THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS 23

tering this shadow-realm by escaping it. His will-to-power
had coiled back on itself and had become, once again, the
slave’s prayer that he be freed from his toils. This absolute
will to freedom was Prometheus’ legacy and has become his
Nemesis, forging again for him heavy chains. For, Promethean
man cannot free himself. He cannot die to his world. He needs
must wait for the coming of the man who can die—the god
who is also man.

In Greek drama a unity of action is obtained by virtue
of the drama’s being 1n reality a hight-communication produc-
ed through the art of the chorus-priesthood. It is a vision,
a grace to crown their music and ritual incantation, consis-
ting in an already perfected action of a drama divinely writ-
ten. The result was a surface characterization of apparent
simplicity.The Greek hero had no hidden inwardness, Although
Greek drama was perfomed 1n the open air it could not be
produced in any random place. Being a down-going of the
god to his altar, its action was confined to his sanctuary.

After the fall of Greek and Roman civilization, the sac-
ramental aspect of tragedy was long cloistered in churches
as the Christ symbol, a contradictory fusion of Dionysus
with Prometheus—a man-god who could die for the sake of
the brotherhood of man. Again men were deprived of that
high object of ancient sacrament, the higher Self, which is
in essence social and is the basis for rational society and sci-
ence. The spiritual tension engendered by this dogma of fus-
ion at length broke its confines and emerged from the chur-
ches as a secular universal religion of brotherhood, which,
far from freeing itself from its inherent paradox, began
involving all mankind in its disastrous consequences.

Western drama since classic times, developing separately
from the church, attempted the same fusion from the pro-
fane side, attempting to make the Promethean man a uni-
versal savior. Whereas the character of the Greek tragic
hero had a shining transparency and could be summed up
by a series of outward gestures and by his changeless formal