That's a very sweet description of Freddy and a nice contemporary look at Zoroastrian influence. I will admit, that chapter was the most difficult for me to relate to -- it felt like foreign territory. So I had questions about my ability to summarize it.

And yeah, your point about science vs subjectivity is well taken. I actually came to interest in this book through reading about various depth psychological topics from Jungian authors. The chapters in this book are so short, that it's kind of mind-blowing how concise Eliade is in dropping a torrent of information on the reader. That said, it's glaringly obvious there is a lot of missing context if taken as a scientific treatise. For me, and I conjecture Eliade as well, the subjectivity is embraced and the interest lies moreso in the interpretive -- the colored, tumultuous experience of humans tripping and falling into consciousness through a lot of trial and error. Reading it was as much an exploration of myself as the history of ideas. For a scientist, it might be hair-raising, but for me, it's an incredibly succinct compendium from which to relate to large, collective psychological trends and patterns.

I fully intend to someday read what might be Eliade's own explicit synthesis Patterns in Comparative Religion someday, too :)