The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY JOSEPH WARD SWAIN M.A.
LONDON GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD RUSKIN HOUSE MUSEUM STREET
FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1915 SECOND IMPRESSION 1926 THIRD IMPRESSION 1954 FOURTH IMPRESSION 1957 FIFTH IMPRESSION 1964
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiry should be made to the publisher.
© George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1915
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY HOLLEN STREET PRESS LTD LONDON W.1



THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
We shall set ourselves to describe the organization of this system with all the exactness and fidelity that an ethnographer or an historian could give it. But our task will not be limited to that: sociology raises other problems than history or ethnography. It does not seek to know the passed forms of civilization with the sole end of knowing them and reconstructing them. But rather, like every positive science, it has as its object the explanation of some actual reality which is near to us, and which consequently is capable of affecting our ideas and our acts: this reality is man, and more precisely, the man of to-day, for there is nothing which we are more interested in knowing. Then we are not going to study a very archaic religion simply for the pleasure of telling its peculiarities and its singularities. If we have taken it as the subject of our research, it is because it has seemed to us better adapted than any other to lead to an understanding of the religious nature of man, that is to say, to show us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity.