Chapter II: Second Twelve Books (10)

There is a danger at present rising strongly into consciousness, a danger inherent in this too-long contemplation of Hades; it is the danger of the Gorgon, the monster whose view turns the spectator into stone, taking away all sensation, emotion, life. The Greek sooner or later must quit Hades, and flee from its shapes; the supersensible world he must transfuse into the sensible, else the former will rush over into the fantastic, the horrible, the ugly. The Gorgon is down in Hades too, having been slain in the terrestrial Upperworld by a Greek Hero, Perseus, who slew the monster of the Orient which once guarded the fair Andromeda, a kind of Pre-Trojan Helen, chained in captivity, whom the heroic Hellenic soul came to release. Ulysses has now reached the Greek limit, Oriental phantasms will rise unless there be a speedy return to the reality, to the realm of sense. Hades has furnished its highest image in Hercules, beware of its worst. Already the Underworld has been in danger of running into the fantastic; then Beauty, the Hellenic ideal, would be lost. The figures of Homeric Hades hitherto have all been men and women, but the monsters are ready to come forth. So they did come forth in the later Greek world under the spur of Oriental influence; witness the Revelations of St. John in the Island of Patmos, joint product of Greek and Hebrew spirit, showing truly the dissolution of the Hellenic ideal.

Thus Ulysses, the supreme spiritual Hero of the Greeks, is shown running away from the Underworld, fearing to look upon coming shapes in Hades; about which fact two reflections can be made: first, Ulysses had to do this in order to remain a Greek; secondly, the poet clearly announces, in such an action, that there is another world lying beyond his world, that underneath the Greek Hades is another Hades, which threatens to rise into view. That Hades will burst up hereafter and become the Christian Hell. Ulysses confesses that there is a realm beyond him there, which he has not conquered, has not even dared to see, and thus he significantly points to the future. The Gorgon is a shadowy anticipation of fiends, of devils, of the infernal monsters of the Romantic Netherworld of Dante, who is to be the next great Hero, passing into the dark world beyond with a new light. To be sure, Virgil sends AEneas into Orcus, and makes such descent a Book of his poem, but Virgil too speaks of a realm beyond his Orcus, which his Hero does not enter. Thus the Roman poet shows substantially the same limits as the Greek poet, whom he has for the most part copied.

Here again we find a conception embodied in song, on which the human mind has moved through many ages. Poetry, Art, Theology, have taken from this Eleventh Book of the Odyssey many creative hints: it is truly an epoch-making work in the history of man's spiritual unfolding. As already stated, Virgil repeats it, Dante grows out of it and makes it over, in accord with the spirit of Christendom, which has many a root running back to this Homeric Hades. The present Book may be called the Greek prophecy heralding medieval Art, and shows old Homer foreshadowing Romanticism. Did he not see the limits of his world? The particular connecting link between two Literary Bibles, Homer and Dante, is just the present Book, even if Dante never read Homer. For the study of Universal Literature it is, therefore, a specially important document. A many-sided production also; its poetic, its religious, its artistic, its philosophical sides are all present in full activity and put to test the spiritual alertness of the reader.

Wherein does the negative nature of Hades lie? The question rises from the fact that Ulysses in Fableland has been declared to be passing through various negative phases; such is the expression often used already. First of all, it is a negating of the sensible world and a going into the supersensible, a seeking of the spirit without the body. Hades was quite the opposite of the Greek mind, which demanded embodiment, and hence was inherently artistic. Still the Greek mind created a Hades, and finally went over into the pure Idea in Plato and the philosophers. Even Homer seems to feel that philosophy is at last a needful discipline, that the abstract thought must be taken from its concrete wrappage, that the Universal must be freed from the Particular.

Ulysses has to pass through Hades in order to complete the cycle of his experience, and realize what is beyond the senses; he must know the spirit apart from the body in this life; he must see the Past as it is in its great disembodied minds; he must behold the famous heroes of Troy as they are in reality, not as they are in the glamor of poetry. As tested by their life and deeds he sees them below in the Netherworld; Greek souls stark naked in Hades he beholds, and then rises out of it.

_Retrospect._ Very important, in our judgment, is this Eleventh Book; it is really one of the sacred documents of Universal Religion, as well as a great creative idea in the World's Literature, But it has fared badly as to its friends; for interpretation it usually falls into the hands of the negative, merely critical Understanding, which has the unfortunate habit of turning Professor of Greek, commentator on Homer, and philologer generally. In order to grasp and connect its leading points more completely, we shall look back at the thought and structure of the Book once more.

First of all, there must be felt and seen the necessity of taking this journey to the Netherworld on the part of the Hero, the complete person of his time. The very conception of the universal man must include the visit to the realm of the Idea; the passage from the sensible to the supersensible, is the deepest need of his soul. Homer can give this spiritual movement only in a mythical form, hence it occurs here in Fableland. So Ulysses has to make the transition from Circe to Hades.

