and, more precisely still, as Spirit.  What he is as spirit appears to the religious consciousness as a Trinity of persons, which at the same time is One.  Here the essence of God is the reconciled unity of universality and particularity, such unity alone being concrete.  Hence, as a content in order to be true must be concrete in this sense, art demands the same concreteness; because a mere abstract idea, or an abstract universal, cannot manifest itself in a particular and sensuous unified form.

If a true and therefore concrete content is to have its adequate sensuous form and shape, this sensuous form must—­this being the third requirement—­also be something individual, completely concrete, and one.  The nature of concreteness belonging to both the content and the representation of art, is precisely the point in which both can coincide and correspond to each other.  The natural shape of the human body, for example, is a sensuous concrete object, which is perfectly adequate to represent the spiritual in its concreteness; the view should therefore be abandoned that an existing object from the external world is accidentally chosen by art to express a spiritual idea.  Art does not seize upon this or that form either because it simply finds it or because it can find no other, but the concrete spiritual content itself carries with it the element of external, real, yes, even sensuous, representation.  And this is the reason why a sensuous concrete object, which bears the impress of an essentially spiritual content, addresses itself to the inner eye; the outward shape whereby the content is rendered visible and imaginable aims at an existence only in our heart and mind.  For this reason alone are content and artistic shape harmoniously wrought.  The mere sensuously concrete external nature as such has not this purpose for its only origin.  The gay and variegated plumage of the birds shines unseen, and their song dies away unheard; the torch-thistle which blossoms only for a night withers without having been admired in the wilds of southern forests; and these forests, groves of the most beautiful and luxuriant vegetation, with the most odorous and fragrant perfumes, perish and waste, no more enjoyed.  The work of art is not so unconsciously self-immersed, but it is essentially a question, an address to the responsive soul, an appeal to the heart and to the mind.

Although the sensuous form in which art clothes its content is not accidental, yet it is not the highest form whereby the spiritually concrete may be grasped.  A higher mode than representation through a sensuous form, is thought.  True and rational thinking, though in a relative sense abstract, must not be one-sided, but concrete.  How far a definite content can be adequately treated by art and how far it needs, according to its nature, a higher and more spiritual form, is a distinction which we see at once if, for example, the Greek gods are compared with God as conceived