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simplicity with infinite meaning.

Only through the perfection of form can Form be made to disappear; and
this is certainly the final aim of Art in the Characteristic. But as
the apparent harmony that is even more easily reached by the empty and
frivolous than by others, is yet inwardly vain; so in Art the quickly
attained harmony of the exterior, without inward fulness. And if it is
the part of theory and instruction to oppose the spiritless copying
of beautiful forms, especially must they oppose the tendency toward
an effeminate characterless Art, which gives itself, indeed, higher
names, but therewith only seeks to hide its incapacity to fulfil the
fundamental conditions.

That lofty Beauty in which the fulness of form causes Form itself to
disappear, was adopted by the modern theory of Art, after Winckelmann,
not only as the highest, but as the only standard. But as the deep
foundation upon which it rests was overlooked, it resulted that a
negative conception was formed even of that which is the sum of all
affirmation.

Winckelmann compares Beauty with water drawn from the bosom of the
spring, which, the less taste it has, the wholesomer it is esteemed.
It is true that the highest Beauty is characterless, but so we say
of the Universe that it has no determinate dimension, neither length,
breadth nor depth, since it has all in equal infinity; or that the Art
of creative Nature is formless, because she herself is subjected to no
form.

In this and in no other sense can we say that Grecian art in its
highest development rises into the characterless; but it did not aim
immediately at this. It was from the bonds of Nature that it struggled
upward to divine freedom. From no lightly scattered seed, but only
from a deeply infolded kernel, could this heroic growth spring up.
Only mighty emotions, only a deep stirring of the fancy through the
impression of all-enlivening, all-commanding energies of Nature,
could stamp upon Art that invincible vigor with which from the rigid,
secluded earnestness of earlier productions up to the period of works
overflowing with sensuous grace, it ever remained faithful to truth,
and produced the highest spiritual Reality which it is given to
mortals to behold.

In like manner, as their Tragedy commences with the grandest
characteristicness in morals, so the beginning of their Plastic Art
was the earnestness of Nature, and the stern goddess of Athens its
first and only Muse.

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