It is for the natural Spirit to exert its energies for the preservation of sensuous existence; the Soul enters not into this contest, but its presence moderates even the storms of painfully-struggling life.  Outward force can take away only outward goods, but not reach the Soul; it can tear asunder a temporal bond, not dissolve the eternal one of a truly divine love.  Not hard and unfeeling, nor giving up love itself, on the contrary the Soul displays in pain this love alone, as the sentiment that outlasts sensuous existence, and thus raises itself above the ruins of outward life or fortune in divine glory.

It is this expression of the Soul that the creator of the Niobe has presented to us.  All the means by which Art tempers even the Terrible, are here made use of.  Mightiness of form, sensuous Grace, nay, even the nature of the subject-matter itself, soften the expression, through this, that Pain, transcending all expression, annihilates itself, and Beauty, which it seemed impossible to preserve from destruction when alive, is protected from injury by the commencing torpor.

But what would it all be without the Soul, and how does this manifest itself?

We see on the countenance of the mother, not grief alone for the already prostrated flower of her children; not alone deadly anxiety for the preservation of those yet remaining, and of the youngest daughter, who has fled for safety to her bosom; nor resentment against the cruel deities; least of all, as is pretended, cool defiance-all these we see, indeed, but not these alone; for, through grief, anxiety, and resentment streams, like a divine light, eternal love, as that which alone remains; and in this is preserved the mother, as one who was not, but now is a mother, and who remains united with the beloved ones by an eternal bond.

Every one acknowledges that greatness, purity, and goodness of Soul have also their sensuous expressions.  But how is this conceivable, unless the principle that acts in Matter be itself cognate and similar to Soul?

For the representation of the Soul there are again gradations in Art, according as it is joined with the merely Characteristic, or in visible union with the Charming and Graceful.

Who perceives not already, in the tragedies of AEschylus, the presence of that lofty morality which is predominant in the works of Sophocles?  But in the former it is enveloped in a bitter rind, and passes less into the whole work, since the bond of sensuous Grace is still wanting.  But out of this severity, and the still rude charms of earlier Art, could proceed the grace of Sophocles, and with it the complete fusion of the two elements, which leaves us doubtful whether it is more moral or sensuous Grace that enchants us in the works of this poet.

The same is true of the plastic productions of the early and severe style, in comparison with the gentleness of the later.