The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, by Emile Durkheim This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life Author: Emile Durkheim Translator: Joseph Ward Swain Release Date: November 13, 2012 [EBook #41360] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELEMENTARY FORMS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE *** Produced by Ruth Morrison, Tor Martin Kristiansen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE EMILE DURKHEIM The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY JOSEPH WARD SWAIN M.A. LONDON GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD RUSKIN HOUSE MUSEUM STREET FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1915 SECOND IMPRESSION 1926 THIRD IMPRESSION 1954 FOURTH IMPRESSION 1957 FIFTH IMPRESSION 1964 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiry should be made to the publisher. © George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1915 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY HOLLEN STREET PRESS LTD LONDON W.1 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Subject of our Study: Religious Sociology and the Theory of Knowledge PAGE I.—Principal subject of the book: analysis of the simplest religion known to determine the elementary forms of the religious life—Why they are more easily found and explained in the primitive religions 1 II.—Secondary subject of research: the genesis of the fundamental notions of thought or the categories— Reasons for believing that their origin is religious and consequently social—How a way of restating the theory of knowledge is thus seen 9 BOOK I PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS CHAPTER I Definition of Religious Phenomena and of Religion Usefulness of a preliminary definition of religion; method to be followed in seeking this definition—Why the usual definitions should be examined first 23 I.—Religion defined by the supernatural and mysterious—Criticism: the notion of mystery is not primitive 24 II.—Religion defined in connection with the idea of God or a spiritual being.—Religions without gods— Rites in deistic religions which imply no idea of divinity 29 III.—Search for a positive definition—Distinction between beliefs and rites—Definition of beliefs—First characteristic: division of things between sacred and profane—Distinctive characteristics of this definition—Definition of rites in relation to beliefs—Definition of religion 36 IV.—Necessity of another characteristic to distinguish magic from religion—The idea of the Church—Do individualistic religions exclude the idea of a Church? 42 CHAPTER II Leading Conceptions of the Elementary Religion I.—Animism Distinction of animism and naturism 48 I—The three theses of animism: Genesis of the idea of the soul; Formation of the idea of spirits; Transformation of the cult of spirits into the cult of nature 49 II.—Criticism of the first thesis—Distinction of the idea of the soul from that of a double—Dreams do not account for the idea of the soul 55 III.—Criticism of the second thesis—Death does not explain the transformation of a soul into a spirit—The cult of the souls of the dead is not primitive 60 IV.—Criticism of the third thesis—The anthropomorphic instinct—Spencer's criticism of it; reservations on this point—Examination of the facts by which this instinct is said to be proved—Difference between a soul and the spirits of nature—Religious anthropomorphism is not primitive 65 V.—Conclusion: animism reduces religion to nothing more than a system of hallucinations 68 [Pg v] [Pg vi] CHAPTER III Leading Conceptions of the Elementary Religion—(continued) II.—Naturism History of the theory 71 I.—Exposition of Max Müller's naturism 73 II.—If the object of religion is to express natural forces, it is hard to see how it has maintained itself, for it expresses them in an erroneous manner—Pretended distinction between religion and mythology 78 III.—Naturism does not explain the division of things into sacred and profane 84 CHAPTER IV Totemism as an Elementary Religion I.—Brief history of the question of totemism 88 II.—Reasons of method for which our study will be given specially to the totemism of Australia—The place which will be given to facts from America 93 BOOK II THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS CHAPTER I Totemic Beliefs The Totem as Name and as Emblem I.—Definition of the clan—The totem as name of the clan—Nature of the things which serve as totems— Ways in which the totem is acquired—The totems of phratries; of matrimonial classes 102 II.—The totem as emblem—Totemic designs engraved or carved upon objects; tatooings or designs upon the body 113 III.—Sacred character of the totemic emblem—The churinga—The nurtunja—The waninga—Conventional character of totemic emblems 119 CHAPTER II Totemic Beliefs—(continued) The Totemic Animal and Man I.—Sacred character of the totemic animals—Prohibition to eat them, kill them or pick the totemic plants— Different moderations given these prohibitions—Prohibition of contact—The sacred character of the animal is less marked than that of the emblem 128 II.—The man—His relationship with the totemic animal or plant—Different myths explaining this relationship—The sacred character of the man is more apparent in certain parts of the organism: the blood, hair, etc.—How this character varies with sex and age—Totemism is not plant or animal worship 134 CHAPTER III Totemic Beliefs—(continued) The Cosmological System of Totemism and the Idea of Class I.—The classification of things into clans, phratries and classes 141 II.—Genesis of the notion of class: the first classifications of things take their forms from society— Differences between the sentiment of the differences of things and the idea of class—Why this is of social origin 144 III.—Religious significance of these classifications: all of the things classified into a clan partake of the nature of the totem and its sacred character—The cosmological system of totemism—Totemism as the tribal religion 148 CHAPTER IV Totemic Beliefs—(end) The Individual Totem and the Sexual Totem I.