imaginary contest with Hesiod did not even yet show the faintest presentiment of individuality.  From the time of Pisistratus onwards, however, with the surprisingly rapid development of the Greek feeling for beauty, the differences in the aesthetic value of those epics continued to be felt more and more:  the Iliad and the Odyssey arose from the depths of the flood and have remained on the surface ever since.  With this process of aesthetic separation, the conception of Homer gradually became narrower:  the old material meaning of the name “Homer” as the father of the heroic epic poem, was changed into the aesthetic meaning of Homer, the father of poetry in general, and likewise its original prototype.  This transformation was contemporary with the rationalistic criticism which made Homer the magician out to be a possible poet, which vindicated the material and formal traditions of those numerous epics as against the unity of the poet, and gradually removed that heavy load of cyclical epics from Homer’s shoulders.

So Homer, the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is an aesthetic judgment.  It is, however, by no means affirmed against the poet of these epics that he was merely the imaginary being of an aesthetic impossibility, which can be the opinion of only very few philologists indeed.  The majority contend that a single individual was responsible for the general design of a poem such as the Iliad, and further that this individual was Homer.  The first part of this contention may be admitted; but, in accordance with what I have said, the latter part must be denied.  And I very much doubt whether the majority of those who adopt the first part of the contention have taken the following considerations into account.

The design of an epic such as the Iliad is not an entire whole, not an organism; but a number of pieces strung together, a collection of reflections arranged in accordance with aesthetic rules.  It is certainly the standard of an artist’s greatness to note what he can take in with a single glance and set out in rhythmical form.  The infinite profusion of images and incidents in the Homeric epic must force us to admit that such a wide range of vision is next to impossible.  Where, however, a poet is unable to observe artistically with a single glance, he usually piles conception on conception, and endeavours to adjust his characters according to a comprehensive scheme.

He will succeed in this all the better the more he is familiar with the fundamental principles of aesthetics:  he will even make some believe that he made himself master of the entire subject by a single powerful glance.