 The 1832–3 aesthetics lectures continue this sort of art-demoting project, but in a different way. Schleiermacher’s initial intention there, it seems, was to demote art (in comparison with religion) in two respects: First, as we saw, the lectures initially set out to give an account of non-linguistic arts (music, painting, and sculpture) that represents them as merely expressive of sensuous feelings and non-cognitive in character. Second, the lectures give an account of poetry that represents it as merely national and indeed individual in nature, not universal like science and (at least in a way) religion. Thus the lectures argue that art generally, and therefore poetry in particular, is national in nature, not universal, and more radically that it indeed has the function of expressing individuality, of resisting even the commonality of a national language (thereby making explicit a potential that is also present, though less fully realized, in normal language use).