—Individual totem as a forename; its sacred character—Individual totem as personal emblem—Bonds between the man and his individual totem—Relations with the collective totem 157 II.—The totems of sexual groups—Resemblances and differences with the collective and individual totems —Their tribal nature 165 CHAPTER V Origins of these Beliefs Critical Examination of Preceding Theories [Pg vii] I.—Theories which derive totemism from a previous religion: from the ancestor cult (Wilken and Tylor); from the nature cult (Jevons)—Criticism of these theories 168 II.—Theories which derive collective totemism from individual totemism—Origins attributed by these theories to the individual totem (Frazer, Boas, Hill Tout)—Improbability of these hypotheses— Reasons showing the priority of the collective totem 172 III.—Recent theory of Frazer: conceptional and local totemism—The begging of the question upon which it rests—The religious character of the totem is denied—Local totemism is not primitive 180 IV.—Theory of Lang: that the totem is only a name—Difficulties in explaining the religious character of totemic practices from this point of view 184 V.—All these theories explain totemism only by postulating other religious notions anterior to it 186 CHAPTER VI Origins of these Beliefs—(continued) The Notion of the Totemic Principle, or Mana, and the Idea of Force I.—The notion of the totemic force or principle—Its ubiquity—Its character at once physical and moral 188 II.—Analogous conceptions in other inferior societies—The gods in Samoa, the wakan of the Sioux, the orenda of the Iroquois, the mana of Melanesia—Connection of these notions with totemism—The Arunkulta of the Arunta 191 III.—Logical priority of impersonal force over the different mythical personalities—Recent theories which tend to admit this priority 198 IV.—The notion of religious force is the prototype of that of force in general 203 CHAPTER VII Origins of these Beliefs—(end) Origin of the Idea of the Totemic Principle or Mana I.—The totemic principle is the clan, but thought of under a more empirical form 205 II.—General reasons for which society is apt to awaken the sensation of the sacred and the divine— Society as an imperative moral force; the notion of moral authority—Society as a force which raises the individual outside of himself—Facts which prove that society creates the sacred 206 III.—Reasons peculiar to Australian societies—The two phases through which the life of these societies alternatively passes: dispersion, concentration—Great collective effervescence during the periods of concentration—Examples—How the religious idea is born out of this effervescence 214 Why collective force has been thought of under totemic forms: it is the totem that is the emblem of the clan —Explanation of the principal totemic beliefs 219 IV.—Religion is not the product of fear—It expresses something real—Its essential idealism—This idealism is a general characteristic of collective mentality—Explanation of the external character of religious forces in relation to their subjects—The principle that the part is equal to the whole 223 V.—Origin of the notion of emblem: emblems a necessary condition of collective representations—Why the clan has taken its emblems from the animal and vegetable kingdoms 230 VI.—The proneness of the primitive to confound the kingdoms and classes which we distinguish—Origins of these confusions—How they have blazed the way for scientific explanations—They do not exclude the tendency towards distinction and opposition 234 CHAPTER VIII The Idea of the Soul I.—Analysis of the idea of the soul in the Australian societies 240 II.—Genesis of this idea—The doctrine of reincarnation according to Spencer and Gillen: it implies that the soul is a part of the totemic principle—Examination of the facts collected by Strehlow; they confirm the totemic nature of the soul 246 III.—Generality of the doctrine of reincarnation—Diverse facts in support of the proposed genesis 256 IV.—Antithesis of the soul and the body: what there is objective in this—Relations of the individual soul with the collective soul—The idea of the soul is not chronologically after that of mana 262 V.—Hypothesis to explain the belief in its survival 267 VI.—The idea of a soul and the idea of a person; impersonal elements in the personality 269 CHAPTER IX The Idea of Spirits and Gods [Pg viii] [Pg ix] I.—Difference between a soul and a spirit—The souls of the mythical ancestors are spirits, having determined functions—Relations between the ancestral spirit, the individual soul and the individual totem—Explanation of this latter—Its sociological significance 273 II.—Spirits and magic 281 III.—The civilizing heroes 283 IV.—The great gods—Their origin—Their relations with the totemic system—Their tribal and international character 285 V.—Unity of the totemic system 295 BOOK III THE PRINCIPAL RITUAL ATTITUDES CHAPTER I The Negative Cult and its Functions The Ascetic Rites I.—The system of interdictions—Magic and religious interdictions—Interdictions between sacred things of different sorts—Interdictions between sacred and profane—These latter are the basis of the negative cult—Leading types of these interdictions; their reduction to two essential types 299 II.—The observance of interdictions modifies the religious state of individuals—Cases where this efficacy is especially apparent: ascetic practices—The religious efficacy of sorrow—Social function of asceticism 309 III.—Explanation of the system of interdictions: antagonism of the sacred and the profane, contagiousness of the sacred 317 IV.—Causes of this contagiousness—It cannot be explained by the laws of the association of ideas—It is because religious forces are outside of their subjects—Logical interest in this property of religious forces 321 CHAPTER II The Positive Cult I.—The Elements of Sacrifice The Intichiuma ceremony in the tribes of Central Australia—Different forms which it presents 326 I.—The Arunta Form—The two phases—Analysis of the first: visit to sacred places, scattering of sacred dust, shedding of blood, etc., to assure the reproduction of the totemic species 327 II.