(_γγ_) A third class of the ancient gods contains, it is true, neither personified potencies of Nature, as such, nor the might which next follows as lord over the particular elements of Nature in the service of the more subordinate human necessities, but is already contestant with that which is essentially in itself ideal, universal, and spiritual. What, however, is none the less lacking in the powers we have here to reckon with is spiritual individuality and its appropriate form and manifestation, so that they also more or less relatively to their operations keep a position which is more nearly akin to the necessity and essential being of Nature. In illustration of this type we may recall the conception of Nemesis, Dike, the Erinnyes, Eumenides, and Moirai. No doubt we find associated with these figures the determinate notions of right and justice; but this inevitable right, instead of being conceived and clothed in the essentially spiritual and substantive medium of social morality[165], remains either persistent in the universal abstract notion, or is related to the obscure right of that which is natural within the circle of spiritual connections, the love of kindred, for example, and its paramount claim, which does not appertain to Spirit in the open freedom of itself self-recognized; and consequently also does not appear as lawful right, but in opposition to this as the irreconcilable right of revenge. To bring the view of the above nearer I will merely draw attention to one or two ideas bound up with it. Nemesis, for example, is the might to humiliate the exalted, and to cast down the man all too fortunate from his lofty seat, and consequently to restore equilibrium. The claim or right of equilibrium is the purely abstract and external right, which, it is true, certifies itself as operative in the range of spiritual circumstances, and conditions, without, however, making the ethical organization of the same the content of justice. Another aspect of importance attaches to this circumstance, that the right of the family-condition is apportioned by the ancient gods, in so far as these repose on a condition of Nature, and thereby are in antagonism with the public right and law of the community. We may adduce the Eumenides of Aeschylus as the clearest illustration of this point. The direful maidens pursue Orestes on account of the murder of his mother, a murder which Apollo, the younger god, had directed, in order that Agamemnon, the slaughtered spouse and king, should not remain unavenged. The entire drama consequently is concentrated in a conflict between these divine Powers, which confront each other in person. On the one side we have the goddesses of revenge, the Eumenides; but they are called here the beneficent, and our ordinary conception of the Furies, into which we convert them, is set before us as rude and uncouth. For they possess an essential right thus to persecute, and are therefore not