If We Pay No Attention To It,

A Religious Phenomenon Will Only Be Recognized As Such If It Is Grasped At Its Own Level, That Is To Say, If It Is Studied As Something Religious. To Try To Grasp The Essence Of Such Phenomenon By Means Of Physiology, Psychology, Sociology, Economics, Linguistics, Art Or Any Other Study Is False; It Misses The One Unique And Irreducible Element In It - The Element Of The Sacred.

Man Becomes Aware Of The Sacred Because It Manifests Itself, Shows Itself, As Something Wholly Different From The Profane.

The Crude Product Of Nature, The Object Fashioned By The Industry Of Man, Acquire Their Reality, Their Identity, Only To The Extent Of Their Participation In A Transcendent Reality.

Whether Religion Is Man-made Is A Question For Philosophers Or Theologians. But The Forms Are Man-made. They Are A Human Response To Something. As A Historian Of Religions, I Am Interested In Those Expressions.

Do What He Will, He [the Profane Man] Is An Inheritor. He Cannot Utterly Abolish His Past, Since He Himself Is A Product Of His Past. He Forms Himself By A Series Of Denials And Refusals, But He Continues To Be Haunted By The Realities That He Has Refused And Denied. To Acquire A World Of His Own, He Has Desacralized The World In Which His Ancestors Lived; But To Do So He Has Been Obliged To Adopt An Earlier Type Of Behavior, And That Behavior Is Still Emotionally Present In Him, In One Form Or Another, Ready To Be Reactualized In His Deepest Being.