The Birth of The Gods Robertson Smith An

558943
research-article2014
STXXXX10.1177/0735275114558943Sociological TheoryMaryanski
Article
Sociological Theory
The Birth of the Gods:

2014, Vol. 32(4) 352–376
© American Sociological Association 2014
DOI: 10.1177/0735275114558943
Robertson Smith and stx.sagepub.com
Durkheim’s Turn to Religion as

the Basis of Social Integration
Alexandra Maryanski1
Abstract
Emile Durkheim’s ideas on religion have long served as foundational blocks for sociological
theories. Yet, a mystery remains over where Durkheim’s insights into religion came
from and especially the event that opened his eyes to religion’s importance in social life.
Durkheim never supplied details on this conversion, but he did credit Robertson Smith for
his new understanding. Did Smith really play the key role in Durkheim’s turn to religion?
This essay examines Durkheim’s revelation in 1895 by starting from a novel angle—the
first edition of The Division of Labor and his original stage model with the “cult of nature”
as the starting point for religion. Tracing the implications of his initial choice of naturism
as the elementary religion, a choice he would later soundly reject as “the product of [a]
delirious interpretation,” offers new insights into why Durkheim found Smith’s ideas so
inspirational. It also sheds light on why Durkheim overhauled his theory of solidarity,
discarding his famous distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity. In Robertson
Smith’s work, Durkheim discovered a more inclusive and enduring basis of solidarity in
the social universe.
Keywords
mechanical solidarity, naturism, totemism, religion, social integration
Certainly, I lay no claim whatsoever to some impossible originality. I am truly

convinced that my ideas have their roots in those of my predecessors; and it is because
of that that I have some confidence in their fruitfulness.
—Emile Durkheim (1907:613)
1University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Alexandra Maryanski, Department of Sociology, University of California at Riverside, 900 University Avenue,
Riverside, CA 92521-0419, USA.
Email: alexandra.maryanski@ucr.edu
Downloaded from stx.sagepub.com at UNIV OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE on February 5, 2015

Maryanski 353
The Unsolved Mystery

Lukes once remarked that when reading Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, he had his
“mind blown” and “became totally immersed in Durkheim” (quoted in Pickering 1984:xix).
Durkheim’s theory of religion is certainly mind stirring, although most of his ideas are not
original with him. Like most scholars, Durkheim built on the work of his predecessors. What
made his monograph stand apart was his talent for taking familiar ideas and weaving them
together in a new fashion. As Alpert (1961:15) put it, Durkheim “was skilled in utilizing and
synthesizing every bit of knowledge he acquired.”
Where did Durkheim get his pivotal ideas on religion? Many scholars played important
roles in Durkheim’s intellectual development, but on religion he singled out only one:
William Robertson Smith. In a rare biographical disclosure, Durkheim wrote of a watershed
moment on religion and, in that context, acknowledged a great debt to Robertson Smith.
Soon after, he became occupied with such strange company as hordes, incest taboos, and
totemism. By 1902, Durkheim ([1902] 1985:91) was so captivated by totems that in his eyes,
“everything that concerns totemism necessarily has repercussions extending into all the
domains of sociology.” By 1905, Durkheim was lecturing on religion in public forums
where, according to his former pupil Lalande (1906:255), he “wished to prove that God is
Society.”
Was Robertson Smith responsible for this transformation? Or did Durkheim glorify his
debt to Smith? This essay aims to revisit Durkheim’s dimly lit revelation by taking the
reader along the path that I recently followed after discovering, quite by accident,
Durkheim’s original stage model of religious evolution in the first edition of The Division
of Labor in Society (Durkheim [1893] 1984). In this model, a “cult of nature,” or naturism,
was his starting point for the evolution of religion. In the second edition ([1902] 1985),
Durkheim replaced naturism with totemism, surely not realizing it would matter someday.
This substitution, however, has misguided researchers (including me) interested in his
formative ideas on religion. Indeed, who knew that Durkheim once favored “the powers
of nature” as the foundational religion, especially in light of his view in Elementary Forms
([1912] 1995:78, 84) that naturism was “the product of [a] delirious interpretation” and
embodied little more than “hallucinatory images”? Yet, examining the evidence, we find
that Durkheim’s interest in totems began after 1893, thereby creating a new timeline for
his swing to totemism. Starting from this new vantage point leads to some unexpected
findings, including why Durkheim abandoned his famous distinction between organic and
mechanical solidarity.
A Surprising Disclosure
In 1906 to 1907, Deploige, a Belgian professor (and former priest), alleged in a journal essay
that Durkheim had “borrowed” ideas from German scholars, notably, Wilhelm Wundt, with-
out citing his sources (Deploige 1907). Durkheim wrote a letter in rebuttal, excoriating
Deploige for suggesting he had lifted German ideas when the truth, Durkheim said, was
quite the opposite: He had introduced the French public to German contributions to sociol-
ogy—and highlighted their significance—and Deploige was well aware of his acknowledg-
ments (Durkheim [1907] 1982:258).
In a follow-up letter, Durkheim denied that his 1886 visit to Germany led to an alignment
with any German scholar.1 Instead, he credited Emilé Boutroux (his mentor), Auguste
Comte, Herbert Spencer, and Alfred Espinas for his formative inspirations in sociology.
Finally, to refute the charge that his ideas on religion came from Wundt, Durkheim wrote,

