The name is absent

52 The Rice Institute Pamphlet

that although it preserve its peculiar nature, yet its place is
below another activity of superior dignity, and (as used at
one time to be said) that it is a handmaid to ethic, a minister
to politics, and a dragoman to science; but this would only
prove that there are people who have the habit of contra-
dicting themselves or of allowing discord among their
thoughts : dazed folk whose existence truly does not call for
any sort of proof. For our part, we shall take care not to fall
into so dazed a condition; and having already made clear
that art is distinguished from the physical world and from
the practical, moral, and conceptual activity as intuition, we
shall give ourselves no further anxiety, and shall assume that
with that first demonstration we have also demonstrated
the independence of art.

But another problem is implicit in the dispute as to de-
pendence or independence; of this I have hitherto purpose-
ly not spoken, and I shall now proceed to examine it. Inde-
pendence is a concept of relation, and in this aspect the only
absolute independence is the Absolute, or absolute relation;
every particular form and concept is independent on one
side and dependent on another, or both independent and de-
pendent. Were this not so, the spirit, and reality in general,
would be either a series of juxtaposed absolutes, or (which
amounts to the same thing) a series of juxtaposed nullities.
The independence of a form implies the matter to which it
is applied, as we have already seen in the development of
the genesis of art as an intuitive formation of a sentimental
or passionate material; and in the case of absolute independ-
ence, since all material and aliment would be wanting to it,
form itself, being void, would become nullified. But since the
recognised independence prevents our thinking one activity
as submitted to the principle of another, the dependence

<<   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   >>

More intriguing information