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