Religion is that active attitude of man towards those factors, real or imaginary, in his environment or makeup, which he of himself cannot fully comprehend or control, and what he does, says and thinks in virtue of that active attitude.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, August 02, 2004
Definition of Religion
Arthur Darby Nock (1902-1963), quoted by W.M. Calder III, Men in Their Books: Studies in the Modern History of Classical Scholarship (Hildesheim: Olms, 1998), pp. 234, 284: