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A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.

Emile Durkheim

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

Abandonment Comparison Imagination Reality Value
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
Melancholy suicide. – This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Attract Connection Depression Melancholy Patience Pleasure Realize Suicide
The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Achievement Difficult Enjoyment Known Man Wisdom
At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Logic Relation Religion
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
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
Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Cry Miniature Pain Science Social Sociology
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Character History Name Sociology Worth
The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Basic Fact Rule Social
Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general one, we cannot condemn it without condemning ourselves; we are too saturated with it not partly to excuse it.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Fact Mindset Oneself Regard Tolerance
When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Law Moral Necessary Rule Value
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

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