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rian marble of which the poetic temple of Greece is built, specially this Homeric temple. 5. At this point we begin to see just what is the function of Homer who has inherited a vast mass of poetic material. He is its shaper, organizer, transformer; chiefly, however, he is the architect of the beautiful structure of song. He does not and cannot make the stone which goes into his edifice, but he makes the edifice. His genius is architectonic; he has an idea which he builds into harmonious measures. What the ages have furnished, he converts to his own use, and orders into a poetic Whole. The store of Fairy Tales in those four Books was unquestionably transmitted to him, but he has jointed them into the Ulyssiad, and into the total Odyssey, of whose structure they form the very heart. The question arises: Did Homer find those Tales already collected? Possibly he did, to a certain extent; they seem to come together of themselves, making a marvelous romance of the sea. Some story-telling Greek sailor may well have given him the thread of connection; certainly they are sprung of nautical experience. But in whatever shape they may come to the poet, we may be certain of one thing: his constructive spirit transformed them and put them into their present place, where they fit to perfection, forming a most important stage in the grand Return. In the development of the folk-tale, we can in a general way mark three grades. (1) There is first the story which sets forth the processes in nature, the clouds, the winds, the storms, the sun and moon, the conflict of the elements. Such is mainly the mythical character of the old Vedas. Many a trace of this ancient conception we can find in Homeric Fableland, which has a strong elemental substrate in the wrath of Neptune, in the tempests, in the winds of AEolus, in the Oxen of the Sun. Still the Odyssey has passed far beyond this phase of mythical consciousness; it cannot be explained by resolving it back into mere nature-myths, which method simply leaves out the vital fact, namely, that of development. (2) In the second stage of the Fairy Tale the physical meaning begins to withdraw into the background, and an ethical element becomes dominant; the outer conflicts of nature, if they be present, are taken to portray the spirit's struggle, in which a supreme moral order of some kind is brought to light. Here we may well place Grimm's collection of folk-tales in many ways an epoch-making
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