It is true that sculpture in its complete plastic perfection accepts the gods as substantive potencies, and endows them with a form in whose beauty they in the first instance repose in security, for the reason that the accidental character, of their external envisagement is to the least extent emphasized. Their _multiplicity_ and _distinction_ does in fact, however, constitute this element of contingency, and thought annuls this in the determinate conception of _one_ divinity, through whose inevitable power they are mutually at war with and to the detriment of each other. For however universal the power of every particular god is conceived as specific individuality, such is of a restricted range. Add to this the fact that the gods do not continue in their eternal repose; they are self-determined relatively to particular aims in actual movement through their being drawn hither and thither by the pre-existing conditions and collisions of concrete reality, in order at one time to afford assistance and at another to obstruct or destroy. These isolated relations in which the gods as active individuals participate contain within them an element of contingency, which impairs the substantive nature of the divine, however much the same may persist as the predominant substratum, and involves the gods in the contradictions and conflicts of a limited finitude. By reason of this finiteness immanent in the gods themselves they fall into contradiction with the loftiness, worth, and beauty of their existence, through which, too, they are eventually brought down to the level of mere caprice and chance. The genuine Ideal evades the complete appearance of this contradiction simply and in so far as--this is preeminently the case in true sculpture and its particular creations as we find them in temples--the divine personalities are represented as explicitly alone in the repose of blessedness, yet retain, as we have already above indicated, a certain aspect of lifelessness, somewhat aloof from all emotion, and withal that quiet characteristic of pathetic lament. It is just this mournfulness which exposes their fate by demonstrating that something of higher import stands above them, and the passage from the particularities of form to their comprehending unity is a necessary one. If, however, we fix our attention on the type and configuration of this loftier unity we shall find that it is, as contrasted with the individuality and relative determination of the gods, the essentially abstract and formless--the necessity, the fate, which under this mode of abstraction the higher can only in general terms be, and which constrains both gods and men, while remaining in itself incomprehensible and inconceivable. Fate is not as yet absolute and self-subsistent end, and thereby at the same time subjective, personal, divine purpose, but merely the one and universal Power which transcends the particularity of the different gods, and consequently is unable to be presented itself as individual entity; because otherwise it would simply appear as one among many individuals, and would stand above them. For this reason it remains without form and individuality, and is in this abstraction merely necessity and nothing more; with which gods no less than men, when they differentiate themselves as separate from one another, contend. And thus they give effect to their individual power condemned though it be to limitations, and would fain exalt themselves over the bounds and warrant of Fate, though they are, in fact, its subjects, and are forced to hearken to all that unalterably befalls them.