Chapter 44 Part Three Revisiting the World as Appearance §44

What the above two arts do for the lowest grades of objectivity of the will, aesthetic horticulture does, to a certain extent, for the higher grades of the plant kingdom.The scenic beauty of a place depends largely on the abundance and variety of natural objects gathered here, and then on the striking classification of these objects, which are clear and orderly, but show appropriate mutual coordination and alternation.It is to these two conditions that the beauty of gardening is devoted, but far less capable of mastering its own material than architecture is, gardening is of limited effect.The beauty exhibited by gardening is almost entirely nature's, and gardening itself adds very little to nature.And, on the other hand, if the heavens were not fair, there would be little to be done in gardening; if nature were merciless and disserviceful, the achievements of gardening would be insignificant.

The vegetable kingdom is everywhere to be admired without the medium of art, but as an object of art it is chiefly the object of landscape painting.In this sphere with the vegetable kingdom is all the rest of ignorant nature. ——In still life sketches and painted simple buildings, ruins, church interiors, etc., the subjective aspect of appreciation is dominant, that is to say, our joy in this is not directly in grasping the concept of exhibition but rather in apprehending the subjective counterpart of the Idea, in pure and willless cognition; The complete silence of the will acquires at the same time a sympathy and an aftertaste, and it is for [our] total immersion of [our] knowledge in those inanimate objects, for the inclination—in this case, of A high degree of objectivity - essential to comprehend things.The effects of real landscape painting generally belong to this type, but because the ideas exhibited are already a higher level of objectivity of the will, the meaning of these ideas is much richer and the expressive force is much stronger, so the aesthetic feeling The objective aspect should be more prominent and balanced with the subjective aspect.Here pure knowledge itself is not quite the main thing, but the idea known, the world as representation operates with equal force on the more pronounced level of the objectification of the will [there].

But animal paintings and sculptures are exhibited on a much higher level.There are still quite a lot of animal sculptures left over from ancient times, such as horses, which are found on the horse mount in Venice and the reliefs of Erqin; there are bronze horses and marble horses in Florence, and there are ancient wild boars here. , howling wolves; in addition, there are carved lion statues in the Arms Exhibition Hall in Venice, and most of the entire hall in the Vatican is filled with ancient animals [carvings]; the list goes on and on.In these works, the objective aspect of aesthetic feeling has a decisive advantage over the subjective aspect.Here the subject who recognizes the idea has suppressed his will, but there is this tranquility of the subject—this is the case in any appreciation—but the appreciator does not feel the effect of this tranquility, because our mood [ In appreciating] has been occupied by the uneasiness and excitement of the will that unfolds before us.What appears before our eyes is the desire that constitutes our essence, but this desire appears in the [carved] form differently than it appears in us, not regulated by thinking, but in broad strokes in a kind of It is shown with an almost grotesque and brutal obviousness; but fortunately, it is also undisguised, innocent, frank, and undisguised, which is why we are interested in animals.In the painting of plants the racial traits are shown, but only in shape; in animals [sculpture] the traits are much more pronounced, and not only in form, but in action. , in posture, in posture, but always only of kind and not of individuality. ——The knowledge of higher ideas, which we receive in painting through the medium of others, is also directly accessible to us when we admire plants and observe animals, and if they are animals, they should be in them. Observe while uninhibited, natural and stretched.To observe objectively their variety and strange beauty of form and behavior is to learn an instructive lesson from nature and to recognize the true "mark of things."In these signs we see the various degrees and modes of will revealed, and yet in all living beings there is but one will, which desires the same thing everywhere, that is, so infinitely varied, so diverse in form and form. Objectify oneself as life, as what actually exists; [at the same time], all these forms are adaptations to different external conditions, comparable to many modulations of the same theme.If we are to give the spectator, for [his] reflective thinking, a single sentence to convey [our] understanding of the inner nature of flora and fauna, we would do well to use the phrase often found in Indian sacred texts called Maha Fagua, that is, the Sanskrit formula of the great mantra: "Tat, Duamen, Asi", which means: "Everything that has such a feeling. Nothing but you."