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Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the second are determined modes of action.

Emile Durkheim

The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Belief Collection Creative Emotion Sentiment System
An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Act Change Define Different End Identity Nature Similar System
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
Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Expression Reality Religious Representation
Even one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Enough Establishment Experiment Law Observation Willing
At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Logic Relation Religion
It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Complex Difficult Man Religion Science Teaching Understand
The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Basic Fact Rule Social
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
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
If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Birth Essential Religion Society Soul
Maniacal suicide. -This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Death Escape Grace Hallucination Imagination Kill Mystery Obedience Patient Suicide
Faith is not uprooted by dialectic proof; it must already be deeply shaken by other causes to be unable to withstand the shock of argument.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Argument Evidence Faith Reason Shock
Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Cloth Creation Ourselves Reach Sadness World
We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Crime Knowledge Philosophy
When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Beginning Discover Lose Man Mindset Mirror

Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the second are determined modes of action.

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Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the second are determined modes of action.

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Popular Authors

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