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
It is from this original type that all the other forms of totemism are
derived. "When several women had, one after the other, felt the first
premonitions of maternity at the same spot and under the same
circumstances, the place would come to be regarded as haunted by spirits
of a peculiar sort; and so the whole country might in time be dotted
over with totem centres and distributed into totem districts."[595] This
is how the local totemism of the Arunta originated. In order that the
totems may subsequently be detached from their territorial base, it is
sufficient to think that the ancestral souls, instead of remaining
immutably fixed to a determined spot, are able to move freely over the
surface of the territory and that in their voyages they follow the men
and women of the same totem as themselves. In this way, a woman may be
impregnated by her own totem or that of her husband, though residing in
a different totemic district. According to whether it is believed that
it is the ancestor of the husband or of the wife who thus follow the
family about, seeking occasions to reincarnate themselves, the totem of
the child will be that of his father or mother. In fact, it is in just
this way that the Guanji and Umbaia on the one hand, and the Urabunna on
the other, explain their systems of filiation.
But this theory, like that of Tylor, rests upon a begging of the
question. If he is to imagine that human souls are the souls of animals
or plants, one must believe beforehand that men take either from the
animal or vegetable world whatever is most essential in them. Now this
belief is one of those at the foundation of totemism. To state it as
something evident is therefore to take for granted that which is to be
explained.
Moreover, from this point of view, the religious character of the totem
is entirely inexplicable, for the vague belief in an obscure kinship
between the man and the animal is not enough to found a cult. This
confusion of distinct kingdoms could never result in dividing the world
into sacred and profane. It is true that, being consistent with himself,
Frazer refuses to admit that totemism is a religion, under the pretext
that he finds in it neither spiritual beings, nor prayers, nor
invocations, nor offerings, etc. According to him, it is only a system
of magic, by which he means a sort of crude and erroneous science, a
first effort to discover the laws of things.[596] But we know how
inexact this conception, both of magic and of religion, is. We have a
religion as soon as the sacred is distinguished from the profane, and we
have seen that totemism is a vast system of sacred things. If we are to
explain it, we must therefore show how it happened that these things
were stamped with this character.[597] But he does not even raise this
problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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