Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/566

 5 28 Reviews.

conceived to be the logical subject of the statement ; an active being endowed with will, aims, and desires. If we are not to take it as a figure of speech (and M. Durkheim decidedly does not give it as such), we must label it an entirely metaphysical con- ception. Society conceived as a collective being, endowed with all properties of individual consciousness, will be rejected even by those sociologists who accept a "collective consciousness" in the sense of a sum of conscious states (as it is accepted, for example, by Messrs. McDougall, Ellwood, Davis, and, partly, by Simmel and Wundt). But, a few pages further, we read a statement which seems to allow of another interpretation. Speaking of " manieres d'agir auxquelles la societe est assez fortement attachee pour les imposer a ses membres," he says, " Les representations qui les expriment en chacun de nous ont done un intensite a laquelle des etats de conscience purement prives ne sauraient atteindre ; car elles sont fortes des innombrables representations individuelles qui ont servi a former chacune d'elles. C'est la societe qui parle par la bouche de ceux qui les afifirment en notre presence" (p. 297). Here we stand before a dilemma : either this phrase means that "social ideas" possess a specific character, because the individual who conceives them has the consciousness of being backed up by society in his opinion, in which case the statement is perfectly empirical ; or the statement implies the conception of a non- empirical action of society upon the individual consciousness, in which case it conveys no scientific meaning.

The writer expresses himself again on the subject, from the genetic point of view, — "En un mot, quand une chose est I'objet d'un etat de I'opinion, la representation qu'en a chaque individu tient de ses origines, des conditions dans lesquelles elle a pris naissance, une puissance d'action que sentent ceux-la memes qui ne s'y soumettent pas " (p. 297). Here the author stands in front of the real problem. What are these specific social conditions in which arise " social consciousness," and consequently religious ideas ? His answer is that these conditions are realized whenever society is actually gathered, in all big social gatherings : — " Au sein d'une assemblee qu'echauffe une passion commune, nous devenons susceptibles de sentiments et d'actes dont nous sommes incapables quand nous sommes reduits a nos seules forces, et quand I'assem-