ough 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 no