Collective Effervescence PDF

CHAPTER SEVEN ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS (CONCLUSION) Origin of the Notion of Totemic Principle, or Mana T he proposition established in the preceding chapter defines the terms in which the problem of how totemism originated must be posed. The central notion o...

CHAPTER SEVEN ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS (CONCLUSION) Origin of the Notion of Totemic Principle, or Mana T he proposition established in the preceding chapter defines the terms in which the problem of how totemism originated must be posed. The central notion of totemism is that of a quasi-divine principle that is imma- nent in certain categories of men and things and thought of in the form of an animal or plant. In essence, therefore, to explain this religion is to explain this belief-that is, to discover what could have led men to construct it and with what building blocks. I It is manifestly not with the feelings the things that serve as totems are capa- ble of arousing in men's minds. I have shown that these are often insignifi- cant. In the sort of impression lizards, caterpillars, rats, ants, frogs, turkeys, breams, plum trees, cockatoos, and so forth make upon man (to cite only the names that come up frequently on lists of Australian totems), there is noth- ing that in any way resembles grand and powerful religious emotions or could stamp upon them a quality of sacredness. The same cannot be said of stars and great atmospheric phenomena, which do have all that is required to seize men's imaginations. As it happens, however, these serve very rarely as totems; indeed, their use for this purpose was probably a late development. 1 Thus it was not the intrinsic nature of the thing whose name the clan bore that set it apart as the object of worship. Furthermore, if the emotion elicited by the thing itself really was the determining cause of totemic rites and be- liefs, then this thing would also be the sacred being par excellence, and the 1 See above, p. 102. 207 208 THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS animals and plants used as totems would play the leading role in religious life. But we know that the focus of the cult is elsewhere. It is symbolic represen- tations of this or that plant or. animal. It is totemic emblems and symbols of all kinds that possess the greatest sanctity. And so it is in totemic emblems and symbols that the religious source is to be found, while the real objects repre- sented by those emblems receive only a reflection. The totem is above all a symbol, a tangible expression of something else. 2 But of what? It follows from the same analysis that the totem expresses and symbolizes two different kinds of things. From one point of view, it is the outward and visible form of what I have called the totemic principle or god; and from an- other, it is also the symbol of a particular society that is called the clan. It is the flag of the clan, the sign by which each clan is distinguished from the others, the visible mark of its distinctiveness, and a mark that is borne by everything that in any way belongs to the clan: men, animals, and things. Thus, if the totem is the symbol of both the god and the society, is this not because the god and the society are one and the same? How could the em- blem of the group have taken the form of that quasi-divinity if the group and the divinity were two distinct realities? Thus the god of the clan, the totemic principle, can be none other than the clan itself, but the clan transfigured and imagined in the physical form of the plant or animal that serves as totem. How could that apotheosis have come about, and why should it have come about in that fashion? II Society in general, simply by its effect on men's minds, undoubtedly has all that is required to arouse the sensation of the divine. A society is to its mem- bers what a god is to its faithful.'~ A god is first of all a being that man con- ceives of as superior to himself in some respects and one on whom he believes he depends. Whether that being is a conscious personality, like Zeus or Yahweh, or a play of abstract forces as in totemism, the faithful believe *Le fidele. To avoid translating this term, which connotes loyal adherence, as "the believer," thereby leaving no room for a contrast with le croyant, which connotes belief, I have usually.rendered it as "the faithful." Durkheim analyzes the stance of what one might call the "unbelieving faithful." See Bk. Ill, chap. 3, §2. 2 In the small book cited above, Uulius] Pikler, [Der Ursprung der Totemismus. Bin Beitrag zur materialis- chen Geschichtheorie, Berlin, K. Hoffmann, 1900] has already expressed, in a somewhat dialectical fashion, the belief that this fundamentally is what the totem is. Origins of These Beliefs (Conclusion) 209 they are bound to certain ways of acting that the nature of the sacred princi- ple they are dealing with has imposed upon them. Society also fosters in us the sense of perpetual dependence. Precisely because society has its own spe- cific nature that is different from our nature as individuals, it pursues ends that are also specifically its own; but because it can achieve those ends only by working through us, it categorically demands our cooperation. Society requires us to make ourselves its servants, forgetful of our own interests. And it subjects us to all sorts of restraints, privations, and sacrifices without which social life would be impossible. And so, at every instant, we must submit to rules of action and thought that we have neither made nor wanted and that sometimes are contrary to our inclinations and to our most basic instincts. If society could exact those concessions and sacrifices only by physical constraint, it could arouse in us only the sense of a physical force to which we have no choice but to yield, and not that of a moral power such as reli- gions venerate. In reality, however, the hold society has over consciousness owes far less to the prerogative its physical superiority gives it than to the moral authority with which it is invested. We defer to society's orders not simply because it is equipped to overcome our resistance but, first and fore- most, because it is the object of genuine respect. An individual or collective subject is said to inspire respect when the rep- resentation that expresses it in consciousness has such power that it calls forth or inhibits conduct automatically, irrespective ef any utilitarian calculation of help- ful or harmful results. When we obey someone out of respect for the moral au- thority that we have accorded to him, we do not follow his instructions because they seem wise but because a certain psychic energy intrinsic to the idea we have of that person bends our will and turns it in the direction indi- cated. When that inward and wholly mental pressure moves within us, respect is the emotion we feel. We are then moved not by the advantages or disad- vantages of the conduct that is recommended to us or demanded of us but by the way we conceive of the one who recommends or demands that conduct. This is