rives at
Phaeacia, an harmonious institutional realm, then he becomes fully
conscious of his negative condition and projects it out of himself in
these Tales or Songs. So all Fableland shows this consciousness in the
man; but the Twelfth Book shows him conscious not only of his negative
state, but of his mental process, conscious of his consciousness, we
may say; he is not only Thought, but is Thought thinking Thought, or at
least imaging the same; that is, Thought has itself as its own object
or content. So much we are inclined to find hinted in this duplication
of the movement in the Twelfth Book.

At this point we hear the cry of dissent: You make Homer too
introspective, you make him a self-introverted, self-torturing
nineteenth century man, whereas he is the most unreflective,
unconscious of poets. Very natural is such a protest, my good reader;
this sort of thing may be carried too far, and become fantastic. Still
it is a great mistake to think that Homer never takes a glance at his
own mind and its workings. He must have looked within in order to see
his world; where else was it to be found in any such completeness? He
has built it, and he must have taken some interest in the architect and
in his processes. Homer himself is a greater wonder than any wonder he
has created, and he probably knew it.

It is by no means the purpose to affirm in the preceding remarks that
Homer intended to make an allegorical psychology. He simply had a mind,
and the essence of mind is to be able to look at mind. So Homer saw
himself and his own process, and set it forth in an imaginative form.
Very similar is the plan of Shakespeare in the _Tempest_. Prospero is
the poet, not only as poet, but the poet making his drama in the drama.
There is also a significant duplication both of structure and
character: Prospero is at one time magician, that is, poet, and
commands the elements and the spirits, especially Ariel; at another
time he assumes his ordinary relations as parent and as king, and is as
limited as other mortals. Shakespeare made many dramas, then he saw
himself making dramas, then he put into a drama himself making dramas.
That is, he in the end (Tempest is usually held to be the last of
Shakespeare's plays) took up his own poetic process into a poem, and
thus completed the arch of his great career.

So much for the psychological aspect of these Books of Fableland. It
must be stated again that abstract terms, so necessary fo