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Other documents randomly have
different content
or there, or to enrich itself or impoverish itself in such and such a
fashion? Since it is impossible to avoid taking sides on this initial
problem, and since the solution given is destined to affect the whole
science, it must be attacked at the outset: that is what we propose
to do.
Besides this, outside of these indirect reactions, the study of
primitive religions has of itself an immediate interest which is of
primary importance.
If it is useful to know what a certain particular religion consists in,
it is still more important to know what religion in general is. This is
the problem which has aroused the interest of philosophers in all
times; and not without reason, for it is of interest to all humanity.
Unfortunately, the method which they generally employ is purely
dialectic: they confine themselves to analysing the idea which they
make for themselves of religion, except as they illustrate the results
of this mental analysis by examples borrowed from the religions
which best realize their ideal. But even if this method ought to be
abandoned, the problem remains intact, and the great service of
philosophy is to have prevented its being suppressed by the disdain
of scholars. Now it is possible to attack it in a different way. Since all
religions can be compared to each other, and since all are species of
the same class, there are necessarily many elements which are
common to all. We do not mean to speak simply of the outward and
visible characteristics which they all have equally, and which make it
possible to give them a provisional definition from the very outset of
our researches; the discovery of these apparent signs is relatively
easy, for the observation which it demands does not go beneath the
surface of things. But these external resemblances suppose others
which are profound. At the foundation of all systems of beliefs and
of all cults there ought necessarily to be a certain number of
fundamental representations or conceptions and of ritual attitudes
which, in spite of the diversity of forms which they have taken, have
the same objective significance and fulfil the same functions
everywhere. These are the permanent elements which constitute
that which is permanent and human in religion; they form all the
objective contents of the idea which is expressed when one speaks
of religion in general. How is it possible to pick them out?
Surely it is not by observing the complex religions which appear in
the course of history. Every one of these is made up of such a
variety of elements that it is very difficult to distinguish what is
secondary from what is principal, the essential from the accessory.
Suppose that the religion considered is like that of Egypt, India or
the classical antiquity. It is a confused mass of many cults, varying
according to the locality, the temples, the generations, the dynasties,
the invasions, etc. Popular superstitions are there confused with the
purest dogmas. Neither the thought nor the activity of the religion is
evenly distributed among the believers; according to the men, the
environment and the circumstances, the beliefs as well as the rites
are thought of in different ways. Here they are priests, there they
are monks, elsewhere they are laymen; there are mystics and
rationalists, theologians and prophets, etc. In these conditions it is
difficult to see what is common to all. In one or another of these
systems it is quite possible to find the means of making a profitable
study of some particular fact which is specially developed there,
such as sacrifice or prophecy, monasticism or the mysteries; but how
is it possible to find the common foundation of the religious life
underneath the luxuriant vegetation which covers it? How is it
possible to find, underneath the disputes of theology, the variations
of ritual, the multiplicity of groups and the diversity of individuals,
the fundamental states characteristic of religious mentality in
general?
Things are quite different in the lower societies. The slighter
development of individuality, the small extension of the group, the
homogeneity of external circumstances, all contribute to reducing
the differences and variations to a minimum. The group has an
intellectual and moral conformity of which we find but rare examples
in the more advanced societies. Everything is common to all.
Movements are stereotyped; everybody performs the same ones in
the same circumstances, and this conformity of conduct only
translates the conformity of thought. Every mind being drawn into
the same eddy, the individual type nearly confounds itself with that
of the race. And while all is uniform, all is simple as well. Nothing is
deformed like these myths, all composed of one and the same
theme which is endlessly repeated, or like these rites made up of a
small number of gestures repeated again and again. Neither the
popular imagination nor that of the priests has had either the time or
the means of refining and transforming the original substance of the
religious ideas and practices; these are shown in all their nudity, and
offer themselves to an examination, it requiring only the slightest
effort to lay them open. That which is accessory or secondary, the
development of luxury, has not yet come to hide the principal
elements.[2] All is reduced to that which is indispensable, to that
without which there could be no religion. But that which is
indispensable is also that which is essential, that is to say, that which
we must know before all else.
Primitive civilizations offer privileged cases, then, because they are
simple cases. That is why, in all fields of human activity, the
observations of ethnologists have frequently been veritable
revelations, which have renewed the study of human institutions. For
example, before the middle of the nineteenth century, everybody
was convinced that the father was the essential element of the
family; no one had dreamed that there could be a family
organization of which the paternal authority was not the keystone.
But the discovery of Bachofen came and upset this old conception.
