ou, upon the nation as a whole.

_FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING_

* * * * *

ON THE RELATION OF THE PLASTIC ARTS TO NATURE (1807)

A Speech on the Celebration of the 12th October, 1807, as the Name-Day
of His Majesty the King of Bavaria

Delivered before the Public Assembly of the Royal Academy of Sciences
of Munich

TRANSLATED BY J. ELLIOT CABOT

Plastic Art, according to the most ancient expression, is silent
Poetry. The inventor of this definition no doubt meant thereby
that the former, like the latter, is to express spiritual
thoughts--conceptions whose source is the soul; only not by speech,
but, like silent Nature, by shape, by form, by corporeal, independent
works.

Plastic Art, therefore, evidently stands as a uniting link between the
soul and Nature, and can be apprehended only in the living centre of
both. Indeed, since Plastic Art has its relation to the soul in common
with every other art, and particularly with Poetry, that by which
it is connected with Nature, and, like Nature, a productive force,
remains as its sole peculiarity; so that to this alone can a theory
relate which shall be satisfactory to the understanding, and helpful
and profitable to Art itself.

We hope, therefore, in considering Plastic Art in relation to its
true prototype and original source, Nature, to be able to contribute
something new to its theory--to give some additional exactness or
clearness to the conceptions of it; but, above all, to set forth
the coherence of the whole structure of Art in the light of a higher
necessity.

[Illustration: FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING Carl Begas]

But has not Science always recognized this relation? Has not indeed
every theory of modern times taken its departure from this very
position, that Art should be the imitator of Nature? Such has indeed
been the case. But what should this broad general proposition
profit the artist, when the notion of Nature is of such various
interpretation, and when there are almost as many differing views of
it as there are various modes of life? Thus, to one, Nature is
nothing more than the lifeless aggregate of an indeterminable crowd
of objects, or the space in which, as in a vessel, he imagines things
placed; to another, only the soil from which he draws his nourishment
and support; to the inspired seeker alone, the holy, ever-creative
original energy of the world, which generates and busily e