appeals to man's senses.