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22 THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS.

cable Prometheus felt his bonds, the more forcibly he affir-

med the inviolability of his pure freedom of will,
the quintessence of egotism. And so he remained crucified
to a sterile rock. For, had he not made Zeus’ fire a sterile force?

He lay exposed to hostile winds blowing hot, cold, and con-
trary. He was lapped by the sea, fire’s death. Yetin this des-
olation Prometheus obtained his desire. Wishing to master
the universe he had, by the Fates’ just irony, become master
of the void. He gloried not in his lot, but in his lack of 1it.

His pride was in his rock. His rock formed an immovable

wedge between heaven and earth,and while he lay midway
in irons he blocked communion between gods and men.

' It was when Zeus sent Hermes, Prometheus’ successor,
that Prometheus felt the bitterest sting. He saw a new god
enjoying the honors of which he was deprived. Prometheus,
chained in his desert wildness, caught a glimpse of the fruits
for which he hungered and was seized by spite. Never had
his own sufferings brought him to sueh a dangerous point,
He had indulged in self-pity and had yearned for sym-

pathy. He was to know utter weariness of spirit. In his

punishment he had acknowledged no dishonor, but shame at
his felt envy of the god tormented his pride, and as storms
churned sky and earth into a chaos moving in on him, he
flung a final contemptuous taunt to the master-god. Sinking
into the dark emptiness of space and deeper ruin, he still
raised his unrepenting voice into oblivion.

Locked now in his ego’s windowless prison, Prometheus
began forging his own Nemesis. He was weighted by matter’s

degradation, sucked downward by 1ts gravity, deafened by
1ts ceaseless whirl in void, his thoughts become voiceless echoes.
Thus abandoned, he felt his own absurdity. Here was burnt
in the minds of all Prometheus’ creatures the seductive, mem-
orted image of the rock cutting the infinite, dark vista
of space which is Prometheus’ domain, outside, beyond, and
cut adrift from each godly precinct. Here it was he dreamed

out his nightmare of penetrating this wall of space, of mas-

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