of the Phaeacians, needful to be known to the
new-comer. They are a people by themselves, distrustful of other
peoples; they too must be transcended.

It is well at this point to observe Homer's procedure in regard to
Pallas. We can distinguish two different ways of employing the Goddess.
The poet says that Pallas gives to the Phaeacian women surpassing skill
in the art of weaving. This is almost allegorical, if not quite; the
Goddess stands for a quality of mind, is subjective. Again, when she
endows Ulysses with forecast in an emergency, it is only another
statement for his mental prevision. Many such expressions we can find
in the Odyssey; Pallas is becoming a formula, indicating simply some
activity of mind in the individual. But in the important places the
Goddess is kept mythical; that is, she voices the Divine Order, she
utters the grand ethical purpose of the poem, or makes herself a vital
part thereof. Thus she is objective, truly mythical; in the other case
she is subjective and is getting to be an allegorical figure. The
Odyssey, with its greater internality compared with the Iliad, is
losing the mythus.

There is a third way of using Pallas and the Gods which is hardly found
in Homer, indeed could not be found to any extent without destroying
him. This is the external way of employing the deities, who appear
wholly on the outside and give their command to mortals, or influence
them by divine authority alone. Thus the Gods become mechanical, and
are not a spiritual element of the human soul. Virgil leaves such an
impression, and the Roman poets generally. Even the Greek tragic poets
are not free from it; especially Euripides is chargeable with this sin,
which is called in dramatic language _Deus ex machina_.

Though the Homeric poems as wholes are not allegories, yet they have
allegory playing into them. Indeed the mythus has an inherent tendency
to pitch over into allegory through culture. Then there is a reaction,
the mythical spirit must assert itself even among civilized peoples,
since allegorized Gods are felt to be hollow abstractions, having
nothing divine about them.

There can hardly be a doubt that a proper conception of the relation of
the deities to men is the most important matter for the student of
Homer. But it requires an incessant alertness of mind to see the
Homeric Gods when they appear to the mortal, and to observe that they
are not always the same, that they too are in the process of