clash in human cultures than that between those representing 
the eye and the ear, it is not strange that our metamorphosis 
into the eye mode of Western man should be only less 
agonizing than our present shift into the auditory mode of 
electronic man. But there is enough inner trauma in such 
change without the auditory cultures and the optical cultures 
flinging themselves at each other in outer manifestations of 
sadistic self-righteousness.

     Mircea Eliade begins his introduction to The Sacred and  
the Profane  as a manifesto announcing the long-delayed 
recognition of “the Sacred” or of auditory space in our century. 
He hails (pp. 8­9) Rudolf Otto’s Das Heilige  (The Sacred ) of 
1917: “Passing over the rational and speculative side of 
religion, he concentrated chiefly on its irrational aspect. For 
Otto had read Luther and had understood what the “living