Chapter 2

Poetry, on the other hand, casts itself free of all subordination to the material of sense, at least to this extent, that in the definition of external or objective expression no reason whatever remains why it should restrict itself to specific content or any limitation to its power of composition and reproduction. It is therefore exclusively united to no specific art type; rather we may define it as theuniversalart, which is capable of reclothing and expressing under every conceivable mode every content that can possibly enter into or proceed from the imagination of man. And it can do this because its material is nothing more or less than the imagination itself, which is the universal root and ground of all the particular arts and their specific types.

We have already, in another connection, when concluding our discussion of the particular artistic types, come across what was practically the same thing. What we sought for, then, in our conclusion was that art in one of its types should make itself independent of that mode of representation properly called specific, remaining thereby predominant above the entire sphere in which such a totality of particularization is reproduced. An elaboration so comprehensive is among all the particular arts by the very nature of the case only possible to poetry. Its realization is effected through the development of poetical creation in part by means of the actual reconstitution of every particular type, and partly by the liberation of the mode of conception and its content from the boundaries fixed for it in the essentially exclusive types of conception, whose character we have severally defined as symbolical, classical, and romantic.

(b) The above considerations will further serve to justify the position, which, in the course of our inquiry, regarded as the development of a philosophy, we previously assigned to the art of poetry. In other words by reason of the fact that poetry is, to a degree quite impossible to any other mode of artistic production, concerned with the universal simply as such in Art, we might appear to have some reason for insisting that it marks the commencement of an investigation in the full sense of the word philosophical, and only from such a starting point can we enter into the sphere of particularization, in which we find the series of the other arts as limited and determined by their specific sensuous medium. Looking back, however, at the result arrived at in our investigation of the particular art types we shall find that the course of philosophical evolution consisted, first, in an increased penetration of the ideal content, and, from another point of view, in the demonstration that originally Art sets forth in the search, then in the discovery of and finally with an advance beyond that content compatible with its powers. This notion of the beautiful andArtmust enforce itself inthe artsthemselves. The starting-point of our inquiry, therefore, was architecture, in which we found merely an impulse toward the complete representation of what pertains to Spirit in a material medium. This is so much the case that it is only through sculpture that art first attains to a genuine interfusion of ideality with the medium; and further that only in the arts of painting and music do we reach the stage where, by virtue of the ideal and subjective character of their content, we find the perfected fusion effected no less under the aspect of conception than that of practical execution in the medium accepted. This process culminates most decisively in poetry, by virtue of the fact that the very nature of its objective realization can only be apprehended as an effort to draw apart from and cancel the material of sense rather than one of reproduction which does not as yet venture to clothe itself and move in the objective medium of sense-perception. In order, however, to make this liberation intelligible in philosophical terms it is of importance that we have already disposed of the question what it is from which art undertakes to liberate itself. This question stands in close relation to the fact that poetry is essentially capable of embracing the entirety of intelligible content and artistic modes of expression. We may add further that we have viewed this as the acceptance of a totality, which can only be interpreted philosophically as the abrogation of limitation in particularity. Our previous consideration of what we mean by things that are one-sided would be involved in such an exposition, the self-exclusive character of such one-sidedness being cancelled by such a totality.

It is only through the course of such an exposition that we can effectively demonstrate that poetry is the specific art in which a point is reached which marks the beginning of the disintegration of art itself, a point at which the philosophical consciousness discovers its bridge of passage to the notion of religion as such, as also to the prose of scientific thought. The boundary lines of the realm of beauty are, aswe have already seen, on the one hand the prose of finite condition and our ordinary conscious life, starting from which Art makes its effort in the direction of truth, and, on the other, of the loftier spheres of religion and science, from which it passes over into a comprehension of the Absolute till more emancipate from all material association.

(c) Despite therefore the completeness with which the art of poetry reproduces, under a mode of objectification that is most ideal, the entire totality of Beauty, nevertheless intelligence is able to discover even here too in this final domain of art a residue of defect. We may for this purpose within our art-system directly contrast the poetic art with that of architecture. In other words architecture was still unable to subordinate the external material to the ideal content sufficiently to clothe the same in a form adequate to mind; poetry on the other hand carries the process of negating its sensuous medium so far that instead of transforming that which stands in opposition to gross spatial matter, namely tone, as architecture does with its material into a significant symbol, it rather reduces it to a mere sign of no significance. But by doing so it destroys the fusion of spiritual ideality with external existence, so thoroughly that to this extent it ceases to be compatible with the original notion of Art. In other words it comes dangerously near to bidding goodbye to the region of sense altogether, remaining wholly absorbed in that of ideality. The fair mean between these extremes of architecture and poetry is secured by sculpture, painting, and music. Every one of these arts not merely still reproduces the spiritual content completely in a medium borrowed from the objective world, but also leaves us with that which lies open to our senses, no less than our intelligence. For although painting and music, regarded as romantic arts, attach themselves to a medium already more ideal, they do none the less supply the immediacy of objective existence, which, however, in this increase of ideality, shows indications of disappearance, while again from the opposite point of view they prove themselves, through their media of colour and tone, more profuse in fulness of particularization and manifold configuration than is required from the material of sculpture.

No doubt the art of poetry in its turn also endeavours, as a set-off to this defect, to place the objective world before us with a breadth and variety which even painting, at least in a single composition, fails to secure: none the less this comprehensiveness remains throughout merely a realization confined to consciousness itself; and, if it so happens that poetry, in response to a demand for more material artistic realization, attempts to increase the impression on our senses, it is only able to do this by either borrowing these effects from music and painting, in order to secure artistic means otherwise foreign to it; or it is forced, if it seeks retain its genuine character, to employ these sister arts only under a subordinate relation of service, while the main stress is laid on the ideas of conscious life, the imagination which appeals to the imagination, with which it is above all concerned.

This will suffice for discussion of the general relation under which poetry is placed to the other arts. We shall now proceed to a closer examination of the art of poetry itself, and with a view to this propose to co-ordinate the same as follows.

We have already seen that in poetry it is the ideal concept itself from which we derive content no less than medium. By reason, however, of the fact that we already find outside Art's domain the world of idea to be the most obvious mode of conscious life, it is above everything else important to distinguish the conception ofpoetryfrom that ofprose.The art of poetry, however, is not complete in this ideal world of the imagination alone. It is necessary that it should clothe the same in expressivelanguage.It has therefore a twofold task confronting it. On the one hand it is called upon so to arrange this world of constructed idea that it may admit of complete translation into speech: on the other it must take care not to leave this medium of language in the form appropriated by ordinary conscious life. In other words such must be treated poetically in order that the expression of art may be distinguishable in the selection of words no less than their position, and even their sound from that of ordinary prose.

