 For Schlegel, in the same way as nature—the true experience of nature— cannot be reduced to its mere physical or external manifestations, both the work of art and the experience it evokes are more than just the simple perception or the analysis of its forms. Thus, he argues, the true work of art, in order to endure the shifting modes and fashions of time, must have something more profound than just a beautiful form, in the same way a flower needs its roots and cannot survive long without them. For Schlegel, as for Schelling or Novalis, the attempt to understand the work of art as the result of the conscious decisions of the artist alone would be misleading, because there is always an unconscious element in every artistic creation. The work of art is a result of both conscious and unconscious forces. In other words, the artist’s intention is, to a great extent, irrelevant for the artistic product, and hence, cannot play a major role in the evaluation of the work itself. In his Lectures on Dramatic Art, Schlegel defines genius as someone being capable of the “almost unconscious choice of the highest degree of excellence” (LDA: 5), and in an Athenaeum fragment he claimed that “it is a distinguishable mark of poetical genius to know a great deal more than he knows he knows” (SW: VIII, 15). This does not mean that any sign of an ‘unconscious’ choice in the production of art is a sign of genius; what is characteristic about the great artist is that his/her ‘unconscious’ choices seem attributable to a higher, divine and conscious force. The extent to which the artist is capable of transcending his/her more or less involuntary particularities, i.e., the extent to which his/her choices seem to derive from an unconscious ability to select always the highest degree of excellence, determines the difference between style and mannerism. When the work of art appears as if all its elements had been consciously chosen by a power above and beyond the artist, it has style; when the artist has not transcended his/her individuality, then s/he is categorized as mannerist (SW: III, 309–312).