Having the entire Book now before us, we observe that it shows a threefold movement; that is, one movement with three leading stages. These take the shape of three communications from the realm of the dead, which includes all past Time, imparted to the living who are now present, namely the Phaeacians, through Ulysses, who has had this cycle of experiences and now sings them. But that which is true in past Time must be seen to be true in all Time--Past, Present and Future. So there unfolds the idea of a World-Order, foretold at first by the Pre-Trojan prophet Tiresias, illustrated by the fate of the three Greco-Trojan heroes in Hades, and finally realized and active in the realm of Minos. The whole has, therefore, the secret underlying thought of a world-tribunal, which works through all human history; it is a kind of Last Judgment to which the deeds of men are appealed for final adjudication; it most profoundly suggests in its movement the ethical order of the Universe. Let us briefly sum up its three stages.

I. The first communication from the Hades of the Past to the real world of the Present through Ulysses is that of the prophet Tiresias, "whose mind is whole;" he may be called the pure Idea (as subjective) uttering the Idea (as objective, as principle of the world). For he beholds the truth of things as they are in their essence, he himself being the impersonation of Truth. Thus he looks through the Future and foretells; he knows that Neptune will avenge the deed done to Polyphemus, that the Oxen of the Sun constitute a great danger, that Ulysses will punish the Suitors; then he prophesies the peace and final harmony of Ulysses after his long conflict and separation from home, country, and the Divine Order.

So speaks Tiresias and is therein a kind of world-judge, prefiguring Minos of the last stage of Hades. For he prophesies according to the law of the deed; what you have done is sure to return upon you, be it good or bad. Hence he can tell what will happen to Ulysses for acts already committed (the wrath of Neptune); he can give a warning concerning things which Ulysses may do (the slaying of the Oxen of the Sun); he can affirm the certain punishment of guilt (the case of the Suitors). Thus the prophet voices a world-justice, which inflicts the penalty unflinchingly, but also bears within itself reconciliation. Such is the prophetic Idea, appearing in advance, not yet ordered and realized.

II. The second communication from Hades to the Phaeacians through Ulysses comes from the Trojan Past, and is voiced by the three most famous heroes of the Iliad--Achilles, Agamemnon, Ajax (the last one, however, does not speak, but acts out his communication). All three are tragic characters, are the victims of fate, that is, of their own fatal limitations. Such is the world-judgment here, it is really pronounced by themselves upon themselves in each case. Agamemnon states his own guilt, Achilles shows his limit by his complaint, Ajax does not need to speak. Ulysses simply listens and sees; now he tells the story of Troy and its heroes anew to the Present, indicating how they have put themselves into Hades.

The intimate connection between this part and the preceding part of Tiresias is plain. The prophet has forecast the law which rules these heroes also; they are truly illustrations of his prophecy, or of its underlying principle. They expose the heroic insufficiency of that Trojan time; they are the negative, tragic phases of greatness, which have also to submit at last to the law of compensation. Thus is the illustrious Trojan epoch judged and sent down below; but mark! Ulysses, of that same epoch, survives, is present, and is singing the judgment.

III. The world-justice which ideally underlies the prophecies of Tiresias in the first part of the present Book, and which is the secret moving principle in the fates of the three Greco-Trojan heroes in the second part, becomes explicit, recognized and ordered in the third part, which is now to be given. There is first the world-judge, Minos, famous for his justice during life, distributing both penalties and rewards in the Netherworld. Secondly we see the condemned ones, Orion, Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus (mark the significant reduplication of the root in the names of each one of them). All four are represented as having wronged the Gods in some way; they have violated the Divine Order, according to the Greek conception; hence the tribunal of world-justice, now organized and at work in Hades, takes them in hand. To be sure, the text of Homer does not say that they were sentenced by the decree of Minos, but such is certainly the implication. These four had a common sin, to the Greek mind: they sought to transcend the limit which the Gods have placed upon finite man, hence the image of their penalty lies in the endless repetition of their acts, which is also suggested in their names. Orion has always to pursue and slay the wild beast, never getting the work done; the liver of Tityus grows and swells afresh (root from _tu_, meaning to swell, Latin _tumor_) though being consumed by the vultures; in like manner Tantalus and Sisyphus have ever-repeated labors. Such is the glimpse here of the Greek Hades of eternal punishment. Now comes the curious fact that the heroic man through labor and suffering can rise out of this Hades of finitude; he can satisfy the demand of world-justice, and rise to Olympus among the blessed Gods. Such was Hercules, and such is to be Ulysses, who now having seen the culmination of Hades and heard its prophecy of his future state, leaves it and returns to the Upperworld.

Undoubtedly these thoughts of future punishment and reward are very dim and shadowy in Homer; still they are here in this Eleventh Book of the Odyssey, and find their true interpretation in that view of the life to come into which they unfolded with time. The best commentary on this Book, we repeat, is the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante, the grand poem of futurity, which carries out to fullness the order, of which we here catch a little glimpse.

_BOOK TWELFTH._

Ulysses flees from the Underworld, there is something down there which he feels he cannot master, something which he has not seen but of which he has a vague presentiment. The Gorgon stands for much, dimly foreshadowing a Hades beyond or below the Greek Hades, with which, however, it is not his call to grapple. Hence the poet puts upon his Hero a limitation at this point, strangely prophetic, and sends him in haste back to the terrestrial Upperworld. The bark crossed the stream of the "river Oceanus," then it entered "the wide-wayed Sea" in which lay the island of Circe, "where are the houses of the Dawn, and her dances, and the risings of the Sun." Verily the Hero has got back to the beginning of the world of light, in which he is now to have a new span of existence after his experience in the supersensible realm.