Furthermore, on account of the fact that, though poetry avails itself of language as a means of expression, it secures by far the most unqualified freedom from those conditions and restrictions imposed on the other arts by virtue of the particularization of their material, it is possible for a poetical composition in a pre-eminent degree to elaborate every one of the various modes of expression, otherwise adopted unaffected by the onesidedness incidental to their application to a particular art. The subdivision of suchmodes of expressionin all their variety is consequently by far the most complete in the works of poetry.

The further course of our investigation may now be epitomized as follows:

First,we have to elucidate what is in general termspoetical,and thepoetical compositionin particular.

Secondly,poetry will be examined as a means ofexpression.

Thirdly, we shall deal with the subdivision of the art intoEpic, Lyric,andDramaticpoetry.

[1]Mittelpunkt.We should rather say the unifying significance of the creation.

[2]It would be perhaps better to translategeistigen Innerlichkeitwith the words "the self-conscious life of the human reason." This is developed and explained, however, in the next paragraph.

[3]Hegel expresses this as "making the inner or ideal content perceptible to the ideal faculty," that is,prima facie, consciousness, or at least that sense which is nearest related to it, viz., hearing.

[4]Bystatt des GeistigenHegel clearly contrasts pure music with music related as accompaniment to human speech in song.

[5]Lit., "one that merely plays by the way."

[6]Such a statement is obviously one which would be strongly resisted. The stress laid here on the purely ideal content as contrasted with the beauty of rhythm and modal arrangement would certainly suggest that Hegel was deficient in a sense for the musical possibilities of language I presume he does usegebundenin the sense of verse.

[7]Hegel's expression isin rein theoretischen Interesse.

[8]The medium of music is not of course strictly on all fours with the others.

[9]That is under the limits of these four arts.

We find it difficult to recall a single writer among all who have written on the subject of poetry who has not evaded the attempt to describe what is poetical as such, let alone a clear definition. And in fact if any one begins a discussion upon poetry, regarded as an art, without previously having investigated the nature of the content and mode of conception appropriate to Art in its most general terms, he will find it an extremely difficult matter to determine where we must look for that in which the essential character of poetry consists. To an exceptional degree is this failure to tackle this problem visible in those cases where a writer takes as his point of departure the actual execution in particular works of art, and seeks to establish, by means of this connoisseurship, some general principle which he may apply as relevant to every sort and kind of composition. In this way works of the most heterogeneous character come to rank as genuine poetry. If we once start from such assumptions, and then proceed to the inquiry by virtue of what productions of this nature can be reasonably classed together as poems we are at once confronted with the difficulty I have above adverted to. Happily our own position here is not that of these inquirers. In the first place we have by no manner of means arrived at the general notion of our subject-matter through an examination of any particular examples of its display; we have on the contrary sought to evolve the actual constitution of the same by a reference to the fundamental notion.[1]Agreeably with this it is not part of our demand that everything in ordinary parlance regarded as poetry should in our present inquiry fall into the general notion we have accepted. At least this is certainly not so in so far as the decision whether any particular work is or is not poetical is only deducible from the notion itself. Furthermore it is unnecessary now to expound more fully what we understand by the notion of poetry. To do this we should simply have to repeat again the course of our inquiry into the nature of Beauty and the Ideal as developed in general terms in the first part of this work. The intrinsic character of what is poetical stands in general agreement with the generic notion of artistic beauty and the art-product. That is to say, the imagination of the poet is not, as is the case with the plastic arts and music by reason of the nature of themateria, through which they are reproductive, constrained in its creative activity in many directions, and forced to accept many others of a onesided or very partial completeness; it is on the contrary merely subservient to the essential requirements and general principle of an ideal and artistic presentation.

From the many different points of view applicable to our present purpose, I will attempt to emphasize merely those of most importance, as for example,firststhat which relates to the distinction between themode of compositionemployed respectively by poetry and prose;secondly, that which contrasts apoetical workas completed with one of prose; and,finally, I propose to add a few observations relative to the subjective faculty which creates, or, shall we say, thepoethimself.

(a) In so far as thecontentappropriate to poetical composition is concerned we may, relatively speaking at any rate, exclude the external world of natural fact. It is spiritual interests rather than the sun, mountains, landscape, or the bodily human form, and the like, which are its proper subject-matter. For, although it naturally embraces the element of sensuous impression and perception, it remains none the less, even in this respect, an activity of mind. Its main object is an intuition of ideality, to which it stands as spiritual activity in closer relation and affinity than is possible for external objects, as presented in their concrete substance to the senses. The world of Nature therefore only enters into the content of poetry in so far as mind discovers therein a stimulus or a material upon which to exercise its own energy; as, for example, where it is regarded as the environment of man, merely possessing essential worth in its relation to the ideality of conscious life, which moreover can put forward no claim to be itself the independent object of poetry. The object, in short, which fully corresponds to its appeal is the infinite realm of Spirit. For the medium of language, the most plastic medium possessed immediately by conscious life, and the one most competent to grasp its interests and movements in their ideal vitality, precisely as is the case with the material of the other arts, such as stone, colour, and tone, must necessarily and above all be employed to express that which it is most qualified to express. It is consequently the pre-eminent task of poetry to bring before our vision the energies of the life of Spirit, all that surges to and fro in human passion and emotion, or passes in tranquillity across the mind, that is the all-embracing realm of human idea, action, exploit, fatality, the affairs of this world and the divine Providence. It has been the most universal and cosmopolitan instructor of the human race and is so still. Instruction and learning are together the knowledge and experience of what is. Stars, animals and plants areignorant of their law—it does not come into their experience; but man only then exists conformably to the principle of his being when he knows what he is and by what he is surrounded. He must recognize the powers by which he is driven or influenced; and it is just such a knowledge which poetry, in its original and vital[2]form, supplies.

(b) It is, however, also a content of the same character which belongs to man'sordinaryconscious life. This too instructs him in general laws, as such at least are interpreted by the motley crowd of human life, in their distinction, coordination, and significance. The question therefore arises, as previously observed, as to the nature of the distinction between the mode of conception severally adopted by prose and poetry, a similarity in the content of each being assumed as possible.

