subject-matter. The characters of the drama, on the other hand, are not so represented as in themselves the absolute crowning point of all the rest, which becomes objective in and through them. They rather are set forth independently and for themselves in their purpose, which they accept as the outcome of their character, or as the result of definite principles which have grown up in conjunction with their more isolate personality.
(_γγ_) There is a _third_ distinguishing feature in epic characterization due to the fact that the Epos does not portray an action simply as action, but an event. In drama the matter of importance is that the individual manifests himself as operative for his specific purpose, and is expressly represented in such activity and its consequences. This undeviating consideration for the realization of a distinct purpose is absent in the Epic. No doubt in this case, too, heroes have desires and aims, but the main thing here is all that they may happen to experience while fulfilling it, not the nature of their conduct in the carrying it out. The circumstances are just as active as themselves, frequently more active. The return to Ithaca, for example, is the actual project of Odysseus. The Odyssey, however, does not merely display this character in the active execution of his predetermined end, but expands its account into all the variety of occurrence which he happens to experience in his wanderings, what he suffers, what obstructions meet him in the way, what dangers he has to overcome, and all, in fact, that moves him. And this varied experience is not, as would be necessary in the drama, a direct result of his action, but is in great measure rather incidental to his journey, in the main even independent of the concurrent action of the hero. After his adventures with the Lotophagi, Polyphemus, and the Laestrygones, the godlike Circe detains him for a full year. Further, after he has visited the lower world and suffered shipwreck, he dallies with Calypso, until he falls into home-sickness, wearies of the damsel, and stares with tearful eyes over the solitary sea. Thereupon it is Calypso herself who finally provides him with the means wherewith he builds his boat, who provides him with food, wine and raiment, and takes her right anxious and kindly farewell of him. Finally, after his sojourn among the Phæacians, he is carried in sleep--he knows not how--to the shores of his island. To carry out a purposed end in this sort of way would not be possible for dramatic poetry. Again, in the Iliad, the wrath of Achilles, which, along with all else that results from this compelling force, constitutes the specific object of the narrative, is throughout not an end, but rather an emotional state. When Achilles is insulted he rages. In this condition, so far from doing anything truly dramatic, he withdraws apart, does nothing with Patroclus by the ships on the seashore, sullenly angry that he is not honoured by the lord of the folk. Then follow the consequences of his retirement, and only at last, when his friend has been slain by Hector, do we find Achilles once more plunge into the conflict. In another way, again, is the end prescribed to Æneas, which he has to carry out, where Virgil recounts all the events as the result of which its realization is in such varied ways postponed.
(_γ_) We have just one further important feature to mention in respect to the form of the event in the Epos. I have already observed that in the drama the conscious will, and that which the same demands and wills, is essentially the determining factor, and constitutes the permanent foundation of the entire presentation. All that is carried out appears throughout as posited already by the personal character and its aims; and the main interest above all turns upon the justification or its absence of what is done within the situations presupposed and the conflicts they bring about. If consequently it so happens also that in the drama the external conditions are themselves active, they nevertheless only retain their validity by virtue of that which conscious feeling and volition makes of them, and the ways and means under which character reacts upon them. In the Epos, however, the circumstances and external accidents are effective on level terms with the personal will itself. All that man accomplishes passes before us precisely as any other event of the world outside him, so that the human exploit is in this case likewise and equally conditioned, and must be shown to be carried forward by the development of such an environment. The individual, in short, in epic poetry does not merely act freely of himself and independently. He is placed in the midst of an assemblage of facts, whose end and actuality in its wide correlation with an essentially unified world of conscious life or objective existence supplies the irremovable foundation of the life of each separate individual. This typical system is, in fact, predominant in the Epos through all its content, whether in that of passion, determined result, or general achievement. It is true that at first sight we might expect that, on account of an equal cogency being accorded to external condition in its independent eventualities, we should find indisputable opportunity given for every shade of contingency. And yet we have seen that it is the function of the Epos to present what is truly objective--what is, in short, essentially substantive existence. The solution of this contradiction is to be found in this, that the principle of _necessity_ is involved in the events, whether taken in detail or generally.
