Among Famous Books | Page 7

have attained to a
persuasion that the gods have made knowledge difficult in order that
the wise may also be the strong.
The second battleground is that of philanthropy. Here also there has
been an apparently reasonable Titanism. Men have struggled in vain,
and then protested in bitterness, against the waste and the
meaninglessness of the human débâcle. The only aspect of the powers
above them has seemed to many noble spirits that of the sheer cynic.
He that sitteth in the heavens must be laughing indeed. In Prometheus
the Greek spirit puts up its daring plea for man. It pleads not for pity
merely, but for the worth of human nature. The strong gods cannot be
justified in oppressing man upon the plea that might is right, and that
they may do what they please. The protest of Prometheus, echoed by
Browning's protest of Ixion, appeals to the conscience of the world as
right; and, kindling a noble Titanism, puts the divine oppressor in the
wrong. Finally, there dawns over the edge of the ominous dark, the
same hope that Prometheus vaguely hinted to the Greek. To him who
has understood the story of Calvary, the ultimate interpretation of all
human suffering is divine love. That which the cross of Prometheus in
all its outrageous cruelty yet hints as in a whisper, the Cross of Christ
proclaims to the end of time, shouting down the centuries from its
blood and pain that God is love, and that in all our affliction He is
afflicted.
Another myth of great beauty and far-reaching significance is that of
Medusa. It is peculiarly interesting on account of its double edge, for it
shows us both the high possibilities of ideal beauty and the deepest

depths of pagan horror. Robert Louis Stevenson tells us how, as he
hung between life and death in a flooded river of France, looking
around him in the sunshine and seeing all the lovely landscape, he
suddenly felt the attack of the other side of things. "The devouring
element in the universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley
quickened by a running stream. The bells were all very pretty in their
way, but I had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan's music. Would
the wicked river drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so
beautiful all the time?" It was in this connection that he gave us that
striking and most suggestive phrase, "The beauty and the terror of the
world." It is this combination of beauty and terror for which the myth
of Medusa stands. It finds its meaning in a thousand instances. On the
one hand, it is seen in such ghastly incidents as those in which the sheer
horror of nature's action, or of man's crime, becomes invested with an
illicit beauty, and fascinates while it kills. On the other hand, it is seen
in all of the many cases in which exquisite beauty proves also to be
dangerous, or at least sinister. "The haunting strangeness in beauty" is
at once one of the most characteristic and one of the most tragic things
in the world.
There were three sisters, the Gorgons, who dwelt in the Far West,
beyond the stream of ocean, in that cold region of Atlas where the sun
never shines and the light is always dim. Medusa was one of them, the
only mortal of the trio. She was a monster with a past, for in her
girlhood she had been the beautiful priestess of Athene, golden-haired
and very lovely, whose life had been devoted to virgin service of the
goddess. Her golden locks, which set her above all other women in the
desire of Neptune, had been her undoing: and when Athene knew of the
frailty of her priestess, her vengeance was indeed appalling. Each lock
of the golden hair was transformed into a venomous snake. The eyes
that had been so love-inspiring were now bloodshot and ferocious. The
skin, with its rose and milk-white tenderness, had changed to a
loathsome greenish white. All that remained of Medusa was a horrid
thing, a mere grinning mask with protruding beast-like tusks and
tongue hanging out. So dreadful was the aspect of the changed priestess,
that her face turned all those who chanced to catch sight of it to stone.
There is a degree of hideousness which no eyes can endure; and so it

came to pass that the cave wherein she dwelt, and all the woods around
it, were full of men and wild beasts who had been petrified by a glance
of her,--grim fossils immortalised in stone,--while the snakes writhed
and the red eyes rolled, waiting for another victim.
This was not a case into which any hope of redemption could enter, and
there was nothing