(α) Poetry is of greater antiquity than speech modelled in the artistic form of elaborate prose. It is theoriginalimaginative grasp of truths a form of knowledge, which fails as yet to separate the universal from its living existence in the particular object, which does not as yet contrast law land phenomena, object and means, or relate the one to the other in subordination to the process of human reason, but comprehends the one exclusively in the other and by virtue of the other. For this reason it does not merely, under the mode of imagery, express a content already essentially apprehended in its universality; on the contrary it lingers, conformably to its unmediated notion, in the unity of concrete life itself, which has not as yet effected such a separation or such an association of mere relationship.

(αα) Under the above forms of envisualization, poetry posits all that it comprehends as an exclusive and consequently independent totality, which, despite its capacity for a rich content and an extensive range of condition, individuals, actions, events, emotions and ideas of every kind, nevertheless is forced to exhibit the same in all their wide complexity as an essentially self-determined whole, as displayed and motived by the unity, whose individual expression this or that fact in its singularity actually is. And consequently the universal or rational principle is not expressed in poetry in its abstract universality, or in the complexus which lies open to philosophical exposition or under the relation of its varied aspects apprehended by science, but on the contrary as a vital union, in its phenomenal presence, possessed with soul and self-determined throughout; and it is further expressed in such a way that the all-embracing unity, the real soul of its vitality, is only suffered to be operative in mysterious guise from within outwards.

(ββ) The character of this mode of apprehending, reclothing and expressing fact is throughout one of construction. It is not the fact itself and itscontemplative[3]existence, but reconstruction and speech which are the object of poetry. Its entrance on the scene dates from the first efforts of man at self-expression. What is expressed is simply made use of to satisfy this desire. The instant man, in the midst of his practical activities and imperative duties, seeks to summarize this effect for mind and to communicate himself to others, then we have some kind of artistic expression, some accord with what is poetical. To mention one from a host of examples, there is that distich which we read in Herodotus referring to the slain heroes of Thermopylae. As for its content it is simply the fact, the bare announcement that four thousand Peloponesians on a certain spot fought the battle with three hundred myriads. The main interest is, however, the composition of an inscription which communicates to contemporary life and posterity the historical fact, and is there exclusively to do so. In other words, the expression of this fact is poetical; it testifies to itself as a deed (εἱν ποιείν) which leaves the content in its simplicity, but expresses the same with a definite purpose. The language, in which the idea is embodied, is to that extent of such increased value that an attempt is made to distinguish it from ordinary speech; we have a distich in lieu of a sentence.

(γγ) For this reason, even from the point of view of language, poetry makes an effort to keep its domain singular and distinct from ordinary parlance, and to accomplish this elevates its expression to a higher virtue than that of merely articulate expression. We must, however, not only in this particular respect, but for the purposes of our present inquiry generally, make an essential distinction between a primitive poetry, which arisesprevious tothe creation of ordinary artificial prose, and that mode of poetical composition and speech the development of which is effected where already the conditions of our everyday life and prosaic expression exist. The first is poetical without intention, in idea no less than speech; the latter, on the contrary, is fully conscious of the sphere, from which its task is to detach itself, in order that it may establish itself on the free basis of art. It is consequently quite aware of the distinction and contrast implied in its self-creation to the world of prose.

(β)Secondly, the kind ofprose life, from which poetry has to separate itself, postulates an entirely different nature of conception and speech.

(αα) In other words, looked at from one point of view, such a consciousness regards the wide expanse of reality according to that association of cause and effect, object and means, and all other categories of the mode of reflection which deals withfiniteconditions and the objective world generally, that is, the limited categories of science or the understanding. It is a feature of such thought that every particular trait should at one moment appear with a false subsistency, at another should be placed in the position ofbarerelation to something else, that as such it should be so apprehended in its relativity and dependence that no unity of a free nature whatever is possible, no unity, that is, which remains essentially throughout, and in all its branches and separate filaments, a complete and free totality, no unity, in short, where we find that the individual aspects are simply the appropriate explication and phenomenal presence ofonecontent which constitutes the point of focus, the soul that unites all together, and which also finds its vital principle in this all-pervading centre of animation. Rather the type of conception we above refer to as that of science goes no further than the discovery of particular laws in phenomena, and persists for this reason in the separation, or bare relation, of the particular existence with its general law, the laws themselves under this view tending to harden from each other in their isolate singularity; that their relation is, in fact, conceived exclusively under external and finite conditions.

(ββ) And, furthermore, man'sordinaryconsciousness has nothing to do with what we call the ideal principle of association, the essential core of facts, their bases, causes, ends, and so forth. It rests satisfied with the acceptance of the mere fact that something exists or happens as distinct from something else; or, in other words, with its insignificant contingency. It is no doubt true that the unity of life is not, in such a case, deliberately cancelled by any express separation; that unity, I mean, in which the intuition of the poet arrests the idealrationaleof the fact, its expression and determinate existence. What, however, is absent here, is just that flash of insight into this core of reason and significance, which becomes consequently for our intelligence a thing essentially vacant, possessing no further claim on our minds to a rational interest. The comprehension of a rational cosmos; and its relations is exchanged then and there for a mere flux and contiguity of indifference, which it is true may possess a large expanse of external animation, but which none the less suffers the profounder impulse of reason[4]to remain unsatisfied. True vision, no less than soul-life in its full vigour, can only obtain satisfaction, where such are made aware in phenomena, through feeling no less than contemplation, of the reality in its essence and truth which is compatible with such a world. The life which is a mere external show is defunct to our deeper sense, if all that is ideal and intrinsically rich in significance fails to shine through as the very soul thereof.

(γγ) These defects, thirdly, in the conceptions of science and our ordinary conscious lifespeculative thoughteffaces. It stands, therefore, in one respect in affinity with the imagination of the poet. The cognizance of reason[5]is not solely, or even mainly, concerned with contingent singularity, nor does it overlook in the phenomenal world the essence of the same. It does not rest satisfied with the differentiations and external relations proper to the conceptions and deductions of the understanding; it unites them in a free totality, which in the apprehension of our finite facultyin part fails to preserve its self-consistency, and in part is posited in a relation that possesses no synthetic unity. Pure thought, however, can have but one result, namely thoughts. It evaporates the mode of reality in that of the pure notion. And although it grasps and comprehends actual things in their essential separation and their actual existence, it does also nevertheless translate this particularity into the ideal element of the universal, in which alone thought is at home with itself. Consequently there arises, in contrast to the world of phenomena, a world that is new in this sense, that though the truth of the Real is present, it is not displayed inrealityitself as the power itself which gives it form and the veritable soul thereof. Thinking is simply a reconciliation of truth with reality inThought.The creations and reconstruction, however, of the poet is a reconciliation under the mode of phenomenal reality itself, albeit such areal appearanceis merely ideally conceived.

