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Carolina Federal
Savings & Loan Association
OF ASHEVILLE
Insured Savings • Home Loans
10 College Street at Pritchard Park
Asheville, North Carolina
Man —
Is ISot A Thing
Cash and Carry Dial AL. 2-8331
t
Keith’s Super Cleaners
DELIVERY SERVICE
492 Merrimon Ave. Asheville, N. C.
Insurance Service of Asheville, Inc.
ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA
52 Pag* Avenue
"A COMPLETE INSURANCE
PROGRAM”
Phone: AL. 3-1668
JAMES W. STICKNEY III, Pr«iid«nt
INDEPENDENT AGENTS
Representing Old Line Capital Stock
Companies and Specializing in
Unusual Lines
m NORTHLAND DRUG
“May We Be of Service in your Drug Needs”
NORTHLAND SHOPPING CENTER
946 MERRIMON AVE. ASHEVILLE, N.C.
AL. 4-6191
RAY COPPEDGE
Positive Protection
II. G. Latimer and Son
INCORPORATED
Mutual Insurance
COMPLETE COVERAGE
DIAL RO. 2-9606 128 Princess St.
Wilmington, North Carolina
704/253-7335
704/254-7467
NORMAN SULTAN
PRESIDENT
Sultan of Tires
Carolina Tire & Retreading
Company
77 COXE AVE. ASHEVILLE, N.C.
by RABBI SAMUEL UMEN
In the tragedy of Promethe
us Bound, of Aeschylus, Pro
metheus is represented as the
great lover of mankind. He
found men existing wretched
ly, like beasts in sunless caves,
blindly ignorant and helplessly
afraid. The instruments which
could deliver them from this
condition were in the hands of
Zeus and the other gods; and
the gods withheld their gifts.
Prometheus stole fire from
Dlympus, brought it to man.
and taught him the use of the
arts, and the powers of the
c,vilized life. For this he is
punished by the gods, chained
to a lonely cliff, taunted and
tortured for his presumption;
but scornful and unyielding
throughout the drama, he rises
to a climax of defiance. How
ever. the brute forces of nature
are unloosed upon him and he
is swept down in a cataclysm
of destruction.
Now Prometheus in this
play, the champion of man
kind, is generally understood
to be a poetic figure standing
ter mankind itself, and the
tragedy is regarded as the
first great picture in literature
c.f man fighting his way slowly
and painfully in the teeth of a
hostile world, forcing from a
teluctant nature the secrets of
his own well being, and grad
ually subduing to his own pur
poses the brutish forces which
once enslaved him and even
threatened to destroy him.
In any ease, Prometheus is
regarded as a symbol of man’s
conquest of nature, through
his struggle to create a better
world to live in. He personifies
the idea of scientific progress
through human effort and
sacrifice.
No one will deny man’s pro
gress in the field of science has
been phenomenal. If there is
anything in the repertory of
human activities and pursuits
that has not proved a failure,
it is precisely this science,
when one considers it circum
scribed within its territory,
nature. Within this erder an.;
ambit, far from having failed,
it has transcended all our
hopes. Science has achieved
things that irresponsible imag
inings had never so much as
dreamed of. However, it is im
portant to consider that nature
is only one dimension of
human life and that the con
quest of nature does not neces
sarily preclude failure with re
gard to the totality of human
existence.
Physical science fails to furn
ish the solution to human
problems. With the aid of sci
ence a host of nature’s secrets
are unlocked, but it fails to un
furl the mysteries of human
nature.
This is not to say that sci
ence completely excludes from
.'ts study the human being.
What it does overlook is the
fact that human nature cannot
be treated in the same manner
as nature, which is regarded
as a thing.
‘‘Nature is a thing, a great
thing, that is composed of
many lesser things. Now. what
ever be the difference between
things, they all have one basic
teature in common, which con
sists simply in the fact that
things are, they have their be
ing. And this signifies not onlv
that they exist, that there they
are. in front of us, but also
that they possess a given, fixed
s 1 ru c f u r e or consistency.
Given a stone, there exists
forthwith, for all to see, wha !
a stone is. I he stone can never
be something new and ditier-
ont. This consistency’, given
and fixed once and for all, is
what we customarily under
stand when we speak of the
being of a thing. An alternative
expression is the word ‘na
ture. And the task of natural
science is to penetrate beneath
changing appearances to that
permanent nature or texture.”
Human life, it is well to re
member, is not a thing, has not
a nature, and in consequence
we must make up our minds to
think of it in terms of catego
ries and concepts that are
radically different from such
as shed light on the phenomena
38
The Southern Israelite