—Second phase: ritual consumption of the totemic plant or animal 333 III.—Interpretation of the complete ceremony—The second rite consists in a communion meal—Reason for this communion 336 IV.—The rites of the first phase consists in oblations—Analogies with sacrificial oblations—The Intichiuma thus contains the two elements of sacrifice—Interest of these facts for the theory of sacrifice 340 V.—On the pretended absurdity of sacrificial oblations—How they are explained: dependence of sacred beings upon their worshippers—Explanation of the circle in which sacrifice seems to move—Origin of the periodicity of positive rites 344 CHAPTER III The Positive Cult—(continued) II.—Imitative Rites and the Principle of Causality I.—Nature of the imitative rites—Examples of ceremonies where they are employed to assure the fertility of the species 351 II.—They rest upon the principle: like produces like—Examination of the explanation of this given by the anthropological school—Reasons why they imitate the animal or plant—Reasons for attributing a physical efficacy to these gestures—Faith—In what sense it is founded upon experience—The principles of magic are born in religion 355 III.—The preceding principle considered as one of the first statements of the principle of causality—Social conditions upon which this latter depends—The idea of impersonal force or power is of social origin —The necessity for the conception of causality explained by the authority inherent in social imperatives 362 CHAPTER IV The Positive Cult—(continued) III.—Representative or Commemorative Rites I.—Representative rites with physical efficacy—Their relations with the ceremonies already described— Their action is wholly moral 371 [Pg x] II.—Representative rites without physical efficacy—They confirm the preceding results—The element of recreation in religion: its importance; its reason for existence—The idea of a feast 376 III.—Ambiguity of function in the various ceremonies studied; they substitute themselves for each other— How this ambiguity confirms the theory proposed 383 CHAPTER V Piacular Rites and the Ambiguity of the Notion of Sacredness Definition of the piacular rite 389 I.—Positive rites of mourning—Description of these rites 390 II.—How they are explained—They are not a manifestation of private sentiments—The malice attributed to the souls of the dead cannot account for them either—They correspond to the state of mind in which the group happens to be—Analysis of this state—How it ends by mourning—Corresponding changes in the way in which the souls of the dead are conceived 396 III.—Other piacular rites; after a public mourning, a poor harvest, a drought, the southern lights—Rarity of these rites in Australia—How they are explained 403 IV.—The two forms of the sacred: the pure and the impure—Their antagonism—Their relationship— Ambiguity of the idea of the sacred—All rites present the same character 409 CONCLUSION To what extent the results obtained may be generalized 415 I.—Religion rests upon an experience that is well founded but not privileged—Necessity of a science to reach the reality at the bottom of this experience—What is this reality?—The human groups—Human meaning of religion—Concerning the objection which opposes the ideal society to the real society 416 How religious individualism and cosmopolitanism are explained in this theory 424 II.—The eternal element in religion—Concerning the conflict between science and religion; it has to do solely with the speculative side of religion—What this side seems destined to become 427 III.—How has society been able to be the source of logical, that is to say conceptual, thought? Definition of the concept: not to be confounded with the general idea; characterized by its impersonality and communicability—It has a collective origin—The analysis of its contents bears witness in the same sense Collective representations as types of ideas which individuals accept—In regard to the objection that they are impersonal only on condition of being true—Conceptual thought is coeval with humanity 431 IV.—How the categories express social things—The chief category is the concept of totality which could be suggested only by society—Why the relations expressed by the categories could become conscious only in society—Society is not an a-logical being—How the categories tend to detach themselves from geographically determined groups 439 The unity of science on the one hand, and of morals and religion on the other—How the society accounts for this unity—Explanation of the rôle attributed to society: its creative power—Reactions of sociology upon the science of man 445 THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE INTRODUCTION SUBJECT OF OUR STUDY: RELIGIOUS SOCIOLOGY AND THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE In this book we propose to study the most primitive and simple religion which is actually known, to make an analysis of it, and to attempt an explanation of it. A religious system may be said to be the most primitive which we can observe [Pg xi] [Pg xii] [Pg 1] when it fulfils the two following conditions: in the first place, when it is found in a society whose organization is surpassed by no others in simplicity;[1] and secondly, when it is possible to explain it without making use of any element borrowed from a previous religion. We shall set ourselves to describe the organization of this system with all the exactness and fidelity that an ethnographer or an historian could give it. But our task will not be limited to that: sociology raises other problems than history or ethnography. It does not seek to know the passed forms of civilization with the sole end of knowing them and reconstructing them. But rather, like every positive science, it has as its object the explanation of some actual reality which is near to us, and which consequently is capable of affecting our ideas and our acts: this reality is man, and more precisely, the man of to-day, for there is nothing which we are more interested in knowing. Then we are not going to study a very archaic religion simply for the pleasure of telling its peculiarities