why a command generally takes on short, sharp forms of address that leave no room for hesitation. It is also why, to the extent that command is command and works by its own strength, it precludes any idea of deliberation or calculation, but instead is made effective by the very intensity of the men- tal state in which it is given. That intensity is what we call moral influence. The ways of acd.ng to which society is strongly enough attached to im- pose them on its members are for that reason marked wjth a distinguishing sign that calls forth respect. Because these ways of acting have been worked out in common, the intensity with which they are thought in each individ- ual mind finds resonance in all the others, and vice versa. The representations 210 THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS that translate them within each of us thereby gain an intensity that mere pri-: vate states of consciousness can in no way match. Those ways of acting gather. strength from the countless individual representations that have served to' form.each of them. It is society that speaks through the mouths of those who affirm them in our presence; it is society that we hear when we hear them;. and the voice of all itself has a tone that an individual voice cannot have. 3 The very forcefulness with which society acts against dissidence, whether by. moral censure or physical repression, helps to strengthen this dominance, 4 and at the same time forcefully proclaims the ardor of the shared conviction. In short, when something is the object of a state of opinion, the representa- tion of the thing that each individual has draws such power from its origins, from the conditions in which it originated, that it is felt even by those who do not yield to it.·~ The mental representation of a thing that is the object of a state of opinion has a tendency to repress and hold at bay those representa.:. tions that contradict it; it commands instead those actions that fulfill it. It ac- complishes this not by the reality or threat of physical coercion but by the radiation of the mental energy it contains. The hallmark of moral authority is that its psychic properties alone give it power. Opinion, eminently a social thing, is one source of authority. Indeed, the question arises whether au- thority is not the daughter of opinion. 5 Some will object that science is of- ten. the antagonist of opinion, the errors of which it combats and corrects. But science can succeed in this task only if it has sufficient authority, and it can gain such authority only from opinion itself. All the scientific demon- · strations in the world would have no influence if a people had no faith in sci- ence. Even today, if it should happen that science resisted a very powerful current of public opinion, it would run the risk of seeing its credibility eroded. 6 *For example, the thief acknowledges a "state of opinion" by taking precautions not to be discovered. As this example suggests, once upon a time Durkheim's term opinion could have been translated as "pub- lic opinion" without confusion, but not in America today. Our present usage connotes the discrete bits of "opinion" that pollsters elicit through replies to questionnaires. Trans. 3See my [De la] Division du travail social: Etude sur /'organisation de societes superieures, 3d ed. [Paris, E Al- can, 1902], pp. 64ff. 4 Ibid., p. 76. 5This is the case at least for all moral authority that is recognized as such by a group. 6 ! hope this analysis and those that follow will put an end to an erroneous interpretation of my ideas, which has more than once led to misunderstanding. Because I have made constraint the external feature by which social facts can be most easily recognized and distinguished from individual psychological ones, some have believed that I consider physical constraint to be the entire essence of social life. In reality, I have never regarded constraint as anything more than the visible, tangible expression of an underlying, in~· ner fact that is wholly ideal: moral authority. The question for sociology-if there can be said to be one so- Origins of These Beliefs (Conclusion) 211 Because social pressure makes itself felt through mental channels, it was bound to give man the idea that outside him there are one or several powers, moral yet mighty, to which he is subject. Since they speak to him in a tone of command, and sometimes even tell him to violate his most natural incli-. nations, man was bound to imagine them as being external to him. The mythological interpretations would doubtless not have been born if man could easily see that those influences upon him come from society. But the ordinary observer cannot see where the influence of society comes from. It moves along channels that are too obscure and circuitous, and uses psychic mechanisms that are too complex, to be easily traced to the source. So long as scientific analysis has not yet taught him, man is well aware that he is acted upon but not by whom. Thus he had to build out of nothing the idea of those powers with which he feels connected. From this we can begin to per- ceive how he was led to imagine those powers in forms that are not their own and to transfigure them in thought. A god is not only an authority to which we are subject but also a force that buttresses our o~n. The man who has obeyed his god, and who for this reason thinks he has his god with him, approaches the world with confidence and a sense of heightened energy. In the same way, society's workings do not stop at demanding sacrifices, privations, and efforts from us. The force of the collectivity is not wholly external; it does not move us entirely from outside. Indeed, because society can exist only in and by means of individual minds, 7 it must enter into us and become organized within us. That force thus be- comes an integral part of our being and, by the same stroke, uplifts it and brings it to maturity.'' This stimulating and invigorating effect of society is particularly apparent in certain circumstances. In the midst of an assembly that becomes worked ~ ciological question-is to seek, throughout the various forms of external constraint, the correspondingly various ·kinds of moral authority and to discover what causes have given rise to the latter. Specifically, the main object of the question treated in the present work is to discover in what form the particular kind of moral authority that is inherent in all that is religious was born, and what it is made of. Further, it will be seen below that in making social pressure one of the distinguishing features of sociological phenomena, I do not mean to say that this is the only one. I will exhibit another aspect of collective life, virtually the opposite of this one, but no less real. (Seep. 213.) * L'e/eve et le grandit. This phrase can also mean "uplifts and enlarges" it. Swain chose the verbs "ele- vate" and "magnify." Durkheim may have intended both the physical and the moral meanings: "to lift" as well as "to bring up" or "re~r"; to "enlarge" as well as to "raise in stature" or "bring to m.iturity." 