ence proceeds, purified as by fire, the
pure gold of Beauty and Truth.

Nor was there any change in the main view of the relation of Art to
Nature, even when the unsatisfactoriness of the principle began to
be more generally felt; no change, even by the new views and new
knowledge so nobly established by John Winckelmann. He indeed restored
to the soul its full efficiency in Art, and raised it from its
unworthy dependence into the realm of spiritual freedom. Powerfully
moved by the beauty of form in the works of antiquity, he taught that
the production of ideal Nature, of Nature elevated above the Actual,
together with the expression of spiritual conceptions, is the highest
aim of Art.

But if we examine in what sense this surpassing of the Actual by Art
has been understood by the most, it turns out that, with this view
also, the notion of Nature as mere product, of things as a lifeless
result, still continued; and the idea of a living creative Nature
was in no wise awakened by it. Thus these ideal forms also could be
animated by no positive insight into their nature; and if the forms
of the Actual were dead for the dead beholder, these were not less so.
Were no independent production of the Actual possible, neither would
there be of the Ideal. The object of the imitation was changed;
the imitation remained. In the place of Nature were substituted the
sublime works of Antiquity, whose outward forms the pupils busied
themselves in imitating, but without the spirit that fills them. These
forms, however, are as unapproachable, nay, more so, than the works of
Nature, and leave us yet colder if we bring not to them the spiritual
eye to penetrate through the veil and feel the stirring energy within.

On the other hand, artists, since that time, have indeed received a
certain ideal impetus, and notions of a beauty superior to matter;
but these notions were like fair words, to which the deeds do not
correspond. While the previous method in Art produced bodies without
soul, this view taught only the secret of the soul, but not that of
the body. The theory had, as usual, passed with one hasty stride to
the opposite extreme; but the vital mean it had not yet found.

Who can say that Winckelmann had not penetrated into the highest
beauty? But with him it appeared in its dissevered elements only: on
the one side as beauty in idea, and flowing out from the soul; on the
other, as beauty of forms.

But what is the efficient link