The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, by Emile Durkheim.

[578] See The Golden Bough,² III, pp. 351 ff. Wilken had already pointed out similar facts in De Simsonsage, in De Gids, 1890; De Betrekking tusschen Menschen-Dieren en Plantenleven, in Indische Gids, 1884, 1888; Ueber das Haaropfer, in Revue Coloniale Internationale, 1886-1887.

[579] For example, Eylmann in Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien, p. 199.

[580] Mrs. Parker says in connection with the Euahlayi, that if the Yunbeai does "confer exceptional force, it also exposes one to exceptional dangers, for all that hurts the animal wounds the man" (Euahlayi, p. 29).

[581] In a later work (The Origin of Totemism, in The Fortnightly Review, May, 1899, pp. 844-845), Frazer raises this objection himself. "If," he says, "I deposit my soul in a hare, and my brother John (a member of another clan) shoots that hare, roasts and swallows it, what becomes of my soul? To meet this obvious danger it is necessary that John should know the state of my soul, and that, knowing it, he should, whenever he shoots a hare, take steps to extract and restore to me my soul before he cooks and dines upon the animal." Now Frazer believes that he has found this practice in use in Central Australia. Every year, in the course of a ceremony which we shall describe presently, when the animals of the new generation arrive at maturity, the first game to be killed is presented to men of that totem, who eat a little of it; and it is only after this that the men of the other clans may eat it freely. This, says Frazer, is a way of returning to the former the souls they may have confided to these animals. But, aside from the fact that this interpretation of the fact is wholly arbitrary, it is hard not to find this way of escaping the danger rather peculiar. This ceremony is annual; long days may have elapsed since the animal was killed. During all this time, what has become of the soul which it sheltered and the individual whose life depended on this soul? But it is superfluous to insist upon all the inconceivable things in this explanation.

[582] Parker, op. cit., p. 20; Howitt, Australian Medicine Men, in J.A.I., XVI, pp. 34, 49 f.; Hill Tout, J.A.I., XXXV, p. 146.

[583] According to Hill Tout himself, "The gift or transmission (of a personal totem) can only be made or effected by certain persons, such as shamans, or those who possess great mystery power" (J.A.I., p. 146). Cf. Langloh Parker, op. cit., pp. 29-30.

[584] Cf. Hartland, Totemism and some recent Discoveries, in Folk-Lore, XI, pp. 59 ff.

[585] Except perhaps the Kurnai; but even in this tribe, there are sexual totems in addition to the personal ones.

[586] Among the Wotjobaluk, the Buandik, the Wiradjuri, the Yuin and the tribes around Maryborough (Queensland). See Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 114-147; Mathews, J. of the R. Soc. of N.S. Wales, XXXVIII, p. 291. Cf. Thomas, Further Notes on Mr. Hill Tout's Views on Totemism, in Man, 1904, p. 85.

[587] This is the case with the Euahlayi and the facts of personal totemism cited by Howitt, Australian Medicine Men, in J.A.I., XVI, pp. 34, 35, 49-50.

[588] Miss Fletcher, A Study of the Omaha Tribe, in Smithsonian Report for 1897, p. 586; Boas, The Kwakiutl, p. 322. Likewise, Vth Rep. of the Committee ... of the N.W. Tribes of the Dominion of Canada, B.A.A.S., p. 25; Hill Tout, J.A.I., XXXV, p. 148.

[589] The proper names of the gentes, says Boas in regard to the Tlinkit, are derived from their respective totems, each gens having its special names. The connection between the name and the (collective) totem is not very apparent sometimes, but it always exists (Vth Rep. of the Committee, etc., p. 25). The fact that individual forenames are the property of the clan, and characterize it as surely as the totem, is also found among the Iroquois (Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 78), the Wyandot (Powell, Wyandot Government, in Ist Rep., p. 59), the Shawnee, Sauk and Fox (Morgan, Ancient Society, pp. 72, 76-77) and the Omaha (Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, in IIIrd Rep., pp. 227 ff.). Now the relation between forenames and personal totems is already known (see above, p. 157).

