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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

Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Act Expression General Personal Phenomenon Social Suicide Victim
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
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
When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Law Moral Necessary Rule Value
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
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
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Character History Name Sociology Worth
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

Action Belief Determination Opinion Phenomenon Religious State
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 not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Assign Capacity Feeling Human Nature Ourselves Variable
The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. His passions are mere appearances, being sterile. They are dissipated in futile imaginings, producing nothing external to themselves.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Activity Appearance Imagination Man Meditation Production Surround
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
Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Expression Reality Religious Representation
At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Logic Relation Religion
Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Character Live Man Melancholy Sadness Sorrow

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.

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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.

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