Émile Durkheim argues that religion originates in society and that its elementary forms reveal the categories of human thought. This deck covers his definitions of beliefs and rites, his account of imitative, commemorative, and mourning rites, and his claims about causality and the categories.
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Chapter 1 · Question
Why does Durkheim seek the elementary forms of religious life in primitive religions?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
The author argues that the simplest religion known can be analyzed to determine the elementary forms of the religious life. He holds that these forms are more easily found and explained in primitive religions, which is the principal subject of the book. A secondary aim is to study the genesis of the fundamental notions of thought, the categories, whose origin he believes to be religious and therefore social.
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Section 13 cards
Why does Durkheim seek the elementary forms of religious life in primitive religions?
The author argues that the simplest religion known can be analyzed to determine the elementary forms of the religious life. He holds that these forms are more easily found and explained in primitive religions, which is the principal subject of the book. A secondary aim is to study the genesis of the fundamental notions of thought, the categories, whose origin he believes to be religious and therefore social.
Chapter 1
What two criticisms does Durkheim make of defining religion by the supernatural and mysterious?
Durkheim examines the usual definition of religion by the supernatural and mysterious and rejects it on the ground that the notion of mystery is not primitive. He also criticizes defining religion in connection with the idea of God or a spiritual being, since there are religions without gods and rites in deistic religions that imply no idea of divinity.
Chapter 1
How does Durkheim positively define beliefs, rites, and religion?
Durkheim distinguishes beliefs from rites and defines beliefs by their first characteristic: the division of things into sacred and profane. Rites are then defined in relation to beliefs. Religion is defined by this sacred/profane division plus a further characteristic distinguishing it from magic, namely the idea of the Church, a community sharing the beliefs and practices.
Chapter 1
Section 24 cards
What principle do imitative rites rest upon, according to Durkheim?
The imitative rites rest on the principle that like produces like. Durkheim examines the anthropological school's explanation of this, asks why the animal or plant is imitated, and why a physical efficacy is attributed to these gestures. He argues that faith underlies them and that the principles of magic are born in religion.
Chapter 2
How does Durkheim connect the principle of causality to social conditions?
Durkheim treats the like-produces-like principle as one of the first statements of the principle of causality. He argues that the idea of impersonal force or power is of social origin, and that the necessity for the conception of causality is explained by the authority inherent in social imperatives.
Chapter 2
What does Durkheim argue about representative or commemorative rites?
Durkheim holds that representative rites with physical efficacy act wholly morally, and that those without physical efficacy confirm the preceding results. He stresses the element of recreation in religion, its importance and reason for existence, and the idea of a feast. He also notes the ambiguity of function among ceremonies, which substitute for each other.
Chapter 2
How does Durkheim explain positive rites of mourning?
Durkheim says mourning rites are not a manifestation of private sentiments, nor can the malice attributed to souls of the dead account for them. They correspond to the state of mind of the group, and the group's state ends by mourning. He also notes the two forms of the sacred, pure and impure, and their ambiguity.
Chapter 2
Section 34 cards
Why does Durkheim prefer studying primitive religions over complex historical ones?
The author argues that in lower societies, slight individuality, small groups, and homogeneous circumstances minimize variation, so beliefs and rites are uniform and simple. Complex religions like Egypt or India mix cults, superstitions, and dogmas across priests, monks, and laymen, making the essential foundation hard to discern. Primitive religions show indispensable elements nakedly, without luxury hiding the principal elements.
Chapter 3
What does Durkheim mean by the 'origin' of religion, and does he seek a first beginning?
The author argues there was no given moment when religion began, so seeking a literal first beginning is unscientific and should be discarded; such speculations are subjective constructions subject to no control. Instead, his problem is discerning the ever-present causes on which essential forms of religious thought and practice depend, studied where societies are least complicated.
Chapter 3
How does Durkheim use the analogy of a physician studying hallucinations?
The author argues a physician must know an hallucination's original point of departure, which is easier to observe near its beginnings because later interpretations push the original state into the background. Likewise, as religious thought progresses, causes remain active but are perceived only through mythologies and theologies that transform them, widening the gap between apparent and effective cause.
Chapter 3
What examples does Durkheim give of ethnology overturning established sociological assumptions?
The author cites Bachofen's discovery upsetting the belief that paternal authority was the family's keystone, and shows that since we know the primitive clan, kinship relations cannot be explained by consanguinity, contrary to Bachofen, MacLennan, and Morgan. He also notes the religion he will study is largely foreign to the idea of divinity, yet aids understanding of modern religious forces.
Chapter 3
Section 41 cards
What two doctrines about the categories does Durkheim reject, and why?
He identifies the a priori view, which holds categories are logically prior to experience and inherent in the mind, and the empirical view, which holds individuals construct them from experience. He argues empiricism strips the categories of their universality and necessity, reducing reason to illusion and resulting in irrationalism, while the a priori view cannot explain their social variation across times and societies.
Chapter 4
Section 64 cards
Why does Durkheim say the idea of the supernatural is not primitive?
The author argues the idea of the supernatural presupposes its opposite: a fixed natural order governed by necessary laws. That notion of universal determinism is a recent conquest of the positive sciences. Before it existed, people saw events as the work of contingent wills, so marvelous occurrences seemed natural rather than mysterious.
Chapter 6
How does Durkheim's renovated theory of knowledge differ from empiricism?
The author argues the categories are not simple notions easily assembled from personal observation, as empiricists treat them. Instead they are priceless instruments of thought forged laboriously by human groups over centuries, accumulating intellectual capital. Understanding them therefore requires observing history, not merely interrogating one's own consciousness.
Chapter 6
Why does Durkheim criticize Professor Frazer in Chapter 1?
Durkheim says Frazer failed to take the precaution of first defining religion, and so could not recognize the profoundly religious character of the beliefs and rites Durkheim studies, where he locates the initial germ of humanity's religious life. Durkheim calls definition a prejudicial question to be treated before all others.
Chapter 6
What preliminary step does Durkheim require before defining religion?
He insists the mind must first be freed of every preconceived idea. People form notions of religion from habit and circumstance long before the science of religions begins, and these unmethodical ideas deserve no credit. The definition must come from reality itself, comparing all known religions, primitive and refined, excluding none.
Chapter 6
Section 73 cards
How does Durkheim critique Jevons's theory of the supernatural?
Jevons holds that unexpected events like eclipses or failed rains were attributed to extra-natural causes, birthing the supernatural and giving religion its subject. Durkheim objects that contingency is taught by experience just as much as uniformity, so there is no reason to assign them to different forces. To reach the supernatural, events must be conceived as impossible against a necessary order, which only positive science later constructed.
Chapter 7
Why does Durkheim say Buddhism counts as a religion without gods?
Durkheim notes that in Buddhism the essential doctrine lies in the four noble truths: suffering accompanies perpetual change, desire causes suffering, suppressing desire suppresses sorrow, and uprightness, meditation, and wisdom lead to Nirvana. None of these principles involves a divinity. The Buddhist relies on himself and meditates rather than praying, and though he does not deny Indra, Agni, or Varuna, he believes he owes them nothing.
Chapter 7
What criterion does Tylor's minimum definition of religion imply?
Tylor proposes belief in Spiritual Beings as the minimum definition of religion, meaning conscious subjects with powers superior to common men, including souls of the dead, geniuses, demons, and proper divinities. Since these beings are conscious, humans act on them only through psychological processes: invocations, prayers, offerings, and sacrifices. This yields a simple criterion distinguishing religious from non-religious: religion exists only where there are prayers, sacrifices, and propitiatory rites.
Chapter 7
Section 84 cards
According to the chapter, what is the essential core of Buddhism, and why is Buddha not central to it?
The author argues Buddhism consists primarily in the idea of salvation, which requires only knowing and practising the good doctrine. Once Buddha revealed this doctrine, his work was accomplished; the four holy truths could be practised even if his memory were obliterated. This contrasts with Christianity, which is inconceivable without the ever-present idea of Christ and his ever-practised cult.
Chapter 8
How does the chapter describe Vedic sacrifice, and what does this show about rites?
The author cites Bergaigne that sacrifice exercises direct influence on celestial phenomena, is all-powerful of itself without divine influence, and even made the waters of heaven fall in spite of the gods. Sacrifice is said to be the origin of things par excellence, including gods. This shows rites can act automatically, by their own virtue, with no god intervening between the practitioner and the result.
Chapter 8
What examples of rites independent of gods does the chapter give from Hebrew and Jewish practice?
The chapter cites biblical interdictions: a woman living isolated during a determined period each month, similar isolation during lying-in at childbirth, and prohibitions on hitching an ass and a horse together or wearing a garment mixing hemp with flax. The author notes Jahveh is wholly absent from these forbidden relations and could not be interested in them. Dietetic regulations are likewise cited.
Chapter 8
What does the chapter say about theism and mythology in Northern versus Southern Buddhism?
The chapter states the divinization of Buddha is peculiar to Northern Buddhism; Southern Buddhists and less advanced Northern Buddhists speak of their founder as if he were a man. Scholars cited hold that theism and complicated mythology are only derived, deviated forms of Buddhism, and that Buddha was at first regarded only as 'the wisest of men.'
Chapter 8
Section 94 cards
What single characteristic do all known religious beliefs share, according to Durkheim?
Durkheim argues that all known religious beliefs, simple or complex, presuppose a classification of all things, real and ideal, into two opposed classes generally called profane and sacred. This division of the world into two domains is the distinctive trait of religious thought; beliefs, myths, dogmas and legends express the nature of sacred things, their powers, and their relations with each other and with profane things.
Chapter 9
Why does Durkheim reject hierarchy as the criterion for distinguishing sacred from profane?
Durkheim argues a hierarchic distinction is too general and imprecise. Slaves are inferior to masters, subjects to kings, the miser to his gold, yet nothing religious is involved. He also notes sacred things exist at every degree: amulets inspire only ordinary respect, and worshippers may physically constrain their gods, beating a fetish or throwing stones into a sacred spring. Dependence between gods and worshippers is reciprocal.
Chapter 9
What does Durkheim say initiation rites reveal about the sacred-profane relation?
Durkheim argues that passage between the two worlds, when it occurs, implies a veritable metamorphosis, not a gradual development. In initiation rites the young man is said to die and be reborn under a new form; the ceremonies are taken literally, not merely symbolically. This, he argues, proves a break of continuity between the profane being he was and the religious being he becomes.
Chapter 9
What visible sign outwardly marks the opposition between sacred and profane?
Durkheim argues the opposition shows itself in interdiction: the sacred thing is par excellence that which the profane should not touch and cannot touch with impunity. Contact is not absolutely impossible, since the sacred would then be good for nothing, but establishing relations is delicate, demanding precautions and initiation, and the profane cannot approach without losing its specific characteristics and becoming sacred to some degree.
Chapter 9
Section 104 cards
How does Durkheim define a religion in this chapter?
A religion is the totality of beliefs and rites relating to sacred things that stand in relations of co-ordination or subordination so as to form a system with a certain unity, not comprised within any other system of the same sort. Durkheim stresses that a religion is not contained in one sole idea but is a whole of distinct, relatively individualized parts, each sacred thing or homogeneous group forming a centre of organization with its own cult.
Chapter 10
What distinguishes magic from religion for Durkheim?
Durkheim argues the essential difference is that religion is inseparable from the idea of a Church, while there is no Church of magic. Religious beliefs are common to a determined group and unite its members into a moral community, laymen as well as priests. Magic has a clientele rather than a Church: the magician's relations with clients are accidental and transient, like a sick man with his physician, and magicians' own societies exclude laymen.
Chapter 10
Why does Durkheim say some religious phenomena belong to no special religion?
Because they have not been, or are no longer, part of any religious system. If one cult of a religious system is maintained while the group it belonged to disappears, it survives only in a disintegrated condition. Durkheim gives the example of many agrarian cults that have survived as folk-lore; in some cases it is not even a cult but a simple ceremony or particular rite that persists this way.
Chapter 10
How does Durkheim's definition of sacred things reshape the problem of religion's origin?
If sacred beings were distinguished only by greater intensity of power, one could simply ask which exceptionally energetic forces struck the imagination enough to inspire religious sentiment. But Durkheim argues sacred things differ in nature and essence from profane things. The problem then becomes more complex: one must first ask what led men to see the world as two heterogeneous and incompatible worlds, though sensible experience seems unable to suggest so radical a duality.
Chapter 10
Section 114 cards
How does Durkheim define religion in this chapter?
Durkheim defines religion as "a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." He argues the Church element is as essential as the sacred, making religion an eminently collective thing.
Chapter 11
How does Durkheim answer the objection that private religions are autonomous?
The author argues individual cults are not distinct autonomous systems but aspects of the common religion of the Church. The Christian's patron saint comes from the Church's official list, with canonical rules governing the private cult; the Ojibway manitou, Melanesian tamaniu and Roman genius rest on shared ideas like the soul. Among some peoples, rites for a protecting genius are mixed with public initiation rites.
Chapter 11
What two contrary theories explain the origins of religious thought?
Durkheim describes naturism, which addresses cosmic forces and earthly objects like plants, animals and rocks, and animism, which addresses spiritual beings—spirits, souls, geniuses, demons and divinities—who are conscious agents not ordinarily visible to human eyes. Some hold animism primitive and naturism derived; others reverse this. Durkheim says these are the only theories so far offered to explain religious origins rationally.
Chapter 11
How does the animist theory say the idea of the soul arose?
According to the theory Durkheim presents, the soul idea came from the savage's failure to distinguish waking representations from dreams. Dreaming he visited a distant country, he believes he really went, so he must have a double that left his body lying asleep. This double is the soul: body-like but more active, malleable and ethereal, passing out by the mouth and nose.
Chapter 11
Section 124 cards
According to Durkheim, how does the soul become a spirit?
The author argues the soul becomes a spirit through death: for a rudimentary intelligence, death resembles a prolonged swoon or sleep, so it seems to be a separation of soul and body. Since the body is not reanimated, the separation is taken as final once funeral rites destroy the body, producing spirits detached from any organism and free in space.
Chapter 12
What did the first cult, rites, sacrifices and altars consist of?
Durkheim states that since death brought about the soul's apotheosis into a spirit, the first cult known to humanity was addressed to the dead, to ancestral souls. Thus the first rites were funeral rites, the first sacrifices were food offerings meant to satisfy the departed's needs, and the first altars were tombs.
Chapter 12
How does Tylor explain the extension of animism to nature?
Tylor held that the primitive, like an infant, cannot distinguish animate from inanimate, so he thinks everything on the model of human nature. Once he conceives man as a body animated by a spirit, he attributes similar souls to inert bodies. Souls of men affect human life; souls of things cause physical phenomena, completing ancestor-cult with a religion of nature.
Chapter 12
What is Spencer's objection to Tylor's explanation?
Spencer objects that the hypothesis is contradicted by facts: the ability to distinguish animate from inanimate develops up the animal scale, and superior animals do not confuse self-moving objects with mechanically moved ones. Since primitive men could not be less intelligent than preceding animals, the shift from ancestor-cult to nature-cult must have another cause, which Spencer locates in literal interpretation of metaphorical names.
Chapter 12
Section 134 cards
What service does Durkheim credit animist theorists like Tylor with performing?
The author grants that animist theorists did important service by submitting the idea of the soul to historical analysis, rather than treating it as a simple, immediate object of consciousness. They correctly viewed the soul as a complex whole, a product of history and mythology, essentially religious in nature, origin and functions. Philosophers received the idea from religion, and its ancient form cannot be understood without the mythical elements that shaped it.
Chapter 13
Why does Durkheim doubt the dream-double hypothesis explains the primitive idea of the soul?
The author argues the notion is more complex than the doctrine supposes: for the primitive, the soul is not radically separate from the body but interpenetrates it, with organs serving as its seat and material manifestation. Even granting the double, simpler explanations exist, and dreams of past events or of companions with contradictory accounts would not naturally produce the double. He also questions why primitives would bother explaining dreams at all.
Chapter 13
What examples show primitives distinguish ordinary dreams from significant ones?
Codrington states the Melanesians attribute only dreams that strike their imagination forcibly to soul-wanderings, not all dreams indiscriminately. The Dieri of Australia sharply distinguish ordinary dreams, seen as simple fantasy, from nocturnal visions of deceased friends or relatives, attributed to an evil spirit. Howitt's examples likewise involve the sleeper transported to the land of the dead or conversing with a dead companion.
Chapter 13
What is Durkheim's alternative account of how the soul idea relates to dreams?
The author argues the dream may not have furnished the materials from which the idea of the double or soul was first constructed; instead the idea might have been applied afterwards to dreams, ecstasy and possession. Ideas are often used retrospectively to co-ordinate or illuminate facts unrelated to their origin, as with proving God and immortality from morality. The significant dreams presuppose spirits, souls and a land of the dead, so a prior religious system.
Chapter 13
Section 144 cards
Why does Durkheim say death alone cannot make a soul sacred?
Durkheim argues death only frees the double from the body and gives it greater mobility; it adds nothing essential. Since the soul was profane during life, a mere change of degree cannot move it into the sacred category, which is separated from the profane by an abyss. He also notes that in some societies souls are thought to weaken with the body, making survival hard to explain.
Chapter 14
What Melanesian evidence does Durkheim use against death having deifying power?
The Melanesians believe souls leave the body at death and become tindalo, and they do pray to and sacrifice to them. But only tindalo from men credited with mana during life receive cult; ordinary souls are, in Codrington's words, 'nobodies alike before and after death.' Durkheim concludes death can reinforce an existing sacred character but cannot create one.
Chapter 14
Why does Durkheim deny that Australians practice an ancestor cult?
Durkheim argues a cult requires periodic rites, festivals and ceremonies reaffirming the bond with sacred beings. Australians perform funeral and mourning rites, but once the bones are dry and mourning ends, survivors owe nothing more; kept bones become anonymous charms used magically. Where fabulous ancestors are celebrated, they were held to have superhuman powers while alive, not to have been deified by death.
Chapter 14
What does Durkheim say about the social distribution of ancestor cults?
Durkheim argues that if ancestor worship were the original religion, it should dominate the simplest societies. Instead, the ancestral cult appears mainly in advanced societies like China, Egypt and the Greek and Latin cities, and is completely lacking in Australian societies, which he treats as the lowest and simplest form of social organization known. He therefore rejects animism's claim to be the primitive type of religion.
Chapter 14
Section 153 cards
Why does Durkheim say the cult of the dead cannot be the origin of Australian religion?
The author argues that Australians are concerned with their dead only at death and shortly after, yet they have a complex, permanent cult of other sacred beings involving many ceremonies that occupy weeks or months each year. The contrast is so great that he suggests the few mortuary rites may derive from the permanent cult, not the reverse.
Chapter 15
How does Durkheim criticize Spencer's argument from animal instinct?
Spencer held that since animals distinguish living from dead bodies, early humans must have had the same faculty. Durkheim replies that this assumes all animal faculties passed integrally into humans, which is false: human nature is a recasting of animal nature involving losses as well as gains, since humans must also adapt to a social environment.
Chapter 15
Why does Durkheim reject children's behavior as evidence for primitive animism?
When a child scolds an object that hurt him, Durkheim says this is not because he thinks it conscious but because his anger, once aroused by pain, must discharge somewhere. Once calm, the child distinguishes a chair from a person. Similarly, treating toys as alive expresses his intense need to play, and he would be surprised if a toy bit him.
Chapter 15
Section 164 cards
What principle does Durkheim say the science of religions must adopt about religion's content?
Durkheim argues it should be a principle of the science of religions that religion expresses nothing which does not exist in nature, since there are sciences only of natural phenomena. The task is to learn from what part of nature these realities come and what made men represent them in this singular religious form. He insists one must first admit these are real things being represented.
Chapter 16
How does Durkheim argue against the eighteenth-century view that religion was a priestly invention?
Durkheim notes that if priests invented religion to deceive the people, its persistence could be explained by the sacerdotal class's interest in deceiving them. But if the people themselves were the artisans of these erroneous systems while also being their dupes, he asks how this extraordinary dupery could have perpetuated itself throughout history. He finds such durability inexplicable on that view.
Chapter 16
What principle does Max Müller make the axiom of his theory of religion?
Max Müller begins with the contrary principle to animism: religion reposes upon an experience from which it draws all its authority. He says religion, to be a legitimate element of consciousness, must begin with sensuous experience, applying the adage that nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses. Durkheim says this seems to escape the objection raised against animism.
Chapter 16
What evidence does Max Müller draw from Vedic and Indo-European god-names?
Müller notes god-names are common words, still used or formerly common, designating principal natural phenomena. Agni originally meant only material fire, as Latin ignis and Lithuanian ugnis show; Sanskrit Dyaus, Greek Zeus, Latin Jovis and High German Zio designate one divinity recognized before the Indo-European separation, and Dyaus means the bright sky. Thus forms and forces of nature were first deified.
Chapter 16
Section 174 cards
According to Max Müller, what transformed natural forces into personal gods?
Max Müller rejects the animist solution that humans naturally confuse animate and inanimate. According to him, it is language that brought about this metamorphosis: language is not merely the external covering of thought but its internal framework, aiding in making it. Since language's laws differ from thought's, it deforms thought, and this deformation created the special characteristic of religious thought.
Chapter 17
What two characteristics does Max Müller attribute to Indo-European roots?
First, the roots are general: they express types of extreme generality, not particular things or individuals, representing fundamental categories of the intellect. Second, the types correspond to actions, not objects—manners of acting like striking, pushing, walking. Thus men generalized and named their principal ways of acting before generalizing and naming natural phenomena.
Chapter 17
How does language, applied to nature, produce personal agents according to this theory?
Roots, being general and supple, were extended to natural objects. Because they originated in human action, natural forces could be designated only through their manifestations nearest to human acts: a thunderbolt as something that tears the soil, the wind as something that sighs. Since phenomena were compared to human acts, the something was conceived as a personal agent. The metaphor was taken literally, an error inevitable before science existed.
Chapter 17
What objection does Durkheim raise against naturism's practical value?
Durkheim argues that if religion were born from reflections on nature, its survival is unintelligible. Religion's conception of the universe is too mutilated to yield useful practices: things become living, thinking beings, and praying, feasting, sacrificing, or fasting rarely succeeds. Failures would vastly outnumber successes, quickly showing people they followed a false route, so religion could not have survived.
Chapter 17
Section 184 cards
Why does Durkheim say persistent errors can survive in history?
The author argues errors persist only when they are practically true: even without a theoretically exact idea of things, they express well enough how things affect us for good or bad, so the actions they determine are generally the proper ones. An error leading only to mistaken and useless practices, he says, has no chance of living.
Chapter 18
How does Durkheim argue naturism reduces religion to hallucination?
The author argues naturism starts from real sensations provoked by natural phenomena but, through the action of language, transforms them into extravagant conceptions. Religious thought thus covers reality with a veil of fabulous mythological beliefs, so the believer, like a delirious man, lives among beings with only verbal existence. He notes Max Müller himself called myths a disease of language and thought.
Chapter 18
Why does Durkheim reject Max Müller's split between mythology and religion?
The author argues the distinction is arbitrary: myth is an essential element of religious life. Rites are addressed to named personalities with characters and histories, and the cult depends on the character the myth determines; the rite is often the myth put in action, as Christian communion is inseparable from the Last Supper. Remove myth and you must remove rite too.
Chapter 18
Why does Durkheim doubt nature's marvels could originate the sacred?
The author argues nature is characterized by regularity approaching monotony: sunrises, lunar cycles, rivers and seasons repeat. Momentary variations like eclipses or floods yield only momentary impressions, not stable systems of beliefs and practices. He argues representing early humans as filled with admiration projects recent sentiments backward, and admiration alone does not make an object sacred.
Chapter 18
Section 194 cards
Why does Durkheim reject naturism as the origin of the sacred?
The author argues that nature is uniform everywhere, so its immensity or force cannot create a radical duality between sacred and profane. A profane world may be unlimited but remains profane; sacred forces differ in quality, not merely intensity. If religion arose from assigning causes to physical phenomena, those forces would be no more sacred than the scientist's today, meaning no sacred beings and no religion.
Chapter 19
Why couldn't feelings of being overwhelmed by nature produce religion in primitive people?
The author argues the primitive does not feel overwhelmed at all, since science has not yet taught him modesty. He believes he can command the elements, release winds, compel rain, or stop the sun by a gesture. Religion itself reinforces this confidence, since rites are partly means to impose his will on the world. Religions thus stem from the contrary sentiment, reassuring men in their struggle with things.
Chapter 19
What evidence does Durkheim offer against cosmic powers being the first sacred objects?
The author argues that if imposing forms or forces made things sacred, the sun, moon, sky, mountains, sea, and winds should have been divinized first, since none appeal more to the senses and imagination. But they were divinized only slowly. The first objects of cult were humble vegetables and animals—ducks, rabbits, kangaroos, lizards, worms, frogs—with which men could claim equality. Their objective qualities did not inspire the religious sentiment.
Chapter 19
What positive conclusion does Durkheim draw from criticizing animism and naturism?
The author argues that since neither man nor nature has a sacred character inherently, the sacred must come from another source. Beyond the human individual and the physical world, there must be some other reality giving religion its objective value. Therefore, beyond animistic and naturistic cults, there should be a more fundamental and primitive cult, of which these are derived forms. That cult, he says, is totemism.
Chapter 19
Section 204 cards
Why does Durkheim reject Frazer's broad comparative approach to totemism?
The author argues social facts vary with the social system they belong to and cannot be understood when detached from it. Two facts from different societies cannot be profitably compared merely because they resemble each other; the societies themselves must be varieties of the same species. He claims Frazer commits errors by assimilating wild-animal-worship rites to totemic practices despite the great distance between their social systems.
Chapter 20
Why does Durkheim choose Australian societies as his principal field of study?
He argues Australia is the most favourable field because its societies are perfectly homogeneous, belonging to one common type, with social organization designated by identical or equivalent names across many tribes. Their totemism is the best documented, and they are the most primitive and simple societies known, with rudimentary civilization and clan-based organization, giving the best chance to study the most primitive religion.
Chapter 20
What did Spencer and Gillen contribute to the study of totemism?
These two observers discovered in the interior of Australia a considerable number of tribes whose basis and unity was founded in totemic beliefs, publishing The Native Tribes of Central Australia and The Northern Tribes of Central Australia. Their work repaired the deficiency that no totemic religion in complete action had yet been observed, and their systematic presentation influenced later studies.
Chapter 20
How does Strehlow's work relate to Spencer and Gillen's findings?
Strehlow, a German missionary who spent years in the same Central Australian societies, published observations on the Aranda and Loritja (the Arunta and Luritcha of Spencer and Gillen). Having mastered the language, he supplied numerous totemic myths and religious songs, mostly in the original text. Despite differences of detail whose importance Durkheim says was greatly exaggerated, Strehlow confirms Spencer and Gillen in all essentials.
Chapter 20
Section 214 cards
Why does Durkheim include North American tribes if Australia is his main focus?
Durkheim argues the American tribes are a more advanced variety of the same clan-based type, not a different type, so comparison is legitimate. Because their civilization is more developed, certain features of the shared social organization are more visible and stable there, and studying totemism in its later stages can clarify aspects of Australian totemism. He insists American facts are used only supplementarily.
Chapter 21
What two traits does Durkheim say characterize the Australian clan?
First, members consider themselves united by a bond of kinship, but this comes from sharing the same name rather than definite blood connections; they recognize duties like aid, vengeance, mourning, and exogamy. Second, the clan's name is also the name of a determined species of material things, its totem, with which members believe they have particularly close, kinship-like relations.
Chapter 21
How does the Australian clan differ from the Roman gens and Greek genos?
Durkheim says the clan does not differ from the Roman gens or Greek genos by its name-based kinship, since the gens was also united by a shared nomen gentilicium, and in one sense the gens is a clan. The Australian clan is distinguished because its name is also the name of a determined species of material things, the totem, with which it believes it has very particular relations.
Chapter 21
What kinds of things serve as totems, according to Howitt's collection?
Most totems belong to the animal or vegetable kingdom, especially animals. Of over 500 totemic names Howitt collected in south-eastern Australia, scarcely forty are not plants or animals; the rest include clouds, rain, hail, frost, moon, sun, wind, seasons, stars, thunder, fire, smoke, water, and sea. Celestial bodies and great cosmic phenomena are rare, though rain is a frequent exception.
Chapter 21
Section 224 cards
What three systems govern how a child acquires a totem in Australian tribes?
The chapter identifies three systems: maternal descent (e.g., Dieri, Urabunna, Kamilaroi), where the child takes the mother's totem and the totemic group lacks a territorial base; paternal descent (e.g., Warramunga, Quanji), where locality largely shares one totem; and the Arunta/Loritja system, where the totem is that of a mythical ancestor who fecundated the mother at conception, making it depend on fortuitous circumstances.
Chapter 22
Why does the author argue abnormal totems like geographical features are relatively recent?
The author argues that geographical features became totems because a mythical ancestor was supposed to have stopped or acted there. But these ancestors are represented in myths as belonging to clans with regular animal or vegetable totems. Therefore, totemic names commemorating these heroes cannot be primitive; they belong to an already derived and deviated form of totemism. He suggests meteorological totems may share this origin.
Chapter 22
What evidence leads the author to regard the phratry as an ancient dismembered clan?
In nearly all cases where phratry names have known meanings, the name is an animal, such as white cockatoo and black cockatoo (Gournditch), eagle-hawk and crow (Wurunjerri, Ngarigo), suggesting a totem. The author argues the phratry is an ancient clan that was dismembered, with actual clans as its product and their solidarity a souvenir of primitive unity. Phratries are everywhere in regression, their names often forgotten or archaic.
Chapter 22
How do matrimonial classes alternate between generations within a phratry?
Each generation in a phratry belongs to different clans from the immediately preceding one. When there are two classes per phratry, they alternate every generation: children are in the class their parents are not, while grandchildren return to the grandparents' class. Among the Kamilaroi, the Kupathin phratry has classes Ippai and Kumbo; with uterine descent, a mother of Ippai has a Kumbo child, whose daughters' children are Ippai again.
Chapter 22
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What defines a matrimonial class in the Australian system?
Matrimonial classes are groups within a phratry that alternate every generation and govern marriage: members of one class may in principle marry into only one class of the other phratry, such as Ippai marrying Kubbi and Murri marrying Kumbo. Durkheim says the group is named a matrimonial class precisely because this organization profoundly affects matrimonial relations.
Chapter 23
Why does Durkheim deny that dietetic restrictions prove matrimonial classes have totems?
Some Queensland matrimonial classes must abstain from certain animals, but Durkheim argues dietetic restrictions are not characteristic marks of totemism: the totem is first a name and then an emblem, and these classes bear no animal or plant name and have no emblem. He allows the restrictions may derive indirectly from vanished clans' totems, but then only as an enfeebled, denatured form.
Chapter 23
How do Australian and North American totemic organizations differ, and why?
Durkheim says Australian clans are numerous, almost unlimited, and never definitively listed because dismemberment continues, while American clans are fewer, fixed in number, and known exactly. He attributes this to the superiority of American social economy: attachment to the soil and a keen sense of unity. He argues Australia's fluid state reflects degeneration from time and white contact, not a normal condition.
Chapter 23
How does Durkheim use the Tlinkit and Haida to argue American phratries preserve totemism?
Durkheim notes the Tlinkit are divided into Crow and Wolf phratries and the Haida into Eagle and Crow, each subdivided into clans. Unlike Australia's anonymous or forgotten phratry names, these names are totems in the full sense, with essential attributes, and the division corresponds to living tribal customs, with a marked moral distance between phratries. Thus America allows direct study of phratry totems.
Chapter 23
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How do clan members physically incorporate their totem into their persons?
The chapter states that totemic images appear not only on houses, canoes, arms, utensils and tombs but also on the bodies of men. Members of each clan seek to give themselves the external aspect of their totem: wearing animal garments at Tlinkit festivals, feathers for bird totems, clan-specific hairstyles among the Iowa and Omaha, and tattooed or scarified designs. The author argues this world of bodily representations is by far the more important one.
Chapter 24
What are churinga and what religious status do they hold?
Churinga (or tjurunga) are pieces of wood or polished stone, generally oval or oblong, kept by each totemic group in Central Australia. Each bears a design representing the group's totem. Some are pierced and whirled as bull-roarers. Every churinga is counted among eminently sacred things; the word itself also means sacred, and profane persons—women and uninitiated young men—may not touch or even see them.
Chapter 24
What is the ertnatulunga and what powers does it have?
The ertnatulunga is the hidden cave or cavern where the Arunta piously store their churinga, its entrance closed with cleverly placed stones. The sacred character of the churinga radiates to the locality: women and the uninitiated cannot approach it, and young men gain access only after initiation is complete. It functions as a place of asylum—a pursued man who reaches it is saved, a wounded animal taking refuge must be respected, and quarrels are forbidden there.
Chapter 24
What marvellous properties does the chapter attribute to churinga?
The chapter lists many: by contact they heal wounds, especially those from circumcision, and have power over sickness; they help make the beard grow; they ensure the normal reproduction of the totemic species; and they give men force, courage and perseverance while depressing and weakening enemies. The belief is so firm that a combatant who sees his opponent has brought churinga loses confidence and his defeat is certain. Their powers are communicated to the faithful by anointings and by scattering down.
Chapter 24
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According to Durkheim, what alone gives the churinga its sacred character?
Durkheim argues that the churinga are ordinary objects of wood and stone, distinguished from profane things only by the totemic mark drawn or engraved on them. He rejects the explanations of Spencer and Gillen (an ancestor's soul residing in it) and Strehlow (the image or body of the ancestor), noting that some churinga are made by old men before everyone, and some tribes never associate the churinga with a spirit.
Chapter 25
How are the nurtunja and waninga constructed, and how long do they last?
The nurtunja is a vertical support—a lance, bundled lances, or pole—ringed with grass, down in circles or parallel lines, topped with eagle-hawk plumes. The waninga, found among southern Arunta, Urabunna and Loritja, is a tall stick or lance with one or two cross-pieces, crossed by hair or fur cords forming a lozenge, sometimes down-covered, like a flag. Both last only for the ceremony and are then stripped and scattered.
Chapter 25
What role does the nurtunja play in Arunta initiation?
During initiation the novice is led to the foot of a nurtunja erected for the occasion and told, "There is the nurtunja of your father; many young men have already been made by it." He must kiss it, entering into relations with the religious principle residing there—a veritable communion meant to give him the force to endure the terrible operation of sub-incision.
Chapter 25
What do Australian sacred totemic designs look like, and how is their meaning fixed?
Unlike North American images that try to reproduce the totemic animal, Australian sacred representations are essentially geometrical: straight or curved lines, semicircles for men and women, whole circles or spirals for animals, lines of points for tracks. The connection to the thing represented is remote and conventional; only clan members can interpret them, the same design may mean different things to different totems, and meaning is fixed by convention.
Chapter 25
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According to Durkheim, what normally happens to those who eat their totemic plant or animal?
Normally the totemic plant or animal may not be used for everyday consumption. Whoever oversteps this rule exposes himself to grave dangers; the group does not always intervene to punish artificially, since the sacrilege is believed to produce death automatically. A redoubtable principle is held to reside in the totemic being, which cannot enter the profane organism without disorganizing or destroying it. Only the old men are free from this prohibition in certain tribes.
Chapter 26
How does Durkheim answer Spencer and Gillen's claim that totemic prohibitions are recent?
Spencer and Gillen argue there was first complete liberty of consumption, citing solemn repasts and myths of ancestors eating their totems. Durkheim replies that food eaten at a mystical repast is essentially sacred and so forbidden to the profane; myths interpret present rites rather than commemorate past events; and ancestral heroes, being nearly gods, could eat sacred food because they were sacred themselves.
Chapter 26
What does Durkheim conclude about the relative sacredness of totemic images versus totemic beings?
Durkheim argues the images of totemic beings are more sacred than the beings themselves. Interdictions protecting the emblem are more numerous, stricter, and more severely enforced: the churinga and nurtunja may never be handled by women or the uninitiated, while the totemic animal or plant may be seen and touched by everybody. The animal plays no active role in the cult; initiates communicate with the churinga.
Chapter 26
Why may a man not freely eat the totems of other clans in his own phratry?
Durkheim holds that the clans of a phratry are probably subdivisions of one original clan that was dismembered. There was a time when all these clans had the same totem; wherever the memory of this common origin is not effaced, each clan still feels united to the others and considers their totems not completely foreign. So a man may touch them only if given by a member of the other phratry.
Chapter 26
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Why does the primitive believe a clan member is also the totemic animal?
Because the name is not merely an outward sign but part of the being, even essential to it. Since the man bears the totem's name, identity of name implies identity of nature. A Kangaroo clan member calls himself a kangaroo and is therefore, in one sense, that animal. Each individual thus has a double nature: a man and an animal coexist within him.
Chapter 27
How do myths explain the duality of man and totemic animal?
Myths establish genealogical connections making the animal a relative of the man, explaining their common nature by common origin. Forms vary: the Narrinyeri imagined first men could transform into beasts; others place strange animals, mixed beings, or shapeless creatures at humanity's start, later carved into humans by blows of an axe or beak. American legends use metamorphosis or gradual evolution instead.
Chapter 27
Why are blood and hair treated as sacred in totemism?
The author argues the human organism conceals a sacred principle surfacing especially in blood and hair. Human blood consecrates cult instruments like the nurtunja, is sprinkled on novices at initiation, and is forbidden to women; red ochre is sacred as kindred to blood. Hair belts wrap cult objects and serve as payment for loaned churinga, and cutting hair is a ritual act.
Chapter 27
Is totemism a form of animal worship?
The author argues no: a man's attitude toward his totemic animal is not that of believer to god, since he belongs to the sacred world himself. Their relations are those of equals; the animal may be called father or grandfather, but also friend or elder brother. Animals and men are made of the same flesh, and men's regard for the animal in no way resembles a cult.
Chapter 27
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What does the churinga of a Euro give a hunter, according to the chapter?
By rubbing his body with a Euro churinga, a man acquires a greater chance of catching euros. Durkheim treats this as proof that participating in the nature of a totemic being confers a sort of eminent right over that being, paralleling the clan's property-like claims over its totem.
Chapter 28
How does the Mount Gambier tribe's classification work?
It has two phratries, Kumite and Kroki, each subdivided into five clans, and everything in nature belongs to one of these ten clans. For example, the Crow clan holds rain, thunder, lightning, clouds, hail, and winter, while the Black cockatoo clan holds the stars and moon. The lists are admittedly incomplete.
Chapter 28
What does Durkheim argue the totemic classifications prove about the category of class?
The author argues these systematic classifications are the first in history and were modelled on social organization: phratries served as classes and clans as species. Because men were organized, they could organize things, and the unity of these first logical systems merely reproduces the unity of society, showing that even the notion of category may be a social product.
Chapter 28
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How does Durkheim distinguish the idea of class from a generic image?
Durkheim says the feeling of resemblance is one thing and the idea of class another. The class is a definite external framework with fixed outlines applicable to an undetermined number of things, actual or possible, with possibilities of extension beyond known objects. The generic image is only a vague, fluctuating residual representation from superimposed individual images. He notes an animal can form generic images while ignorant of thinking in classes and species.
