Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/563

 REVIEWS.

Les Formes Elementaires de la Vie Religieuse. Le Systeme Totemique en Australia. (Bibliotheque de Philosophie Con- temporaine.) Par E. Durkheim. Paris: Felix Alcan, 1912. 8vo, pp. 647. Carte. \ofr.

It is superfluous to draw the attention of students to the import- ance of Prof. Durkheim's new work, for the appearance of a large volume from the pen of the leader of the French sociological school is a scientific event. The group of savants connected with rA?ifiee Sociologiqiie has achieved remarkable success in dealing with problems in primitive religion, and we have to thank it especially for the essays of MM. Hubert and Mauss on Sacrifice and Magic, and the articles of M. Durkheim on the Definition of Religious Phenomena, Classifications in Primitive Thought, and Totemism, and of M. Hertz on Funerary Rites.

To Prof. Durkheim the religious is the social par excellence. The distinctive characters of social and religious phenomena practically coincide. The social is defined, in Regies de la methode sociologique, by its " exteriority to individual minds," by its " coercive action " upon individual minds ; the religious, which is also "external" to individual minds, by its "obligatoriness."^ It is obvious, therefore, that the present volume is of special importance, being the systematic and final expression of the best organized sociological school extant on a subject specially important to, and specially well-mastered by, this school.

There is yet another reason why this book should particularly arouse the interest of the sociologist. It is Prof. Durkheim's first

1 See " Sur la Definition des phenomenes religieux," in fAnn^e Sociologiipie vol. ii.