(_αα_) This purposed object, which is infused with the vital principle of individuality on the lines of which, regarded in its particularized content, the entire process moves forward, must further, as already ascertained, appropriate to itself in the Epos the form of an _event_. It will be therefore above all important to recall at once the specific character of the mode, under which human volition and action generally combine in what we designate as the event. Now, in the _first_ place, action and adventure are the outcome of conscious life, the content of which is not only ideally expressed in emotions, reflections, and thoughts, but also quite as much in a practical way. We may regard such realization from two distinct points of view. _First,_ we have the ideal substance of the end presupposed and purposed, the general character of which the individual must recognize, will, calculate and accept. _Secondly_, there is the external reality of the spiritual or human and the natural environment, within which he is only able to act, and the accidental features of which at one time obstruct and at another assist his path; so that either in the one case he is carried forward by virtue of this favour to a successful issue, or, if in the other he is not prepared wholly to give way to such opposition, he finds it necessary to overcome them with his individual energy. If now the world covered by this volitional power is conceived as the indivisible unity of these two aspects, with the result that the right of assertion by both is equally asserted, in that case what is most pertinent to conscious life likewise enters into the formal structure of the event, the form, that is, which confers on all human action the _configuration of events_, in so far as the conscious or subjective will, with its purposes, motives of passion, principles and aims, can no longer appear the fact of most importance. Or, in other words, in human _action_ everything is referred back to human personality, personal obligation, opinion and intention. In the case of the _event_, on the contrary, the external constitution of things is permitted to assert its inviolable claim. Here it is objective reality itself, which constitutes either the form assumed by the whole, or from another point of view a fundamental part of the content. In agreement with such a view I have already stated that it is the function of epic poetry to demonstrate the _happening_ of an action, and thereby not only to establish the external disposition of the execution of ends, but also to meet as readily the claims of external condition, natural occurrences, and all else of a contingent character, which, in action taken simply as such, the ideal element of conscious life claims exclusively as its province.