d the same sphere with religion and
philosophy and has become a certain mode of bringing to consciousness
and expression the divine meaning of things, the deepest interests of
mankind, and the most universal truths of the spirit. Into works of art
the nations have wrought their most profound ideas and aspirations. Fine
Art often constitutes the key, and with many nations it is the only key,
to an understanding of their wisdom and religion. This character art has
in common with religion and philosophy. Art's peculiar feature, however,
consists in its ability to represent in _sensuous form_ even the highest
ideas, bringing them thus nearer to the character of natural phenomena,
to the senses, and to feeling. It is the height of a supra-sensuous
world into which _thought_ reaches, but it always appears to immediate
consciousness and to present experience as an alien _beyond_. Through
the power of philosophic thinking we are able to soar above what is
merely _here_, above sensuous and finite experience. But spirit can heal
the breach between the supra-sensuous and the sensuous brought on by its
own advance; it produces out of itself the world of fine art as the
first reconciling medium between what is merely external, sensuous, and
transient, and the world of pure thought, between nature with its finite
reality and the infinite freedom of philosophic reason.

Concerning the unworthiness of art because of its character as
appearance and deception, it must be admitted that such criticism would
not be without justice, if appearance could be said to be equivalent to
falsehood and thus to something that ought not to be. Appearance is
essential to reality; truth could not be, did it not shine through
appearance. Therefore not appearance in general can be objected to, but
merely the particular kind of appearance through which art seeks to
portray truth. To charge the appearance in which art chooses to embody
its ideas as deception, receives meaning only by comparison with the
external world of phenomena and its immediate materiality, as well as
with the inner world of sensations and feelings. To these two worlds we
are wont, in our empirical work-a-day life, to attribute the value of
actuality, reality, and truth, in contrast to art, which is supposed to
be lacking such reality and truth. But, in fact, it is just the whole
sphere of the empirical inner and outer world that is not the world of
true reality; indeed it may be called a