The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
C. DEFECTIVE ASPECTS OF THE BEAUTY OF NATURE
The true object of our inquiry is the beauty of art viewed as the only reality adequate to the Idea of beauty. We have hitherto treated the beauty of Nature as the first mode of the existence of the beautiful. We have now to inquire more closely into that which distinguishes natural beauty from that of art. As an abstract proposition we may affirm that the Ideal is beauty in its rounded completeness. Nature, on the contrary, brings before us beauty in its incompleteness. Such abstract predicates do not, however, help us much, for our real problem is rather to explain exactly what it is which makes the difference between the completeness of the one from the incompleteness of the other. Our inquiry therefore hinges on the question how it comes about that Nature is necessarily incomplete as a mode of beauty and how this incompleteness is asserted. When we have answered that we shall be in a better position to deduce both the necessity and essential significance of the Ideal. We have already in following the process of Nature up to its culminating manifestation in animal life drawn attention to the modes of beauty revealed in that process. It is now of the first importance that we fix our attention more definitely on the culminating phase of that evolution where we find subjectivity and individuality presented to us in the living organism.
We have already referred to the beautiful as the Idea in a manner identical to that we employ when we speak of the good and true as the Idea, in the sense, that is to say, where we characterize the Idea as the wholly substantial and universal, the absolute substance--with no sensuous material therewith--of reality, in short, the consistency of the world. Determined more strictly, however, as already pointed out, the Idea is not merely substantiality and _universality_, but the unity of the _notion_ and its _reality_, just that, the notion revealed to us as notion in its coincident objectivity. It was Plato who, as we have remarked in our introduction, posited the Idea as that which was alone true and universal, and, indeed, as the one _concrete_ Universal. The Platonic _Idea_ is, however, not itself as yet the concrete _real_, for apprehended under the _notion_ and its _universality_ it is already coincident with the real. Apprehended, however, only in its _universality_[260], it is not _realized_, realized, that is to say, as Truth in its self-determinate realization. It is still only the _potency_ of such self-realization.
But just as the notion is not the notion of real existence without its full objectivity, in the same way the Idea without its realization in the objective world is not the Idea in its Truth as existent reality. The Idea must proceed to such realization, which is only present itself for the first time in a really existent subjectivity adequate to the notion, and its ideal unity and self-determination. In the generic species we find its reality first manifested as free and concrete individuality. Life only exists as a _living thing_; goodness is only realized in _particular_ men; and all truth is simply the consciousness of _knowledge_--Spirit which has come to its own vital inheritance. Only the concrete singularity is both true and really existent, mere abstract universality and particularity is not so. This self-subsistent actuality, this subjectivity is the point on which everything turns, and which we must fully grasp in its significance. Subjectivity may be defined as ideal determination by virtue of a principle of ideal unity which asserts itself through _negation_ of the differences presented to it as consistent parts of one objective reality[261]. The unity of the Idea and its realization is the _negative_ unity of the _Idea_ as such and its _reality_; it is at once and at the same time the _subsumption_ and _deposition_ in a unified content of the difference asserted on either side. Only in this active process is the unity of the Idea affirmatively determined in its full activity, a unity and subjectivity whose process of self-determination is infinite. We have consequently to apprehend the Idea of the beautiful in its realized mode of existence as essentially concrete subjectivity and, moreover, as individual substantiality, by virtue of which it is the Idea really existent, possessing the form of its reality in concrete and individual singularity.
But here we must distinguish between _two_ distinct modes of singularity or individuality, namely, that which is immediately presented us by _Nature_ and that which is predicated of _mind_ (spirit). In both forms it is given determinate existence, and consequently is in both substantive content, the Idea in short, and in the particular sphere of our inquiry for both forms the Idea as beauty. Viewed in this way we may affirm if we please that the beautiful of Nature has a _similar_ content with that of the Ideal. In contradistinction, however, to such a point of view we must not fail to observe that the difference of form, in which the Idea herein attains reality, that is to say the difference between the individuality which prevails in the spheres of Nature and Spirit, the difference asserted in its respective appearance, this it is which constitutes an _essential distinction._ As we shall see, the real point of our inquiry is this, namely, which of these two forms is really the one most adequate to the Idea, for it is obvious that it is only in the entirely adequate form that the totality of the Idea is _in its full content_ explicitly realized. This is the more immediate point we have now to examine in so far as the difference between natural beauty and the Ideal falls into line with the formal differentiation of singularity.