(_αα_) In this connection we may affirm of the Epos--not, however, as is generally assumed of the drama--that _Destiny_ is a predominant force. No doubt the dramatic character by the kind of end accepted, which he endeavours to carry out despite all obstruction under the circumstances given and recognized, makes of _himself_ his Destiny; but in the Epos, on the contrary, it is _made for him_, and this force of circumstances, which stamp their particular form on the deed, apportions to each individual his lot, determines the result of his actions--is, in short, the genuine control of Destiny. What happens is appertinent to itself. It is so, and only thus; it is the fiat of necessity. In lyric poetry we are conscious of emotion, reflection, the personal interest, and yearning. The drama converts the ideal claim of human action into an objective presence. The presentation of epic poetry, on the other hand, moves, as it were, within the element itself of essentially necessary existence. Therefore, the individual has no choice but to follow this particular substantive condition; and, in its process of being, to adapt himself to it or not, and then to suffer as he is able and is forced to suffer. Destiny, in short, defines what is and inevitably must be, and in the result success, misadventure, life, and death are plastic precisely in the sense that individuals are plastic. What does actually unfold before us is a condition of universal expanse, in which the actions and destinies of mankind appear as something isolated and evanescent. This fatality is the great justice, and is not tragic in the dramatic sense of the term, in which the individual appears judged as a _personality_, but in the epic sense in which judgment is passed on man in all that concerns him.[16] The tragic Nemesis consists in this, that the greatness of his concerns is too great for the individual concerned. Consequently a certain tone of sadness[17] prevails over the whole. What is most glorious is seen very early to pass away. In the fulness of his life Achilles mourns over his death; and at the conclusion of the Odyssey we view him and Agamemnon as spirits that have passed away as shades, with the consciousness that they are shades. Troy, too, falls; old Priam is slain hard by the altar of the home; women and maidens become slaves. Æneas, in obedience to the divine command, departs to found a new kingdom in Latium, and the victorious heroes only return after manifold suffering to the happiness or bitterness that awaits them at home.
(_ββ_) This necessity of events may, however, be represented in very different ways.
The most obvious and least elaborate is the bare exhibition of such events without any further explanation of the poet of a necessary element existing in the particular occurrences and their general consequence by his addition of a controlling world of gods disclosed in the decision, interference, and co-operation of eternal powers. In such a case we must, however, have the feeling brought home from the entire atmosphere of the exposition, that in the recounted events and great life-destinies of single individuals and entire families or races, we are not merely confronted with what is mutable and contingent in human existence, but with destinies which have an essential foundation, whose necessity remains, however, the obscure operation of a power which is not placed before us poetically as such a power in its divine controlling energy to the point of defined individualization and in its explicit activity. The Niebelungenlied retains this general tone strongly, albeit it does not ascribe the direction of the blood-stained final result of all committed deed either to Christian Providence or the pagan world of gods. For in regard to Christendom, we merely hear of churchgoing and mass. We have, indeed, the remark of the bishop of Spejevs to the beautiful Ute, when the heroes withdraw into king Etzel's country: "Please God, He will keep them there!" We have also no doubt dreams of warning, the prophecy of the Danube maidens to Hagen, and other examples of a similar kind, but no really conclusive witness to the control and interference of gods. This leaves an impression on this poetry as of a something unriddled, unyielding, a mournfulness that is at the same time objective, and consequently wholly epic in its tone. It is a great contrast to the poems of Ossian, in which in the same way no gods appear, yet in which, on the other hand, we find lamentation over the death and downfall of the entire heroic stock presented under the form of the private sorrow of the dismayed minstrel, and as the yearning of a woe-begone recollection.