Chapter 29
What does Durkheim say about the origin of hierarchy in classification?
The author argues classification is a hierarchic system with dominating and subordinate parts, and that hierarchy is exclusively a social affair. Only in society are there superiors, inferiors and equals. Neither physical nature nor mental associations could furnish this knowledge. He concludes that we have taken these ideas from society and projected them into our conceptions of the world, and that society furnished the outlines logical thought filled in.
Chapter 29
How does totemic classification bind people and things morally, not just logically?
Durkheim says things classed in a clan are believed really to be the totem, not merely labeled conventionally. Men regard clan things as relatives, friends, made of the same flesh, sharing a name and mystic sympathy. Examples: a Wakelbura burial scaffold must use wood of the deceased's phratry; a magician uses only his own phratry's things; hunters avoid arrows of the animal's phratry, believing the arrow would refuse to hit a kindred animal.
Chapter 29
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Why may members of a clan not freely eat animals classified under their totem?
Durkheim argues that because all things classified in a clan share the totem's sacred character, they too are sacred and may not be eaten freely. In the Mount Gambier tribe, men whose totem is a non-poisonous snake must also abstain from seals, eels and similar animals; if necessity forces them to eat such flesh, they must perform expiatory rites as if they had eaten the totem itself.
Chapter 30
What are sub-totems and how do they arise within clans?
Durkheim describes sub-totems as accessory or secondary totems. When smaller groups or associations form within a clan and seek to individualize themselves, they need a special totem, chosen from among the things classified under the principal totem. Thus one individual may hold two totems: a principal totem common to the clan and a sub-totem special to his sub-clan, analogous to the Roman nomen and cognomen.
Chapter 30
How does a sub-totem become a regular totem, according to Durkheim?
When a sub-clan emancipates itself completely and becomes an autonomous, independent clan, its sub-totem becomes a regular totem. Durkheim cites the Arunta, where Strehlow counted 442 totems rather than the sixty reported earlier by Spencer and Gillen, because original clans divided and subdivided repeatedly. Howitt described such cases among the Wotjobaluk as sub-totems which are totems in formation.
Chapter 30
How does Durkheim revise the traditional view of totemism as merely the religion of the clan?
Durkheim argues that totemic cults within a tribe are not independent, self-sufficing religions. Though each totem's cult is celebrated in its own clan, the cults mutually imply each other and form parts of a single religion. Members of one clan accept neighbouring clans' beliefs, may eat another's totem only after ritual formalities and permission, and representatives of different clans assist at rites, including initiation ceremonies.
Chapter 30
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What does Durkheim argue the totemic organization of a tribe requires?
The author argues that totemic organization must result from some sort of understanding among all tribe members. Since a single totem is normally not repeated within a tribe and the universe is divided among totems so no object belongs to two clans, such a methodical division could not occur without a tacit or planned agreement in which the whole tribe participated. Thus totemic beliefs are partially, but only partially, a tribal affair.
Chapter 31
How does Durkheim distinguish the individual totem from the clan totem?
The author argues the clan believes it descends from its totem, while an individual has no relation of descent with his personal totem: it is a friend, associate, and protector, not a relative. Also, clan members may let neighboring clans eat their totem animal under proper formalities, whereas an individual respects and protects his personal totem's species against strangers where their destinies are bound together.
Chapter 31
What bonds exist between a person and his individual totem animal?
The man is believed to participate in the animal's nature, gaining its qualities and faults; an eagle-named man sees the future, a bear-named man is apt to be wounded. The animal is his alter ego and double, and their destinies are often bound together, so if the animal dies the man's life is menaced. Hence the rule against killing or eating it is more formal and absolute than for the clan totem.
Chapter 31
What names have been given to the individual protector, and why does Durkheim prefer 'individual totemism'?
The protector is called nagual among Mexican Indians, manitou among Algonquins, okki among Hurons, snam and sulia among Salish, budjan among the Yuin, and yunbeai among the Euahlayi. Durkheim, following Frazer, prefers 'individual totemism' because the same principle applies to clan and individual, and primitives sometimes use one word for both; he rejects Tylor and Powell's separate terms since they deny the collective totem's sacred character.
Chapter 31
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How does the collective totem differ from the individual totem in acquisition?
The collective totem is part of each person's civil status, generally hereditary and fixed at birth regardless of personal wish—whether from mother, father, or locality of conception. The individual totem, by contrast, is acquired through a deliberate act requiring a series of ritual operations, such as the North American puberty withdrawal, fasting, and self-mortification that produce visions.
Chapter 32
What ritual method do North American Indians use to acquire a personal totem?
Around puberty the young man withdraws to a distant place, fasting, mortifying himself, and inflicting mutilations for days to years. He howls, lies motionless, dances and prays until super-excited to the verge of delirium, so his representations become hallucinations. If an animal appears friendly in dream or vision, he believes he has found his patron.
Chapter 32
Is acquiring an individual totem obligatory, and can one have several?
No. Many Australian tribes seem entirely unfamiliar with the custom, and where it exists it is often optional—among the Euahlayi only magicians routinely have one, granted as a favour. The author notes it is considered an advantage rather than a necessity: a man can do without one, seek several for fuller protection, or change one that serves badly.
Chapter 32
What is sexual totemism and which tribes practice it?
An intermediate form found only in Australia among a small number of tribes, especially Victoria and New South Wales. All men and all women form two distinct, even antagonistic societies, each linked to a determined animal—among the Kurnai, men to the emu-wren and women to the linnet. Each sex regards its animal as protector, forbidden to kill or eat.
Chapter 32
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Why does Durkheim say totemism and the clan mutually imply each other?
The author argues clan members are united neither by common habitat nor by common blood, since they are not necessarily consanguineous and are often scattered across the tribal territory. Their unity comes solely from sharing the same name and emblem, believing they have the same relations with the same categories of things, and practising the same rites—in a word, from participating in the same totemic cult.
Chapter 33
What is Tylor and Wilken's theory of totemism's origin?
They hold that totemism is a special form of ancestor-cult, bridged by the doctrine of transmigration of souls. Since many peoples believe a dead soul animates another living body, and the lower psychology draws no firm line between human and beast souls, the respect felt for an ancestor attaches to the animal or plant he now inhabits. That object becomes sacred—a totem—for his descendants, who form the clan.
Chapter 33
Why does Durkheim reject the transmigration theory as an explanation of totemism?
The author argues the societies cited had already passed pure totemism, having families rather than totemic clans, and Australia lacks both a cult of the dead and the doctrine of transmigration. Further, the belief begs the question: it presupposes the very human-animal kinship totemism rests on, without explaining it. Finally, totemism is not animal-worship—the animal is never adored, and the cult addresses the emblem, not the species.
Chapter 33
What is Jevons's nature-cult theory, and Durkheim's objections to it?
Jevons holds that men, having peopled the world with supernatural beings, sought alliance with them through kinship, since kinship was the only association they knew; the clan collectively adopted a natural species as kindred, making it a totem. Durkheim objects that religions are too complex to originate in a premeditated act of will, that men would have chosen the most powerful protectors rather than humble ones, and that each clan contents itself with a single totem instead of many allies.
Chapter 33
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What two sorts of totemism does Durkheim distinguish, and what question does he say theories omit?
Durkheim distinguishes individual totemism from clan totemism. He argues that theories omit the question of whether one derives from the other and which is more primitive. The answer matters because if individual totemism were primitive, religion would be born in individual consciousness and its collective form would be merely secondary.
Chapter 34
Which scholars does Durkheim list as holding that clan totemism derives from individual totemism?
Durkheim names Frazer in The Golden Bough, Hill Tout, Miss Fletcher, Boas and Swanton as holding this theory. He says it reflects a desire for undue simplicity and harmonizes with the current conception of religion as something intimate and personal. On this view, the clan totem is an individual totem that became generalized.
Chapter 34
What evidence does Hill Tout draw from Salish and Thompson River societies?
Hill Tout argues that among these peoples individual and clan totemism vary in inverse proportion: where clan totemism becomes general, individual totemism tends to disappear, and vice versa. He also notes their mythology represents the clan founder as a human who received a totemic emblem from a fabulous animal and passed it to descendants. Durkheim later rejects this as proof.
Chapter 34
What objections does Durkheim raise against the individual-totem-first hypothesis?
Durkheim argues that if collective totemism were generalized individual totemism, clans would force others to abstain from their totem; instead each clan performs rites to make its totem species prosper as food for other clans. He also notes that two clans of one tribe always have different totems, which presupposes collective organization and social agreement.
Chapter 34
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How does Durkheim argue individual totemism relates to collective totemism?
The author argues individual totemism presupposes collective totemism rather than giving birth to it. In societies where it predominates, novices may not choose any animal; each clan has a fixed set of permitted species that are its exclusive property. The individual totem represents a part or aspect of the collective totem, like a sub-totem, so personal religion is the collective cult adapted to individual needs.
Chapter 35
What evidence does Durkheim cite against individual totemism being the original form?
The author argues the evidence is reversed: if individual totemism were original, it should be strongest in the most primitive societies. Instead, Australia, the most primitive, is the classic land of collective totemism, with no tribe practising individual totemism alone. In North America, collective totemism is in decay while individual totemism flourishes as a sign of higher civilization.
Chapter 35
How does Frazer explain the genesis of conceptional totemism?
Frazer holds that a woman feeling the first signs of pregnancy believes a spirit from nearby objects, especially food she recently ate, has entered her. The child is then considered a sort of emu or yam, related to that species and refusing to eat it. Repeated conceptions at one spot create totem centres, producing the Arunta's local totemism, from which other forms derive.
Chapter 35
How is an Arunta child's totem determined, according to Frazer's account?
The child receives neither the father's nor the mother's totem. Instead, the totem is fixed by the locality where the mother believes she first felt the symptoms of pregnancy. The Arunta are said to be ignorant of the relation between generation and the sexual act, holding that conception occurs when an ancestral soul enters the woman; the child is that ancestor reincarnated and keeps its totem.
Chapter 35
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What evidence overturns Frazer's assumption that Arunta local totemism is most primitive?
Strehlow and Schulze show each Arunta also has a maternal totem independent of geography, inherited as a birthright, acting as protector and granting cult rights; the corpse faces its region. Since this maternal totem now plays only a secondary role, it must once have been primary—so uterine hereditary totemism preceded local totemism.
Chapter 36
How does Lang explain totemism, and what is Durkheim's main objection?
Lang derives totemism from the totem being a name: groups named themselves after flora and fauna, and since early minds treat names as mystically bound to things, men believed they shared the animal's attributes, later explained by myths of kinship. Durkheim objects Lang, like Frazer, denies totemism is a religion and explains sacredness by already assuming it.
Chapter 36
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In Durkheim's analysis, what is the true object of totemic cult?
The author argues totemism is not worship of particular animals, men, or images but of an anonymous, impersonal force present in all of them yet identical with none. No one possesses it entirely; all participate in it. It precedes and survives the individuals it animates, and the totem is only the material form imagination gives this immaterial energy.
Chapter 37
How does Durkheim describe the physical and moral character of totemic forces?
The author argues these forces act as real forces, not metaphors: contact without proper precautions brings a shock like an electric discharge, and entry into an unprepared organism causes sickness and death. They also have moral character—natives feel obliged to observe rites as duty, and those sharing a totemic principle are bound by duties of assistance and vendetta constituting kinship.
Chapter 37
How does Durkheim use Samoan religion to support his interpretation of totemism?
The author argues Samoan religion has passed the totemic phase yet retains traces: each god attaches to a local or domestic group as a totem does to a clan, and each is immanent in a whole species, not one subject. When an animal dies the group mourns, but the god is eternal, soul of past and future generations—the totemic principle in slightly personal form.
Chapter 37
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What is wakan among the Sioux, and how is it misrepresented?
Wakan is the pre-eminent power of the Siouan pantheon, of which all particular deities are derived forms. The author argues travelers gravely misrepresent it by translating it as "great spirit" and treating it as a sovereign personal god. It is not a personal being, has no determined form or definable attributes; it embraces all mystery, secret power, and divinity, and all revered beings are its manifestations.
Chapter 38
How does orenda work among the Iroquois?
Orenda is the Iroquois equivalent of wakan, a mystic potence held to be the property of all things and the efficient cause of all phenomena. Nothing lacks some quota of orenda, but quantities vary: some beings are favored, others relatively disinherited. Universal life consists in struggles between orenda of unequal intensity, the more intense conquering the weaker. Success in hunting or war indicates greater orenda.
Chapter 38
What is mana according to Codrington, and what mistake must be avoided?
Codrington defines mana as a force distinct from physical power, acting for good and evil, which it is greatly advantageous to possess or control. It is not fixed in anything and can be conveyed in almost anything; Melanesian religion consists in getting mana or having it used for one's benefit. Codrington warns it must not be regarded as a supreme being; that idea is absolutely foreign to Melanesian thought.
Chapter 38
Why did the idea of a single universal mana not arise in Australia?
The author argues this is due less to the Australians' insufficient aptitude for abstraction than to the social environment. While totemism remains the basis of organization, each clan keeps marked religious autonomy; its totem is fully sacred only for that clan, and its group of things forms a distinct realm. The idea of one universal mana could be born only when tribal religion developed above and absorbed clan religion.
Chapter 38
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How does Durkheim contrast totemic forces with magical forces in Australia?
Totemic forces are theoretically healthful and beneficent, belong to the clan, and are localized in distinct social forms, so they are diversified. Magical forces cause sickness and death, are tribal or intertribal rather than clan-bound, require only efficient recipes, and rise above social divisions, so the mind represents them in their generic unity as one homogeneous force.
Chapter 39
What is arungquiltha among the Arunta and Loritja?
It is a harmful magic force, described by Spencer and Gillen as a term of vague import always associated with supernatural evil power, applied to the influence or the object in which it resides. Strehlow says it suddenly stops life and brings death to those who contact it. The name covers charm bones and wood and poisonous animals and vegetables, so it may be called a harmful mana.
Chapter 39
What does Durkheim conclude about the origin of religious thought from totemism?
The author argues that at the origin of religious thought are not distinct personal beings but indefinite, anonymous forces, impersonal like physical forces. Particular sacred things are individualized forms of this principle. Even in religions with avowed divinities, rites have efficacy in themselves, and each god retains some impersonality, which enables syncretisms and duplications.
Chapter 39
How does Durkheim use the Dakota informant's statement about wakan?
A Dakota questioned by Miss Fletcher said everything that moves makes stops, like a bird nesting or resting, and so the god has stopped: the sun, trees, and animals are places where he stopped, and prayers are sent there. Durkheim reads this as wakan moving through the world, with sacred things being the points where it alights, distancing his theory from both naturism and animism.
Chapter 39
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What did Hubert and Mauss establish about magic in their general theory?
Hubert and Mauss, attempting a general theory of magic, established that magic as a whole rests on the notion of mana. Since the magic rite and the religious rite are closely akin, it was foreseeable that the same theory would be applied to religion. Preuss supported this the same year, arguing from American facts that ideas of soul and spirit developed only after ideas of impersonal power and force.
Chapter 40
According to Durkheim, what is the religious origin of the idea of force?
The author argues that the idea of force is of religious origin: it was borrowed from religion first by philosophy, then by the sciences. Comte foresaw this, making metaphysics the heir of theology, but concluded the idea of force should disappear from science because of its mystic origins. Durkheim disagrees, arguing religious forces are real despite imperfect symbols, so the concept of force in general has objective value.
Chapter 40
Why does Durkheim reject totem things' sensations as the source of totemic belief?
Durkheim argues totems are often insignificant things—lizard, caterpillar, rat, ant, frog, plum-tree—not capable of producing strong religious impressions. Stars and atmospheric phenomena could strike the imagination but serve only exceptionally as totems. Also, if the totem animal's own sentiments caused the rites, it would be pre-eminently sacred; yet the centre of the cult is the figurative representations and emblems, which possess the greatest sanctity.
Chapter 40
What two things does the totem symbolize, and what does Durkheim conclude from this?
The totem expresses and symbolizes two things: the totemic principle or god, and the clan society itself—it is the clan's flag, the sign distinguishing it from others, borne by men, beasts and things belonging to the clan. Durkheim concludes that since the emblem is at once symbol of god and society, the god of the clan, the totemic principle, can be nothing else than the clan itself, personified under the visible form of the totem.
Chapter 40
Section 414 cards
For Durkheim, what makes society capable of arousing the sense of the divine?
The author argues society has what is needed to arouse the sensation of the divine because of the power it holds over its members: it is to them what a god is to worshippers. A god is a being thought superior and upon whom men feel dependent, imposing manners of acting; society likewise demands perpetual dependence, sacrifice, and submission to rules neither made nor desired.
Chapter 41
What distinguishes moral authority from mere physical constraint, according to the chapter?
The author argues society's empire over consciences rests less on physical supremacy than on moral authority. Respect arises when a representation has force that automatically causes or inhibits actions without regard to useful or injurious effects; we obey because of the idea of the person commanding, not because the command seems wise. Commands take peremptory form, excluding deliberation.
Chapter 41
How does the chapter explain the authority of opinion, and its relation to science?
The author argues opinion, primarily a social thing, is a source of authority, and asks whether all authority is the daughter of opinion. Representations elaborated in common gain intensity no private state could attain, and society speaks through those who affirm them. Science may combat opinion's errors, but only succeeds if it has authority, which it obtains from opinion itself.
Chapter 41
What does Durkheim claim collective effervescence does to individuals in revolutionary epochs?
The author argues that under great collective shock, social interactions become more frequent and active, producing a general effervescence. This stimulates individual forces: men see more and differently, become different, and their passions demand violent or unrestrained action, superhuman heroism or bloody barbarism. Mediocre bourgeois become heroes or butchers; Crusaders felt God present, Joan of Arc obeyed celestial voices.
Chapter 41
Section 424 cards
According to Durkheim, what does society constantly create out of ordinary things?
The author argues that society constantly creates sacred things out of ordinary ones, both today and in the past. When society falls in love with a man it sees as embodying its aspirations, it raises him above others and deifies him, investing him with majesty analogous to that protecting the gods. He notes society alone authors these apotheoses, since it sometimes consecrates men with no personal merit.
Chapter 42
What two contrasting phases does Durkheim say Australian social life alternates between?
Durkheim states that Australian societies alternate between two sharply contrasted phases. In one, the population disperses into small groups engaged in economic activity like hunting and fishing, making life uniform, languishing and dull. In the other, the population concentrates at determined points for days to months to celebrate a religious ceremony or corrobbori, producing intense collective effervescence.
Chapter 42
How does Durkheim explain the collective effervescence produced at a corrobbori?
Durkheim argues that the very fact of concentration acts as an exceptionally powerful stimulant. When people come together, a sort of electricity forms, transporting them to extraordinary exaltation. Each sentiment re-echoes the others, growing like an avalanche. Gestures and cries tend to become rhythmic, producing songs and dances, and instruments like boomerangs and bull-roarers both express and strengthen the agitation.
Chapter 42
What does Durkheim say the French Revolution demonstrated about society's capacity to create gods?
The author argues this aptitude was never more apparent than in the French Revolution's first years. Under general enthusiasm, purely laical things—the Fatherland, Liberty, Reason—were transformed by public opinion into sacred things. A religion tended to establish itself with dogmas, symbols, altars and feasts. Durkheim notes this renovation was ephemeral because the patriotic enthusiasm relaxed, but insists the experiment retains sociological interest.
Chapter 42
Section 434 cards
What roles do the two phratries play in the Warramunga Wollunqua ceremony?
