not exercised so great an influence upon
mankind as the Eleventh Book, but it is probably profounder. It lures
specially the thinker and the psychologist, it seems not only to set
forth thought but the thought of thought. Very difficult is the poetic
problem in such a case, the imaginative form really is driven to its
utmost limit in order to express the content.

I. The first thing to be fully grasped and thoroughly studied is the
structure of the Book. For structure is the primordial fact of any
work, and especially of any great work, structure has always its own
meaning and far-reaching suggestiveness, and it points directly to what
the Book signifies, being its inner vital organism. In the Twelfth Book
we shall ponder a little the three essential facts of its structure.

(1) There is the twofold division of the Book, while the other Books of
Fableland have distinctly a threefold division. Herewith is coupled the
duplication of its content; the second part repeats what is contained
in the first part; or the first part tells in advance what is to be
done in the second part. Thus the structure images dualism: Thought and
Action, Word and Deed, Idea and Reality, Prophecy and Fulfillment. Yet
it also hints the oneness in the dualism.

(2) The next point in structure is the threefold subdivision of each of
the two parts. That is, now the structural principle falls back into
that of the preceding Books of Fableland. Each part has its three main
adventures with their respective environments and shapes, quite as each
Book hitherto has had. What does this suggest to the reader--this
duplication of the threefold form of the Book?

(3) Finally comes the very peculiar structure of the second adventure,
which we have above called the Double Alternative. The dualism of the
Book we may say, is now doubled, and transformed into the middle one of
the three grand trials or exploits which the Hero has to pass through.
The monster Scylla is here to be noted, with its six necks and heads,
three on each side of the body, wherein again the triple is duplicated,
though the body is certainly one. It was this monster which did most
harm to Ulysses, snapping up six of his companions in the passage.

Such are the main points in the structure of the present Book,
assuredly as great a marvel as anything recorded in the same, when it
is once fully beheld. That it is intimately connected with the thought
of the Book, is indeed the very form an