(γ) We have, therefore, two distinct spheres of consciousness, that of poetry and prose. In former times, in which there is neither present a deliberate outlook on the world elaborated, in respect to its religious belief and its general knowledge, under the co-ordinated form of scientific ideas and cognition, nor an actual world of human condition regulated conformably to such a standard, poetry is confronted with a lighter task. Prose is not in such a case opposed to it as an essentially independent field of ideal and external existence, which it has first to overcome. Its problem is for the most part simply limited to deepening all that is significant or transparent in the forms of ordinary consciousness. If, on the contrary, the prose of life has already appropriated within its mode of vision the entire content of conscious life, setting its seal on all and every part of it, the art of poetry is forced to undertake the task of melting all down again and re-coining the same anew. In every direction it finds itself involved in difficulties by the unresponsive nature of prosaic existence. It has, in short, not only to wrest itself from the adherence of ordinary consciousness to all that is indifferent and contingent, and to raise the scientific apprehension of the cosmos of fact to the level of reason's profounder penetration, or to translate speculative thought into terms of the imagination, giving a body to the same in the sphere of intelligence itself; it hasfurther to convert in many ways themode of expressioncommon to the ordinary consciousness into that appropriate to poetry; and, despite of all deliberate intention enforced by such a contrast and such a process, to make it appear as though all such purpose was absent, preserving the original freedom essential to all art.

(c) We have now summarized in its most general terms that in which the content of poetry consists. We have further distinguished the form of poetry from that of prose. In conclusion, it is of importance to draw attention to the particularization which the art of poetry, to a degree unattained by the other arts, whose development is not nearly so rich in results, admits of. We find, no doubt, architecture illustrated in the arts of very varied peoples, and continuous through many centuries. But of sculpture, at least, it is true that it reaches its culminating point in the ancient world of Greece and Rome, just as painting and music have done more recently in Christendom. The art of poetry celebrates its epochs of brilliancy and bloom among all nations and in all ages almost that present any real artistic activity at all. It embraces the collective Spirit of mankind, and it is differentiated through every kind of variation.

(α) Furthermore, inasmuch as poetry does not accept the universal in scientific abstraction from its object, but seeks to represent what is rational under the mode of individuality,[6]the specific traits of national character are essential to its growth; the content and the particular mode of its presentation are in fact conditioned by the nature of these and the general outlook in each case. We find it consequently adapting itself to every variety of form and peculiarity. It matters not what the poetry may be, whether Oriental, Italian, Spanish, English, Roman, Hellenic, or German, each and all differ totally in their spirit, emotional impulse, general outlook and expression.

A similar distinctive variety asserts itself in particular epochs as they are favourable to the art of poetry or the reverse. The results secured, for example, by our German poetry were impossible in the Middle Ages, or the times of the thirty years' war. The particular motives, which in our own day excite the greatest interest, are inseparable from the entire evolution of contemporary life. And in the same way every age has its own wider or more restricted, more exalted and liberal, or more depressed phase of emotional life, in short its specific outlook on the world, which it is the express aim of poetry to bring home to the artistic consciousness in the most intelligible and complete manner, inasmuch as language is the one medium capable of expressing the human spirit wherever and in whatever form it may be manifested.

(β) Among these national characteristics, or views and opinions peculiar to particular epochs, some have closer affinity with the poetic impulse than others. The Oriental consciousness is, for example, in general more poetic than the Western mind, if we exclude Greece. In the East the principle predominant is always that of coherence, solidity, unity, substance. An outlook of this nature is intrinsically most penetrative, even though it may fail to reach the freedom of the Ideal. Our Western point of view, especially that of modern life, is based on the endless breaking up and division of its boundless material into fragments, in virtue of which process, the extreme emphasis laid here on particular facts, what is merely finite becomes substantive for the imagination, and despite of this must be once more subsumed under the converse action of relativity. For the Oriental nothing persists as really substantive, but everything appears as contingent, discovering its supreme focus, stability and final justification in the One, the Absolute, to which it is referred.

(γ) By means of this diversity of national traits and the evolutionary process of the centuries we find that what is shared by all mankind alike, no less than all that claims to be artistic, is drawn as a common element within the reach of other nations and epochs, intelligible and enjoyable to the same. It is in this twofold connection that of late years to an exceptional degree Hellenic poetry has roused the admiration and imitation of most diverse nationalities. And this is so because in the content of it no less than in the artistic form it receives the simply human is disclosed with most beauty. The literature of India itself, however, despite all the difficulties attendant on an outlook and artistic expression so alien to our own, is not wholly outside our sympathy; and the boast is no empty one that in our modern era pre-eminently a keen sense for all that art and the human spirit embraces in every direction has begun to unfold itself.

Were we in our present investigation of this impulse toward individualization, pursued so persistently by poetry, under the aspects we have already described, to restrict the same to ageneraltreatment of the art of poetry, such a generalization, however established, could not fail to be abstract and devoid of content. It is therefore of first importance, if our object be to consider poetry of a really genuine type, that we include in our survey the forms of thecreative spirit as presented in their national form, the unique product of one age; and further we must not overlook the individuality which creates, the soul of the poet. Such, then, are the main points of view to which I would draw attention by way of a general introduction to poetical creation and conception.

Poetry is not, however, exhausted by the imaginative idea alone: it must necessarily proceed to make itself articulate and complete in thepoetical work of art.

Such an object of study opens a large field of investigation. We may conveniently arrange and classify the course of our discussion as follows:

First, we shall endeavour to point out what is of most importance relatively to thepoetical composition generally.

Secondly, we shall distinguish it from the principal types ofprose composition, in so far as the same are compatible with artistic treatment.

We shall then,finallybe in a position to deduce with some completeness the notion of thefree art-product.

(a) In respect to the poetical work of art under its generic aspect all that is necessary is once more to enforce our previous contention that it must, no less than any other production of an unfettered imagination, receive the form and independence of an organic whole. This demand can only receive satisfaction as follows:

(α) In thefirstplace that which constitutes a homogeneous content, whether it be a definite object of action and event, or a specific emotion and passion, must before everything else possess intrinsic unity.