The Uluuru phratry alone is qualified to celebrate the rite, while the Kingilli phratry decorates the actors, prepares the mound and instruments, and serves as audience. The Kingilli also receive the Uluuru wives and later urge the Uluuru on to destroy the mound at dawn.
Chapter 43
How does Durkheim explain why collective forces are conceived under the form of the totem?
The author argues the totem is the clan's emblem and name, and sentiments aroused by a thing attach to its symbol, especially when the thing itself is too complex to represent. The totem, repeated everywhere and surviving the assembly, becomes the concrete object on which shared emotions fix.
Chapter 43
What does Durkheim claim the effervescent assemblies produce in participants?
The author argues that in collective effervescence a man feels dominated by an external power, no longer himself, and transformed into a new being. Since companions feel the same and express it in cries and gestures, he seems transported into another world. This contrast yields the conviction of two heterogeneous worlds: the profane and the sacred.
Chapter 43
Why does Durkheim say Australian religious activity confirms his theory of origin?
He argues that in Australia positive rites and important ceremonies occur only when groups assemble, while other times are filled with profane occupations; only prohibitions persist between celebrations. Religious life thus alternates between lull and super-excitation, matching social life's rhythm. In civilized peoples the continuity of both blurs this relation.
Chapter 43
Section 444 cards
Why does the totemic emblem hold first place among sacred things?
The author argues religious force is the collective and anonymous force of the clan, representable in the mind only as the totem. The emblem is thus like the visible body of the god, the source from which kindly or dreadful actions seem to emanate. So the cult is addressed to it, which explains why it holds the first place in the series of sacred things.
Chapter 44
Why is the totemic animal ranked above man in sacredness?
The totemic principle is the clan thought under the material form of the emblem, and the animal shares that form more closely than man does. Since the animal naturally resembles the emblem more, it seems to incarnate the principle more fully. So men treat it as a brother, but at least as an elder brother, and it is forbidden to kill or eat it.
Chapter 44
How does the sacred character spread to the rest of the world?
A sacred character is highly contagious, so it spreads from the totemic being to everything closely or remotely connected with it: substances that nourish the animal, things that resemble it, and beings with which it has constant relations. Little by little sub-totems attach to totems, and eventually the whole world is divided among the totemic principles of each tribe.
Chapter 44
Does Durkheim think fear created the first gods?
No. The author rejects the formula that fear made the gods, arguing primitive deities were regarded as friends, kindred, or natural protectors, near to men and conferring useful powers. Setting aside funeral rites, the totemic cult was celebrated with songs, dances, and dramatic representations; the terrible and jealous gods appear only slowly in religious evolution. The root sentiments are happy confidence, not terror.
Chapter 44
Section 454 cards
According to Durkheim, what do cult practices really strengthen beyond the believer's bond to a god?
Durkheim argues that cult practices, by apparently strengthening the bond between believer and god, really strengthen the bond attaching the individual to the society of which he is a member, since the god is only a figurative expression of society. This real effect, he says, compensates for the secondary errors religion implies, such as ineffective recipes for acting on things, because these errors do not touch religion's fundamentals.
Chapter 45
How does Durkheim defend religion against the charge that it is a delirium?
Durkheim concedes religious life at high intensity implies a psychical exaltation near delirium, and that prophets, founders, and saints often show pathological nervousness; ritual intoxication is explained similarly. But he argues this delirium is well-founded: its images correspond to something in reality, namely moral forces, and the mental agitation they cause bears witness to their reality rather than being pure illusion.
Chapter 45
Why does Durkheim say the part of a sacred thing equals the whole?
Durkheim argues sacredness is not intrinsic to an object but added to it, coming from sentiments the object symbolizes. Since a fragment evokes the same sentiments as the whole, it has the same value and efficacy: a relic's debris equals an intact relic, a drop of blood contains the whole active principle, and a fragment of the flag represents the fatherland as well as the flag itself.
Chapter 45
What two questions does Durkheim say remain about the origin of the totemic emblem?
Durkheim states that once the idea of the totem as clan emblem is given, the rest follows, but its formation is still unexplained. He divides this into two questions: what led the clan to choose an emblem at all, and why these emblems were borrowed from the animal and vegetable worlds, particularly the former. He notes emblems serve both to express and to create social sentiment.
Chapter 45
Section 464 cards
According to Durkheim, why are symbols necessary for social sentiments to endure?
The author argues that social sentiments are strong only while people are assembled and influencing one another; once the group disperses, they survive only as recollections that grow feebler as individual temperaments regain the upper hand. If the movements expressing these sentiments are attached to something enduring, the sentiments become more durable, since that thing constantly recalls and reawakens them. Thus emblems are indispensable for continuing collective consciousness.
Chapter 46
Why does Durkheim say the clan especially needs an emblem or symbol?
The author argues the clan is less able than any other society to do without an emblem because it lacks other markers of unity: central authority is uncertain and unstable, the population is nomad and not attached to a locality, and exogamy plus maternal filiation scatter members of different clans across each family and locality. Its unity is visible only in the collective name and the emblem reproducing the object that name designates.
Chapter 46
Why were totemic names and emblems taken mainly from animals and plants rather than celestial bodies?
The author argues an emblem's basis must be something representable by a design and something with which clan members were most habitually in contact. For hunting and fishing peoples, animals were an essential part of the economic environment, with plants secondary; animals are also more closely associated with human life. Sun, moon and stars seemed too far away and, before constellations were classified, lacked sufficient differentiated variety to mark all clans and sub-clans.
Chapter 46
What does Durkheim mean by saying social phenomena transcend individual minds?
The author argues that social phenomena are born not in individuals but in the group; each person receives them from without. So when people represent these forces as emanating from a material object, they do not completely misunderstand their nature: the forces do not come from that specific thing, but their origin is genuinely outside the individual. The objectivity of the symbol merely translates this externalness.
Chapter 46
Section 474 cards
According to Durkheim, what caused primitive people to confuse different kingdoms of nature?
The author argues religion was the agent of this transfiguration, substituting a different world for the one perceived by the senses. In totemism, clan members and totemic beings were believed made of the same essence, building a bridge between kingdoms. These religious conceptions resulted from determined social causes, since the clan's emblem fixed collective sentiments, mixing the most different kingdoms in the idea of collective force.
Chapter 47
How does Durkheim compare primitive religious logic with modern scientific thought?
The author argues there is no abyss between them: both are made of the same elements, unequally developed. To explain is always to show how one thing participates in others. Saying heat is movement or light is a vibration of the ether identifies contraries just as saying a man is a kangaroo does. The difference lies in criteria and method, not in the essential mental processes.
Chapter 47
What does Durkheim say about primitive thought and the principle of contradiction?
The author rejects characterizing primitive mentality by a single inclination for indistinction. If the primitive confounds things we distinguish, he also distinguishes things we connect, conceiving sharp oppositions: things in different phratries are antagonistic, and sacred and profane things repel each other so strongly the mind refuses to think them together. Religious thought is excessive in both directions, confounding when it connects and opposing when it distinguishes.
Chapter 47
What does Durkheim claim about the idea of the soul in Australian societies?
The author states that all Australian societies admit every human body shelters an interior being, the principle of the life animating it: the soul. The idea seems contemporaneous with humanity itself, its essential characteristics formulated at the outset, with later religions and philosophy mainly refining it. Exceptions exist: some tribes believe women have no souls, and Dawson reports young children likewise, but these are exceptional and probably late cases.
Chapter 47
Section 494 cards
According to Spencer and Gillen, what is the origin of individual souls among Central Australian tribes?
Spencer and Gillen report that souls are not newly created but come from a fixed stock of immortal ancestral souls (Altjirangamitjina) who lived in the Alcheringa. These souls reincarnate periodically: when a wandering soul enters a woman's body, conception and birth follow, so each person is a returning ancestor in a new body.
Chapter 49
What two characteristics make the ancestors of the Alcheringa sacred, according to the chapter?
The author states the ancestors had miraculous powers far beyond living men—shaping the earth, creating beings—making them nearly gods, so their reincarnated souls are sacred. They were also not fully human but animal or plant beings, or mixed, sharing the totemic principle's double nature.
Chapter 49
How does the chapter define the soul in relation to the totemic principle?
The author argues the soul is nothing other than the totemic principle incarnate in each individual. Since the principle is immanent in all clan members but each consciousness differs, it individualizes itself in each person. Thus the soul is both the most profound part of the self and a foreign guest that will one day regain independence.
Chapter 49
How does Strehlow's account of the soul's fate differ from Spencer and Gillen's?
Strehlow holds that after mourning rites free the soul, it never reincarnates. It goes to the isles of the dead, returns briefly as a protecting genius to sons or grandsons, then departs for a final time and is struck by lightning, ending its career. He also says generation results from mystic operations, not reincarnation.
Chapter 49
Section 504 cards
According to Strehlow, what are the two main ways a woman conceives in Arunta belief?
A ratapa (embryo child) living on an ancestor's nanja tree, rock, or water-hole may enter a woman of the proper matrimonial class through the hip, causing the first pregnancy pains. Alternatively, the ancestor himself throws a small churinga called a namatuna into the passing woman; it enters her body and takes human form while he returns underground. The child's features supposedly reveal which mode occurred.
Chapter 50
How does Durkheim reconcile Strehlow's account with Spencer and Gillen's?
Durkheim argues the two versions differ only in wording, not substance. Both hold that every conception results from an incarnation of an Alcheringa ancestor. The ratapa is a detached portion of the ancestor formed on his mystic body, so even if only an emanation enters the mother, the ancestor is entire in each fragment. The namatuna churinga is likewise treated as the ancestor's body.
Chapter 50
What is the third, rarer mode of conception Strehlow describes, and what happens to that soul at death?
After the namatuna enters the woman, the ancestor himself may enter her and submit to a new birth, making it a real reincarnation. This is very exceptional. When such a man dies, the ancestral soul animating him departs like ordinary souls to the isles of the dead, where after the usual delays it is definitively annihilated and cannot be reincarnated again.
Chapter 50
What does the churinga signify for the individual and his ancestor?
The churinga left by an ancestor expresses his personality and, on Strehlow's view, is his body. It is equally related to the individual conceived under that ancestor's influence. When a young initiate is shown his ancestor's churinga, he is told, 'You are this body; you are the same thing as this.' Strehlow calls it 'the body common to the individual and his ancestor,' uniting them.
Chapter 50
Section 514 cards
How does Durkheim describe the relationship between churinga, ancestor, individual, and totemic animal?
The author argues that the churinga represents the personality of the individual born of it, the body of the ancestor, and the totemic animal at once. Citing Strehlow's phrase, he says these three beings form a "solid unity" and are almost equivalent, interchangeable terms—different aspects of one reality defined by the totemic principle.
Chapter 51
What does the word ratapa designate in the Arunta and Loritja languages?
According to the chapter, ratapa (and the Loritja aratapi) designates the mythical embryo detached from the ancestor that becomes the child. The same words also designate the child's totem, as determined by the spot where the mother believes conception occurred—showing in language itself the identity of soul and totem.
Chapter 51
How is the soul transmitted among the tribes of the Pennefather River?
Each man has two souls: the ngai in the heart and the choi in the placenta. Anje-a, a genius in charge of procreation, takes a bit of the father's choi and places it in the embryo. At the father's death the ngai is liberated and divided equally among the children, so one soul animates the first ancestor and all descendants.
Chapter 51
What evidence does Durkheim give that belief in reincarnation extends beyond Central Australia?
The author cites the Dieri's Mura-mura ancestors, the Kurnai's Muk-Kurnai, the Nimbaldi's conception theory, and the Wotjobaluk's belief that spirits assemble in the miyur of their clans to be reborn. He also notes the Niol-Niol and Pennefather River tribes, and American cases among the Tlinkit, Haida, Kwakiutl, Hurons, Iroquois, and Tinneh.
Chapter 51
Section 523 cards
How does Durkheim explain the animal nature of the soul after death?
The author argues the soul's animal nature is veiled during life by the human body but reappears at death. The Omaha believe souls rejoin the buffalo ancestors; the Hopi say each person becomes a bear or deer according to clan. This widespread reincarnation belief, Durkheim argues, supports that the soul's elements came largely from the animal kingdom.
Chapter 52
Why does Durkheim say the soul is sacred rather than a dream explanation?
The author argues the soul is a particular application of beliefs about sacred beings, always considered sacred and opposed to the profane body. Dreams contain nothing to awaken religious emotion, so they cannot explain the soul's sacred character. If the soul is part of the divine substance, it naturally becomes the object of the same sentiments reserved for sacred beings.
Chapter 52
What is Durkheim's objective foundation for the body-soul duality?
The author argues our inner life contains two irreducible species of representations: those concerning the external material world and those concerning an ideal world with moral superiority. Society establishes itself within us durably, and its imperative rules carry authority we do not recognize as our own voice. Thus we are truly made of two beings, and there is a particle of divinity in us.
Chapter 52
Section 534 cards
For Durkheim, what is the fundamental reason an object is sacred?
The author argues an object is sacred because it inspires a collective sentiment of respect that removes it from profane touches. Whether this efficacy is represented abstractly as impersonal mana or attributed to a named spiritual agent does not matter; the psychological roots of both beliefs are identical, and the differing interpretations are superadded to one fundamental phenomenon.
Chapter 53
Why does Durkheim reject the dream hypothesis for belief in immortality?
The author argues dreams of departed persons are too rare, too short, and leave recollections too vague to have created so important a system of beliefs on their own. Such observations might confirm an idea already born, but there is a remarkable lack of proportion between the effect and the cause to which it is attributed.
Chapter 53
What is Durkheim's explanation for the belief that souls survive the body?
The author argues souls must survive because new souls can only come from souls: ancestral souls reincarnate or emit emanations in newborns. Since individuals die but the clan survives, the totemic forces animating bodies must endure unchanged. Belief in immortality explains the perpetuity of group life, and it is not without objective truth, since the group outlasts individuals.
Chapter 53
According to Strehlow's testimony, how do Arunta souls differ in immortality?
The Arunta distinguish ancestral Alcheringa souls from souls of living individuals. The latter survive the body only a relatively short time and are soon annihilated; only the ancestral souls are immortal, being uncreated and imperishable. Durkheim notes only these are needed to explain the permanence of the group, since every conception is their work.
Chapter 53
Section 544 cards
According to Durkheim, what two factors produce the notion of person?
The notion of person results from two factors: an impersonal spiritual principle that serves as the soul of the group and forms the substance of individual souls, and an individualizing factor, the body. Because bodies occupy distinct points in space and time, each becomes a special centre where collective representations reflect differently, so consciousnesses share one world but see it from different angles.
Chapter 54
How does Durkheim use Leibniz and Kant to support his account of personality?
Durkheim argues both philosophers reached results analogous to sociology. For Leibniz, all monads express the same world, differing only by their point of view. For Kant, the will acts according to reason, which is impersonal and universal; what makes a man a person is what he shares with other men, while the senses and body individualize. Durkheim says this shows individuation is not the essential characteristic of personality.
Chapter 54
What distinguishes a spirit from a soul in Australian religion?
A soul is shut up in a determined organism, ordinarily a prisoner there, leaving only at death, and has almost no influence beyond the body it animates. A spirit, though often bound to an object like a spring, rock or tree, may leave at will and exist independently in free space, has a wider circle of action, and is defined by a power over some order of cosmic or social phenomena.
Chapter 54
Why is a ghost not a true spirit, according to the chapter?
After death the soul gains a spirit's liberty of movement, lingering near the tomb and prowling in the brush, and is generally beneficent to family though sometimes cruel depending on its humour and treatment. But a ghost has only limited power, no definite province, and no determined task; death put it outside all regular forms, making it a vagabond and exile. A spirit always has a defined power and function.
Chapter 54
Section 554 cards
What functions do ancestral spirits perform for living clan members?
They oversee conception and the periodic recruiting of the clan, and after birth they guard the child. As the person grows, the ancestor accompanies him in the hunt, brings game, warns him by dreams of dangers, and protects him against enemies. Strehlow and Spencer and Gillen agree on this guardianship role.
Chapter 55
How can the ancestor both reincarnate and act as an external guardian?
According to Spencer and Gillen's version, the ancestor does not reincarnate entirely; he merely duplicates himself. One part enters the woman and fertilizes her, while another part continues to exist outside under the special name Arumburinga, fulfilling the office of guardian genius. This resolves the apparent contradiction of being both the child's soul and its protector.
Chapter 55
Why does Durkheim reject calling these ancestral beings 'gods'?
Strehlow calls them gods, but the author argues this is inexact in most cases. In a society like the Arunta, where each person has a protecting ancestor, there would be as many gods as individuals, and naming a sacred being with only one worshipper a god only confuses terminology. Normally 'spirits' is the suitable word; the snake Wollunqua is an exceptional collective case.
Chapter 55
Why are nanja-trees and rocks treated as sacred, and how did ancestors become genius loci?
These trees and rocks cluster around sanctuaries where the clan's churinga is kept, and the sacredness of the cult instruments spreads to them by psychic contagiousness. Natives explain this by myths: each ertnatulunga marks where ancestors entered the ground, and the mounds or trees represent their bodies. Souls, retaining affinity for their bodies, were thought to frequent these places, becoming genius loci.
Chapter 55
Section 564 cards
What two characteristics define an individual totem?
Durkheim defines an individual totem by two traits: it is a being in animal or vegetable form whose function is to protect an individual, and the fate of the person and the patron are closely united, so that whatever touches the totem is sympathetically communicated to the person. He argues ancestral spirits fit this same definition, making the two conceptions identical.
Chapter 56
How does Durkheim explain the origin of individual totemism?
The author argues individual totemism arises from a duplication of the soul. The totem, like the ancestor, is the soul externalized and invested with superior powers. This duplication reflects the soul's double nature: it is ours, expressing personality, yet also the reaching into us of an outside religious force we cannot fully identify with. Frazer's view that exteriority came from magical artifice is rejected.
Chapter 56
How do evil spirits differ from the good ancestral spirits?
Evil spirits are conceived on the same model as good ones, in animal or half-animal form, inhabiting trees, rocks and caverns. But they do not reincarnate, have no human representatives or posterity, belong to no totemic group, and stand outside social organization. Durkheim notes children believed to result from them are put to death at birth. They are magic powers rather than religious ones, and magicians often get powers from them.
Chapter 56
Why do tribal-wide rites get attributed to single ancestors?
Durkheim argues each society has rites distinguished by homogeneity and generality, such as churinga use, initiation practices, and tribal institutions. Their harmony seemed explicable only by unity of origin, so people imagined each group of similar rites was founded by one ancestor who revealed them to the tribe. Examples include Putiaputia for churinga and Mangarkunjerkunja for circumcision and social organization.
Chapter 56
Section 574 cards
How does Durkheim explain the origin of the Australian supreme tribal gods?
The author argues they are of indigenous origin and not borrowed from Christianity, as Tylor claimed. Rather than coming from a separate source, they are the logical working-out and highest form of totemic beliefs. There is no break of continuity: a great god is simply an ancestor of especial importance, and names like Mura-mura and Nuralie also serve as collective terms for mythical ancestral beings.
Chapter 57
What characteristics do the Australian supreme gods share across tribes?
They are immortal, self-derived beings who lived on earth, then ascended or were taken to heaven, where they live with family and are often identified with stars. They control the sun, moon, lightning, thunder and rain. They are called father and creator of men, animals, trees, and the arts, act as providence and moral guardian, and are especially tied to initiation rites.
Chapter 57
What role does the supreme god play in initiation rites?
Initiation is the principal form of tribal cult and the supreme god is its centre. He is represented by an image on bark or in the ground, around which people dance, sing and pray. The secret name and history are told to initiates, and people raise their hands toward his heaven. He watches over the neophyte and punishes negligence in the ceremonies terribly.
