ond to the several
particular arts, so that they (the particular arts) belong each of them
_specifically_ to _one_ of the general types of art. It is these
particular arts which give adequate and artistic external being to the
general types.

ARCHITECTURE

The first of the particular arts with which, according to their
fundamental principle, we have to begin, is architecture. Its task
consists in so shaping external inorganic nature that it becomes
homogeneous with mind, as an artistic outer world. The material of
architecture is matter itself in its immediate externality as a heavy
mass subject to mechanical laws, and its forms remain the forms of
inorganic nature, but are merely arranged and ordered in accordance with
the abstract rules of the understanding, the rules of symmetry. But in
such material and in such forms the ideal as concrete spirituality
cannot be realized; the reality which is represented in them remains,
therefore, alien to the spiritual idea, as something external which it
has not penetrated or with which it has but a remote and abstract
relation. Hence the fundamental type of architecture is the _symbolical_
form of art. For it is architecture that paves the way, as it were, for
the adequate realization of the God, toiling and wrestling in his
service with external nature, and seeking to extricate it from the chaos
of finitude and the abortiveness of chance. By this means it levels a
space for the God, frames his external surroundings, and builds him his
temple as the place for inner contemplation and for reflection upon the
eternal objects of the spirit. It raises an inclosure around those
gathered together, as a defense against the threatening of the wind,
against rain, the thunder-storm, and wild beasts, and reveals the will
to gather together, though externally, yet in accordance with the
artistic form. A meaning such as this, the art of architecture is able
to mold into its material and its forms with more or less success,
according as the determinate nature of the content which it seeks to
embody is more significant or more trivial, more concrete or more
abstract, more deeply rooted within its inner being or more dim and
superficial. Indeed, it may even advance so far as to endeavor to create
for such meaning an adequate artistic expression with its material and
forms, but in such an attempt it has already overstepped the bounds of
its own sphere, and inclines towards sculpture, the highe