With regard to specific types, in which we may classify lyrical composition, I have already referred with more detail to some which form the transition step from the narrative form of the Epos to the more subjective mode of exposition. From a contrary point of view it might seem desirable in the same way to demonstrate the beginnings of the dramatic. This inclination, however, of passage to the animation of the drama is exclusively and in essentials restricted to the circumstance that the lyric poem too as conversation, without, however, carrying the movement of action to the point of actual conflict, may itself accept the external form of dialogue. We shall nevertheless omit further allusion to these intermediate and hybrid stages, and restrict our cursory examination to those forms in which the real principle of the Lyric fully asserts itself. The main cause of this distinction is to be found in the attitude, which the artistic consciousness assumes relatively to its object. (_α_) To be more definite the poet--this at least is one direction--annuls the particularity of his emotion and idea, and is absorbed in the general contemplation of God or gods, whose greatness and might permeates the whole of the personal life, and causes the poet as an individual person to vanish. Hymns, dithyrambs, paeans, psalms, all belong to this class, which are moreover quite differently treated by different peoples. I propose merely to draw general attention to the following characteristic of such poetry. (_αα_) The poet, who is raised above the narrow limitation of his own purely personal life and external conditions, or the ideas which are therewith associated, replacing these with that which appears to him and his people as absolute and divine, may, in the _first_ instance, completely depict the divine in an objective presentment, and set forth this, as thus projected and executed for the spiritual vision of others, to the honour and power of the glorified god. The hymns which are ascribed to Homer are of this character. They contain above all mythological situations and histories of the divine Being, in whose celebration they are composed, which are not merely conceived in the ideas of symbolism, but are clothed in the downright objectivity of the Epos.