(γγ) Not every war, however, waged under ordinary conditions between two hostile nations is necessarily on that account of an epic character. We must have a further condition satisfied, namely, the justification on broad historical grounds for the bellicose attitude thus adopted. Only when we have this do we obtain a picture of an enterprise at once novel and more exalted, which does not present the appearance of something apart from universal history, the purely capricious subjugation of one state by another, but is absolutely and essentially rooted in a profounder principle of necessity, however much at the same time the more superficial and obvious motive of the undertaking may assume from one point of view the aspect of deliberate wrong,[9] and from the other that of a private revenge. We have something analogous to such a situation in the Ramajana. But the supreme example is that of the Iliad, where the Greeks invade an Asiatic people, and in doing so fight out as it were the preludic conflict of a tremendous opposition, the wars of which practically constitute the turning point of Greek history as we see it on the stage of universal history. Of the same type is the struggle of the Cid against the Moors, or in Tasso and Ariosto the battles of the Christians against the Saracens, or in Camoens the strife of the Portuguese against the Indians. And indeed we may assert that in all the greatest Epopees we find nations which differ from each other in moral customs, religion, and language, in a word, in all that concerns their spiritual and external life, brought into collision; and we are ready to contemplate such without any revulsion on account of the triumph we find asserted there of a nobler principle of world-evolution over a less exalted, a victory assured by a bravery that is simply annihilating. If any one should, in this sense, and in emulation of past Epopees, which have sought to depict the triumph of the West over the East, of the European principle of moderation, of the individually articulate and truly organic type of beauty over Asiatic splendour, over the magnificence of a patriarchal unity, which does not attempt to secure such organic completeness, or is at least merely held together by abstract and superficial conjunctions, if such, I say, should aspire to write the Epopee of the future, he will be necessarily restricted to the portrayal of the victory of some future and intensely vital rationality of the American nation over the prison-house of the spirit which for ever pursues its monotonous task of self-adjustment and particularization.[10] In the Europe of our day every nation finds itself conditioned[11] by its neighbour, and cannot venture on its own account to wage any war with another European nation. If we lift our eyes beyond Europe, there can be only one direction, America.
(b) The Individual Epic Action
It is on such an essentially limited foundation then of conflict between entire nationalities that the epic event is realized, the leading characteristics of which we have now to determine. We may summarize the form we propose our investigation should take as follows:
Firsts what actually takes place consists essentially in this that the object of the epic action ought necessarily to be of individual vitality and definition, however much it may rest on a basis of the most general extension.
Secondly, for the reason that it is only of individuals that we can predicate actions we have the problem to solve of the general nature of the epic character or personality.
Thirdly, in the epic eventuality the form of objectivity is not exclusively that of external appearance: it consists quite as much in the significance of all that is itself intrinsically necessary to and substantive in the exposition. We have consequently to determine the form in which this intrinsic significance of the occurrence proclaims itself as effective, either in part as the ideal necessity which is therein concealed, or as the disclosed direction[12] of eternal and providential forces.
(α) We have postulated as a necessary background of this epic world an enterprise of national significance, in which the entire compass of a national spirit can express itself in the bloom and freshness of its heroic condition. From this fundamental substratum in its simplicity we now further assume the apparition of a particular end, in the realization of which all other aspects of the national character, whether in belief or action, can be represented to our vision. The original postulate is in fact bound up in the closest way with such an all-embracing actuality.
(αα) This purposed object, which is infused with the vital principle of individuality on the lines of which, regarded in its particularized content, the entire process moves forward, must further, as already ascertained, appropriate to itself in the Epos the form of an event. It will be therefore above all important to recall at once the specific character of the mode, under which human volition and action generally combine in what we designate as the event. Now, in the first place, action and adventure are the outcome of conscious life, the content of which is not only ideally expressed in emotions, reflections, and thoughts, but also quite as much in a practical way. We may regard such realization from two distinct points of view. First, we have the ideal substance of the end presupposed and purposed, the general character of which the individual must recognize, will, calculate and accept. Secondly, there is the external reality of the spiritual or human and the natural environment, within which he is only able to act, and the accidental features of which at one time obstruct and at another assist his path; so that either in the one case he is carried forward by virtue of this favour to a successful issue, or, if in the other he is not prepared wholly to give way to such opposition, he finds it necessary to overcome them with his individual energy. If now the world covered by this volitional power is conceived as the indivisible unity of these two aspects, with the result that the right of assertion by both is equally asserted, in that case what is most pertinent to conscious life likewise enters into the formal structure of the event, the form, that is, which confers on all human action the configuration of events, in so far as the conscious or subjective will, with its purposes, motives of passion, principles and aims, can no longer appear the fact of most importance. Or, in other words, in human action everything is referred back to human personality, personal obligation, opinion and intention. In the case of the event, on the contrary, the external constitution of things is permitted to assert its inviolable claim. Here it is objective reality itself, which constitutes either the form assumed by the whole, or from another point of view a fundamental part of the content. In agreement with such a view I have already stated that it is the function of epic poetry to demonstrate the happening of an action, and thereby not only to establish the external disposition of the execution of ends, but also to meet as readily the claims of external condition, natural occurrences, and all else of a contingent character, which, in action taken simply as such, the ideal element of conscious life claims exclusively as its province.
