T —————

THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS 37

with evil enjoyment over the uneasy reveries imaged on our
human stage. Worldly he is and altogether a hedonist and
his justice puts men out of reach of tragedy. He is beyond
offence, for the confession is a sauce that makes any dish good
to his palate and every carnival acceptable. This monster is
present universally, self-mocking in his knowledge that in
his inviolable chastity he has made crime impotent. He watches
only that his actors never be seduced into heresy against him,
To the actor in his solitude the human scene becomes a
bestiary inducing communion on an animal level, and his
pleasure is taken in natural license. The audience, as the in-
corporate Modern Spirit presiding on its stage, permits and
encourages the appearance of bestial freedom, not in the form
of Silenus’mockery but as blandishments to poor appetite.
The actor is led to develop a tender palate for his animal na-
ture, with the expectation that its being confessed will cleanse-
him of any actual vice. To possess knowledge of without ca-
pacity for bestiality and to have a nice feeling for moral de-
linquency—to enjoy without indulging appetite is his pub-
lic prerogative. Though his knowledge is a bar to his inno-
cence, his evoked vision of bliss assumes an animal nature.
It is a refreshment from the tension of speech. Animals do
commune silently. His vision may resemble an animal dream
but he looks on it with “knowledge” thereof. He develops a
moist tongue and an evil eye. His Silenus is no longer inno-
cent. In short, there is no joy in his pleasure and he takes
his dehights with a bad taste. In consequence of his predic-
ament of aloneness and his informed technique of living,
his abrogation of reason, and the mass conspiracy against
the emergence of a higher, fateful man, he desper-
ately seeks communion with his fellows in a conceived realm
of pure, primal lawlessness from which, however, his know-
ledge eternally bars him. Furthermore, he regards his lonely,
meditated visions as evil, yet their confession as good. Our
actors thus play a game wherein they remain radically free
of evil upon its being artistically staged before an understand-