354 Sociological Theory 32(4)
[I]t is stated that I found in Wundt the idea that religion is the matrix of moral and
juridical ideas, etc. I read Wundt in 1887: but it was only in 1895 that I had a clear view
of the capital role played by religion in social life. It was in that year that, for the first
time, I found a means of tackling sociologically the study of religion. It was a revelation
to me. That lecture course of 1895 marks a watershed in my thinking, so much so that
all my previous research had to be started all over again so as to be harmonized with
these new views. The Ethik of Wundt, which I had read eight years previously played
no part in this change of direction. It was due entirely to the studies of religious history
which I had just embarked upon, and in particular to the works of Robertson Smith and
his school. (Durkheim [1907] 1982:259–60)
In 1911, Deploige repeated his charge that Durkheim’s ideas originated in Germany. Again,
Durkheim reaffirmed the “preponderant place” of religion in his research and that “the sci-
ence of religion is essentially English and American; it has no trace of anything German. . . .
[And] it is making a systematically truncated ‘genesis’ of our thinking to neglect everything
we owe to Robertson Smith and to the works of the ethnographers of England and America”
(quoted in Nandan 1980:160).
Durkheim was clearly infuriated by Deploige’s accusations and responded accordingly.
Spencer, Boutreaux, Espinal, and Comte are all expected influences for a sociologist of
Durkheim’s time, but where Robertson Smith fits in this picture is a mystery. The problem,
following Pickering (1984:62), is that “scholars are left guessing . . . [because] no one knows
for sure what elements of Robertson Smith were of such revelatory importance to Durkheim.”
Robert Jones (1986:601) agrees, adding lightheartedly that since Durkheim “never bothered
to disclose the precise nature of his revelation . . . [this] historiographical discourtesy . . . has
encouraged a scholarly debate of massive proportions.”
What was the blazing insight in Durkheim’s epiphany? Not surprisingly, there are a good
number of contenders. As Jones (1986:601) nicely sums it up,
[A]mong the numerous candidates for the role of pivotal idea . . . are Smith’s views on
the relationship between religion and magic, the “contagiousness” of the sacred, the
relations between religious and political institutions, the ritual theory of myth, totemism
as the origin of more developed religious systems, his discovery of the primitive
origins of Durkheim’s childhood faith, and his “revolutionary” theory of sacrifice.
Contending parties also debate Smith’s influence. Was it really so great? Did Fustel de
Coulanges or Sir James Frazer also play key roles? Did Durkheim really experience a revela-
tion in 1895, if ever? Indeed, this aura of mystery spans nearly 90 years.2 Lukes (1972:238–
39) concludes that Durkheim was “deeply impressed” by Smith and surmises it was a
“considerable revelation” given the “thinness and inconclusiveness” of Durkheim’s early
publications on religion. Pickering (1984:69–70) agreed, underscoring that Durkheim’s
“intellectual change of direction—one could almost call it an intellectual crisis . . . has to be
located in the work of Robertson Smith.” Moreover, he added, “[a]ny solution . . . will have
to take into consideration Durkheim’s overwhelming concern with totemism” (Pickering
1984:69-70).
Taking Durkheim at his word, 1895 marked a turning point in his career. Only then did he
perceive “the capital role played by religion in social life” (Durkheim [1907] 1982:258) and
a method to study it sociologically. This episode was so illuminating that it compelled him
to reevaluate all his past research so it would synchronize with his new insights. Did this
occur? Did Robertson Smith, a professor of Arabic at Cambridge who lived between 1846