and its singularities. If we have taken it as the subject of our research, it is because it has seemed to us better adapted than any other to lead to an understanding of the religious nature of man, that is to say, to show us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity. But this proposition is not accepted before the raising of strong objections. It seems very strange that one must turn back, and be transported to the very beginnings of history, in order to arrive at an understanding of humanity as it is at present. This manner of procedure seems particularly paradoxical in the question which concerns us. In fact, the various religions generally pass as being quite unequal in value and dignity; it is said that they do not all contain the same quota of truth. Then it seems as though one could not compare the highest forms of religious thought with the lowest, without reducing the first to the level of the second. If we admit that the crude cults of the Australian tribes can help us to understand Christianity, for example, is that not supposing that this latter religion proceeds from the same mentality as the former, that it is made up of the same superstitions and rests upon the same errors? This is how the theoretical importance which has sometimes been attributed to primitive religions has come to pass as a sign of a systematic hostility to all religion, which, by prejudging the results of the study, vitiates them in advance. There is no occasion for asking here whether or not there are scholars who have merited this reproach, and who have made religious history and ethnology a weapon against religion. In any case, a sociologist cannot hold such a point of view. In fact, it is an essential postulate of sociology that a human institution cannot rest upon an error and a lie, without which it could not exist. If it were not founded in the nature of things, it would have encountered in the facts a resistance over which it could never have triumphed. So when we commence the study of primitive religions, it is with the assurance that they hold to reality and express it; this principle will be seen to re-enter again and again in the course of the analyses and discussions which follow, and the reproach which we make against the schools from which we have separated ourselves is that they have ignored it. When only the letter of the formulæ is considered, these religious beliefs and practices undoubtedly seem disconcerting at times, and one is tempted to attribute them to some sort of a deep- rooted error. But one must know how to go underneath the symbol to the reality which it represents and which gives it its meaning. The most barbarous and the most fantastic rites and the strangest myths translate some human need, some aspect of life, either individual or social. The reasons with which the faithful justify them may be, and generally are, erroneous; but the true reasons do not cease to exist, and it is the duty of science to discover them. In reality, then, there are no religions which are false. All are true in their own fashion; all answer, though in different ways, to the given conditions of human existence. It is undeniably possible to arrange them in a hierarchy. Some can be called superior to others, in the sense that they call into play higher mental functions, that they are richer in ideas and sentiments, that they contain more concepts with fewer sensations and images, and that their arrangement is wiser. But howsoever real this greater complexity and this higher ideality may be, they are not sufficient to place the corresponding religions in different classes. All are religions equally, just as all living beings are equally alive, from the most humble plastids up to man. So when we turn to primitive religions it is not with the idea of depreciating religion in general, for these religions are no less respectable than the others. They respond to the same needs, they play the same rôle, they depend upon the same causes; they can also well serve to show the nature of the religious life, and consequently to resolve the problem which we wish to study. But why give them a sort of prerogative? Why choose them in preference to all others as the subject of our study?— It is merely for reasons of method. In the first place, we cannot arrive at an understanding of the most recent religions except by following the manner in which they have been progressively composed in history. In fact, historical analysis is the only means of explanation which it is possible to apply to them. It alone enables us to resolve an institution into its constituent elements, for it shows them to us as they are born in time, one after another. On the other hand, by placing every one of them in the condition where it was born, it puts into our hands the only means we have of determining the causes which gave rise to it. Every time that we undertake to explain something human, taken at a given moment in history—be it a religious belief, a moral precept, a legal principle, an æsthetic style or an economic system—it is necessary to commence by going back to its most primitive and simple form, to try to account for the characteristics by which it was marked at that time, and then to show how it developed and became complicated little by little, and how it became that which it is at the moment in question. One readily understands the importance which the determination of the point of departure has for this series of progressive explanations, for all the others are attached to it. It was one of Descartes's principles that the first ring has a predominating place in the chain of scientific truths. But there is no question of placing at the foundation of the science of religions an idea elaborated after the cartesian manner, that is to say, a logical concept, a pure possibility, constructed simply by force of thought. What we must find is a concrete reality, and historical and ethnological observation alone can reveal that to us. But even if this cardinal conception is obtained by a different process than that of Descartes, it [Pg 2] [Pg 3] [Pg 4] remains true