nscious existence,
so that, just because he knows himself to be animal, he ceases in virtue
of such knowledge to be animal, and, through such self-knowledge only,
can characterize himself as mind or spirit.

If in the manner just described the unity of the human and divine nature
is raised from an _immediate_ to a _conscious,_ unity, the true mold for
the reality of this content is no longer the sensuous, immediate
existence of the spiritual, the bodily frame of man, but
self-consciousness and internal contemplation. For this reason
Christianity, in depicting God as Spirit--not as particularized
individual mind, but as absolute and universal Spirit--retires from the
sensuousness of imagination into the sphere of inner being, and makes
this, and not the bodily form, the material and mold of its content; and
thus the unity of the human and divine nature is a conscious unity,
capable of realization only by spiritual knowledge. The new content, won
by this unity, is not dependent upon sensuous representation; it is now
exempt from such immediate existence. In this way, however, romantic art
becomes art which transcends itself, carrying on this process of
self-transcendence within its own artistic sphere and artistic form.

Briefly stated, the essence of romantic art consists in the artistic
object being the free, concrete, spiritual idea itself, which is
revealed in its spirituality to the inner, and not the outer, eye. In
conformity with such a content, art can, in a sense, not work for
sensuous perception, but must aim at the inner mood, which completely
fuses with its object, at the most subjective inner shrine, at the
heart, the feeling, which, as spiritual feeling, longs for freedom
within itself and seeks and finds reconciliation only within the inner
recesses of the spirit. This _inner_ world is the content of romantic
art, and as such an inner life, or as its reflection, it must seek
embodiment. The inner life thus triumphs over the outer world--indeed,
so triumphs over it that the outer world itself is made to proclaim its
victory, through which the sensuous appearance sinks into worthlessness.

On the other hand, the romantic type of art, like every other, needs an
external mode of expression. But the spiritual has now retired from the
outer mode into itself, and the sensuous externality of form assumes
again, as it did in symbolic art, an insignificant and transient
character. The subjective, finite mind and wi