From the brief geographical glances which we catch up from the voyage, as well as from a number of hints scattered throughout the Odyssey (for instance, from what is said of the Ethiopians in the First Book), we are inclined to believe that Homer held the earth to be round. We like to think of the old Poet seeing this fact, not as a deduction of science, not even as a misty tradition from some other land, but as an immediate act of poetic insight, which beholds the law of the physical world rising out of the spiritual by the original creative fiat; the Poet witnesses the necessity by which nature conforms to mind. Homer knew the spiritual Return, this whole Odyssey is such a Return, whereby the soul is rounded off to completeness, and becomes a true totality. Why should he not apply the same law to nature, to the whole Earth, and behold it, not indefinitely extended as it appears to the senses, but returning into itself, whereby the line becomes a circle and the plain a globe? Some such need lay deep in his poetic soul, to which he had to harmonize the entire universe, visible as well as invisible. Not science is this, but an immediate vision of the true, always prophetic, which observes the impress of spirit everywhere upon the realm of matter. The old Greek sages seem to have known not merely of the rotundity of the Earth, but also of its movement round the Sun and upon its own axis, both movements being circular, returns, which image mind. Did they get their knowledge from Egypt or Chaldea? Questionable; if they looked inwardly deep enough, they could find it all there. Indeed the sages of Egypt and Chaldea saw the fact in their souls ere they saw it or could see it in the skies.

So these Homeric glimpses into the realm of what is to become science are not to be neglected or despised, in spite of their mythical, ambiguous vesture. Moreover they are in profound harmony with the present poem, to which they furnish remote, but very suggestive parallels, making the physical universe correspond to the spiritual unfolding of the Hero.

Ulysses, accordingly, comes back to the sensible world and there he finds Circe again. Indeed whom else ought he to find? She is the bright Greek realm of the senses reposing in sunlight; she has been subordinated to the rational, she is no longer the indulgence of appetite which turns men to swine, nor is she, on the other hand, the rigid ascetic. Hence we need not be surprised at her bringing good things to eat and drink: "bread and many kinds of meat and sparkling red wine." Moreover, she is still prophetic, she still has the outlook upon the Beyond, being spirit in the senses. Her present prophecies, however, will be different from her former one, she will point to the supersensible, not in Hades, for that is now past, but in the Upperworld of life and experience. Such is the return of the Hero to Circe, the fair, the terrestrial, who makes existence beautiful if she be properly held in restraint; beautiful as sunlit Hellas with its plastic forms she can become, in striking contrast to the dark shapes of the sunless Underworld which leads to the Gorgon, the realm of spooks, shades, fiends, in general of romanticism.

So much for Circe in her new relation in the present Book; how about Ulysses? It is manifest that he too is prepared for a fresh experience. He has been in the Underworld and great has been the profit. There he has seen the famous men and women of old and beheld the very heart of their destiny; the Trojan and the Pre-Trojan worthies sweeping backward through all Greek time he has witnessed and in part heard; he has become acquainted with the prophet Tiresias who knows Past, Present and Future, who is the universal mind in its purity from all material dross; he has beheld the Place of Doom and its penalties, as well as the supreme Greek Hero, the universal man of action, Hercules. Nor must we forget that he has run upon a limitation, that Gorgon from whom he fled. Truly he has obtained in this journey to Hades a grand experience of the Past, of all Greek ages, which is now added to his own personal experience. So this Past, with its knowledge, is to be applied to the Future, whereby knowledge becomes foreknowledge, and experience is to be transformed into prophecy. Mark then the transition from the previous to the present Book: when Ulysses comes back to the world of sense, he will at once see in it the supersensible, which he has just behold; he must hear in the Present a prophetic voice, that of Circe proclaiming the Future.

Thus Ulysses is now ready to listen to the coming event and to understand its import. It is to be observed that up to the Eleventh Book he has had experience merely; he took everything as it came, by chance, without knowing of it beforehand; he simply happens upon the Lotus-eaters, Polyphemus, Circe, though the careful reader has not failed to note an interior thread of connection between all these adventures. As to Hades, it is pointed out to him in advance by Circe, though all is not foretold him; but in the Twelfth Book, now to be considered, he has everything in detail laid open to him beforehand. A great change in manner of treatment; why? Because Ulysses must be shown as having reached the stage of foreknowledge through his journey to Hades; hitherto he was the mere empirical man, or blind adventurer, surrendering himself to hazard and trusting to his cunning for getting out of trouble. But now he foresees, and Circe is the voice thereof; he knows what he has to go through before he starts, here in the Upperworld, to which he has come back, and through whose conflicts he is still to pass, for life has not yet ended. Such, we think, is the fruit of that trip to the Underworld, the supersensible is seen in the sensible, and the Future becomes transparent.

Accordingly Circe foretells, and Ulysses foreknows; the two are counterparts. Then he simply goes through what has been predicted, he fills up the outline with the deed.

