his aid when he believes and acts. His
intellect is doubt, his will is faith: wherein we may trace important
lines which unite him with Faust, the chief character in our last
world-poem. Ulysses will complain, and having freed his mind, will go
to work and conquer the obstacle. He struggles with the billow,
clinging to the mast, though he had just said: "Now I shall die a
miserable death."

Parallel to this human side runs the divine side, which we need not
further describe here, with its three water-deities. A little attention
we may give to the part of Pallas. At one time she seems to control the
outer world for her favorite, sending the wind or stopping it; then she
is said to inform his mind with forecast, that he may do the thing in
spite of wind or other obstacle; finally he often does the deed without
any divine suggestion, acting through himself. In these stages we can
see a transition of the Mythus. The first stage is truly mythical, in
which the deity is the mover, the second is less so, the Goddess having
become almost wholly internal; in the third stage the mythical is lost.
All these stages are in Homer and in this Book, though the first is
still paramount.

Taking into view the general character of the mythical movement of this
Fifth Book, we observe that there is a rise in it from a lower to a
higher form; Calypso and Neptune are intimately blended with their
physical environments, the island and the sea. Though elevated into
persons, they are still sunk in Nature; it is the function of the Hero,
especially the wise man, to subordinate both or to transcend both:
which is just what Ulysses has done. His Mythus is, therefore, a higher
one, telling the story of the subjection of nature and of her Gods.
This story marks one phase of his career.

The reader will probably be impressed with the fact that in the present
Book the stress is upon the discipline of the will. The inner reactions
of complaint, doubt, or despair turn against the deed, to which Ulysses
has to nerve himself by a supreme act of volition. The world of Calypso
is that of self-indulgence, inactivity, will-lessness, to which Ulysses
has sunk after his sin against the source of light, after his negation
of all intelligence. It is not simply sensuous gratification with the
mind still whole and capable of resolution, as was the case with
Ulysses in the realm of Circe, in which he shows his will-power, though
coupled with indulgence. Such is th