7 Which does not mean, of course, that collective consciousness does not have specific traits (Durk- heim, "Representations individuelles et representations collectives," RMM, vol. VI (), pp. 273ff.). 212 THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS up, we become capable of feelings and conduct of which we are incapable when left to our individual resources. When it is dissolved and we are again on our own, we fall back to our ordinary level and can then take the full measure of how far above ourselves we were. History abounds with exam- ples. Suffice it.to think about the night of August 4 *, when an assembly was suddenly carried away in an act of sacrifice and abnegation that each of its members had refused to make the night before and by which all were sur- prised the morning after. 8 For this reason all parties-be they political, eco- nomic, or denominational-see to it that periodic conventions are held, at which their followers can renew their common faith by making a public demonstration of it together. To strengthen emotions that would dissipate if left alone, the one thing needful is to bring all those who share them into more intimate and more dynamic relationship. In the same way, we can also explain the curious posture that is so char- acteristic of a man who is speaking to a crowd-if he has achieved commu- nion with it. His language becomes high-flown in a way that would be ridiculous in ordinary circumstances; his gestures take on an overbearing quality; his very thought becomes impatient of limits and slips easily into every kind of extreme. This is because he feels filled to overflowing, as though with a phenomenal oversupply of forces that spill over and tend to spread around him. Sometimes he even feels possessed by a moral force greater than he, of which he is only the interpreter. This is the hallmark of what has often been called the demon of oratorical inspiration. This extraordinary surplus of forces is quite real and comes to him from the very group· he is addressing. The feelings he arouses as he speaks return to him enlarged and amplified, re- inforcing his own to the same degree. The passionate energies that he arouses reecho in turn within him, and they increase his dynamism. It is then no longer a mere individual who speaks but a group incarnated and personified. Apart from these passing or intermittent states, there are more lasting ones in which the fortifying action of society makes itself felt with longer- term consequences and often with more striking effect. Under the influence *Durkheim is probably alluding to the night of 4 August 1789, when France's new National Assem- bly ratified the total destruction of the feudal regime. 8 The proof of this is the length and passion of the debates at which legal form was given to the reso- lutions in principle that were taken in a moment of collective enthusiasm. More than one, among clergy and nobility alike, called that famous night "dupes' night," or, with Rivarol, the "Saint Bartholomew's of the landed estates:' [This apparently alludes to two events. The Journee des Dupes was the day, not the night, of 30 November 1630, when Cardinal Richelieu's enemies came to believe the cardinal had lost the king's ear for good and had fallen in disgrace; they were proved wrong. La St. Barthelemy was a mas- sacre of Protestants 23-24 August 1527, which led to civil war. Trans.] See [Otto] Stoll, Suggestion und Hypnotismus in derVolkerpsychologie, 2d ed. (Leipzig, Veit, 1904], p. 618 n. 2. Origins of These Beliefs (Conclusion) 213 of some great collective shock in certain historical periods, social interactions become much more frequent and active. Individuals seek one another out and come together more. The result is the general effervescence that is char- acteristic of revolutionary or creative epochs. The result of that heightened activity is a general stimulation of individual energies. People live differently and more intensely than in normal times.* The changes are not simply of nuance and degree; man himself becomes something other than what he was. He is stirred by passions so intense that they can be satisfied only by vi- olent and extreme acts: by acts of superhuman heroism or bloody barbarism. This explains the Crusades,9 for example, as well as so many sublime or sav- age moments in the French Revolution. 10 We see the most mediocre or harmless bourgeois transformed by the general exaltation into a hero or an executioner. 11 And the mental processes are so clearly the same as those at the root of religion that the individuals themselves conceived the pressure they yielded to in explicitly religious terms. The Crusaders believed they felt God present among them, calling on them to go forth and conquer the Holy Land, and Joan of Arc believed she was obeying celestial voices. 12 This stimulating action of society is not felt in exceptional circumstances alone. There is virtually no instant of our lives in which a certain rush of en- ergy fails to come to us from outside ourselves. In all kinds of acts-that ex- press the understanding, esteem, and affection of his neighbor, there is a lift that the man who does his duty feels, usually without being aware of it. But that lift sustains him; the feeling society has for him uplifts the feeling he has for himself. Because he is in moral harmony with his neighbor, he gains new confidence, courage, and boldness in action-quite like the man of faith who believes he feels the eyes of his god turned benevolently toward him. Thus is produced what amounts to a perpetual uplift of our moral being. Since it varies according to a multitude of external conditions-whether our relations with the social groups that surround us are more or less active and what those groups are-we cannot help but feel that this moral toning up has an external cause, though we do not see where that cause is or what it is. So we readily conceive of it in the form of a moral power that, while immanent in us, also represents something in us that is other than ourselves. This is * On vit plus et autrement qu'en temps normal. 9 Ibid., pp. 353ff. 10 Ibid., pp. 619, 635. 11 Ibid., pp. 622ff. 12 Feelings of fear or sadness can also develop and intensify under the same influences. As we will see, those feelings correspond to a whole aspect of religious life (Bk. Ill, chap. 5). 214 THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS man's moral consciousness and his conscience.'