52 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



The first step in this process is a sensuous knowledge in 

 which the Absolute is seen and felt : this is the region 

 of Art; in this region the Idea becomes the Ideal of 

 which Art is the representation or embodiment. In the 

 second stage, that of Keligion, the sensuous or outward 

 representation appears inadequate, and is accordingly 

 abandoned. The Absolute, or Idea, has become an object 

 of thought to which no external representation but only 

 a mental presentation is adequate and sufficient. 1 The 

 Idea has receded from the external world into the inter- 

 nal world of the mind, where it occupies a position in 

 the region of feeling and undefined thought. 2 The last 



1 This way of putting it corre- 

 sponds to the maturer form of 

 Hegel's philosophy. In the ' Phen- 

 omenology,' his first great work 

 which really contains the entire 

 programme or sketch of his system, 

 Art is not kept in the same way 

 separate as it is later on. It is 

 there only incompletely treated 

 under the section of Religion, 

 Hegel having, as Kuno Fischer has 

 pointed out, at that time which 

 coincides with his intimate friend- 

 ship with the poet Holderlin 

 before his mind mainly the spirit 

 and religion of Grecian antiquity. 

 Much difficulty exists in rendering 

 in English the terms which Hegel 

 employs in his description of the 

 development of Mind or Spirit. To 

 this I referred already on a former 

 occasion (vol. iii. p. 466, n.) At 

 present it is mainly the use of the 

 word Vorstdlung that I have in 

 view. It is usually translated in 

 English by "presentation," and 

 this term, if distinguished from 

 "representation," denotes pretty 

 fairly what, in the German lan- 

 guage, would distinguish Vorstd- 

 lung from Darstdluftg ; Hegel's 

 meaning would probably be this, 



that in Art the Idea, or the truly 

 Real, finds a representation (Dar- 

 stellung), and rises in the higher 

 forms of religion to a presentation 

 or Thought ( Vorstdlung). 



2 Hegel, in speaking of religi- 

 ous, as differing from philosophic, 

 thought, uses the word Vorstdlung 

 in contradistinction to the word 

 Begriff. In this way Vorstdlung 

 forms, as it were, the intermediate 

 term between what can be pre- 

 sented to the senses on the one 

 side and what can be conceived by 

 the intellect in the most abstract 

 form as logical Idea on the other. 

 The content of religious thought is 

 thus more spiritual than what can 

 be expressed in Art, under which 

 term Hegel thinks primarily of the 

 plastic, the fine, and the dramatic 

 Arts. But it is less definite and, 

 as his whole philosophy implies, 

 less satisfactory to the modern 

 mind than what he terms the 

 scientific notion. For in his sys- 

 tem the attempt of the Contin- 

 ental mind to establish a creed 

 at once spiritual and reasoned has 

 attained its climax and consum- 

 mation. Anything that has been 

 done since in this direction, either 



