ABSTRACT
In The Symbolism of Evil the author demonstrated how mythic symbols played an important ideological and political role in the ancient cultures of the Babylonians, Hebrews and Greeks. He presents an analysis of what constitutes the imaginary nucleus of any culture. It is his conviction that one cannot reduce any culture to its explicit functions - political, economic and legal, and so on. There is invariably a hidden nucleus which determines and rules the distribution of the transparent functions and institutions. It is this matrix of distribution which assigns them different roles in relation to each other, other societies, the individuals who participate in them, and nature, which stands over against them. In several cultures the significance of economic and historical considerations would seem to be minor. In their culture the economic factor is indeed determining; but that does not mean that the predominance of economics is itself explicable purely in terms of economic science.
