RELIGION "How can there be a History of Religions ?" once objected a French senator.

"For either one believes in a religion, and then everything in it appears natural; or one does not believe in it, and then everything in it appears absurd!" This was said some thirty years ago, when it was a question of founding the now famous chair of the General History of Religions at the College de France.

At that time, such chairs were almost unheard of.

Now-a-days the more important universities of the world, to reckon them alone, can show at least thirty.
What is the significance of this change?
It means that the parochial view of religion is out of date.

The religious man has to be a man of the world, a man of the wider world, an anthropologist.