c. THE ARTIFICER(9)

SPIRIT, then, here takes the form of the artificer, and its action, when producing itself as object, but without having as yet grasped the thought of itself, is an instinctive kind of working, like bees building their cells.

The first form, because immediate, has the abstract character of "understanding", and the work accomplished is not yet in itself endued with spirit. The crystals of Pyramids and Obelisks, simple combinations of straight lines with even surfaces and equal relations of parts in which the incommensurability of roundness is set aside--these are the works produced by this artificer, the worker of the strict form. Owing to the purely abstract intelligible nature of the form, the work is not in itself its own true significance; it is not the spiritual self. Thus, either the works produced only receive spirit into them as an alien, departed spirit, one that has forsaken its living suffusion and permeation with reality, and, being itself dead, enters into these lifeless crystals; or they take up an external relation to spirit as something which is itself there externally and not as spirit--they are related to it as to the Orient Light, which throws its significance on them.

The separation of elements from which spirit as artificer starts--the separation of the implicit essential nature, which becomes the material it works upon, and independent self-existence, which is the aspect of the self-consciousness at work-this division has become objective to spirit in its work. Its further endeavour has to be directed to cancelling and doing away with this separation of soul and body; it must strive to clothe and give embodied shape to soul per se, and endow the body with soul. The two aspects, in that they are brought closer to one another, bear towards each other, in this condition, the character of ideally presented spirit and of enveloping shell. Spirit's oneness with itself contains this opposition of individuality and universality. As the work comes closer to itself in the coming together of its aspects, there comes about thereby at the same time the other fact, that the work comes closer to the self-consciousness performing it, and that the latter attains in the work knowledge of itself as it truly is. In this way, however, the work merely constitutes to begin with the abstract side of the activity of spirit, which does not yet know the content of this activity within itself but in its work, which is a "thing". The artificer as such, spirit in its entirety, has not yet appeared; the artificer is still the inner, hidden reality, which qua entire is present only as broken up into active self-consciousness and the object it has produced.

The surrounding habitation, then, external reality, which has so far been raised merely to the abstract form of the understanding, is worked up by the artificer into a more animated form. The artificer employs plant life for this purpose, which is no longer sacred as in the previous case of inactive impotent pantheism; rather the artificer, who grasps himself as the self existent reality, takes that plant life as something to be used and degrades it to an external aspect, to the level of an ornament. But it is not turned to use without some alteration: for the worker producing the self-conscious form destroys at the same time the transitoriness, inherently characteristic of the immediate existence of this life, and brings its organic forms nearer to the more exact and more universal forms of thought. The organic form, which, left to itself, grows and thrives in particularity, being on its side subjugated by the form of thought, elevates in turn these straight- lined and level shapes into more animated roundness--a blending which becomes the root of free architecture.(10)

This dwelling, (the aspect of the universal element or inorganic nature of spirit), also includes within it now a form of individuality, which brings nearer to actuality the spirit that was formerly separated from existence and external or internal thereto, and thus makes the work to accord more with active self-consciousness. The worker lays hold, first of all, on the form of self-existence in general, on the forms of animal life. That he is no longer directly aware of himself in animal life, he shows by the fact that in reference to this he constitutes himself the productive force, and knows himself in it as being his own work, whereby the animal shape at the same time is one which is superseded and becomes the hieroglyphic symbol of another meaning, the hieroglyph of a thought. Hence also this shape is no longer solely and entirely used by the worker, but becomes blended with the shape embodying thought, with the human form.(11) Still, the work lacks the form and existence where self exists as self: it also fails to express in its very nature that it includes within itself an inner meaning; it lacks language, the element in which the sense and meaning contained are actually present. The work done, therefore, even when quite purified of the animal aspect, and bearing the form and shape of self-consciousness alone, is still the silent soundless shape, which needs the rays of the rising sun in order to have a sound which, when produced by light, is even then merely noise and not speech, shows merely an outer self, not the inner self.(12)

Contrasted with this outer self of the form and shape, stands the other form, which indicates that it has in it an inner being. Nature, turning back into its essen- tial being, degrades its multiplicity of life, ever individualizing itself and confounding itself in its own process, to the level of an unessential encasing shell, which is the covering for the inner being. And as yet this inner being is still simple darkness, the unmoved, the black formless stone.(13)

Both representations contain inwardness and existence--the two moments of spirit: and both kinds of manifestation contain both moments at once in a relation of opposition, the self both as inward and as outward. Both have to be united. The soul of the statue in human form does not yet come out of the inner being, is not yet speech, objective existence of self which is inherently internal,--and the inner being of multiform existence is still without voice or sound, still draws no distinctions within itself, and is still separated from its outer being, to which all distinctions belong. The artificer, therefore, combines both by blending the forms of nature and self-consciousness; and these ambiguous beings, a riddle to themselves--the conscious struggling with what has no consciousness, the simple inner with the multiform outer, the darkness of thought mated with the clearness of expression--these break out into the language of a wisdom that is darkly deep and difficult to understand.(14)

With the production of this work, the instinctive method of working ceases, which, in contrast to self-consciousness, produced a work devoid of consciousness. For here the activity of the artificer, which constitutes self-consciousness, comes face to face with an inner being equally self-conscious and giving itself expression. He has therein raised himself by his work up to the point where his conscious life breaks asunder, where spirit greets spirit. In this unity of self-conscious spirit with itself, so far as it is aware of being embodiment and object of its own consciousness, its blending and mingling with the unconscious state of immediate shapes of nature become purified. These monsters in form and shape, word and deed, are resolved and dissolved into a shape which is spiritual-an outer which has entered into itself, an inner which expresses itself out of itself and in itself,-they pass into thought, which brings forth itself, preserves the shape and form suited to thought, and is transparent existence. Spirit is Artist.

1. Primarily Oriental religion.

2. Parsee religion.

3. Term applied in e.g. Judaism and Mohammedanism.

4. Cp. Philos. Of Relig., W.W., XI, 403,404, 411.

5. Angels.

6. Cp. Ency., ¤ 389.

7. Primarily religions of India.

8. Sacred animals in Indian religion.

9. Egyptian religions.

10. The Egyptian columns and architecture.

11. The representations of the gods with forms half animal, half human.

12. The statues of Memnon which gave forth a moaning harp-like noise at sunrise.

13. The Black Stone of Mecca: a fetish still worshipped by the faithful.

14. Sphinxes.