relations of their citizens. The State may identify its infinitude and
honor with every one of its single aspects. And if a State, as a strong
individuality, has experienced an unduly protracted internal rest, it
will naturally be more inclined to irritability, in order to find an
occasion and field for intense activity.

The nations of Europe form a family according to the universal principle
of their legislation, their ethical code, and their civilization. But
the relation among States fluctuates, and no judge exists to adjust
their differences. The higher judge is the universal and absolute Spirit
alone--the World-Spirit.

The relation of one particular State to another presents, on the largest
possible scale, the most shifting play of individual passions,
interests, aims, talents, virtues, power, injustice, vice, and mere
external chance. It is a play in which even the ethical whole, the
independence of the State, is exposed to accident. The principles which
control the many national spirits are limited. Each nation as an
existing individuality is guided by its particular principles, and only
as a particular individuality can each national spirit win objectivity
and self-consciousness; but the fortunes and deeds of States in their
relation to one another reveal the dialectic of the finite nature of
these spirits. Out of this dialectic rises the universal Spirit, the
unlimited World-Spirit, pronouncing its judgment--and its judgment is
the highest--upon the finite nations of the world's history; for the
history of the world is the world's court of justice.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART (1820-21)

BY GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

TRANSLATED BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D. Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard
University

THE MEANING OF ART

The appropriate expression for our subject is the "Philosophy of Art,"
or, more precisely, the "Philosophy of Fine Arts." By this expression we
wish to exclude the beauty of nature. In common life we are in the habit
of speaking of beautiful color, a beautiful sky, a beautiful river,
beautiful flowers, beautiful animals, and beautiful human beings. But
quite aside from the question, which we wish not to discuss here, how
far beauty may be predicated of such objects, or how far natural beauty
may be placed side by side with artistic beauty, we must begin by
maintaining that artistic beauty is higher than the beauty of nature.
For the beauty of art is beauty born--and b