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
At the same time we find the explanation of how there can be groups of
religious phenomena which do not belong to any special religion; it is
because they have not been, or are no longer, a part of any religious
system. If, for some special reason, one of the cults of which we just
spoke happens to be maintained while the group of which it was a part
disappears, it survives only in a disintegrated condition. That is what
has happened to many agrarian cults which have survived themselves as
folk-lore. In certain cases, it is not even a cult, but a simple
ceremony or particular rite which persists in this way.[73]
Although this definition is only preliminary, it permits us to see in
what terms the problem which necessarily dominates the science of
religions should be stated. When we believed that sacred beings could be
distinguished from others merely by the greater intensity of the powers
attributed to them, the question of how men came to imagine them was
sufficiently simple: it was enough to demand which forces had, because
of their exceptional energy, been able to strike the human imagination
forcefully enough to inspire religious sentiments. But if, as we have
sought to establish, sacred things differ in nature from profane things,
if they have a wholly different essence, then the problem is more
complex. For we must first of all ask what has been able to lead men to
see in the world two heterogeneous and incompatible worlds, though
nothing sensible experience seems able to suggest the idea of so radical
a duality to them.
IV
However, this definition is not yet complete, for it is equally
applicable to two sorts of facts which, while being related to each
other, must be distinguished nevertheless: these are magic and religion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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