Up to very recent times it was regarded as evident that the moral
and legal relations of kindred were only another aspect of the
psychological relations which result from a common descent;
Bachofen and his successors, MacLennan, Morgan and many others
still laboured under this misunderstanding. But since we have
become acquainted with the nature of the primitive clan, we know
that, on the contrary, relationships cannot be explained by
consanguinity. To return to religions, the study of only the most
familiar ones had led men to believe for a long time that the idea of
god was characteristic of everything that is religious. Now the
religion which we are going to study presently is, in a large part,
foreign to all idea of divinity; the forces to which the rites are there
addressed are very different from those which occupy the leading
place in our modern religions, yet they aid us in understanding these
latter forces. So nothing is more unjust than the disdain with which
too many historians still regard the work of ethnographers. Indeed,
it is certain that ethnology has frequently brought about the most
fruitful revolutions in the different branches of sociology. It is for this
same reason that the discovery of unicellular beings, of which we
just spoke, has transformed the current idea of life. Since in these
very simple beings, life is reduced to its essential traits, these are
less easily misunderstood.
But primitive religions do not merely aid us in disengaging the
constituent elements of religion; they also have the great advantage
that they facilitate the explanation of it. Since the facts there are
simpler, the relations between them are more apparent. The reasons
with which men account for their acts have not yet been elaborated
and denatured by studied reflection; they are nearer and more
closely related to the motives which have really determined these
acts. In order to understand an hallucination perfectly, and give it its
most appropriate treatment, a physician must know its original point
of departure. Now this event is proportionately easier to find if he
can observe it near its beginnings. The longer the disease is allowed
to develop, the more it evades observation; that is because all sorts
of interpretations have intervened as it advanced, which tend to
force the original state into the background, and across which it is
frequently difficult to find the initial one. Between a systematized
hallucination and the first impressions which gave it birth, the
distance is often considerable. It is the same thing with religious
thought. In proportion as it progresses in history, the causes which
called it into existence, though remaining active, are no longer
perceived, except across a vast scheme of interpretations which
quite transform them. Popular mythologies and subtile theologies
have done their work: they have superimposed upon the primitive
sentiments others which are quite different, and which, though
holding to the first, of which they are an elaborated form, only allow
their true nature to appear very imperfectly. The psychological gap
between the cause and the effect, between the apparent cause and
the effective cause, has become more considerable and more
difficult for the mind to leap. The remainder of this book will be an
illustration and a verification of this remark on method. It will be
seen how, in the primitive religions, the religious fact still visibly
carries the mark of its origins: it would have been well-nigh
impossible to infer them merely from the study of the more
developed religions.
The study which we are undertaking is therefore a way of taking
up again, but under new conditions, the old problem of the origin of
religion. To be sure, if by origin we are to understand the very first
beginning, the question has nothing scientific about it, and should
be resolutely discarded. There was no given moment when religion
began to exist, and there is consequently no need of finding a
means of transporting ourselves thither in thought. Like every
human institution, religion did not commence anywhere. Therefore,
all speculations of this sort are justly discredited; they can only
consist in subjective and arbitrary constructions which are subject to
no sort of control. But the problem which we raise is quite another
one. What we want to do is to find a means of discerning the ever-
present causes upon which the most essential forms of religious
thought and practice depend. Now for the reasons which were just
set forth, these causes are proportionately more easily observable as
the societies where they are observed are less complicated. That is
why we try to get as near as possible to the origins.[3] It is not that
we ascribe particular virtues to the lower religions. On the contrary,
they are rudimentary and gross; we cannot make of them a sort of
model which later religions only have to reproduce. But even their
grossness makes them instructive, for they thus become convenient
for experiments, as in them, the facts and their relations are easily
seen. In order to discover the laws of the phenomena which he
studies, the physicist tries to simplify these latter and rid them of
their secondary characteristics. For that which concerns institutions,
nature spontaneously makes the same sort of simplifications at the
beginning of history. We merely wish to put these to profit.
Undoubtedly we can only touch very elementary facts by this
method. When we shall have accounted for them as far as possible,
the novelties of every sort which have been produced in the course
of evolution will not yet be explained. But while we do not dream of
denying the importance of the problems thus raised, we think that
they will profit by being treated in their turn, and that it is important
to take them up only after those of which we are going to undertake
the study at present.

II

But our study is not of interest merely for the science of religion.
In fact, every religion has one side by which it overlaps the circle of
properly religious ideas, and there, the study of religious phenomena
gives a means of renewing the problems which, up to the present,
have only been discussed among philosophers.
For a long time it has been known that the first systems of
representations with which men have pictured to themselves the
world and themselves were of religious origin. There is no religion
that is not a cosmology at the same time that it is a speculation
upon divine things. If philosophy and the sciences were born of
religion, it is because religion began by taking the place of the
sciences and philosophy. But it has been less frequently noticed that
religion has not confined itself to enriching the human intellect,
formed beforehand, with a certain number of ideas; it has
contributed to forming the intellect itself. Men owe to it not only a
good part of the substance of their knowledge, but also the form in
which this knowledge has been elaborated.
At the roots of all our judgments there are a certain number of
essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life; they are what
philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of the
understanding: ideas of time, space,[4] class, number, cause,
substance, personality, etc. They correspond to the most universal
properties of things. They are like the solid frame which encloses all
thought; this does not seem to be able to liberate itself from them
without destroying itself, for it seems that we cannot think of objects
that are not in time and space, which have no number, etc. Other
ideas are contingent and unsteady; we can conceive of their being
unknown to a man, a society or an epoch; but these others appear
to be nearly inseparable from the normal working of the intellect.
