The Elementary Forms of the Religious LifeDurkheim, Émile
Religion
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Durkheim, Émile
Cults; Religion; Religion -- Philosophy; Rites and ceremonies; Totemism
Against the hypothesis of Hill Tout, Miss Fletcher, Boas and Frazer
there is such an array of decisive facts that one is surprised that it
has been so readily and so generally accepted.
In the first place, we know that a man frequently has the greatest
interest not only in respecting, but also in making his companions
respect the species serving him as personal totem; his own life is
connected with it. Then if collective totemism were only a generalized
form of individual totemism, it too should repose upon this same
principle. Not only should the men of a clan abstain from killing and
eating their totem-animal themselves, but they should also do all in
their power to force this same abstention upon others. But as a matter
of fact, far from imposing such a renunciation upon the whole tribe,
each clan, by rites which we shall describe below, takes care that the
plant or animal whose name it bears shall increase and prosper, so as
to assure an abundant supply of food for the other clans. So we must at
least admit that in becoming collective, individual totemism was
transformed profoundly, and we must therefore account for this
transformation.
In the second place, how is it possible to explain, from this point of
view, the fact that except where totemism is in full decay, two clans of
a single tribe always have different totems? It seems that nothing
prevents two or several members of a single tribe, even when there is no
kinship between them, from choosing their personal totem in the same
animal species and passing it on to their descendants. Does it not
happen to-day that two distinct families have the same name? The
carefully regulated way in which the totems and sub-totems are divided
up, first between the two phratries and then among the various clans of
the phratry, obviously presupposes a social agreement and a collective
organization. This is as much as to say that totemism is something more
than an individual practice spontaneously generalized.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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