quality of which there is no fixed standard of comparison, because such is too far removed from our common humanity. When we consequently, in more recent times, are made acquainted with the songs of the Iroquois, the Esquimaux, and other wild nationalities, the circle of a true poetic enjoyment is in no wise thereby enlarged. (_β_) Further, inasmuch as the Lyric is the entire expression of the inward life of Spirit, it can neither restrict itself to the mode of expression nor the content of the genuine folksong, or of later poems composed in a similar spirit. (_αα_) In other words, on the one hand, it is of essential importance, as already remarked, that the wholly self-absorbed soul should detach itself from this absolute concentration and its direct introspection, and should pass on instead to the free grasp of itself which, in the conditions above described, is only incompletely the case. On the other, it is necessary that it should expand in a world abundant in ideas, passions, varied conditions, and conflicts, in order to endow with ideal expression everything that the human heart is essentially able to apprehend, and then communicate as the birth of its own spirit. For the collective wealth of lyrical poetry should express in poetic form all that the inner life comprises, so far as the same can pass into poetry, and therefore finds itself at home alike in all phases of spiritual culture. (_ββ_) And, _secondly_, with the advent of a free self-consciousness is bound up the freedom of an assured _art_ of its own. The folk-song sings forth, just as any natural song, straight from the heart. A free art, however, is aware of itself; it requires a knowledge and desire of that which it produces; and requires culture to promote this knowledge, as also an executive power, which is expert in the finest composition. When, consequently, genuine epic poetry has to conceal the individual creative power of the poet, or rather it lies with the entire character of the age of its origin that such should not yet be visible, this result is merely because of the fact that the Epos deals with the nation's positive existence rather than that which issues from the personal life of the poet himself, and that it is not present in poetry in such a close personal relation, but rather appears as a self-evolved product essentially independent. In lyrical poetry, on the contrary, the creative activity no less than the content are inseparable from the inner life, and are bound to declare themselves as such in actual fact.