imagination in fully admitting the expressiveness due, by virtue of the nature of their position and movement, to words which, in respect to their intelligible meaning, are of a greater importance than others. (_αα_) The first alteration, then, effected by rhymed verse in the previous system is this indisputable validity of _natural quantity_,[39] If, therefore, any time-measure at all is permitted to remain, it is compelled to seek for a basis for such quantitative pause or acceleration, which it refuses any longer to find in the natural quantity, of syllables, in some other province. And this, as we have seen, can be no other than the intrinsic meaning of syllables and words. It is this _significance_ which in the final instance determines the quantitative measure of syllables, so long as such is still regarded as essential at all, and by doing so transfers the criterium from the purely objective medium[40] and its natural structure to the ideal subject-matter. (_ββ_) A further result follows from this of yet more importance. As I have already pointed out, this collocation of the emphasis on the significant stem-syllable dissipates that other independent diffusion of it in manifold forms of inflexion, which our rhythmical system is not yet forced to treat as negligible, in contrast to the stem, because it deduces neither the natural quantity of syllables nor the accent which it asserts from the intelligible significance. In the case, however, where such an explication,[41] with its co-ordination in verse-feet according to the quantity of syllables in their natural stability, falls away the entire system therewith necessarily collapses, which reposes on the time-measure and its laws. Of this type, for example, is French and Italian poetry, the metre and rhythm of which are absolutely non-existent as understood by the ancients. The entire question is here merely one of a definite number of syllables. (_γγ_) For such a loss there is only one possible compensation--that of _rhyme._ In other words, if--this is one aspect--it is no longer time-duration which receives objective expression, by means of which the sound of syllables flows on freely in the even movement that intrinsically belongs to them; if, furthermore, the intelligible significance dominates over the stem-syllables, and coalesces with the same without further organic expatiation into a determinate unity, we have no sensuous medium, such as is able to maintain itself independently of the time-measure, no less than this accentuation of the stem-syllables, finally left to us other than just this syllabic sound.