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after having caused them to rest and bathe, he conducted them into a meadow where he entertained them sumptuously. The feast terminated, he asked them which day had been the more agreeable to them. All cried out in favor of the present day, which had brought them nothing but delight. "Very well," said Cyrus, "if you will follow me, such days will multiply without number; if not, be assured that you will suffer innumerable hardships like those of yesterday."

There is some analogy between such parables and those which we find in the Gospel, though the latter are much more profound, and of a higher generality. The parable of the Sower, for example, is a story of which the subject is in itself insignificant, and which derives importance only from its comparison to the kingdom of heaven. The meaning of this parable is a wholly religious idea, to which an incident of human life presents some resemblance; as, in the Æsopic fable, human life finds its emblem in the animal kingdom.

The story of Boccacio, of which Lessing has made use, in Nathan the Wise, for his parable of the Three Rings, presents a meaning of like extent. The story, considered in itself, is still altogether ordinary; but it makes allusion to the most important ideas, to the difference and the relative purity of the three religions, Jewish, Mahometan, and Christian. It is the same - to recall the most recent productions of this class -with the parables of Goethe.

b. The Proverb forms an intermediate class in this circle. Indeed, when developed, proverbs change either into parables or into apologues. They present some circumstance borrowed from whatever is most familiar in human life, but which is then to be taken in a universal sense. For example: One hand washes the other. Let everybody sweep before his own door. He who digs a pit for another, falls into it himself. Here also belong maxims, of which Goethe has also, in these latter times, composed a great number which are of an infinite grace, and often full of profound meaning.

These are not comparisons. The general idea and the concrete form are not separated and again brought together. The idea is immediately expressed in the image.

c. The Apologue might be considered as a parable which serves as an example, not in the manner of a comparison, in order to make manifest some general truth, but to introduce under such wrappage a maxim which is found to be therein expressed. This is really included in the particular fact which, nevertheless, is related simply as such. In this sense The God and the Bajadere of Goethe might be styled an apologue. We find here the Christian story of the sinful Magdalene clothed in the forms of Indian imagination. The bajadere shows the same humility, the same power of love and of faith. The god subjects her to a proof which she sustains perfectly; she is freed from her faults and returns again to favor through atonement. In the apologue the recital is so conducted that the issue itself gives the lesson, without any comparison being necessary; as, for example, in the Treasure-Seeker, "Give day to labor, evening to pleasure; toil through the week, but on holiday be merry; henceforth be this thy motto."

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3. Metamorphoses constitute the third class, forming a contrast with the fable. They present, it is true, the symbolic and mythological character; but, aside from this, they place the spirit in opposition to nature, because they represent an object of nature a rock, an animal, a flower, etc. as an existence of the spiritual order degraded by punishment. Philomela, the Pierides, Narcissus, Arethusa, are moral persons who, by a fault, a passion, a crime, or the like, have merited infinite suffering, or have fallen into great sorrow. Bereft of liberty, of life, and of spirit, they have entered into the class of natural beings.

Thus the objects of nature are not considered here prosaically, as physical beings. These are no longer simply a mountain, a fountain, a tree; they represent an act, a circumstance of human life. The rock is not merely a stone; it is Niobe weeping for her children. On the other hand, this act is a fault, and the transformation must be looked upon as a degradation from spiritual existence.

We must, then, carefully distinguish these metamorphoses of men and of gods into natural objects from the unconscious or irreflective symbolic properly speaking. In Egypt, for

example, the divine principle is contemplated immediately in the mysterious depth of animal life. Moreover, the true symbol is a sensuous object, which represents an idea by its analogy with it, yet without expressing it completely, and in such manner that this is inseparable from its emblem; for here spirit cannot disengage itself from the natural form. Metamorphoses, on the contrary, constitute the express distinction between natural and spiritual existence, and in this respect mark the transition from symbolic mythology to mythology properly speaking. Mythology, as we understand it, sets out, it is true, from real objects of nature as the sun and the sea, rivers, trees, the fertility of the earth, etc.; but it lifts them out of their mere physical character by individualizing them as spiritual powers, so as to make of them gods having a human soul and the human form. It is thus, for example, that Homer and Hesiod first gave to Greece its true mythology; that is to say, not merely the fables concerning the gods, or conceptions, moral, physical, theological and metaphysical, under the veil of allegory, but the beginning of a religion of spirit, with the anthropomophic character.

