Of still greater interest, albeit wholly involved in human feeling and action, is the contradiction which we have set before us in the "Antigone," one of the most sublime, and in every respect most consummate work of art human effort ever produced. Not a detail in this tragedy but is of consequence. The public law of the State and the instinctive family-love and duty towards a brother are here set in conflict. Antigone, the woman, is pathetically possessed by the interest of family; Kreon, the man, by the welfare of the community. Polynices, in war with his own father-city, had fallen before the gates of Thebes, and Kreon, the lord thereof, had by means of a public proclamation threatened everyone with death who should give this enemy of the city the right of burial. Antigone, however, refused to accept this command, which merely concerned the public weal, and, constrained by her pious devotion for her brother, carried out as sister the sacred duty of interment. In doing this she relied on the law of the gods. The gods, however, whom she thus revered, are the _Dei inferi_ of Hades[168], the instinctive Powers of feeling, Love and kinship, not the daylight gods of free and self-conscious, social, and political life. (_γ_) The _third_ point, which we would advert to in connection with the theogony of the outlook of artists in the classic period, has reference to the difference between individuals of the older gods relatively to their powers and the duration of their authority. (_αα_) In the first place, the origin of these gods is a succession. From Chaos, according to Hesiod, proceeds Gaia, Uranos, and others, after that Kronos and his race, finally Zeus and his subjects. This succession appears in one aspect of it as a rise from the more abstract and formless to the more concrete and already fairly defined powers of Nature; in another as the beginnings of the superiority of the spiritual over the natural. Thus in his "Eumenides" Aeschylus makes the Pythia in the temple of Delphi begin with the words: "First of all I revere in my prayer her who first gave us oracles, Gaia, and after her Themis, who as second after her mother had her prophetic seat in this place." Pausanias, on the other hand, who also names the Earth first as giver of oracles, says that Daphne was ordained by her afterwards in the prophetic office. In another series again Pindar places Night in the first place, after her he makes Themis follow, then comes Phoebe, and finally he closes the succession with Phoebus. It would be of interest to analyse more closely these particular differences; such an inquiry, however, lies outside our present purpose.