In the second part of his thesis, Benjamin employs the concept of allegory to expose the implicit eschatological structure of these works. However, the first part utilises the distorting tension of this structure to distinguish the specific and historically conspicuous technique of the German baroque mourning-play. This concludes by identifying sorrow or mourning (Trauer) as the predominant mood inherent to its metaphysical structure, in contrast to the suffering of tragedy. With the “total  secularization of the historical in the state of creation…History passes into the setting” to become natural history (OGT, 81), whose attendant cognition is a melancholic contemplation of things which derives enigmatic satisfaction from its very recognition of their transience and emptiness (OGT, 141). “For all wisdom of the melancholic hearkens to the deep”, Benjamin claims: “it is won from immersion in the life of creaturely things, and nothing of the voice of revelation reaches it. Everything to do with Saturn points into the depths of the earth…” (OGT, 157).