ortal. He must not betray this secret
till a Mystic (Heracles) comes to him, and annihilates the power which
was perpetually threatening him with death. A being half animal, half
human, a centaur, is obliged to sacrifice itself to redeem man. The
centaur is man himself, half animal, half spiritual. He must die in
order that the purely spiritual man may be delivered. That which is
disdained by Prometheus, human will, is accepted by Epimetheus, reason
or prudence. But the gifts offered to Epimetheus are only troubles and
sorrows, for reason clings to the transitory and perishable. And only
one thing is left--the hope that even out of the perishable the
eternal may some day be born.

The thread running through the legends of the Argonauts, Heracles and
Prometheus, is continued in Homer's _Odyssey_. Here we find ourselves
compelled to use our own method of interpretation. But on closer
consideration of everything which has to be taken into account, even
the sturdiest doubter must lose all scruples about such an
interpretation. In the first place, it is a startling fact that it is
also related of Odysseus that he descended into the nether-world.
Whatever we may think about the author of the _Odyssey_ in other
respects, it is impossible to imagine his representing a mortal
descending to the infernal regions, without his bringing him into
connection with what the journey into the nether-world meant to the
Greeks. It meant the conquest of the perishable and the awakening of
the eternal in the soul. It must therefore be conceded that Odysseus
accomplished this, and thereby his experiences and those of Heracles
acquire a deeper significance. They become a delineation of the
non-sensuous, of the soul's progress of development. Hence the
narrative in the _Odyssey_ is different from what is demanded by a
history of outer events. The hero makes voyages in enchanted ships.
Actual geographical distances are dealt with in most arbitrary
fashion. It is not in the least a question of what is physically real.
This becomes comprehensible, if the physically real events are only
related for the sake of illustrating the development of a soul.
Moreover the poet himself at the opening of the book says that it
deals with a search for the soul:

"O Muse, sing to me of the man full of resource, who wandered very
much after he had destroyed the sacred city of Troy, and saw the
cities of many men, and learned their manners. Many griefs also in his