physical world, once so destructive, now so
obedient.

Cloth for his sails she brought him, but we must recollect that she was
a weaver at the start of the story. At last Ulysses pushes his raft
down into the fair salt sea; Ogygia, the place of nature's luxuriance
and delight, is left behind; he must quit the natural state, however
paradisaical, and pass to the social order, to Ithaca, though the
latter be poor and rocky. Still we may well recall the fact that the
island and Calypso once saved Ulysses, when wrecked elsewhere, on
account of the slaughter done to the Oxen of the Sun; this wild spot
furnished him natural shelter, food, gratification; nay, it gave him
love.

To be sure, the other side is not to be forgotten: it had to be
transcended, when it kept him away from the higher institutional life.
Ulysses, the wonderful, limit-transcending spirit, unfolds within even
while caught in this wild jungle; he evolves out of it, as man has
evolved out of it, thus he hints the movement of his race, which has to
quit a cave-life and a mere sensuous existence. Such is the decree of
the Gods, for all time: the man must abandon Calypso, who is herself to
be transformed into an instrument of his progress.

We may now begin to see what Calypso means, in outline at least. The
difficulty of comprehending her lies in her twofold character: at one
time she is nature, then she is the helper against nature. But just
therein is her movement, her development. She is Goddess of this
Island, where she rules; but she is a lesser deity who has to be
subordinated to the Olympians, as nature must be put under spirit. The
Greek deified nature, not being able to diabolize it; still he knew
that it must be ruled and transmuted by mind. Thus Calypso is a
Goddess, inferior, confined to one locality, but having sensuous beauty
as nature has. She, without ethical content, as purely physical, stands
in the way of institutions, notably the Family; she seduces the man,
and holds him by his senses, by his passion, till he rise out of her
sway. On this side her significance is plain: she is the female
principle which stands between Ulysses and his wedded wife, she not
being wedded. Thus she is an embodiment of nature, from the external
landscape in which she is set, to internal impulse, to the element of
sex. So it comes that she is represented as a beautiful woman, but
beauty without its ethical content can no longer chain Ulysses. That
charm is b