fe. The first twelve Books are, therefore, the getting
rid of the destructive results caused by the Trojan War and all war, in
the human soul.

Still Ulysses, with Telemachus, is to do a deed of destruction, he is
to destroy the Suitors, who are themselves destructive of institutional
order in Ithaca. In a general way they are like the Trojans, they are
assailing the domestic and political life of the Greek world; they too
must be put down at home by the hero, as Troy was put down abroad by
him. But at Troy he became negative through the long training of a ten
years' war, the spirit of which he must get rid of before he can slay
the Suitors, for he is too much like them to be their rightful
destroyer. This, then, is the discipline of the first twelve Books:
through the experience of life to get internally free of that
destructive Trojan spirit, to overcome the negative within, and then
proceed to overcome it without.

Now this overcoming of the negative without (embodied in the Suitors)
is just the work of the last twelve Books of the Odyssey, which we have
called the Ithakeiad, as the scene is laid wholly in Ithaca. Internally
both Ulysses and Telemachus are ready; they have now externally to make
their world conform to their Idea. The trend of the poem is henceforth
toward the deed which destroys the outer negation, as hitherto the
trend was toward the deed which overcame the inner negation. To be
sure, the destruction of the Suitors has hovered before the poem from
the beginning; but in the second half it is explicit, is the immediate
end of the action.

This second half divides itself into two distinct portions. It being
the direct movement toward the deed shows in the first portion the
preparation of the instruments, which takes place at the hut of the
swineherd. Ulysses is alone, he must find out upon whose aid he can
rely; his helpers must show not only strength of limb, but strength of
conviction. Two persons appear--his son and his swineherd; they believe
themselves to be the bearers of a Divine Order as against the Suitors;
they are the army of three to whom the cowherd is to be hereafter added
on manifesting his loyalty. This part of the poem has been unfolded in
the preceding four Books.

The second portion of this second half of the poem, consisting of eight
Books, we are next to consider. Ulysses has hitherto only heard of the
excesses of the Suitors; he is now to see them directly and to
experience t