That most excellent critic,[6] to whom the gods have given sway over
Nature as well as Art, compares the Characteristic in its relation to
Beauty, with the skeleton in its relation to the living form. Were we
to interpret this striking simile in our sense, we should say that
the skeleton, in Nature, is not, as in our thought, detached from the
living whole; that the firm and the yielding, the determining and
the determined, mutually presuppose each other, and can exist only
together; thus that the vitally Characteristic is already the whole
form, the result of the action and reaction of bone and flesh, of
Active and Passive. And although Art, like Nature, in its higher
developments, thrusts inward the previously visible skeleton, yet the
latter can never be opposed to Shape and Beauty, since it has always
a determining share in the production of the one as well as of the
other.
But whether that high and independent Beauty should be the only
standard in Art, as it is the highest, seems to depend on the degree
of fulness and extent that belongs to the particular Art.
Nature, in her wide circumference, ever exhibits the higher with the
lower; creating in Man the godlike, she elaborates in all her other
productions only its material and foundation, which must exist in
order that in contrast with it the Essence as such may appear. And
even in the higher world of Man the great mass serves again as the
basis upon which the godlike that is preserved pure in the few,
manifests itself in legislation, government, and the establishment of
Religion.
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