h 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 itsel