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}.