The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion » (Reprint)

In The Quest Mircea Eliade stresses the cultural function that a study of the history of religions can play in a secularized society. He writes for the intelligent general reader in the hope that what he calls a new humanism "will be engendered by a confrontation of modern Western man with unknown or less familiar worlds of meaning."

"Each of these essays contains insights which will be fruitful and challenging for professional students of religion, but at the same time they all retain the kind of cultural relevance and clarity of style which makes them accessible to anyone seriously concerned with man and his religious possibilities."—Joseph M. Kitagawa, Religious Education

Preface
1. A New Humanism
2. The History of Religions in Retrospect: 1912 and After
3. The Quest for the "Origins" of Religion
4. Crisis and Renewal
5. Cosmogonic Myth and "Sacred History"
6. Paradise and Utopia: Mythical Geography and Eshatology
7. Initiation and the Modern World
8. Prolegomenon to Religious Dualism: Dyads and Polarities Index