Essentially distinct from the above type of conception is the complete interlacement of all human destiny and natural event with the resolution, volition and action of a many-sided world of gods such as we find in the great Hindoo Epopees, and in Homer, Virgil, and others. I have already expressly drawn attention to the varied poetic interpretation which the poet himself supplies of events, which are apparently accidental, through his assumption of the co-operation and apparition of gods, and attempted to enforce the same by particular examples from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Here we may observe that the condition of most importance to the poetry in question is that in this reciprocal action of gods and men the relative independence of both aspects is maintained, so that neither the gods fall into lifeless abstractions, nor the human individuals become purely subservient vassals. How such a danger is to be avoided I have already discussed at length in a previous passage. The Hindoo Epos is in this respect unable to force its way fully to the truly ideal relation between gods and mankind; on such a stage of imaginative symbolism the human aspect still remains aloof in its free and beautiful actuality, and the activity of individuals in part appears as the incarnation of gods, and in part, as something of more incidental merit, vanishes, or is depicted under the guise of ascetic exaltation to the condition and power of gods. Conversely the variously personified powers, passions, genii, angels, and so forth, that we meet with in Christendom possess for the most part too little individual independence, and consequently tend only to affect us in a cold and abstract sort of way. The case is much the same in Mohammedanism. Through the deification of Nature and the world of mankind, through the conception of a prosaic co-ordination of reality, it is hardly possible to avoid the danger, more particularly where we enter a region of fairyland, wherein a miraculous interpretation is given to that which is essentially contingent and indifferent in external circumstances, which are themselves only present as a simple occasion for human action and as the ordeal of individual character, without possessing therewith an ideal consistency and foundation. By reason of this no doubt the infinitely extensible connection of cause and effect is broken, and the many sections in this prosaic concatenation of circumstances, which cannot be throughout made clearly distinct, are brought all of a sudden into one union. If, however, such a result is secured without the principle of necessity and ideal reasonableness, such a mode of elucidation, as, for example, frequently in "The Thousand and one Nights," appears as little more than the sport of an imagination, which endeavours to unfold as causality possible and actual, by means of such inventions, what is otherwise incredible.
The fairest mean, on the other hand, in this respect is that retained by Greek poetry, inasmuch as it is able to bestow both on gods and men a reciprocally indestructible power and freedom of independent individuality. And such is harmonious with its fundamental standpoint.
(_ββ_) There is, however, particularly in the epic conception of it, a point of view relative to the collective world of gods, which I have already referred to above in another connection. This is the contrast which the _primitive_ Epopee presents to the _artificial_ composition of later times. This difference is very pronounced if we compare Homer and Virgil. The level of education, from which the Homeric poems originated, still continues in a fair harmony with the poetic subject-matter. With Virgil, on the contrary, we are reminded by every single hexameter that the general outlook of the poet is totally different from the world, which it is his endeavour to depict; and the gods more particularly have lost the freshness of their original vitality. Instead of being living persons in their own selves, actual witnesses to us of their existence, they have rather the appearance of being mere creations of the poet and external instruments, which it is neither possible for the poet or his audience to take quite seriously, although there is an open pretence made that they have been taken thus seriously. Throughout the whole of the Virgilian Epic we feel ourselves in the atmosphere of ordinary life; the old tradition, the saga, the fairyland of poetry enters with prosaic distinctness into the frame of our common-sense faculties. What we have in the Æneid is very much what we find in the Roman history of Livy, where ancient kings and consuls make speeches, precisely as an orator made his speech in the Agora of Rome, or the school of the rhetoricians in the days of Livy himself. And, on the other hand, in what is really retained from tradition, as an example of primitive speech, such as the fable of Menenius Agrippa[18] about the functions of the belly, we find a contrast which is almost repulsive. In Homer, however, the gods are wafted in a magical light between poetry and reality: they are not permitted to approach the imagination so nearly, that the apparition of them confronts us with all the detail of ordinary life; nor are they left so undefined, that they lose all appearance of vital reality as we look at them. All that they do is readily explained by the soul-life and activities of men; and that which supports our faith in them is the substance and content upon which they essentially repose. From this point of view the poet, too, is thoroughly in earnest with his creations, though he treats with irony their form and external reality.
In agreement with this it appears that the ancients themselves believed in this external form merely as works of art, which receive their confirmation and significance as a gift of the poet. This light-hearted and human freshness of presentment, in virtue of which the gods appear human and natural, is one of the pre-eminent qualities of the Homeric poems. The divine figures of Virgil float before our vision as so many invented wonders, as members of an artificial system. Virgil has not wholly escaped the charge of mere travesty, despite his earnestness; nay, this earnest mien of his is rather the cause of it, and Blumauer's Mercury with his boots and spurs and riding-whip is not without its justification. There is no necessity for any one else to make the Homeric gods ridiculous. His own picture of them makes them quite ridiculous enough. Nay, in his own story the gods themselves have their laugh over the lame Hephestus, and over the cunning net in which Mars lies in company with Venus, to say nothing of the box on the ear that Venus gets, and the howl of Mars as he collapses. By means of these touches of natural lustiness and gaiety the poet at once liberates us from the external form which he set up, and enforces all the more emphatically our common human nature, which he values, and which suffers, however, the necessary and substantive power involved therein, and the faith in the same, to remain. But one or two more examples of similar detail. The tragic episode of Dido is so entirely to the modern colour, that it was able to inspire a Tasso with emulation, nay, even in part to a literal translation. Even nowadays the French are moved to something like ecstasy over it. And yet how totally different in their human naïveté, simplicity and truth are the Homeric narratives of Circe and Calypso. The contrast is the same in Homer's account of the descent of Odysseus into Hades. This obscure and twilight like retreat of the shades is shown us through a dusky cloud, in an intermingling of imagination and reality, which takes hold of us with astonishing force.