They are like the framework of the intelligence. Now when primitive
religious beliefs are systematically analysed, the principal categories
are naturally found. They are born in religion and of religion; they
are a product of religious thought. This is a statement that we are
going to have occasion to make many times in the course of this
work.
This remark has some interest of itself already; but here is what
gives it its real importance.
The general conclusion of the book which the reader has before
him is that religion is something eminently social. Religious
representations are collective representations which express
collective realities; the rites are a manner of acting which take rise in
the midst of the assembled groups and which are destined to excite,
maintain or recreate certain mental states in these groups. So if the
categories are of religious origin, they ought to participate in this
nature common to all religious facts; they too should be social affairs
and the product of collective thought. At least—for in the actual
condition of our knowledge of these matters, one should be careful
to avoid all radical and exclusive statements—it is allowable to
suppose that they are rich in social elements.
Even at present, these can be imperfectly seen in some of them.
For example, try to represent what the notion of time would be
without the processes by which we divide it, measure it or express it
with objective signs, a time which is not a succession of years,
months, weeks, days and hours! This is something nearly
unthinkable. We cannot conceive of time, except on condition of
distinguishing its different moments. Now what is the origin of this
differentiation? Undoubtedly, the states of consciousness which we
have already experienced can be reproduced in us in the same order
in which they passed in the first place; thus portions of our past
become present again, though being clearly distinguished from the
present. But howsoever important this distinction may be for our
private experience, it is far from being enough to constitute the
notion or category of time. This does not consist merely in a
commemoration, either partial or integral, of our past life. It is an
abstract and impersonal frame which surrounds, not only our
individual existence, but that of all humanity. It is like an endless
chart, where all duration is spread out before the mind, and upon
which all possible events can be located in relation to fixed and
determined guide lines. It is not my time that is thus arranged; it is
time in general, such as it is objectively thought of by everybody in a
single civilization. That alone is enough to give us a hint that such an
arrangement ought to be collective. And in reality, observation
proves that these indispensable guide lines, in relation to which all
things are temporally located, are taken from social life. The
divisions into days, weeks, months, years, etc., correspond to the
periodical recurrence of rites, feasts, and public ceremonies.[5] A
calendar expresses the rhythm of the collective activities, while at
the same time its function is to assure their regularity.[6]
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. It is thus even
up to the distinction between right and left which, far from being
inherent in the nature of man in general, is very probably the
product of representations which are religious and therefore
collective.[12]
Analogous proofs will be found presently in regard to the ideas of
class, force, personality and efficacy. It is even possible to ask if the
idea of contradiction does not also depend upon social conditions.
What makes one tend to believe this is that the empire which the
idea has exercised over human thought has varied with times and
societies. To-day the principle of identity dominates scientific
thought; but there are vast systems of representations which have
played a considerable rôle in the history of ideas where it has
frequently been set aside: these are the mythologies, from the
grossest up to the most reasonable.[13] There, we are continually
coming upon beings which have the most contradictory attributes
simultaneously, who are at the same time one and many, material
and spiritual, who can divide themselves up indefinitely without
losing anything of their constitution; in mythology it is an axiom that
the part is worth the whole. These variations through which the
rules which seem to govern our present logic have passed prove
that, far from being engraven through all eternity upon the mental
constitution of men, they depend, at least in part, upon factors that
are historical and consequently social. We do not know exactly what
they are, but we may presume that they exist.[14]

This hypothesis once admitted, the problem of knowledge is posed

in new terms.
Up to the present there have been only two doctrines in the field.
For some, the categories cannot be derived from experience: they
are logically prior to it and condition it. They are represented as so
many simple and irreducible data, imminent in the human mind by
virtue of its inborn constitution. For this reason they are said to be a
priori. Others, however, hold that they are constructed and made up
of pieces and bits, and that the individual is the artisan of this
construction.[15]
But each solution raises grave difficulties.
 Is the empirical thesis the one adopted? Then it is necessary to
deprive the categories of all their characteristic properties. As a
matter of fact they are distinguished from all other knowledge by
their universality and necessity. They are the most general concepts
which exist, because they are applicable to all that is real, and since
they are not attached to any particular object they are independent
of every particular subject; they constitute the common field where
all minds meet. Further, they must meet there, for reason, which is
nothing more than all the fundamental categories taken together, is
invested with an authority which we could not set aside if we would.
When we attempt to revolt against it, and to free ourselves from
some of these essential ideas, we meet with great resistances. They
do not merely depend upon us, but they impose themselves upon
us. Now empirical data present characteristics which are
diametrically opposed to these. A sensation or an image always
relies upon a determined object, or upon a collection of objects of
the same sort, and expresses the momentary condition of a
particular consciousness; it is essentially individual and subjective.
We therefore have considerable liberty in dealing with the
representations of such an origin. It is true that when our sensations
are actual, they impose themselves upon us in fact. But by right we
are free to conceive them otherwise than they really are, or to
represent them to ourselves as occurring in a different order from
that where they are really produced. In regard to them nothing is
forced upon us except as considerations of another sort intervene.
Thus we find that we have here two sorts of knowledge, which are
like the two opposite poles of the intelligence. Under these
conditions forcing reason back upon experience causes it to
disappear, for it is equivalent to reducing the universality and
necessity which characterize it to pure appearance, to an illusion
which may be useful practically, but which corresponds to nothing in
reality; consequently it is denying all objective reality to the logical
life, whose regulation and organization is the function of the
categories. Classical empiricism results in irrationalism; perhaps it
would even be fitting to designate it by this latter name.
 In spite of the sense ordinarily attached to the name, the
apriorists have more respect for the facts. Since they do not admit it
as a truth established by evidence that the categories are made up
of the same elements as our sensual representations, they are not
obliged to impoverish them systematically, to draw from them all
their real content, and to reduce them to nothing more than verbal
artifices. On the contrary, they leave them all their specific
characteristics. The apriorists are the rationalists; they believe that
the world has a logical aspect which the reason expresses
excellently. But for all that, it is necessary for them to give the mind
a certain power of transcending experience and of adding to that
which is given to it directly; and of this singular power they give
neither explanation nor justification. For it is no explanation to say
that it is inherent in the nature of the human intellect. It is
necessary to show whence we hold this surprising prerogative and
how it comes that we can see certain relations in things which the
examination of these things cannot reveal to us. Saying that only on
this condition is experience itself possible changes the problem
perhaps, but does not answer it. For the real question is to know
how it comes that experience is not sufficient unto itself, but
presupposes certain conditions which are exterior and prior to it, and
how it happens that these conditions are realized at the moment and
in the manner that is desirable. To answer these questions it has
sometimes been assumed that above the reason of individuals there
is a superior and perfect reason from which the others emanate and
from which they get this marvellous power of theirs, by a sort of
mystic participation: this is the divine reason. But this hypothesis has
at least the one grave disadvantage of being deprived of all
experimental control; thus it does not satisfy the conditions
demanded of a scientific hypothesis. More than that, the categories
of human thought are never fixed in any one definite form; they are
made, unmade and remade incessantly; they change with places
and times. On the other hand, the divine reason is immutable. How
can this immutability give rise to this incessant variability?
 Such are the two conceptions that have been pitted against each
other for centuries; and if this debate seems to be eternal, it is
because the arguments given are really about equivalent. If reason
is only a form of individual experience, it no longer exists. On the
other hand, if the powers which it has are recognized but not
accounted for, it seems to be set outside the confines of nature and
science. In the face of these two opposed objections the mind
remains uncertain. But if the social origin of the categories is
admitted, a new attitude becomes possible, which we believe will
enable us to escape both of the opposed difficulties.
The fundamental proposition of the apriorist theory is that
knowledge is made up of two sorts of elements, which cannot be
reduced into one another, and which are like two distinct layers
superimposed one upon the other.[16] Our hypothesis keeps this
principle intact. In fact, that knowledge which is called empirical, the
only knowledge of which the theorists of empiricism have made use
in constructing the reason, is that which is brought into our minds by
the direct action of objects. It is composed of individual states which
are completely explained[17] by the psychical nature of the
individual. If, on the other hand, the categories are, as we believe
they are, essentially collective representations, before all else, they
should show the mental states of the group; they should depend
upon the way in which this is founded and organized, upon its
morphology, upon its religious, moral and economic institutions, etc.
So between these two sorts of representations there is all the
difference which exists between the individual and the social, and
one can no more derive the second from the first than he can
deduce society from the individual, the whole from the part, the
complex from the simple.[18] Society is a reality sui generis; it has its
own peculiar characteristics, which are not found elsewhere and
which are not met with again in the same form in all the rest of the
universe. The representations which express it have a wholly
different contents from purely individual ones and we may rest
assured in advance that the first add something to the second.
 Even the manner in which the two are formed results in
differentiating them. Collective representations are the result of an
immense co-operation, which stretches out not only into space but
into time as well; to make them, a multitude of minds have
associated, united and combined their ideas and sentiments; for
them, long generations have accumulated their experience and their
knowledge. A special intellectual activity is therefore concentrated in
them which is infinitely richer and complexer than that of the
individual. From that one can understand how the reason has been
able to go beyond the limits of empirical knowledge. It does not owe
this to any vague mysterious virtue but simply to the fact that
according to the well-known formula, man is double. There are two
beings in him: an individual being which has its foundation in the
organism and the circle of whose activities is therefore strictly
limited, and a social being which represents the highest reality in the
intellectual and moral order that we can know by observation—I
mean society. This duality of our nature has as its consequence in
the practical order, the irreducibility of a moral ideal to a utilitarian
motive, and in the order of thought, the irreducibility of reason to
individual experience. In so far as he belongs to society, the
individual transcends himself, both when he thinks and when he
acts.