_Immediate_ singularity is no doubt primarily found in the domain of Spirit no less than in Nature as such. For, in the first place, Spirit is possessed of an external existence in bodily form; secondly, even in spiritual relations, Spirit, in the first instance, only exists in its union with immediate reality. Subdividing our inquiry in conformity with such facts, we will consider the nature of immediate singularity from _three_ different points of view. 1. (_a_) We have already seen that the animal organism preserves its determinate existence through a persistent evolutionary process of its own in opposition to an environing inorganic Nature, which it assimilates by means of consumption and digestion, compelling thereby what is external to submit to that process, and asserting its own independent existence by so doing. We found at the same time that this living process is a system of activities, which is realized in a system of organs, whose functional action consists in those very activities. The one and single aim of this homogeneous system is the self-preservation of the living totality thereof through such a process. The animal life consists, therefore, in a life of sensuous impulses, whose general course and satisfaction is realized in the above-mentioned organic system. The living organism is for this reason articulated in its parts under a _teleological principle_, and the principle or end subserved is self-preservation. Life is immanent in every member; they are united to life, and life is one with them. And the net result of this animate process is that the animal is maintained as a thing conscious of itself as an individual subject of feeling, life and the self-enjoyment its singularity procures for it.
We have only to compare animal life with plant life to see the difference implied in the absence of such a sense-consciousness. The plant simply brings to the birth new specimens of its species, without even being able to concentrate any single one on that point of negation, which constitutes self-singularity. We must, however, add that even in the animal organism and its life we never have actually before our eyes the true manifestation of this _centre of unity_, but rather simply the _manifold_ of its members. Life is still too deficient on the side of freedom and in opposition to the mere caprice of sense-life to manifest such a subjective individuality as is capable of breaking through the external envisagement of its organic parts. The vital centre of such activities in the animal organism still remains veiled from vision, and all that we see are the mere outlines of the figure, and this for the most part concealed from our view by feathers, scales, hair, fur, or spines. There can be no question that coverings of this nature, though characteristic of the animal world, are coverings which partake of the form of the vegetable world. And it is precisely at this point that the beauty of animal life declares its essential insufficiency. That which the organism makes most visible to us is not the soul-principle. That which is directed outward and throughout appears is not the life within, but rather formations accepted from a lower plane of existence than the essential embodiment of life. The animal is _only_ fully alive beneath that outer crust, and consequently for this very reason that its _inwardness_[262] is not wholly made real in a form adequate to reveal it, we are unable to see the principle of Life everywhere shine freely through it; it remains _only_ an _inwardness_, and the shell is _external only_ unpermeated by the vital principle.
Finally, when we consider from the same point of view any single individual we are confronted with the same truth. Every human person is a self-rounded totality, held together by the central unity of life. In the immediate envisagement of reality, that is in his life, action, avoidance of action, desires and impulses, he only appears in a fragmentary way; none the less it is only from a general survey of all his actions or sufferings that we are able to form an estimate of character. The centre of unity which thus concentrates to a point the entire subject-matter of our extended survey is not as such either visible or directly apprehended. 2. The second point of importance to which we would draw attention is this. With the immediate appearance of individuality the Idea, as we have already indicated, receives determinate existence. Through this very immediacy however it becomes interwoven with the complexity of the external world, is conditioned by the limitations of external circumstance and the relative character of means and ends which are found there, in one word is carried into the finitude of external Nature. For though immediate singularity is in the first place a fully rounded off unity, it is for the same reason only self-exclusive as a centre of negation opposed to _others_, and is, by virtue of its immediate singularity, influenced by, no less than related to, a totality of real existence other than its own, upon which it is dependent in a thousand different ways. The Idea, in short, is in this very immediacy realized in every direction as _individual distinction._ It is consequently now merely a reflex of the inherent energy of the notion which binds all individual existence, that of Nature no less than mind in reciprocal correlation[263]. Such a relation to the existences themselves is a purely external one, and appears also to them as a single _external necessity_ uniting each part of the manifold in one shifting complexus of interrelated reciprocity. The immediacy of determinate existence is therefore, as thus regarded, a system of necessary relations between apparently self-subsistent individual things and forces, in which each singular entity is committed as a means to the service of ends foreign to it, or itself is compelled to utilize that which is external to itself as such a means. And inasmuch as the Idea is under this aspect wholly realized on the ground of externality, there appears at the same time the unrestrained play of every caprice and accident, no less than the uncontrolled discharge of the burden of indigence. Singularity as immediate appearance lives and moves in the realm of unfreedom.
For individual man stands in a relation of dependence to the influences, laws, organizations and other social relations of civic life which he finds already existing around him, and to which he must submit whether he forfeit his own independent soul-life thereby or not. And more than this, each separate individual is not presented to others as such totality, but is only reflected in whatever isolated interest they may happen at the time to possess in his actions, desires, and opinions. And what interests mankind mainly is some relation to their own particular thoughts and aims. Even historically important actions and events, with which the community is expressly associated, appear in this field of relative appearances merely as a manifold of isolated efforts. It is a varied collection to which each contributes as he may, with aims by no means identical, some of which meet with success while others miscarry, and indeed, be they ever so fortunate, are significant in a very subordinate degree if we consider them as contributions to the wellbeing of all.