[590] "For example," says Mathews, "if you ask a Wartwurt man what totem he is, he will first tell his personal totem, and will probably then enumerate those of his clan" (Jour. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales, XXXVIII, p. 291).

[591] The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the Australian Aborigines, in Fortnightly Review, July, 1905, pp. 162 ff., and Sept., p. 452. Cf. the same author, The Origin of Totemism, ibid., April, 1899, p. 648, and May, p. 835. These latter articles, being slightly older, differ from the former on one point, but the foundation of the theory is not essentially different. Both are reproduced in Totemism and Exogamy, I, pp. 89-172. In the same sense, see Spencer and Gillen, Some Remarks on Totemism as applied to Australian Tribes, in J.A.I., 1899, pp. 275-280, and the remarks of Frazer on the same subject, ibid., pp. 281-286.

[592] "Perhaps we may ... say that it is but one remove from the original pattern, the absolutely original form of totemism" (Fortnightly Review, Sept., 1905. p. 455).

[593] On this point, the testimony of Strehlow (II, p. 52) confirms that of Spencer and Gillen. For a contrary opinion, see A. Lang, The Secret of the Totem, p. 190.

[594] A very similar idea had already been expressed by Haddon in his Address to the Anthropological Section (B.A.A.S., 1902, pp. 8 ff.). He supposes that at first, each local group had some food which was especially its own. The plant or animal thus serving as the principal item of food became the totem of the group.

All these explanations naturally imply that the prohibitions against eating the totemic animal were not primitive, but were even preceded by a contrary prescription.

[595] Fortnightly Review, Sept., 1905, p. 458.

[596] Fortn. Rev., May, 1899, p. 835, and July, 1905, pp. 162 ff.

[597] Though considering totemism only a system of magic, Frazer recognizes that the first germs of a real religion are sometimes found in it (Fortn. Rev., July, 1905, p. 163). On the way in which he thinks religion developed out of magic, see The Golden Bough,² I, pp. 75-78.

[598] Sur le totemisme, in Année Soc., V, pp. 82-121. Cf., on this same question, Hartland, Presidential Address, in Folk-Lore, XI, p. 75; A. Lang, A Theory of Arunta Totemism, in Man, 1904, No. 44; Conceptional Totemism and Exogamy, ibid., 1907, No. 55; The Secret of the Totem, ch. iv; N. W. Thomas, Arunta Totemism, in Man, 1904, No. 68; P. W. Schmidt, Die Stellung der Aranda unter der Australischen Stämmen, in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1908, pp. 866 ff.

[599] Die Aranda, II, pp. 57-58.

[600] Schulze, loc cit., pp. 238-239.

[601] In the conclusion of Totemism and Exogamy (IV, pp. 58-59), Frazer says, it must be admitted, that there is a totemism still more ancient than that of the Arunta: it is the one observed by Rivers in the Banks Islands (Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia, in J.A.I., XXXIX, p. 172). Among the Arunta it is the spirit of an ancestor who is believed to impregnate the mother; in the Banks Islands, it is the spirit of an animal or vegetable, as the theory supposes. But as the ancestral spirits of the Arunta have an animal or vegetable form, the difference is slight. Therefore we have not mentioned it in our exposition.

[602] Social Origins, London, 1903, especially ch. viii, entitled The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs, and The Secret of the Totem, London, 1905.

[603] In his Social Origins especially, Lang attempts to reconstitute by means of conjecture the form which these primitive groups should have; but it seems superfluous to reproduce these hypotheses, which do not affect his theory of totemism.

[604] On this point, Lang approaches the theory of Julius Pickler (see Pickler and Szomolo, Der Ursprung des Totemismus. Ein Beitrag zur materialistirchen Geschichtstheorie, Berlin, 36 pp. in 8vo). The difference between the two hypotheses is that Pickler attributes a higher importance to the pictorial representation of the name than to the name itself.

[605] Social Origins, p. 166.

[606] The Secret of the Totem, p. 121; cf. pp. 116, 117.

[607] The Secret of the Totem, p. 136.

