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
In the first place, the religious life and the profane life cannot
coexist in the same place. If the former is to develop, a special spot
must be placed at its disposition, from which the second is excluded.
Hence comes the founding of temples and sanctuaries: these are the spots
awarded to sacred beings and things and serve them as residences, for
they cannot establish themselves in any place except on the condition of
entirely appropriating to themselves all within a certain distance. Such
arrangements are so indispensable to all religious life that even the
most inferior religions cannot do without them. The ertnatulunga, the
spot where the churinga are deposited, is a veritable sanctuary. So the
uninitiated are not allowed to approach it. It is even forbidden to
carry on any profane occupation whatsoever there. As we shall presently
see, there are other holy places where important ceremonies are
celebrated.[1046]
Likewise, the religious life and the profane life cannot coexist in the
same unit of time. It is necessary to assign determined days or periods
to the first, from which all profane occupations are excluded. Thus
feast days are born. There is no religion, and, consequently, no society
which has not known and practised this division of time into two
distinct parts, alternating with one another according to a law varying
with the peoples and the civilizations; as we have already pointed out,
it was probably the necessity of this alternation which led men to
introduce into the continuity and homogeneity of duration, certain
distinctions and differentiations which it does not naturally
have.[1047] Of course, it is almost impossible that the religious life
should ever succeed in concentrating itself hermetically in the places
and times which are thus attributed to it; it is inevitable that a
little of it should filter out. There are always some sacred things
outside the sanctuaries; there are some rites that can be celebrated on
work-days. But these are sacred things of the second rank and rites of a
lesser importance. Concentration remains the dominating characteristic
of this organization. Generally this concentration is complete for all
that concerns the public cult, which cannot be celebrated except in
common. The individual, private cult is the only one which comes very
near to the temporal life. Thus the contrast between these two
successive phases of human life attains its maximum of intensity in the
inferior societies; for it is there that the individual cult is the most
rudimentary.[1048]
II
Up to the present, the negative cult has been presented to us only as a
system of abstentions. So it seems to serve only to inhibit activity,
and not to stimulate it or to modify it. And yet, as an unexpected
reaction to this inhibitive effect, it is found to exercise a positive
action of the highest importance over the religious and moral nature of
the individual.
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