becomes in turn only the husk and body
of a higher life; what was before a whole is treated as a part, and
the highest relation of Art and Nature is reached in this--that it
makes Nature the medium of manifesting the soul which it contains.

But though in this blossoming of Art, as in the blossoming of the
vegetable kingdom, all the previous stages are repeated, yet, on the
other hand, we may see in what various directions Art can proceed from
this centre. Especially does the difference in nature of the two
forms of Plastic Art here show itself most strongly. For Sculpture,
representing its ideas by corporeal things, seems to reach its highest
point in the complete equilibrium of Soul and Matter--if it give a
preponderance to the latter it sinks below its own idea--but it seems
altogether impossible for it to elevate the Soul at the expense of
Matter, since it must thereby transcend itself. The perfect sculptor
indeed, as Winckelmann remarks apropos of the Belvedere Apollo, will
use no more material than is needful to accomplish his spiritual
purpose; but also, on the other hand, he will put into the Soul no
more energy than is at the same time expressed in the material; for
precisely upon this, fully to embody the spiritual, depends his
art. Sculpture, therefore, can reach its true summit only in the
representation of those natures in whose constitution it is implied
that they actually embody all that is contained in their Idea or Soul;
thus only in divine natures. So that Sculpture, even if no Mythology
had preceded it, would of itself have come upon gods, and have
invented such if it found none.

Moreover as the Spirit, on this lower platform, has again the same
relation to Matter that we have ascribed to the Soul (being the
principle of activity and motion, as Matter is that of rest and
inaction), the law that regulates Expression and Passion must be a
fundamental principle of its nature.

But this law must be applicable not only to the lower passions, but
also equally to those higher and godlike passions, if it is permitted
so to call them, by which the Soul is affected in rapture, in
devotion, in adoration. Hence, since from these passions the gods
alone are exempt, Sculpture is inclined from this side also to the
imaging of divine natures.

The nature of Painting, however, seems to differ entirely from that of
Sculpture. For the former represents objects, not like the latter, by
corporeal things, but by lig