Chapter 57
How does Durkheim critique Tylor's and Lang's views of the supreme god?
Tylor held the idea was so elevated it must be a denatured Christian import; Lang thought it autochthonous but a separate, intuitive revelation later obscured by totemism. The author argues the facts support neither: the belief is indigenous, observed before missionary influence, yet not a mysterious revelation, since it develops continuously out of totemic ancestor beliefs.
Chapter 57
Section 584 cards
What intermediate figures does Durkheim say bridge ancestral geniuses and the tribal god?
Durkheim argues that civilizing heroes serve as the middle term between the many ancestral geniuses and the idea of a tribal god. These fabulous beings are really simple ancestors whom mythology elevated above the others, yet their functions—introducing arts, founding institutions, revealing ceremonies—closely resemble those of a great god. He notes they often belong to the totemic organization, and descent relations sometimes link them to great gods.
Chapter 58
How does Durkheim show great gods retain totemic marks?
Durkheim argues the notion of a supreme god depends so closely on totemic beliefs that it still bears their mark. Among the Kurnai, the same word means totem and names the divine hero Tundun; among the Arunta, Altjira names both a great god and the maternal totem. Many great gods have obviously totemic aspects: Daramulun is an eagle-hawk, Baiame is represented as an emu, and Bunjil's word also designates a phratry totem.
Chapter 58
What does Durkheim claim about the origin of great gods in initiation assemblies?
Durkheim argues great gods were phratry-totems that became deified, a process he locates in initiation assemblies, since the gods play an important role only in these rites and initiation is the principal form of tribal cult. As the tribe gained a livelier sense of itself, this sentiment incarnated in a personage; the initiation god, whose object is to make men, was predestined to become creator and supreme, with other heroes made his sons or subordinates.
Chapter 58
How does Durkheim explain the international spread of the great god?
Durkheim argues initiation ceremonies drew representatives from neighbouring tribes, becoming religious and lay international fairs. Beliefs formed in such environments could not stay the exclusive property of one nationality: a stranger carries them home and later invites his former hosts, producing continual exchange of ideas. Thus an international mythology arose with the great god as its essential element, since it originated in the initiation rites he personifies; shared phratry names facilitated diffusion.
Chapter 58
Section 593 cards
According to Durkheim, what is the origin of the notion of a great tribal god?
The author argues the notion of a great god is due entirely to the tribal sentiment—the same sentiment already active in the genesis of specifically totemic beliefs. Totemism was not the work of isolated clans but was elaborated within a tribe conscious of its unity, so the same causes operate at the bottom and the top of the religious system.
Chapter 59
What is the negative cult, and why does Durkheim call its interdicts the religious interdicts par excellence?
The negative cult is the system of rites whose function is to keep the sacred and profane separate, imposing abstentions rather than positive acts. Durkheim says these interdicts derive immediately from the notion of sacredness itself, separating all that is sacred from all that is profane, and they furnish the basis of every other cult.
Chapter 59
What are the principal interdictions of contact Durkheim lists in Australia?
The profane must never touch the sacred: the uninitiated may not touch the churinga or bull-roarers, and blood, hair, and corpses fall under the same interdict. A dead man is sacred because the soul stays with the corpse, so the place of death is avoided, camps are moved, and sometimes the spot and its contents are destroyed.
Chapter 59
Section 604 cards
Why does Durkheim say eating sacred totem animals is forbidden?
Durkheim argues the prohibition stems not from sympathy for mythical kin but from the exceptionally intimate contact caused by absorbing food. Eating a sacred animal is so sacrilegious that the ban covers most adults, though some old men with sufficient religious dignity sometimes escape it. The belief that consuming forbidden flesh causes sickness or death automatically shows impersonal religious forces react against sacrilege.
Chapter 60
How does Durkheim explain the ritual day of rest?
The author argues feast days suspend work because religious and profane life are incompatible. Work is an eminent form of profane activity, putting people in contact with ordinary things, while on feast days religious life reaches exceptional intensity. This repose is obligatory even for sad feasts of mourning and repentance, so it is not mere relaxation. The ritual day of rest is one case of the general sacred-profane separation, resulting from an interdiction.
Chapter 60
What two fundamental interdictions summarize the system of interdicts?
Durkheim says religious and profane life cannot coexist in the same place, so special spots like temples, sanctuaries, and the ertnatulunga are set aside exclusively for sacred things. Nor can they coexist in the same unit of time, so determined days or periods are assigned to religion, excluding profane occupations. Thus feast days are born. He adds that some second-rank sacred things and lesser rites inevitably filter outside these boundaries.
Chapter 60
Why are sacred words, names, and songs kept from the profane?
Durkheim treats speech as contact: the breath establishes communication, so the profane may not address sacred beings or speak in their presence, sometimes communicating only by signs. Ritual songs women must not hear under pain of death, and proper names share the sacredness of their bearers, so they are taboo in profane life. Among the Warramunga the snake Wollunqua's name is taboo, and during mourning the dead man's name must not be mentioned.
Chapter 60
Section 614 cards
How does Durkheim argue the negative cult produces positive effects?
The author argues the negative cult is not merely inhibitive: because a barrier separates sacred from profane, a man must rid himself of the profane before approaching sacred things. By submitting to interdictions he is changed—purified and sanctified—and placed on more equal footing with religious forces. Thus negative rites, like positive ones, confer efficient powers and can elevate the individual's religious tone.
Chapter 61
What happens to the Australian initiate during the negative rites of initiation?
The neophyte withdraws from ordinary society, lives in the brush under old men, and endures many abstinences: forbidden foods, minimal eating, sometimes fasting, no talking except by signs, no washing, sometimes immobility. The accumulated interdictions produce a radical change of condition—he moves from the company of women and exclusion from cult to the society of men and a sacred character, sometimes represented as a second birth.
Chapter 61
What is asceticism, according to Durkheim, and where does it come from?
The author argues asceticism is not rare or abnormal but an essential element of religious life. Any interdict observed has an ascetic character; when the system of interdictions swells and usurps the entire existence, systematic asceticism is born—a hypertrophy of the negative cult. Its virtues are an amplified form of those conferred by any interdiction, resting on the principle that a man sanctifies himself by separating from the profane.
Chapter 61
Why does Durkheim say the negative cult cannot develop without suffering?
We hold to the profane world through our senses and flesh; it penetrates us and is part of ourselves. Detaching from it does violence to our nature and painfully wounds our instincts, so pain is a necessary condition of the negative cult. Some have therefore treated pain as a rite in itself, a state of grace sought for its powers; Durkheim cites Preuss on its religious role in inferior societies.
Chapter 61
Section 624 cards
According to Durkheim, what is the purpose of ritual mutilations like biting the scalp or finger amputation?
The author argues these rites aim to stimulate a specific organ's vitality or confer practical powers. Arunta and Warramunga bite a novice's scalp to make hair grow, and the same is done for beards. Eylmann reports Arunta and Kaitish burn small arm wounds to gain skill at fire-making or strength for carrying wood, and Warramunga girls amputate finger joints so the finger finds yams better.
Chapter 62
Why does Durkheim say circumcision and subincision are indispensable before marriage?
The author argues that in these societies sexual union carries a religious character, putting dangerous forces into play. A man cannot approach them safely until ritual processes give him immunity. Circumcision and subincision are the forerunners of a series of positive and negative practices; by painfully mutilating the organ, a sacred character is given to it, fitting it to resist forces it could not otherwise meet.
Chapter 62
What belief does Durkheim claim is shared by Australian rites and Christianity about suffering?
The author argues both hold that suffering creates exceptional strength. For the Christian it acts on the soul, purging and spiritualizing it; for the Australian it works on the body, increasing vital energies, growing hair and beard, and toughening limbs. Durkheim says the principle is the same in both cases, and that this belief is not without foundation.
Chapter 62
Why does Durkheim say asceticism is not limited to religious ends?
The author argues religious interests are only the symbolic form of social and moral interests. Society itself demands perpetual sacrifices, doing violence to natural appetites because it raises us above ourselves. So an asceticism inherent in all social life will survive all mythologies and dogmas and is an integral part of all human culture; it is the reason for and justification of what religions have taught.
Chapter 62
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Why does Durkheim say sacredness spreads so easily between objects?
The author argues religious forces are collective forces hypostatized — moral forces made of ideas and sentiments awakened by society, not physical sensations. Because they are not homogeneous with visible things and are merely "added to" their supports, they have no roots there. So no object is predestined to receive them; even the most insignificant may do so, and accidental circumstances decide which.
Chapter 63
How does Durkheim explain the sanctions attached to violating an interdict?
Because sacredness is contagious, a profane person who violates an interdict has the religious force he unduly approached extend over him and establish empire over him. Since sacred and profane are antagonistic, he becomes dependent on a hostile power that reacts violently to destroy him. Sickness or death are therefore considered natural, physically necessary consequences of transgression — every profanation implies a dreadful consecration.
Chapter 63
What does Durkheim say about the association-of-ideas explanation of contagion?
The author rejects it. He notes that consecration by anointing or washing in modern cults rests on the same principle, so an enlightened Catholic would have to be a retarded savage deceived by associations — implausible. He also argues primitives do not blindly objectify emotions in ordinary life; only religious thought leans toward such confusions. The origin lies in the special nature of religious things, not general laws of intelligence.
Chapter 63
What does Durkheim claim about personified versus impersonal religious forces?
The author argues the explanation of interdicts does not depend on the symbols used. Whether forces are anonymous impersonal energies reacting automatically or personalities obeying passionate resentment, the practical effect is the same: both express one psychic mechanism — the antagonism of sacred and profane plus sacredness's contagiousness. So the rite remains the same whether religious beings are personified or not.
Chapter 63
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According to Durkheim, what is the source of an object's sacred character?
The author argues that sacredness does not rest in any intrinsic attribute of a being. It comes from impressions of comfort and dependence provoked by society's action on the mind. These intense emotions are not attached to any particular object but are contagious, spreading to representations of objects present at the moment, so objects receive religious value conferred from without.
Chapter 64
How does Durkheim explain the contagiousness of sacredness?
The author argues contagion is not a secondary process by which already-acquired sacredness propagates; it is the very process by which sacredness is acquired. A special emotion attaches to whatever object it encounters, then spreads to all objects mentally connected to the first, whether by material contiguity or mere similarity. Thus contagion confirms his theory of religious forces.
Chapter 64
How does religious contagion relate to primitive classifications of things?
The author argues that because religious forces are eminently contagious, the same principle comes to animate very different objects through material proximity or superficial similarity. Men, animals, plants and rocks thus share one totem. Since religious forces are considered the source of all efficacy, beings sharing one principle are thought to have the same essence, differing only in secondary characteristics, and are grouped into a single category.
Chapter 64
What is the Intichiuma and when is it celebrated?
The Intichiuma is a totemic ceremony of central Australian tribes, especially the Arunta, aimed at assuring prosperity of the clan's totem species. It is celebrated just as the good rainy season approaches, but since the rainy season is variable, its date is not fixed: the Alatunja, chief of the totemic group, judges the suitable moment and informs his companions.
Chapter 64
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In the witchetty grub rite, what does the Alatunja do with the sacred stones and why?
The Alatunja strikes the sacred stones with a wooden tray called an apmara to detach dust. Each grain of this holy dust is regarded as a germ of life containing a spiritual principle that will give birth to a new being when introduced into an organism of the same species. Assistants scatter the dust with gum-tree branches to accomplish its fecundating work, assuring abundant reproduction of the totemic animal.
Chapter 65
Why do some clans pour their own blood onto sacred rocks during Intichiuma?
Men of the clan are relatives of the plant or animal whose name they bear, sharing the same principle of life, especially in their blood. Pouring blood on the rock revivifies its virtues and reinforces its efficacy. The author notes the Arunta also sprinkle blood on sick or tired men to reanimate them, so blood awakening life in the totemic species is consistent.
Chapter 65
How does the Emu group's Intichiuma differ from rites using sacred stones?
In the Emu group, they use no sacred stones or anything resembling them. The Alatunja and assistants sprinkle the ground with their blood, then trace colored lines on the soaked ground representing parts of an emu's body. Kneeling around this design, they chant a hymn, believing vivifying principles go forth from the fictitious emu and the blood to animate new embryos.
Chapter 65
Besides blood and dust, what other substances serve as vivifying principles in these rites?
In some cases they use the very substance they wish to produce. The Kaitish sprinkle water over a sacred rock representing Water clan heroes to create rain; the Mara spit water from a sacred hole in all directions; the Worgaia chief chews yams and throws the bits about; and a Kaitish chief scatters grass grains by blowing after they touch his mouth.
Chapter 65
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Why does the Arunta native never doubt the efficacy of Intichiuma rites?
The native is convinced the rites must produce the expected results with a sort of necessity. If events deceive his hopes, he concludes they were counteracted by the sorcery of a hostile group. It never enters his mind that a favourable result could be obtained by any other means. If vegetation or animals appear before his Intichiuma, he supposes the ancestors celebrated one underground and the living reap its benefits.
Chapter 66
What happens to the alimentary interdiction right after the Intichiuma?
The sacred character of the totem is reinforced: the Arunta do not even dare to touch it. Though they may ordinarily eat the totemic animal or plant in moderation, on the morrow of the Intichiuma this right is suspended and the interdiction is strict and without exceptions. They believe violation would neutralize the rite's good effects and prevent the species' increase. Men of other totems are also less free: they must bring the animal to camp to cook it.
Chapter 66
What does the final Arunta ceremony, such as the witchetty grub rite, involve?
When grubs are mature and abundant, men collect them, cook them hard, and store them in pitchi. When grubs grow scarce, the Alatunja summons everyone; each brings his supply and places it before the totem's men. The Alatunja grinds a pitchi's contents between stones, eats a little, his assistants do the same, and the rest goes to other clans. Afterwards the totem's people may eat only a little at a time.
Chapter 66
How does Durkheim connect the Intichiuma rite to Robertson Smith's theory of sacrifice?
Durkheim credits Robertson Smith with overturning the classic view of sacrifice as tribute, noting that sacrifice is a repast whose substance is food and in which worshippers share with the god, creating kinship through alimentary communion. Durkheim argues the Intichiuma's closing rite is such an act: the Alatunja and old men solemnly eat the totemic animal, communicating with its sacred principle. The difference is that this animal is naturally sacred rather than artificially made so.
Chapter 66
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When is the most opportune time to perform the totemic rite, and why?
The most opportune time is when the new generation has just reached full development, because that is when the forces animating the totemic species reach maximum intensity. The firstfruits manifest the energy they contain, so they are regarded as very sacred and reserved for holy beings; the Australian uses them to regenerate himself spiritually.
Chapter 67
How does Durkheim explain that profane persons may eat so sacred a food?
The author argues every positive rite is a kind of sacrilege, since contact with sacred beings crosses the barrier separating them from the profane. Precautions attenuate it: the transition is arranged so the worshipper enters the sacred circle slowly and gradually. Fasts, contact with sacred rocks, the churinga and totemic decorations have gradually conferred a religious character enabling him to approach the food.
Chapter 67
What did Smith hypothesize about sacrifice, and what does Durkheim say the new facts establish?
Smith held that sacrifice maintained and renewed the natural kinship primitively uniting men and gods, and was inclined to see the totemic sacrifice as the original source of the whole sacrificial institution. Durkheim says the demonstration is made on at least one point: the totemic sacrifice Smith conceived is or has been practised in many societies. Its universality remains hypothetical, but its existence is established.
Chapter 67
How does Durkheim refute Smith's claim that the idea of oblation was absent from primitive sacrifice?
Smith thought oblation absurd and late, born when gods became kings and proprietors. Durkheim argues the Intichiuma rites are among the most primitive observed, with only anonymous impersonal forces, yet they imply the same circle: men give the sacred beings a little of what they receive. The dust scattered from sacred rock and blood sprinkled on the totemic design are veritable oblations, so oblation is not a late product.
Chapter 67
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How does Durkheim relate the Intichiuma to sacrifice?
The author argues the Intichiuma contains the germs of sacrifice, since sacrifice has two essential elements: an act of communion and an act of oblation. Both appear in the Intichiuma, but are separated in time rather than performed together. Taken as a whole, the Intichiuma is a sacrifice whose parts are not yet articulated and organized.
Chapter 68
Why does Durkheim reject Frazer's view of the Intichiuma?
Frazer made the Intichiuma a simple magic operation with no religious character at all. The author argues this is unsupportable, because one cannot exclude from religion a rite that is the forerunner of so great a religious institution as sacrifice.
Chapter 68
What two corrections does Durkheim make to Robertson Smith's theory of sacrifice?
The author argues Smith must be revised because oblation is as essential as communion, and neither can be deduced from the other; perhaps oblation is even more permanent. Also, sacrifice need not address personal beings, since Australian oblations imply only impersonal forces. Yet the cult may have secondarily favoured personification of religious forces.
Chapter 68
Why does Durkheim say the gods need the cult as much as worshippers do?
The author argues sacred beings exist only as represented in minds, and collective representations weaken when the assembly breaks up. The cult reassembles groups, retempers these representations in the source of religious life, and regenerates the gods. What worshippers really give is their thought, not the food or blood.
Chapter 68
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According to Durkheim, why can the gods not do without their worshippers?
The author argues that the sacred principle is society transfigured and personified. Society exists and lives only in and through individuals; if collective beliefs and traditions were no longer shared in individual minds, society would die. So the gods, as symbolic expressions of society, depend on worshippers just as society depends on individuals, and individuals depend on society.
Chapter 69
What does Durkheim claim is the first effect of religious ceremonies?
The author argues that however little importance ceremonies have, they put the group into action by assembling it. Their first effect is to bring individuals together, multiply relations between them, and make them more intimate. This changes the contents of consciousness: utilitarian private concerns are eclipsed, and thoughts center on common beliefs, traditions, ancestors, and the collective ideal.
Chapter 69
Why does Durkheim say the positive cult tends toward periodic forms?
The author argues periodicity in religion expresses the rhythm of social life. Society can revivify its sentiment of itself only by assembling, but it cannot remain in congregation indefinitely, so it scatters and reassembles when needed. These alternations correspond to sacred and profane times. Seasonal changes supplied only an outer framework and occasion; even cults aiming at purely spiritual ends remained periodical.
Chapter 69
What are imitative rites, and what example does Durkheim give?
Imitative rites consist of movements and cries that imitate the attitudes and aspects of the animal whose reproduction is desired, completing and consolidating the effects of the oblations. In the Arunta Intichiuma of the Witchetty grub, men enter a branch shelter called the Umbana representing the chrysalis, and the Alatunja emerges squatting, followed by companions reproducing the insect's emergence, accompanied by a descriptive hymn.
Chapter 69
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What do the actors imitate in the Intichiuma of the unchalka grub?
The officiant bends double, rises on his knees, and shakes his outstretched arms to represent the insect's wings. He leans over a buckler marked with concentric circles of down, imitating the butterfly flying over the trees where it lays eggs. A second ceremony uses bucklers showing zigzag grub tracks and circles for eggs and Eremophile seed, while the officiant mimics the animal leaving its chrysalis.
Chapter 70
How does the Kaitish rain Intichiuma use a rainbow image?
The Kaitish hold the rainbow to be the son of rain and always urging it to appear so rain stops. To make rain fall, they make a design of a rainbow on a buckler and carry it to camp hidden from all eyes, believing that keeping the image invisible keeps the rainbow itself from appearing. The chief throws down flakes representing clouds, and plover cries complete the rite.
Chapter 70
How do the Dieri represent rain and clouds in their ceremony?
