(_αα_) In the first place we should draw attention to the possibilities of _extension_ within the range of the Epos. These are quite as much due to the form as they are to the content. We have already seen what a variety of objects may be comprised in the world of the Epic as fully elaborated, not merely in its ideal capacities, motives, and aim, but also in respect to its objective situation and environment. Inasmuch as all these aspects assume an objective form, an appearance of reality, each one of them takes to itself a form of essentially independent ideality and externality, in which the epic poet, either in his exposition or description, is permitted freely to linger, and to disclose in its positive appearance. The lyric, on the contrary, concentrates all that it lays hold of within the ideal realm of the emotions, or refines it away in the generalized vision of reflection. In the objective world it is the immediate complex in juxtaposition, or the varied wealth of manifold characteristics, which is presented us. In this respect we find that in no other type of poetry is the claim to introduce episodical matter, even to the point of to all appearance absolute independence, more indisputable than in the Epos. The delight, however, in actual fact for its own sake and in its natural form must, as already observed, not be carried so far as to import into the poem circumstances and facts which have no real connection with the important action. Such episodes must assert themselves as effective in the advance of such action, whether as events which are obstructive to its course, or assistant in their mediation. Yet, despite of this, the particular portions of the epic poem will be somewhat loosely bound together. This is a necessary result of the mode of its objectivity. For in what is objective mediation persists as the ideal essence; what in contrast to this confronts the external aspect is the independent existence of particular aspects. This defect in the direction of a stringent unity and the emphasized relation of specific portions of the epic poem, which, according to its primitive form, possesses moreover a primitive period of origination, has this result, that it lends itself more readily than lyric or dramatic compositions to subsequent additions and continuations; and, further, it is enabled to appropriate under its more recent and embracing whole even examples of the saga which have already received artistic expression of a definite, if not so exalted character.