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

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THE
ELEMENTARY FORMS OF
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE

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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 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