The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Unabridged). Durkheim Émile

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Thus we arrive at the following definition: 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. The second element which thus finds a place in our definition is no less essential than the first; for by showing that the idea of religion is inseparable from that of the Church, it makes it clear that religion should be an eminently collective thing.92

25 We have already attempted to define religious phenomena in a paper which was published in the Année Sociologique (Vol. II, pp. 1 ff.). The definition then given differs, as will be seen, from the one we give to-day. At the end of this chapter (p. 47, n. 1), we shall explain the reasons which have led us to these modifications, but which imply no essential change in the conception of the facts.

26 See above, p. 3. We shall say nothing more upon the necessity of these preliminary definitions nor upon the method to be followed to attain them. That is exposed in our Règles de la Méthode sociologique, pp. 43 ff. Cf. Le Suicide, pp. 1 ff. (Paris, F. Alcan).

27 First Principles, p. 37.

28 Introduction to the Science of Religions, p. 18. Cf. Origin and Development of Religion, p. 23.

29 This same frame of mind is also found in the scholastic period, as is witnessed by the formula with which philosophy was defined at this time: Fides quærens intellectum.

30 Introduction to the History of Religions, pp. 15 ff.

31 Introduction to the History of Religions, p. 23.

32 See below, Bk. III, ch. ii.

33 Prolegomena to the History of Religions, p. 25 (tr. by Squire).

34 Primitive Culture, I, p. 424. (Fourth edition, 1903.)

35 Beginning with the first edition of the Golden Bough, I, pp. 30-32.

36 Notably Spencer and Gillen and even Preuss, who gives the name magic to all non-individualized religious forces.

37 Burnouf, Introduction à l'histoire du bouddhisme indien, sec. edit., p. 464. The last word of the text shows that Buddhism does not even admit the existence of an eternal Nature.

38 Barth, The Religions of India, p. 110 (tr. by Wood).

39 Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 53 (tr. by Hoey).

40 Oldenberg, ibid., pp. 313 ff. Cf. Kern, Histoire du bouddhisme dans l'Inde, I, pp. 389 ff.

41 Oldenberg, p. 250; Barth, p. 110.

42 Oldenberg, p. 314.

43 Barth, p. 109. In the same way, Burnouf says, "I have the profound conviction that if Çâkya had not found about him a Pantheon already peopled with the gods just named, he would have felt no need of inventing them" (Introd. à l'hist. du bouddhisme indien, p. 119).

44 Burnouf, op. cit., p. 117.

45 Kern, op. cit., I, p. 289.

46 "The belief, universally admitted in India, that great holiness is necessarily accompanied by supernatural faculties, is the only support which he (Çâkya) should find in spirits" (Burnouf, p. 119).

47 Burnouf, p. 120.

48 Ibid., p. 107.

49 Ibid., p. 302.

50 This is what Kern expresses in the following terms: "In certain regards, he is a man; in certain others, he is not a man; in others, he is neither the one nor the other" (op. cit., I, p. 290).

51 "The conception" "was foreign to Buddhism" "that the divine Head of the Community is not absent from his people, but that he dwells powerfully in their midst as their lord and king, so that all cultus is nothing else but the expression of this continuing living fellowship. Buddha has entered into Nirvâna; if his believers desired to invoke him, he could not hear them" (Oldenberg, p. 369).

52 "Buddhist doctrine might be in all its essentials what it actually is, even if the idea of Buddha remained completely foreign to it" (Oldenberg, p. 322). — And whatever is said of the historic Buddha can be applied equally well to the mythological Buddhas.

53 For the same idea, see Max Müller, Natural Religion, pp. 103 ff. and 190.

54 Op. cit., p. 146.

55 Barth, in Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses, VI, p. 548.

56 Oldenberg, op. cit., p. 53.

57 1 Sam. xxi., 6.

58 Levit. xii.

59 Deut. xxii., 10 and 11.

60 La religion védique, I, p. 122.

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