ed, but at the same time recognized as inadequate to their own
inner meaning; it is this inner meaning which is glorified far and above
every worldly content.

These elements constitute, in general, the character of the primitive
artistic pantheism of the Orient, which either invests even the lowest
objects with absolute significance, or forces all phenomena with
violence to assume the expression of its world-view. This art becomes
therefore bizarre, grotesque, and without taste, or it represents the
infinite substance in its abstract freedom turning away with disdain
from the illusory and perishing mass of appearances. Thus the meaning
can never be completely molded into the expression, and, notwithstanding
all the aspiration and effort, the incongruity between the spiritual
idea and the sensuous form remains insuperable. This is, then, the first
form of art-symbolic art with its endless quest, its inner struggle, its
sphinx-like mystery, and its sublimity.

CLASSICAL ART

In the second form of art, which we wish to designate as the
_classical_, the double defect of symbolic art is removed. The symbolic
form is imperfect, because the spiritual meaning which it seeks to
convey enters into consciousness in but an abstract and vague manner,
and thus the congruity between meaning and form must always remain
defective and therefore abstract. This double aspect disappears in the
classical type of art; in it we find the free and adequate embodiment of
the spiritual idea in the form most suitable to it, and with it meaning
and expression are in perfect accord. It is classical art, therefore,
which first affords the creation and contemplation of the completed
ideal, realizing it as a real fact in the world.

But the congruity of idea and reality in classical art must not be
taken in a formal sense of the agreement of a content with its external
form; otherwise every photograph of nature, every picture of a
countenance, landscape, flower, scene, etc., which constitutes the aim
of a representation, would, through the conformity of content and form,
be at once classical. The peculiarity of classical art, on the contrary,
consists in its content being itself a concrete idea, and, as such, a
concrete spiritual idea, for only the spiritual is a truly essential
content. For a worthy object of such a content, Nature must be consulted
as to whether she contains anything to which a spiritual attribute
really belongs. It must be the