Maryanski 355
and 1894, profoundly influence Durkheim on totemism and the origin of religion? To answer
these questions, I begin with a synopsis of Durkheim’s early ideas on religion.
Durkheim’s Early Writings on Religion

Herbert Spencer’s Ghost Theory of Religion
Durkheim’s early publications are mostly book reviews in which he would paraphrase a
book’s main points and then provide his own critical analysis. In 1886, he reviewed Spencer’s
“Ecclesiastical Institutions” (from Part VI of The Principles of Sociology; Spencer [1885]
1898). In Spencer’s scheme, religion takes root when the “primitive mind” can conceptual-
ize a double self—a daytime self and a nighttime self that roams about during dream time
(p. 160). After death, the nighttime self lives on as a ghost or spirit. For Spencer, a “cult of
the dead,” or animism, is the starting point of all religion, followed by a “cult of nature,” or
naturism. Over time, as smaller societies are compounded into larger ones and as inequality
increases, a hierarchy of gods emerges along with a religious mythology that corresponds
with a society’s existing social arrangements. Spencer predicted an end to religion once
humans appreciated the “higher sentiments” found in humanity’s own creative energy (pp.
161–63, 171ff.).
In his analysis, Durkheim ([1886] 1975:17–18) applauds Spencer for his “great ingenu-
ity” but finds his origin thesis “a singularly tenuous one.” Ancestor worship is too complex
for the first religion, he said, and he suggests another possibility: Réville’s origin thesis in
which, as Durkheim expressed it, “the first religious manifestations would have consisted in
the worship, pure and simple, of the personification of the great forces of nature” or naturism
(pp. 17–18).3 Durkheim also faulted Spencer for reducing religion to little more than imagi-
nary beings and for dallying in topics outside the sphere of sociology. Religion can be part
of sociology, Durkheim said, “but the sociologist must apply himself uniquely to the deter-
mination of its social role” (pp. 18–19). He also challenged Spencer’s view that religion will
disappear. It cannot be so, Durkheim wrote, “[f]or so long as men live together, they will
hold some belief in common. What we cannot foresee and what only the future will be able
to decide, is the particular form in which this faith will be symbolized” (p. 22).
Jean-Marie Guyau’s Non-religion of the Future

In 1887, Durkheim reviewed Jean-Marie Guyau’s ([1887] 1897) The Non-religion of the
Future: A Sociological Study.4 For Guyau, religion originated in superstitions and vague
impressions and then evolved by following universal laws. All religions, he said, converge
on the idea that mutually dependent relations exist between humans and supernaturals, and
these bonds are physical, social, and emotional. Guyau’s explanation is vague on the origins
of these bonds, but he essentially places the birth of religious sentiments in the sphere of
human sociality, with religious institutions being an imaginary extension of human social
relationships. For Guyau, “a mythical and sociomorphic theory of the physical universe” sits
at the base of all religions, and the first religions are “systematized and organized supersti-
tions” (p. 78). As society and religion mutually evolve, they interact, fusing morality with
religion. Guyau also prophesized a positive “religious anomy,” leaving humans free to pur-
sue their own speculations or to join voluntary associations in which the spirit of science
prevailed (pp. 374–75).5
In a lengthy analysis, Durkheim praised Guyau for his profound ideas, his sociological
approach, and above all, his recognition that religion originated in collective phenomena.