that it is destined to have a considerable influence on the whole series of propositions which the science establishes. Biological evolution has been conceived quite differently ever since it has been known that monocellular beings do exist. In the same way, the arrangement of religious facts is explained quite differently, according as we put naturism, animism or some other religious form at the beginning of the evolution. Even the most specialized scholars, if they are unwilling to confine themselves to a task of pure erudition, and if they desire to interpret the facts which they analyse, are obliged to choose one of these hypotheses, and make it their starting-point. Whether they desire it or not, the questions which they raise necessarily take the following form: how has naturism or animism been led to take this particular form, here or there, or to enrich itself or impoverish itself in such and such a fashion? Since it is impossible to avoid taking sides on this initial problem, and since the solution given is destined to affect the whole science, it must be attacked at the outset: that is what we propose to do. Besides this, outside of these indirect reactions, the study of primitive religions has of itself an immediate interest which is of primary importance. If it is useful to know what a certain particular religion consists in, it is still more important to know what religion in general is. This is the problem which has aroused the interest of philosophers in all times; and not without reason, for it is of interest to all humanity. Unfortunately, the method which they generally employ is purely dialectic: they confine themselves to analysing the idea which they make for themselves of religion, except as they illustrate the results of this mental analysis by examples borrowed from the religions which best realize their ideal. But even if this method ought to be abandoned, the problem remains intact, and the great service of philosophy is to have prevented its being suppressed by the disdain of scholars. Now it is possible to attack it in a different way. Since all religions can be compared to each other, and since all are species of the same class, there are necessarily many elements which are common to all. We do not mean to speak simply of the outward and visible characteristics which they all have equally, and which make it possible to give them a provisional definition from the very outset of our researches; the discovery of these apparent signs is relatively easy, for the observation which it demands does not go beneath the surface of things. But these external resemblances suppose others which are profound. At the foundation of all systems of beliefs and of all cults there ought necessarily to be a certain number of fundamental representations or conceptions and of ritual attitudes which, in spite of the diversity of forms which they have taken, have the same objective significance and fulfil the same functions everywhere. These are the permanent elements which constitute that which is permanent and human in religion; they form all the objective contents of the idea which is expressed when one speaks of religion in general. How is it possible to pick them out? Surely it is not by observing the complex religions which appear in the course of history. Every one of these is made up of such a variety of elements that it is very difficult to distinguish what is secondary from what is principal, the essential from the accessory. Suppose that the religion considered is like that of Egypt, India or the classical antiquity. It is a confused mass of many cults, varying according to the locality, the temples, the generations, the dynasties, the invasions, etc. Popular superstitions are there confused with the purest dogmas. Neither the thought nor the activity of the religion is evenly distributed among the believers; according to the men, the environment and the circumstances, the beliefs as well as the rites are thought of in different ways. Here they are priests, there they are monks, elsewhere they are laymen; there are mystics and rationalists, theologians and prophets, etc. In these conditions it is difficult to see what is common to all. In one or another of these systems it is quite possible to find the means of making a profitable study of some particular fact which is specially developed there, such as sacrifice or prophecy, monasticism or the mysteries; but how is it possible to find the common foundation of the religious life underneath the luxuriant vegetation which covers it? How is it possible to find, underneath the disputes of theology, the variations of ritual, the multiplicity of groups and the diversity of individuals, the fundamental states characteristic of religious mentality in general? Things are quite different in the lower societies. The slighter development of individuality, the small extension of the group, the homogeneity of external circumstances, all contribute to reducing the differences and variations to a minimum. The group has an intellectual and moral conformity of which we find but rare examples in the more advanced societies. Everything is common to all. Movements are stereotyped; everybody performs the same ones in the same circumstances, and this conformity of conduct only translates the conformity of thought. Every mind being drawn into the same eddy, the individual type nearly confounds itself with that of the race. And while all is uniform, all is simple as well. Nothing is deformed like these myths, all composed of one and the same theme which is endlessly repeated, or like these rites made up of a small number of gestures repeated again and again. Neither the popular imagination nor that of the priests has had either the time or the means of refining and transforming the original substance of the religious ideas and practices; these are shown in all their nudity, and offer themselves to an examination, it requiring only the slightest effort to lay them open. That which is accessory or secondary, the development of luxury, has not yet come to hide the principal elements.