The Philosophy of Fine Art. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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СКАЧАТЬ of motion, if only in a subordinate degree, the release of itself from the former abstractness referable to the particular modes of motion, their direction and their speed. Under a yet closer view, moreover, the animal, regarded by itself in its organism, presents the same sensuous matter that is moved; and here, too, life is as before a freedom of motion within this organic reality, evidenced in the flow of blood and the movement of the limbs.

      Motion, however, is not the only expression of animated life. The free tones of the voice of animals, which are unknown in the inorganic world, where bodies merely roar and clatter through the blow of objects external to them, these already present to us the higher expression of animated subjectivity. The most intimate and vital expression of such ideal activity is, however, brought before us when we find the living individual able to concentrate itself as individuality over against the objective world, while at the same time it appropriates and transfigures that world for its own. And this is accomplished in part through observation by means of vision, and partly for practical purposes, in so far as such an individual brings the outer world into subjection to himself, utilizes the same, assimilates it as a means of nourishment, and in this manner continually reproduces his individuality in that objective alterum. Such a process, of course, as it ascends through stronger organisms, assumes more and more emphatic degrees of unsatisfied desire, assimilation, satisfaction, or satiety.

Such, then, are the activities, in which the notion of animated life makes itself apparent. Moreover, the principle of Ideality thus rendered visible is not merely the result of our reflection; it is objectively real itself in the living subject, whose existence consequently we may go so far as to call an objective idealism. And it is the soul, as before stated, which, as this ideal energy, brings about its own manifestation223, always reducing the purely external reality of the body to an appearance, and thereby affirming itself as objective totality in that very bodily shape.

      2. Now it is as the Idea made objectively visible to the senses that the animated life of Nature is beautiful; in so far, that is to say, as the truth or the Idea, presented in the form of Nature, where under it first appears, in other words life, is immediately given in the particular shape of reality adequate to it. Owing, however, to its sensuous immediacy the living beauty of Nature is neither beautiful for itself nor is the beauty strictly that which is the outcome of itself, a product, that is, of its purely objective appearance. The beauty of Nature is only beautiful for another, that is for us, the consciousness that apprehends its beauty. The question therefore arises in what way and by virtue of what characteristics the principle of life appears to us beautiful in its immediate existence.

(a) If we look at the practical way in which a living object becomes visible and preserves itself, the first thing which rivets our attention is spontaneous motion. This motion, regarded simply as motion, is nothing more than the entirely abstract freedom of motion from place to place and from time to time, which we find exemplified in the spontaneous, but entirely haphazard movements of animal life. In music and the dance we have, it is true, motion in its generic significance; but here motion is not merely a matter of chance and impulse, but it exhibits the laws which regulate it; it is defined, complete in itself and subject to measure; and it is all this, though we still abstract from it the significance whereof it is the beautiful expression. If we again interpret the motion of animals as the realization of an aim originating within themselves, this excited impulse is still entirely accidental, an end of most restricted import. If we further extend our survey and conceive such motion as the activity and working together of all parts of the animal organism towards a definite purpose, we shall merely find that such a conception is rendered possible by our own effort of imagination224. The case is just the same if we reflect upon the way in which an animal gratifies its physical wants, obtains nourishment through the organs which grasp it, consume it, digest it, and generally is a subject of the process which preserves its life. For in this case also we have either only before us single desires and their spontaneous and haphazard gratification, in which the inward activity225 of the organism is not present at all, or at least all these activities and their means of expression have become the subject of our imaginative reflection, which is at pains to understand such a process by relating it to definite ends, and to establish a harmony between aims assumed to belong to the animal itself and the organs which fulfill them.

We shall rather find that neither the sensuous perception of single haphazard appetites, arbitrary movements and efforts towards self-satisfaction, nor the fanciful consideration of the animal organism as one directed by purpose will present to us purely animal life as a part of the beauty of Nature. The beauty consists in the appearance of individual form, both in repose and motion, quite apart from the relation of its self-gratification to any purpose thus subserved, as it is apart from the entirely isolated contingency of self-imposed movement226. Such beauty is related to the form alone, because it is only as such that it is the external appearance, in which the objective idealism of the principle of life makes itself known to us as a thing perceived and contemplated upon through the senses. Thought apprehends this "objective idealism" in the medium of its notion, appropriating the same in the element of universality which belongs to it, albeit the contemplation of its beauty is inseparably bound with its phenomenal reality. And this reality is the external form of the articulated organism, which is, in our view of it, quite as much determinate particularity as it is a semblance, namely, that of the physical manifold of the separate members, which can only form part of the concrete totality of the living form under the guise of phenomenal appearance.

      (b) From the explanation of the notion of life already given we may deduce more narrowly the form of this appearance as follows. The form is one of spatial extension, limitation, and configuration, distinguished through its various shape, colour, and motion, being, in fact, a manifold of such distinctions. If, however, the organism which manifests these differences is a living organism, it will inevitably appear that the organism does not derive its true existence from such a manifold and its physical configurations. This is brought about by the fact that the different parts, which are apprehended by us through the senses, are at the same time conjoined together in one totality; they appear consequently as the members of one individual existence, which is a unity of such differences, and which not merely possesses them in their difference, but as parts of one homogeneous whole.

      (α) In the first place, however, this unity will assert itself as the purposeless identity of such differences, that is to say with no abstract relation to any causal end whatever. The parts in such a case are not rendered visible to sense merely as a means to or in the service of some defined purpose, nor are they able to fix the determinate relation of form and structure which they occupy one over against the other.

(β) Rather the contrary is the case, for, in the second place, the bodily members have for our sense-perception the appearance of being quite accidental in their form; in other words the determination of one appears to be quite indifferent to that of another. In other words, we can never conclude because one has a certain form another will have the same, as would be the case if a material uniformity was clear between them. Where uniformity is the rule an abstract determination of some kind of form, size, or whatever it may be, is the property of all parts. The windows of a building, for example, are all of one size, or at least are placed together in one row. Or we may illustrate the same similarity with the uniform worn by all soldiers belonging to one regiment. We have various parts of such clothing differing in colour, texture and the rest, but their formal opposition is no matter of chance; each has its causal connection with some other; it is there because the other is there. Neither is there here any complete distinction of form, nor any unique independence wholly asserted. With the individual organism of life the case is entirely otherwise. Here every part is absolutely distinguished; the nose from the forehead, the mouth from the cheek, the breast from the neck, the arms from the legs, and so on. Inasmuch as for our СКАЧАТЬ