(αα) All else must be posited under relation to this bond of unity, and thereby combine to form a freehand concrete coherence of all parts. This is only possible under the condition, that the content selected is not conceived as abstractuniversal, but as the action and emotion of men, as the object and passion which are actually present in the mind, soul, and volition of definite individuals, arising as such from the distinctive basis of an individual nature in each case.

(ββ) The universal, which is to receive representation, and the individuals, in whose character events and actions the manifestation of poetry is asserted must not consequently fall into fragments, or be so related that the individuals are merely of service as an abstract universal; both aspects must combine in vital coalescence. In the Iliad, for example, the contest of Greeks and Trojans, and the victory of the former is inseparably bound up with the wrath of Achilles, which for this reason becomes the common focus welding all together. No doubt we also find poetical works in which the fundamental content is partly more abstract in its generalization, and also partly is executed in a way that expresses a universal of more significance. Dante's great epic poem is an illustration, which not only embraces the world divine throughout, but displays individuals of the most varied character in their relation to the punishments of hell, purgatory and the blessedness of Paradise. But even here we find no entirely abstract separation, of the two points of view, no mere relation of service between the particular objects. For in the Christian world the focus of conscious life is not conceived as nothing more than an accident of Godhead, but as essential and infinite cause or end itself, so that here the universal purpose, that is the divine justice in condemnation and salvation can verily appear as immanent fact, the eternal interest and being of the individual himself. In this divine world the individual is throughout of pre-eminent importance. In that of the State he can of course be sacrificed in order to save the universal, that is the State. In his relation to God, however, and in the kingdom of God he is essentially and exclusively the end.

(γγ) We must, however,thirdly, conceive the universal, which supplies the content of human emotion and action as self-subsistent, intrinsically complete where it is, and constituting as such in itself a definitive and exclusive world. When, for instance, in our contemporary life mention is made of any officer, official, general, professor, and so forth, and we try to imagine what kind of action such a man or personality is likely to attempt or carry out under his own particular conditions of environment, we place before ourselves simply a content of interest and activity, which in part is not itself a rounded and self-substantive whole, but one which stands in infinitely manifold external connections, relations and conditions, in part also, if we regard it as abstract totality, one which can receive the form of a universal concept in its separation from the individuality of the, in other respects, entire personality, as for instance that of personal obligation. Conversely we may have no doubt a content of sterling character, making, that is to say, an essentially independent whole, which, despite of this, and without further development and advance, is complete in one sentence. It is really impossible to say whether a content of this nature belongs more properly to poetry or prose. The grand affirmation of the old Testament, "God said Let their be Light and there was Light," is at once in its penetration, no less than the precision of its embrace,[7]as much essentially sublime poetry as it is ordinary prose. Of a similar nature is the command, "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods but me"; or that, "Honour thy father and thy mother." The golden epigrams of a Pythagoras and the wise sayings of Solomon are of the same type. Phrases, so rich in content as the above, have their origin in a world where the distinction between poetry and prose is as yet absent. We can, however, hardly affirm of such that they are a poetical work of art, even though many such phrases may be combined together. The independence and rounding off of a genuine poetical work must be assumed at the same time to be of the nature of a process, and a differentiation of parts: weassume it therefore to be a unity, the true character of which is only made explicit by emphatic insistence upon its diversity. This process, absolutely essential in the plastic arts, regarded at least according to the requirements of their form, is also more generally of the greatest moment in a poetical composition.

(β) This introduces us, then, to asecondfeature of the work of art, namely, the organic differentiation of its several parts, essential to it not merely that it may be presented as an organic unity, but that the elaboration of all it implies may be rendered complete.

(αα) The most obvious reason of this necessity is referable to the fact that Art in general tends instinctively to particularization. The effect of the scientific faculty is that what is particular and singular fails to receive its complete vindication. And this is so not merely because the understanding apprehends the manifold, as such theoretic faculty, starting from its principles of generalization, causing the particular fact thereby to evaporate in its abstract deductions and categories; but also because it makes this manifold subserve ends of purely practical import. Severe adherence to that purely relative value, which strictly belongs to the nature of the process, appears to the understanding as useless and tedious. To the conception and composition of poetry on the contrary every part, every phase in the result must remain of essential interest and vital. It dallies therefore with delight in detail, depicts the same with enthusiasm, and treats every part as an independent whole. However great, therefore, in addition the content may be of a poetical work in its central interest, the organic completeness is equally asserted in subordinate detail, precisely as in the human organism every member, every finger is rounded with exquisite delicacy in its unified completeness, and as a rule, we find in Nature that every particular existence is enclosed within a perfect world of its own. The advance of poetry is therefore more slow than that compatible with the judgments and conclusions of the understanding, where we find that, whether regarded theoretically as science or with reference to practical conduct and action, the main stress is on the final result, this rather than on the path by which it is reached. As for the degree in which poetry approaches realization in its tenderness for such detail we have already pointed out that it is not its vocation to describe with excessive diffuseness what is exterior in the form of its sensuous appearance. If it therefore undertakes extensive descriptions without making them reflect at the same time the claims and interests of soul-life it becomes heavy and tedious. Above all it must take care not to enter into deliberate rivalry with the actual detail, in its exact completeness, presented by natural fact itself. Even painting in this respect should aim at circumspection and restriction. We have therefore here and in the case of poetry a twofold point of view to consider. On the one hand we must remember that the impression is on our mental vision; and on the other the art can only place before the mind the object, which in Nature we can survey and comprehend in a single glance in a series of separate traits. For this reason it is important that poetry does not carry its elaboration of detail so far, that the vision of the whole in its entirety becomes inevitably disturbed, confused, or lost. It is obvious therefore that difficulties of an exceptional nature have to be overcome when the attempt is made to place an action or event of varied nature before our vision, and where in actual life such happen in a single moment of time, and in close connection with such immediacy, for all it can do is to present the same in a continuous series. As respects this difficulty, no less than the general way in which poetry, as already described, approaches the detail of Nature, we find the demand of the several generic types of the art differs very considerably. Epic poetry, for instance, attaches itself to the particularity of the external world with an emphasis totally different from that of dramatic poetry, with its rapidity of forward movement, or from that of lyrical poetry with its exclusive insistence on the ideally significant.

(ββ) It is through an elaboration of this kind that the several parts of a composition securesubsistency.No doubt this appears to stand in direct contradiction to the unity which we established as a primary condition: as a matter of fact the opposition is merely apparent. This independence should not, that is to say, assert itself in such a way that the several parts are placed in absolute separation from each other: it must on the contrary only be carried so far that the several aspects and members of the whole are clearly seen on their own account to be asserted in the vital form peculiar to each, and to stand on their own free basis of independence. If, on the contrary, this individualized life is absent from the several parts, the composition becomes, precisely as Art generally can only invest the universal with determinate existence under the form of actual particularity, cold and defunct.