Yet, Durkheim proposed substantial corrections that brought a different slant to Guyau’s
scheme. For Guyau, religion results from (1) the human need to understand and (2) humans’
social nature. In contrast, Durkheim proposed that sociability “be made the determining
cause of religious sentiment” because human beings
did not start by imagining the gods. . . . They began by attaching themselves to the
things they used or suffered from, just as they attached themselves to each other,
spontaneously, without thinking, without the least degree of speculation. The theory to
explain and make sense of the habits which had been formed in this way came only
later to these primitive consciences. As these sentiments were moderately similar to
those which man observed in his relations with his fellows, he visualized the powers of
nature as beings like himself; and at the same time he set them apart from himself and
attributed to these exceptional beings distinctive qualities which turned them into
gods. Religious ideas, then, result from the interpretation of pre-existing sentiments.
(Durkheim [1887] 1975:35; emphasis added)
In all societies, Durkheim ([1887] 1975) continued, there are two kinds of social senti-
ments. The first are personal relations linked by emotions associated with respect, honor,
fear, and positive affect. The second are community relations linked by emotions associated
with collective life. Personal attachments link individuals in an interdependence but at the
same time keep individuality mostly intact. In contrast, community relations attach individu-
als to the collective and create a sense of obligation to the larger whole. Instead of Guyau’s
notion that person-to-person emotions are the catalyst for religion, Durkheim describes emo-
tions that attach individuals to the collective entity as giving rise to religious sentiments.
Durkheim also dismissed Guyau’s notion that religion originates in mythic causes, argu-
ing that “each time anyone attempts the study of a collective représentation . . . a practical
and not a theoretical cause has been the determining reason for it. This is the case with that
system of représentations we call a religion” (Durkheim [1887] 1975:34). He also dismissed
Guyau’s notion that early religions lacked morality and law—Guyau overlooked the “oblig-
atory nature of religious prescriptions” (p. 34). Finally, Durkheim judged Guyau’s prophesy
of a “religious anomy” (or a liberation from dogmatic faith) to be a miscalculation, because
faith is the result of practical causes. . . . To show that it has no future, it has to be
demonstrated that the reasons which make its existence necessary have disappeared;
and since these changes are of a sociological kind, we must look for the change which
has taken place in the nature of societies and which henceforward makes religion
useless and impossible. (P. 37)6
The Division of Labor

In 1892, after working on The Division of Labor in Society for about eight years, Durkheim
presented his thesis to the Paris Faculty of Letters.7 Durkheim’s dissertation reflects an effort
to deal with what he called the “the initial problem of sociology”: We first need to know, he
said, “what bonds unite men to one another or, in other words, what determines the forma-
tion of social aggregates” (Durkheim [1888] 1978:205).
Durkheim’s concern with social solidarity can be traced to his publishing debut in 1885,
when he reviewed Schaeffle’s Bau und Leben des Sozialen Körpers (“Structure and Life of
the Social Body”), gently chiding Schaeffle for ignoring one of sociology’s “gravest ques-
tions”: In large-scale societies, how do you curb the human proclivity for individualism in