This is the essential fact of the Book, which is organized by it into two portions, namely the prophecy and the fulfillment; Circe has one part, Ulysses the other. Moreover each part exhibits the same general movement, which has three phases with the same names: the Sirens, the Plangctae on the one hand with Scylla and Charybdis on the other, and the Oxen of the Sun.

I.

As soon as Ulysses, after coming back from Hades, had performed the last rites over the corpse of Elpenor, Circe appears and makes a striking address: "O ye audacious, who still living have gone down to the house of Hades--ye twice-dead, while others die but once." Such is one side of Circe, now rises the other: "But come, eat food, drink wine the whole day;" let us have a Greek festival ere new labors begin. Then Circe holds a private conference with Ulysses, she asked each thing "about the journey to Hades," which, it seems, she must know ere she can foretell the remaining part.

One cannot help feeling in this passage that the poet hints that these prophecies of Circe have some connection with what Ulysses imparts to her concerning Hades. Indeed she repeats what Tiresias had already foretold in reference to the Oxen of the Sun--a matter which she probably heard from Ulysses. Cannot the other two adventures be derived in a general way from the experiences of the Underworld? The Past seems here to furnish the groundwork for the predictions of the Future, and Circe, knowing what has been in the pure forms of the supersensible, becomes the voice of what is to be.

1. First come the Sirens, whom Ulysses will have to meet again, as he has often met them before. Indeed Circe herself was once a Siren, a charmer through the senses. The present Sirens are singers, and entice to destruction through the sense of hearing, inasmuch as "heaps of bones lie about them," evidently the skeletons of persons who have perished through their seductive song. Pass them the man must; what is to be done? He will have somehow to guard against his sensuous nature and keep it from destroying itself. Yet on the other hand he must enjoy, which is his right in this world of sensations; each good music must be heard. So Circe tells of the scheme of putting wax into his companions' ears, while he is bound to the mast. Already Tiresias warned Ulysses in the Underworld to hold his appetite in check and that of his companions, if he wished to return home. This warning Circe now repeats, indeed she repeats in a new mythical form her own experience, for she, the Siren, has also been met by Ulysses and mastered. Yet these later charmers seem to have been more dangerous. When they are passed, a new peril rises of necessity.

2. Next we behold an image, or rather two sets of images, of the grand dualism of existence. That escape from the Sirens is really no solution of the problem, it is external and leaves the man still unfree, still subject to his senses. There must be somehow an inner control through the understanding, an intellectual subordination. But just here trouble springs up again. The mind has two sides to it, and is certain to fall into self-opposition. Two are the ways after parting from the Sirens, says Circe: "I shall tell thee of both."

One way is by the Plangctae (rocks which clasp together); here no bird can fly through without getting caught, even the doves of Zeus pay the penalty. "No ship of men, having gone thither, has ever escaped"--except the God-directed Argo: surely a sufficient warning. Then the second way also leads to two rocks, but of a different kind; at their bases in the sea are found Scylla, the monstrous sea-bitch, on one side, and Charybdis, the yawning maelstrom, on the other; between them Ulysses must pass with his ship and companions.

It is manifest that here are two alternatives, one after the other; the first is that of the Plangctae, the Claspers, which mean Death, unless they be avoided, yet this avoidance does not always mean Life. We can trace the connection with the Sirens: the absolute resignation to the senses is license, is destruction; we may say the same thing of the opposite, the absolute suppression of man's sensuous being is simply his dissolution. Hence the extremes appear; the moral and the immoral extremes land us in the same place; they are the two mighty rocks which may smite together and crush the poor mortal who happens to get in between the closing surfaces. If we understand the image, it holds true of excess on either side; excessive indulgence is overwhelmed by its opposite, so is excessive abstinence; they co-operate, like two valves, for the destruction of the one-sided extremist. Truly Greek is the thought, for the Greek maxim above all others was moderation, no over-doing. Such then are the Plangctae, which Ulysses must avoid wholly, if he wishes to escape. Still, even the danger is by no means over.

There is the second way which introduces a new alternative; the path of moderation has its difficulty, it too forks and produces perplexity and peril to the voyager. Here is the point where Scylla and Charybdis appear, a new set of extremes, between which the mean is to be sought, then the passage can be made. Yet even thus it costs, Ulysses will lose six of his companions; the penalty has to be paid, just the penalty of moderation. _Es raecht sich alles auf Erden._ Two sets of extremes always; if you shun one set and take the middle path, just this act of shunning produces a second set; cut the magnet in twain with its two poles, then each part will at once have two poles of its own. Such is indeed the very dialectic of life, the dualism of existence, which the heroic voyager is to overcome with suffering, with danger, with many penalties.

Fault has often been found with this duplication of the alternative, but when rightly seen into, it will show itself as the central fact of the entire description. It casts an image of the never-ceasing differentiation both in the mind and in the world; it hints the recurring contradiction in all thought and in all conduct, always to be solved, yet never quite solved. What else indeed has man to do? To master the contradiction gives him life, movement, energy, and it must be mastered every day. The old poet is going to the bottom of the matter. The above mentioned repetition of the alternative has its correspondence with the repetition which we have seen to be the fundamental form into which the whole Book is cast.