(γγ) Despite of this self-subsistency, however, these several parts must remain likewise in conjunction to the extent that theonefundamental motive or purpose, made explicit and manifest in and through them, must declare itself as the unity which pervades the whole, and in which the parts coalesce and to which they return. This is the condition of art, and pre-eminently so of poetry, where it falls short of its noblest reach, upon which it most readily is wrecked, and the work of art declines from the realm of a free imagination into that of mere prose. To put it in another way, the connexion into which the parts fall must not merely be one of finalcause and effect.For in the relation of teleology the end is the universal as essentially presupposed and willed, which it is true succeeds in making the several aspects tally with the process, yet employs them none the less as means and to this extent robs them of all really free stability and thereby of every sort of vitality. In such a case the parts merely fall under a relation of purpose to one end, which is asserted imperiously to the disadvantage of all else, and which accepts the same in abstraction as subservient and subordinate to itself. The freedom and beauty of art contradict flatly this servile relation of the abstract faculty of science.

(γ) On these grounds the unity, asserted in the several parts of the composition, must be of another character. The definition of this may be stated under two aspects of conception, as follows.

(αα) In thefirstplace, the vital presence we have already referred to as peculiar to every part separately must be maintained. If we direct our attention, however, to that which in fact justifies the introduction of any detailwhatever into the composition, we find the point of departure to beonefundamental idea which the same as a whole is undertaken to manifest or interpret. Consequently everything defined and particular must announce that as the source of its own specific appearance. In other words, the content of a poetical work must not be itself intrinsically abstract, but concrete, one that by reason of its own wealth conducts us to a rich unravelment of its varied aspects. And when this variety, even assuming that in its realization it falls to every appearance into plain contradictions, yet is as a matter of fact rooted in the essentially unified content we have adverted to, in that case we may affirm that by necessity the content itself, in a form agreeable to its notion and being, comprises what is fundamentally an exclusive and harmonious totality of particular characteristics, which it possesses as its own, and in the continuous expatiation of which what it is in its real significance is in truth rendered explicit. It is onlytheseseveral parts, which originally belong to the content, and which consequently should be carried into the composition under the mode of actual and essentially sound and vital existence. In this respect, therefore, despite all appearance the display of particular characteristics present of opposition to others, they are throughout combined in a union of mysterious accord, rooted in its own nature.

(ββ)Secondly,since the composition is presented under the form ofnaturalphenomena, the unity must, in order to preserve the vital appearance of such reality, only be theidealbond, which to all appearance without intention holds together the parts and includes them in an organic whole. It is just this animating union of organic life which alone is able to bring into being true poetry as contrasted with the expressed intention of plain prose. That is to say whenever particularity exclusively appears as means to a definite end, it does not possess and cannot conceivably possess an independent and unique vitality of its own; what it does testify to, on the contrary, is that it exists for the sake of something else, that is the end proposed. Purpose of this type declares its sovereignty over the objective facts through which it is fulfilled. An artistic composition should, however, confer upon all that is particular within it, all in the expatiation of which it displays continuously the central and fundamental content selected, the appearance of an unfettered stability. This is absolutely necessary, because what we here comprise under the term particularity is just that content itself under the mode of the reality which corresponds with it. We may therefore recall to our minds the analogous task of speculative thought, which in the same way has on the one side to develop the particular to the point of self-subsistency or freedom from that which is at first an indefinite universality; and likewise, too, it is called on to demonstrate how within this totality of what is particular, in which that and that only is divulged which essentially reposes in the universal, the unity is on this very account once more asserted, and indeed then and only then is truly concrete unity, established through its own differences and their mediation. Speculative philosophy is thus, in the same way, through the method of dialectic above adverted to, responsible for works which resemble in this respect those of poetry, containing, that is, by virtue of the content, an essential identity of self-seclusiveness and a revelation of differentiated material in accord with it. We must, however, despite this similarity between these two activities, and apart from the obvious difference between the evolution of pure thinking and creative art, draw attention to a further essential distinction. The deduction of philosophy no doubt vindicates the necessity and actuality of particularity, but none the less, in virtue of the dialectic process in which this aspect of reality is asserted, it is expressly demonstrated of this particularity and all of it, that it for the first time discovers its truth and its stability in the concrete unity.[8]Poetry, on the contrary, does not proceed to any such express demonstration. The concordant unity must no doubt be completely vindicated in every one of its creations, and be operative there in all their manifold detail as the soul and vital core of the whole; but this presence remains for Art an ideal bond which is implied rather than expressly posited, precisely as the soul is immediately made vital in all the bodily members, without robbing the same of the appearance of an independent existence. We have the same truth illustrated by colour and tone. Yellow, blue, green and red are different colours which admit of the most absolute contrast; but none the less, onaccount of the fact that as colour they all essentially belong to one totality, they maintain a harmony throughout; and it is not, moreover, necessary that this union as such should be expressly declared in them. In a similar way the dominant, the third and the fifth remain independent as tones, and yet for all that give us the harmony of the trichord; or, rather, we should put it that they only produce this harmony so long as each tone is permitted to assert its own essentially free and characteristic sound.

(γγ) In connection with this organic unity and articulate synthesis of a poetical composition we have further to consider essentialfeatures of distinctionwhich are due to the particularartistic formappropriate to the composition under review, no less than the particulartypeof poetry in which we discover the specific character of its working out. Poetry, for example, of symbolic art is unable, owing to the more abstract and indefinite traits which constitute its essential and significant content, to attain to a fully organic fusion in the degree of transparency possible to the works of the classical art-form. In symbolism generally, as we have already established in the first part of this enquiry, the conjunction of general significance and the actual phenomenon, in association with which Art embodies its content, is of a less coherent character: as a result of this we find that what is particular in one direction preserves a greater consistency; in another, as in the case of the Sublime, only so far asserts this quality in order, through the negation thus implied, to render more intelligible theonesupreme power and substance, or merely to advance the process to a condition of mysterious association of particular, but at the same time heterogeneous no less than related traits and aspects of natural and spiritual facts. Conversely, in the romantic type, wherein the ideality of truth reveals itself in essential privacy to soul-life only, we find a wider field for the display of the detail of rational reality in its self-subsistency; in this latter case the conjunction of all parts and their union must necessarily be present, but the nature of their elaboration can neither be so clear or secure as in the products of classical art.

