Homer and Classical Philology | Page 5

in this natural phenomenon as we do in an
uncontrollable cataract. But as soon as we examine this thought at close quarters, we
involuntarily put a poetic mass of people in the place of the poetising _soul of the people_:
a long row of popular poets in whom individuality has no meaning, and in whom the
tumultuous movement of a people's soul, the intuitive strength of a people's eye, and the
unabated profusion of a people's fantasy, were once powerful: a row of original geniuses,
attached to a time, to a poetic genus, to a subject-matter.
Such a conception justly made people suspicious. Could it be possible that that same
Nature who so sparingly distributed her rarest and most precious

production--genius--should suddenly take the notion of lavishing her gifts in one sole
direction? And here the thorny question again made its appearance: Could we not get
along with one genius only, and explain the present existence of that unattainable
excellence? And now eyes were keenly on the lookout for whatever that excellence and
singularity might consist of. Impossible for it to be in the construction of the complete
works, said one party, for this is far from faultless; but doubtless to be found in single
songs: in the single pieces above all; not in the whole. A second party, on the other hand,
sheltered themselves beneath the authority of Aristotle, who especially admired Homer's
"divine" nature in the choice of his entire subject, and the manner in which he planned
and carried it out. If, however, this construction was not clearly seen, this fault was due to
the way the poems were handed down to posterity and not to the poet himself--it was the
result of retouchings and interpolations, owing to which the original setting of the work
gradually became obscured. The more the first school looked for inequalities,
contradictions, perplexities, the more energetically did the other school brush aside what
in their opinion obscured the original plan, in order, if possible, that nothing might be left
remaining but the actual words of the original epic itself. The second school of thought of
course held fast by the conception of an epoch-making genius as the composer of the
great works. The first school, on the other hand, wavered between the supposition of one
genius plus a number of minor poets, and another hypothesis which assumed only a
number of superior and even mediocre individual bards, but also postulated a mysterious
discharging, a deep, national, artistic impulse, which shows itself in individual minstrels
as an almost indifferent medium. It is to this latter school that we must attribute the
representation of the Homeric poems as the expression of that mysterious impulse.
All these schools of thought start from the assumption that the problem of the present
form of these epics can be solved from the standpoint of an æsthetic judgment--but we
must await the decision as to the authorised line of demarcation between the man of
genius and the poetical soul of the people. Are there characteristic differences between
the utterances of the man of genius and the _poetical soul of the people_?
This whole contrast, however, is unjust and misleading. There is no more dangerous
assumption in modern æsthetics than that of _popular poetry and individual poetry, or, as
it is usually called, artistic poetry_. This is the reaction, or, if you will, the superstition,
which followed upon the most momentous discovery of historico-philological science,
the discovery and appreciation of the soul of the people. For this discovery prepared the
way for a coming scientific view of history, which was until then, and in many respects is
even now, a mere collection of materials, with the prospect that new materials would
continue to be added, and that the huge, overflowing pile would never be systematically
arranged. The people now understood for the first time that the long-felt power of greater
individualities and wills was larger than the pitifully small will of an individual man;[1]
they now saw that everything truly great in the kingdom of the will could not have its
deepest root in the inefficacious and ephemeral individual will; and, finally, they now
discovered the powerful instincts of the masses, and diagnosed those unconscious
impulses to be the foundations and supports of the so-called universal history. But the
newly-lighted flame also cast its shadow: and this shadow was none other than that
superstition already referred to, which popular poetry set up in opposition to individual
poetry, and thus enlarged the comprehension of the people's soul to that of the people's

mind. By the misapplication of a tempting analogical inference, people had reached the
point of applying in the domain of the intellect and artistic ideas that principle of greater
individuality which is truly applicable only in the domain of the will.