The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Unabridged). Durkheim Émile
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without impropriety. A science is a discipline which, in whatever manner it is conceived, is always applied to some real data. Physics and chemistry are sciences because physico-chemical phenomena are real, and of a reality which does not depend upon the truths which these sciences show. There is a psychological science because there are really consciousnesses which do not hold their right of existence from the psychologist. But on the contrary, religion could not survive the animistic theory and the day when its truth was recognized by men, for they could not fail to renounce the errors whose nature and origin would thus be revealed to them. What sort of a science is it whose principal discovery is that the subject of which it treats does not exist?
93 We thus leave aside here those theories which, in whole or in part, make use of super-experimental data. This is the case with the theory which Andrew Lang exposed in his book, The Making of Religion, and which Father Schmidt has taken up again, with variations of detail, in a series of articles on The Origin of the Idea of God (Anthropos, 1908, 1909). Lang does not set animism definitely aside, but in the last analysis, he admits a sense or intuition of the divine directly. Also, if we do not consider it necessary to expose and discuss this conception in the present chapter, we do not intend to pass it over in silence; we shall come to it again below, when we shall ourselves explain the facts upon which it is founded (Bk. II, ch. ix, § 4).
94 This is the case, for example, of Fustel de Coulanges who accepts the two conceptions together (The Ancient City, Bk. I and Bk. III, ch. ii).
95 This is the case with Jevons, who criticizes the animism taught by Tylor, but accepts his theories on the origin of the idea of the soul and the anthropomorphic instinct of man. Inversely, Usener, in his Götternamen, rejects certain hypotheses of Max Müller which will be described below, but admits the principal postulates of naturism.
96 Primitive Culture, chs. xi-xviii.
97 Principles of Sociology, Parts I and VI.
98 This is the word used by Tylor. It has the inconvenience of seeming to imply that men, in the proper sense of the term, existed before there was a civilization. However, there is no proper term for expressing the idea; that of primitive, which we prefer to use, lacking a better, is, as we have said, far from satisfactory.
99 Tylor, op. cit., I, pp. 455 f.
100 See Spencer, Principles of Sociology, I, pp. 143 ff., and Tylor, op. cit., I, pp. 434 ff., 445 ff.
101 Tylor, II, pp. 113 ff.
102 Tylor, I, pp. 481 ff.
103 Principles of Sociology, I, p. 126.
104 Ibid., pp. 322 ff.
105 Ibid., pp. 366-367.
106 Ibid., p. 346. Cf. p. 384.
107 See below, Bk. II, ch. viii.
108 See Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 123-127; Strehlow, Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral Australien, II, pp. 52 ff.
109 The Melanesians, pp. 249-250.
110 Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-Eastern Australia, p. 358.
111 Ibid., pp. 434-442.
112 Of the negroes of southern Guinea, Tylor says that "their sleeping hours are characterized by almost as much intercourse with the dead as their waking are with the living" (Primitive Culture, I, p. 443). In regard to these peoples, the same author cites this remark of an observer: "All their dreams are construed into visits from the spirits of their deceased friends" (ibid., p. 443). This statement is certainly exaggerated; but it is one more proof of the frequency of mystic dreams among the primitives. The etymology which Strehlow proposes for the Arunta word altjirerama, which means "to dream," also tends to confirm this theory. This word is composed of altjira, which Strehlow translates by "god" and rama, which means "see." Thus a dream would be the moment when a man is in relations with sacred beings (Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme, I, p. 2).
113 Andrew Lang, who also refuses to admit that the idea of the soul was suggested to men by their dream experiences, believes that he can derive it from other empirical data: these are the data of spiritualism (telepathy, distance-seeing, etc.). We do not consider it necessary to discuss the theory such as it has been exposed in his book The Making of Religion. It reposes upon the hypothesis that spiritualism is a fact of constant observation, and that distance-seeing is a real faculty of men, or at least of certain men, but it is well known how much this theory is scientifically contested. What is still more contestable is that the facts of spiritualism are apparent enough and of a sufficient frequency to have been able to serve as the basis for all the religious beliefs and practices which are connected with souls and spirits. The examination of these questions would carry us too far from what is the object of our study. It is still less necessary to engage ourselves in this examination, since the theory of Lang remains open to many of the objections which we shall address to that of Tylor in the paragraphs which follow.
114 Jevons has made a similar remark. With Tylor, he admits that the idea of the soul comes from dreams, and that after it was created, men projected it into things. But, he adds, the fact that nature has been conceived as animated like men does not explain how it became the object of a cult. "The man who believes the bowing tree or the leaping flame to be a living thing like himself, does not therefore believe it to be a supernatural being — rather, so far as it is like himself, it, like himself, is not supernatural" (Introduction to the History of Religions, p. 55).
115 See Spencer and Gillen, Nor. Tr., p. 506, and Nat. Tr., p. 512.
116 This is the ritual and mythical theme which Frazer studies in his Golden Bough.
117 The Melanesians, p. 119.
118 Ibid., p. 125.