Religious Representations Are Collective Representations Which Express

Man Seeks To Learn, And Man Kills Himself Because Of The Loss Of Cohesion In His Religious Society; He Does Not Kill Himself Because Of His Learning. It Is Certainly Not The Learning He Acquires That Disorganizes Religion; But The Desire For Knowledge Wakens Because Religion Becomes Disorganized.

What History Teaches Us Is That Man Does Not Change Arbitrarily; He Does Not Transform Himself At Will On Hearing The Voices Of Inspired Prophets. The Reason Is That All Change, In Colliding With The Inherited Institutions Of The Past, Is Inevitably Hard And Laborious; Consequently It Only Takes Place In Response To The Demands Of Necessity. For Change To Be Brought About It Is Not Enough That It Should Be Seen As Desirable; It Must Be The Product Of Changes Within The Whole Network Of Diverse Casual Relationships Which Then Determine The Situation Of Man.

It Is Only By Historical Analysis That We Can Discover What Makes Up Man, Since It Is Only In The Course Of History That He Is Formed.

Sociological Method As We Practice It Rests Wholly On The Basic Principle That Social Facts Must Be Studied As Things, That Is, As Realities External To The Individual. There Is No Principle For Which We Have Received More Criticism; But None Is More Fundamental. Indubitably For Sociology To Be Possible, It Must Above All Have An Object All Its Own. It Must Take Cognizance Of A Reality Which Is Not In The Domain Of Other Sciences... There Can Be No Sociology Unless Societies Exist, And That Societies Cannot Exist If There Are Only Individuals.

While The State Becomes Inflated And Hypertrophied In Order To Obtain A Firm Enough Grip Upon Individuals, But Without Succeeding, The Latter, Without Mutual Relationships, Tumble Over One Another Like So Many Liquid Molecules, Encountering No Central Energy To Retain, Fix And Organize Them.