The Dieri represent rain not by water but by blood, which men cause to flow from their veins onto the assistants, while throwing white down to represent clouds. Two large stones representing piles of clouds are placed in a hut, then moved high into a lofty tree to make clouds mount the sky. Men charge through the hut until it collapses, representing clouds bursting and rain falling.
Chapter 70
What two principles underlie the imitative rites, and how does Durkheim distinguish them?
Durkheim states the first principle as contagion: anything touching an object touches everything in proximity or unity with it. The second is 'like produces like': representing a being or condition creates it. He argues the real difference is not contiguity versus resemblance but that charms involve simple contagious communication, while these rites involve production and creation of something new.
Chapter 70
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Why does Durkheim reject Frazer's explanation of imitative rites?
Durkheim argues Frazer's "homoeopathic magic" rests on an association of ideas between image and model, but in imitative rites only the image is given—the new totemic generation is merely a hoped-for, uncertain future. There is no model to associate with, so the rite is a real creation, not a mistaken association. General properties of human nature cannot explain such special practices.
Chapter 71
What two reasons does Durkheim give for imitative rites?
First, worshippers believe they are the animal or plant of their totem, so they act like it to display and reaffirm their shared moral community—an early form of likeness to the divine. Second, the urgent, shared preoccupation with reproducing the totemic species externalizes itself in gestures representing the animal, a need Durkheim calls essentially human.
Chapter 71
How does Durkheim explain the belief that imitative gestures cause reproduction?
The rite's real moral efficacy—worshippers feel well-being and reforge their moral nature—leads them to credit it with physical efficacy, which is imaginary. Since the totemic species normally does reproduce, the rite usually appears to succeed; failures are the exception and get explained away. The efficacy of the whole is thus transferred to each part.
Chapter 71
How does Durkheim compare religious faith to scientific reasoning?
Durkheim argues faith is "impermeable to experience" because believers hold practices in which they periodically recreate themselves; abandoning them would upheave their being. Yet he says the scholar differs only in degree: both resist a single contradictory fact and reinterpret it rather than abandon an established law. The scholar merely introduces more method.
Chapter 71
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According to Durkheim, what is the relationship between magic and religion?
The author argues magic is not an original fact from which religion derives, as Frazer held. Rather, magic's precepts were established under the influence of religious ideas and only later extended to purely lay relations. Contagiousness and the principle that like produces like detached from ritual origins through spontaneous generalization. Magic's faith is a particular case of religious faith, produced indirectly by collective effervescence.
Chapter 72
Why does Durkheim reject the label 'sympathetic magic' for these rites?
He argues the expression is not very exact. Sympathetic rites exist, but they are not peculiar to magic; they are found in religion, and it was from religion that magic received them. Naming them 'sympathetic magic' risks confusion by making them appear specifically magical when they are not.
Chapter 72
Why does Durkheim reject the will as the model for the idea of force?
He argues the first forces imagined were anonymous, vague, diffused powers, sharply contrasted with the eminently personal human will, so they could not be conceived in its image. Moreover, impersonal forces are communicable, passing between objects, while the self is incommunicable and cannot change its substratum or spread to another.
Chapter 72
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According to Durkheim, what is the origin of the idea of force and power?
The author argues that the idea of force implies ascendancy, mastery, and domination, with their corollaries of dependence and subordination—relations that are eminently social. Society classifies beings into superiors and inferiors, commanding masters and obeying servants, and confers the property that makes command efficacious. Thus the first powers the human mind conceived were those societies established in organizing themselves, and physical powers were conceived in their image.
Chapter 73
Why does Durkheim say a man feels he has a soul but an animal does not?
The author argues that the soul is not merely a name for the abstract faculty of moving, thinking, and feeling; it is before all a religious principle, a particular aspect of the collective force. A man feels he has a soul, and consequently a force, because he is a social being. Animals do not attribute a soul to themselves because they do not participate in a social life comparable to that of men; among animals there is nothing resembling a civilization.
Chapter 73
How does Durkheim account for the a priori necessity of the causal judgment?
The author argues empiricism cannot explain apriorism: habit produces only expectation or predisposition, not an external norm superior to our representations. The causal law was born in imitative rites: the group assembles over a shared concern, performs identical gestures, and a collective association forms. Because a social interest of great importance is at stake, society imposes the ceremony and the accompanying state of mind as obligatory, so the ritual precept is doubled by a logical precept.
Chapter 73
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What does the Warramunga Black Snake ceremony commemorate and represent?
It commemorates and dramatically represents the mythical history of the ancestor Thalaualla, from his emergence from the ground to his return, following his voyages and repeating the totemic ceremonies he supposedly celebrated at each locality. The officiant is an actor playing a role, not an incarnation. Durkheim notes no gesture aims directly at increasing the species.
Chapter 74
How does Durkheim interpret the efficacy of the Warramunga rites?
The author argues the rites act only upon the mind: they sustain the vitality of the clan's common beliefs, revivify essential elements of the collective consciousness, and periodically renew the group's sentiment of itself and its unity. If men believe the rite acts on things and assures the species' prosperity, this is only a reaction to the real moral action.
Chapter 74
How does the Arunta Intichiuma relate to the Warramunga ceremony?
Durkheim says the Arunta Intichiuma contains an implicit commemoration: rites occur at places the ancestor made illustrious, along his roads, with hymns of his exploits. The officiant is one with the ancestor he reincarnates. Among the Warramunga the duality of ancestor and officiant becomes more marked, making it explicit drama. Durkheim denies this proves one transformed into the other, suggesting a common origin.
Chapter 74
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What is the Wollunqua, and how does it differ from ordinary totems?
The Wollunqua is a purely mythical, unique totem of the Warramunga: a colossal snake said to dwell in the water-hole Thapauerlu. Unlike animal or vegetable totems, it is a species by itself and does not reproduce. It serves as the collective name and ancestor of a group, and the other snake totems of the Uluuru phratry are believed descended from it.
Chapter 75
Why do the Warramunga perform the Wollunqua ceremonies, according to Durkheim?
The author argues they celebrate because their ancestors did, because they are attached to it as a respected tradition, and because it leaves them with a feeling of moral well-being. Ideas that the rite brings rain or averts the Wollunqua's anger are after-thoughts; the natives have only hazy notions of these, and rain is not the purpose of the celebration.
Chapter 75
What does Durkheim conclude the Wollunqua rites prove about the positive cult?
He argues these ceremonies, which lack any material efficacy and demand no useful ends, show that the psychical state of the assembled group is the only solid basis of the ritual mentality. Beliefs attributing physical efficaciousness to rites are accessory and contingent: they may be lacking without altering the essentials of the rite.
Chapter 75
What element of religion do the representative rites reveal, and how do they relate to games and art?
They reveal the recreative and esthetic element: the rites resemble drama, pursue no utilitarian end, and distract participants into an imaginary world. Durkheim argues games and the principal forms of art were born of religion and long retained a religious character, because cult has also been a sort of recreation, with surplus energy escaping in movement and play.
Chapter 75
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What does Durkheim say about the aesthetic aspect of cult and its limits?
The author argues that cult is itself something aesthetic, since there is a poetry inherent in all religion and scarcely any rites lack this aspect. But he warns it is a grave error to see only this aspect or exaggerate it: when a rite serves only to distract, it is no longer a rite, and its representations are not vain images but necessary for moral life.
Chapter 76
How does Durkheim relate religious ceremonies to feasts?
The author argues that the idea of an important religious ceremony awakens the idea of a feast, and inversely every feast, even purely lay ones, has characteristics of religious ceremony: it brings men together, excites effervescence, and produces cries, songs, dances and excesses. The difference lies not in kind but in the unequal proportions in which serious and playful elements combine.
Chapter 76
What does the Intichiuma example show about totemic ceremonies?
Spencer and Gillen first presented the Intichiuma as exclusively ensuring reproduction of the totemic species, but later recognized the same ceremonies occur in initiation rites. Strehlow confirmed this explicitly: the same rite serves both ends, though the Arunta call it mbatjalkatiuma when its object is reproduction and Intichiuma when part of initiation.
Chapter 76
What is Durkheim's general conclusion about the function of rites?
The author argues that a rite's real function is not the particular effects it seems to aim at, since the same rite serves marriages, burials, expiation and more. Its true function is to awaken a state of soul composed of moral force and confidence, depending on the group being assembled; apparent efficacy changes with circumstances while real efficacy remains invariable.
Chapter 76
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What does Durkheim claim rites accomplish for the social group?
The author argues that rites are, before all else, means by which the social group periodically reaffirms itself. The essential thing is that men assemble, feel sentiments in common, and express them in common acts; the particular nature of those sentiments and acts is relatively secondary and contingent. Visible forms matter little, though they do not come by chance.
Chapter 77
Why can different rites substitute for one another in Durkheim's account?
Just as one rite may serve many ends, many rites may produce the same effect and replace one another. To assure reproduction of the totemic species, oblations, imitative practices, or commemorative representations may all be used. This substitutability proves the plasticity of rites and the extreme generality of their useful action: what matters is shared thought and action, not the specific form.
Chapter 77
How does Durkheim hypothetically reconstruct the origin of the totemic cult?
The author argues that men united by blood, interest and tradition assemble and become conscious of their moral unity, then represent it as consubstantiality with a determined animal. They affirm this collectively through material acts, namely movements imitating that animal. Thus imitative rites appear as the first form of the cult, later subordinated to utilitarian ends and supplemented by oblation and communion rites.
Chapter 77
What does Durkheim mean by piacular rites, and what is his first example?
Piacular rites are sad ceremonies whose object is to meet a calamity or to commemorate and deplore it; they are celebrated in a state of uneasiness or sadness. The term piaculum suggests expiation but also covers every misfortune or evil omen requiring such a rite. Mourning offers the first important example, though Durkheim separates its negative interdicts from its positive acts.
Chapter 77
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What is the Urpmilchima among the Arunta?
It is the closing rite that ends mourning, whose effervescence equals or surpasses the opening ceremonies. Ornaments called Chimurilia (men's term) or Aramurilia (women's term) are made from animal bones fixed to locks of the dead person's relatives' hair. Women paint themselves by kinship degree, lament at the tomb, and the mother slashes her head until, exhausted, she is raised up and the pipe-clay rubbed off, ending the mourning.
Chapter 78
What varies and what repeats in Australian funeral rites?
Durkheim says funeral rites—care of the corpse, manner of burial—vary between tribes and, within a tribe, by age, sex, and social importance. But the real mourning ceremonies repeat the same theme everywhere, differing only in detail: silence broken by groans, cutting hair and beard, covering the head with pipe-clay or cinders, and a frenzy of beating, lacerating, and burning oneself.
Chapter 78
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According to Durkheim, is mourning the spontaneous expression of individual grief?
No. Durkheim argues mourning is a duty imposed by the group, not a natural movement of private feelings. He notes that weepers may switch to laughing conversation mid-rite, and that mourners sometimes force tears by artificial means. The obligation is sanctioned by mythical penalties, such as the dead man's soul killing a negligent relative, or by social reprimands.
Chapter 79
How does Durkheim explain why the dead are thought to demand mourning?
He rejects the natives' mythological answer as merely restating the problem. He also doubts that desire for posthumous remembrance could explain such cruel rites, and asks why the soul, loving in life, becomes an evil spirit only temporarily during mourning. Instead, he explains mourning as collective effervescence: the group assembles after a loss and exerts moral pressure on members to harmonize their sentiments.
Chapter 79
What does Durkheim say mourning rites have in common with joyous rites?
Both are made up of collective ceremonies producing effervescence among participants. The sentiments differ—tears and groans versus happy dances—but the arousal is the same. Sorrow, like joy, becomes exalted when leaping from mind to mind, expressing itself in violent movements. Durkheim suggests the explanation of joyous rites applies to sad rites if the terms are transposed.
Chapter 79
How does Durkheim account for blood-revenge and head-hunting in mourning?
He argues that intensified collective sorrow mixes with anger and exasperation, creating a need to break or destroy something. Men beat, burn, or wound themselves or others, producing orgies of torture during mourning. He suggests blood-revenge and head-hunting likely originate here: a victim must be found outside the group, since a stranger is subject to less resistance and not protected by sympathy.
Chapter 79
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According to Durkheim, what is the true origin of mourning rites?
The author argues mourning rites arise from impersonal social forces—the emotions aroused in the group by a member's death—not from ideas of souls or spirits. The primitive, unaware of this psychical mechanism, later invents the soul as an explanation for the obligations he feels. Thus the dreaded soul is a consequence of mourning, not its cause.
Chapter 80
How do mourning ceremonies eventually end the grief that produced them?
The author argues mourning brings individuals together into closer relations and a shared mental state, producing a comforting sensation that compensates the loss. Communicating in sorrow still raises social vitality, and the group feels its strength returning. One stops mourning owing to the mourning itself, and the idea of the soul shifts accordingly.
Chapter 80
What practices do Australians use against drought and other calamities?
The author reports that after insufficient harvest or during drought, natives inflict suffering on themselves—prolonged fasts, vigils, exhausting dances, and physical pain—to appease ill-disposed powers. Examples include tooth extraction among the Kaitish, chest and arm incisions among the Dieri, and tribal assemblies groaning and begging the Mura-mura for rain.
Chapter 80
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Why does Durkheim argue piacular rites cannot be assigned a late origin?
Durkheim argues piacular rites cannot be assigned a late origin because they are found even in Australian societies, and with one exception they are independent of anthropomorphic conceptions. No spirits or gods mediate between the rite and its effect: abstinences and blood effusions stop famines and cure sicknesses directly. Mythical personalities, he concludes, intervened only later, serving to make the established ritual more easily representable, not to cause it.
Chapter 81
How does Durkheim explain the efficacy of piacular rites?
Durkheim explains efficacy through collective forces. When misfortune threatens, the group assembles and a shared uneasiness intensifies through pooling, producing effervescence and violent gestures like self-beating and wounding. This exaltation raises the vital tone, so participants feel reassured as if the danger were driven off. Suffering itself thus comes to be regarded as a means of conjuring evil or curing sickness.
Chapter 81
What does Durkheim say about Robertson Smith's view of expiatory sacrifice?
Durkheim credits Robertson Smith with dating expiatory sacrifices relatively late, holding that blood-shedding was first a simple communion rite strengthening bonds with a god, acquiring a piacular and penal character only when its original meaning was forgotten. Durkheim rejects the late dating, since piacular rites exist in Australian societies, but he praises Smith for pointing out the ambiguity of the notion of sacredness.
Chapter 81
How does Durkheim characterize the two sorts of religious forces?
Durkheim distinguishes beneficent forces—guardians of physical and moral order, dispensers of life and health, such as the totemic principle, mythical ancestors and tutelar gods—from evil and impure powers producing disorder, death and sickness, such as forces behind sorcery, corpses and menstrual blood. The two are radically opposed, yet both are sacred: profane beings must abstain from contact with either, and respect and horror shade into one another.
Chapter 81
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How does Durkheim say the pure and impure relate within the sacred?
The author argues the pure and impure are not two separate classes but two varieties of one class including all sacred things: propitious and unpropitious sacredness. There is no break of continuity between them, and one object may pass from one form to the other without changing its nature. The pure is made from the impure and reciprocally; this possibility of transmutation constitutes the ambiguity of the sacred.
Chapter 82
What example shows communion producing the effects of sacrilege?
Among the Narrinyeri and neighboring tribes, parents preserve an infant's umbilical cord, believed to conceal part of its soul. Two persons who exchange these cords communicate by exchanging souls, yet are forbidden to touch, speak to, or even see one another, as though each were an object of horror to the other. Durkheim cites this as a typical case where the sacred bond unites and separates.
Chapter 82
How does Durkheim explain the transformation of evil powers into benevolent ones?
The author argues evil powers are products of piacular rites symbolizing collective states: society presses members to mourn or inflict suffering, restoring group energy. Benevolent powers arise the same way from collective life. Since both reflect the group's condition, a change in that state changes their character—after mourning ends and the group regains confidence, the deceased's spirit seems to become a benevolent protector.
Chapter 82
What does Durkheim conclude about the unity of rites?
The author argues that though rites must be distinguished, there is no break of continuity between them: they overlap and may replace one another. Oblation, communion, imitative and commemorative rites often fulfill the same function; the negative cult can produce positive effects, and fasts and self-mutilations yield results like communions and offerings. Ascetic and piacular rites share suffering with analogous efficacy.
Chapter 82
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What does Durkheim claim is the objective reality behind religious experience?
The author argues that the reality mythologies represent under many forms, and the universal objective cause of the sensations sui generis making up religious experience, is society. Society develops moral forces and awakens a sentiment of refuge, shield and guardian support attaching the believer to his cult; it raises him outside himself and even made him, since civilization is society's work.
Chapter 83
Why does Durkheim give the cult a preponderating role in religious life?
The author argues the cult is not merely outward signs translating faith but the means by which faith is created and recreated periodically. Believers feel joy, peace and enthusiasm through it, an experimental proof of their beliefs. Society cannot make its influence felt unless in action, and it acts only when individuals assemble and act in common; thus action dominates religious life.
Chapter 83
How does Durkheim treat the believer's claim that religion makes one stronger?
The author takes seriously the believers' objection that religion's function is to make us act and live, not merely think. The believer who communicates with his god feels more force to endure or conquer trials. But Durkheim argues a mere idea cannot confer superior powers; one must place oneself within the object's sphere of action and act, repeating the acts—hence the cult's importance.
Chapter 83
What does Durkheim conclude about the origin of the fundamental categories of thought?
The author argues, as a result of his whole work, that the fundamental categories of thought, and consequently of science, are of religious origin; the same holds for magic and its derived processes. Moral and legal rules were long indistinguishable from ritual prescriptions. Nearly all great social institutions were born in religion, so religion is the concentrated expression of collective life.
Chapter 83
Section 844 cards
How does Durkheim argue religious rites should be understood beyond their manual appearance?
The author argues rites like anointings, washings, and meals look like manual operations or "mystic mechanics," but the material maneuvers are only an external envelope hiding mental operations. Religion does not constrain blind imaginary forces; it reaches individual consciousnesses to give them direction and discipline them. He concludes all religions, even the crudest, are spiritualistic, since their powers are spiritual and their object is the moral life.
Chapter 84
How does Durkheim answer the objection that real society is too flawed to inspire religious sentiment?
The author argues religion is realistic as well as idealistic: there are gods of theft, trickery, lust, war, sickness, and death, and Christianity gives Satan an essential, non-profane place. Religion reflects all aspects of society, even the vulgar and repulsive. If good appears victorious over evil, life over death, it is because reality is not otherwise; were the relation reversed, life would be impossible.
Chapter 84
For Durkheim, what causes the formation of the ideal world behind religion?
The author argues the ideal is not an irreducible innate faculty but a natural product of social life. When a society assembles and concentrates to become conscious of itself, collective effervescence over-excites vital energies and passions; people feel transformed and attribute exceptional powers to things. Society cannot create or recreate itself without creating an ideal, so the ideal society is part of the real one, not outside it.
Chapter 84
What does Durkheim say about conflicts between the ideal and reality in society?
The author argues the ideal society is not outside the real society but part of it, so opposing them as two antagonists materializes abstractions. The conflicts that break out are not between ideal and reality but between two different ideals: yesterday's, backed by tradition, and today's, holding hope for the future. Society is above all the idea it forms of itself, though it hesitates over how to conceive itself.
Chapter 84
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Does Durkheim's theory of religion reduce it to historical materialism?
No. The author argues religion is essentially social but denies this is a restatement of historical materialism. Social life depends on its material foundation, yet collective consciousness is more than an epiphenomenon of its morphological basis. A synthesis sui generis of particular consciousnesses produces a world of sentiments, ideas and images that obey their own laws and can even manifest with no utility.
