¹ Durkheim, E., The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Swain, J. W., trans. (Original publication 1912; New York: Collier, 1961), p. 52Google Scholar. Some uneasiness may exist concerning the use of the distinction (see Leach, E. R., Political Systems of Highland Burma, [Boston: Beacon, 1965], pp. 12–13) but it has not been replaced.Google Scholar

² Eliade, M., Traité d'histoire des religions (Paris: Payot, 1948), pp. 11, 15Google Scholar and passim, and The Sacred and the Profane, Trask, W. R., trans., (New York: Harper & Row, 1961).Google Scholar

³ Cf. Eliade, M., The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), Chap. III, ‘The Quest for the "Origins" of Religion’.Google Scholar

⁴ The literature on secularization since Hegel is vast and it is not feasible to summarize even its major tenets here. I should like to mention several writings by some specialists in the last few years, not only because they reveal a renewed interest in the subject but because they show that some common assumptions no longer go unchallenged. Recently the sociologist Thomas Luckmann (The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society [New York: Macmillan, 1967]Google Scholar) has underlined that ‘religion’ is something basic to human existence as such and is not just a problem of membership statistics and organizations. Professor Marc Galanter contributed a critical essay to a discussion in Comparative Studies in Society and History, VII, 1964–1965Google Scholar. He rightly emphasized that to speak meaningfully about a secular state of affairs in very different countries (India and the United States) one has to be conscious of the religion that state of affairs is secular to. Pertinent is also Professor Galanter's warning against the use of ‘a single notion of secularism that attempts to serve both as a descriptive category and as a trans-cultural ideal’ (p. 158). For the related, yet more encompassing problem of change in society and culture, see the earlier paper by Geertz, Clifford, ‘Ritual and Social Change: a Javanese Example’. American Anthropologist, LIX (1957).Google Scholar

⁵ In addition to Opera omnia (critically edited by Hoffmann, E. and Klibansky, R., published in Leipzig, beginning 1932; in Hamburg since 1949)Google Scholar, still incomplete, and the new edition, of the Strassburg edition of 1488, edited by Wilpert, Paul (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), 2 vols.Google Scholar, eloquent signs of renewed interest are Gerd Heinz-Mohr and Paul, Willehad Eckert, eds., Das Werk des Nikolaus Cusanus, eine bibliophiele Eifiihrung (Cologne: Wienand, 1963)Google Scholar, Jaspers, Karl, Nikolaus Cusanus (Munchen: Piper, 1964)Google Scholar, and the ‘study-edition’ in Latin and German by Gabriel, Leo (ed.) and Dietlind and Dupré, Wilhelm (trans.), Nikolaus yon Kues, Philosophisch-theologische Schriften (Vienna: Herder, 1964–1967), 3 vols.Google Scholar

⁶ Although the letters appeared as separate texts in the Basel edition of 1565, they actually seem to have been composed as one single work, De usu Communionis. See Sigmund, Paul E., Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ For a summary along these lines, see Bett, Henry, Nicholas of Cusa (London: Methuen, 1932), p. 3Google Scholar, who is fo Ilowing üx, Johann M., Der deutsche Cardinal Nicolaus v on Cusa und die Kirche seiner Zelt (Regensburg: Verlag Joseph Manz, 1847), I, pp. 154, 155.Google Scholar

⁸ Jaspers, Karl, Nikolaus Cusanus (Munchen: Piper, 1964), pp. 31–4, 226–88.Google Scholar

⁹ De pace fidei XVIII.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Cf. Bolle, Kees W., The Persistence of Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1965), p. 106.Google Scholar

¹¹ Among the most useful scholarly descriptions are Jacobi, H., ‘The Ages of the World, Indian’Google Scholar, in Hastings, J., Encyclopedia for Religion and Ethics (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1926), Vol. 1, 200–2Google Scholar; Abegg, Emil, Der Messiasglauben in Indien undIran (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1928), Chap. IGoogle Scholar; Kirfel, Willibald, Die Kosmographie der Inder (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchmsellschaft 1967: renrint of 1920 ed.), pp. 91–2.Google Scholar

¹² Wilson, H. H., trans., The Vishnu Purana (1840; reprint Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1961), pp. 270, 271.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid., p. 271.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 275.

¹⁵ See van Buitenen, J. A. B., ‘On the Archaism of the Bhāgatava Purāna’, in Singer, Milton, ed., Krishna: Myths, Rites, and Attitudes (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1966), especially p. 25.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Hopkins, Thomas J., ‘The Social Teachings of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa’Google Scholar, ibid., p. 12.

¹⁷ A number of facts and documents concerning religion in the Soviet Union are conveniently recorded in ‘The Church and State under Communism’, prepared by the Law Library of the Library of Congress (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964).Google Scholar