~ And it is only with the aid.. · of religious symbols that most have ever managed to conceive of it with any clarity at all. In addition to those free forces that continuously renew our own, there are other forces congealed in the techniques we use and in traditions of all kinds. We speak a language we did not create; we use instruments we did not invent; we claim rights we did not establish; each generation inherits a trea- sury of knowledge that it did not itself amass; and so on. We owe these var- ied benefits of civilization to society, and although in general we do not see where they come from, we know at least that they are not of our own mak- ing. It is these things that give man his distinctiveness among all creatures, for man is man only because he is civilized. Thus he could not escape the sense of mighty causes existing outside him, which are the source of his character- istic nature and which, like benevolent forces, help and protect him and guarantee him a privileged fate. He naturally accorded to those powers a re- spect commensurate with the great value of the benefits that he attributed to them. 13 Thus the environment in which we live seems populated with forces at once demanding and helpful, majestic and kind, and with which we are in touch. Because we feel the weight of them, we have no choice but to locate them outside ourselves, as we do for the objective causes of our sensations. But from another point of view, the feelings they provoke in us are qualita- tively different from those we have for merely physical things. So long as these perceptions are no more than the empirical characteristics that ordinary ex- perience makes manifest, and so long as the religious imagination has not yet transfigured them, we feel nothing like respect for them, and they have noth- ing of what it takes to lift us above ourselves. Therefore the representations that express them seem to us very different from those that collective influ- ences awaken in us. The two sorts of representation form two kinds of men.:. tal state, and they are as separate and distinct as the two forms of life to which they correspond. As a result, we feel as though we are in touch with two dis- tinct sorts of reality with a clear line of demarcation between them: the world of profane things on one side, the world of sacred things on the other. '' Conscience. To bring out that the French conscience refers simultaneously to intellectual cognition and moral obligation, I have used both "conscience" and "consciousness." 13Such is the other aspect of society, which seems to us demanding as well as good and kindly. It dom- inates us; it helps us. If I have defined social fact more by the first characteristic than by th~ second, it is because the dominance is more easily observable and because it is expressed by external and visible signs; but I am far from ever having intended to deny the reality of the second. ([Emile Durkheim,] Les Reg/es de la methode sodologique, 2d ed. [Paris, Akan, 1901], preface, p. xx n.1). Origins ef These Beliefs (Conclusion) 215 Furthermore, now as in the past, we see that society never stops creating new sacred things. If society should happen to become infatuated with a man, believing it has found in him its deepest aspirations as well as the means of ful- filling them, then that man will be put in a class by himself and virtually de- ified. Opinion will confer on him a grandeur that is similar in every way to the grandeur that protects the gods. This has happened to many sovereigns in whom their epochs had faith and who, if not deified outright, were looked upon as direct representatives of the godhead. A clear indication that this apotheosis is the work of society alone is that society has often consecrated men whose personal worth did not warrant it. Moreover, the routine defer- ence that men invested with high social positions receive is not qualitatively different from religious respect. The same movements express it: standing at a distance from a high personage; taking special precautions in approaching him; using a different language to speak with him and gestures other than those that will do for ordinary mortals. One's feeling in these circumstances is so closely akin to religious feeling that many do not distinguish between them. Sacredness is ascribed to princes, nobles, and political leaders in order to account for the special regard they enjoy. In Melanesia and Polynesia, for example, people say that a man of influence possesses mana and impute his influence to this mana. 14 It is clear, nonetheless, that his position comes to him only from the importance that opinion gives him. Thus, both the moral power conferred by opinion and the moral power with which sacred beings are invested are of fundamentally the same origin and composed of the same elements. For this reason, one word can be used to designate both. Just as society consecrates men, so it also consecrates things, including ideas. When a belief is shared unanimously by a people, to touch it-that is, to deny or question it-is forbidden, for the reasons' already stated. The pro- hibition against critique is a prohibition like any other and proves that one is face to face with a sacred thing. Even today, great though the freedom we al- low one another may be, it would be tantamount to sacrilege for a man wholly to deny progress or to reject the human ideal to which modern soci- eties are attached. Even the peoples most enamored of free thinking tend to place one principle above discussion and regard it as untouchable, in other words, sacred: the principle of free discussion itself Nowhere has society's ability to make itself a god or to create gods been more in evidence than during the first years of the Revolution. In the gen- eral enthusiasm of that time, things that were by nature purely secular were 14 [Robert Henry] Codrington, The Melanesians [Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1891], pp. 50, 103, 120. Moreover, it is generally believed that in the Polynesian languages, the word mana originally meant "author- ity." (See [Edward] Tregear, Maori Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, s.v. [Wellington, Lyon and Blair, 1891].) 216 THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS transformed by public opinion into sacred things: Fatherland, Liberty, Rea-. son. 15 A religion tended to establish itself spontaneously, with its own dogma, 16 symbols, 17 altars, 18 and feast days. 19 It was to these spontaneous hopes that the Cult of Reason and the Supreme Being tried to give a kind of authoritative fulfillment. Granted, this religious novelty did not last. The pa- triotic enthusiasm that originally stirred the m~sses died away, 20 and the cause having departed, the effect could not hold. But brief though it was, this ex- periment loses none of its sociological interest. In a specific case, we saw so- ciety and its fundamental ideas becoming the object of a genuine cult directly-and without transfiguration of any kind. All these facts enable us to grasp how it is possible for the clan to awaken in its members the idea of forces existing outside them, both dominating and supporting them~in sum, religious forces. There is no other social group to which the primitive is more directly or tightly bound. The ties that bind him to the tribe are looser and less strongly felt. Although the tribe is certainly not foreign to him, it is with the people of his clan that he has most in com- mon, and it is the influence of this group that he feels most immediately, and so it is also this influence, more than any other, that was bound to find ex- pression in religious symbols. This first explanation is too general, though, since it can be applied in- discriminately to any kind of society and hence to any kind of religion. Let us try to specify what particular form collective action takes in the clan and how in the clan it brings about the sense of the sacred, for collective action is nowhere more easily observable or more obvious than in its results. III Life in Australian societies alternates between two different phases. 