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We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

Emile Durkheim

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

Absurd Drink Health Himself Language Perfection Person Sick Thinking Time
There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright or somber lights. In fact, only society can pass a collective opinion on the value of human life; for this the individual is incompetent.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Collection Compatible Humor People Psychology Sadness Science Society
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
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
Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Disappear Live Man Moral Philosophy Society
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
I can be free only to the extent that others are forbidden to profit from their physical, economic, or other superiority to the detriment of my liberty.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Economics Freedom Liberty Myself Profit
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
Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Attachment High Himself Man Pressure
When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Beginning Discover Lose Man Mindset Mirror
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
Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Abyss Capacity Force Regular
A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Curiosity Mindset Question Risk
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
A person is not merely a single subject distinguished from all the others. It is especially a being to which is attributed a relative autonomy in relation to the environment with which it is most immediately in contact.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Autonomy Distinguish Person Relative Subject
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
The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Activity Man Meditation Surrounding
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
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
When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Force Law Necessary
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
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
That men have an interest in knowing the world which surrounds them, and consequently that their reflection should have been applied to it at an early date, is something that everyone will readily admit.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Date Interest Known Man Ready Surround World
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
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
We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
EMILE DURKHEIM

Crime Knowledge Philosophy

We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

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We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

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