for that reason, the subjective type of poetry is bound to find its own forms, in a province of its own, wholly independent of the Epos. In other words, the human spirit descends from the objectivity of the object into its own private domain; it peers into its particular conscious life; it endeavours to satisfy the desire to reproduce the presence and reality of _that_, as displayed in soul, in the experience of heart and reflected idea, and in doing so to unfold the content and activity of the personal life rather than the actual presence of the external fact. But, again, inasmuch as this expression, if it is not simply to remain the chance expression of mere individuality[1] in its immediate feeling and conception, must assert itself in speech as the reflection of an inner life that is _poetic_, all that is thus envisaged of feeling or otherwise--and however much, too, it may be a part of the poet's unique personality, and be presented by him as such--must nevertheless possess a universal validity, in other words, it must essentially include feelings and reflections for which the art of poetry is able to discover the vital and adequate means of expression. And although, apart from this, pain and desire, as conceived, described, and expressed in speech, may lighten the heart, and poetic ebullition is unquestionably permissible for such a purpose, yet its function is not restricted to such domestic service. Rather it has a nobler vocation, which is not so much to liberate the human spirit from emotion, but in the medium of the same. The blind tumult of passion surges on in a union with the entire soul-life unenlightened, unawakened to the grasp of mind. In such a state the soul cannot assert itself in idea and expression. It is the function of poetry no doubt to free the heart from such a prison house, in so far as it presents that life as an object to it. But it does more than this mere translation of content from the immediacy of emotional experience; it creates therefrom an object which is purified from all mere contingency of the passing mood; an object in which the soul-life in this deliverance returns once more to itself freely and with self-conscious satisfaction, and remains there at home. Conversely, however, this primary objectivisation ought not to be carried to the point of a reflection that actually discloses the individual activity of the soul-life and its passions as it is carried forward in practical impulse and _action_; in other words, in the self-return of the individual upon himself in veritable deed. For the most pertinent reality of our inner life is still itself an inward something, and consequently this passage from itself can only give us the _sense_ of deliverance from the immediate concentration of heart in its blind and formless presence, which now unbars itself in self-expression, and in doing so grasps and expresses what was previously merely felt in the form of a self-conscious vision and ideas.