This same social character leads to an understanding of the origin
of the necessity of the categories. It is said that an idea is necessary
when it imposes itself upon the mind by some sort of virtue of its
own, without being accompanied by any proof. It contains within it
something which constrains the intelligence and which leads to its
acceptance without preliminary examination. The apriorist postulates
this singular quality, but does not account for it; for saying that the
categories are necessary because they are indispensable to the
functioning of the intellect is simply repeating that they are
necessary. But if they really have the origin which we attribute to
them, their ascendancy no longer has anything surprising in it. They
represent the most general relations which exist between things;
surpassing all our other ideas in extension, they dominate all the
details of our intellectual life. If men did not agree upon these
essential ideas at every moment, if they did not have the same
conception of time, space, cause, number, etc., all contact between
their minds would be impossible, and with that, all life together.
Thus society could not abandon the categories to the free choice of
the individual without abandoning itself. If it is to live there is not
merely need of a satisfactory moral conformity, but also there is a
minimum of logical conformity beyond which it cannot safely go. For
this reason it uses all its authority upon its members to forestall such
dissidences. Does a mind ostensibly free itself from these forms of
thought? It is no longer considered a human mind in the full sense
of the word, and is treated accordingly. That is why we feel that we
are no longer completely free and that something resists, both
within and outside ourselves, when we attempt to rid ourselves of
these fundamental notions, even in our own conscience. Outside of
us there is public opinion which judges us; but more than that, since
society is also represented inside of us, it sets itself against these
revolutionary fancies, even inside of ourselves; we have the feeling
that we cannot abandon them if our whole thought is not to cease
being really human. This seems to be the origin of the exceptional
authority which is inherent in the reason and which makes us accept
its suggestions with confidence. It is the very authority of society,[19]
transferring itself to a certain manner of thought which is the
indispensable condition of all common action. The necessity with
which the categories are imposed upon us is not the effect of simple
habits whose yoke we could easily throw off with a little effort; nor is
it a physical or metaphysical necessity, since the categories change
in different places and times; it is a special sort of moral necessity
which is to the intellectual life what moral obligation is to the will.[20]

But if the categories originally only translate social states, does it

not follow that they can be applied to the rest of nature only as
metaphors? If they were made merely to express social conditions, it
seems as though they could not be extended to other realms except
in this sense. Thus in so far as they aid us in thinking of the physical
or biological world, they have only the value of artificial symbols,
useful practically perhaps, but having no connection with reality.
Thus we come back, by a different road, to nominalism and
empiricism.
But when we interpret a sociological theory of knowledge in this
way, we forget that even if society is a specific reality it is not an
empire within an empire; it is a part of nature, and indeed its
highest representation. The social realm is a natural realm which
differs from the others only by a greater complexity. Now it is
impossible that nature should differ radically from itself in the one
case and the other in regard to that which is most essential. The
fundamental relations that exist between things—just that which it is
the function of the categories to express—cannot be essentially
dissimilar in the different realms. If, for reasons which we shall
discuss later,[21] they are more clearly disengaged in the social
world, it is nevertheless impossible that they should not be found
elsewhere, though in less pronounced forms. Society makes them
more manifest but it does not have a monopoly upon them. That is
why ideas which have been elaborated on the model of social things
can aid us in thinking of another department of nature. It is at least
true that if these ideas play the rôle of symbols when they are thus
turned aside from their original signification, they are well-founded
symbols. If a sort of artificiality enters into them from the mere fact
that they are constructed concepts, it is an artificiality which follows
nature very closely and which is constantly approaching it still more
closely.[22] From the fact that the ideas of time, space, class, cause
or personality are constructed out of social elements, it is not
necessary to conclude that they are devoid of all objective value. On
the contrary, their social origin rather leads to the belief that they
are not without foundation in the nature of things.[23]
Thus renovated, the theory of knowledge seems destined to unite
the opposing advantages of the two rival theories, without incurring
their inconveniences. It keeps all the essential principles of the
apriorists; but at the same time it is inspired by that positive spirit
which the empiricists have striven to satisfy. It leaves the reason its
specific power, but it accounts for it and does so without leaving the
world of observable phenomena. It affirms the duality of our
intellectual life, but it explains it, and with natural causes. The
categories are no longer considered as primary and unanalysable
facts, yet they keep a complexity which falsifies any analysis as
ready as that with which the empiricists content themselves. They
no longer appear as very simple notions which the first comer can
very easily arrange from his own personal observations and which
the popular imagination has unluckily complicated, but rather they
appear as priceless instruments of thought which the human groups
have laboriously forged through the centuries and where they have
accumulated the best of their intellectual capital.[24] A complete
section of the history of humanity is resumed therein. This is
equivalent to saying that to succeed in understanding them and
judging them, it is necessary to resort to other means than those
which have been in use up to the present. To know what these
conceptions which we have not made ourselves are really made of, it
does not suffice to interrogate our own consciousnesses; we must
look outside of ourselves, it is history that we must observe, there is
a whole science which must be formed, a complex science which can
advance but slowly and by collective labour, and to which the
present work brings some fragmentary contributions in the nature of
an attempt. Without making these questions the direct object of our
study, we shall profit by all the occasions which present themselves
to us of catching at their very birth some at least of these ideas
which, while being of religious origin, still remain at the foundation
of the human intelligence.
 BOOK I

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS

CHAPTER I

DEFINITION OF RELIGIOUS
PHENOMENA AND OF RELIGION[25]
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 would run the risk of giving
the name to a system of ideas and practices which has nothing at all
religious about it, or else of leaving to one side many religious facts,
without perceiving their true nature. That this is not an imaginary
danger, and that nothing is thus sacrificed to a vain formalism of
method, is well shown by the fact that owing to his not having taken
this precaution, a certain scholar to whom the science of
comparative religions owes a great deal, Professor Frazer, has not
been able to recognize the profoundly religious character of the
beliefs and rites which will be studied below, where, according to our
view, the initial germ of the religious life of humanity is to be found.
So this is a prejudicial question, which must be treated before all
others. It is not that we dream of arriving at once at the profound
characteristics which really explain religion: these can be determined
only at the end of our study. But that which is necessary and
possible, is to indicate a certain number of external and easily
recognizable signs, which will enable us to recognize religious
phenomena wherever they are met with, and which will deter us
from confounding them with others. We shall proceed to this
preliminary operation at once.
But to attain the desired results, it is necessary to begin by freeing
the mind of every preconceived idea. Men have been obliged to
make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the
science of religions started its methodical comparisons. The
necessities of existence force all of us, believers and non-believers,
to represent in some way these things in the midst of which we live,
upon which we must pass judgment constantly, and which we must
take into account in all our conduct. However, since these
preconceived ideas are formed without any method, according to the
circumstances and chances of life, they have no right to any credit
whatsoever, and must be rigorously set aside in the examination
which is to follow. It is not from our prejudices, passions or habits
that we should demand the elements of the definition which we
must have; it is from the reality itself which we are going to define.
Let us set ourselves before this reality. Leaving aside all
conceptions of religion in general, let us consider the various
religions in their concrete reality, and attempt to disengage that
which they have in common; for religion cannot be defined except
by the characteristics which are found wherever religion itself is
found. In this comparison, then, we shall make use of all the
religious systems which we can know, those of the present and
those of the past, the most primitive and simple as well as the most
recent and refined; for we have neither the right nor the logical
means of excluding some and retaining others. For those who regard
religion as only a natural manifestation of human activity, all
religions, without any exception whatsoever, are instructive; for all,
after their manner, express man, and thus can aid us in better
understanding this aspect of our nature. Also, we have seen how far
it is from being the best way of studying religion to consider by
preference the forms which it presents among the most civilized
peoples.[26]
But to aid the mind in freeing itself from these usual conceptions
which, owing to their prestige, might prevent it from seeing things
as they really are, it is fitting to examine some of the most current of
the definitions in which these prejudices are commonly expressed,
before taking up the question on our own account.

One idea which generally passes as characteristic of all that is

religious, is that of the supernatural. By this is understood all sorts of
things which surpass the limits of our knowledge; the supernatural is
the world of the mysterious, of the unknowable, of the un-
understandable. Thus religion would be a sort of speculation upon all
that which evades science or distinct thought in general. "Religions
diametrically opposed in their overt dogmas," said Spencer, "are
perfectly at one in the tacit conviction that the existence of the
world, with all it contains and all which surrounds it, is a mystery
calling for an explanation"; he thus makes them consist essentially in
"the belief in the omnipresence of something which is inscrutable."
[27] In the same manner, Max Müller sees in religion "a struggle to
conceive the inconceivable, to utter the unutterable, a longing after
the Infinite."[28]
It is certain that the sentiment of mystery has not been without a
considerable importance in certain religions, notably in Christianity. It
must also be said that the importance of this sentiment has varied
remarkably at different moments in the history of Christianity. There
are periods when this notion passes to an inferior place, and is even
effaced. For example, for the Christians of the seventeenth century,
dogma had nothing disturbing for the reason; faith reconciled itself
easily with science and philosophy, and the thinkers, such as Pascal,
who really felt that there is something profoundly obscure in things,
were so little in harmony with their age that they remained
misunderstood by their contemporaries.[29] It would appear
somewhat hasty, therefore, to make an idea subject to parallel
eclipses, the essential element of even the Christian religion.
