It Is Not Without Fear And Trembling

And I Realize How Useless Wails Are And How Gratuitous Melancholy Is.

To Believe That I Could, At Twenty-three, Sacrifice History And Culture For The Absolute Was Further Proof That I Had Not Understood India. My Vocation Was Culture, Not Sainthood.

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.

It Would Be Frightening To Think That In All The Cosmos, Which Is So Harmonious, So Complete And Equal To Itself, That Only Human Life Is Happening Randomly, That Only One's Destiny Lacks Meaning.

It Is Not Without Fear And Trembling That A Historian Of Religion Approaches The Problem Of Myth. This Is Not Only Because Of That Preliminary Embarrassing Question: What Is Intended By Myth? It Is Also Because The Answers Given Depend For The Most Part On The Documents Selected.