THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS 13
ther and then to translate these words into things in order
to penetrate nature’s secrets. He taught them religious tech-
niques by which they mught raise themselves to a speaking
level with gods. Before Prometheus, men had possessed no
story, no.past, no myth. Nothing had ever happened to them-
Prometheus’ culture-crime is the root of the most ancient
European mythos.

Prometheus, 1n transforming the world into a magical
scene for his men, also pointed the way for its continuance
through a technological brotherhood of men, a lure that
always lies ready at hand for the disinherited in that it prom-
ises each a part of nature’s possession. He thereby began to
bind them, with. himself, faster to the Maya-matrix, who ever
strives to gain power through her sons in their overthrow of
paternal rule. Seducing by new scenes and continuously novel
transfigurations, she clasps them securely while she invites
them to possess that which is nothing to own. For she is
but illusion. She can never yield men a portion of herself,
She can never be kinown. She can never give them mastery.
She can bequeath no inheritance. She is able but to put men
in ceaseless motion in quest of her, over ways which lead no--
where except to her further phantasmagoria. She spurs them
on to discover, through motion, the center of matter in its:
formal duality. A vain search. For, had matter a center it
would be at rest. Though they father new sons for her mainte--
nance of mother-right through the brotherhood of man,
through her is brought to pass the ancient Titan curse that
when the father’s order is overturned the sons must divide their
inheritance by the sword. She is now their only shared lot.
Men without father and fatherland, though, constitute a
brotherhood of betrayal. They are prepared to destroy one
another at the first opportunity offered of grasping power
over the earth.

Accordingly, each son is portionless except for his right
over the mother, yet he learns that a part of her is nothing;
to possess unless he obtains the whole, and so he tries to own.