So far as the _division_ of classical art is concerned it is usual in the more general sense of the term to call every complete work of art classic, whatever the particular character it may otherwise carry, whether symbolic or romantic. We have no doubt thus accepted it in the particular sense of art perfection, but with this important qualification, that this perfection must be based on the thorough interpenetration of ideal and free individuality and external definition. We consequently differentiate the classic form expressly from the symbolic and romantic, whose beauty in content and form is entirely of another kind. And along with the classic, regarded in its usual and more indefinite significance, we have as little to do here at this early stage with the particular arts in which the classical ideal is represented, as, for example, sculpture, the Epic, definite forms of lyrical poetry and specific types of tragedy and comedy. These particular types of art, although classic art is imprinted upon them, will be first discussed in the third portion of the division of our subject in the explication of the several arts and their grades[137]. What we approach more immediately now is the classic in the sense we have secured for the term, and as bases of our subdivision we can only therefore seek out the grades of evolution, which proceed from this notion of the classical ideal itself. The essential phases of this development are as follows.
The _first_ point to which we would direct our attention is this, that the classical type of art is not to be apprehended as was the case with the symbolic type as immediately primary, as art's _commencement_, but, on the contrary, as its _result._ We have evolved it, consequently, in the first instance from the course of the symbolic modes of representation, which it presupposes. The essential feature on which this process turned was the concentration of content in the elucidation of an essentially self-conscious individuality, which can neither employ for its expression the mere natural form, whether it be that of the elements or animals, nor the defective and confused personification of the human figure with it, but receives its expression in the animation of the human body permeated throughout with the breath of Spirit. Inasmuch, then, as the essence of freedom consists in this, to be that which it is through its own resources, that which in the first place appeared purely as the presupposition and condition of its origin outside the sphere of classical art must take its place within the circle peculiar to the same in order to make really visible the true content and the genuine form by means of the subjection of what is unconformable to and the negation of the Ideal. This process of conformation through negation, this process by means of which, whether we view it relatively to content or form, the genuine type of classical beauty begets itself from its own substance is consequently our point of departure, and we shall treat of that in our _first_ chapter.