Homer does not suffer his hero to descend into any Underworld ready to hand. Odysseus himself digs a pit, and pours therein the blood of a ram he has killed; he summons the shades, which are then under constraint to circle round him, and bids some of them drink fresh blood that they may address him, and give him news, and drives away others with the sword as they throng round him in their thirst for life. Everything that happens here is bound up with the life of the hero, whose general demeanour is the reverse of the humble attitude of Æneas and Dante. In Virgil's account Æneas descends in the ordinary way; and the flight of steps, Cerberus, Tantalus, and all the rest leaves us with the impression of a definitely organized family establishment, quite to the pattern of an orthodox compendium of mythology.
With yet more force will this artificial _compôte_ of the poet appear as such rather than a work that springs naturally from the subject where we are already cognisant of the substance of the tale that is told us in its fresh and primitive form, or as actual history.
Examples of this are Milton's "Paradise Lost," the "Noachid" of Bodmer, Klopstock's "Messias," Voltaire's "Henriade," and others. In all these poems we cannot fail to detect a real cleft between the content and the reflection of the poet which modifies his description of the events, characters and circumstances. In Milton's case, for example, we find emotions and observations obviously the growth of an imagination and ethical ideas inseparable from his own age. In the same way with Klopstock we have God the Father, the history of Jesus Christ, patriarchs and angels combined with our German education of the eighteenth century, and the ideas of Wölffian metaphysic. This twofold aspect asserts itself in every line. No doubt in these cases the content itself offers many difficulties. For God the Father, the heaven of the angels, and the angelic host are far less adapted to the individualization of a free imagination than are the Homeric gods, which, in a manner similar to the in part fantastic creations in Ariosto, in their external mode of appearance, and so far as they do not epitomize[19] human action, but rather independently confront each other as individuals, do of themselves suggest the gibe over such a presentment.[20] Moreover Klopstock, so far as a religious outlook is concerned, introduces us to a world devoid of foundation, which he crowds with the brilliant effects of a rather exhausting imagination, and compels us to take everything as seriously as he means it himself.
This is particularly unfortunate in the case of his angels and devils.
Such creations only really have substance and can be brought home to us in their individuality in so far as the material of their actions, as with the Homeric gods, is rooted in the spiritual experience of humanity, or in a reality already known to us, as in cases where they claim importance as being the guardian spirits or angels of men or cities, but who, apart from such a concrete significance, assert what is just so much the more merely the vacancy of imagination in proportion as a serious actuality is ascribed to them. Abbadona, for instance, the repentant devil,[21] possesses neither a truly allegorical meaning--for in the abstract notion of devil there can be no inconsistency of guilt which can be converted into virtue--nor is such a figure one that is essentially and truly concrete. If Abbadona were a man, a conversion to God would no doubt be reasonable; but where we have evil regarded as something independently substantive, which is not an individual human evil, such a conversion is merely a triviality of sentimental emotion. It is in fact a distinguishing characteristic of Klopstock's invention that it creates such unreal personages, conditions and events, which have nothing in common with the actual world and its poetical content. And he fares no better in the machinery of his judicial condemnation of riotous living in high places, least of all in the contrast he presents to Dante, who condemns the famous personalities of his time to hell with a power of detailed realization of another type altogether. Equally destitute of real content as poetry is the joy of the resurrection among the assembled spirits of Adam, Noah, Shem, Japhet, and the rest, as depicted by Klopstock, who, in the 11th canto of the Messias, at the command of Gabriel, once more revisit their graves. Reason and rational ground are alike absent here. The souls have lived in the Divine Presence; they now behold the Earth, but they enter into no renewed relation with it. We may presume that they could not do better than appear to men; but of this there is not a single example. No doubt we find here beautiful emotions, endearing situations; and above all the moment in which the soul is once more united to a body is depicted in a way that arrests us; but the _content_ remains none the less an invention that possesses no real claim to credibility. In contrast to such abstract ideas the blood-drinking of the phantoms in Homer, their reanimation in memory and speech, possess for us infinitely more the truth and realization of ideal poetry. And though from the point of view of imaginative resource these pictures of Klopstock are decorative enough, what is most essential in them is throughout the lyrical rhetoric of angels, who appear merely as instruments of service, or of patriarchs and other Biblical figures whose speeches and harangues have little in harmony with their historical characters as we have received the same from tradition. Mars, Apollo, War, Knowledge, and so forth--powers of this kind are