[712] Upon this particular aspect of primitive societies, see our Division du travail social, 3rd ed., pp. 123, 149, 173 ff.
[713] We provisionally limit ourselves to this general indication: we shall return to this idea and give more explicit proof, when we speak of the rites (Bk. III).
[714] On this point, see Achelis, Die Ekstase, Berlin, 1902, especially ch. i.
[715] Cf. Mauss, Essai sur les variations saisonnières des sociétés eskimos, in Année Sociol., IX, p. 127.
[716] Thus we see how erroneous those theories are which, like the geographical materialism of Ratzel (see especially his Politische Geographie), seek to derive all social life from its material foundation (either economic or territorial). They commit an error precisely similar to the one committed by Maudsley in individual psychology. Just as this latter reduced all the psychical life of the individual to a mere epiphenomenon of his physiological basis, they seek to reduce the whole psychical life of the group to its physical basis. But they forget that ideas are realities and forces, and that collective representations are forces even more powerful and active than individual representations. On this point, see our Représentations individuelles et représentations collectives, in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, May, 1898.
[717] See above, pp. 188 and 194.
[718] Even the excreta have a religious character. See Preuss, Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst, especially ch. ii, entitled Der Zauber der Defäkation (Globus, LXXXVI, pp. 325 ff.).
[719] This principle has passed from religion into magic: it is the totem ex parte of the alchemists.
[720] On this point see Règles de la méthode sociologique, pp. 5 ff.
[721] Procopius of Gaza, Commentarii in Isaiam, 496.