In all events, it is certain that this idea does not appear until late
in the history of religions; it is completely foreign, not only to those
peoples who are called primitive, but also to all others who have not
attained a considerable degree of intellectual culture. When we see
them attribute extraordinary virtues to insignificant objects, and
people the universe with singular principles, made up of the most
diverse elements and endowed with a sort of ubiquity which is
hardly representable, we are undoubtedly prone to find an air of
mystery in these conceptions. It seems to us that these men would
have been willing to resign themselves to these ideas, so disturbing
for our modern reason, only because of their inability to find others
which were more rational. But, as a matter of fact, these
explanations which surprise us so much, appear to the primitive man
as the simplest in the world. He does not regard them as a sort of
ultima ratio to which the intellect resigns itself only in despair of
others, but rather as the most obvious manner of representing and
understanding what he sees about him. For him there is nothing
strange in the fact that by a mere word or gesture one is able to
command the elements, retard or precipitate the motion of the stars,
bring rain or cause it to cease, etc. The rites which he employs to
assure the fertility of the soil or the fecundity of the animal species
on which he is nourished do not appear more irrational to his eyes
than the technical processes of which our agriculturists make use,
for the same object, do to ours. The powers which he puts into play
by these diverse means do not seem to him to have anything
especially mysterious about them. Undoubtedly these forces are
different from those which the modern scientist thinks of, and whose
use he teaches us; they have a different way of acting, and do not
allow themselves to be directed in the same manner; but for those
who believe in them, they are no more unintelligible than are
gravitation and electricity for the physicist of to-day. Moreover, we
shall see, in the course of this work, that the idea of physical forces
is very probably derived from that of religious forces; then there
cannot exist between the two the abyss which separates the rational
from the irrational. Even the fact that religious forces are frequently
conceived under the form of spiritual beings or conscious wills, is no
proof of their irrationality. The reason has no repugnance a priori to
admitting that the so-called inanimate bodies should be directed by
intelligences, just as the human body is, though contemporary
science accommodates itself with difficulty to this hypothesis. When
Leibniz proposed to conceive the external world as an immense
society of minds, between which there were, and could be, only
spiritual relations, he thought he was working as a rationalist, and
saw nothing in this universal animism which could be offensive to
the intellect.
Moreover, the idea of the supernatural, as we understand it, dates
only from to-day; in fact, it presupposes the contrary idea, of which
it is the negation; but this idea is not at all primitive. In order to say
that certain things are supernatural, it is necessary to have the
sentiment that a natural order of things exists, that is to say, that
the phenomena of the universe are bound together by necessary
relations, called laws. When this principle has once been admitted,
all that is contrary to these laws must necessarily appear to be
outside of nature, and consequently, of reason; for what is natural in
this sense of the word, is also rational, these necessary relations
only expressing the manner in which things are logically related. But
this idea of universal determinism is of recent origin; even the
greatest thinkers of classical antiquity never succeeded in becoming
fully conscious of it. It is a conquest of the positive sciences; it is the
postulate upon which they repose and which they have proved by
their progress. Now as long as this was lacking or insufficiently
established, the most marvellous events contained nothing which did
not appear perfectly conceivable. So long as men did not know the
immutability and the inflexibility of the order of things, and so long
as they saw there the work of contingent wills, they found it natural
that either these wills or others could modify them arbitrarily. That is
why the miraculous interventions which the ancients attributed to
their gods were not to their eyes miracles in the modern acceptation
of the term. For them, they were beautiful, rare or terrible
spectacles, or causes of surprise and marvel (θαύματα, mirabilia,
miracula); but they never saw in them glimpses of a mysterious
world into which the reason cannot penetrate.
We can understand this mentality the better since it has not yet
completely disappeared from our midst. If the principle of
determinism is solidly established to-day in the physical and natural
sciences, it is only a century ago that it was first introduced into the
social sciences, and its authority there is still contested. There are
only a small number of minds which are strongly penetrated with
this idea that societies are subject to natural laws and form a
kingdom of nature. It follows that veritable miracles are believed to
be possible there. It is admitted, for example, that a legislator can
create an institution out of nothing by a mere injunction of its will, or
transform one social system into another, just as the believers in so
many religions have held that the divine will created the world out of
nothing, or can arbitrarily transmute one thing into another. As far as
social facts are concerned, we still have the mentality of primitives.
However, if so many of our contemporaries still retain this antiquated
conception for sociological affairs, it is not because the life of
societies appears obscure and mysterious to them; on the contrary,
if they are so easily contented with these explanations, and if they
are so obstinate in their illusions which experience constantly belies,
it is because social events seem to them the clearest thing in the
world; it is because they have not yet realized their real obscurity; it
is because they have not yet recognized the necessity of resorting to
the laborious methods of the natural sciences to gradually scatter
the darkness. The same state of mind is found at the root of many
religious beliefs which surprise us by their pseudo-simplicity. It is
science and not religion which has taught men that things are
complex and difficult to understand.