[2] All is reduced to that which is indispensable, to that without which there could be no religion. But that which is indispensable is also that which is essential, that is to say, that which we must know before all else. Primitive civilizations offer privileged cases, then, because they are simple cases. That is why, in all fields of human activity, the observations of ethnologists have frequently been veritable revelations, which have renewed the study of human institutions. For example, before the middle of the nineteenth century, everybody was convinced that the father was the essential element of the family; no one had dreamed that there could be a family organization of which the paternal authority was not the keystone. But the discovery of Bachofen came and upset this old conception. Up to very recent times it was regarded as evident that the moral and legal relations of kindred were only another aspect of the psychological relations which result from a common descent; Bachofen and his successors, MacLennan, Morgan and many others still laboured under this misunderstanding. But since we have become acquainted with the nature of the [Pg 5] [Pg 6] primitive clan, we know that, on the contrary, relationships cannot be explained by consanguinity. To return to religions, the study of only the most familiar ones had led men to believe for a long time that the idea of god was characteristic of everything that is religious. Now the religion which we are going to study presently is, in a large part, foreign to all idea of divinity; the forces to which the rites are there addressed are very different from those which occupy the leading place in our modern religions, yet they aid us in understanding these latter forces. So nothing is more unjust than the disdain with which too many historians still regard the work of ethnographers. Indeed, it is certain that ethnology has frequently brought about the most fruitful revolutions in the different branches of sociology. It is for this same reason that the discovery of unicellular beings, of which we just spoke, has transformed the current idea of life. Since in these very simple beings, life is reduced to its essential traits, these are less easily misunderstood. But primitive religions do not merely aid us in disengaging the constituent elements of religion; they also have the great advantage that they facilitate the explanation of it. Since the facts there are simpler, the relations between them are more apparent. The reasons with which men account for their acts have not yet been elaborated and denatured by studied reflection; they are nearer and more closely related to the motives which have really determined these acts. In order to understand an hallucination perfectly, and give it its most appropriate treatment, a physician must know its original point of departure. Now this event is proportionately easier to find if he can observe it near its beginnings. The longer the disease is allowed to develop, the more it evades observation; that is because all sorts of interpretations have intervened as it advanced, which tend to force the original state into the background, and across which it is frequently difficult to find the initial one. Between a systematized hallucination and the first impressions which gave it birth, the distance is often considerable. It is the same thing with religious thought. In proportion as it progresses in history, the causes which called it into existence, though remaining active, are no longer perceived, except across a vast scheme of interpretations which quite transform them. Popular mythologies and subtile theologies have done their work: they have superimposed upon the primitive sentiments others which are quite different, and which, though holding to the first, of which they are an elaborated form, only allow their true nature to appear very imperfectly. The psychological gap between the cause and the effect, between the apparent cause and the effective cause, has become more considerable and more difficult for the mind to leap. The remainder of this book will be an illustration and a verification of this remark on method. It will be seen how, in the primitive religions, the religious fact still visibly carries the mark of its origins: it would have been well-nigh impossible to infer them merely from the study of the more developed religions. The study which we are undertaking is therefore a way of taking up again, but under new conditions, the old problem of the origin of religion. To be sure, if by origin we are to understand the very first beginning, the question has nothing scientific about it, and should be resolutely discarded. There was no given moment when religion began to exist, and there is consequently no need of finding a means of transporting ourselves thither in thought. Like every human institution, religion did not commence anywhere. Therefore, all speculations of this sort are justly discredited; they can only consist in subjective and arbitrary constructions which are subject to no sort of control. But the problem which we raise is quite another one. What we want to do is to find a means of discerning the ever-present causes upon which the most essential forms of religious thought and practice depend. Now for the reasons which were just set forth, these causes are proportionately more easily observable as the societies where they are observed are less complicated. That is why we try to get as near as possible to the origins.