Masters & Friends
by S. M. Hutchens
I had a brief encounter with Mircea Eliade while walking one day on the University of Chicago campus. I knew it was he because, as he approached, a girl came running out of the Meadville-Lombard (Unitarian) seminary where he had apparently been lecturing, calling “Professor Eliade!” after him. What impressed me about him immediately was how short he was, not a midget, but almost a miniature man.
This campus is one of those anonymizing places where people who pass each other do not make eye contact, but this was different. Eliade and I looked for a moment—and for no reason I can think of—directly into each other’s eyes, nodded acknowledgment, and continued on our ways. This, I discovered, was a few months before his death, when critics were complaining that he was rescheduling Christianity into the fundamental human religion of his Catholic boyhood. I had heard of him before, but only enough to categorize him in my mind as just another learned religious anthropologist, but had never actually read him.
Thereafter I did read him and came away with the impression that he was surprisingly objective and guileless for one of his tribe, and worth gleaning by people who were advanced enough in their Christianity to use what he had to say to good effect.
One cannot be the disciple of such a man, but one can be his friend. I am under the impression that one of the most important aspects of Wisdom is to discern the difference. Many who aspire to Wisdom fail because they take as their masters those who should only be their friends.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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