in all that he sings to us of his world, and where we are conscious of such intimacy in another we are infected with a like feeling, for we are here face to face with truth, with that spirit which lives in its world, and discovers therein its true being; and it does us good to feel this, inasmuch as the poet is himself present therein heart and soul. Such a world may, indeed, belong to a less advanced stage of evolution and culture than our own; but at least it does remain faithful to that of a poetry and beauty which is open to all, so that we essentially recognize and understand here everything which our higher life, our humanity in its fundamental demands, whether it be the honour, the opinions, the emotions, the exhortation, or the exploits of each and every hero; and we are able to enjoy such characters, in all the detail of their portraiture, as themselves united to such a life and the richness of its actual presence. (_ββ_) But on account of the emphasis upon the objective independence of this whole, it is a further necessary contrast that the poet fall into the background and become lost in his _subject_. What is to appear is the creation, not the poet; and yet withal, that which the poem expresses belongs to him. He has imagined all in his mind's eye; he has implanted there his soul, his genius. All this, however, is not expressly asserted. So we find, for instance, that at one time a Calchas will give the outline of events; at another, a Nestor. Yet, for all that, such interpretative matter is the gift of the poet himself. Nay, actual changes in the soul-life of his heroes he explains in objective fashion as an entrance of gods upon the scene, as in the case where Athene appears before Achilles in his rage, counselling self-restraint. And inasmuch as the Epos does not disclose the soul-life of the creator, save indirectly, but the positive facts of external life, the subjective aspect of his creations must completely fall into the background, no less than the creator himself vanish behind the world he unfolds to our vision. From this point of view a great epic style makes the work appear to be itself its own minstrel. It seems to pass before us self-begotten, a work of independent birth.