Table Of ContentThe Elementary Forms
of Relisious Life
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41 I
The Elementary Forms of
PELIGIOUS JJFE
The Elementary Forms of
EMILE DÜRKHEIM
Translated and with an Introduction by
Karen E. Fields
I
THE FREE PRESS
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY TOKYO SINGAPORE
Translation and Introduction copyright © 1995 by Karen E. Fields
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Pub
lisher.
The Free Press
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Printed in the United States of America
printing number
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 89 10
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dürkheim, Emile, 1858-1917.
[Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. English]
The elementary forms of religious life/ Emile Dürkheim;
translated and with an introduction by Karen E. Fields,
p. cm.
Translation of: Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-02-907936-5 (hbk.).—ISBN 0-02-907937-3 (pbk.)
II. Title.
GN470.D813 1995
306.6—dc20 94-41128
CIP
This book was originally published as Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse: Le système
totémique en Australie, Paris, F. Alcan, 1912.
The endpaper art in this volume is based on a map that appeared in the French edition.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments xiii
Abbreviations xv
Translator's Introduction: Religion as an Eminendy Social Thing xvii
INTRODUCTION
Subject of the Study:
Religious Sociology and the Theory of Knowledge 1
I. • Main subject of the book: analysis of the simplest known religion, to
determine the elementary forms of religious life. • Why they are easier to
arrive at and explain through primitive religions. 1
II. • Secondary subject: origin of the fundamental notions or categories of
thought. • Reasons for believing their origin to be religious and conse
quently social. • How a means of regenerating the theory of knowledge can
be seen from this point of view. 8
BOOK ONE: PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS
Chapter One: Definition of Religious Phenomena
and of Religion 21
The usefulness of a preliminary definition of religion; method to be followed
in arriving at that definition. • Why the usual definitions should be examined
first. 21
I. • Religion defined by the supernatural and the mysterious. • Criticism.
The idea of mystery was not present at the beginning. 22
II. • Religion defined in relation to the idea of God or a spiritual being.
Religions without gods. • Rites in deistic religions that imply no idea of de
ity. 27
III. • Search for a positive definition. • Distinction between beliefs and rites.
Definition of beliefs. • First characteristic: bipartite division of things into
sacred and profane. • Distinguishing traits of that division. • Definition of
rites in relation to beliefs. • Definition of religion. 33
111
IV Contents
IV • Necessity of another characteristic to distinguish magic from religion. •
The idea of Church. • Do individual religions exclude the idea of Church?
39
Chapter Two: The Leading Conceptions of
the Elementary Religion: Animism 45
Distinction between animism and naturism
I. • The three theses of animism: (1) genesis of the idea of soul; (2) formation
of the idea of spirit; (3) transformation of the cult of spirits into the cult of
nature. 45v
II. • Criticism of the first thesis: Distinction between the ideas of soul and of
double. • Dreams do not account for the idea of soul. 52
III. • Criticism of the second thesis. Death does not explain the transforma
tion of the soul into a spirit. • The cult of the souls of the dead is not prim
itive. 59
IV. • Criticism of the third thesis. The anthropomorphic instinct. Spencer's
criticism of it; reservations on this subject. Examination of the facts by which
the existence of that instinct is said to be proved. • Difference between the
soul and the spirits of nature. Religious anthropomorphism is not primitive.
61
V. • Conclusion: Animism reduces religion to nothing more than a system of
hallucinations. 65
Chapter Three: The Leading Conceptions of the
Elementary Religion (Continuation): Naturism 68
Review of the theory 68
I. • Exposition of naturism according to Max Muller. 70
II. • If the object of religion is to express natural forces, then how it could
have survived is hard to see, for it expresses them mistakenly. The alleged dis
tinction between religion and mythology. 76
III. • Naturism does not explain the division of things into sacred and pro
fane. 81
Contents v
Chapter Four: Totemism as Elementary Religion:
Review of the Question. Method of Treating It 84
I. • Brief history of the question of totemism. 85
II. • Methodological reasons for which the study will be based mainly on
Australian totemism. • Concerning the place to be given to American ex
amples. 90
BOOK TWO: THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS
Chapter One: The Principal Totemic Beliefs:
The Totem as Name and as Emblem 99
I. • Definition of the clan. • The totem as name of the clan. • Nature of the
things that serve as totems. • Ways in which the totem is acquired. • The
totems of phratries and of marriage classes.
II. • The totem as emblem. • Totemic designs engraved or sculpted on ob
jects, and tattooed or painted on bodies.
III. • Sacredness of the totemic emblem. • The churingas. • The nurtunja. •
The waninga. • Conventional nature of totemic emblems.
Chapter Two: The Principal Totemic Beliefs (Continued):
The Totemic Animal and Man 127
I. • Sacredness of the totemic animals. • Prohibition against eating and killing
them and against picking totemic plants. • Various mitigations of those pro
hibitions. • Prohibitions of contact. • The sacredness of the animal is less pro
nounced than that of the emblem.
II. • Man. • His kinship with the totemic plant or animal. • Various myths ex
plaining that kinship. • The sacredness of the man is more apparent in certain
parts of the body: the blood, the hair, etc. • How this quality varies with sex
and age. • Totemism is neither animal nor plant worship.
