s the escape, to which the strong giant must be made to
contribute, he is skillfully turned against himself. The great stone is
removed by him from the mouth of the cave, but he places himself there
at the entrance, and no human being can pass. Still, the herds have to
go out to their pasture. Ulysses dexterously binds three large sheep
together, fastens a companion under the middle one, while he clings
beneath a huge ram, and out they move together. But the giant stops
just this ram and talks to it, being his favorite of the flock. The man
of nature is again outwitted by the man of intelligence, allowing his
enemy to slip through his very fingers. The conversation of the blind
Cyclops with the dumb animal is pathetic; his one solitary friend
apparently, the only creature he loved, is compelled to silent service
against its master. "Why art thou last to leave, who wast always first?
Dost thou long to see the eye of thy ruler, which has been put out by
that vile wretch, Nobody?" So the Cyclops speaks, without seeing or
knowing, yet with a touch which excites sympathy for his misfortune.

The special characteristic of this scene is that Ulysses does not now
destroy, but employs Polyphemus and his property. Nature must be used
by intelligence to overcome nature; the strength of the giant must be
directed to rolling away the big stone; his herds are taken to bring
about the escape of his foes, and he is turned into an instrument
against himself. Thus he is no longer negated as in the last scene, but
utilized; having been subdued, he now must serve.

Ulysses and his companions are outside the cave, having gotten rid of
those dark and fearful limits which walled them in with a monster.
Mind, thought has released them; soon they are on their ship in a free
element. But the end is not yet; even Polyphemus, the natural man, must
come to know who and what has subjected him, he too is in the grand
discipline of the time.

4. Two things Ulysses is now to tell to the Cyclops in the distance.
The first is the wrong and the penalty thereof: "Amply have thy evil
deeds been returned to thee," namely, his treatment of men. "Zeus and
the other Gods have punished thee," there is a divine order in the
world, which looks after the wrong-doer. Thus Polyphemus the anarchist,
atheist, and cannibal gets a short missionary sermon on justice,
religion and humanity. But he does not receive it kindly, he "hurls a
fragment of a mountain peak," and