gave up family and country; "chewing the lotus, he forgot
the return." His will vanished into a sensuous oblivion; he was
indifferent, and this indifference was a passive destruction of the
Greek world to which he was returning. But now in due order the active
destroyer of that world appears; behold the Cyclops, the wild man of
nature, truly a monster to the Greek institutional sense, being without
domestic and civil order. Thus we mark the inner transition: the active
principle of that which was a passive Lotus-eater is the Cyclops, a
Polyphemus. The Trojan negative result, so deeply lodged in the soul of
Ulysses and his companions, cannot remain mere indifference or
forgetfulness; it must proceed to action, to virulent destructive
action, which is now to be bodied forth in a fabulous shape. Only a few
of the weakest companions of Ulysses were ready to become Lotus-eaters,
and they were easily thrust under the oar-benches and carried away.
Here there is a fresh conflict, altogether the main one of the present
Book.

III.

If then we have seized the matter aright, we have reached a shape in
Fairyland, which represents what is hostile, actively hostile, to the
Greek institutional world, State, Family, Society. Ulysses stands in a
double relation to the present condition of things. The Cyclops is
really a picture of him in his negative character, a product of his
destructive Trojan spirit, yet he is just the man who must put down the
Cyclops, he must master his own negation or perish. Ulysses sees the
natural man, or rather, he sees himself with all culture taken away,
with all institutional life eliminated from his existence.

He may well be frightened at the monster, who is very real, though a
dweller in Fairyland. Nor should we forget that the Cyclops also
undergoes a change, he too is in the process and shows something like
development under the severe tuition of Ulysses.

As already said, the present portion is altogether the longest in the
Book, it is essentially the entire Book. The other two portions were
hardly more than a short introduction and a brief transitional stage;
now comes the full and highly elaborated tale, in which both the land
and its inhabitants are fabulous, supernatural. There are two distinct
divisions treating of the Cyclops: the first describes their race in
general, the second gives a description of the particular grand
Cyclops, Polyphemus, in his conflict with Ulysses.

I. This tim