And he throws it crazy, without thought.

Then I am bitter. But lesson and speech,

Even an example, they will remain in vain,

So come with childish frivolity

A day, inexperienced in touching everything!

If you were more friendly with the past,

With the present, forming, merged,

It would be good for everyone, and I would be glad.

Thus, Promethean humanity is also an endless process; but it consists in the fact that people are constantly rushing from one object to another, and cannot in any way part with the incessant fluidity of life. This is also emphasized by the final words of Eos that it is not Prometheus, but only the higher gods who can create true happiness for people. The endless progress of mankind is therefore thought of here as an endless striving of people to and fro without any meaning or purpose. Like Fr. Schlegel, there is certainly something new in this symbolism of Prometheus, but European individualism, for all its shredding, still remains in place as a principle of behavior and creativity.

Thus, in Shaftesbury and Goethe, from the richest content of the myth of Prometheus, only the idea of artistic creation, now more organic, now more mechanical, is extracted. However, in Herder's work this idea is brought to a high level of universal creativity, when, as a result of the efforts of all peoples, according to Herder, pure and perfect humanity is created.

14. Byron and Shelley. In England, Byron, in his poem "Prometheus" (1816), on the contrary, was a revolutionary romantic, who, it seems, for the first time, treated Prometheus as a representative of man in general, as well as Shelley. In his Prometheus Unchained (1819), Shelley overthrows the celestial Jupiter, as a result of which all nature is filled with unprecedented exultation and exuberant flourishing, which Shelley thinks is already infinite in time and space. Of all the Western (226) Prometheans, this image in Shelley is undoubtedly the most charged with that semantic power which we have found above in the symbol in general, and which is vividly presented here in the form of an extended and universal perspective of personal and social freedom and ecstatic exultation.

15. Kiné and Lipiner. The French romantic Edgar Quinet gives an ambiguous concept of Prometheus, which, perhaps, is characteristic of the romantic worldview in general. He wrote a whole dramatic poem in three parts, entitled "Prometheus" (1838),63 in which Quinet first depicts Prometheus' creation of men from clay after the flood, the theft of fire for them from the Cyclopes on Lemnos, and the allegorical figure of Hermione, signifying the liberation of the human spirit from "all gods in general. The second part of the trilogy is close to the tragedy of Aeschylus that has come down to us. Nemesis orders the Cyclopes to chain Prometheus to the peaks of the Caucasus, although she knows that it will not be possible to conquer him. As in Aeschylus, in Kyne, Oceanus, Hermes and others come to Prometheus. Hermione also arrives, asking for immortality. A chorus of sibyls tells about the suffering of people. Prometheus in response predicts that the current gods will disappear and people will live differently. At the same time, Prometheus is possessed by tormenting doubts: will the Olympians disappear? Won't the new god be as cruel as they are?