osed to the habits of a
book-learned age, shows in particular a depth of ancient sagacity worthy
of our admiration. From those times until the generation that produced
Friedrich August Wolf we must take a jump over a long historical vacuum;
but in our own age we find the argument left just as it was at the time
when the power of controversy departed from antiquity, and it is a
matter of indifference to us that Wolf accepted as certain tradition
what antiquity itself had set up only as a hypothesis. It may be
remarked as most characteristic of this hypothesis that, in the
strictest sense, the personality of Homer is treated seriously; that a
certain standard of inner harmony is everywhere presupposed in the
manifestations of the personality; and that, with these two excellent
auxiliary hypotheses, whatever is seen to be below this standard and
opposed to this inner harmony is at once swept aside as un-Homeric. But
even this distinguishing characteristic, in place of wishing to
recognise the supernatural existence of a tangible personality, ascends
likewise through all the stages that lead to that zenith, with
ever-increasing energy and clearness. Individuality is ever more
strongly felt and accentuated; the psychological possibility of a
_single_ Homer is ever more forcibly demanded. If we descend backwards
from this zenith, step by step, we find a guide to the understanding of
the Homeric problem in the person of Aristotle. Homer was for him the
flawless and untiring artist who knew his end and the means to attain
it; but there is still a trace of infantile criticism to be found in
Aristotle--i.e., in the naive concession he made to the public opinion
that considered Homer as the author of the original of all comic epics,
the _Margites_. If we go still further backwards from Aristotle, the
inability to create a personality is seen to increase; more and more
poems are attributed to Homer; and every period lets us see its degree
of criticism by how much and what it considers as Homeric. In this
backward examination, we instinctively feel that away beyond Herodotus
there lies a period in which an immense flood of great epics has been
identified with the name of Homer.

Let us imagine ourselves as living in the time of Pisistratus: the word
"Homer" then comprehended an abundance of dissimilarities. What was
meant by "Homer" at that time? It is evident that that generation found
itself unable to grasp a personality and the l