neither in respect to their content wholly inventions, as the angels are, nor are they simply historical persons borrowed from historical sources, as are the patriarchs; they are on the contrary permanent forces, whose _form_ and mode of appearance is alone the _poet's creation._ In the "Messias," however, admitting its excellence in certain directions--its purity of feeling, the brilliancy of its phantasy--yet it cannot be denied that by reason of the very type of such a phantasy we have here very, very much indeed that is hollow, without definite substance, and utilized simply as machinery for something else, all of which, combined with the absence of continuity in the content and its mode of conception, has even already covered the entire poem with oblivion. Things only live and remain green, which, essentially vital in themselves, unfold to us original life and activity in their pristine mould. For this reason we must hold fast to the primitive Epopees, and keep aloof, not only from modes of conception which are antagonistic to the actual presence which is vindicated in such, but also and above all from false aesthetic theory and predilection, at least if we are really anxious to enjoy and study the original world-outlook of nations, that great and spiritual[22] natural history. We have every reason to congratulate recent times, and our German nation in particular, that it is now on the road to the attainment of this object; that it has, in short, broken through the former obtuseness, of ordinary methods of thinking, and by its liberation of the mind from restricted views made it more receptive to ideas of the world which it is imperative that we as individuals enter into, and which alone are able to restore to us, to the full extent of their claim, the resurrected spirits of nations, whose ideal significance and deed thus appear struck into life in these their own Epopees.
(_c_) _The Epos as Unified Totality_ Hitherto, in considering the necessary qualifications of a genuine Epos, we have on the one hand discussed the _general_ world-environment and from a further point of view the nature of the particularized event transacted on such a background by _individuals_ either acting under the direction of gods or subject to destiny. These two fundamental aspects have yet further to coalesce in one and the same epic totality.
In respect to this I will merely confine the reader's attention to the following points of interest: In the _first_ place we propose to consider the _collective aggregate of objects_, a satisfactory exposition of which is necessary to disclose the connection between the particular action and the substantive ground referred to.
_Secondly_, we have to examine the nature of the difference which obtains between the epic mode of _disclosure_ and that of lyric or dramatic poetry.
_Thirdly_, we have to deal with the _unity_ in which an epic composition is rounded off despite all its breadth of extension.
(_α_) The content of the Epos, as already observed, is the entirety of a world in which an individual action is eventuated. In such a world the greatest variety of objects appear necessarily appertinent to the general views, deeds, and conditions of such a world.
(_αα_) Lyrical poetry is, no doubt, involved in definite situations, within which the subject of the lyric is permitted to import a great variety of content into its emotion and reflection. In this type of poetry, however, it is throughout the form of conscious life itself which characterizes such content; and for this reason excludes the outlook on the objective world in all its breadth of extension.
Conversely the dramatic composition presents us characters and the carrying out of the action itself with all the animated appearance of life, so that here, too, the portrayal of local accessories, the external form of the active personages and all that happens, in the nature of the case tends to disappear. As a rule, what we have to express is the soul-motive and purpose rather than its extensive relations with the surrounding world of objects, or a description of individuals in their positive appearance as part of them. In the Epos, however, quite apart from the national actuality in the widest sense, upon which the action is based, we must find room for the ideal or soul aspect no less than the external or world aspect. We have in this type, therefore, under review and in coalescence the entire totality of all that we may reckon as comprised in the poetic presentation of our human existence. In this content we must not merely include on the one side the natural environment in the sense of this or that specific locality in which the action takes place, but also the more universal objective outlook such as I have already pointed out is a feature we find illustrated in the Odyssey, enabling us to understand how the Greeks in the times of Homer regarded the shape of the Earth, the configuration of the seas, and similar geographical facts. At the same time these natural aspects are not the object of most importance in the poem; they are merely the foundation; there is, in short, the further and more essential aspect of the composition unfolded in the existence, activities, and co-operation of the entire world of divinities; and between these two extremes we have humanity simply as such in its collective relation to domestic, public, peaceful, and warlike situations, ethical habit, customs, characters and events. And, moreover, throughout we have to assume in both directions, whether that is from the point of view of the individual event, or the general condition, the all-embracing national and other actual complexus.
