Lecture (continued):

We have lost one or two hours already by the manifoldness of our discussion of religion and art, and especially by the showing of the pictures. But what I hope is that the gain was greater than the loss, because these pictures, which I hope you all remember, at least vaguely— or some of them, not only vaguely—have a great power of keeping us for the analysis of the present situation into which we have to go now. This analysis could have been given, as I said, already at the beginning of this whole course, but then it would have been a little bit abstract. Now since it is given between the two main parts—or better, in the connection with the transitory part, namely the theoretical and the practical side of culture—it is more filled with content for your mind, and especially since you have seen, in the visual arts, an expression of our time and the whole reality in which we are living.

One of the functions of art—and perhaps you remember that I said the main function of art is its revelation character and it reveals in unity two things: the human situation as such, or generally; and the special situation in which this general situation becomes concrete. This statement has more implications than it seems to have. These sociologists, anthropologists and Marxists who analyze a concrete situation only from the point of view of its historical reality would not accept my statement. They would say: what we can know of man is always limited to a concrete situation, let us say to the 20th century, and here again to a special period in this century and to a special place where this period takes place. If you follow this method, then you come to the point that you cannot say anything universally about man. And that is