Methodological Remarks on the Study of Religious Symbolism

This selection continues from the earlier excerpt from Eliade’s The Two and the One ("What the Symbols Reveal”). Like the earlier excerpt this one concerns both symbolism and methodology. However, where the first concentrated on establishing the nature of symbol, the present article focuses more on a discussion of methodology and thus makes a fitting introduction to this section on method. The article makes a series of clear statements on Eliade’s understanding of methodology:\n \n In the broad sense of the term, the science of religions embraces both religious phenomenology and the philosophy of religion. ... The supreme merit of any historian of religions is precisely his endeavor to discover in a “fact” duly conditioned by the historical moment and the cultural style of the age the existential situation which caused it. ... A man is a historian of religions not by virtue of mastering a certain number of philologies, but because he is capable of ordering religious facts in a general perspective. \n \n