What the majority may carry through, in contrast with the entire aggregate of events and the end applicable to all[265], to which it furnishes its quota, is after all a mere patch; nay, even men of eminent standing, who feel and are fully conscious of the universal passage of events[266], as their own world, are for all that clearly immeshed in the same net of particular circumstances, conditions, and a thousand other hindrances involved in their relative position. On all these grounds it is plain that in this sphere of exterior life the individual world is unable to offer us the vision of that independent and complete freedom of the living principle, such as is essential to the true notion of beauty. It is, of course, true that the immediate appearance of human reality and its events and organizations is not without system, and as such is a totality of activities; but this whole is rather in its appearance a mere mass of isolated fragments. Moreover the practical concerns of such activities are divided and subdivided into countless parts, and in such a way that each single part is in touch with the merest fraction of all; and, in short, however much individuals may remain steadfast to their own purposes, and only bring forth to the light that which their own interest has employed as a means, the self-subsistence and freedom of their will remains more or less of a formal character, determined by external circumstance or accident, and constantly thwarted by natural causes[267].
This is the prose of the world, as presented to our own consciousness no less than to that of others; a world of finitude and change, a world immeshed in relation and submerged beneath the pressure of necessity, a world from which no individual can extricate himself. The central paradox of life confronts every unit of the living whole. On the one hand there is the impulse of individuality to perfect its isolated unity in self-exclusion; on the other there is the necessary condition of dependence on others from which none may claim immunity. However prolonged the struggle to overcome this contradiction may be the effort of that interminable battle only terminates with life itself. 3. Thirdly, the immediate singularity of the worlds of Nature and Mind is not merely conditioned by dependence on others, but is deficient in any complete self-subsistency owing to its _confined_ nature, or with more accuracy, because it is particularized in its own specific mode of manifestation.
Poverty, care, anger, coldness, and indifference, the rage of passion, the obstinate retention of narrow purposes, indications of change and division in the spiritual world, entire dependence on that of Nature--in one word all that is implied in the transitory condition of human life--leaves its indelible, if quite incalculable, expression on the varied surface of the faces of mankind. Who has not crossed weather-beaten types of such, on which the storm of all the passions has imprinted its disturbing wave; or others, where the coldness and superficiality of the soul within is all the impression we receive; or, lastly, as the final verdict of self-absorbed particularity[268], cases in which the general type seems almost totally to have disappeared. There is no end to the caprice of the human features. Speaking generally, we would associate with this ground the fact that the beauty of children most arrests us. In their faces we find all pronounced idiosyncracies slumber as it were beneath a quiet veil; no dominating passion as yet ravages their soul; not one of the thousand interests of the grown man has engraved for ever the expression of its necessity on these mobile features. This envisaged innocence of the child, however, though we may discover in its flexible animation the possibility of Life's completed fulness, obviously fails to reveal those profounder indications of a spirit which has been carried forward to explore the range of its own recesses and to make its life one with rational purpose.
We may regard, then, immediate existence, both in the purely physical and spiritual sense of the term, as a _finitude_, or more justly as a finitude which does not satisfy its notion and for this very reason declares its finitude. For the notion, and more concretely still, the Idea, is essentially _independent_ and _free._ Purely animal life, although as Life it is the Idea, is no manifestation of infinity as such or freedom. This is alone possible under conditions, where we find the notion penetrate so completely the reality which is adequate to it, that it finds itself entirely at home therein, with no extraneous matter, to disturb its possession. Then alone do we find it a really free and concrete individuality. The natural life, on the contrary, is unable to overcome the element of feeling to which it is attached, and which renders it incapable of penetrating the entire reality which enrings it. It finds itself, moreover, immediately conditioned in itself, restricted in its range and dependent, a result which is due to the fact that its freedom is not truly self-determinate, but conditioned by the external: object. And the same thing is true of the immediate and finite reality of the spirit world in its knowledge, volitional action, and fateful history. For although in this latter case we find centres of unity expressed which have a real significance, neither these any more than the particularities they unite have truth as they stand by themselves; but only that truth which, in their reciprocal relation to each other, they manifest as constituent parts of a whole. And this whole, albeit in a sense adequate to its notion, does not correspond to it in such a way as to manifest itself in its full totality[269], which consequently still remains aloof from such envisagement, or rather, is only apprehended in the ideal world of thought. In other words, the notion finds no fully adequate presentation in external reality, such as is powerful enough to marshal homogeneously all the numberless fragments of particularity, and to concentrate them into _one_ expression and _one_ single form.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.