In proceeding further to examine this fundamental aspect of our present subject I must at once give utterance to the preliminary caution that the historic investigation of the varied and multifold conceptions of Greek mythology lies outside our present task. All we are concerned to inquire into here are the essential phasal steps of this process of reconstruction, in so far as the same notify themselves as phases of universal import in the new artistic configuration and its content. As for that infinite mass of particular myths, narrations, histories, things referable to a local origin and symbolism, which collectively still assert their predominance in the world of later gods, and incidentally appear in artistic production, but for all that do not belong to the vital point of interest to which our own effort is directed—we must necessarily leave all this broad field of material on one side, and can merely refer to an example or two by way of illustration. Speaking generally we may compare this road, on which we now move forwards, to the course of the history of sculpture. For inasmuch as sculpture places before the observation of sense the gods in their real form it constitutes the peculiar centrum of classical art, albeit also the better to make it wholly understood poetry expresses itself upon gods and mankind, or passes in review the worlds of gods and men in their activity and movement in direct contrast to that objectivity self-contained in repose. Just as, then, in sculpture the moment of all importance in the beginning is the transformation of the formless, the stone or block of wood that has fallen from heaven (διoπετὴς)—as the the great goddess of Pessinus in Asia Minor actually was, which the Romans directed by means of a solemn embassy to be transferred to Rome—into the human form and so makes the statue, so too we have here to make a beginning from the formless, uncouth powers of Nature, and while doing so merely to indicate the stages, in their passage through which they are exalted into spiritual individuality and are finally concentrated in shapes of fixity.
We may in this connection distinguish three separable aspects as of most importance.
The first, which arrests our attention, are the oracles in which the knowledge and volition of gods, still under a formless mode, gives witness to their presence through natural existences.
The second point of view to be noted is concerned with the universal forms of Nature, no less than the abstractions of Right and so forth, which lie at the root of the genuine spiritual and individual deities, which are, so to speak, their birth-cradles and furnish us with the necessary conditions of their origin and activity: they are the old gods in contradistinction to the new.
Thirdly, and finally, we are made aware of the essentially necessary progress to the Ideal in the fact that the primarily superficial personifications of the activities of Nature and the most abstract spiritual conditions are contested and thrust from their prominence as something essentially subordinate and negative and, by virtue of this debasement the self-sufficient spiritual individuality and its human form and action, is suffered to attain an unchallenged masterdom. This revolution, which constitutes the real central position in the historical origins of the classic gods, is in Greek mythology placed before our imagination in the conflict—a mode of presentation as naïve as it is astonishingly direct—between the old and new gods, in the headlong fall of the Titans, and in the victory which the divine race of Zeus secures.
(a) To take, then, first in order the oracles, it will not be necessary for us now to dilate on them to any considerable extent. The essential point which concerns us here is merely due to this fact, that in classical art the phenomena of Nature are no longer revered as such—in the way that the Parsees, for example, pray to naphthetic regions or fire, or as among the Egyptians, gods remain inscrutable, mysterious, and mute riddles—but that the gods, being themselves subjects of knowledge and volition, do verily give to man by means of natural phenomena indications of their wisdom. In this sense the ancient Hellenes made inquiry at the oracle of Dodona[155], whether they should accept the names of gods, which have come to them from barbarians, and the oracle replied: "Use them."
(α) The signs by means of which the gods thus made their revelations are for the most part of the simplest description. At Dodona such were the rustle and whisper of the sacred oak, the murmur of the spring, the tones of the brazen vessel, which the wind made thus to reverberate. In like manner at Delos it was the laurel which rustled and at Delphi, too, the sound of the wind on the brazen tripod was full of significance[156]. Over and above, however, such immediately natural sounds man is also the voice-piece of the oracle in so far as he is rendered deaf to and whirled away from the alert commonsense of his ordinary mind to a natural condition of enthusiasm; as, for example, the Pythia at Delphi was wont, stupefied by exhalations, to deliver the oracular words, or in the cave of Trophonius the inquirer of the oracle met with faces, from the interpretation of which an answer was delivered him.
(β) There is, however, another aspect which we should set alongside of the purely external sign. For in the oracles God is, it is true, accepted as He who knows, and the oracle of most famed repute is dedicate to Apollo, the god of wisdom. The form, however, in which he reveals his will, remains the wholly indefinite voice of Nature, either a natural sound, that is, or the unconnected tones of words. In this obscurity of form the spiritual content is itself equally obscure and requires interpretation and explanation.
(γ) This explanation, albeit it brings under a mode of spiritual life the deliverance of the god which in the first instance is presented purely in the form of Nature's own voice, remains despite this fact obscure and equivocal. For the god is in his knowledge and volition concrete universality. And of the same type also must the advice or command unavoidably be which the oracle declares. The universal, however, is not one-sided and abstract, but as concrete universal contains the one side no less than the other. Inasmuch, then, as man stands over against the knowing god as one unknowing he accepts the oracular word itself in ignorance. In other words, the concrete universality of the same is not open to his intelligence, and he can merely select from the equivocal word of the god, assuming that he decides to act upon it, one aspect thereof, for the reason that every action under particular circumstances is unavoidably definite, only, that is to say, giving a decisive impulse in one direction and shutting off another. His action is barely accomplished, and the deed—which consequently has become his own and for which he must now be answerable—really carried through when he finds a collision confronting him. All in a moment he is aware that the other side, which lay already folded in the oracular sentence, is turned against himself and the fatality of his deed, his knowledge and will notwithstanding, has him in the toils; a fatality which he may not know, but of which we must suppose the gods are aware. Conversely again the gods are determinate potencies and their expressed will, when it carries this character of essential determinacy, as, for example, the bidding of Apollo, which drives Orestes forward to his revenge, brings about a collision of forces in the selfsame way. For the reason, then, that in one aspect of it the form, which the spiritual knowledge of the god assumes in the oracle, is the wholly undefined external expression or the abstract ideality of the word, and the form itself through the equivocal sense it contains includes the possibility of discord, we find that in classical art it is not sculpture, but poetry, and pre-eminently dramatic poetry, in which oracles contribute their share of the content and are of importance. In classical art, however, they do essentially maintain a place, because in it human individuality has not forced its way to the full height of spiritual attainment, where the subject draws the determination of his actions without infringement from his own resources. What we in our modern sense of the term call conscience, has not as here secured its rightful place. The Greek acts often, it is true, at the beck of his passion, bad no less than good; the genuine pathos, however, which is here held to quicken him, and does in fact so quicken him, proceeds from the gods, whose content and might is the universal of such a pathos; and the heroes are either immediately instinct with the same, or they interrogate oracles for advice, when the gods do not present themselves openly to their vision, by way of quickening the deed to be done.
(b) Moreover, as in the oracle the content is to be found in the gods that know and willy while the form of the external phenomenon is the external which is abstract and a part of Nature, from the other point of view that which is natural, if we look at it relatively to its universal forces and the activities which belong to these, becomes the content, from out of which the independent individuality has first to force its way up, and receives as its original form merely the formal and superficial personification. The thrusting back of these purely natural forces, the opposition and contention through which they are overcome is just the significant centre, for which we are indebted primarily to classical art, and which we must consequently submit to a closer examination.