Various

“ It is that in the representation of sensuous forms, art no longer fears to admit into itself the real with its imperfections and its faults. The beautiful is no longer the essential thing; the ugly occupies a much larger place in its creations. Here, then, vanishes that ideal beauty which elevates the forms of the real world above the mortal condition, and replaces it with blooming youth. This free vitality in its infinite calmness—this divine breath which animates matter—romantic art has no longer, for essential aim, to represent these. ”

“ Art has as its end and aim the representation of the ideal. Now what is the ideal? It is beauty in a degree of perfection superior to real beauty. It is force, life, spirit, the essence of things, developing themselves harmoniously in a sensuous reality, which is its resplendent image, its faithful expression; it is beauty disengaged and purified from the accidents which veil and disfigure it, and which alter its purity in the real world. ”

“ Art and science, it is true, differ in their methods; but imagination, also, has its laws; though free, it has not the right to be lawless. In art, nothing is arbitrary; its ground is the essence of things; its form is borrowed from the real world, and the Beautiful is the accord, the harmony of the two terms. Philosophy recognizes in works of art the eternal content of its meditations, the lofty conceptions of intelligence, the passions of man, and the motives of his volition. Philosophy does not pretend to furnish prescriptions to art, but is able to give useful advice ”

“ Art creates works which represent the beautiful under its purest and most perfect form.
But spirit can not rest in this precise accord of the form and the idea, in which the infinite and the finite blend. When it comes to be reflected upon itself, to penetrate farther into the depths of its inner nature, to take cognizance of its spirituality and its freedom, then the idea of the infinite appears to it stripped of the natural forms which envelop it. ”

“ It is to him the essential basis upon which he builds. Unless the work of art affects his feelings, he has nothing to think about; he can go no further; the work, to him, is not a work of art at all. But if he is aroused and charmed by it, if his emotional nature is stirred to its depths, and he feels inspired by those spiritual intimations of Eternity which true art always excites, then he has a content to work upon, and this thinking of his, amounts simply to a recognition in other forms, of this eternal element, that glows through the work of art. ”

“ If we compare, in this respect, romantic art with classic art, we see that Sculpture no longer suffices to express this idea. We should vainly seek in the image of the gods fashioned by sculpture that which announces the true personality, the clear consciousness of self and reflected will. In the external this defect is betrayed by the absence of the eye, that mirror of the soul. Sculpture is deprived of the glance, the ray of the soul emanating from within. ”

“ All these arts culminate in Poetry, which includes them and surpasses them, and whose superiority is due to its mode of expression—speech. It alone is capable of expressing all ideas, all sentiments, all passions, the highest conceptions of the intelligence, and the most fugitive impressions of the soul. To it alone is given to represent an action in its complete development and in all its phases. It is the universal art—its domain is unlimited. ”

“ The music, at first slow and sweet, grows more and more strong and rapid till even the rustic dance-measure comes in merrily. Most naturally here the key-note is again struck by the force of contrast, and the despair of the sorrow that wakes from the forgetfulness of pleasant dreams to the consciousness of loss, strikes as rapidly its minor chords till it seems as if hope were entirely lost. ”

“ Its genius, a mixture of spontaneity and reflection, presented an equal fusion of contraries. The feeling of this auspicious harmony pierces through all the productions of the Greek mind. It was the moment of youth in the life of humanity—a fleeting age, a moment unique and irrevocable, like that of beauty in the individual.
Art attains then the culminating point of sensuous beauty under the form of plastic individuality. The worship of the Beautiful is the entire life of the Greek race. Thus religion and art are identified. All forms of Greek civilization are subordinate to art. ”

“ A philosophy which should explain the great complex of the universe, could hardly be expected to be transparent to uncultured minds at the first glance. Thus it happens that many critics give us such discouraging reports upon their return from a short excursion into the true wonder-land of philosophy. The Eternal Verities are miraculous only to those eyes which have gazed long upon them after shutting out the glaring sunlight of the senses.
Those who criticise a philosophy must imply a philosophical method of their own, and thus measure themselves while they measure others. ”

“ Its hollow tones reverberate through his being, and he starts from his dream and drowns his memory anew in the storm of action. At times we are elevated to the creative moment of the artist, and feel its inspiration and lofty enthusiasm, but again and again the exhausted soul collapses, and the same abysmal crash comes in at the bass each time. ”

“ But what best marks the destruction of romantic art and of chivalry is the modern romance, that form of literature which takes their place. The romance is chivalry applied to real life; it is a protest against the real, it is the ideal in a society where all is fixed, regulated in advance by laws, by usages contrary to the free development of the natural longings and sentiments of the soul; it is the chivalry of common life. The same principle which caused a search for adventures throws the personages into the most diverse and the most extraordinary situations. ”

“ But, as an expression of sentiment, Music still surpasses painting. What it expresses is the soul itself, in its most intimate and profound relations; and this by a sensuous phenomenon, equally invisible, instantaneous, intangible—sound—sonorous vibrations, which resound in the abysses of the soul, and agitate it throughout. ”

“ The first act brings us into social life; a multitude of shapes pass by us—the most different wishes, opinions and humors are heard; still, a secret unity, which we shall note even more closely, pervades the confused tumult. In a delightful spot, lying upon the flowery sward, we see Faust alone, tormented by deep pangs, seeking rest and slumber. Out of pure pity, indifferent whether the unfortunate man is holy or wicked, elves hover around him and fan him to sleep, in order that the past may be sunk into the Lethe of forgetfulness; otherwise, a continuance of life and endeavor is impossible. ”

