past Epopees, which have sought to depict the triumph of the West over the East, of the European principle of moderation, of the individually articulate and truly organic type of beauty over Asiatic splendour, over the magnificence of a patriarchal unity, which does not attempt to secure such organic completeness, or is at least merely held together by abstract and superficial conjunctions, if such, I say, should aspire to write the Epopee of the future, he will be necessarily restricted to the portrayal of the victory of some future and intensely vital rationality of the American nation over the prison-house of the spirit which for ever pursues its monotonous task of self-adjustment and particularization.[10] In the Europe of our day every nation finds itself conditioned[11] by its neighbour, and cannot venture on its own account to wage any war with another European nation. If we lift our eyes beyond Europe, there can be only one direction, America. (_b_) _The Individual Epic Action_ It is on such an essentially limited foundation then of conflict between entire nationalities that the epic event is realized, the leading characteristics of which we have now to determine. We may summarize the form we propose our investigation should take as follows: _First_, what actually takes place consists essentially in this that the object of the epic action ought necessarily to be of _individual vitality_ and definition, however much it may rest on a basis of the most general extension. _Secondly_, for the reason that it is only of individuals that we can predicate actions we have the problem to solve of the general nature of the epic _character_ or personality. _Thirdly_, in the epic eventuality the form of objectivity is not exclusively that of external appearance: it consists quite as much in the significance of all that is itself intrinsically necessary to and substantive in the exposition. We have consequently to determine the form in which this intrinsic significance of the occurrence proclaims itself as effective, either in part as the ideal necessity which is therein concealed, or as the disclosed direction[12] of eternal and providential forces. (_α_) We have postulated as a necessary background of this epic world an enterprise of national significance, in which the entire compass of a national spirit can express itself in the bloom and freshness of its heroic condition. From this fundamental substratum in its simplicity we now further assume the apparition of a _particular_ end, in the realization of which all other aspects of the national character, whether in belief or action, can be represented to our vision. The original postulate is in fact bound up in the closest way with such an all-embracing actuality.