The Philosophy of Fine Art. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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 sense-perception every member possesses its unique form rather than one which belongs to another, or one which is determined by that of another, the members appear as self-subsistent parts, and for this reason free and spontaneous227. For the material juxtaposition of the parts alone throws no light upon their particular form.

(γ) Thirdly, it is obvious there must be for our imaginative perception a more inward bond of connection present in the self-subsistence of the organism, if the unity is not offered us in its rational, spatial, temporal, or quantitative relations such as are presented in the examples of uniformity referred to, which, as we have seen, the unique particularity of the parts can extinguish. This identity is not sensuous and immediately present to perception in the way the distinction between the members is presented; it is rather a secret and inward bond of necessity and harmonious relation between the members and their form. If it were only inward, quite out of reach of our vision, such a necessary unity would be apprehended only in thought, removed from our sense-perception altogether. In such a case, however, it would fail to enter into the beautiful object of our vision, and what we found as such in the living, object would cease to be the Idea in its own objective and phenomenal reality. Such a unity must consequently enter into what is externally perceived, although it is, as the ideal principle of life within it, not entirely apparent to sense or confined in spatial dimensions. It appears in fact in the individual totality as the universal ideality of its members, constituting thus the fundamental basis which supports and holds them together, the subject of the living subject. And this subjective unity in organic life finds its first direct expression in feeling. In the emotional life the Soul finds its true expression as Soul. For soul the mere juxtaposition of limbs have no real truth, and in the presence of its subjective ideality the purely spatial multiplicity of external configuration ceases to exist. Such a manifold, with its unique differentiations, its organic articulation of parts228 is no doubt presupposed; but when and in so far as the soul expresses itself through such in feeling the more inward unity ever-present to life asserts itself equally as the dissolution of all absolute independence between the physical parts, which reveal now not merely their materia, but also that wave of animation which fuses all in their soul.

      (c) To start with, however, we must observe that the emotional expression of soul-life neither offers us the visual impression of any necessary inter-dependence between the separate members, nor indeed the perception of an identity which is necessary between such physical articulation and the subjective unity conferred on it by simple feeling. We will investigate this more narrowly.

(α) If indeed the form and only the form renders in some way visible this inward harmony and its necessity, it may be because we look upon this juxtaposition as the habitual relation of such members, a connection which brings to our view some specific type and the oft-repeated formal exemplifications of such a type. But the necessity of custom is after all only a subjective necessity.229 According to such a principle we may find certain animals ugly for no other reason than that we find in them an organism which differs from our ordinary experience, or runs contrary to it. For this reason we call the organisms of certain animals bizarre in so far as the way in which their organs are related together is foreign to what is more common to our experience or entirely contradicts it. Fishes whose bodies are in size out of all proportion to their length of tail, or those in which we find eyes together on one side of the head only, are an example. In the world of plants we are already prepared to find many such strange departures from type, although the cactus with its spines, and the more rectilinear shaping of its angular junctures230 may still arouse our wonder. The more a man is educated, however, in all branches