But the human mind, says Jevons,[30] has no need of a properly
scientific culture to notice that determined sequences, or a constant
order of succession, exist between facts, or to observe, on the other
hand, that this order is frequently upset. It sometimes happens that
the sun is suddenly eclipsed, that rain fails at the time when it is
expected, that the moon is slow to reappear after its periodical
disappearance, etc. Since these events are outside the ordinary
course of affairs, they are attributed to extraordinary exceptional
causes, that is to say, in fine, to extra-natural causes. It is under this
form that the idea of the supernatural is born at the very outset of
history, and from this moment, according to this author, religious
thought finds itself provided with its proper subject.
But in the first place, the supernatural cannot be reduced to the
unforeseen. The new is a part of nature just as well as its contrary.
If we state that in general, phenomena succeed one another in a
determined order, we observe equally well that this order is only
approximative, that it is not always precisely the same, and that it
has all kinds of exceptions. If we have ever so little experience, we
are accustomed to seeing our expectations fail, and these deceptions
return too often to appear extraordinary to us. A certain contingency
is taught by experience just as well as a certain uniformity; then we
have no reason for assigning the one to causes and forces entirely
different from those upon which the other depends. In order to
arrive at the idea of the supernatural, it is not enough, therefore, to
be witnesses to unexpected events; it is also necessary that these be
conceived as impossible, that is to say, irreconcilable with an order
which, rightly or wrongly, appears to us to be implied in the nature
of things. Now this idea of a necessary order has been constructed
little by little by the positive sciences, and consequently the contrary
notion could not have existed before them.
Also, in whatever manner men have represented the novelties and
contingencies revealed by experience, there is nothing in these
representations which could serve to characterize religion. For
religious conceptions have as their object, before everything else, to
express and explain, not that which is exceptional and abnormal in
things, but, on the contrary, that which is constant and regular. Very
frequently, the gods serve less to account for the monstrosities,
fantasies and anomalies than for the regular march of the universe,
for the movement of the stars, the rhythm of the seasons, the
annual growth of vegetation, the perpetuation of species, etc. It is
far from being true, then, that the notion of the religions coincides
with that of the extraordinary or the unforeseen. Jevons replies that
this conception of religious forces is not primitive. Men commenced
by imagining them to account for disorders and accidents, and it was
only afterwards that they began to utilize them in explaining the
uniformities of nature.[31] But it is not clear what could have led
men to attribute such manifestly contradictory functions to them.
More than that, the hypothesis according to which sacred beings
were at first restricted to the negative function of disturbers is quite
arbitrary. In fact, we shall see that, even with the most simple
religions we know, their essential task is to maintain, in a positive
manner, the normal course of life.[32]
So the idea of mystery is not of primitive origin. It was not given
to man; it is man who has forged it, with his own hands, along with
the contrary idea. This is why it has a place only in a very small
number of advanced religions. It is impossible to make it the
characteristic mark of religious phenomena without excluding from
the definition the majority of the facts to be defined.

II

Another idea by which the attempt to define religion is often

made, is that of divinity. "Religion," says M. Réville,[33] "is the
determination of human life by the sentiment of a bond uniting the
human mind to that mysterious mind whose domination of the world
and itself it recognizes, and to whom it delights in feeling itself
united." It is certain that if the word divinity is taken in a precise and
narrow sense, this definition leaves aside a multitude of obviously
religious facts. The souls of the dead and the spirits of all ranks and
classes with which the religious imagination of so many different
peoples has populated nature, are always the object of rites and
sometimes even of a regular cult; yet they are not gods in the
proper sense of the term. But in order that the definition may
embrace them, it is enough to substitute for the term "gods" the
more comprehensive one of "spiritual beings." This is what Tylor
does. "The first requisite in a systematic study of the religions of the
lower races," he says, "is to lay down a rudimentary definition of
religion. By requiring in this definition the belief in a supreme deity
..., no doubt many tribes may be excluded from the category of
religious. But such narrow definition has the fault of identifying
religion rather with particular developments.... It seems best ...
simply to claim as a minimum definition of Religion, the belief in
Spiritual Beings."[34] By spiritual beings must be understood
conscious subjects gifted with powers superior to those possessed
by common men; this qualification is found in the souls of the dead,
geniuses or demons as well as in divinities properly so-called. It is
important, therefore, to give our attention at once to the particular
conception of religion which is implied in this definition. The relations
which we can have with beings of this sort are determined by the
nature attributed to them. They are conscious beings; then we can
act upon them only in the same way that we act upon
consciousnesses in general, that is to say, by psychological
processes, attempting to convince them or move them, either with
the aid of words (invocations, prayers), or by offerings and
sacrifices. And since the object of religion is to regulate our relations
with these special beings, there can be no religion except where
there are prayers, sacrifices, propitiatory rites, etc. Thus we have a
very simple criterium which permits us to distinguish that which is
religious from that which is not. It is to this criterium that Frazer,[35]
and with him numerous ethnographers,[36] systematically makes
reference.
But howsoever evident this definition may appear, thanks to the
mental habits which we owe to our religious education, there are
many facts to which it is not applicable, but which appertain to the
field of religion nevertheless.
In the first place, there are great religions from which the idea of
gods and spirits is absent, or at least, where it plays only a
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