The Philosophy of Fine Art. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

so far as that form unfolds what is essentially uniformity, and thereby passes beyond the mere characteristics of equality and repetition. But in doing this the distinctions of quality assert themselves not only in their difference of opposition and contradiction, but in aspects of a unity that rivets them together, a unity in which all distinguishing features, it is true, are maintained in their proper place, but still only as belonging to one single whole. This unity of accordance is what constitutes harmony. We may either regard it as a totality of aspects essentially distinct, or as the resolution of the element of mere contradiction asserted by them, revealing their more vital interconnection and ideal solidarity. In this sense we refer to the harmony of form, or colour, or musical tone. As an example, we have blue, yellow, green, and red as the fundamentally necessary differentiation of colour253.

In these irresolvable data of the spectrum we have not merely the inequality we found in symmetry, but contradictory opposites, such as yellow and blue, their neutralization and withal concrete identity. The beauty of their harmony is revealed in the avoidance of their crude opposition, which is softened thereby in such a way as to put before us the concordance hidden beneath their difference. They do, in fact, emanate from one source, namely colour, which is not an abstract conception254, but an essential totality. So far, indeed, can the compulsive force of such totality carry us, that we can, as Goethe has pointed out, when we have but one colour presented to us, still subjectively recognize another at the same time. In the same way the tonic, mediant, and dominant are essential distinctions among musical tones, which the unity of harmony associates through their difference in one whole. We may submit the harmony of form, which is differentiated through the varied aspects of position, repose, and motion to a similar analysis. If we suffer any one of the subordinate distinctions to assume an exclusive predominance the unity which relates them will be destroyed.

Harmony, however, is not to be confused with free ideal subjectivity and soul-life. In the latter the unity manifested is not merely an interconnection and concordance, but a positive negation of difference, which, for the first time, reveals their concrete and ideal unity. A concrete unity such as this is not the result of harmony. Such concrete unity is, for example, that which we find in the actually melodious thing[255], which no doubt possesses harmony as its fundamental form, but at the same time possesses the higher characteristic of free subjectivity, and by means of song gives expression to that. Harmony alone has nothing to do with the appearance of subjective life, as such, nor of that of mind, although it is the highest manifestation of abstract form, and stands in close affinity to free subjectivity. Such, then, is our determination of abstract unity as we find it brought before us in the specific modes of abstract form.

      2. BEAUTY AS ABSTRACT UNITY OF THE MATERIAL MEDIUM

The side of abstract unity which we have now to consider is not that directly related to form, but to the sensuous material simply in which it is asserted. The unity is manifested on this side as the entirely undifferentiated concordance of the particular sensuous material. It is the one form of unity, which the material of sense, in its purely objective aspect, is capable of receiving. On this plane and under the above noted relation256 the abstract purity of the materia in its form, colour, or tone constitutes what is most essential to it. Entirely straight drawn lines, which run without a shadow of difference in their straightness or strength, bare superficies and similar examples please us by virtue of their persistent regularity and their uniform homogeneousness. The purity of the heavens, the translucence of the atmosphere, a mirror-like lake the smoothness of the ocean's face, all give pleasure by virtue of this unity. We find the same truth brought home to us by purity of tone. The voice when purely produced, though taken quite by itself, possesses an attraction for us inexpressibly delightful; vocal notes which are not thus pure on the contrary, by permitting us to hear the organ of production along with them, disturb or weaken the pure resonance and definition of their music. In much the same way human speech possesses pure tones in its vowels, a, e, i, o, u, and its compound vowels, ae, ü, and ö. Popular dialects are particularly characterized by impurity of vocalization and mediate tones such as oa. Purity of tones consists further in this that the vowels are associated with consonants, whose sound does not tend to blurr the sonority of the vowel tones, as is too frequently the case with our northern languages, when contrasted with the way in which their purity is preserved by the Italian, a characteristic which makes that language so adaptable to singing. We experience an enjoyment of similar nature through the sight of colour in its simplest purity of tint, an absolutely pure red or blue for example, not by any means a common occurrence, such pristine colours being often weakened through the addition to them of yellow or tints of each other257. Violet can no doubt appear to us as a pure colour, but only in an external object, not, that is to say, as a compounded colour258, for it is not itself an elementary colour belonging to colour's essential differentiation. It is these elementary or cardinal colours, easily recognized by sense in their purity, which, on account of their crude opposition, are most difficult to unite together in harmony. Colours, on the contrary, which are blurred in their transparency by many other tints, although not so antagonistic to general harmony, fail to give us such direct enjoyment from the very fact that the energy of opposition in them is weakened. Green, for instance, is a compound of blue and yellow, but it is the neutralization of these cardinal colours, and for that reason less attractive to us in its own purity than blue and yellow in their secure259 opposition. Such are the points of most importance we have to remark upon in dealing with the abstract unity of form no less than the simplicity and purity of the sensuous material. In whichever aspect we regard our subject-matter we have to review that which is by virtue of its abstract character destitute of life, and a unity with no true actuality. Ideal subjectivity is inseparable from this, and such is entirely absent from the beauty of Nature even at the highest potency of its manifestation. This essential defect points us imperatively forward to the Ideal, which Nature is unable to reveal to us, and in contrast with which the beauty of Nature appears as a subordinate mode.

      C. DEFECTIVE ASPECTS OF THE BEAUTY OF NATURE

      The true object of our inquiry is the beauty of art viewed as the only reality adequate to the Idea of beauty. We have hitherto treated the beauty of Nature as the first mode of the existence of the beautiful. We have now to inquire more closely into that which distinguishes natural beauty from that of art.

      As an abstract proposition we may affirm that the Ideal is beauty in its rounded completeness. Nature, on the contrary, brings before us beauty in its incompleteness. Such abstract predicates do not, however, help us much, for our real problem is rather to explain exactly what it is which makes the difference between the completeness of the one from the incompleteness of the other. Our inquiry therefore hinges on the question how it comes about that Nature is necessarily incomplete as a mode of beauty and how this incompleteness is asserted. When we have answered that we shall be in a better position to deduce both the necessity and essential significance of the Ideal.

      We have already in following the process of Nature up to its culminating manifestation in animal life drawn attention to the modes of beauty revealed in that process. It is now of the first importance that we fix our attention more definitely on the culminating phase of that evolution where we find subjectivity and individuality presented to us in the living organism.

We have already referred to the beautiful as the Idea in a manner identical to that we employ when we speak of the good and true as the Idea, in the sense, that is to say, where we characterize the Idea as the wholly substantial and universal, the absolute substance—with no sensuous material therewith—of reality, in short, the consistency of the world. Determined more strictly, however, as already pointed out, the Idea is not merely substantiality and universality, but the unity of the notion and its reality, just that, the notion revealed