The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Howsoever much they may differ from one another in the nature of the gestures they imply, the positive rites which we have been passing under review have one common characterist...

The proposition established in the preceding chapter determines the terms in which the problem of the origins of totemism should be posed. Since totemism is everywhere dominated...

In the preceding chapters we have been studying the fundamental principles of the totemic religion. We have seen that no idea of soul or spirit or mythical personality is to be...

We do not have the intention of attempting a complete description of the primitive cult in what is to follow. Being preoccupied especially with reaching that which is most eleme...

Whatever the importance of the negative cult may be, and though it may indirectly have positive effects, it does not contain its reason for existence in itself; it introduces on...

If we are going to look for the most primitive and simple religion which we can observe, it is necessary to begin by defining what is meant by a religion; for without this, we w...

Even the crudest religions with which history and ethnology make us acquainted are already of a complexity which corresponds badly with the idea sometimes held of primitive ment...

Owing to its nature, our study will include two parts. Since every religion is made up of intellectual conceptions and ritual practices, we must deal successively with the belie...

When we come to the idea of the soul, we have left the circle of purely impersonal forces. But above the soul the Australian religions already recognize mythical personalities o...

But the processes which we have just been describing are not the only ones employed to assure the fecundity of the totemic species. There are others which serve for the same end...

II.--How they are explained--They are not a manifestation of private sentiments--The malice attributed to the souls of the dead cannot account for them either--They correspond t...

The beliefs which we have just summarized are manifestly of a religious nature, since they imply a division of things into sacred and profane. It is certain that there is no tho...

The explanation which we have given of the positive rites of which we have been speaking in the two preceding chapters attributes to them a significance which is, above all, mor...

Since individual totemism is later than the totemism of the clan, and even seems to be derived from it, it is to this latter form that we must turn first of all. But as the anal...

The spirit of the naturistic school is quite different. In the first place, it is recruited in a different environment. The animists are, for the most part, ethnologists or anth...

We are beginning to see that totemism is a much more complex religion than it first appeared to be. We have already distinguished three classes of things which it recognizes as...

But totemic images are not the only sacred things. There are real things which are also the object of rites, because of the relations which they have with the totem: before all...

Howsoever opposed their conclusions may seem to be, the two systems which we have just studied agree upon one essential point: they state the problem in identical terms. Both un...

Up to the present, we have studied totemism only as a public institution: the only totems of which we have spoken are common to a clan, a phratry or, in a sense, to a tribe;[488...

II.--General reasons for which society is apt to awaken the sensation of the sacred and the divine--Society as an imperative moral force; the notion of moral authority--Society...

I.--The three theses of animism: Genesis of the idea of the soul; Formation of the idea of spirits; Transformation of the cult of spirits into the cult of nature 49

I.--The Arunta Form--The two phases--Analysis of the first: visit to sacred places, scattering of sacred dust, shedding of blood, etc., to assure the reproduction of the totemic...

II.--Theories which derive collective totemism from individual totemism--Origins attributed by these theories to the individual totem (Frazer, Boas, Hill Tout)--Improbability of...

II.--Genesis of this idea--The doctrine of reincarnation according to Spencer and Gillen: it implies that the soul is a part of the totemic principle--Examination of the facts c...

III.--Search for a positive definition--Distinction between beliefs and rites--Definition of beliefs--First characteristic: division of things between sacred and profane--Distin...

I.--The system of interdictions--Magic and religious interdictions--Interdictions between sacred things of different sorts--Interdictions between sacred and profane--These latte...

II.--They rest upon the principle: _like produces like_-- Examination of the explanation of this given by the anthropological school--Reasons why they imitate the animal or plan...

II.--Analogous conceptions in other inferior societies--The gods in Samoa, the wakan of the Sioux, the orenda of the Iroquois, the mana of Melanesia--Connection of these notions...

II.--Genesis of the notion of class: the first classifications of things take their forms from society--Differences between the sentiment of the differences of things and the id...

I.--Sacred character of the totemic animals--Prohibition to eat them, kill them or pick the totemic plants--Different moderations given these prohibitions--Prohibition of contac...

I.--Difference between a soul and a spirit--The souls of the mythical ancestors are spirits, having determined functions-- Relations between the ancestral spirit, the individual...

I.--Definition of the clan--The totem as name of the clan--Nature of the things which serve as totems--Ways in which the totem is acquired--The totems of phratries; of matrimoni...

II.--If the object of religion is to express natural forces, it is hard to see how it has maintained itself, for it expresses them in an erroneous manner--Pretended distinction...