21 In one phase, the population is scattered in small groups that attend to their occupa- 15 See Albert Mathiez, Les Origines des cultes revo/utionnaires 1789-1792 [Paris, G. Bellais, 1904). 16 Ibid., p. 24. 17 Ibid., pp. 29, 32. 1 8rbid., p. 30. 19 Ibid, p. 46. 20See [Albert) Mathiez, La Theophilanthropie et le culte decadaire [Paris, E Alcan, 1903), p. 36. See [Sir Baldwin] Spencer and [Francis James) Gillen, Northern Tribes [ef Central Australia, London, 21 Macmillan, 1904), p. 33. Origins if These Beliefs (Conclusion) 217 tions independently. Each family lives to itself, hunting, fishing-in short, striving by all possible means to get the food it requires. In the other phase, by contrast, the population comes together, concentrating itself at specified places for a period that varies from several days to several months. This con- centration takes place when a clan or a portion of the tribe22 is summoned to come together and on that occasion either conducts a religious ceremony or holds what in the usual ethnographic terminology is called a· corroboree. 23 These two phases stand in the sharpest possible contrast. The first phase, in which economic activity predominates, is generally of rather low intensity. Gathering seeds or plants necessary for food, hunting, and fishing are not oc- cupations that can stir truly strong passions. 24 The dispersed state in which the society finds itself makes life monotonous, slack, and humdrum. 25 Every- thing changes when a corroboree takes place. Since the emotional and pas- sionate faculties of the primitive are not fully subordinated to his reason and will, he easily loses his self-control. An event of any importance immediately puts him outside himself. Does he receive happy news? There are transports of enthusiasm. If the opposite happens, he is seen running hither and yon like a madman, giving way to all sorts of chaotic movements: shouting, scream- ing, gathering dust and throwing it in all directions, biting himself, brandish- ing his weapons furiously, and so on. 26 The very act of congregating is an exceptionally powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are gathered to- gether, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and quickly launches them to an extraordinary height of exaltation. Every emotion ex- pressed resonates without interference in consciousnesses that are wide open J 22 Indeed there are ceremonies, notably those that take place for initiation, to which members of for- eign tribes are summoned. A system of messages and messengers is organized for the purpose of giving the notice that is indispensable for the grand ceremonies. (See [Alfred William] Howitt, "Notes on Aus- tralian Message-Sticks and Messengers:' ]AI, vol. XVIII (1889) [pp. 314-334]; Howitt, Native Tribes [ef South-East Australia, New York, Macmillan, 1904], pp. 83, 678-691; Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes [of Central Australia, London, Macmillan, 1899], p. 159; Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 551. 23 The corroboree is distinguished from a religious rite proper in that it is accessible to women and the uninitiated. But although these two sorts of collective celebrations must be distinguished, they are closely related, I will return to and explain this relationship. 24 Except in the case of the large bush-beating hunts. 25 "The peaceful monotony of this part of his life;' say Spencer and Gillen (Northern Tribes, p. 33). 26 Howitt, Native Tribes, p. 683. Here it is the demonstrations that take place when an embassy sent to a foreign group returns to camp.with news of a favorable result. [Durkheim will not be the one to report that the' embassy in question had been entrusted to women. Howitt does not say what the women's mis- sion was about. Trans.] Cf. (Robert] Brough Smyth, [11te Aborigines efVictoria], vol. 1 [Melbourne, J. Fer- res, 1878], p. 138; [Reverend Louis] Schulze, "Aborigines of the Upper and Middle Finke River;' RSSA, vol. XVI , p. 222. 218 THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS to external impressions, each one echoing the others. The initial impulse is thereby amplified each time it is echoed, like an avalanche that grows as it goes along. And since passions so heated and so free from all control cannot help but spill over, from every side there are nothing but wild movements, shouts, downright howls, and deafening noises of all kinds that further in- tensify the state they are expressing. Probably because a collective emotion cannot be expressed collectively without some order that permits harmony and unison of movement, these gestures and cries tend to fall into rhythm and regularity, and from there into songs and dances. But in taking on a more regular form, they lose none of their natural fury. A regulated commotion is still a commotion. The human voice is inadequate to the task and is given ar- tificial reinforcement: Boomerangs are knocked against one another; bull roarers are whirled. The original function of these instruments, used widely in the religious ceremonies of Australia, probably was to give more satisfying expression to the excitement felt. And· by expressing this excitement, they also reinforce it. The effervescence often becomes so intense that it leads to outlandish behavior; the passions unleashed are so torrential that nothing can hold them. People are so far outside the ordinary conditions of life, and so conscious of the fact, that they feel a certain need to set themselves above and beyond ordinary morality. The sexes come together in violation of the rules governing sexual relations. Men exchange wives. Indeed, sometimes inces- tuous unions, in normal times judged loathsome and harshly condemned, are contracted in the open and with impunity. 27 If it is added that the ceremonies are generally held at night, in the midst of shadows pierced here and there by firelight, we can easily imagine the effect that scenes like these are bound to have on the minds of all those who take part. They bring about such an in- tense hyperexcitement of physical and mental life as a whole that they can- not be borne for very long. The celebrant who takes the leading role eventually falls exhausted to the ground. 28 To illustrate and flesh out this unavoidably sketchy tableau, here is an ac- count of scenes taken from Spencer and Gillen. One of the most important religious celebrations among the Warra- 27See Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, pp. 96-97, Northern Tribes, p. 137; Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. II, p. 319. This ritual promiscuity is practiced especially during initiation ceremonies (Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, pp. 267, 381; Howitt, Native Tribes, p. 657) and in totemic ceremonies (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, pp. 214, 237, 298). The ordinary rules of exogamy are violated dur- ing totemic ceremonies. Nevertheless, among the Arunta, unions between father and daughter, son and mother, brothers and sisters (all cases of blood kinship) remain forbidden (Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes [pp. 96-97]). 