primitive men, but one can hardy rise from the record of these ancient
observances without being haunted by the judgement of the Roman poet:
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,
and feeling with him that the lightening of this cloud, the taming of
this blind dragon, must rank among the very greatest services that
Hellenism wrought for mankind.
FOOTNOTES:
[6:1] Professor Émile Durkheim in his famous analysis of the religious
emotions argues that when a man feels the belief and the command as
something coming from without, superior, authoritative, of infinite
import, it is because religion is the work of the tribe and, as such,
superior to the individual. The voice of God is the imagined voice of
the whole tribe, heard or imagined by him who is going to break its
laws. I have some difficulty about the psychology implied in this
doctrine: surely the apparent externality of the religious command seems
to belong to a fairly common type of experience, in which the
personality is divided, so that first one part of it and then another
emerges into consciousness. If you forget an engagement, sometimes
your peace is disturbed for quite a long time by a vague external
annoyance or condemnation, which at last grows to be a distinct
judgement--'Heavens! I ought to be at the Committee on So-and-so.' But
apart from this criticism, there is obviously much historical truth in
Professor Durkheim's theory, and it is not so different as it seems at
first sight from the ordinary beliefs of religious men. The tribe to
primitive man is not a mere group of human beings. It is his whole
world. The savage who is breaking the laws of his tribe has all his
world--totems, tabus, earth, sky and all--against him. He cannot be at
peace with God.
The position of the hero or martyr who defies his tribe for the sake of
what he thinks the truth or the right can easily be thought out on these
lines. He defies this false temporary Cosmos in loyalty to the true and
permanent Cosmos.
See Durkheim, 'Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse', in
_Travaux de l'Année Sociologique_, 1912; or G. Davy, 'La Sociologie de
M. Durkheim', in _Rev. Philosophique_, xxxvi, pp. 42-71 and 160-85.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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