34 THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS

ed him to the meaning of his own existence, the mass-man
experiences, nevertheless, an increasingly dire hunger for
his bread. He wants his sacramental meal spread before
him. He wants a vision produced on his stage. He wants a
taste of universal being. He wants something to
wake him up from his bad dream of falling uncontrollably
into the future as he whimpers shrilly: “what makes man,
what makes love, necessary?”’

In hope of this clarifying grace he tenders on the sac-
rificial altar none other than himself. in the name of all.
Accordingly, he proffers himself for due purification. Since
the universal being incarnate in the brotherhood
is conceived as alone infallible and absolutely chastening
because of its putative self-perfection in time, each brother
acknowledges the duty of standing in its spotlight. Yet,
since each also regards the other not only as a rival claimant,
hostile, separated by an iron curtain of root-ego, but also
as a moral end-in-himself, a carrier of universal ego-force by
which all men will be bound in the common sacramental body,
each brother is obliged, in turn, to become the sacrifice. No
single one is capable of bearing the responsibility for all.
Only universal force can establish the brotherhood. The re-
sponsibility lies in their totality. Therefore each brother has
also the duty of submitting the other to the purifying in-
quisition of faith to obtain the common bread of their vision.

Even while his memory is being purged of the Classic,
sacramental base of society, with its language, science, and
art that atoned for Prometheus’ crime, each 1s being prepared
to pay a terrible retribution for his forgetfulness, as the myth
of Prometheus, buried in oblivion, rears itself hugely and
proceeds to its fulfilment in the full glare of our enlighten-
ment. Men rush, with prurient haste, to embrace its vision.
The ancient myth of the fateless ones, the patricides, 1s being
told to the end through the actors themselves, all unknow-
ingly 1n their knowledge and however unwillingly in their
willingness. The amnesia provoked by the mass-man’s cut-