[3] It is not that we ascribe particular virtues to the lower religions. On the contrary, they are rudimentary and gross; we cannot make of them a sort of model which later religions only have to reproduce. But even their grossness makes them instructive, for they thus become convenient for experiments, as in them, the facts and their relations are easily seen. In order to discover the laws of the phenomena which he studies, the physicist tries to simplify these latter and rid them of their secondary characteristics. For that which concerns institutions, nature spontaneously makes the same sort of simplifications at the beginning of history. We merely wish to put these to profit. Undoubtedly we can only touch very elementary facts by this method. When we shall have accounted for them as far as possible, the novelties of every sort which have been produced in the course of evolution will not yet be explained. But while we do not dream of denying the importance of the problems thus raised, we think that they will profit by being treated in their turn, and that it is important to take them up only after those of which we are going to undertake the study at present. II But our study is not of interest merely for the science of religion. In fact, every religion has one side by which it overlaps the circle of properly religious ideas, and there, the study of religious phenomena gives a means of renewing the problems which, up to the present, have only been discussed among philosophers. For a long time it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of religious origin. There is no religion that is not a cosmology at the same time that it is a speculation upon divine things. If philosophy and the sciences were born of religion, it is because religion began by taking the place of the sciences and philosophy. But it has been less frequently noticed that religion has not confined itself to enriching the human intellect, formed beforehand, with a certain number of ideas; it has contributed to forming the intellect itself. Men owe to it not only a good part of the substance of their knowledge, but also the form in which this knowledge has been elaborated. At the roots of all our judgments there are a certain number of essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life; they are what philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of the understanding: ideas of time, space,[4] class, number, cause, substance, personality, etc. They correspond to the most universal properties of things. They are like the [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] solid frame which encloses all thought; this does not seem to be able to liberate itself from them without destroying itself, for it seems that we cannot think of objects that are not in time and space, which have no number, etc. Other ideas are contingent and unsteady; we can conceive of their being unknown to a man, a society or an epoch; but these others appear to be nearly inseparable from the normal working of the intellect. They are like the framework of the intelligence. Now when primitive religious beliefs are systematically analysed, the principal categories are naturally found. They are born in religion and of religion; they are a product of religious thought. This is a statement that we are going to have occasion to make many times in the course of this work. This remark has some interest of itself already; but here is what gives it its real importance. The general conclusion of the book which the reader has before him is that religion is something eminently social. Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities; the rites are a manner of acting which take rise in the midst of the assembled groups and which are destined to excite, maintain or recreate certain mental states in these groups. So if the categories are of religious origin, they ought to participate in this nature common to all religious facts; they too should be social affairs and the product of collective thought. At least—for in the actual condition of our knowledge of these matters, one should be careful to avoid all radical and exclusive statements—it is allowable to suppose that they are rich in social elements. Even at present, these can be imperfectly seen in some of them. For example, try to represent what the notion of time would be without the processes by which we divide it, measure it or express it with objective signs, a time which is not a succession of years, months, weeks, days and hours! This is something nearly unthinkable. We cannot conceive of time, except on condition of distinguishing its different moments. Now what is the origin of this differentiation? Undoubtedly, the states of consciousness which we have already experienced can be reproduced in us in the same order in which they passed in the first place; thus portions of our past become present again, though being clearly distinguished from the present. But howsoever important this distinction may be for our private experience, it is far from being enough to constitute the notion or category of time. This does not consist merely in a commemoration, either partial or integral, of our past life. It is an abstract and impersonal frame which surrounds, not only our individual existence, but that of all humanity. It is like an endless chart, where all duration is spread out before the mind, and upon which all possible events can be located in relation to fixed and determined guide lines. It is not my time that is thus arranged; it is time in general, such as it is objectively thought of by everybody in a single civilization. That alone is enough to give us a hint that such an arrangement ought to be collective. And in reality, observation proves that these indispensable guide lines, in relation to which all things are temporally located, are taken from social life. The divisions into days, weeks, months, years, etc., correspond to the periodical recurrence of rites, feasts, and public ceremonies.[5] A calendar expresses the rhythm of the collective activities, while at the same time its function is to assure their regularity.