ce with the course of
events--what does it mean? This is unquestionably the fundamental
problem with the earnest student of Homer. Let us observe, then, first,
that the poet's principle is not to allow a divine intervention to
degenerate into a merely external mechanical act; himself full of the
spirit of the God, he puts the divine influence inside the individual
as well as outside, and thus preserves the latter's freedom in the
providential order. The faithful reader will never let these movements
of the deity drop into mere machinery; when he does, he has lost the
essence of Homer. Doubtless it requires an alert activity of mind to
hold the Gods always before the vision in their truth; they must be
re-thought, or indeed re-created every time they appear. The
somnolescent reader is only too ready to spare himself the poetic
exaltation in which the old bard must be read, if we would really see
the divinities, and grasp the spirit of their dealings with man. Speak
not, then, of epical machinery in Homer, the word is misleading to the
last degree, is indeed libellous, belieing the poet in the very soul of
his art.

In the present Book there is not by any means as much divine
intervention as in the preceding one; we pass from the lower realm of
the water-gods to that of Pallas, the goddess of intelligence, who is
the sole active divinity in this Book. She appears to Nausicaa at the
beginning in the form of a dream, and bids the maiden look after some
washing. Our first question is, why call in a goddess for such a
purpose? The procedure seems trivial and unnecessary, and so it would
be under ordinary circumstances. But through this humble and
common-place duty Nausicaa is made a link in the grand chain of the
Return of Ulysses, which is the divine plan underlying the whole poem,
and is specially the work of Pallas. To be sure this had no place in
Nausicaa's intention, but it does have a place in the providential
scheme, which has, therefore, to be voiced by the Goddess. Yet that
scheme does not conflict with the free-will of the maiden, which finds
its fullest scope just in this household duty, and brings out her
character. She reveals to Ulysses her nature, this is the occasion; she
had to be free to represent what she truly was to the much-experienced
man. An ordinary wash-day has little divinity in it, but this one is
filled with the divine plan. Thus small events, otherwise immediately
forgotten, may by a mighty co-i