sses far off in Hades, but the
Phaeacians in their actual sensible world. The latter demand again the
grand background and presupposition of their present life--the Trojan
epoch represented in its great spirits.

2. The Past, Trojan, in three typical Greek heroes, Agamemnon,
Achilles, Ajax. The three typical Greek women of the Trojan epoch are
also mentioned. An implicit idea of punishment, or of heroic limitation
brought home to the hero, is traceable in this portion.

III. The idea of a world-justice with its universal judgment, hitherto
only implied, now becomes explicit in Hades and organizes itself,
showing (1) the judge, Minos, (2) the culprits in four condemned ones,
(3) the saved one, Hercules, who rises out of Hades through the deed.
By implication so does the living Ulysses--hence the journey is at an
end, Hades is conquered.

I.

Ulysses follows the direction of Circe, indeed he is propelled by the
wind which she sends, to the "confines of the Ocean stream," to the
limits of this terrestrial Upperworld. Here is the land of the
Cimmerians, "hid in fog and in cloud," which veils the realm of the
dead; here the sun sends no beam, either rising or setting. Again it is
possible that the poet may have heard some dim account of the regions
of the extreme North. But the significance of the Cimmerians is to
shadow forth the dark border-land between life and death, which is here
that between the limited and the unlimited. We see the strong attempt
of the poet to get beyond limitation in its twofold appearance: first
he will transcend the external boundary of the Homeric horizon, that of
the sea stretching far to the westward; still more emphatic is his
effort to transcend the limits of finite thinking and to reach an
infinite realm, which is the goal of the spirit. He sweeps out of
sensuous space, yet the poetic imagination has to remain in space after
all, though it be a new space of its own creation. In like manner, he
has to give the disembodied souls some finite nourishment in the shape
of food and blood, in order that they become real. We feel in these
dark Cimmerian limits his wrestle to pass over to the supersensible by
thought.

I. The Present is represented by Ulysses and his companions, who now
perform the rites consisting of a sacrifice and prayer to "the nations
of the dead." We may find in the libation of "mingled honey, sweet
wine, and water," a suggestion of the tissues and fluids of the body,
w