28 Howitt, Native Tribes, pp. 535, 545. This is extremely common. Origins of These Beliefs (Conclusion) 219 munga concerns the snake Wollunqua. It is a series of rites that unfold over several days. What I will describe takes place on the fourth day. According to the protocol in use among the Warramunga, representa- tives of the two phratries take part, some as celebrants and others as organiz- ers and participants. Although only the people of the Uluuru phratry are authorized to conduct the ceremony, the members of the Kingilli phratry must decorate the participants, prepare the site and the instruments, and serve as the audience. In this capacity, they are responsible for mounding damp sand ahead of time, on which they use red down to make a drawing that represents the snake Wollunqua. The ceremony proper, which Spencer and Gillen attended, did not begin until nightfall. Around ten or eleven o' - clock, Uluuru and Kingilli arrived on the scene, sat on the mound, and be- gan to sing. All were in a state of obvious excitement (" every one was evidently very excited"). A short time later in the evening, the Uluuru brought their wives and handed them over to the Kingilli, 29 who had sexual relations with them. The recently initiated young men were brought in, and the ceremony was explained to them, after which there was uninterrupted singing until three in the morning. Then came a scene of truly wild frenzy (" a scene ef the wildest excitement"). With fires flickering on all sides, bringing out starkly the whiteness of the gum trees against the surrounding night, the Uluuru knelt in single file beside the mound, then moved around it, rising in unison with both hands on their thighs, kneeling again a little farther along, and so on. At the same time, they moved their bodies left and then right, at each move- ment letting out an echoing scream-actually a howl-at the top of their voices, Yrrsh! Yrrsh! Yrrsh! Meanwhile the Kingilli, in a high state of excite- ment, sounded their boomerangs, their chief appearing to be even more ex- cited than his companions. When the procession of the Uluuru had circled the mound twice, they rose from their kneeling position, seated themselves, and took to singing again. From time to time, the singing would flag and al- most die, then break out suddenly again. At the first sign of day, everyone jumped to their feet; the fires that had gone out were relit; urged on by the Kingilli, the Uluuru furiously attacked the mound with boomerangs, lances, a.nd sticks, and in a few minutes it was in pieces. The fires died and there was profound silence. 30 The same observers were ,Present at a yet wilder scene among the War- ramunga during the fire rituals. All sorts of processions, dances, and songs had been underway by torchlight since nightfall, and the general efferves- 29 Since the women were also Kingilli, these unions violated the rule of exogamy. 30 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 237. [This account begins at p. 231. Trans.]  ::~ 220 THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS ,'~ '¥ cence was increasingly intense. At a certain moment, twelve of those present.:~ each took in hand a large lighted torch; and, holding his own torch like a ,., bayonette, one of them charged a group of natives. The blows were parried with staves and lances. A general melee followed. Men jumped, kicked, reared, and let out wild screams. The torches blazed and crackled as they hit heads and bodies, showering sparks in all directions. "The smoke, the flam- ing torches, the rain of sparks, the mass of men dancing and screaming-all that, say Spencer and Gillen, created a scene whose wildness cannot be con- veyed in words." 31 It is not difficult to imagine that a man in such a state of exaltation should no longer know himself. Feeling possessed and led on by some sort of external power that makes him think and act differently than he normally does, he naturally feels he is no longer himself. It seems to him that he has become a new being. The decorations with which he is decked out, and the maskli~e decorations that cover his face, represent this inward transformation even more than they help bring it about. And because his companions feel transformed in the same way at the same moment, and express this feeling by their shouts, movements, and bearing, it is as if he was in reality transported into a special world entirely different from the one in· which he ordinarily lives, a special world inhabited by exceptionally intense forces that invade and transform him. Especially when repeated for weeks, day after day, how would experiences like these not leave him with the conviction that two het- erogeneous and incommensurable worlds exist in fact? In one world he lan- guidly carries on his daily life; the other is one that he cannot enter without abruptly entering into relations with extraordinary powers that excite him to the point of frenzy. The first is the profane world and the second, the world of sacred things. It is in these effervescent social milieux, and indeed from that very effer- vescence, that the religious idea seems to have been born. That such is in- 'deed the origin tends to be confirmed by the fact that what is properly called religious activity in Australia is almost entirely contained within the periods when these gatherings are held. To be sure, there is no people among whom the great cult ceremonies are not more or less periodical, but in the more ad- vanced societies, there is virtually no day on which some prayer or offering is not offered to the gods or on which some ritual obligation is not fulfilled. In Australia, by contrast, the time apart from the feasts of the clan and the 31 Ibid., p. 391. Other examples of collective effervescence during religious ceremonies are found in Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, pp. 244-246, 356-366, 374, 509-510. (The last occurs during a funeral rite.) Cf. Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, pp, 213, 351. Origins ef These Beliefs (Conclusion) 221 tribe is taken up 'almost entirely with secular and profane activities. Granted, even during the periods of secular activity, there are prohibitions that must be and are observed. Freely killing or eating the totemic animal is never per- mitted, at least where the prohibition has kept its original strictness, but hardly any positive rite or ceremony of any importance is conducted. The positive rites and ceremonies take place only among assembled groups. Thus, the pious life of the Australian moves between successive phases-one of ut- ter colorlessness, one of hyperexcitement-and social life oscillates to the same rhythm. This brings out the link between the two phases. Among the peoples called civilized, on the other hand, the relative continuity between them partially masks their interrelations. Indeed, we may well ask whether this starkness of contrast may have been necessary to release the experience of the sacred in its first form. By compressing itself almost entirely into cir- cumscribed periods, collective life could attain its maximum intensity and power, thereby giving man a more vivid sense of the twofold existence he leads and the twofold nature in which he participates. But this explanation is still incomplete. I have shown how the clan awak- ens in its members the idea of external forces that dominate and exalt it by the way in which it acts upon its members. But I still must ask how it hap- pens that those forces were conceived of in the form of the totem, ·that is, in the form of an animal or plant. The reason is that some animal or plant has given its name to the clan and serves as the clan's emblem. It is, in fact, a well-known law that the feel- ings a thing arouses in us are spontaneously transmitted to the symbol that represents it. Black is for us a sign of mourning; therefore it evokes sad thoughts and impressions. This transfer of feelings takes place because the idea of the thing and the idea of its symbol are closely conndcted in our minds. As a result, the feelings evoked by one spread contagiously to the other. This contagion, which occurs in all cases to some extent, is much more complete and more pronounced whenever the symbol is something simple, well defined, and easily imagined. But the thing itself is difficult for the mind to comprehend-given its dimensions, the number of its parts, and the complexity of their organization. We cannot detect the source of the strong feelings we have in an abstract entity that we can imagine only with difficulty and in a jumbled way. We can comprehend those feelings only in connection with a concrete object whose reality we feel intensely. Thus if the thing itself does not meet this requirement, it cannot serve as a mooring for the impressions felt, even for those impressions it has itself aroused. The symbol thus takes the place of the thing, and the emotions aroused are trans- ferred to the symbol. It is the symbol that is loved, feared, and respected. It 222 THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS is to the symbol that one is grateful. And it is to the symbol that one sacri- fices oneself. The soldier who dies for his flag dies for his country, but the idea of the flag is actually in the foreground of his consciousness. Indeed, the flag sometimes causes action directly. Although the country will not be lost if a solitary flag remains in the hands of the enemy or won if it is regained, the soldier is killed retaking it. He forgets that the flag is only a symbol that has no value in itself but only brings to mind the reality it represents. The flag itself is treated as if it was that reality. The totem is the flag of the clan, so it is natural that the impressions the clan arouses in individual consciousness-impressions of dependence and of heightened energy-should become more closely attached to the idea of the totem than to that of the clan. The clan is too complex a reality for such un- formed minds to be able to bring its concrete unity into clear focus. Besides, the primitive does not see that these impressions come to him from the group. He does not even see that the coming together of a certain number of men participating in the same life releases new energies that transform each one of them. All he feels is that he is lifted above himself and that he is par- ticipating in a life different from the one he lives ordinarily. He must still connect those experiences to some external object in a causal relation. Now what does he. see around him? What is available to. his senses, and what at- tracts his attention, is the multitude of totemic images surrounding him. He sees the waninga and the nurtunja, symbols of the sacred being. He sees the bull roarers and the churingas, on which combinations oflines that have the same meaning are usually engraved. The decorations on various parts of his body are so many totemic marks. Repeated everywhere and in every form, how could that image not fail to stand out in the mind with exceptionally sharp relief? Thus placed at center stage, it becomes representative. To that image the felt emotions attach themselves, for it is the only concrete object to which they can attach themselves. The image goes on calling forth and recalling those emotions even after the assembly is over. Engraved on the cult implements, on the sides of rocks, on shields, and so forth, it lives beyond the gathering. By means of it, the emotions felt are kept perpetually alive and fresh. It is as though the image provoked them directly. Imputing the emotions to the image is all the more natural because, being common to the group, they can only be related to a thing that is equally common to all. Only the totemic emblem meets this condition. By definition, it is common to all. During the ceremony, all eyes are upon it. Although the generations change, the image remains the same. It is the abiding element of social life. So the mysterious forces with which men feel in touch seem to emanate from it, and thus we understand how Origins of These Beliefs (Conclusion) 223 men were led to conceive them in the form of the animate or inanimate be- ing that gives the clan its name. Having laid this foundation, we are in a position to grasp the essence of totemic beliefs. Because religious force is none other than the collective and anonymous force of the clan and because that force can only be conceived of in the form of the totem, the totemic emblem is, so to speak, the visible body of the god. From the totem, therefore, the beneficial or fearsome actions that the cult is intended to provoke or prevent will seem to emanate. So it is to the totem that the rites are specifically addressed. This is why the totem stands foremost in the ranks of sacred things. Like any other society, the clan can onlyhve in and by means of the in- dividual consciousnesses of which it is made. Thus, insofar as religious force is conceived of as embodied in the totemic emblem, it seems to be external to individuals and endowed with a kind of transcendence; and yet, from an- other standpoint, and like the clan it symbolizes, it can be made real only within and by them. So in this sense, it is immanent in individual members and they of necessity imagine it to be. They feel within themselves the active presence of the religious force, because it is this force that lifts them up to a higher life. This is how man came to believe that he had within him a prin- ciple comparable to the one residing in the totem, and thus how he came to impute sacredness to himself-albeit a sacredness less pronounced than that of the emblem. This happens because the emblem is the preeminent source of religious life. Man participates in it only indirectly, and he is aware of that; he realizes that the force carrying him into the realm of sacred