The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

by Émile Durkheim

Each of them, in fact, consists in a duplication of the soul. The totem, as the ancestor, is the soul of the individual, but externalized and invested with powers superior to those it is believed to possess while within the organism. Now this duplication is the result of a psychological necessity; for it only expresses the nature of the soul which, as we have seen, is double. In one sense, it is ours: it expresses our personality. But at the same time, it is outside of us, for it is only the reaching into us of a religious force which is outside of us. We cannot confound ourselves with it completely, for we attribute to it an excellence and a dignity by which it rises far above us and our empirical individuality. So there is a whole part of ourselves which we tend to project into the outside. This way of thinking of ourselves is so well established in our nature that we cannot escape it, even when we attempt to regard ourselves without having recourse to any religious symbols. Our moral consciousness is like a nucleus about which the idea of the soul forms itself; yet when it speaks to us, it gives the effect of an outside power, superior to us, which gives us our law and judges us, but which also aids and sustains us. When we have it on our side, we feel ourselves to be stronger against the trials of life, and better assured of triumphing over them, just as the Australian who, when trusting in his ancestor or his personal totem, feels himself more valiant against his enemies.[896] So there is something objective at the basis of these conceptions, whether we have in mind the Roman genius, the individual totem, or the Alcheringa ancestor; and this is why they have survived, in various forms, up to the present day. Everything goes just as if we really had two souls; one which is within us, or rather, which is us; the other which is above us, and whose function it is to control and assist the first one. Frazer thought that the individual totem was an external soul; but he believed that this exteriority was the result of an artifice and a magic ruse. In reality, it is implied in the very constitution of the idea of the soul.[897]

II

The spirits of which we have just been speaking are essentially benefactors. Of course they punish a man if he does not treat them in a fitting manner;[898] but it is not their function to work evil.

However, a spirit is in itself just as capable of doing evil as good. This is why we find a class of evil geniuses forming itself naturally, in opposition to these auxiliary and protecting spirits, which enables men to explain the permanent evils that they have to suffer, their nightmares[899] and illnesses,[900] whirlwinds and tempests,[901] etc. Of course this is not saying that all these human miseries have appeared as things too abnormal to be explained in any way except by supernatural forces; but it is saying that these forces are thought of under a religious form. As it is a religious principle which is considered the source of life, so, all the events which disturb or destroy life ought logically to be traced to a principle of the same sort.

These harmful spirits seem to have been conceived on the same model as the good spirits of which we have just been speaking. They are represented in an animal form, or one that is half-animal, half-man;[902] but men are naturally inclined to give them enormous dimensions and a repulsive aspect.[903] Like the souls of the ancestors, they are believed to inhabit trees, rocks, water-holes and subterranean caverns.[904] Taking the Arunta as a particular example, Spencer and Gillen say expressly that these evil geniuses, known under the name of Oruncha, are beings of the Alcheringa.[905] Many are represented as the souls of persons who had led a terrestrial life.[906] Among the personages of the fabulous epoch, there were, in fact, many different temperaments: some had cruel and evil instincts which they retained;[907] others were naturally of a bad constitution; they were thin and emaciated; so after they had entered into the ground, the nanja rocks to which they gave birth were considered the homes of dangerous influences.[908]

Yet they are distinguished by special characteristics from their confrères, the heroes of the Alcheringa. They do not reincarnate themselves; among living men, there is no one who represents them; they are without human posterity.[909] When, judging from certain signs, they believe that a child is the result of their work, it is put to death as soon as born.[910] Also, these belong to no determined totemic group; they are outside the social organization.[911] By all these traits, they are recognized as magic powers rather than religious ones. And in fact, it is especially with the magician that they have relations; very frequently it is from them that he gets his powers.[912] So we have now arrived at the point where the world of religion stops and that of magic commences; and as this latter is outside the field of our research, we need not push our researches further.[913]

III

The appearance of the notion of spirits marks an important step in advance in the individualization of religious forces.

However, the spiritual beings of whom we have been speaking up to the present are as yet only secondary personages. They are either evil-working geniuses who belong to magic rather than religion, or else, being attached to determined individuals or places, they cannot make their influence felt except within a circle of a very limited radius. So they can only be the objects of private and local rites. But after the idea has once been established, it naturally spreads to the higher spheres of the religious life, and thus mythical personalities of a superior order are born.

Though the ceremonies of the different clans differ from one another, they all belong to the same religion, none the less; also, a certain number of essential similarities exist between them. Since all the clans are only parts of one and the same tribe, the unity of the tribe cannot fail to make itself felt through this diversity of particular cults. In fact, there is no totemic group that does not have churinga and bull-roarers, and these are used everywhere in the same way. The organization of the tribe into phratries, matrimonial classes and clans, and the exogamic interdictions attached to them, are veritable tribal institutions. The initiation celebrations all include certain fundamental practices, the extraction of a tooth, circumcision, subincision, etc., which do not vary with the totems within a single tribe. The uniformity on this point is the more easily established as the initiation always takes place in the presence of the tribe, or at least, before an assembly to which the different clans have been summoned. The reason for this is that the object of the initiation is to introduce the neophyte into the religious life, not merely of the clan into which he was born, but of the tribe as a whole; so it is necessary that the various aspects of the tribal religion be represented before him and take place, in a way, under his very eyes. It is on this occasion that the moral and religious unity of the tribe is affirmed the best.