Chapter 85
How does Durkheim explain the origin of individual cults?
Religious force animating the clan particularizes itself by incarnating in particular consciousnesses, forming secondary sacred beings like the soul, individual totem, or protecting ancestor. These are objects of rites one can celebrate alone, the first form of individual cult. It stays rudimentary while personality is weakly marked, and grows as individuals differentiate. Such forces are only individualized forms of collective forces.
Chapter 85
How does Durkheim account for religious universalism and international gods?
He finds universalism at the summit of the Australian system: Bunjil, Daramulun and Baiame are recognized by several tribes, making their cult international. Neighbouring tribes with similar organization, intermarriage, commerce and shared initiation rites came to see their gods as identical, likely conceiving them in inter-tribal assemblies. Such gods have no extra-social origin; they reflect wider, unbounded groups.
Chapter 85
What does Durkheim say is eternal in religion?
The author argues something eternal survives all particular symbols: no society can endure without periodically reaffirming the collective sentiments and ideas that make its unity and personality. This moral remaking requires reunions and assemblies, ceremonies resembling religious ones in object, results and processes. He compares Christian and Jewish festivals to citizens commemorating a new moral or legal system.
Chapter 85
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How does Durkheim characterize the relationship between scientific and religious thought?
The author argues that religion translates the same realities as science—nature, man, society—into an intelligible language, and that the essential ideas of scientific logic are of religious origin. Science differs by purging accidental elements and adding critical precautions against precipitation, bias, and subjective influences. Still, both pursue the same end: scientific thought is only a more perfect form of religious thought, so religion's speculative role naturally recedes.
Chapter 86
What exactly does science refuse to grant religion, per Durkheim?
The author argues the conflict is limited to one point: religion's speculative function. Science does not deny religion's reality or its right to exist as action and a means of making men live—it cannot create life, only explain it, and so presupposes faith. What science refuses is religion's right to dogmatize about the nature of things and its claimed special competence for knowing man and the world.
Chapter 86
Why does Durkheim think religion will transform rather than disappear?
The author argues religion contains something eternal: the cult and the faith. Men cannot celebrate ceremonies they see no reason for or accept a faith they do not understand, so religion must justify itself through theory founded on the social and natural sciences. But science is fragmentary and slow while life cannot wait, so religions must pass beyond science and complete it prematurely, while still affirming nothing science denies.
Chapter 86
Section 874 cards
How does Durkheim distinguish concepts from sensations and images?
The author argues concepts are relatively immutable and universal, while sensations, perceptions, and images are in perpetual flux and tied to the precise instant and to the individual's organism. Concepts resist change and can be shared; sensations cannot pass from one consciousness to another. Language, being fixed and slow to change, expresses the conceptual system of everyday life.
Chapter 87
Why does Durkheim claim concepts are collective representations?
He argues that because concepts bear the mark of no particular mind and are common to all, they must be the work of the community. Collective representations are more stable than individual ones, and language is the product of collective elaboration. Concepts also contain knowledge surpassing personal experience, corresponding to how society considers its own experience.
Chapter 87
According to the chapter, what makes conceptual thought valuable?
The author argues concepts add to personal experience all the wisdom and science the group has accumulated over centuries. Conceiving something means both grasping its essential elements and locating it within a civilization's organized system of concepts. Since concepts are collective, individuals must assimilate them, but always imperfectly, which explains mutual misunderstanding.
Chapter 87
How does Durkheim explain the origin of logical thought?
He argues logical thought requires a world of stable ideas shared by all intelligences, which is possible only through collective experience. Impersonality and stability are the marks of truth, and impersonal thought first appears as collective thought. He notes it took centuries to emerge, becoming clearly conscious in Greece, and that society's existence supplies the system of representations imposing on individual minds.
Chapter 87
Section 883 cards
How does Durkheim relate scientific faith to religious faith?
The author argues concepts do not get authority solely from objective value; they must harmonize with other collective representations or minds close to them. Science today receives privileged credit because we have faith in science, and this faith does not differ essentially from religious faith. The value attributed to science depends on the collectively formed idea of its nature and role, so science rests upon opinion.
Chapter 88
Why does Durkheim claim conceptual thought is coeval with humanity?
The author argues a man who did not think with concepts would not be a social being; reduced to individual perceptions, he would be indistinguishable from beasts. The contrary thesis arose from defining concepts by non-essential traits, identifying them with general ideas. Conceiving is not generalizing: it relates the variable to the permanent and the individual to the social, so logical thought has always existed.
Chapter 88
Why are the categories social 'in the second degree' for Durkheim?
The author argues the categories not only come from society but express things of a social nature: class was at first indistinct from the concept of the human group, the rhythm of social life underlies time, occupied territory furnished space, and collective force was the prototype of efficient force in causality. They reach all reality because they are pre-eminent concepts, permanent moulds enveloping all others.
Chapter 88
Section 894 cards
According to Durkheim, why can only society furnish the most general concepts?
The author argues that the world expressed by the system of concepts is the world society regards, and only a subject containing all individual subjects can embrace such an object. Since the universe exists only insofar as it is thought, and is completely thought only by society, the concept of totality is the abstract form of the concept of society.
Chapter 89
Why does Durkheim say individuals could not have learned the categories on their own?
The author argues the relations the categories express could only be learned in and through society. Individuals orient themselves in space and time through sensation alone, as animals do; classification, fixed dates, and shared causal relations are unnecessary for purely individual needs. Society, by contrast, requires self-conscious organization, which is itself a classification.
Chapter 89
What does Durkheim claim about the relationship between science and morals/religion?
The author argues there is no antinomy between science and morals or religion, since both forms of human activity come from the same source. He credits Kant with seeing speculative and practical reason as aspects of one faculty directed toward the universal, but says Kant fails to explain why humans must leave their individuality and why impersonal law must incarnate itself in individuals.
Chapter 89
Why does Durkheim say logical thought becomes autonomous from social organization?
The author argues that as international life develops, the collective horizon enlarges and society becomes part of a vaster whole with indefinite frontiers. Things can no longer be contained in the original social moulds, so they are organized by their own principles, and logical organization differentiates itself from social organization. Human thought is a product of history, an ideal limit never fully reached.
Chapter 89
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What dilemma does Durkheim say sociology lets thinkers escape?
Durkheim argues thinkers faced a double alternative: explain humans' superior faculties by reducing reason to the senses or mind to matter, denying their uniqueness; or attach them to a postulated super-experimental reality unverifiable by observation. This difficulty arose because the individual was taken as the finis naturae, with nothing beyond him that science could touch. Recognizing society above the individual offers a new explanation.
Chapter 90
Why does Durkheim claim society has creative power?
The author argues all creation, if not a mystical operation beyond science, is the product of a synthesis. Individual consciousnesses already produce novelties by synthesizing particular conceptions; the vast syntheses of complete consciousnesses that make society are far more efficacious. Society is the most powerful combination of physical and moral forces nature offers, so a higher life disengages itself and transforms its elements.
Chapter 90
How does Durkheim propose testing his sociological explanation of human faculties?
He says it cannot presently be said how far these explanations reach or whether they resolve all problems, and no limit can be marked in advance beyond which they cannot go. What must be done is to try the hypothesis and submit it as methodically as possible to the control of facts. He states this is what he has tried to do in the work.
Chapter 90
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How does Durkheim define the sacred in relation to the profane?
The sacred is the characteristic of all that is religious, but Durkheim argues it is not defined by any exalted position. Rather, it is defined by its absolute distinction from the profane. This sharp separation, not superiority, marks the sacred, and Durkheim holds that society itself creates the sacred.
Chapter 91
How does Durkheim relate religion to science?
Durkheim argues religion is the source of science and philosophy, since speculative functions of religion include logical thought. He treats the so-called conflict of religion with science as a misunderstanding. Science supplants religious speculation but cannot do so completely, and science itself has religious origin and its own authority.
Chapter 91
What is the totemic principle, and how is it related to mana?
The totemic principle, or mana, is the cause of the sacredness of things. It is a force and the source of the clan's moral life, represented materially by the totem and personified in gods of higher religions. Durkheim identifies it with Melanesian mana, Iroquois orenda, and Sioux wakan, and says it was first conceived amid great social effervescence.
Chapter 91
Section 924 cards
How does Durkheim define 'origins' and 'primitive' in this chapter?
Durkheim gives both terms a wholly relative sense. By 'origins' he does not mean an absolute beginning, but the most simple social condition actually known or beyond which we cannot presently go. Similarly, 'primitive' societies are those he calls primitive, though he admits the expression lacks precision; once its meaning is fixed, he finds it not inconvenient.
Chapter 92
How does Durkheim distinguish the category of time from sensations of time?
The group of sensations and images that locate us in time summarizes individual experiences and has value only for the person who lived them. The category of time, by contrast, expresses a time common to the group—a social time, a veritable social institution. Durkheim says it is peculiar to man, since animals have no representations of this sort.
Chapter 92
What position does Durkheim's sociological theory of knowledge occupy between empiricism and apriorism?
Durkheim argues his rationalism is midway between the two. For classical empiricism the categories are purely artificial constructions; for apriorism they are given by nature. For Durkheim they are in a sense a work of art, but an art imitating nature with a perfection capable of increasing unlimitedly.
Chapter 92
What does Durkheim say about the relationship between logical necessity and moral obligation?
Durkheim sees an analogy between logical necessity and moral obligation but not an actual identity. He notes that society today treats criminals differently from those whose intelligence alone is abnormal, showing the authority of logical rules and of moral rules are not the same nature, despite similarities. He calls them two species of the same class.
Chapter 92
Section 934 cards
How does Durkheim distinguish magic from religion in this section?
Durkheim separates magic from religion by their social character: religion is bound to a group (a Church), while magic is individual. He cites Robertson Smith's view that magic is opposed to religion as the individual to the social. Durkheim adds that this distinction does not create a break of continuity, since the frontiers between the two domains are frequently uncertain.
Chapter 93
What does Durkheim say about the profane/sacred opposition and science?
Durkheim argues that conceiving the profane as opposed to the sacred like the irrational to the rational, or the intelligible to the mysterious, is only one form of the opposition. Once science was constituted it took on a profane character, especially in the eyes of Christian religions, which made it seem inapplicable to sacred things.
Chapter 93
How does Durkheim characterize the individual cult relative to the collective cult?
Durkheim states that the individual cult presents itself to the observer as an element of, and something dependent upon, the collective cult. He notes this factual statement does not settle whether public religion develops from a primitive personal religion or is a projection of the collective into individual consciences; that problem is treated later.
Chapter 93
Why does Durkheim replace obligation with a new definition of religious beliefs?
Durkheim says his earlier definition in the Année Sociologique defined religious beliefs by their obligatory character, but that was too formal and neglected the contents of religious representations. Obligation comes from the group imposing beliefs on members, so the definitions largely coincide. He also notes obligation admits infinite degrees and is sometimes hard to perceive.
Chapter 93
Section 944 cards
According to Tylor, what did an observer say about the dreams of southern Guinea peoples?
Tylor cites an observer stating that "all their dreams are construed into visits from the spirits of their deceased friends." Durkheim calls this statement certainly exaggerated, but treats it as further proof of how frequent mystic dreams are among primitives. He also notes Strehlow's etymology of the Arunta word altjirerama, "to dream," composed of altjira ("god") and rama ("see").
Chapter 94
Why does Durkheim reject Andrew Lang's theory deriving the soul from spiritualism?
Lang refused to derive the soul from dreams and instead used spiritualist data such as telepathy and distance-seeing. Durkheim declines to discuss it at length: the theory rests on the hypothesis that spiritualism is a constant fact of observation and distance-seeing a real faculty, which he says is scientifically contested. He adds it is still more contestable that such facts are frequent enough to ground all beliefs about souls and spirits, and that Lang's theory remains open to many objections he will raise against Tylor's.
Chapter 94
What objection does Jevons raise against Tylor's dream theory of the soul?
Jevons accepts with Tylor that the idea of the soul comes from dreams and was then projected into things. But he adds that conceiving nature as animated like men does not explain how nature became the object of a cult. As he puts it, one who believes a bowing tree or leaping flame is a living thing like himself does not therefore believe it supernatural; so far as it is like himself, it, like himself, is not supernatural.
Chapter 94
What does Durkheim say about the view that religion is a code of hygiene?
Durkheim calls this conception insupportable and says it has never been systematically sustained by anyone somewhat informed on the history of religions. He argues initiation practices threaten health, dietetic restrictions mostly concern clean animals, and sacrifices made far from a house do not strengthen it. He concedes some religious precepts have practical utility, but says they are lost among the rest and bring drawbacks; the same belief that orders a corpse removed also requires relatives to anoint themselves with putrefying liquids.
Chapter 94
Section 954 cards
How does Durkheim distinguish a religious myth from a mere fable?
Durkheim admits the line between fables and myths is floating and hard to determine, and that fables were not believed in the same way and so had no religious character. Still, he argues there is at least one characteristic that in a number of cases suffices to differentiate the religious myth: its relation to the cult. He insists this is no reason to make all myths stories.
Chapter 95
What does Durkheim criticize in Max Müller's equation of the unknown with the infinite?
Durkheim calls it a veritable abuse of words. Müller claims sensuous experience implies something unknown that he takes the liberty to call infinite. Durkheim replies that the unknown is not necessarily the infinite, any more than the infinite is necessarily the unknown, and that one would have to prove the perceived part differs in nature from the unperceived part.
Chapter 95
Why does Durkheim reject personal agency as the mark of the sacred?
Durkheim notes that Müller links divinity to agency or to a causality that is not natural and profane. Durkheim objects that representing causes as personal agents does not explain how they acquired a sacred character: a personal agent can be profane, and many religious forces are essentially impersonal. He also notes Müller himself saw little difference between Agni and the physicist's ether.
Chapter 95
What does Durkheim concede about Max Müller's claim that Zeus remained the Supreme Deity's name for the Greeks?
Durkheim says he will not dispute the assertion, though he calls it historically contestable, and adds that in any case this conception of Zeus could never have been more than a glimmer amid all the other religious beliefs of the Greeks. He also notes that in a later work Müller made even the notion of god in general a product of a verbal process.
Chapter 95
Section 964 cards
How does Durkheim say the word 'totem' came to be used so widely?
The author notes that the word's spread is regrettable because even its spelling is uncertain—some write totam, toodaim, dodaim, or ododam—and its meaning is not fixed. According to the first observer of the Ojibway, J. Long, totam designated the protecting genius or individual totem, not the clan totem, though other explorers report the contrary.
Chapter 96
What does Durkheim say about the clan and the gens?
The author states that, generally, the clan is a family group where kinship results solely from a common name; in this sense the gens is a clan. He cites Cicero's definition that gentiles are those who share the same name. But the totemic clan is only a particular sort of this class thus constituted.
Chapter 96
What determines a child's totem in the central Australian tribes Durkheim describes?
It is largely the locality where the mother believes she conceived. Each totem has its centre, and ancestors preferably frequent those centres. Since conception usually occurs near the husband's totemic centre, the child generally follows the father's totem, which explains why most inhabitants of a locality share the same totem.
Chapter 96
How does Durkheim explain the rarity of inanimate totems?
Of 204 kinds of totems collected by Spencer and Gillen from many tribes, 188 are animals or plants. The inanimate ones include the boomerang, cold weather, darkness, fire, lightning, the moon, red ochre, resin, salt water, the evening star, a stone, the sun, water, the whirlwind, and wind and hail-stones.
Chapter 96
Section 973 cards
How does Durkheim explain why each matrimonial class has its own totemic interdiction?
Durkheim, following Frazer, notes that when clans disappeared, totemic interdictions should have remained in both matrimonial classes, yet each class has its own. He suggests differentiation arose through a tendency seen among the Kaiabara, where children take the mother's totem but particularized by a distinctive mark, such as white versus black eagle-hawk.
Chapter 97
What does the Kaiabara example show about totem differentiation?
Among the Kaiabara, a tribe of southern Queensland, children have the totem of their mother but particularized by a distinctive mark: if the mother has the black eagle-hawk, the child has the white eagle-hawk. Durkheim cites Howitt for this and treats it as the beginning of a tendency for totems to differentiate according to matrimonial classes.
Chapter 97
How does Durkheim describe the size of clans in a tribe?
Durkheim notes that a tribe of only a few hundred members frequently has fifty or sixty clans, or even many more. He refers readers to Durkheim and Mauss's work on primitive classification for this point, and elsewhere notes that among the Pueblo Indians of the South-West clans are more numerous, though it may be asked whether such groups are clans or sub-clans.
Chapter 97
Section 984 cards
How do Strehlow and Kempe differ on the meaning of tjurunga?
Strehlow translates tjurunga as "that which is secret and personal," deriving tju from a word for hidden or secret and runga from "my own." Kempe, whom Durkheim calls the greater authority here, renders tju as great, powerful, sacred. Durkheim notes the two are not so different, since what is hidden from the profane is sacred, but he doubts Strehlow's sense of runga, because emu ceremonies belong to the whole clan.
Chapter 98
What happens to a woman who sees a churinga, or a man who shows her one?
According to Spencer and Gillen, both are put to death: the woman who has seen a churinga and the man who showed it to her. This is cited as evidence of the extreme sacredness surrounding the churinga, which is kept hidden from the profane. Durkheim uses the point to illustrate how secrecy and sacredness coincide in the meaning of tjurunga.
Chapter 98
What does Durkheim find hard to reconcile about the ertnatulunga?
Strehlow reports that a murderer who takes refuge near an ertnatulunga is pursued there without pity and put to death, even though animals are protected by the same sanctuary. Durkheim finds this difficult to reconcile with the privilege enjoyed by animals and asks whether the rigor shown to criminals is recent, perhaps due to a weakening of the taboo that originally protected the ertnatulunga.
Chapter 98
Why does the other phratry punish a man who eats too much of his totem?
Durkheim explains that the other phratry has an interest in seeing the rule observed: they believe that when the prohibition is broken, the totemic species may not reproduce abundantly. Since members of the other phratry consume that species regularly, they are the ones affected, which is why they take revenge, for example among the Kaitish by a magic operation expected to kill the offender.
Chapter 98
Section 994 cards
What does Durkheim argue about Van Gennep's definition of totemism?
The author argues against making the mystical man-animal relationship the distinctive characteristic of totemism, as Van Gennep proposes. Durkheim holds this relationship is a mythical representation of deeper facts that can be omitted without destroying totemism's essential traits; close bonds between clan and totemic animal always exist but need not be bonds of blood-relationship, though they are frequently conceived in that form.
Chapter 99
Why does Durkheim doubt Frazer's claim that food and contact taboos are totemic?
Durkheim says Frazer admits too readily, and has imitators, that prohibitions against eating or touching an animal depend on totemic beliefs. Durkheim notes that among the Omaha, many contact interdictions have no direct connection to the clan's totem: in the Eagle sub-clan the taboo is against touching a buffalo's head, and another sub-clan with the same totem forbids touching verdigris or charcoal.
Chapter 99
What is the single Australian case of a sight taboo Durkheim accepts?
According to Strehlow, among the Arunta and Loritja a man with the moon as totem must not look at it very long or he risks dying at an enemy's hand. Durkheim believes this is a unique case, and cautions that astronomical totems were probably not primitive in Australia, so the prohibition may result from complex elaboration—confirmed by the Euahlayi, where looking at the moon is forbidden to all mothers and children regardless of totem.
Chapter 99
How does Durkheim explain the resemblance between creation myths and initiation rites?
Durkheim suggests there is an echo of initiation rites in the mythical theme. Initiation aims to make the young man a complete man and involves actual surgical operations such as circumcision, sub-incision and tooth extraction. The processes that formed the first men would naturally be conceived on the same model, so the myths mirror the rites.
