TWO MODERN INCEST HEROES
661
of the myth, the refuge of "not knowing," and by undeceiving
themselves they reverse the prophecy. We are left to conclude that
it
is
the myth that destroys and that the heroic act for modern
man
is the casting off of pretense.
There is even the strong suggestion in
The
Holy
Sinner
that
the unmasking of sinful motives by psychoanalysis may initiate a
new progress in the moral evolution of mankind in which the
"know thyself' of psychoanalysis will bring moral wisdom in place
of moral tyranny.
When Grigorss was found by the searchers after seventeen
years of penance on the rock, he had lost
his
human form and
had shrunk to the size of a small animal. The animal had pro–
tected itself against hunger and the assaults of weather by periods
of long hibernation. After receiving the messengers Grigorss as–
sumed his human form, and with
his
new birth came new wisdom.
The new-born man, the Pope, was the man who had learned
that he had carried his sin within himself in the form of a wish,
that he had deceived himself in order to satisfy his longing. And
it
was this "confession from the depths" that freed him and re–
stored him to human stature.
