The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Unabridged). Durkheim Émile
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rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_9f35930d-5f86-5948-81d1-54b0a34992f4">141 Among others who have adopted this conception may be cited Renan. See his Nouvelles études d'histoire religieuse, 1884, p. 31.
142 Aside from the Comparative Mythology, the works where Max Müller has exposed his general theories on religion are: Hibbert Lectures (1878) under the title The Origin and Development of Religion; Natural Religion (1889); Physical Religion (1890); Anthropological Religion (1892); Theosophy, or Psychological Religion (1893); Contributions to the Science of Mythology (1897). Since his mythological theories are closely related to his philosophy of language, these works should be consulted in connection with the ones consecrated to language or logic, especially Lectures on the Science of Language, and The Science of Thought.
143 Natural Religion, p. 114.
144 Physical Religion, pp. 119-120.
145 Ibid., p. 121; cf. p. 304.
146 Natural Religion, pp. 121 ff., and 149-155.
147 "The overwhelming pressure of the infinite" (ibid., p. 138).
148 Ibid., pp. 195-196.
149 Max Müller even goes so far as to say that until thought has passed this first stage, it has very few of the characteristics which we now attribute to religion (Physic. Rel., p. 120).
150 Physic. Rel., p. 128.
151 The Science of Thought, p. 30.
152 Natural Religion, pp. 393 ff.
153 Physic. Rel., p. 133; The Science of Thought, p. 219; Lectures on the Science of Language, II, pp. 1 ff.
154 The Science of Thought, p. 272.
155 The Science of Thought, I, p. 327; Physic. Rel., pp. 125 ff.
156 Mélanges de mythologie et de linguistique, p. 8.
157 Anthropological Religion, pp. 128-130.
158 This explanation is not as good as that of Tylor. According to Max Müller, men could not admit that life stopped with death; therefore they concluded that there were two beings within them, one of which survived the body. But it is hard to see what made them think that life continued after the body was decomposed.
159 For the details, see Anthrop. Rel., pp. 351 ff.
160 Anthrop. Rel., p. 130. — This is what keeps Max Müller from considering Christianity the climax of all this development. The religion of ancestors, he says, supposes that there is something divine in man. Now is that idea not the one at the basis of the teaching of Christ? (ibid., pp. 378 ff.). It is useless to insist upon the strangeness of the conception which makes Christianity the latest of the cults of the dead.
161 See the discussion of the hypothesis in Gruppe, Griechishen Kulte und Mythen, pp. 79-184.
162 See Meillet, Introduction à l'étude comparative des langues indo-européennes, p. 119.
163 Oldenberg, Die Religion des Vedas, pp. 59 ff.; Meillet, Le dieu Iranien Mythra, in Journal Asiatique, X, No. 1, July-August, 1907, pp. 143 ff.
164 In this category are a large number of the maxims of popular wisdom.
165 It is true that this argument does not touch those who see in religion a code (especially of hygiene) whose provisions, though placed under the sanction of imaginary beings, are nevertheless well founded. But we shall not delay to discuss a conception so insupportable, and which has, in fact, never been sustained in a systematic manner by persons somewhat informed upon the history of religions. It is difficult to see what good the terrible practices of the initiation bring to the health which they threaten; what good the dietetic restrictions, which generally deal with perfectly clean animals, have hygienically; how sacrifices, which take place far from a house, make it more solid, etc. Undoubtedly there are religious precepts which at the same time have a practical utility; but they are lost in the mass of others, and even the services which they render are frequently not without some drawbacks. If there is a religiously enforced cleanliness, there is also a religious filthiness which is derived from these same principles. The rule which orders a corpse to be carried away from the camp because it is the seat of a dreaded spirit is undoubtedly useful. But the same belief requires the relatives to anoint themselves with the liquids which issue from a corpse in putrefaction, because they are supposed to have exceptional virtues. — From this point of view, magic has served a great deal more than religion.
166 Contributions to the Science of Mythology, I, pp. 68 f.
167 Lectures on the Science of Language, II, p. 456 ff.; Physic. Rel., pp. 276 ff. — Also Bréal, Mélanges, p. 6, "To bring the necessary clarity into this question of the origin of mythology, it is necessary to distinguish carefully the gods, which are the immediate product of the human intelligence, from the fables, which are its indirect and involuntary product."
168 Max Müller recognized this. See Physic. Rel., p. 132, and Comparative Mythology, p. 58. "The gods are nomina and not numina, names without being and not beings without name."
It is true that Max Müller held that for the Greeks, "Zeus was, and remained, in spite of all mythological obscurations, the name of the Supreme Deity" (Science of Language, II, p. 478). We shall not dispute this assertion, though it is historically contestable; but in any case, this conception of Zeus could never have been more than a glimmer in the midst of all the other religious beliefs of the Greeks.
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