Let us now proceed and figure to ourselves a father with his children, when first--let it have happened how it may--he discovers the serpents wound about him. There is only one moment of the highest interest,--when one of the figures is made defenseless by the pressure, the second can still fight, but is wounded, the third still retains a hope of escape. In the first condition is the younger son; in the second, the father; in the third, the eldest son. Seek now to find another, a fourth condition! Try to change the order of the _dramatis personae_! If we now consider the treatment from the beginning, we must acknowledge that it has reached the highest point; and in like manner, if we reflect upon the succeeding moments, we shall perceive that the whole group must necessarily be changed, and that no moment can be found equal to this in artistic significance. The youngest son will either be suffocated by the entwining serpent, or should he in his helpless condition exasperate it, he must be bitten. Neither alternative could we endure, since they suppose an extremity unsuitable for representation. As to the father, he would either be bitten by the serpent in other places, whereby the position of the body would be entirely changed and the previous wounds would either be lost to the beholder or, if made evident, would be loathsome, or the serpent might turn about and assail the eldest son, whose attention would then be turned to himself,--the scene loses its participator, the last glimpse of hope disappears from the group, the situation is no longer tragical, it is fearful. The figure of the father, which is now self-centred in its greatness and its suffering, would in that case be turned towards the son and become a sympathizing subordinate. Man has, for his own and others’ sufferings, only three sorts of sensations, apprehension, terror, and compassion,--the anxious foreseeing of an approaching evil, the unexpected realization of present pain, and sympathy with existing or past suffering; all three are excited by and exhibited in the present work, and in the most fitting gradations. Plastic art, laboring always for a single point of time, in choosing a subject expressive of pathos will seize one that awakens terror; while Poetry prefers such as excite apprehension and compassion. In the group of Laocoon the suffering of the father awakens terror, and that in the highest degree. Sculpture has done her utmost for him, but, partly to run through the circle of human sensations, partly to soften the effect of so much of the terrible, it excites pity for the younger son, and apprehension for the elder, through the hope that still exists for him. Thus, by means of variety, the artists have introduced a certain balance into their work, have softened and heightened effect by other effects, and completed at once a spiritual and sensuous whole.