PROMETHEANS ANCIENT AND MODERN BY BURTON RASCOE f sowrs-ioaa NEW YORK AND LONDON To 1S T Y 1VT o x TO THE READER THE identity of the genius who conceived the myth of Prometheus is lost in the mystery of remote an tiquity but let us honor his memory and salute his shade with all the deference due him for having put into an allegory one of the sublimest testimonies to the struggles of the human spirit. It was Prometheus, you will recall, who defied the fearful gods and brought to mankind the gift of fire. For having dared to ...
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PROMETHEANS ANCIENT AND MODERN BY BURTON RASCOE f sowrs-ioaa NEW YORK AND LONDON To 1S T Y 1VT o x TO THE READER THE identity of the genius who conceived the myth of Prometheus is lost in the mystery of remote an tiquity but let us honor his memory and salute his shade with all the deference due him for having put into an allegory one of the sublimest testimonies to the struggles of the human spirit. It was Prometheus, you will recall, who defied the fearful gods and brought to mankind the gift of fire. For having dared to do this Prometheus was punished by a wrathful Zeus who caused him to be chained to a precipice in the Caucasus where an eagle descended daily to eat out his heart. Daily a new heart grew in its place. The men and the women who have wrought warmth into the bleak terror of mans war against the elements, against his own nature and against the imminence of death, have brought us out of a savagery that is now at least a savagery modified by an appearance of amenity. They have always suffered and their hearts have been 8 TO THE READER torn out repeatedly by the spectacle of the cruelty men can inflict upon one another in their efforts to survive. But their hearts grow back, for further pluckings, because the belief persists that all the difficulties of life may some day be smoothed away. I am not sure that would be a blessing. But I have never had experience of such a state, nor do I know of any one who has. The Nirvana of complete tranquillity is, I suspect, an ideal for and by those who have no tran quillity whatever whereas I have observed that those who achieve an outward appearance of the static condi tion of tranquillity for any length of time get bored with it andsometimes break out in the most unseemly con duct. They not uncommonly resort to clubs, firearms, or meat-axes. Still, at the same time, one wishes, in these years of the locust, that there could come some stability and that life would not dance before ones eyes like a species of retina trouble. One wishes that young children were not starving and that feeble old men innocently abroad on their routine affairs were not shot down by gunmen One wishes above all that wars might cease, disease be con quered, and that kindness, generosity and magnanimity might universally prevail A conviction is gaining ground that through a com plete socialization of the means of production and of the distribution of wealth the human race will come into a blissful condition-And to realize this conviction, murder TO THE READER 9 and rapine are conducted on a grand scale there are in trigues and fights for power on the part of those who believe they know better than their rival comrades how to bring about this Utopia, and the victors have caused to be exiled, or have had lined up and shot, those who are weaker in the argument. It quite definitely solves the eco nomic problems of any individual to batter his brains out. Possibly if there are enough individual economic prob lems disposed of in this manner, a happy grace will per vade the globe. The great imponderable is that energy is at once the great factor in life and its most sinister potential. It is at least relatively true that power begets power and nothing else. Champions of the weak, even, tend to oppress those weaker than themselves once they have succeeded in their championship of the weak. That is the blighting paradox. All great tyrannies havebegun in idealism. All reforms carry with them, like a shadow, the threat of evil. Yet reforms are inevitable because change is constant in human society and ideas are generated by the irksome desire for variety and improvement. Hence the irony and the tears of things. Humor is a solvent for the brine of tears and in many of those who are articulate the urge and the genius to provoke a chuckle or a smile is as definite and as sublime, as wise and as beautiful as the urge and the genius to purge the mind by evoking pity and terror...
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