late form, and were not able to
arrive at genuine beauty, because their mythological ideas, the content
and conception of their works of art, were as yet vague and obscure. The
more perfect in form works of art are, the more profound is the inner
truth of their content and thought. And it is not merely a question of
the greater or lesser skill with which the objects of external nature
are studied and copied, for, in certain stages of artistic consciousness
and artistic activity, the misrepresentation and distortion of natural
objects are not unintentional technical inexpertness and incapacity, but
conscious alteration, which depends upon the content that is in
consciousness, and is, in fact, demanded by it. We may thus speak of
imperfect art, which, in its own proper sphere, may be quite perfect
both technically and in other respects. When compared with the highest
idea and ideal of art, it is indeed defective. In the highest art alone
are the idea and its representation in perfect congruity, because the
sensuous form of the idea is in itself the adequate form, and because
the content, which that form embodies, is itself a genuine content.

The higher truth of art consists, then, in the spiritual having attained
a sensuous form adequate to its essence. And this also furnishes the
principle of division for the philosophy of art. For the Spirit, before
it wins the true meaning of its absolute essence, has to develop through
a series of stages which constitute its very life. To this universal
evolution there corresponds a development of the phases of art, under
the form of which the Spirit--as artist--attains to a comprehension of
its own meaning.

This evolution within the spirit of art has two sides. The development
is, in the first place, a spiritual and universal one, in so far as a
gradual series of definite conceptions of the universe--of nature, man,
and God--finds artistic representation. In the second place, this
universal development of art, embodying itself in sensuous form,
determines definite modes of artistic expression and a totality of
necessary distinctions within the sphere of art. These constitute the
particular arts.

We have now to consider three definite relations of the spiritual idea
to its sensuous expression.

SYMBOLIC ART

Art begins when the spiritual idea, being itself still indefinite and
obscure and ill-comprehended, is made the content of artistic forms. As
indefinite, it does not ye