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Few anthropologists would agree that the wholehearted dualism posited by a Durkheim or an Eliade is universally part of human experience. Indeed, †E.E. Evans-Pritchard doubted that it could be seen among the Nuer even in ritual performances. W.E.H. Stanner ignored it in his remarkable monograph On Aboriginal Religion. Elsewhere he argued that the dichotomy could be made to fit Aboriginal conduct only by adding a third category, the mundane (thereby abolishing the dualism), and making other adjustments. As for what lies behind the sacred, anthropologists are too nervous or too sceptical of ultimates to be attracted by Eliade’s mysticism. There remains, however, considerable sympathy for the Durkheimian doctrine that the sacred order is a symbolic representation of the social order. Stanner notwithstanding, it is especially in the

study of Aboriginal Australia that the opposition of sacred and profane has found regular employment. W. Lloyd Warner followed Durkheim closely, though his insistence that the sacred is peculiarly the realm of men is not necessarily implied by the master’s treatment and was disputed on factual grounds by Phyllis Kaberry. After World War II Ronald Berndt and T.G.H. Strehlow laid great stress on the sacred. Berndt’s usage, which is regrettably loose, has been influential in giving rise to the widespread opinion in Australian law and politics that any place of significance to Aborigines is sacred.