We may in this place and from the point of view of the Ideal generally, and for the present wholly in an abstract and formal manner, assume that which we term symbolical in a specific art is its _incompleteness_; as, for example, we may so apply this term to an attempt of children to draw the human figure, or mould it from wax and clay. What they execute is to this extent merely a symbol, as it only _suggests_ the living reality it purports to exhibit, remaining, however, wholly unfaithful to the actual object and its significance. Art is consequently in the first instance hieroglyphical, no mere accidental and capricious mark, but a haphazard delineation of an object for the imagination. For this purpose a badly drawn figure suffices if it recalls that object it is intended to suggest. In a similar way piety is content with badly executed images, and still worships Christ, the Virgin, and any other saint in the most bungling counterfeit, although such images may merely derive such individualization purely from particular attributes conveyed by such means as a lantern or a mill-stone. For piety refuses to be reminded of aught save the object; the soul adds all else thereto, which will be filled up with an image of the object, however untrue the counterfeit may be. It is not the living expression of the present which is required; it is not that which is presented which is intended to enkindle us by itself. Rather a work of art of this kind already brings satisfaction if it excites the general concept of the objects by virtue of its images, however insufficient they be. A concept of this kind, however, already abstracts from the given content. I can readily imagine some known thing, such as a house, a tree, a man; but even in such a case, where the reference is to something quite determinate, the concept merely includes wholly general traits, and is in fact only a _true concept_[153] in so far as it has effaced from the concrete presentment the wholly immediate singularity of the objects and simplified the same. If the imaged concept, which the work of art has to arouse in us, is that of the divine nature, and if this has to receive recognition from an entire people, this object is especially attainable when no _alteration_ is allowed in the mode of presentation. For this reason art is on the one hand conventional, and on the other scholastic[154]; and this is so not merely in the case of the more ancient Egyptians, but also in that of more ancient Greek and Christian art. The artist in such case was bound to restrict himself to definite forms and to repeat their type.