II. Comparison which Commences with the Idea.

1. The Enigma. 2. The Allegory. 3. The Metaphor, the Image, and the Comparison.

1. The Enigma is distinguished from the symbol properly speaking, first, in this: that it is clearly understood by the inventor; secondly, because the form which envelops the idea, and of which the meaning is to be divined, is chosen designedly. Real problems are, first and last, unsolved problems. The enigma, on the contrary, is, by its very nature, already solved before being proposed; which caused Sancho Panza to say, with much reason, that he would greatly prefer to be given the word, before the enigma.

The point whence one takes his departure in the invention of an enigma is, then, the meaning which it contains, and of which he has perfect consciousness.

Nevertheless, individual characteristics and specific prop

erties are borrowed designedly from the external world, and are brought together in a manner unequal, and, therefore, striking; just as in nature, and externality generally, they are found strewn about in mutual exclusion. Whence there is lacking in these elements the close connection which is remarked in a whole of which the parts are strongly bound together of themselves; thus their artificial combination has no meaning by itself. Still, from another point of view, they express a certain unity, because characteristics in appearance the most heterogeneous are brought into connection by means of an idea, and thus offer some significance.

This idea, constituting the subject to which those scattered attributes belong, is the word of the enigma, the solution of the problem which must be sought out by guessing at it through this obscure and perplexed envelop. In this respect the enigma is, in the ordinary sense of the term, the spiritual side of the reflective symbol; it puts to the proof the spirit of sagacity and of combination. At the same time, as a form of symbolic representation, it destroys itself, since it requires to be resolved.

The enigma belongs mainly to that art of which the mode of expression is speech. Still a place can be found for it in the figurative arts, in architecture, in the art of gardening, and in painting. It makes its first appearance in poetry in the Orient, at that period of transition which separates the old Oriental symbolism from reflective knowledge and reason. All peoples and all epochs have found their amusement in such problems. In the middle ages, among the Arabs and the Scandinavians, in German poetry—for example, in the poetic contests which took place at Marburg- the enigma played an important part. In our modern times it has fallen from its elevated rank. It is no longer anything more than a frivolous element of conversation, a freak of wit, a social pleasantry.

2. The Allegory.-The opposite of the enigma, in the circle wherein we set forth from the idea in its universality, is the allegory. True, it seeks faithfully to render the characteristics of a general conception manifest by properties analogous

with those of sensuous objects; but, instead of half concealing the idea by proposing an enigmatical question, its aim is precisely the most perfect clearness. So that, with respect to the idea which appears in it, the exterior object made use of must be of the most perfect transparency.

a. Its chief purpose, then, is to represent and to personify, under the form of a real object, universal, abstract conditions or qualities, as well from the human as from the animal world; such as justice, glory, war, religion, love, peace, the seasons of the year, death, renown, etc. And to personify, we must remember, is to comprehend that which is personified as a subject—as a conscious being. Nevertheless, neither through the content nor through the outer form is there in personification any real, living individuality; it is always an abstract conception, which preserves merely the empty form of personality. Hence it can be regarded only as a nominal existence. It is in vain that the human form has been given to an allegorical being; it will never arrive at the concrete and living individuality of a Greek divinity, nor of a saint, nor of any other real personage, because, in order to render it suitable to the representation of an abstract conception, it is necessary to take away just that which constitutes its personality and its individuality. It is, then, with justice that the allegory has been pronounced cold and pallid. We may add that, in respect of invention, because of the abstract character which allegory expresses, it is rather an affair of the reason than of the imagination; it presupposes no lively and profound sentiment of the reality. Poets like Virgil are often compelled to resort to allegorical beings because they do not know how to create gods who rejoice in a genuine personality, like those of Homer.

b. The idea which the allegory represents, notwithstanding its abstract character, is, nevertheless, definite. Otherwise, it would be unintelligible. And yet the connection between this idea and the attributes which explain it is not sufficiently close to secure its identification with them. This separation of the general idea from the particular ideas which

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