cunning in its more abstract determinacy. The individual aspect is in the result closely intertwined with the general conception, and the character is merged in an individualization of ideal import. The art of painting, on the contrary, which does not restrain particularity within the limits of such ideality, is more than anything else occupied with developing the entire variety of that aspect of particularization which is accidental, so that what we have now set before us, instead of those plastic ideals of gods and men, is _particular people_ viewed in all the varied appearance of their accidental qualities. Consequently perfection of corporeal form, and the fully realized consonancy of the spiritual or ideal aspect with its free and sane existence, in a word, all that in sculpture we referred to as ideal beauty, in the art of painting neither make the same claim upon us, nor generally are regarded as the matter of most importance, inasmuch as now it is the ideality of soul-life itself, and its manifestation as conscious life which forms the centre of interest. In this more ideal sphere that realm of Nature is not so profoundly insistent. Piety of heart, religion of soul can, no less than ethical sense, and activity in fact did in the Silenus face of Socrates, find a dwelling in a bodily form which, viewed on the outside simply, is ugly and distorted. No doubt in expressing spiritual beauty, the artist will avoid what is essentially ugly in external form, or will find a way to subdue and illumine it in the power of the soul which breaks through it, but he cannot for all that entirely dispense with ugliness[319]. For the content of painting, as we have above depicted it at length, includes within itself an aspect, for which it is precisely the abnormal and distorted traits of human figures and physiognomy, which are most able to express. This is no other than the sphere of what is bad and evil, which in religious subjects we find mainly represented by the common soldiers, who take a part in the passion of Christ, or by the sinners and devils in hell. Michelangelo was pre-eminent in his delineation of devils. In his imaginative realization, though we find he passes beyond the scale of ordinary human life, yet at the same time an affinity with it is retained. However much notwithstanding the impersonations which painting sets before us necessarily disclose an essentially complete whole of characteristic realization, we will not go so far as to maintain that we cannot find in them an analogue of that which we refer to as the Ideal in the most plastic type of art[320]. In religious subjects, no doubt, the feature of all importance is that of pure Love. This is exceptionally so in the case of the Virgin mother, whose entire life reposes in this love; it is more or less the same thing with the women who accompany the Master, and with John, the disciple of Love. In the expression of this we may also find the sensuous beauty of forms