COROLLARY.
It is in this sense that Jove's jealous, ever-quarrelsome, spouse represents the political sacerdotal 'cultus', the church, in short, of republican paganism;—a church by law established for the mere purposes of the particular state, unennobled by the consciousness of instrumentality to higher purposes;—at once unenlightened and unchecked by revelation. Most gratefully ought we to acknowledge that since the completion of our constitution in 1688, we may, with unflattering truth, elucidate the spirit and character of such a church by the contrast of the institution, to which England owes the larger portion of its superiority in that, in which alone superiority is an unmixed blessing,—the diffused cultivation of its inhabitants. But previously to this period, I shall offend no enlightened man if I say without distinction of parties—'intra muros peccatur et extra';—that the history of Christendom presents us with too many illustrations of this Junonian jealousy, this factious harrassing of the sovereign power as soon as the latter betrayed any symptoms of a disposition to its true policy, namely, to privilege and perpetuate that which is best,—to tolerate the tolerable,—and to restrain none but those who would restrain all, and subjugate even the state itself. But while truth extorts this confession, it, at the same time, requires that it should be accompanied by an avowal of the fact, that the spirit is a relic of Paganism; and with a bitter smile would an Æschylus or a Plato in the shades, listen to a Gibbon or a Hume vaunting the mild and tolerant spirit of the state religions of ancient Greece or Rome. Here we have the sense of Jove's intrigues with Europa, Io, &c. whom the god, in his own nature a general lover, had successively taken under his protection. And here, too, see the full appropriateness of this part of the 'mythus', in which symbol fades away into allegory, but yet in reference to the working cause, as grounded in humanity, and always existing either actually or potentially, and thus never ceases wholly to be a symbol or tautegory.
Prometheus represents,
1. 'sensu generali', Idea {Greek: pronomos,} and in this sense he is a {Greek: 'theos homophulos'}, a fellow-tribesman both of the 'dii majores', with Jove at their head, and of the Titans or 'dii pacati':
2. He represents Idea {Greek: 'philonomos, nomodeiktaes';} and in this sense the former friend and counsellor of Jove or 'Nous uranius':
3. {Greek: 'Logos philanthr'opos',} the divine humanity, the humane God, who retained unseen, kept back, or (in the 'catachresis' characteristic of the Phoenicio-Grecian mythology) stole, a portion or 'ignicula from the living spirit of law, which remained with the celestial gods unexpended {Greek: en to nomizesthai.} He gave that which, according to the whole analogy of things, should have existed either as pure divinity, the sole property and birth-right of the 'Dii Joviales', the 'Uranions', or was conceded to inferior beings as a 'substans in substantiato'. This spark divine Prometheus gave to an elect, a favored animal, not as a 'substans' or understanding, commensurate with, and confined by, the constitution and conditions of this particular organism, but as 'aliquid superstans, liberum, non subactum, invictum, impacatum, {Greek: mae nouizomenon.} This gift, by which we are to understand reason theoretical and practical, was therefore a {Greek: 'nomos autonomus'}—unapproachable and unmodifiable by the animal basis—that is, by the pre-existing 'substans' with its products, the animal 'organismus' with its faculties and functions; but yet endowed with the power of potentiating, ennobling, and prescribing to, the substance; and hence, therefore, a {Greek: nomos nomopeithaes,} lex legisuada':
4. By a transition, ordinary even in allegory, and appropriate to mythic symbol, but especially significant in the present case—the transition, I mean, from the giver to the gift—the giver, in very truth, being the gift, 'whence the soul receives reason; and reason is her being,' says our Milton. Reason is from God, and God is reason, 'mens ipsissima'.
5. Prometheus represents, {Greek: nous en anthr'op'o—nous ag'onistaes}'. Thus contemplated, the 'Nous' is of necessity, powerless; for, all power, that is, productivity, or productive energy, is in Law, that is, {Greek: nomos allotrionomos}:{1} still, however, the Idea in the Law, the 'numerus numerans' become {Greek: nomos}, is the principle of the Law; and if with Law dwells power, so with the knowledge or the Idea 'scientialis' of the Law, dwells prophecy and foresight. A perfect astronomical time-piece in relation to the motions of the heavenly bodies, or the magnet in the mariner's compass in relation to the magnetism of the earth, is a sufficient illustration.
6. Both {Greek: nomos} and Idea (or 'Nous') are the 'verbum'; but, as in the former, it is 'verbum fiat' 'the Word of the Lord,'—in the latter it must be the 'verbum fiet', or, 'the Word of the Lord in the mouth of the prophet.' 'Pari argumento', as the knowledge is therefore not power, the power is not knowledge. The {Greek: nomos}, the {Greek: Zeus pantokrat'or}, seeks to learn, and, as it were, to wrest the secret, the hateful secret, of his own fate, namely, the transitoriness adherent to all antithesis; for the identity or the absolute is alone eternal. This secret Jove would extort from the 'Nous', or Prometheus, which is the sixth representment of Prometheus.
7. Introduce but the least of real as opposed to 'ideal', the least speck of positive existence, even though it were but the mote in a sun beam, into the sciential 'contemplamen' or theorem, and it ceases to be science. 'Ratio desinit esse pura ratio et fit discursus, stat subter et fit {Greek: hypothetikon}:—non superstat'. The 'Nous' is bound to a rock, the immovable firmness of which is indissolubly connected with its barrenness, its non-productivity. Were it productive it would be 'Nomos'; but it is 'Nous', because it is not 'Nomos'.
