ABSTRACT
There is humor and irony in sociology's rediscovery of religion. The religio-sacred, far from being mere superstructure or illusion, is engrained in society; it cannot be consigned to the lumber room of history, for, as Emile Durkheim was to write, "there is something eternal in religion". At the heart of religion and of all things sacred is dogma. Fustel de Coulanges gives to the sacred and its contrast with the secular the same analytical significance that Henry Maine had given to status and contract. Sacred things have a natural superiority to profane things—superior in dignity and power—and particularly is this true in their relation to man himself. Durkheim's sense of the inevitability and externality of the sacred is a surer guide in this respect than Max Weber's more historical view of the rise and fall, the waxing and waning, of charisma.
