(b) The above described modes of epigram, gnome, and didactive poem accept their specific provinces of Nature or human life as their subject-matter, while endeavouring to fix attention in concise language, with more or less limitation of survey, on that which is of permanent worth and essential truth in this or that object, condition, or activity; and even under the still more restricted condition which the art of poetry imposes on such a task the practical result upon human effort is still maintained. There is, however, a further or second type of such compositions, which is, on the one hand, profounder in its penetration, and, on the other, lays less stress on instruction and reform. Such are the cosmogonies and theogonies, no less than those most ancient works of philosophy, which are still unable entirely to liberate themselves from the poetical form.
(α) In this way the exposition of the Eleatic philosophy in the poems of Xenophanes and Parmenides still remains poetic in form; and this is exceptionally so in the introduction prefaced by the latter to his work. The content is here the One, which, in its contrast to the Becoming or the already Become, all particular phenomena in short, is eternal and imperishable. No particularity is permitted to bring content to the human spirit, which strives after truth, and, in the first instance, is cognizant of the same in its most abstract unity and concreteness. Expatiating in the greatness of this object, and wrestling with the might of the same, the impulse of soul inclines instinctively to the lyrical expression, although the entire explication of the truths into which the writer's thought here penetrates carries on its face a wholly practical and thereby epic character.
(β) It is, secondly, the becoming of objective things, in particular natural objects, the press and conflict of activities operative in Nature, which supplies the matter of the cosmogonies, and impels the poetic imagination to disclose in the still more concrete and opulent mode of actions and events real eventuality. And the way this faculty does this is by clothing the forces of Nature in relatively more or less personified or figurative images placed in distinct stages, and through the symbolical form of human events and actions. Such a type of epic content and exposition pre-eminently belongs to Oriental Nature-religions; and above all among them the poetry of India is to an excessive degree prolific in the invention and portrayal of such modes of conception, frequently of an unbridled and extravagant type, concerning the origin of the world and the powers that are active therein.
(γ) We find, thirdly, similar characteristics in theogonies. Such occupy their true position mainly in so far as, on the one hand, the many particular gods are not suffered exclusively to possess the life of Nature as the more essential content of their power and creation, nor, conversely, is it one god that creates the world out of thought and spirit, and who, in the jealous mood of monotheism, will tolerate no other gods beside himself. This fair mean is alone exemplified in the religious outlook of the Greeks. It discovers an imperishable subject-matter for theogony-building in the forceful emancipation of the family of Zeus from the lawlessness of primitive natural forces, no less than in the conflict waged against them. It is a process and a strife which we may indeed affirm gives us the historical origins of the immortal gods of poetry itself. The famous example of such an epic mode of conception we possess in the theogony known to us under the name of Hesiod. In this composition the entire course of event is throughout wedded to the form of human occurrences; it becomes less and less symbolical just to the extent that the gods, who are summoned to a spiritual dominion, are themselves liberated through an intelligent and ethical individuality adequate to their essential nature, and consequently are rightfully claimed and depicted as acting like human beings. What is, however, still absent from this type of Epic composition is, in the first place, a genuinely complete result[1] as poetry. The acts and events, which are within the scope of the survey of such poems, are no doubt an essentially necessary succession of occurrence, but they are not an individual action which issues as from a centre, wherein it discovers its unity and independence. From a further point of view the content of such poetry does not, and in virtue of its character cannot, present to us an essentially complete whole. It does, and for the above reason must, exclude the real activities of mankind, which are indispensable as the truly concrete material for the active display of the Divine forces. Epic poetry, therefore, is bound to free itself from such defects, if it is to receive its most perfect expression.
(c) This actually does take place in that sphere which we may designate the true Epopœa.
In the types hitherto discussed, which as a rule are wholly passed over, what we call the epic tone is unmistakably present, but the content is not as yet poetical in the concrete sense. Particular ethical maxims and philosophemata still persist as part of the material. What is, however, poetical in the full sense is concrete ideality in individual guise; and the epos, inasmuch as it makes what actually exists its object, accepts as such the happening of a definite action, which, in the full compass of its circumstances and relations must be brought with clarity to our vision as an event enriched by its further association with the organically complete world of a nation and an age. It follows from this that the collective world-outlook and objective presence of a national spirit, displayed as an actual event in the form of its self-manifestation, constitutes, and nothing short of this does so, the content and form of the true epic poem. As one aspect of such a totality we have the religious consciousness in every degree of profundity attained by the human spirit; it furthermore embraces the particular concrete life, whether political or domestic, not excluding all the detail of external existence, and the means by which human necessities are satisfied. All such material the epos makes of vital account as a growth in close contact with individuals; and for this reason, that for poetry the universal and substantive is only realized in the living presence of spirit life.
Such a comprehensive world, together with the human characterization it embraces, must then pass before us as real in a tranquil stream, without any undue haste, either as positive history or dramatic action, towards its aim and conclusion. We must thereby be permitted to linger round isolated facts, to penetrate into the different pictures of its movement and to enjoy them in all their detail. And by this means the entire panorama receives in its objective mode of realization the form of an external series of events, the basis and limitations of which must be implied in the essential ideality of the particular epic content, and of which the positive assertion is alone absent. If, consequently, the epic poem is, in its links of connection, more diffuse, and, by virtue of the relatively greater independence of portions of it, inclined to suffer from lack of coherency, we must not allow ourselves the impression that it could ever have been actually sung throughout in this manner. Rather it is an imperative in its case, as in that of any other artistic production, that it should be finished off in an essentially organic whole, which, however, moves forward in apparent tranquillity, in order that the particular fact and the images of actual life it contains may engage our interest.
(α) Such a primitive whole is the epic composition, whether known as the saga, the book, or the bible of a people. We may add every great and important nation can claim to have such primitive books, in which we find a mirror of the original spirit of a folk. To this extent these memorials are nothing less than the real foundations of the national consciousness; and it would be of profound interest to make a collection of such epic bibles. Such a series of Epopees, however much they fell short of artistic compositions in the modern sense, would at least present to us a gallery of the genius of nations. At the same time it is doubtless the fact that it is not every national bible which can claim the poetic form of the epopœa; nor do all nations which have embodied their most sacred memorials, whether in relation to religion or secular life, in the form of comprehensive compositions of the epic type, possess religious books. The Old Testament, for example, contains no doubt much epic narrative and genuine history, no less than incidental poetic compositions; but despite of this the whole is not a work of art. In a similar way the New Testament, as also the Koran, are mainly limited to a religious subject-matter, starting from which the life of the world at large is to some extent and in later times a consequence. Conversely, though the Hellenes have a poetic bible in the poems of Homer, they are without ancient religious books in the sense the Hindoos and the Parsees possess such. Where, however, we meet with the primitive epopoea, we must essentially distinguish between primitive poetic books and the more recent classic compositions of a nation, which do not any longer offer us a mirror of the national spirit in all its compass but do no more than reflect it partially and in particular directions. The dramatic poetry of the Hindoos, for example, or the tragedies of Sophocles present no such exhaustive picture as we find in the Ramajana and the Maha-Bharata, or the Iliad and the Odyssey.
(β) And insomuch as in the genuine Epos the naïve national consciousness is expressed for the first time in poetic guise, the real epic poem will appear for the most part in that midway stage in which, though no doubt a people is aroused from its stupidity, and its life is to that extent essentially strengthened to the point of reproducing its own world and of feeling itself at home therein, yet, for all that, everything which at a later stage becomes fixed religious dogma or civic law and ethical rule, still remains in the fluency of life as mere opinion, inseparable from the individual as such. And along with this volition and feeling are not as yet held distinct from one another.