nguish of Form.

Nature, from her first works, is throughout characteristic; the energy
of fire, the splendor of light, she shuts up in hard stone, the tender
soul of melody in severe metal; even on the threshold of Life, and
already meditating organic shape, she sinks back overpowered by the
might of Form, into petrifaction.

The life of the plant consists in still receptivity, but in what
exact and severe outline is this passive life inclosed! In the animal
kingdom the strife between Life and Form seems first properly to
begin; her first works Nature hides in hard shells, and, where these
are laid aside, the animated world attaches itself again through its
constructive impulse to the realm of crystallization. Finally
she comes forward more boldly and freely, and vital, important
characteristics show themselves, being the same through whole classes.
Art, however, cannot begin so far down as Nature. Though Beauty is
spread everywhere, yet there are various grades in the appearance
and unfolding of the Essence, and thus of Beauty. But Art demands a
certain fulness, and desires not to strike a single note or tone, nor
even a detached accord, but at once the full symphony of Beauty.

Art, therefore, prefers to grasp immediately at the highest and most
developed, the human form. For since it is not given it to embrace
the immeasurable whole, and as in all other creatures only single
fulgurations, in Man alone full entire Being appears without
abatement, Art is not only permitted but required to see the sum of
Nature in Man alone. But precisely on this account--that she here
assembles all in one point--Nature repeats her whole multiformity, and
pursues again in a narrower compass the same course that she had gone
through in her wide circuit.

Here, therefore, arises the demand upon the artist first to be true
and faithful in detail, in order to come forth complete and beautiful
in the whole. Here he must wrestle with the creative spirit of Nature
(which in the human world also deals out character and stamp in
endless variety), not in weak and effeminate, but stout and courageous
conflict.

Persevering exercise in the study of that by virtue of which the
characteristic in things is a positive principle, must preserve him
from emptiness, weakness, inward inanity, before he can venture to
aim, by ever higher combination and final melting together of manifold
forms, to reach the extremest beauty in works uniting the highes