Bøger af F. Max Muller

German-born Sanskritist and philologist Max Muller (1823-1900) was a pioneer in the field of comparative mythology and religion. Settling in England in 1846, during his distinguished career he served as Taylorian professor of modern European languages, curator of the Bodleian Library and Oxford's first professor of comparative philology. The content of this book was originally presented as part of a lecture series delivered at the University of Glasgow in 1893, where Muller was serving as the Gifford Lecturer. Muller's aim in presenting these lectures was to show that the only way of properly understanding religious phenomena was through utilising historical method. The three volumes preceding this one focused on 'physical religion', 'natural religion' and 'anthropological religion'; this fourth book, on theosophy, contains fifteen lectures, the subject matter ranging from Alexandrian Christianity and the eschatology of Plato to the journey of the soul after death.

To be sure, his work bears the stamp of late Nineteenth-Century sensibilities, but as artifacts of Victorian era scholarship, Muller's essays are helpful in reconstructing and comprehending the intellectual concerns of this highly enlightened though highly imperialistic age.