This conclusion in regard to allegory, which is founded on our consideration of the nature of art and quite consistent with it, is directly opposed to the opinion of Winckelmann, who, far from explaining allegory, as we do, as something quite foreign to the end of art, and often interfering with it, always speaks in favour of it, and indeed (Works, vol. i. p. 55) places the highest aim of art in the “representation of universal conceptions, and non-sensuous things.” We leave it to every one to adhere to whichever view he pleases. Only the truth became very clear to me from these and similar views of Winckelmann connected with his peculiar metaphysic of the beautiful, that one may have the greatest susceptibility for artistic beauty, and the soundest judgment in regard to it, without being able to give an abstract and strictly philosophical justification of the nature of the beautiful; just as one may be very noble and virtuous, and may have a tender conscience, which decides with perfect accuracy in particular cases, without on that account being in a position to investigate and explain in the abstract the ethical significance of action. Allegory has an entirely different relation to poetry from that which it has to plastic and pictorial art, and although it is to be rejected in the latter, it is not only permissible, but very serviceable to the former. For in plastic and pictorial art it leads away from what is perceptibly given, the proper object of all art, to abstract thoughts; but in poetry the relation is reversed; for here what is directly given in words is the concept, and the first aim is to lead from this to the object of perception, the representation of which must be undertaken by the imagination of the hearer. If in plastic and pictorial art we are led from what is immediately given to something else, this must always be a conception, because here only the abstract cannot be given directly; but a conception must never be the source, and its communication must never be the end of a work of art. In poetry, on the contrary, the conception is the material, the immediately given, and therefore we may very well leave it, in order to call up perceptions which are quite different, and in which the end is reached. Many a conception or abstract thought may be quite indispensable to the connection of a poem, which is yet, in itself and directly, quite incapable of being perceived; and then it is often made perceptible by means of some example which is subsumed under it. This takes place in every trope, every metaphor, simile, parable, and allegory, all of which differ only in the length and completeness of their expression. Therefore, in the arts which employ language as their medium, similes and allegories are of striking effect. How beautifully Cervantes says of sleep in order to express the fact that it frees us from all spiritual and bodily suffering, “It is a mantle that covers all mankind.”