“ Such an activity can be no other than the æsthetic, and every work of art can be conceived only as the product of such. The ideal work of art and the real world of objects are therefore products of one and the same activity; the meeting of the two (the conscious and the unconscious) without consciousness, gives the real—with consciousness, the æsthetic world.
The objective world is only the primal, still unconscious, poetry of the mind; the universal organum of philosophy, the key-stone of its whole arch, is the philosophy of art. ”

“ But Faust shudders because he is not to experience earthly solitude alone, like that of the boundless ocean, when yet star follows star, and wave follows wave; the deepest solitude of the creative spirit, the retirement into the invisible, yet almighty Thought, the sinking into the eternal Idea is demanded of him. ”

“ Nature, which never lies, tells us the same in its naïve way; it lets any being just kindle the first spark of its life on one of his equals, and then lets it finish itself before our eyes. The form and the movement it takes from its own self, the substance from outside. This is called growth and development. Thus even empirically do all beings stand before us as their own work; but the language of nature is too simple, and therefore but few understand it.
Cognition, since all motives are dependent on it, is the essential characteristic of the animal kingdom. ”

“ Hence there is no collision between the artist and the critic, if both are true to their ideal.
It certainly is no injury to the work of art to show that it treats in some form the Problem of Life, which is the mystery of the Christian religion. It is no derogation to Beethoven to show how he has solved a problem in music, just as Shakspeare in poetry, and Michael Angelo in painting. Those who are content with the mere feeling, we must always respect if they really have the true art feeling, just as we respect the simple piety of the uneducated peasant. ”

“ All these materials fashioned by art, give to the Greek gods the appearance, the interest, and the charm, of living humanity. But this traditional side, which in its origin had a symbolic sense, loses it little by little; it is designed only to complete the individuality of the gods, to give to them a more human and more sensuous form, to add, through details frequently unworthy of divine majesty, the side of the arbitrary and accidental. Sculpture, which represents the pure ideal, ought, without wholly excluding it in fact, to allow it to appear as little as possible ”

“ If the reader of different systems of Philosophy has in himself achieved some degree of Speculative culture, he will at every step be delighted and confirmed at the agreement of what, to the ordinary reader, seem irreconcilable statements.
Not only do speculative writers agree among themselves as to the nature of things, and the destiny of man and the world, but their results furnish us in the form of pure thought what the artist has wrought out in the form of beauty. Whether one tests architecture, sculpture, painting, music or poetry, it is all the same. ”

“ Nay, more—if highest ease and freedom of mind may suggest conviction; if the ingenuity to fit one’s philosophy into all forms, and apply it to all parts of human knowledge—the power to scatter all doubts as soon as they appear, and the manner of using one’s philosophy more as an instrument than as an object, may testify of perfect clearness; and if self-reliance, cheerfulness and high courage in life may be signs of inner harmony, then Leibnitz was perhaps convinced, and the only example of conviction in the history of philosophy. ”

“ Whenever it shall have become the well-matured object of education—from tenderest youth upwards—to develop the inner power of the scholar, but not to give it a direction; to educate man for his own use, and as instrument of his own will, but not as the soulless instrument of others;—then the Science of Knowledge will be universally and easily comprehensible. Culture of the whole man, from earliest youth—this is the only way to spread philosophy. Education must first content itself to be more negative than positive—more a mutual interchange with the scholar than a working upon him ”

“ In the first place, art is a product of human activity, a creation of the mind. What distinguishes it from science is this, that it is the fruit of inspiration, not of reflection. On this account it can not be learned or transmitted; it is a gift of genius. Nothing can possibly supply a lack of talent in the arts.
Let us guard ourselves meanwhile from supposing that, like the blind forces of nature, the artist does not know what he does, that reflection has no part in his works. ”

“ Let this spirit of inquiry once extend to thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, Schelling and Hegel—let these be digested and organically reproduced—and what a phalanx of American thinkers we may have to boast of! For after all it is not “American thought” so much as American thinkers that we want. To think, in the highest sense, is to transcend all natural limits—such, for example, as national peculiarities, defects in culture, distinctions in Race, habits, and modes of living—to be universal, so that one can dissolve away the external hull and seize the substance itself. ”

“ Indeed, the deduction of an objective truth, as well in the world of appearances as in the world of intellect, is the only purpose of all philosophy.
It is the philosopher who says in his own name: everything that is for the Ego is also through the Ego. But the Ego itself, in that philosopher’s philosophy says: as sure as I am I, there exists outside of me a something, which exists not through me. ”

“ It is therefore right when Goethe makes the transition from civil to religious freedom. Men cannot accomplish more than the realization of the freedom of the nations, for Mankind has its concrete existence only in the nations; if the nations are free, it is also free. Faust must thus be enraptured by this thought in the highest degree. But with it, he departs from the world—Heaven has opened itself above him. But, though Heaven sheds its grace, and lovingly receives the striving soul which has erred, still it demands repentance and complete purification from what is earthly. ”

“ He finds a nobler pleasure in science, which furnishes food for his ardent curiosity, and promises to reveal to him the laws of nature and to unveil the secrets of the universe. Civil life opens another channel to his activity; he burns to realize his conceptions; he marches to the conquest of the right, and pursues the ideal of justice which he bears within him. He endeavors to realize in civil society his instinct of sociability, which is also the law of his being, and one of the fundamental inclinations of his moral nature. ”