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 the same thing with space. As Hamelin has shown,[7] space is not
the vague and indetermined medium which Kant imagined; if purely and
absolutely homogeneous, it would be of no use, and could not be grasped
by the mind. Spatial representation consists essentially in a primary
co-ordination of the data of sensuous experience. But this co-ordination
would be impossible if the parts of space were qualitatively equivalent
and if they were really interchangeable. To dispose things spatially
there must be a possibility of placing them differently, of putting some
at the right, others at the left, these above, those below, at the north
of or at the south of, east or west of, etc., etc., just as to dispose
states of consciousness temporally there must be a possibility of
localizing them at determined dates. That is to say that space could not
be what it is if it were not, like time, divided and differentiated. But
whence come these divisions which are so essential? By themselves, there
are neither right nor left, up nor down, north nor south, etc. All these
distinctions evidently come from the fact that different sympathetic
values have been attributed to various regions. Since all the men of a
single civilization represent space in the same way, it is clearly
necessary that these sympathetic values, and the distinctions which
depend upon them, should be equally universal, and that almost
necessarily implies that they be of social origin.[8]
Besides that, there are cases where this social character is made
manifest. There are societies in Australia and North America where space
is conceived in the form of an immense circle, because the camp has a
circular form;[9] and this spatial circle is divided up exactly like the
tribal circle, and is in its image. There are as many regions
distinguished as there are clans in the tribe, and it is the place
occupied by the clans inside the encampment which has determined the
orientation of these regions. Each region is defined by the totem of the
clan to which it is assigned. Among the Zuñi, for example, the pueblo
contains seven quarters; each of these is a group of clans which has had
a unity: in all probability it was originally a single clan which was
later subdivided. Now their space also contains seven quarters, and each
of these seven quarters of the world is in intimate connection with a
quarter of the pueblo, that is to say with a group of clans.[10] "Thus,"
says Cushing, "one division is thought to be in relation with the north,
another represents the west, another the south," etc.[11] Each quarter
of the pueblo has its characteristic colour, which symbolizes it; each
region has its colour, which is exactly the same as that of the
corresponding quarter. In the course of history the number of
fundamental clans has varied; the number of the fundamental regions of
space has varied with them. Thus the social organization has been the
model for the spatial organization and a reproduction of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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