The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

One of the book’s major themes is also its core thesis: The origins of religious belief stem from society itself. Durkheim posits that group identity, especially as experienced during communal events of an emotional or inspiring nature (such as clan meetings), which impress upon the individual an intuition that there is some spiritual or psychical force above them. In a sense, Durkheim writes, that intuition is correct—the communal action of individual consciousnesses working together as part of a group produces a collective consciousness whose influence is felt by the whole: “In fact, we can say that the believer is not deceived when he believes in the existence of a moral power upon which he depends and from which he receives all that is best in himself: this power exists, it is society” (257).

While this is not a spirit or god in classical religious terms, it is a real phenomenon that affects human thought and emotion. This religious intuition, which responds to the collective reflection of society, takes the collective consciousness and treats its object (society) as something sacred. Thus society itself becomes, in a certain sense, the god of the religious system. The religion then reinforces and propagates itself when members of the community come together in other events to recapture the heightened sense of spiritual power that they initially encountered together; these renewed attempts eventually become recurrent rituals and ceremonies.