(_α_) Such a primitive whole is the epic composition, whether known as the saga, the book, or the bible of a people. We may add every great and important nation can claim to have such primitive books, in which we find a mirror of the original spirit of a folk. To this extent these memorials are nothing less than the real foundations of the national consciousness; and it would be of profound interest to make a collection of such epic bibles. Such a series of Epopees, however much they fell short of artistic compositions in the modern sense, would at least present to us a gallery of the genius of nations. At the same time it is doubtless the fact that it is not every national bible which can claim the poetic form of the epopœa; nor do all nations which have embodied their most sacred memorials, whether in relation to religion or secular life, in the form of comprehensive compositions of the epic type, possess religious books. The Old Testament, for example, contains no doubt much epic narrative and genuine history, no less than incidental poetic compositions; but despite of this the whole is not a work of art. In a similar way the New Testament, as also the Koran, are mainly limited to a religious subject-matter, starting from which the life of the world at large is to some extent and in later times a consequence. Conversely, though the Hellenes have a poetic bible in the poems of Homer, they are without ancient religious books in the sense the Hindoos and the Parsees possess such. Where, however, we meet with the primitive epopoea, we must essentially distinguish between primitive poetic books and the more recent classic compositions of a nation, which do not any longer offer us a mirror of the national spirit in all its compass but do no more than reflect it partially and in particular directions. The dramatic poetry of the Hindoos, for example, or the tragedies of Sophocles present no such exhaustive picture as we find in the Ramajana and the Maha-Bharata, or the Iliad and the Odyssey. (_β_) And insomuch as in the genuine Epos the naïve national consciousness is expressed for the first time in poetic guise, the real epic poem will appear for the most part in that midway stage in which, though no doubt a people is aroused from its stupidity, and its life is to that extent essentially strengthened to the point of reproducing its own world and of feeling itself at home therein, yet, for all that, everything which at a later stage becomes fixed religious dogma or civic law and ethical rule, still remains in the fluency of life as mere opinion, inseparable from the individual as such. And along with this volition and feeling are not as yet held distinct from one another.