CHAPTER V

PIACULAR RITES AND THE AMBIGUITY OF THE NOTION OF SACREDNESS Definition of the piacular rite 389 I.--Positive rites of mourning--Description of these rites 390 II.--How they are explained--They are not a manifestation of private sentiments--The malice attributed to the souls of the dead cannot account for them either--They correspond to the state of mind in which the group happens to be--Analysis of this state--How it ends by mourning--Corresponding changes in the way in which the souls of the dead are conceived 396 III.--Other piacular rites; after a public mourning, a poor harvest, a drought, the southern lights--Rarity of these rites in Australia--How they are explained 403 IV.--The two forms of the sacred: the pure and the impure--Their antagonism--Their relationship--Ambiguity of the idea of the sacred--All rites present the same character 409 CONCLUSION To what extent the results obtained may be generalized 415 I.--Religion rests upon an experience that is well founded but not privileged--Necessity of a science to reach the reality at the bottom of this experience--What is this reality?--The human groups--Human meaning of religion--Concerning the objection which opposes the ideal society to the real society 416 How religious individualism and cosmopolitanism are explained in this theory 424 II.--The eternal element in religion--Concerning the conflict between science and religion; it has to do solely with the speculative side of religion--What this side seems destined to become 427 III.--How has society been able to be the source of logical, that is to say conceptual, thought? Definition of the concept: not to be confounded with the general idea; characterized by its impersonality and communicability--It has a collective origin--The analysis of its contents bears witness in the same sense Collective representations as types of ideas which individuals accept--In regard to the objection that they are impersonal only on condition of being true--Conceptual thought is coeval with humanity 431 IV.--How the categories express social things--The chief category is the concept of totality which could be suggested only by society--Why the relations expressed by the categories could become conscious only in society--Society is not an a-logical being--How the categories tend to detach themselves from geographically determined groups 439 The unity of science on the one hand, and of morals and religion on the other--How the society accounts for this unity-- Explanation of the rôle attributed to society: its creative power--Reactions of sociology upon the science of man 445 THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE