ut back of all
this enchantment intelligence is working and assumes her mythical,
supernatural garb when the poet images her control of nature.

Thus in general the Mythus shadows forth objective mind, not
subjective; it springs from the imaginative Reason, and not from a
cultivated Reflection. In our time the demand is to have these
objective forms translated into subjective thoughts; then we can
understand them better. But the Homeric man shows the opposite
tendency: he had to translate his internal thoughts into the external
shapes of the Mythus before he could grasp fully his own mind. His
conception of the world was mythical; this form he understood and not
that of abstract reflection. We may well exclaim: Happy Homeric man, to
whom the world was ever present, not himself. Yet both sides belong to
the full-grown soul, the mythical and the reflective; from Homer the
one-sided modern mind can recover a part of its spiritual inheritance,
which is in danger of being lost.

It is therefore, a significant fact that the education of the present
time is seeking to restore the Mythus to its true place in the
development of human spirit. The Imagination is recognized to have its
right, and unless it be taken care of in the right way, it will turn a
Fury, and wreak treble vengeance upon the age which makes it an
outcast. Homer is undoubtedly the greatest of all mythologists, he
seizes the pure mythical essence of the human mind and gives to it form
and beauty. Hence from this point of view, specially, we shall study
him.

In the present Book the fact is brought out strongly that little or
nothing is to be expected from the Ithacan people toward rectifying the
great wrong done to the House of Ulysses. In part they are the
wrong-doers themselves, in part they are cowed into inactivity by the
wrong-doers. Corruption has eaten into the spirit of the people; the
result is, the great duty of deliverance is thrown back upon an
individual. One man is to take the place of all, or a few men the place
of the many, for the work must be done. The mightiness of the
individual in the time of a great crisis is thus set forth in vivid
reality; the one man with the Gods on his side is the majority. With
truest instinct does the old poet show the Goddess Pallas directing
Telemachus, who participates in the Divine and is carrying out its
decree. This communion between man and deity is no mere mythologic
sport, but the sincerest faith; verily