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Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

Emile Durkheim

By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Break Character Continue Fear Separate
Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Abyss Capacity Force Regular
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Character History Name Sociology Worth
Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Circular Generation Improvement Movement Order
When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Force Law Necessary
It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Comfortable Greatness Harsh Time
When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Beginning Discover Lose Man Mindset Mirror
A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Belief Community Moral Relative Religion System
It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Analysis Built Himself History Make Up Man
One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or – which is the same thing – when his goal is infinity.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Goal Infinity Oneself Walk
Men have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Comparison Man Obligation Religion
Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Abandonment Comparison Imagination Reality Value
The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Basic Fact Rule Social
Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Cling Group Life Live Man Object Social Society Solidarity Vanish
Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Finding Lose Moral People
The term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result
EMILE DURKHEIM

Death Known Negative Positive Production Result Suicide Victim

Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

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Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

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Popular Authors

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