Finally, if we consider the nature of this intelligible content it is not merely an external _événement_ that is presented us, but in conjunction with such we must have, too, placed before us the ideal world of emotion, the aims and purposes of mind, all that may contribute to justify or condemn a deliberate line of conduct. In short, the real subject-matter of lyric and dramatic poetry is not wholly excluded, although in the epic type these aspects merely are valid as subordinate features; they do not, as in the former cases, constitute the essential form of the exposition, nor do they deprive the Epos of its distinctive character. We may consequently affirm that the distinctive note of the Epic is absent, when lyric expression determines both tone and colour, as is the case, for example, in Ossian, or when passages are emphasized in which the execution of the poet is made as consummate as possible, as is to some extent the case with Tasso, and to a still more marked degree characteristic of Milton and Klopstock. Emotions and reflections ought rather, no less than the portrayal of objective fact, to be transmitted as something done, already spoken and thought, and not interrupt the tranquil course of the Epic narrative. The incoherent exclamation of emotion, the direct outcry of the soul mainly intent with its utterance upon self-revelation, is out of place in such poetry. It will for the same reason and as strongly abstain from an imitation of the animation of dramatic dialogue, in which individuals carry on a conversation as though face to face with each other, where the aspect of most importance throughout is the contrast presented by different types of character in their interchange of speech as they strive to convince, command, impose upon, or passionately unravel their motives to one another.
(_ββ_) And, _secondly_, the Epos has not merely to bring before our vision the manifold content above described in its actually independent and subsistent objective form, but also the form in which it essentially becomes the Epos is, as I have more than once already described it, an _individual_ event. If this essentially limited action is to remain united with all other material introduced, this additional accretion of fact, must throughout be brought into definite relation with the course of the individual event, that is to say, it must not fall outside it as independent. We could not find a more perfect illustration of this interweaving of all threads than that of the Odyssey. The domestic arrangements of the Greeks, for instance, no less than the ideas we get of foreign and barbarous folk and countries, or of the realm of the shades, and much else, are so closely interwoven with the personal wanderings of the home-returning Odysseus and the fortunes of Telemachus on his journey after his father, that not one of these aspects of the tale is held in a loose and independent position apart from the main event, or, as with the chorus of tragedy, which does not usually enter into the action and merely deals with generalized reflections, is able to relapse inactive into retrospection, but co-operates in the actual progress of the event. In a similar manner Nature also and the world of gods for the first time receives, not so much on their own account as in their relation to the particular events, which it is the function of the godlike to direct, an individual representation and one of rich vitality. Only when such a condition is fulfilled, or, in other words, when the narrative throughout informs us of the progressive movement of the event, which the poet has selected as the unifying material of his composition, can it never appear as a mere portrayal of independent objects. On the other hand, the particular event for its part should not be involved in and absorb the substantive national basis and totality upon which it moves forward to such a degree, that these are themselves divested of all independent existence, and fall by necessity into a relation simply of service. In this respect the expedition of Alexander against the East would not supply satisfactory subject-matter for the true Epopee. An heroic exploit of this kind not merely in respect to the original resolve, but also to its manner of execution, depends so entirely on this _one_ single individual, his personality and character is so exclusively that which supports it, that we lose altogether the independent existence and self-assertion of the national basis, the host and its leaders, which we have shown to be a necessary condition. Alexander's army is his people, wholly bound up with him and his command: it follows him rather in the relation of vassalage than that of free will. In contrast to this the true vitality of the epic consists in this, that both these fundamental aspects, the particular action with its individual agents and the general world-condition, while no doubt continuing under a mediated relation, yet in this relation of reciprocity no less preserve their necessary independence and thereby enforce themselves as one existing whole, at the same time securing and possessing an independent entity.
(_γγ_) In a previous passage we laid it down generally that in order to have an individual action the substantive basis of epic poetry must offer the opportunity of collisions, and furthermore observed, that the general foundation must not appear as wholly independent but under the form of a specific event; we may now add that it is in this individual _événement_ that we must seek the point of _departure_ for the entire epic poem. This is pre-eminently of importance for the situations connected with its commencement. Here, too, we may take the Iliad and