I would suggest that we do not need to begin with the sacred-profane polarity as the startingpoint of a systematic phenomenology, or gram- mar as I shall call it, of religion. Further there are some more particular features of Eliade's treatment of the sacred which may attract some questions. However, let me make my general claim a little more perspicuous by outlining very briefly the substance of the grammar of religion which might prove to be more inclusive than Eliade's.
A person or thing endowed with an emotional charge, which I shall call substance, may be in contact with another-and this in turn may be thought of in the widest way as a ritual or, to use J. L. Austin's term, performative contact. This contact can be conceived as either positive or negative, that is as a blessing or threat. If I were introduced to some great hero like Pele, the handshake and all would convey a kind of blessing: my substance would increase with even a minor in- fusion of that of the hero. Consequently the Latin word hostis meant both stranger and enemy. The approach of the stranger might be a threat: hospitality was a ritual means of establishing a positive relation with the stranger, and thus gaining something positive rather than negative from his presence. If for whatever reason you are yourself very strong, there may be emotional advantage in diminishing the other person's substance, by such rituals as insult, arrogance or (more extremely) torture.
Substance comes in forms of layers. Thus my own substance is built up most obviously of such layers as national identity (I par- ticipate ritually in the substance of Scotland). Then I participate in the profession of professing, and religion and philosophy in particular -so part of my substance is drawn from the worth of the job. Partly it is drawn from my place in the profession, that is from reputation, etc., which provides a kind of ordering of people's substance. One might see human behaviour from this point of view as involved in preserving or expanding individual substances.
Since communication of substance is essentially a ritual matter, the grammar of ritual itself becomes vital-e.g. the way in which the
substances of the past and future are made available, and the sub- stances also which exist in other portions of space, not to mention those which transcend space and time.
A further aspect of a general theory would have to do with the relation between categories through which substances are differen- tiated. The more the emotional charge the more important boundaries round a concept may be, since proper ritual response is necessary for the charge to be communicated in a benign manner. Similarly where an entity goes through a re-categorization clarity of ritual becomes important, hence rites of passage. Since communication of substance is a matter of created affinity, much ritual implies getting into a con- dition of affinity with what one is confronted with. Hence the drawing of performative boundaries in relation to what is powerful, and in particular the sacred. So it may be that we do not need to begin with the sacred-profane polarity as an ultimate but see it in a wider theory of emotional charges and their ritual accompaniments. I might add that is seems to me that whatever some modem science may say about the momentariness of events and the insubstantiality of things, where feelings are involved men operate according to notions of what Levy- Bruhl's translators called mystical participation. Or to put in another way: perhaps Plato through this theory of Forms reflected the way we think emotionally, thought not how we ought to think in regard to scientific exploration. And perhaps we should even eschew sub- stance-thinking in regard to what moves us in feeling and ritual-it could be that Buddhism's attack on substance is a correct attack too upon's men's "natural" emotional life.
Now of course Eliade's fixing on the sacred-profane polarity as ultimte involves various other limbs of theory. For the sacred is con- ceived by him ontologically: what is perceived as sacred in a hierophany reflects an archetype attests to the primordial ontology, which Eliade characterizes as Parmenidean (the real is timeless and inexhaustible), Platonic (archetypal) and Indian (temporal experience is illusory).
Attitudes to time, of course, permeate Eliade's whole theory of myth and history.
Now Eliade's theory is in its own way philosophical and speculative.
There is, of course, nothing wrong in this, and indeed one sometimes wishes more historians of religion were bolder in theory. But there are theories and theories, and intentions behind them. It seems to me
that we have a problem where a theory in effect is an expression of a worldview, which is then brought to bear upon worldviews. For in- stance in the past there have been those who have pursued the com- parative study of religion from a Christian-theological angle-con- sider such works a Farquhar's The Crown of Hinduism, Zaehner's At Sundry Times, Kraemer's The Christian Message in a Non- Christian World; and there have been others who have started from some other religious point of view-consider the works of Radha- krishnan and other products of modem Hindu thinking in which Christianity and other faiths are interpreted from a Hindu, and in particular a Vedantin, angle. But of course such essentially theological presentations are the subject matter of the history of religions, not exercises in it. Does this mean that all interpretative theories have to be eschewed? How do we draw the line between the pursuit of theology and the pursuit of Eliadean philosophy?
It is partly a matter of evidences, and partly a matter of intention.
Revealed and authoritative spiritual messages are not accepted as part of the evidence brought to bear in establishing a theory of religions.
That is, they are not brought to beear in their capacity as being nor- mative for the investigator, for they have no such capacity. But of course in other respects a theory is to be tested by evidences: here Dudley comments, not altogether favouably, on Eliade's handling of evidence, e.g. from the New Testament and Zuni mythology. It was of course an aspect of Edmund Leach's fierce attack on Eliade in The New York Review of Books that Eliade failed a number of evi- dential tests (doing bad history, bad ethnology and bad psychology, he alleged). I do not think Eliade is altogether to be exempted from the charge that he sometimes is highly selective in his use of sources.
But on the other hand he has undoubtedly brought together some highly suggestive symbolic complexes, especially in his major works on Yoga and shamanism.
It is worth adding that Guilford Dudley brings out well Eliade's normative thrust and his apologetics for a soteriology which will free people from "the terror of history": here Eliade is seen as guru. How- ever, looking at Eliade's theory from the point of view of the study of religion, and more generally from within the ambit of the human sciences, it is important to note whether he yields fruitful accounts of some of the key notions which the religionist needs to wield. And
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here I think he is open to criticism, and I shall illustrate this in rela-