Plainly the Double Alternative here mythically set forth, springs out of the conflict with the Sirens, and is a deepening of the same to the very bottom. Indulgence kills, abstinence kills, in their excess; and the middle path bifurcates into two new extremes with their problem. Prophetic Circe can tell all this, for does it not lie just in the domain of her experience, which has also been twofold? Pure forms of spirit, wholly non-natural, are these figures representing the Double Alternative, created by the Imagination to express Thought.

3. The final warning of Circe is mainly a repetition of what Tiresias had told Ulysses already in the Underworld; from the latter she heard it and puts it here into its place. Beware of slaying the cattle of the Sun, oxen and sheep in two flocks, over which two bright nymphs keep guard. There can scarcely be a doubt concerning the physical basis of this myth. The seven herds of oxen, fifty to the herd, suggest the number of days in the lunar year (really 354); the seven herds of sheep suggest the corresponding nights. Lampelia (the Moon or Lamp of Night) is the keeper of the one; Phaethusa (the Radiant one) is the keeper of the other--namely the Sun as the day-bringer. Seldom has the old Aryan form of the myth been so well preserved; the whole reads like a transcript out of the Vedas.

Still stronger than the physical side is the spiritual suggestion. The slaughter of these cattle of the Sun points to the supreme act of negation in the intellectual man, to the sin against light. Ulysses and his companions now know the way to reach home, having had the grand experience with the Sirens and then with the Double Alternative; moreover the leader has heard the warning twice. If they now do wrong, it will be a wrong against the Sun, against Intelligence itself.

A certain critic finds fault with Circe because she repeats the warning of Tiresias, and he holds that some botcher or editor, not Homer, transferred the passage from one place to the other. Yet this repetition is not only an organic necessity of the poem, but gives an insight into the character of Circe: she cannot foresee of herself the great intellectual transgression, but Tiresias can; the Sirens and the Double Alternative, however, lie within her own experience. So she copies where she cannot originate, and in this way she is decidedly distinguished from Tiresias, though both are prophetic.

Such is the outlook upon the Future given by Circe, in the way of warning, whereby the warned know what is coming. In the three adventures we feel a certain connection, in fact an unfolding of one out of the other, beginning with the primary conflict of the Senses, which soon rises into the Understanding, and finally ends in a revolt against Reason itself, the source of Light. They have the character of typical forms, derived from the Past, yet they are certain to recur again, and hence can be foretold.

II.

We now have reached the second portion of the Book, which is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the first portion; moreover we see how the forewarnings are heeded. Ulysses and his companions enter their vessel and start once more upon the sea, leaving the island of Circe, who sends them a favorable wind. We note also that Ulysses always repeats the warning to his companions, and tells to what they are coming next; they are to share in his knowledge. Three times he does this, just before each incident, and thus prepares them, though he does not tell everything. The experience with the Bag of Winds has taught him much; his companions through ignorance of its nature opened it and the fatality followed. So he received the penalty of not sharing his knowledge with his fellows; now he avoids that mistake, for his conduct at present shows that he regards his failure to impart his information as a mistake. He was the cause of the ignorance of his companions, which was brought home to him by their deed. Now he tells them, still he will not be able to save them; the fault is theirs when they transgress, and they will receive the penalty.

1. In accord with the plan already foretold, the ship approaches the island of the Sirens, Ulysses fills the ears of his men with wax and enjoys the song, being tied firmly to the mast. It is evident that he cannot control himself from within, he wishes to be loosed, but is only fastened the more tightly by his deafened associates. Foreseeing his own weakness he guards against it, yet brings out the more strongly his lack of self-mastery. He gives up his freedom in order not to perish through enjoyment. Herein we find suggestive hints concerning the natural man; he must be governed from without, till he become self-governable. Truly this is the first stage both in the individual and in history, and Ulysses is the typical personality representing both.

The song of the Sirens is given, which we did not hear in the previous prophetic portion. We may note in it touches of flattery, of enticement, of boundless promises, even of wisdom for the wise man. Then that favorite theme, the Trojan War, they claim to know, "and all that has ever happened upon the foodful earth." Such are the gorgeous promises to the man thirsty for knowledge; but mark in their meadow the bones and decaying bodies of dead men. Evidently their sweet song, promising all, lures only to destroy. Their power, however, lasts but for the moment, while the senses are tingled; when the fit is over, Ulysses is set free and he makes no attempt to return to them. Indeed another problem is upon him; he sees "a great wave and mist," to which is added a loud sound of rushing waters. Again he exhorts his companions and tells them all that he dares about the approaching dangers.

2. Now we are to witness a practical dealing with the Double Alternative, which was theoretically set forth in the previous portion. But the first Alternative, those bi-valvular rocks called Plangctae, which clasped the sea-faring man between their valves and crushed him to death, is wholly avoided, is not even mentioned in the present passage, though it is possibly implied in one place. At any rate the grand stress is laid upon the second Alternative, Scylla and Charybdis, between which the ship is to pass.

Here again Ulysses shows his limitation. In spite of Circe's warning, he puts on armor, takes two spears, and goes on deck, like a Homeric hero, to fight Scylla. He tries to solve his problem externally, as he did in the case of the Sirens. In vain; he could not see his foe anywhere, and his eyes grew weary, peering about at the mist-like rocks.