In a similar way the Epic gives us a more extensivepicture of the external world; it even lingers by the way in episodical events and deeds, whereby the unity of the whole, owing to this increased isolation of the parts, appears to suffer diminution. The drama, in contrast to this, requires a more strenuous conjunction, albeit, even in the drama, we find that romantic poetry permits the introduction of a type of variety in the nature of episode and an elaborate analysis of characteristic traits in its presentation of soul-life no less than that of external fact. Lyric poetry, as it changes conformably to the fluctuation of its types, adapts itself to a mode of presentment of the greatest variety: at one time it is bare narration; at another the exclusive expression of emotion or contemplation; at another it restricts its vision, in more tranquil advance, to the central unity which combines; at another it shifts hither and thither in unrestrained passion through a range of ideas and emotions apparently destitute of any unity at all.

This, then, must suffice us on the general question of a poetical composition.

(b) In order now,—this is oursecondmain head in the present discussion,—to examine more closely the distinction which obtains between the organic poem as above considered and the prose composition, we propose to direct attention to those specific types ofprosewhich, despite their obvious limitations, do none the less come into closest affinity with art. Such are, without question, the arts of history and oratory.

(α) As regards history, there can be no doubt that we find ample opportunity here foroneaspect of genuine artistic activity.

(αα) The evolution of human life in religion and civil society, the events and destinies of the most famous individuals and peoples, who have given emphasis to life in either field by their activity, all this presupposes great ends in the compilation of such a work, or the complete failure of what it implies. The historical relation of subjects and a content such as these admits of real distinction, thoroughness and interest: and however much our historian mustendeavour to reproduce actual historical fact, it is none the less incumbent upon him to bring before our imaginative vision this motley content of events and characters, to create anew and make vivid the same to our intelligence with his own genius.[9]In the creation of such a memorial he must, moreover, not rest satisfied with the bare letter of particular fact; he must bring this material into a co-ordinated and constructive whole; he must collectively conceive and embrace single traits, occurrences and actions under the unifying concept; with the result that on the one hand we have flashed before us a clear picture of nationality, epoch of time, external condition and the spiritual greatness or weakness of the individuals concerned in the very life and characterization which belonged to them; and on the other that the bond of association, in which the various parts of our picture stand to the ideal historical significance of a people or an event, is asserted from such without exception. It is in this sense that we, even in our own day, speak of the art of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Tacitus, and a few others, and cannot cease to admire their narratives as classical products of the art of human language.

(ββ) It is nevertheless true that even these fine examples of historical composition do not belong to free Art. We may add that we should have no poetry even though we were to assume with such works the external form of poetry, the measure or rhyme of verse and so forth. It is not exclusively the manner in which history is written, but the nature of itscontent, which makes it prose. Let us look at this rather more closely.

Genuine history, both in respect to aim and performance, only begins at the point where the heroic age, which in its origination it is the part of poetry and art to vindicate, ceases, for the reason that we have here the moment when the distinct outlines and prose of life, in its actual conditions, no less than the way they are conceived and represented, come into being. Herodotus does not for instance describe the Greek expedition to Troy, but the Persian wars, and takes pains, in a variety of ways, with tedious research and careful reflection, to base the narrative proposed on genuine knowledge. The Hindoos, indeed we may say the Orientals generally, with almost the single exception of the Chinese, do not possess this instinct of prose sufficiently to produce a genuine history. They invariably digress either into aninterpretation and reconstruction of facts of a purely religious character, or such as are fantastic inventions. The element of prose then native to the historical age of any folk may be briefly described as follows.

In thefirstplace, in order that we may have history we must presuppose a common life, whether we consider the same on its religious side, or that of a polity, with its law, institutions, and the like, established on their own account, and possessing originally or in their subsequent modification a validity as laws or conditions of general application.

It is out of such a common life,secondly, that we mark the birth of definite activities for the preservation or change of the same, which may be of universal import, and in fact constitute the end or motive of their continuance, and to complete and carry into effect which we have to presuppose individuals fitted for such a task. These individuals are great and eminent in so far as they show themselves, through their effective personality, in co-operation with the common end, which underlies the ideal notion of the conditions which confront them: they are little when they fail to rise in stature to the demand thus made on their energy: they are depraved when, instead of facing as combatants of the practical needs of the times,[10]they are content merely to give free rein to an individual force which is, with its implied caprice, foreign to all such common ends. Where, however, any of such conditions obtain we do not have either a genuine content or a condition of the world such as we established in the first part of our inquiry as essential to the art of poetry. Even in the case of personal greatness the substantive aim of its devotion is to a large or less extent something given, presupposed, and enforced upon it, and to that extent the unity of individuality is excluded, wherein the universal, that is the entire personality should be selfidentical, an end exclusively for itself, an independent whole in short. For however much these individuals discover their aims in their own resources, it is for all that not the freedom or lack of it in their souls and intelligence, in other words the vital manifestation of their personality, but the accomplished end, and its result as operative upon the actualworld already there, and essentially independent of such individuality, which constitutes the object of history. And, moreover, from a further point of view we find manifested in the historical condition the play of contingency, that breach between what is implicitly substantive and the relativity of particular events and occurrences, no less than of the specific subjectivity of characters displayed in their personal passions, opinions and fortunes, which in this prosaic mode of life present far more eccentricity and variation than do the wonders of poetry, which through all diversity must remain constant to what is valid in all times and places.

Andfinally, in respect to the actual execution of affairs within the cognisance of history we find here again the introduction of a prosaic element, if we contrast it with the impulse of genuine poetry, partly in the division asserted by personal idiosyncracy from a consciousness of laws, principles, maxims and so forth, which is thereby necessarily absorbed in the universal condition or fact; and in part also the realization of the ends proposed involve much preparation and arrangement, the means to effect which extend far, and embrace many necessary or subservient relations, which have to be readjusted and adapted, in order to carry out the course proposed, with intelligence, prudence and prosaic circumspection. The work in short cannot be undertaken offhand, but only to a large extent after extensive introduction. The result of this is that the particular acts of execution, which, it is here assumed, come into effect for theonemain purpose, are often either wholly contingent in respect to their content, and remain without ideal union, or are asserted under the form of a practical utility regulated by a mind dominated by the aims proposed; in other words, they do not proceed unmediated from the core of free and independent life itself.[11]

