The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

Peter Smith Publisher (June 1983)

Mircea Eliade 1907 - 1986

Eliade examines the differences between "religious man" and "profane man".

He explains the impulses that prompt religious man (and woman - Eliade does not seem interested in correctness) to seek religious explanations for the chaos and relativity of the natural world.  He describes how religious man uses ready-made symbols from that world to construct his myths.

Eliade contrasts religious man with profane man, noting how profane man, even when trying to escape sacred strictures, remains influenced by those views.

He concludes by saying that religion poses paradigmatic solutions to existential crises of being - questions about who we are, what we are, what the world is (e.g., those European diseases of the soul - angst, ennui and the absurd).