[608] J.A.I., Aug., 1888, pp. 53-54; cf. Nat. Tr., pp. 89, 488, 498.

[609] "With reverence," as Lang says (The Secret of the Totem, p. 111).

[610] Lang adds that these taboos are the basis of exogamic practices.

[611] Ibid., p. 125.

[612] However, we have not spoken of the theory of Spencer. But this is because it is only a part of his general theory of the transformation of the ancestor-cult into the nature-cult. As we have described that already, it is not necessary to repeat it.

[613] Except that Lang ascribes another source to the idea of the great gods: as we have already said, he believes that this is due to a sort of primitive revelation. But Lang does not make use of this idea in his explanation of totemism.

[614] For example, in a Kwakiutl myth, an ancestral hero pierces the head of an enemy by pointing a finger at him (Boas, Vth Rep. on the North. Tribes of Canada, B.A.A.S., 1889, p. 30).

[615] References supporting this assertion will be found on p. 128, n. 1, and p. 320, n. 1.

[616] See Bk. III, ch. ii.

[617] See, for example, Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 482; Schürmann, The Aboriginal Tribes of Port Lincoln, in Woods, Nat. Tr. of S. Australia, p. 231.

[618] Frazer has even taken many facts from Samoa which he presents as really totemic (See Totemism, pp. 6, 12-15, 24, etc.). It is true that we have charged Frazer with not being critical enough in the choice of his examples, but so many examples would obviously have been impossible if there had not really been important survivals of totemism in Samoa.

[619] See Turner, Samoa, p. 21 and ch. iv and v.

[620] Alice Fletcher, A Study of the Omaha Tribe, in Smithsonian Rep. for 1897, pp. 582 f.

[621] Dorsey, Siouan Sociology, in XVth Rep., p. 238.

[622] Ibid., p. 221.

[623] Riggs and Dorsey, Dakota-English Dictionary, in Contrib. N. Amer. Ethnol., VII, p. 508. Many observers cited by Dorsey identify the word wakan with the words wakanda and wakanta, which are derived from it, but which really have a more precise signification.

[624] XIth Rep., p. 372, § 21. Miss Fletcher, while recognizing no less clearly the impersonal character of the wakanda, adds nevertheless that a certain anthropomorphism has attached to this conception. But this anthropomorphism concerns the various manifestations of the wakanda. Men address the trees or rocks where they think they perceive the wakanda, as if they were personal beings. But the wakanda itself is not personified (Smithsonian Rep. for 1897, p. 579).

[625] Riggs, Tah-Koo Wah-Kon, pp. 56-57, quoted from Dorsey, XIth Rep., p. 433, § 95.

[626] XIth Rep., p. 380, § 33.

[627] Ibid., p. 381, § 35.

[628] Ibid., p. 376, § 28; p. 378, § 30; cf. p. 449, § 138.

[629] Ibid., p. 432, § 95.

[630] Ibid., p. 431, § 92.

[631] Ibid., p. 433, § 95.

[632] Orenda and a Definition of Religion, in American Anthropologist, 1902, p. 33.

[633] Ibid., p. 36.

[634] Tesa, Studi del Thavenet, p. 17.

[635] Boas, Kwakiutl, p. 695.

[636] Swanton, Social Condition, etc, of the Tlinkit Indians, XXVIth Rep., 1905, p. 451, n. 2.

[637] Swanton, Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida, p. 14; cf. Social Condition, etc., p. 479.

[638] In certain Melanesian societies (Banks Islands, North New Hebrides) the two exogamic phratries are found which characterize the Australian organization (Codrington, The Melanesians, pp. 23 ff.). In Florida, there are regular totems, called butos (ibid., p. 31). An interesting discussion of this point will be found in Lang, Social Origins, pp. 176 ff. On the same subject, and in the same sense, see W. H. R. Rivers, Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia, in J.A.I., XXXIX, pp. 156 ff.

[639] The Melanesians, p. 118, n. 1. Cf. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee, pp. 178, 392, 394, etc.

[640] An analysis of this idea will be found in Hubert and Mauss, Théorie Générale de la Magie, in Année Sociol., VII, p. 108.