Not thus was Scylla to be met, a monster not of mortal mould, hardly attainable by the senses. Still she was present somehow, and made herself valid. The whirling waters roared and seethed, all were intent upon the maelstrom, Charybdis, the other side; "we looked at her, fearing destruction," and destruction came just from the direction in which they were not looking. Scylla, watched, remains invisible; unwatched, she appears and snaps up six companions; external weapons can effect nothing against her. Still Ulysses gets through, scotched somewhat; he has failed to see both sides at one and the same time; mind, intelligence alone can rise out of the particular thing of the senses, and grasp the two things in opposition. As we read the story here, it suggests the man, the life-faring man, who is so drawn to one part that he neglects the counterpart, which has equal validity and soon makes itself felt by the penalty. Not the Alternative, then, Scylla _or_ Charybdis, but the combined Scylla _and_ Charybdis is the word of mastery. The two kept in separation destroy, the two held in unity are conquerable. Under all difference of Nature lies the Thought's oneness, which is the true synthesis of every Scylla and Charybdis. Such is the experience of Ulysses now; the Sirens, the creatures of the senses, may be thwarted by a species of external force; but not the present monsters can be so treated. The dualism exists doubtless, and we can be caught in it, but the function of mind is to overspan it, and so transform all difference, discord, diabolism into unity, harmony, deity.

Thus Ulysses disobeys Circe's command not to attempt to fight Scylla with weapons; the reason of her injunction becomes plain. Not a sensuous thing to be slain is Scylla, in spite of her animal figure; the poet hints that she is to be encountered by mind, which must here see both sides at once and so assert its supremacy over both. To be intent upon the one and disregard the other--that is the grand human danger. Hence the thought of Scylla and Charybdis has passed into the literature of the world, nay into the proverbs of the people, to express the peril of one-sidedness, as well as the inherent dualism in all conduct. Moreover the golden mean is suggested, that principle of action so familiar in later Greek philosophy. Deeper than this golden mean, however, runs the idea here; the dialectic of existence, the twofoldness which must be made one, the higher synthesis over all analysis are dimly intimated in the marvelous tale.

3. Having escaped through the two rocks, Ulysses and his companions come to "the flawless island of the Sun," the all-seeing luminary of Heaven. It is the total light beholding the totality. Is it not manifest that we have passed out of dualism into unity, out of strife into harmony? The island is represented as pastoral, peaceful, idyllic, with its herds reposing in sunlight; certainly a decided contrast to the noise and struggle in the region of Scylla and Charybdis. Or we may give the matter a psychological turn and say: Such is the transition from the Understanding with its finitude to Reason with its universality, to the all-seeing light within. Ulysses, having transcended the limit he showed in his last experience, has gone forward to the clear sunlit realm which illumines all limitations.

But just at this point danger arises. On the island are pasturing herds of oxen and sheep sacred to the Sun, things of light consecrated to light. The temptation will be to use them for the gratification of appetite, perhaps under some strong stress. Already both Tiresias and Circe have given the warning, which Ulysses now repeats to his companions and even exacts an oath from them not to harm the holy flocks. But hunger pinches, Ulysses again goes to sleep at the wrong moment, and the oxen of the Sun are slain by his men. It is true that the test is a hard one, death by starvation is impending, and they yield, not only violating their oaths but their light. Then they defiantly repeated their deed, "for six whole days they feasted, selecting the best of the Sun's oxen." When Ulysses awoke, he chid them sternly, but did not, or could not, stop them. The result was, they perished.

Already we have touched upon the physical basis which underlies this tale. The symbolism we may consider somewhat more closely. The sin against light on the part of the companions is double: they knew better because they had been forewarned, they were not ignorant as when they opened the Bag of Winds. Secondly, they destroyed objects sacred to the grand luminary, they assailed the very source of light. Ulysses has shared in the act also, he too must take his part of the penalty. He is saved, for he forbade the wrong, yet he went to sleep at the critical moment. To be sure the companions were hungry; but that is just the test; if they had had plenty to eat, there would have been no real trial of their fidelity to principle.

The ancient poet, throwing deepest glances into the soul and into the world, beholds the supreme negative act of man, and seeks to clothe it in a symbol. Mind turns against mind, when the man does what he knows is wrong, and the destructive side is doubly re-inforced when he assails light itself, and knowledge slays knowledge. When a person who knows affirms in word and deed that his knowing is a lie, his light puts out a light, he destroys the Oxen of the Sun. What then? It is no wonder that the great luminary threatens "to go down to Hades and there shine among the dead," unless the full penalty is exacted for such a deed. In fact, he is already extinguished mentally for these men, and Zeus, voicing the world-order, can only hurry them off into darkness. Very wonderful is the thought lurking in the symbolism of the old seer: intellectual negation, skepticism, denial, culminating in the negative deed, will at last drive the Sun himself out of Heaven and send him below into the Underworld. It is highly probable, however, that the negative man will be sent down there first, as is done in the present case.

