of things here given we already have all the elements of a profound and
pessimistic contemplation of the world, and along with these we have
the _mystery doctrine of tragedy_: the fundamental knowledge of the
oneness of all existing things, the consideration of individuation as
the primal cause of evil, and art as the joyous hope that the spell of
individuation may be broken, as the augury of a restored oneness.
It has already been intimated that the Homeric epos is the poem
of Olympian culture, wherewith this culture has sung its own song
of triumph over the terrors of the war of the Titans. Under the
predominating influence of tragic poetry, these Homeric myths are now
reproduced anew, and show by this metempsychosis that meantime the
Olympian culture also has been vanquished by a still deeper view of
things. The haughty Titan Prometheus has announced to his Olympian
tormentor that the extremest danger will one day menace his rule,
unless he ally with him betimes. In Æschylus we perceive the terrified
Zeus, apprehensive of his end, in alliance with the Titan. Thus, the
former age of the Titans is subsequently brought from Tartarus once
more to the light of day. The philosophy of wild and naked nature
beholds with the undissembled mien of truth the myths of the Homeric
world as they dance past: they turn pale, they tremble before the
lightning glance of this goddess--till the powerful fist[16] of
the Dionysian artist forces them into the service of the new deity.
Dionysian truth takes over the entire domain of myth as symbolism of
_its_ knowledge, which it makes known partly in the public cult of
tragedy and partly in the secret celebration of the dramatic mysteries,
always, however, in the old mythical garb. What was the power, which
freed Prometheus from his vultures and transformed the myth into a
vehicle of Dionysian wisdom? It is the Heracleian power of music:
which, having reached its highest manifestness in tragedy, can invest
myths with a new and most profound significance, which we have already
had occasion to characterise as the most powerful faculty of music. For
it is the fate of every myth to insinuate itself into the narrow limits
of some alleged historical reality, and to be treated by some later
generation as a solitary fact with historical claims: and the Greeks
were already fairly on the way to restamp the whole of their mythical
juvenile dream sagaciously and arbitrarily into a historico-pragmatical
_juvenile history._ For this is the manner in which religions are
wont to die out: when of course under the stern, intelligent eyes of
an orthodox dogmatism, the mythical presuppositions of a religion are
systematised as a completed sum of historical events, and when one
begins apprehensively to defend the credibility of the myth, while at
the same time opposing all continuation of their natural vitality and
luxuriance; when, accordingly, the feeling for myth dies out, and its