on the ideal in action must appear as
the manifestation of moral power, and in action, properly so called, it
must contain three points in the ideal: first, general principles;
secondly, personages; thirdly, their character and their passions. Hegel
winds up by considering the qualities necessary in an artist:
imagination, genius, inspiration, originality, etc.

A recent exponent of Hegel's aesthetical ideas further developed
expresses himself thus on the nature of beauty:--

"After the bitterness of the world, the sweetness of art soothes and
refreshes us. This is the high value of the beautiful--that it solves
the contradiction of mind and matter, of the moral and sensuous world, in
harmony. Thus the beautiful and its representation in art procures for
intuition what philosophy gives to the cognitive insight and religion to
the believing frame of mind. Hence the delight with which Schiller's
wonderful poem on the Bell celebrates the accord of the inner and outer
life, the fulfilment of the longing and demands of the soul by the events
in nature. The externality of phenomena is removed in the beautiful; it
is raised into the circle of ideal existence; for it is recognized as the
revelation of the ideal, and thus transfigured it gives to the latter
additional splendor."

"Thus the beautiful is active, living unity, full existence without
defect, as Plato and Schelling have said, or as recent writers describe
it; the idea that is quite present in the appearance, the appearance
which is quite formed and penetrated by the idea."

"Beauty is the world secret that invites us in image and word," is the
poetical expression of Plato; and we may add, because it is revealed in
both. We feel in it the harmony of the world; it breaks forth in a
beauty, in a lovely accord, in a radiant point, and starting thence we
penetrate further and yet further, and find as the ground of all
existence the same charm which had refreshed us in individual forms.
Thus Christ pointed to the lilies of the field to knit His followers'
reliance on Providence with the phenomena of nature: and could they jet
forth in royal beauty, exceeding that of Solomon, if the inner ground of
nature were not beauty?

We may also name beauty in a certain sense a mystery, as it mediates to
us in a sensuous sign a heavenly gift of grace, that it opens to us a
view into the eternal Being, teaching us to know nature in God and God in
nature, that it brings the divine