Chapter 99
Section 1004 cards
How do associate totems relate to principal totems among the Arunta?
The author, drawing on Spencer, Gillen and Strehlow, describes associate totems as secondary totems attached to a principal totem. Principal totems are nearly all animals, with rare exceptions, while stars appear only as secondary or associated totems. According to myth, associate totems served as food to the men of the principal totem in fabulous times, or gave shade when they were trees.
Chapter 100
Why does Durkheim reject Thomas's objection about phratry opposition?
Thomas argued that Durkheim's theory of phratry origins cannot explain their opposition. Durkheim replies that the opposition need not be connected to the profane/sacred distinction: the things of one phratry are not profane for the other, since both belong to the same religious system. He cites hostility between phratries, including myths of perpetual war between their totem animals, as evidence.
Chapter 100
How does Durkheim explain tribes where members must eat their class's attributed animals?
Among Queensland tribes such as the Wakelbura, members may eat animals attributed to their class and may eat no others. Durkheim argues this does not make those animals profane: the obligation is imperative, a sign of religious nature expressed as a positive obligation rather than a negative interdiction. He suggests the property-right over one's totem was developed under special circumstances.
Chapter 100
What does Durkheim say about the ambiguity of animals among the Haida?
Citing Swanton, Durkheim notes that among the Haida every animal has two aspects: it is an ordinary animal to be hunted and eaten, and also a supernatural being in animal form upon which men depend. Mythical beings corresponding to cosmic phenomena share the same ambiguity. Durkheim uses this to illustrate the lack of distinction between sacred and profane in primitive classification.
Chapter 100
Section 1013 cards
Why does Durkheim reject calling the Arunta wild cat a tribal totem?
Among the Arunta the wild cat is the totem of one clan but is forbidden to the whole tribe, and even other clans may eat it only very moderately. Durkheim argues it would be an abuse to call this a tribal totem, since a prohibition on free consumption does not make an animal a totem; other causes can produce an interdiction. Tribal religious unity is real, he says, but is expressed through other symbols.
Chapter 101
What does Durkheim say about Mathews's claim that individual totems are hereditary?
Mathews says each person claims an animal, plant or inanimate object as a personal totem inherited from the mother. Durkheim objects that if all children in a family had their mother's personal totem, neither they nor she would really have personal totems. He suggests Mathews means each person chooses from things attributed to the mother's clan, so birth determines the personal totem only to a certain extent.
Chapter 101
What does Durkheim say about the transmission of personal totems from father to son?
Durkheim notes that such transmission seems to occur only when the father is a shaman or magician, as among the Thompson Indians and Wiradjuri. In the essential rite described by Hill Tout, the magician blows upon the animal skin; without this correctly done, transmission would not take place. Durkheim explains that breath is the soul, so both parties exhale part of their souls, which fuse and partake of the animal's nature.
Chapter 101
Section 1024 cards
How does Durkheim critique Wundt's theory that reptiles were the first totems?
Durkheim argues Wundt's hypothesis that decomposing corpses suggested souls incarnate in worms and reptiles 'does not have even the shadow of a proof.' Wundt asserts reptiles are more common totems but cites no facts; Durkheim notes totem lists from Australia and America show no species predominating, totems vary with local flora and fauna, and a narrow original circle of totems could not satisfy the rule that two clans must have different totems.
Chapter 102
What problem does Frazer raise about depositing one's soul in a totem animal?
Frazer asks what happens if a man deposits his soul in a hare and his brother John, of another clan, shoots, roasts and eats it. Frazer claims Central Australian first-game ceremonies return souls to the totem clan, but Durkheim calls this interpretation wholly arbitrary and asks what becomes of the soul during the long days before the annual ceremony.
Chapter 102
What does Durkheim say about the relationship between personal totems and clan totems?
Durkheim notes personal totems exist alongside collective clan totems, as among the Euahlayi and in Howitt's cases, and that only certain persons such as shamans can transmit a personal totem. He also observes that among the Wartwurt a man asked his totem names his personal one first, then his clan's, showing personal totemism is distinct but connected.
Chapter 102
How does Durkheim criticize Tylor's theory linking totemism to ancestor worship?
Tylor treats the clan as only an enlarged family, so claims about one group apply to the other, and sees animal worship as a bridge from ancestor cult to animal cult. Durkheim calls this conception exceedingly contestable, since only the clan presupposes a totem, which has its whole meaning only in and through the clan.
Chapter 102
Section 1034 cards
How does Durkheim characterize the churinga concept among the Arunta compared to mana?
Durkheim notes that churinga, or tjurunga in Strehlow's spelling, designates all that is secret or sacred, applied both to an object and to the quality it possesses, and is sometimes used for religious power generally. Yet he argues the notion of churinga lacks the clarity and precision of mana in Melanesia or wakan among the Sioux.
Chapter 103
What does Durkheim say about Frazer's view of totemism and religion?
Durkheim notes that Frazer considers totemism only a system of magic, yet Frazer recognizes that the first germs of a real religion are sometimes found in it. Durkheim also cites Frazer's discussion of how religion developed out of magic in The Golden Bough.
Chapter 103
What does Durkheim argue about the prohibitions on eating the totemic animal?
Durkheim argues that all the explanations he surveys imply the prohibitions against eating the totemic animal were not primitive, but were even preceded by a contrary prescription. This challenges views treating the dietary taboo as original to totemism.
Chapter 103
How does Durkheim describe the wakan concept among the Sioux?
Durkheim cites Dorsey and Fletcher showing wakan is impersonal; Fletcher notes some anthropomorphism attaches to its manifestations, so men address trees or rocks as personal beings, but the wakan itself is not personified. Durkheim also notes the word wakan is identified with wakanda and wakanta, which have a more precise signification.
Chapter 103
Section 1044 cards
In note 681, how does Durkheim clarify his use of 'constraint' in defining social facts?
The author argues constraint is only the outward sign by which social facts are most easily recognized and distinguished from individual psychology. He insists he never treated physical constraint as the essence of social life; it is the material expression of an interior, ideal fact: moral authority. Sociology's task is to find the different sorts of moral authority behind external constraint and their causes.
Chapter 104
According to note 707, what is the relationship between totemic kinship and sacredness?
The author argues fraternity is the logical consequence of totemism rather than its basis. Men did not treat totemic animals as sacred because they regarded them as kindred; instead they imagined the kinship to explain the beliefs and rites already directed at the animal. The animal was considered a relative because it was a sacred being like man, not sacred because it was a relative.
Chapter 104
How does Durkheim criticize Ratzel's geographical materialism in note 716?
The author argues such theories wrongly derive all social life from its material foundation, whether economic or territorial. He compares this to Maudsley's error in individual psychology, which reduced psychical life to an epiphenomenon of the physiological basis. Durkheim counters that ideas are realities and forces, and collective representations are even more powerful and active than individual ones.
Chapter 104
In note 669, how does Durkheim interpret Frazer's denial of totemism's religious character?
The author argues Frazer recognizes the fundamental fact that totemic forces are impersonal, like those the magician employs, which is why Frazer makes totemism a sort of magic. But Frazer draws different conclusions because he recognizes religion only where mythical personalities exist. Durkheim thus credits Frazer with the underlying insight while rejecting his definition of religion.
Chapter 104
Section 1054 cards
How does Durkheim explain why Gnanji women are said to have no souls?
The author argues that because Gnanji filiation changed from uterine to paternal, a mother no longer transmits her totem to her child, so she has no descendants to perpetuate her. Since souls reincarnate only through descendants, the Gnanji concluded either women have no souls or are destroyed after death; they chose the former, while some Queensland peoples chose the latter.
Chapter 105
According to Durkheim, what mental state does he compare to Lévy-Bruhl's law of participation?
Durkheim says the mental state he studies in that paragraph is identical to what Lévy-Bruhl calls the law of participation in Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures. He notes his pages were written when that work appeared and are published unchanged, adding only explanations of how his understanding of the facts differs from Lévy-Bruhl's.
Chapter 105
What does Durkheim say about the contagiousness of religious forces?
Durkheim states that the extreme contagiousness of religious forces contributed much to this fusion: they seize upon every object within reach, whatever it may be. Thus a single religious force may animate the most diverse things, which thereby become closely connected and classified within a single group. He promises to return to this contagiousness when showing it comes from the social origins of sacredness.
Chapter 105
Why does Durkheim doubt reports that souls have nothing corporeal?
Durkheim notes that some testimony collected by Eylmann says souls are ohne Fleisch und Blut, but he says these radical negations leave him sceptical. He argues that the fact offerings are not made to the souls of the dead does not imply, as Roth thinks, that they do not eat. Elsewhere he notes souls may emit odours.
Chapter 105
Section 1064 cards
According to Strehlow, what does the Arunta term ratapa mean?
Strehlow translates ratapa as Kinderkeime, or "children-germs": spirit-children that emanate from rocks, trees, or churinga and enter women to fertilize them. Durkheim notes that Spencer and Gillen also describe this belief, citing Erathipa rocks from which spirit children disengage to enter women's bodies, though they say Erathipa is rarely used for "child" in ordinary conversation.
Chapter 106
How does a ratapa acquire a matrimonial class, according to Durkheim's note?
Durkheim states that the ratapa can incarnate itself only in the body of a woman belonging to the same matrimonial class as the mother of the mythical ancestor. He uses this to dispute Strehlow's claim that, except in one case, the myths do not assign determined matrimonial classes to Alcheringa ancestors, arguing Strehlow's own conception theory proves the contrary.
Chapter 106
What is the real difference between Strehlow and Spencer and Gillen on the soul after death?
Durkheim says the only real difference concerns what happens after death: for Spencer and Gillen the individual soul returns to the nanja tree and is again confounded with the ancestor's soul, while for Strehlow it goes to the isle of the dead and is finally annihilated. In neither myth does it survive individually. Durkheim declines to seek the cause of this divergence.
Chapter 106
How does Durkheim reconcile Spencer and Gillen's account with Strehlow's on incarnation?
Durkheim argues the two versions nearly coincide because Spencer and Gillen's statement that the ancestral soul is incarnated in the woman is not to be taken literally: only an emanation fertilizes the mother, while a soul equal or superior in power continues to live in the nanja tree or rock. He also notes that churinga as soul-residence and churinga as soul are ultimately identical interpretations.
Chapter 106
Section 1074 cards
How does Durkheim answer the objection that the soul is multiple while personality is one?
The author argues that the unity of the person is itself made up of parts and can divide and decompose; the notion of personality does not vanish because it is no longer treated as a metaphysical, indivisible atom. Popular conceptions of the soul, he says, show that men have always felt the human personality lacks the absolute unity certain metaphysicians attribute to it.
Chapter 107
What role does Durkheim assign to the individual factor in personality?
Durkheim does not deny the individual factor's importance. He argues that if the essential element of personality is the social part of us, social life still requires distinct individuals associated together, and it is richer the more numerous and different they are. Thus the individual factor is a condition of the impersonal factor, and society is itself an important source of individual differences.
Chapter 107
According to Durkheim, how did the individual totem probably replace the protecting ancestor?
The author argues the individual totem began as a complimentary role: those seeking powers beyond ordinary protection looked for another assistant, so among the Euahlayi only magicians have or can procure individual totems. When collective totemism declined and the protecting ancestor dimmed, men used means analogous to those of magicians to discover a second soul charged with watching over the first.
Chapter 107
How do Spencer and Gillen and Strehlow differ on the Arunta Oruncha?
Spencer and Gillen describe the Oruncha as malicious rather than evil and say the Arunta know no necessarily evil spirits; Strehlow's Erintja, evidently the equivalent word, have doing evil as their regular business. Durkheim suggests Spencer and Gillen touched up the Oruncha figures a little, since the myths present them as originally ogres.
Chapter 107
Section 1082 cards
How are the great gods' family compositions described, and what varies?
The chapter notes the great gods have families, citing Bunjil's and Baiame's compositions and Nurunderi's. Durkheim stresses there are all sorts of variations in how these families are conceived: the personage who is a brother in one place is a son in another, and the number and names of the wives vary with the locality.
Chapter 108
What distinction does Durkheim draw between religious and magic interdictions?
Durkheim says there is no radical break of continuity between religious and magic interdictions; some folk-lore interdicts are hard to classify as either. Still, he holds their distinction is necessary, because magic interdicts cannot be understood except as a function of the religious ones. He also divides interdictions into those between sacred and profane and those between pure and impure sacred.
Chapter 108
Section 1094 cards
According to Durkheim, how does the religious interdict become a property right?
The author argues that since each man contains a sacred principle, the soul, individuals can use interdicts to withdraw things from common use. Roth's example: a man who urinates near his left belongings makes them tami (taboo), ensuring they stay intact. This power is greatest with chiefs and old men, who use it to monopolize things, so the religious interdict becomes a right of property and an administrative rule.
Chapter 109
Why does Durkheim say initiation rites sometimes resemble hazing?
The author argues hazing arises whenever two groups of unequal moral and social standing come into intimate contact: the superior group resists newcomers and reacts with more or less grave cruelties, also shaping them for their new existence. Since the old men are superior in religious and moral dignity yet must assimilate the young men, all conditions for hazing are present, so initiation takes that form.
Chapter 109
What does Durkheim say about the act of eating sacred food?
The author argues that eating is in itself so profane that eating a sacred food always constitutes a profanation. It may be permitted or even ordered, but only on condition that rites attenuating or expiating it precede or accompany it. The existence of these rites shows that, by itself, the sacred thing should not be eaten.
Chapter 109
Why does Durkheim set aside sexual contact interdictions?
Durkheim notes there are religious periods when a man cannot have commerce with a woman, but says it is hard to determine whether this is because the woman is profane or because the sexual act is dreaded. He declines to decide the question in passing, setting it aside along with all conjugal and sexual rites, since it is too closely connected with the problems of marriage and the family.
Chapter 109
Section 1104 cards
What does Durkheim say about Howitt's term for rites that 'saturate the initiate with religiousness'?
Durkheim notes that Howitt calls the object of these positive rites 'magic powers' rather than religiousness, but argues that for most ethnologists this word merely signifies religious virtues of an impersonal nature. He thus treats Howitt's terminology as compatible with a religious interpretation of the rites.
Chapter 110
How does Durkheim respond to Crawley's theory that taboo contagion comes from misinterpreting contagion phenomena?
Durkheim calls Crawley's theory arbitrary and endorses Jevons, who says the contagious character of sacredness is affirmed a priori, not based on faith in badly interpreted experiences. Durkheim also notes that magic forces share this contagiousness, but because magic was conceived on the model of religious forces, not because they correspond to objectified social sentiments.
Chapter 110
What two features does Durkheim say Strehlow makes evident to distinguish Intichiuma from initiation ceremonies?
Durkheim reports that Strehlow distinguishes them by two traits: the Intichiuma always occurs at a sacred spot tied to an ancestor's memory, while initiation ceremonies may be held anywhere; and blood oblations are special to the Intichiuma, showing they are central to its ritual. Durkheim nonetheless finds Strehlow's descriptions mix facts from both.
Chapter 110
Why does Durkheim think the natives' ignorance of why they ritually consume the totem does not disprove its function?
Durkheim argues that ritual consumption is required, so it must be thought useful or necessary, and like every communion it can only serve to confer needed virtues on the communicant. That some natives have forgotten this function does not make it unreal, since worshippers are generally ignorant of the real reasons for their practices.
Chapter 110
Section 1114 cards
What does Durkheim question about Smith's classification of blood and hair offerings?
Durkheim asks whether the effusions of blood and offerings of hair that Smith treats as acts of communion are not really oblations. He notes expiatory rites are almost exclusively oblations and are communions only secondarily, suggesting Smith's category may be too broad.
Chapter 111
How do Spencer and Gillen's natives interpret thunder in relation to the Wollunqua?
The same noise of thunder is read inconsistently: sometimes as a sign the Wollunqua is satisfied and will send rain, sometimes as grumbling discontent. Durkheim uses this to show native ideas about the rite's rain purpose are vague, and that rain is not the ceremony's immediate object.
Chapter 111
Why does Durkheim doubt Spencer and Gillen's explanation of destroying the hillock?
They claim the destruction was meant to frighten the Wollunqua and magically constrain it. Durkheim objects: the Wollunqua itself demanded removal of the debris, so the act obeyed rather than coerced it. He suggests it fits a general Warramunga rule that cult instruments are destroyed after each ceremony.
Chapter 111
What does Durkheim conclude about the relation between religion and magic?
He denies religion ever existed without magic, and doubts the two correspond to distinct historical phases. Instead, as religion took form, some of its principles extended to non-religious relations, supplementing it with developed magic. Durkheim claims only a relation of definite derivation between the two systems.
Chapter 111
Section 1124 cards
Why does Durkheim say initiation rites were never studied as a ritual entity?
The author argues initiation is not a single ritual but a conglomeration of rites of different sorts: interdictions, ascetic rites, and representative ceremonies indistinguishable from those at the Intichiuma. He therefore dismembered the composite system, treating each rite separately and classifying it with similar rites. He notes initiation also seeded a religion tending to surpass totemism, but his book stops at elementary beliefs and practices.
Chapter 112
How does Durkheim explain sexual licence and exogamy violations during ceremonies?
The author argues these excesses likely have no precise ritual meaning; they are a mechanical consequence of the super-excitation provoked by the ceremony, examples of rites with no definite object that are mere discharges of energy. The native assigns them no definite end either, saying only that without these licences the rite will not produce its effects and the ceremony will fail.
Chapter 112
Why does Durkheim say prolonged funeral ceremonies are necessary?
The author argues funeral ceremonies are often very long, with many operations at intervals over months, so they prolong and support the moral disturbance caused by the death. A death marks a grave change of condition with extended, enduring effects on the group, and it takes a long time to neutralize these effects. He cites Hertz on the collective representation of death.
Chapter 112
What does Durkheim say about the sincerity of mourning?
The author notes a disagreement among observers: Dawson says the mourning is sincere, but Eylmann assures us he never knew a single case where a wound from sorrow was really felt. Durkheim presents both reports without settling the question, using them within his broader analysis of mourning rites and the collective disturbance produced by death.
Chapter 112
Section 1134 cards
How does Durkheim respond to Smith's view of the expiatory victim's purity?
Durkheim calls Smith's account inadmissible: Smith held the victim was holy rather than impure, chosen to restore kinship with the god, and only later misread as impure. Durkheim argues so universal a belief cannot stem from mere misinterpretation, and that the victim was charged with the impurity of sin, since pure-impure transformations appear even in the most inferior societies.
Chapter 113
What distinction does Durkheim draw between universality and generality of concepts?
Durkheim insists universality must not be confused with generality. Universality is a concept's property of being communicable to a number of minds, in principle to all minds, and is wholly independent of its extension. A concept applying to only one object, with minimal extension, can still be the same for everybody, as with the concept of a deity.
Chapter 113
What does Durkheim say about economic activity's relation to religion?
Durkheim notes economic activity is the one form of social activity not yet expressly attached to religion. Processes derived from magic may have an indirectly religious origin, and economic value is a sort of power or efficacy with religious origins; richness can confer mana. He concludes economic and religious value are connected, but the nature of these connections remains unstudied.
Chapter 113
How does Durkheim distinguish a habit from a social rule or standard?
Against the objection that repetition alone crystallizes ways of thinking into habits, Durkheim replies that a habit is only a tendency to repeat an act or idea automatically when the same circumstances recur. It does not imply an exemplary type proposed or imposed on mind or will. Only when such a type, a rule or standard, is established can social action be presumed.
Chapter 113
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Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #41360 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-26. Cards reviewed 2026-10-26.
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