[641] There are not only totems of clans but also of guilds (A. Fletcher, Smithsonian Rep. for 1897, pp. 581 ff.).

[642] Fletcher, op. cit., pp. 578 f.

[643] Ibid., p. 583. Among the Dakota, the totem is called Wakan. See Riggs and Dorsey, Dakota Grammar, Texts and Ethnol., in Contributions N. Amer. Ethn., 1893, p. 219.

[644] James's Account of Long's Expedition in the Rocky Mountains, I, p. 268. (Quoted by Dorsey, XIth Rep., p. 431, § 92.)

[645] We do not mean to say that in principle every representation of religious forces in an animal form is an index of former totemism. But when we are dealing with societies where totemism is still apparent, as is the case with the Dakota, it is quite natural to think that these conceptions are not foreign to it.

[646] See below, same book, ch. ix, § 4, pp. 285 ff.

[647] The first spelling is that of Spencer and Gillen; the second, that of Strehlow.

[648] Nat. Tr., p. 548, n. 1. It is true that Spencer and Gillen add: "The idea can be best expressed by saying that an Arungquiltha object is possessed of an evil spirit." But this free translation of Spencer and Gillen is their own unjustified interpretation. The idea of the arungquiltha in no way implies the existence of spiritual beings, as is shown by the context and Strehlow's definition.

[649] Die Aranda, II, p. 76, n.

[650] Under the name Boyl-ya (see Grey, Journal of Two Expeditions, II, pp. 337-338).

[651] See above, p. 42. Spencer and Gillen recognize this implicitly when they say that the arungquiltha is a "supernatural force." Cf. Hubert and Mauss, Théorie Générale de la Magie, in Année Sociol., VII, p. 119.

[652] Codrington, The Melanesians, pp. 191 ff.

[653] Hewitt, loc. cit., p. 38.

[654] There is even ground for asking whether an analogous notion is completely lacking in Australia. The word churinga, or tjurunga as Strehlow writes, has a very great similarity, with the Arunta. Spencer and Gillen say that it designates "all that is secret or sacred. It is applied both to the object and to the quality it possesses" (Nat. Tr., p. 648, s.v. churinga). This is almost a definition of mana. Sometimes Spencer and Gillen even use this word to designate religious power or force in a general way. While describing a ceremony among the Kaitish, they say that the officiant is "full of churinga," that is to say, they continue, of the "magic power emanating from the objects called churinga." Yet it does not seem that the notion of churinga has the same clarity and precision as that of the mana in Melanesia or of the wakan among the Sioux.

[655] Yet we shall see below (this book, ch. viii and ix) that totemism is not foreign to all ideas of a mythical personality. But we shall show that these conceptions are the product of secondary formations: far from being the basis of the beliefs we have just analysed, they are derived from them.

[656] Loc. cit., p. 38.

[657] Rep. Peabody Museum, III, p. 276, n. (quoted by Dorsey, XIth Rep., p. 435).

[658] See above, p. 35.

[659] In the expressions such as Ζεὺς ὕει or Ceres succiditur, it is shown that this conception survived in Greece as well as in Rome. In his Götternamen, Usener has clearly shown that the primitive gods of Greece and Rome were impersonal forces thought of only in terms of their attributes.

[660] Définition du phénomène religieux, in Année Sociol., II, pp. 14-16.

[661] Preanimistic Religion, in Folk-Lore, 1900, pp. 162-182.

[662] Ibid., p. 179. In a more recent work, The Conception of Mana (in Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions, II, pp. 54 ff.), Marrett tends to subordinate still further the animistic conception of mana, but his thought on this point remains hesitating and very reserved.

[663] Ibid., p. 168.

[664] This return of preanimism to naturism is still more marked in Clodd, Preanimistic Stages of Religion (Trans. Third Inter. Congress for the H. of Rel., I, p. 33).

[665] Théorie générale de la Magie, in Année Sociol., VII, pp. 108 ff.

