6 . Do your heroes realize they have changed? Is there self-examination or realization of wider consciousness? Have they learned to deal with their inner flaws? 184 STAGE TEN: THE ROAD BACK 2©=>- "Easy is the descent to the Lower World; but, to retrace your steps and to escape to the upper air — this is the task, this the toil." — T h e Sibyl to Aeneas in The Aeneid nee the lessons and Rewards of the great Ordeal have been celebrated and absorbed, heroes face a choice: whether to remain in the Special World or begin the journey home to
required Thomas Edison to pass a stiff examination in acoustical theory before deigning to look at his phonograph. The Babbage rule would have deprived cryptologists of some of the most important features of modern cryptography such as the Vernam mechanism, the rotor, the Hagelin machine. Cryptologists must process a lot of ore to get something valuable—but so must diamond miners. In evaluating their ciphers, many inventors err by thinking that the cryptanalyst must retrace the decipher- ment steps in his solution and that, since some of these steps are recoverable only with the key, the cipher must remain inviolate. But the cryptanalyst, of course, comes in by the back door. Many inventors also invoke the vast number of combinations of keys afforded by their system as proof of its invulnerability. To exhaust the possible solutions would take eons, they contend. Of course the argument is specious. With 26 letters, an enormous number of different
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