8. Solitary {Greek: abato en eraemia}. Now I say that the 'Nous', notwithstanding its diversity from the 'Nomizomeni', is yet, relatively to their supposed original essence, {Greek: pasi tois nomizomenois tantogenaes}, of the same race or 'radix': though in another sense, namely, in relation to the {Greek: pan theion}—the pantheistic 'Elohim', it is conceived anterior to the schism, and to the conquest and enthronization of Jove who succeeded. Hence the Prometheus of the great tragedian is {Greek: theos suggenaes}. The kindred deities come to him, some to soothe, to condole; others to give weak, yet friendly, counsels of submission; others to tempt, or insult. The most prominent of the latter, and the most odious to the imprisoned and insulated 'Nous', is Hermes, the impersonation of interest with the entrancing and serpentine 'Caduceus', and, as interest or motives intervening between the reason and its immediate self-determinations, with the antipathies to the {Greek: nomos autonomos}. The Hermes impersonates the eloquence of cupidity, the cajolement of power regnant; and in a larger sense, custom, the irrational in language, {Greek: rhaemata ta rhaetorika}, the fluent, from {Greek: rheo}—the rhetorical in opposition to {Greek: logoi, ta noaeta}. But, primarily, the Hermes is the symbol of interest. He is the messenger, the inter-nuncio, in the low but expressive phrase, the go-between, to beguile or insult. And for the other visitors of Prometheus, the elementary powers, or spirits of the elements, 'Titanes pacati', {Greek: theoi huponomioi}, vassal potentates, and their solicitations, the noblest interpretation will be given, if I repeat the lines of our great contemporary poet:—
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own:
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And e'en with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man
Forget the glories he hath known
And that imperial palace whence he came:—
WORDSWORTH.
which exquisite passage is prefigured in coarser clay, indeed, and with a less lofty spirit, but yet excellently in their kind, and even more fortunately for the illustration and ornament of the present commentary, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas of Dr. Henry More's poem on the Pre-existence of the Soul:—
Thus groping after our own center's near
And proper substance, we grew dark, contract,
Swallow'd up of earthly life! Ne what we were
Of old, thro' ignorance can we detect.
Like noble babe, by fate or friends' neglect
Left to the care of sorry salvage wight,
Grown up to manly years cannot conject
His own true parentage, nor read aright
What father him begot, what womb him brought to light.
So we, as stranger infants elsewhere born,
Cannot divine from what spring we did flow;
Ne dare these base alliances to scorn,
Nor lift ourselves a whit from hence below;
Ne strive our parentage again to know,
Ne dream we once of any other stock,
Since foster'd upon Rhea's {1} knees we grow,
In Satyrs' arms with many a mow and mock
Oft danced; and hairy Pan our cradle oft hath rock'd!
But Pan nor Rhea be our parentage!
We been the offspring of the all seeing Nous, &c.
To express the supersensual character of the reason, its abstraction from sensation, we find the Prometheus {Greek: aterpae}—while in the yearnings accompanied with the remorse incident to, and only possible in consequence of the Nous being, the rational, self-conscious, and therefore responsible will, he is {Greek: gupi diaknaiomenos}
If to these contemplations we add the control and despotism exercised on the free reason by Jupiter in his symbolical character, as {Greek: nomos politikos};—by custom (Hermes); by necessity, {Greek: bia kai kratos};—by the mechanic arts and powers, {Greek: suggeneis to Noo} though they are, and which are symbolized in Hephaistos,—we shall see at once the propriety of the title, Prometheus, {Greek: desmotaes}.
9. Nature, or 'Zeus' as the {Greek: nomos en nomizomenois}, knows herself only, can only come to a knowledge of herself, in man! And even in man, only as man is supernatural, above nature, noetic. But this knowledge man refuses to communicate; that is, the human understanding alone is at once self-conscious and conscious of nature. And this high prerogative it owes exclusively to its being an assessor of the reason. Yet even the human understanding in its height of place seeks vainly to appropriate the ideas of the pure reason, which it can only represent by 'idola'. Here, then, the 'Nous' stands as Prometheus {Greek: antipalos}, 'renuens'—in hostile opposition to Jupitor 'Inquisitor'.
10. Yet finally, against the obstacles and even under the fostering influences of the 'Nomos', {Greek: tou nomimou}, a son of Jove himself, but a descendant from Io, the mundane religion, as contra-distinguished from the sacerdotal 'cultus', or religion of the state, an Alcides 'Liberator' will arise, and the 'Nous', or divine principle in man, will be Prometheus {Greek: heleutheromenos}.
Did my limits or time permit me to trace the persecutions, wanderings, and migrations of the Io, the mundane religion, through the whole map marked out by the tragic poet, the coincidences would bring the truth, the unarbitrariness, of the preceding exposition as near to demonstration as can rationally be required on a question of history, that must, for the greater part, be answered by combination of scattered facts. But this part of my subject, together with a particular exemplification of the light which my theory throws both on the sense and the beauty of numerous passages of this stupendous poem, I must reserve for a future communication.