[666] Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst, in Globus, 1904, Vol. LXXXVI, pp. 321, 355, 376, 389; 1905, Vol. LXXXVII, pp. 333, 347, 380, 394, 413.

[667] Globus, LXXXVII, p. 381.

[668] He clearly opposes them to all influences of a profane nature (Globus, LXXXVI, p. 379a).

[669] It is found even in the recent theories of Frazer. For if this scholar denies to totemism all religious character, in order to make it a sort of magic, it is just because the forces which the totemic cult puts into play are impersonal like those employed by the magician. So Frazer recognizes the fundamental fact which we have just established. But he draws different conclusions because he recognizes religion only where there are mythical personalities.

[670] However, we do not take this word in the same sense as Preuss and Marrett. According to them, there was a time in religious evolution when men knew neither souls nor spirits: a preanimistic phase. But this hypothesis is very questionable: we shall discuss this point below (Bk. II, ch. viii and ix).

[671] On this same question, see an article of Alessandro Bruno, Sui fenomeni magico-religiosi della communità primitive, in Rivista italiana di Sociologia, XII Year, Fasc. IV-V, pp. 568 ff., and an unpublished communication made by W. Bogoras to the XIV Congress of the Americanists, held at Stuttgart in 1904. This communication is analysed by Preuss in the Globus, LXXXVI, p. 201.

[672] "All things," says Miss Fletcher, "are filled with a common principle of life," Smiths. Rep. for 1897, p. 579.

[673] Hewitt, in American Anthropologist, 1902, p. 36.

[674] The Melanesians, pp. 118-120.

[675] Ibid., p. 119.

[676] See above, p. 103.

[677] Pickler, in the little work above mentioned, had already expressed, in a slightly dialectical manner, the sentiment that this is what the totem essentially is.

[678] See our Division du travail social, 3rd ed., pp. 64 ff.

[679] Ibid., p. 76.

[680] This is the case at least with all moral authority recognized as such by the group as a whole.

[681] We hope that this analysis and those which follow will put an end to an inexact interpretation of our thought, from which more than one misunderstanding has resulted. Since we have made constraint the outward sign by which social facts can be the most easily recognized and distinguished from the facts of individual psychology, it has been assumed that according to our opinion, physical constraint is the essential thing for social life. As a matter of fact, we have never considered it more than the material and apparent expression of an interior and profound fact which is wholly ideal: this is moral authority. The problem of sociology—if we can speak of a sociological problem—consists in seeking, among the different forms of external constraint, the different sorts of moral authority corresponding to them and in discovering the causes which have determined these latter. The particular question which we are treating in this present work has as its principal object, the discovery of the form under which that particular variety of moral authority which is inherent in all that is religious has been born, and out of what elements it is made. It will be seen presently that even if we do make social pressure one of the distinctive characteristics of sociological phenomena, we do not mean to say that it is the only one. We shall show another aspect of the collective life, nearly opposite to the preceding one, but none the less real (see p. 212).

[682] Of course this does not mean to say that the collective consciousness does not have distinctive characteristics of its own (on this point, see Représentations individuelles et représentations collectives, in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1898, pp. 273 ff.).

[683] This is proved by the length and passionate character of the debates where a legal form was given to the resolutions made in a moment of collective enthusiasm. In the clergy as in the nobility, more than one person called this celebrated night the dupe's night, or, with Rivarol, the St. Bartholomew of the estates (see Stoll, Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie, 2nd ed., p. 618, n. 2).

[684] See Stoll, op. cit., pp. 353 ff.

[685] Ibid., pp. 619, 635.

[686] Ibid., pp. 622 ff.

[687] The emotions of fear and sorrow are able to develop similarly and to become intensified under these same conditions. As we shall see, they correspond to quite another aspect of the religious life (Bk. III, ch. v).

[688] This is the other aspect of society which, while being imperative, appears at the same time to be good and gracious. It dominates us and assists us. If we have defined the social fact by the first of these characteristics rather than the second, it is because it is more readily observable, for it is translated into outward and visible signs; but we have never thought of denying the second (see our Règles de la Méthode Sociologique, preface to the second edition, p. xx, n. 1).