t tread
the wine-press alone." Only in one source had he discovered a
stay and stimulus, which brought him the sense of individual
self-subsistence--in the exercise of such creative talent as nature
had bestowed upon him. Of this consciousness, no external power could
deprive him, and it is this consciousness that is the governing idea
of the fragment, and not the Titanism of the Prometheus of AEschylus.
It was, moreover, an idea which permanently accompanied Goethe
throughout life, and to which he frequently gave expression in his
later correspondence.[143]

[Footnote 143: The following passage from an article in the _Hibbert
Journal_, by M. Bergson (October, 1911, pp. 42-3), is an interesting
commentary on Goethe's conception: "If, then, in every province the
triumph of life is expressed by creation, might we not think that the
ultimate reason of human life is a creation which, in distinction from
that of the artist or man of science, can be pursued at every moment
and by all men alike; I mean the creation of self by self, the
continual enrichment of personality, by elements which it does not
draw from outside, but causes to spring forth from itself?"]

As, apart from its intrinsic power, _Prometheus_ has an incidental
interest in the history of philosophic thought, it may be worth while
to sketch briefly the development it attained. When Prometheus is
introduced to us, he is a rebel against Zeus and the other gods. He
had rendered them allegiance so long as he believed that "they saw the
past and the future in the present and were animated by
self-originated and disinterested wisdom," but, on the discovery of
his error, he had renounced their authority, and, as an independent
agent, he had fashioned images of human beings, to which, however, he
was powerless to give the breath of life. In the first Scene of the
first Act, Mercury appears as the messenger of the gods and reasons
with Prometheus on the folly of his contending with their omnipotence.
Prometheus denies their omnipotence either over nature or over
himself. "Can they separate me from myself?" he asks, and Mercury
admits that the gods are subject to a power stronger than their
own--the power of Fate. "Go, then," is the reply, "I do not serve
vassals." After a brief soliloquy, in which Prometheus expresses the
passionate wish that he might impart feeling to his lifeless images,
Epimetheus appears as a second representative of the gods. Their
offer, he tel