Chapter Three: The Principal Totemic Beliefs (Continued):
The Cosmological System of Totemism and the Notion of Kind 141
I. • Classifications of things by clan, phratry, and class. 141
VI Contents
II. • Origin of the idea of genus: The first classifications of things take their
schemes from society. • Differences between the feeling of resemblance and
the idea of genus. • Why that idea is of social origin. 145
III. • Religious meaning of these classifications: All things classified within a
clan participate in the nature of the totem and in its sacredness. The cosmo-
logical system of totemism. • Totemism as tribal religion. 149
Chapter Four: The Principal Totemic Beliefs (End):
The Individual Totem and the Sexual Totem 158
I. • The individual totem as first name; its sacredness. • The individual totem
as personal emblem. • Bonds between man and his individual totem. • Links
with the collective totem. 158
II. • Totems of sexual groups. • Resemblances and differences between col
lective and individual totems. • Their tribal character. 166
Chapter Five: Origins of These Beliefs
Critical Examination of the Theories 169
I. • Theories that derive totemism from an earlier religion: from the ancestor
cult (Wilken and Tylor); from the cult of nature (Jevons). • Criticism of these
theories. 170
II. • Theories that derive collective totemism from individual totemism. •
Origins ascribed by these theories to the individual totem (Frazer, Boas, Hill
Tout) • Improbability of these hypotheses. • Arguments for the priority of
the collective totem. 174
III. • Recent theory of Frazer: conceptional and local totemism. • The ques
tion begging on which it rests. • The religious character of the totem is de
nied. • Local totemism is not primitive. 182
IV. • Theory of Lang: the totem is merely a name. • Difficulties in explain
ing the religious character of totemic practices from this point of view. 186
V • All these theories explain totemism only by postulating earlier religious
notions. 188
Contents vn
Chapter Six: Origins of These Beliefs (Continued):
The Notion qfTotemic Principle, or Mana, and the Idea of Force 190
I. • The notion of force or totemic principle. • Its ubiquity. • Its simultane
ously physical and moral character. 190
II. • Similar conceptions in other lower societies. • Gods in Samoa. • Wakan
of the Sioux, orenda of the Iroquois, mana in Melanesia. • Relationships of
these notions with totemism. • Arunkulta of the Arunta. 193
III. • The logical priority of the notion of impersonal force over the various
mythical personalities. • Recent theories that tend to accept this priority. 201
IV. • The notion of religious force is the prototype of the notion of force in
general. 205
Chapter Seven: Origins of These Beliefs (Conclusion):
Origin of the Notion of Totemic Principle, or Mana 207
I. • The totemic principle is the clan, but the clan thought of in tangible
form. 207
II. • General reasons society is capable of arousing the sensation of the sacred
and the divine. • Society as an imperative moral power; the notion of moral
authority. • Society as a force that raises the individual above himself. • Facts
proving that society creates the sacred. 208
III. • Reasons peculiar to the Australian societies. • The two phases through
which the life of these societies alternately passes: dispersal and concentra
tion. • Great collective effervescence during the periods of concentration.
Examples. • How the religious idea is born from that effervescence. Why the
collective force was conceived of in totemic forms: The totem is the emblem
of the clan. • Explanation of the principal totemic beliefs. 216
IV. • Religion is not a product of fear. • It expresses something real. • Its fun
damental idealism. • That idealism is a general trait of collective mentality. •
Why religious forces are external to their substrates. • On the principle the
part equals the whole. 225
V. • Origin of the notion of emblem: use of emblems, a necessary condition
of collective representations. • Why the clan has taken its emblems from the
animal and plant kingdoms. 231
Vlll Contents
VI. • On the tendency of the primitive to merge realms and classes that we
distinguish. • Origins of those fusions. • How they paved the way for scien
tific explanations. • They do not preclude the tendency to create distinctions
and oppositions. 236
Chapter Eight: The Notion of Soul
I. • Analysis of the notion of soul in the Australian societies. 242
II. • Genesis of that notion. • The doctrine of reincarnation according to
Spencer and Gillen: It implies that the soul is a portion of the totemic prin
ciple. • Examination of the facts reported by Strehlow; they confirm the
totemic nature of the soul. 249
III. • Generality of the notion of reincarnation. • Evidence to support the
origin proposed. 259
IV. • The antithesis between soul and body: what is objective about it. Rela
tionships between the individual soul and the collective soul. • The notion of
soul is not chronologically after that of mana. 265
V • Hypothesis to explain the belief in life after death. 270
VI. • The idea of soul and the idea of person; impersonal elements of per
sonality. 272
Chapter Nine: The Notion of Spirits and Gods 276
I. • Difference between soul and spirit. • The souls of the mythical ancestors
are spirits with set functions. • Relations between the ancestral spirit, the in
dividual soul, and the individual totem. • Explanation of the last. • Its socio
logical significance. 276
II. • Spirits and magic. 284
III. • Civilizing heroes. 286
IV. • High gods. • Their origin. • Their relationship with the totemic system
as a whole. • Their tribal and international character. 288
V. • Unity of the totemic system. 298