After slaying the Oxen of the Sun and repeating the offense many times, Ulysses and his companions must again meet life, and accordingly they set sail upon the sea, bound for home and country. But such men have not in them the elements of the Return. Storms arise, winds blow, the helmsman is killed by the falling mast, and the ship is struck by lightning. The destructive powers of nature seem to concentrate upon these destroyers; such is the decree of Zeus, carrying out his promise to the Sun; verily the Supreme God could not well do otherwise. Ulysses alone barely saves himself upon a fragment of the mast and keel; manifestly there is a difference between him and his companions, who disobeyed his order. The text says that "the companions feasted for six days," it would seem that he did not; still he is involved in their calamity, though not fully in their guilt. Here is, then, a distinction of importance, since upon it is based the saving of Ulysses, who is yet to have a career.

While Ulysses may not have personally participated in the guilty deed, he was not active against it, he did not apparently seem to restrain the repetitions of it, he was paralyzed in energy. It was his will which was defective, not his intellect; he did not commit the offense, but he did not stop it, and try to conciliate the wrath of the Gods by sacrifices, by what we now call repentance. Hence, while he does not perish, he is still unfinished, incomplete, with a limit to be removed. A training of the Will is to be gone through next, till it be able to do what Reason commands. A new discipline therefore is in store for the Hero after the loss of his ship and his companions.

What will this discipline be? To a degree his entire career must be worked over again from the beginning. Upon his fragment of wood he floats back to Scylla and Charybdis; he falls into the old dualism in one of its phases, for he cannot stay upon the Island of the Sun, the place of unity and rest and light. Indeed have we not just seen him in the fierce conflict between knowing and doing, which he has not been able to unify in the last adventure? So he drops back between the grinding mill-stones of two opposites; one of these opposites, the maelstrom Charybdis, is sucking him in, but he clutches the branches of a large fig-tree overhanging the whirlpool, and holds fast till his mast and keel return to the surface of the water, upon which he escapes.

One cannot help feeling that the poet in this description has a conscious meaning underneath, it is more or less allegorical. The will of Ulysses was paralyzed in the Island of the Sun, he is helplessly carried forward on the sea, till the yawning gulf of Charybdis (Despair) threatens to swallow him, when he puts forth a mighty effort of will, represented in his clinging to the branches of the fig tree, which extends Hope to him, and thus he rescues himself. Now he rows his raft "with both his hands," it is indeed time to exert anew his volition. Charybdis could not take him, on account of a saving germ in him still; she has to let him pass. Whither?

Naturally the next station rearward is that of the Sirens, and this in a general way is what Ulysses reaches in his relapse. He comes to the realm of the senses, for the fact is that this was the source of the great trouble in the Island of the Sun. The companions, pressed by appetite and the needs of the body, yielded up their conviction, their intelligence; they had not reached that strength of the spirit which prefers the death of the body to a surrender of the soul. Ulysses at last acquiesced, the problem was too great for him and so he also is cast out of the Island of the Sun back into the region of the senses. But it is a new region of the senses, not that of the Sirens, not that of Circe, both of which he has transcended by an effort of will-power; it is the realm of Calypso, the Concealer, which has been reached through the collapse of the will after the sin against light. There is unquestionably an affinity between Circe, the Sirens, and Calypso, yet there is also such a difference between them that the poet has assigned to them distinct domains, It is plain, too, that Ulysses in his present paralysis will remain long with Calypso, not at once will he recover his power after such a negation. He is hidden, as it were, in her Dark Island Ogygia after that undoing of light; he passes from the sun-world of Reason to its opposite. Calypso, therefore, is reached through the grand Relapse, not through the progressive movement, which we have seen him going through hitherto.

Still Ulysses has in him the germ of betterment, of salvation. He longs to reach home and country, to return to his institutional world; that spark of aspiration has a saving power; it will not be extinguished even in the sensuous delights of Calypso's bower.

_Observations._ In looking back at the Twelfth Book and thinking it over as a Whole, the reader will always feel that he has not fully sounded its depths. It has not exercised so great an influence upon mankind as the Eleventh Book, but it is probably profounder. It lures specially the thinker and the psychologist, it seems not only to set forth thought but the thought of thought. Very difficult is the poetic problem in such a case, the imaginative form really is driven to its utmost limit in order to express the content.

I. The first thing to be fully grasped and thoroughly studied is the structure of the Book. For structure is the primordial fact of any work, and especially of any great work, structure has always its own meaning and far-reaching suggestiveness, and it points directly to what the Book signifies, being its inner vital organism. In the Twelfth Book we shall ponder a little the three essential facts of its structure.

(1) There is the twofold division of the Book, while the other Books of Fableland have distinctly a threefold division. Herewith is coupled the duplication of its content; the second part repeats what is contained in the first part; or the first part tells in advance what is to be done in the second part. Thus the structure images dualism: Thought and Action, Word and Deed, Idea and Reality, Prophecy and Fulfillment. Yet it also hints the oneness in the dualism.

(2) The next point in structure is the threefold subdivision of each of the two parts. That is, now the structural principle falls back into that of the preceding Books of Fableland. Each part has its three main adventures with their respective environments and shapes, quite as each Book hitherto has had. What does this suggest to the reader--this duplication of the threefold form of the Book?