Maryanski 357
favor of the collective good? For Schaeffle, the reasoning minds of contemporary individu-
als will naturally unite them into a sense of solidarity, whereas for Durkheim ([1885]
1978:112, 114), “if society is a being which has a goal, then it may find the reasoning minds
of individuals too independent and too mobile for the common destiny to be entrusted to
them without fear.”
In The Division of Labor, Durkheim focused on the relationship between the individual
and society. “How does it come about,” he wrote, “that the individual, whilst becoming more
autonomous, [in industrial societies] depends ever more closely upon society? How can he
become at the same time more of an individual and yet more linked to society?” (Durkheim
[1893] 1984:xxx). This paradox is resolved, he said, once the division of labor is viewed not
just as an economic system but also as an adaptation for a new type of social solidarity (pp.
105, 122–23).
Durkheim used law as his visible indicator of solidarity and then proposed two types of
integration symbolized by two kinds of law: (1) repressive or penal law, found in primitive
societies, and (2) contractual or restitutive law, found in developed societies. In societies
with little occupational differentiation, social ties depend on a fusing of personal functions
into a collective consciousness—a mechanical solidarity; in societies with occupational spe-
cialization, social ties depend on an interdependence of functions—an organic solidarity.8
The primary function of an increasing division of labor, he argued, was to bring about
another type of integration and a new code of ethics, although this transition had not yet
crystallized for the new solidarity to fully take hold (Durkheim [1893] 1984:24ff.).
To explain the rise in the division of labor (and sidestep teleological reasoning), Durkheim
pioneered a two-step process to separate cause from effect: (1) Search for the parts maintain-
ing the integration of the social whole, and (2) search for the selection pressures (or causes)
for the existence of, and variation in, the parts. He also reasoned that once ties linking indi-
viduals in mechanical solidarity are replaced by ties linking individuals in organic solidarity,
the social structure of a society must also change. This led him to propose two societal types,
segmentary and nonsegmentary, that correspond to the dichotomy implied by his two types
of solidarity. Durkheim then constructed a scenario showing how the transition from
mechanical to organic solidarity slowly evolved over time (Durkheim [1893] 1984:26ff.).
In the beginning, Durkheim said, humans lived in a “horde,” or undivided aggregate, that
gradually morphed into kinship-based clans. In segmented societies with mechanical soli-
darity, religion is always the unifying force—but it is not the cause of this organizational
type. Rather, Durkheim ([1893] 1984:130) explained, “it is these arrangements that explain
the power and nature of the religious idea.” Durkheim now faced a stumbling block: How do
personal consciences “swallowed up” in a collective conscience gradually break free so that
the division of labor can forge ahead? If left unanswered, the need for greater individualism
would seem to be the cause leading to that end. To resolve this conundrum, Durkheim pro-
posed an inherent “primal basis of all individuality,” an “inalienable” part of the mind that,
during the reign of mechanical solidarity, was simply suspended in a dormant state (p. 145).9
To help clarify such a tangled hypothesis, Durkheim wrote a narrative describing how this
breaking-up process occurs. It is this narrative that provides a long-buried glimpse into his
early thinking on the origin and evolution of religion.
Durkheim’s narrative opens with a primordial society so circumscribed that everyone has
identical relations with the same precise things (e.g., this one animal, this single tree), result-
ing in an overpowering collective conscience (in modern network terms, all individuals
reveal “regular equivalence” to all objects). Over time, with increases in volume and density,
the collective entity “is itself obliged” to start widening its circle beyond its original bound-
aries. As it does, mechanical solidarity lessens and organic solidarity increases in response

to an expanding network of interdependent tasks. To dramatize how the ecclesiastical author-