things is not inherent in himself but comes to him from outside. For another reason, the animals or plants of the totemic species had to have the same quality to an even greater degree. For if the totemic principle is none other than the clan, it is the clan thought of irt the physical form de- picted by the emblem. Now, this is also the form of the real beings whose name the clan bears. Because of this resemblance, they could not fail to arouse feelings similar to those aroused by the emblem itself. Because this emblem is the object of religious respect, they too should inspire respect of the same kind· and appear as sacred. Given forms so. perfectly identical, the faithful were bound to impute forces of the same kind to both. This is why it is forbidden to kill or eat the totemic animal and why the flesh is deemed to have positive virtues that the rites put to use. The animal looks like the emblem of the clan-like its own image, in other words. And since it looks more like the emblem than the man does, its place in the hierarchy of sacred things is superior to man's. Clearly there is a close kinship between these two beings; both share the same essence, and both incarnate something of the  224 THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS totemic principle. But because the principle itself is conceived of in animal form, the animal seems to incarnate it more conspicuously than the man does. This is why, if the man respects the animal and treats it as a brother, he gives it at least the respect due an older brother. 32 But although the totemic principle has its chief residence in a specific animal or plant species, it cannot possibly remain localized there. Sacredness is highly contagious, 33 and it spreads from the totemic being to everything that directly or remotely has to do with it. The religious feelings inspired by the animal passed into the substances it ate, thereby making or remaking its flesh and blood; those feelings passed into the things that resemble it and into the various creatures with which it is in constant contact. Thus, little by lit- tle, subtotems attached themselves to totems, and the cosmological systems expressed by the primitive classifications came into being. In the end, the whole world was divided up among the totemic principles of the same tribe. We now understand the source of the ambiguity that religious forces dis- play when they appear in history-how they come to be natural as well as human and material as well as moral. They are moral powers, since they are made entirely from the impressions that moral collectivity as a moral being makes on other moral beings, the individuals. Such moral powers do not ex- press the manner in which natural things affect our senses but the manner in which the collective consciousness affects individual consciousnesses. Their authority is but one aspect of the moral influence that society exerts on its members. From another standpoint, they are bound to be regarded as closely akin to material things34 because they are conceived of in tangible forms. Thus they bestride the two worlds. They reside in men but are at the same time the life-principles of things. It is they that enliven and discipline con- sciences; it is also they that make the plants grow and the animals multiply. Because of its double nature, religion was able to be the womb in which the 32 It can be seen that this brotherhood, far from being the premise of totemism, is its logical conse- quence. Men did not come to believe they had duties toward the animals of the totemic species because they believed them to be kin; instead, they imagined that kinship in order to explain the nature of the be- liefs and rites of which the animals were the object. The animal was considered man's relative because it was a sacred being like man; it was not treated like a sacred being because people saw him as a relative. 33 See below, Bk. III, chap. 1, §3. 34 Furthermore, at the basis of this idea is a well-founded and lasting awareness. Modern science also tends more and more to allow that the duality of man and nature does not predude their unity, and that, while distinct, physical forces and moral ones are closely akin. We certainly have a different idea of this unity and kinship than the primitive's, but beneath the different symbols, the fact affirmed is the same for both. Origins of These Beliefs (Conclusion) 225 principal seeds of human civilization have developed. Because religion has borne reality as a whole within itself, the material world as well as the moral world, the forces that move both bodies and minds have been conceived of in religious form. Thus it is that the most disparate techniques and prac- tices-those that ensure the continuity of moral life (law, morals, fine arts) and those that are useful to material life (natural sciences, industrial tech- niques)-sprang from religion, directly or indirectly. 35 IV The first religious ideas have often been attributed to feelings of weakness and subjection or fear and misgiving, which supposedly gripped man when he came into contact with the ~orld. The victim of a sort of nightmare fab- ricated by none other than himself, man imagines himself surrounded by those same hostile and fearsome powers, and appeasing them is the point of the rites. I have just shown that the first religions have an altogether different origin. The famous formula Primus in orbe d,eps fecit timor'' is in no way war- ranted by the facts. The primitive did not see his gods as strangers, enemies, or beings who were fundamentally or necessarily evil-minded or whose fa- vor he had ta. win at all costs. Quite the contrary, to him the gods are friends, relatives, and natural protectors. Are these not the names he gives to the be- ings of the totemic species? As he imagines it, the power to which the cult is addressed does not loom far above, crushing him with its superiority; instead, it is very near and bestows upon him useful abilities that he is not born with. Never, perhaps, has divinity been closer to man than at this moment in his- tory, when it is present in the things that inhabit his immediate surroundings and, in part, is immanent in man himself. In sum, joyful confidence, rather than terror or constraint, is at the root of totemism. If we set aside funeral rites, the melancholy aspect of any religion, the totemic cult is celebrated with songs, dances, and dramatic performances. Cruel expiations are relatively rare in it, as we will see; even the painful and obligatory maimings that attend initiation are not of this character. The j eal- ous and terrible gods do not make their appearance until later in religious *First in the world, fear created the gods. 35 I say that this derivation is sometimes indirect, because of techniques that, in the great majority of cases, seem to be derived from religion only via magic (see [Henri] Hubert and [Marcel] Mauss, [Esquisse d'une] Theorie generale de la magie, AS, vol. VII , pp. 144ff; magic forces are, I think, only a special form of religious forces. I will have occasion to return more than once to this point.