(3) Finally comes the very peculiar structure of the second adventure, which we have above called the Double Alternative. The dualism of the Book we may say, is now doubled, and transformed into the middle one of the three grand trials or exploits which the Hero has to pass through. The monster Scylla is here to be noted, with its six necks and heads, three on each side of the body, wherein again the triple is duplicated, though the body is certainly one. It was this monster which did most harm to Ulysses, snapping up six of his companions in the passage.

Such are the main points in the structure of the present Book, assuredly as great a marvel as anything recorded in the same, when it is once fully beheld. That it is intimately connected with the thought of the Book, is indeed the very form and mould thereof, is felt by every careful reader. But what is this thought? Here the difference begins, and the conflict of opinion ranges over and into fields diverse and far apart.

II. It may be said that the interpretations suggested by these three adventures--with the Sirens, with Scylla and Charybdis, and with the Oxen of the Sun--belong to two extremes; those of Nature and of Mind. Readers and commentators of different character and training will differ; one set will lean to the physical view, the other to the spiritual. It is our opinion that both views can find justification in the poem. We may first look at the physical interpretation.

All these monsters have been supposed to represent perils of navigation, especially in the Italian seas, which were frequented by the early Greek navigator. They have also been located geographically, to be sure in a variety of places. The Sirens dwelt on three dangerous rocks near the island of Capraea, according to ancient authorities; or they were found on the promontory between Paestum and Elea, or even down at Cape Pelorum in Sicily. Why should they not be indeed everywhere! Then they have been supposed to personify the secret dangers of a calm sea, and their song is the music of splashing waters. Undoubtedly a physical substrate must be granted in the case of the Sirens, and in the Mythus generally; still they are truly everywhere, not only in the Italian Sea, but also in the sea of life, and they appear not only to the professional sailor but to every human navigator. Are literal rocks passed by putting wax into the ears of the crew and by tying the captain to the mast? Surely some other peril is suggested.

In the second adventure, the Plangctae (the Claspers, not the Wanderers, as some translations give it), have been located at the Lipari Islands in the Sicilian Sea, where there is strong volcanic action. The well-known Symplegades of the Argonautic expedition which were placed at the entrance of the Euxine, were probably patterned after this Homeric conception, and transferred to the North-east. The two terrors, Scylla and Charybdis, lie in the straits of Messina, according to the accepted view, the former on the Italian side, the latter on the Sicilian. A town named Scilla still exists in those regions, and an eddy in the straits of Messina is still called Charilla (from Charybdis doubtless.) Etymologically Scylla means a bitch, Charybdis is allied with Chaos (from a Greek word meaning to yawn). Later legend gave to Scylla a great variety of forms, which were reproduced in art and poetry. One story represents her as having been a beautiful maiden who was loved by Glaucus, and who was turned into her present monstrous shape by Circe through jealousy, for the enchantress loved Glaucus too. The sucking-in of the waters by Charybdis, and her disgorging of them has been connected with the ebb and flow of the tides. It may also be added that the Plangctae (in the sense of wandering or floating islands) have been supposed to refer to icebergs, some report of which may have reached the Homeric world through the Phoenician sailor, who must have passed outside of the straits of Gibraltar, into the Atlantic.

III. Such are some of the physical explanations which this Book has suggested; we may now consider it in relation to certain mental phenomena. Already we have unfolded the ethical meaning which especially lies in these shapes, and the Hero's struggle with them. But they have another and deeper suggestion; they adumbrate the nature of mind itself and the process of thinking; both in form and content the whole Book strangely points to psychology, as if the poet, having created these wonders of Fableland, were going to create his own creative act and present it in an image.

(1) The division of the Book into the two parts already alluded to in which each is what the other is, in which there are both separation and identity, calls up the fundamental fact of self-consciousness, which is often expressed in the formula Ego=Ego. Mind, Ego, separates itself into two sides, yet each side is the whole and recognizes the other side as itself. This act is the condition of knowing of every kind, which always differentiates then identifies. One step more: Circe in her prophecy gave the pure form of the idea, then came its realization, so that there is suggested the primordial distinction of the mind into Intellect and Will, or the Thought and the Deed. Thus we see in this division of the Twelfth Book the exact characteristic of subject-object, and there is still further suggested the distinction between Thinking and Willing.

(2) Passing to the threefold subdivision of each of the two parts, we observe that it also calls up psychological distinctions. Three stages of the knowing mind, Senses, Understanding, Reason, may be found here, not very definitely given, still distinctly implied. The Sirens represent the Sensuous, especially in its moral aspect; the Plangctae with Scylla and Charybdis set forth a vivid image of the divisions and conflicts of the finite Understanding; the Oxen of the Sun point to the central light, that of Reason, which, when destroyed in any way, constitutes the chief human calamity.

Another curious psychological hint may be noted in the text of Homer. The Sirens, the first or implicit stage, are sometimes spoken of in the dual and sometimes in the plural; Homer would seem to imply that they are two in number, yet they always act and sing as one. That is, the dualism or separation is as yet implicit; but in the second stage (that of Scylla and Charybdis) it will become explicit with decided emphasis. Later legend made the Sirens three in number, and gave them names, and otherwise distinguished them; but this is not Homeric and indeed has lost the Homeric consciousness.