(γγ) The historian then has no right to expunge these prosaic characteristics of his content, or to convert them into others morepoetical;his narrative must embrace what lies actually before him and in the shape he finds it without amplification,[12]or at least poetical transformation. However much, therefore, it may become a part of his labours to make the ideal significance and spirit of an epoch, a people, or the particular event depicted, the ideal focus and bond which holds all together in one coherent whole, he is not entitled to make either the conditions presented him, the characters or events, wholly subordinate to such a purpose, though he may doubtless remove from his survey what is wholly contingent and without serious significance; he must, in short, permit them to appear in all their objective contingency, dependence and mysterious caprice. No doubt in biography the full animation of personality and an independent unity is conceivably possible, because in such a work the individual, no less than all which proceeds from him and is operative in moulding such a figure, is throughout the focus of the composition. A historical character is, however, exclusively one of two opposed extremes. For although we deduce a unity of subject from the same, none the less from another point of view various events and transactions obtrude, which in part are without any essential ideal connection, and in part come into contact with such individuality without any free co-operation on the part of the same, and to this extent involve the same within the contingency of such an external condition. So, for example, Alexander is without question a personality, pre-eminent above all others of his epoch, and one which, in virtue of its unique forces, falling as they do in accord with contemporary world conditions, becomes engaged in the Persian invasion. The continent of Asia none the less, which Alexander vanquishes, is in the capricious variety of its nationalities a whole united by no necessary bond.[13]Historical events pass before him as the bare panorama of purely objective phenomena. And, finally, if the historian adds to his survey his private reflections as a philosopher, attempting thereby to grasp the absolute grounds for such events, rising to the sphere of that divine being, before which all that is contingent vanishes and a loftier mode of necessity isunveiled, he is none the less debarred, in reference to the actual conformation of events, from that exclusive right of poetry, namely, to accept this substantive resolution as the fact of most importance. To poetry alone is the liberty permitted to dispose without restriction of the material submitted in such a way that it becomes, even regarded on the side of external condition, conformable with ideal truth.

(β)Secondly,oratoryappears to have a closer affinity with the freedom of art.

(αα) For although the orator avails himself of the opportunity for and content of his effort out of actual life and definite circumstances and opinions, all that he utters remains none the less, in thefirstplace, subject to his free choice. His personal aims and views are immanent therein, in virtue of which he can make the same a complete and living expression of his personality. And,secondly, the development of the subject of his oration and the mode of delivery depends entirely on himself, so that the impression he makes is as though we received in his speech a wholly independent expression of mind. And,finally, it is his vocation not merely to address himself to the trained or ordinary intelligence of his hearers, but to work upon their entire humanity, their emotions, no less than their judgment. The substance of what he has to say and in which he strives to awake interest, is not merely the abstract aspect of it, nor is it this aspect of his main purpose, in the fulfilment of which he invites co-operation, but rather for the most part also a definite and very real thing. For this reason the substance of the orator's address, while embracing what is essentially substantive in its character, ought equally to grasp his general principle under the form of its specific manifestation, and render the same intelligible to conscious life in the full concrete sense of the term. The orator then must not merely satisfy our understanding with the cogency of his deductions and conclusions, but has it in his power to address the soul itself, to rouse human passion and carry it captive, to absorb the whole attention, and by such means, through all the avenues of spirit, to ravish and convince his audience.

(ββ) Despite, however, such considerations, looked at rightly we find that it is just in the arts of oratory that this apparent freedom is almost wholly subordinate to the rule of practicalutility. In other words what confers upon public speaking its unique motive force is not implied in the particular purpose, to promote which the speech is made; we must refer it to the general principle, the laws, rules, axioms which the particular case suggests, and which are already essentially present in this form of universality, partly, as actual laws of the State, partly too as ethical, juristic or religious maxims, emotions, dogmas, and so forth. The particular circumstance and end, which we find here as the point of departure, and this universal are in every respect separate from each other, and this separation is the relation maintained throughout. No doubt the orator intends to make these two aspects unite: what, however, in poetry, in so far as poetry is really present, attests as already from the first accomplished, is present in oratory merely as the personal aim of the orator, the fulfilment of which lies outside the speech itself altogether.

The only alternative we have left us is a process ofsubsumation, whereby the phenomenon, the actual and defined thing, here the concrete case or end, is not unravelled in immediate unity with the universal as such, and freely from its own substance, but only receives validity by virtue of its dependence upon general principles and in its relation to legislative acts, morality, customs, and the like, which on their own account possess independent stability. It is not the spontaneous life of the fact in its concrete manifestation, but the prosaic division between notion and reality, a mere relation of both to each other and a mere demand for their union, which constitutes the fundamental type under consideration.

Such a process of thought is frequently adopted by the religious teacher. For him religious doctrines, in their widest connotation, and the principles of morality or of philosophy, political or otherwise, which follow in their train, are in fact precisely the object whereto he can refer cases of every conceivable variety; and they are this for the reason that these doctrines have to be accepted, believed and recognized by the religious consciousness as essentially and in their ownworth the substance of all particular appearance. No doubt the preacher may at the same time appeal to our heart, may suffer the divine laws to unveil from the depth of soul-life as their source, and face to face with his audience may refer them to such a source. But it is not in their absolutely individual guise that he must necessarily present and assert them; on the contrary, he must bring effective universality to consciousness under precisely this form of commands, promises and maxims of faith. The oratory of courts of law is even a better illustration. Here we find in addition the twofold point of view, that while on the one hand all turns most obviously on the particular case, yet conversely the subsumation of this case to general considerations and laws is equally a necessity. As regards thefirstaspect, we may remark that the element of prose is already implied in the enforced investigation of the actual facts and the collocation and able reconstruction of all singular circumstances and accidents; a process such as this at once opens our eyes to the poverty involved in this investigation of the truth of such a legal case, no less than the tedious ingenuity engaged in its display, if we contrast it at least with the free creations of poetry. We have in fact to carry our analysis of the concrete facts to a yet further point. Such must not merely be traced in a series that does justice to all features, but every one of such features, no less than the whole case, have to be referred back to the statute accepted from the first as of independent validity. At the same time, even in this prosaic affair, we still have considerable scope for an impression on the heart and emotions. For it is possible so to present the rightness or wrongness of the case under discussion to the imagination that we are no longer bound to acquiesce in the bare knowledge of the facts and a general conviction; on the contrary, the case in its entirety is capable of becoming, by virtue of the style adopted in its exposition, so marked with the characteristics of personality to everyone who hears it, that no one can fail to discover there a personal interest as of something which concerns himself.

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