In three works that contemplate the question of the necessity of limits on human intelligence, the issue revolves around the notion of humanity exceeding its limits and, thereby, offending or challenging the gods. The question asked by Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound, by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, and by Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe is whether there is some inherent limit on human ability--a point beyond which humanity should not go. Does human technology, the various products of human intelligence, reach a point at which it is beyond the ability of mere mortals to control it? Though the question was phrased in very different ways, all three authors agreed that there was a limit to human intelligence and that such a limit was a necessity. Why it is a necessity was, however, answered quite differently by the three writers.
In Aeschylus' play the conflict is over whether Prometheus was right to give humanity the ability to act in ways that Zeus believed should be reserved to the gods. (The actual point in question in this play, which was one of a trilogy about Prometheus' dilemma, was Zeus' demand that Prometheus reveal a secret he possessed about a limit on Zeus' power.) While Prometheus is judged to have acted rightly in giving humanity its gifts, the manner in which he acted, his rebelliousness, is seen as excessive. In Shelley's novel, which is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus," the story revolves around fantastic circumstances in which a human being ventures into territory that is reserved to the gods. The horrors that derive from this situation are the direct result of the incompleteness of human knowledge. Frankenstein could never succeed in creating human life--as it was meant to be--because he had discovered only a small part of the true secret of creating life. But for Defoe's Crusoe, stuck in a situation that placed him somewhere between the emergent human beings favored by Prometheus and the modern educatio...