[6] It is the same thing with space. As Hamelin has shown,[7] space is not the vague and indetermined medium which Kant imagined; if purely and absolutely homogeneous, it would be of no use, and could not be grasped by the mind. Spatial representation consists essentially in a primary co-ordination of the data of sensuous experience. But this co- ordination would be impossible if the parts of space were qualitatively equivalent and if they were really interchangeable. To dispose things spatially there must be a possibility of placing them differently, of putting some at the right, others at the left, these above, those below, at the north of or at the south of, east or west of, etc., etc., just as to dispose states of consciousness temporally there must be a possibility of localizing them at determined dates. That is to say that space could not be what it is if it were not, like time, divided and differentiated. But whence come these divisions which are so essential? By themselves, there are neither right nor left, up nor down, north nor south, etc. All these distinctions evidently come from the fact that different sympathetic values have been attributed to various regions. Since all the men of a single civilization represent space in the same way, it is clearly necessary that these sympathetic values, and the distinctions which depend upon them, should be equally universal, and that almost necessarily implies that they be of social origin.[8] Besides that, there are cases where this social character is made manifest. There are societies in Australia and North America where space is conceived in the form of an immense circle, because the camp has a circular form;[9] and this spatial circle is divided up exactly like the tribal circle, and is in its image. There are as many regions distinguished as there are clans in the tribe, and it is the place occupied by the clans inside the encampment which has determined the orientation of these regions. Each region is defined by the totem of the clan to which it is assigned. Among the Zuñi, for example, the pueblo contains seven quarters; each of these is a group of clans which has had a unity: in all probability it was originally a single clan which was later subdivided. Now their space also contains seven quarters, and each of these seven quarters of the world is in intimate connection with a quarter of the pueblo, that is to say with a group of clans.[10] "Thus," says Cushing, "one division is thought to be in relation with the north, another represents the west, another the south," etc.[11] Each quarter of the pueblo has its characteristic colour, which symbolizes it; each region has its colour, which is exactly the same as that of the corresponding quarter. In the course of history the number of fundamental clans has varied; the number of the fundamental regions of space has varied with them. Thus the social organization has been the model for the spatial organization and a reproduction of it. It is thus even up to the distinction between right and left which, far from being inherent in the nature of man in general, is very probably the product of representations which are religious and therefore collective.[12] Analogous proofs will be found presently in regard to the ideas of class, force, personality and efficacy. It is even possible to ask if the idea of contradiction does not also depend upon social conditions. What makes one tend to believe this is that the empire which the idea has exercised over human thought has varied with times and societies. To- [Pg 10] [Pg 11] [Pg 12] day the principle of identity dominates scientific thought; but there are vast systems of representations which have played a considerable rôle in the history of ideas where it has frequently been set aside: these are the mythologies, from the grossest up to the most reasonable.[13] There, we are continually coming upon beings which have the most contradictory attributes simultaneously, who are at the same time one and many, material and spiritual, who can divide themselves up indefinitely without losing anything of their constitution; in mythology it is an axiom that the part is worth the whole. These variations through which the rules which seem to govern our present logic have passed prove that, far from being engraven through all eternity upon the mental constitution of men, they depend, at least in part, upon factors that are historical and consequently social. We do not know exactly what they are, but we may presume that they exist.[14] This hypothesis once admitted, the problem of knowledge is posed in new terms. Up to the present there have been only two doctrines in the field. For some, the categories cannot be derived from experience: they are logically prior to it and condition it. They are represented as so many simple and irreducible data, imminent in the human mind by virtue of its inborn constitution. For this reason they are said to be a priori. Others, however, hold that they are constructed and made up of pieces and bits, and that the individual is the artisan of this construction.[15] But each solution raises grave difficulties. Is the empirical thesis the one adopted? Then it is necessary to deprive the categories of all their characteristic properties. As a matter of fact they are distinguished from all other knowledge by their universality and necessity. They are the most general concepts which exist, because they are applicable to all that is real, and since they are not attached to any particular object they are independent of every particular subject; they constitute the common field where all minds meet. Further, they must meet there, for reason, which is nothing more than all the fundamental categories taken together, is invested with an authority which we could not set aside if we would. When we attempt to revolt against it, and to free ourselves from some of these essential ideas, we meet with great resistances. They do not merely depend upon us, but they impose themselves upon us. Now empirical data present characteristics which are diametrically opposed to these. A sensation or an image always relies upon a determined object, or upon a collection of objects of the same sort, and expresses the momentary condition of a particular consciousness; it is essentially individual and subjective. We therefore have considerable liberty in dealing with the representations of such an origin. It is true that when our sensations are actual, they impose themselves upon us in fact. But by right we are free to conceive them otherwise than they really are, or to represent them to ourselves as occurring in a different order from that where they are really produced. In regard to them nothing is forced upon us except as con...