(ββ) With regard to the particular end, the carrying out of which the Epos unfolds under the mode of the event, it follows from our previous conclusions that it must be no mere mental abstraction, but on the contrary of wholly concrete definition. At the same time, inasmuch as it is realized within the substantive actuality of the national unity, such a process must exclude the notion of merely capricious activity. The political state as such—the fatherland, let us say—or the history of a State and country, are essentially something universal, which, regarded in the light of such universality, does not appear under the mode of a subjectively individual existence, or, in other words, in inseparable and exclusive coalition with one definite living individual. For this reason the history of a country, the development of its political life, its constitution and destiny may also no doubt be narrated as event; if, however, the facts thus described are not placed before us as the concrete deed, the conscious aim, the passion, the suffering and accomplishment of particular heroes, whose individuality supplies the form and content of the realization in all its parts, the event merely assumes the rigid form of its independent forward movement in the prosaic history of a people or an empire. In this respect no doubt the most exalted action of Spirit would be the history of the world itself. We can conceive it possible that our poet might in this sense undertake to elaborate in what we may call the absolute Epos this universal achievement on the battlefield of the universal spirit, whose hero would be the spirit of man, the humanus, who is drawn up and exalted from the clouded levels[13] of conscious existence into the clearer region of universal history. But in virtue of the very fact of its universality a subject-matter of this kind would so be quite unfitted for artistic treatment. It would not adapt itself sufficiently to individualization. For on the one hand we fail altogether to find in such a subject a clearly fixed background and world-condition, not merely in relation to external locale, but also in that of morality and custom. In other words, the only basis for all we could possibly presuppose would be the universal World-Spirit or intelligence, whom we are unable to bring visibly before us as a particular condition, and who is possessed of the entire Earth as his local environment. And in like manner too the one end fulfilled in such an Epos could only be the end proposed by the World-Spirit himself,[14] who can only be apprehended and explicitly disclosed in his true significance through the processes of thought. If he is, however, to be represented in the form of poetry, or, at least, if the whole is to receive its proper meaning and coalescence from such a source, it is necessary that his presence should be expressed as that which acts independently from its own resources. This could only be possible for poetry, in so far as the ideal Taskmaster of history, the eternal and absolute Idea, which is realized in humanity, either was envisioned as a directive, active, perfecting individual person, or was merely made effective under the concealing veil of an ever-operative Necessity. In the first case, however, the infinity of such a content must shatter the necessarily limited artistic vessel of determinate individuality, or, as the only way of avoiding such a defect, must assume the inadequate form of a dispassionate allegory of general reflections over the destination of the human race and its education, over the final purpose of mankind, its moral consummation, or over whatever result the end of this World-history might establish. In the alternative case it is the genius of the various peoples which has in each example to be presented (in the heroic figure) in the conflicting existence of whom history expands and moves forward in progressive evolution. If, however, the genius of nations is really to appear in poetical form this can be carried out in only one way, namely, by placing before us the actual world-historical figures as operative through their deeds. We should, however, then merely have a series of particular characters, which emerged and again disappeared in a wholly external succession, the objects of which lacked individual unity and connection; and this would be so for the reason that the controlling World-Spirit, under our conception of it, as the ideal essence and destiny, could not, in the case supposed, be set forth as itself an active individual and the culminating agent in the process. And if, further, anyone was desirous of appropriating the spirits of different nationalities in their universality, and of displaying them as agents in such a substantive form, we should still only have a similar series, the individuals whereof, apart from the fact that they would merely possess an appearance of positive existence similar to Hindoo incarnations, would, in the fictitious form of the imagination they received pale into nothingness when contrasted with the truth of the World-Spirit as realized in actual history.
(γγ) We may consequently lay it down as a general principle that the particular epic event is only able to secure a vital form in poetry when it is united in the closest state of fusion with one individual. Precisely as it is one poet who thinks out and executes the whole, so too one individual must crown the edifice, with whom the event is associated and in connection with whose single identity it is continued and completed.