56 Science Religion and Reality 



are by no means coextensive, and while a great deal of belief and 

 religious inspiration must be traced back to solitary experiences 

 of man, there is much concourse and effervescence which has no 

 religious meaning nor religious consequence. 



If we extend yet further the definition of "society" and regard 

 it as a permanent entity, continuous through tradition and culture, 

 each generation brought up by its predecessor and moulded into 

 its likeness by the social heritage of civilisation — can we not regard 

 then Society as the prototype of Godhead ? Even thus the facts 

 of primitive life will remain rebellious to this theory. For tradition 

 comprises the sum-total of social norms and customs, rules of art and 

 knowledge, injunctions, precepts, legends and myths, and part 

 of this only is religious, while the rest is essentially profane. As 

 we have seen in the second section of this essay, primitive man's 

 empirical and rational knowledge of nature, which is the foundation 

 of his arts and crafts, of his economic enterprises and of his con- 

 structive abilities, forms an autonomous domain of social tradition. 

 Society as the keeper of lay tradition, of the profane, cannot be the 

 religious principle or Divinity, for the place of this latter is within 

 the domain of the sacred only. We have found, moreover, that 

 one of the chief tasks of primitive religion, especially in the per- 

 formance of initiation ceremonies and tribal mysteries, is to sacralise 

 the religious part of tradition. It is clear, therefore, that religion 

 cannot derive all its sanctity from that source which itself is made 

 sacred by religion. 



It is in fact only by a clever play on words and by a double- 

 edged sophistication of the argument that " society " can be 

 identified with the Divine and the Sacred. If, indeed, we set 

 equal the social to the moral and widen this concept so that it 

 covers all belief, all rules of conduct, all dictates of conscience ; if, 

 further, we personify the Moral Force and regard it as a Collective 

 Soul, then the identification of Society with Godhead needs not 

 much dialectical skill to be defended. But since the moral rules 

 are only one part of the traditional heritage of man, since morality 

 is not identical with the Power or Being from which it is believed 

 to spring, since finally the metaphysical concept of " Collective 

 Soul " is barren in anthropology, we have to reject the sociological 

 theory of religion. 



To sum up, the views of Durkheim and his school cannot be 

 accepted. First of all, in primitive societies religion arises to a 