ity of the collective conscience gradually dwindles, Durkheim deployed its “god-like” core
element, the transcending changes in “divinity,” as a manifestation of this evolutionary rule.
He then sketched a stage model of religious evolution starting with naturism as his root reli-
gion, as shown in the text on the left side of Table 1 (Durkheim 1893:319–20).
To readers familiar with The Division of Labor, the middle paragraph in Table 1 from the
1893 edition is probably unfamiliar, and for good reason. In the second edition, in 1902,
Durkheim wrote that he had deleted about 30 pages of his original preface and added a sec-
tion on the growing importance of occupational groups. Otherwise, he said, it was best that
the book stayed as written—and it mostly did. However, as Table 1 confirms, Durkheim
(1902:273) did change his 1893 stage model by removing naturism as its starting point and
replacing it with “totem of the clan.”
If we compare the two versions, only the 1893 stage model is logically consistent with
Durkheim’s early writings on religion. And only this early version corresponds with
Durkheim’s portrayal of how a concrete collective conscience gradually transitions into a
more abstract form. For example, in the 1893 narrative, as noted earlier, all community
members have the same relations with exactly the same objects—“this animal, this tree, this
plant, this natural force, etc.” (Durkheim 1893:318ff; emphasis added). This rigid portrayal
was surely meant to agree with the reign of naturism, where according to Durkheim, “all
natural beings who are susceptible of influencing social life . . . are deified” (p. 319). In
contrast, while the 1902 edition includes the same lead-in narrative (i.e., this animal, this
tree), Durkheim’s stage model now jumps from this single animal to this species. In the
revised stage-model version, members no longer have identical relationships with single,
precise natural beings but with all “animals or plants of the species that serve as the clan’s
totem” (Durkheim 1902:272–73; emphasis added).
Durkheim’s original version also spotlights the early influence of Réville, whose origin
thesis Durkheim was already entertaining in his 1886 review of Spencer’s ghost theory.
Réville (1883:67) coined the term naturism, proposing that religion originated with “a cult
of nature,” and set the scope of naturism by calling it “a religion which has for direct object
phenomena, bodies, or forces of nature held as animated and conscious.” Réville also
demarcated the parameters of animism, calling it a religion that evolved out of naturism,
because the animistic stage “is only possible when the revered spirits are conceived inde-
pendently from natural objects, living in no necessary relation with them” (p. 67). Réville
added that during the animistic phase, invisible spirits “meddle with events that relate to the
fate of humans” (p. 228). In Durkheim’s 1893 stage model, Réville’s influence is abun-
dantly evident—from Durkheim’s adoption of naturism as the root religion to his second
stage, the “reign of animism,” when the revered spirits are “constantly mingling with our
lives.”10
Why replace the cult of nature with the cult of totemism? And why keep the original sub-
stance of the surrounding text when it was logically incompatible with Durkheim’s amended
model (as is plainly evident in a comparison of the 1893 and 1902 versions in English or in
the original French in the appendix)? Durkheim had already dropped naturism as the primal
religion (certainly by 1897) and had criticized the ideas of its two strongest advocates,
Réville and Max Müller. Keeping naturism as the primordial religion in the 1902 edition
now conflicted with his understanding of religion. Yet, he wanted to keep his word that the
second edition was virtually unchanged (as he wrote in the 1902 preface). So he minimized
textual changes, deleted naturism, and penciled in totemism. Whatever his reasons, what is
relevant here is that before his 1895 revelation, Durkheim had endorsed naturism (and not
totemism) as his baseline religion.

Maryanski 359
Table 1. Durkheim’s Stage Models from The Division of Labor in Society.
Text from 1893 edition (pp. 319–20) Text from 1902 edition (pp. 273–74)
The fact that perhaps best reveals this growing [No change from 1893 edition]
tendency of the common consciousness is the
parallel transcendence of its most essential
of elements; I refer to the notion of divinity.
Originally, the gods are not distinct/separate
from the universe . . .
. . . but all natural beings who are susceptible . . . or rather, there are no gods, only sacred
of influencing social life, of awakening the beings, but the sacred character with which
fears and hopes of the community [ lit. trans. they are invested is not related to an exterior
“collective fears and hopes”], are deified. This entity as its source. The animals or plants of
character is not communicated to them from the species that serve as the clan’s totem [or
the outside, but is intrinsic to them. They are “totem of the clan”] are the objects of worship;
not divine because god lives in them; they but this is not because of a principle sui generis
are the gods themselves. It is at this stage of that communicates their divine nature from
religious evolution that the name naturism was the outside. This nature is intrinsic [“within/
begotten/given. But little by little, the gods to them”]; they are divine in themselves. But
become detached from the things with which little by little, the religious forces are detached
they were confounded. They become spirits from the things of which they were at first only
who, if they prefer residing here or there, the attributes, and are reified. This is how the
nonetheless exist outside of the concrete notion of spirits or gods is formed who, while
forms under which they are incarnated; this preferably residing here or there, nonetheless
is the reign of animism. Regardless of whether exist outside the particular objects to which
they are multiple or, as with the Jews, brought they are more specifically attached. In this sense,
back to unity; in one case like in the other, the they have something that is less concrete/they
degree of immanence is the same. [Emphasis in are somehow less concrete. However, whether
original] they are multiple or have been brought back to
a certain unity, they are still immanent to the
world. [Emphasis in original]
If they are in part separated from things, they are [Virtually the same as 1893 edition]
still in space. So, they remain very close to us,
constantly mingling with our lives. Greco-Latin
polytheism, which is a more elevated and more
organized form than animism, is a progressive
step towards transcendence. The residence of
the gods becomes more neatly distinct from
that of humans/men. Retired/regrouped atop
the mysterious mountains/heights of Olympus
or in the depths of the earth, they personally
intervene in human affairs only intermittently.
But it is solely with [the advent of] Christianity
that God definitely leaves space; his kingdom is
no more of this world; the dissociation between
nature and the divine is so complete that it
degenerates into antagonism. At the same time,
the notion of divinity becomes more general
and more abstract, because it is shaped not by
sensations, as in principle, but by ideas. The
human god is necessarily less understanding/
comprehension than the gods of cities or clans.

Thus, in The Division of Labor, after grappling for years with how solidarity can be sus-
tained in industrial societies, Durkheim argued that the problem had resolved itself with the
rise of a new solidarity created by the interdependence of societal parts. While Durkheim
never held that the collective conscience would disappear entirely, he did claim it would
progressively lessen in favor of individual diversity and creativity. In fact, its eclipse was
essential if the division of labor was to advance in an uninhibited manner. Durkheim also
demonstrated how the individual conscience is slowly emancipated from the common con-
science through developmental changes in the notion of divinity, starting with naturism.
Did religion always interest Durkheim? It appears so, despite his remark in the Spencer
review to limit religious sociology to its social and regulatory functions. Thus, Bellah (1959),
Pickering (1984), Thompson (2002), and others who insist on Durkheim’s long-standing
interest in religion have a valid case, as his early assumptions on religion make evident:
•• Religion is a collective phenomenon found only in established societies (1886).

•• Religion as a facet of human association is embedded in a social matrix and corre-
sponds with the social structure of which it is a part (1886).
•• Religion is based on real and practical concerns, always serving fundamental com-
munity and human needs (1887).
•• Sociability is the primary cause of religious sentiments (1888).
•• Religion is a moral force in all societies, along with obligatory rights and duties
(1887).
•• Religion involves a shared locality, habits, practices, and subsequently a shared ideol-
ogy (1887).
•• The organizational arrangements of a society determine the influence and power of
religious beliefs (1893).
•• Religion had its genesis in naturism (1893).
Yet, despite Durkheim’s efforts to make sense of religion, it still baffled him. In The Division
of Labor ([1893] 1984:118–19), he reflected on a lack of “any scientific conception of what
religion is” or why humans would grant such extraordinary powers to an imaginary being:
“Nothing proceeds from nothing”; hence, “the force that the being possesses must come
from somewhere.” If we assume that Robertson Smith is the pivotal player in Durkheim’s
1895 revelation, what blazing new insights did he convey into the secrets of the gods?
William Robertson Smith

In 1892, the University of Chicago sponsored a lecture series on religion with special atten-
tion given to Robertson Smith. Harvard University offered Smith the chair of Hebrew—
twice, Sir James Frazer dedicated The Golden Bough (Frazer 1890) to him, and when Smith
died, a note in the journal Nature (Anonymous 1894:557) characterized him as someone
with “remarkable powers” whose early death was a “profound loss to the whole thinking
world.” How did Smith become such a celebrated figure during his lifetime?
Robertson Smith was an Old Testament scholar, but unlike fundamentalists who revered
the Bible as an infallible book, or apologetics who tried to explain away incongruities, Smith
sought a true historical interpretation by treating the Scriptures just like any other ancient
manuscript.11 After provisionally comparing the Old Testament with ancient neighboring
religions, it was evident to Smith that early Hebrew religion had a strong concurrence with
other Semitic religions, and thus these traits likely came from the same ancestral source.
Armed with a spirit of scientific pursuit; holding a profound knowledge of Latin, ancient

Maryanski 361
Greek, and Arabic; and provisioned with John McLennan’s sociological theories (to be dis-
cussed), Smith boldly set forth to trace the Hebrew religion back to its heathen roots.12
Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia

Smith’s entry point into ancient Semitic civilization was his Kinship and Marriage in Early
Arabia (Robertson Smith [1885] 1963).13 Starting with Arabian prehistory, Smith drew on a
wealth of old Arabian books and documents, working backward until the facts could not be
interpreted without drawing in other Semitic nations. After piecing together Arab institu-
tions, Smith then challenged the undisputed belief that ancient Arabian society was always
organized around male kinship; he proposed that it was first organized around female kin-
ship. And, the later shift from matriliny to patriliny had major repercussions for Arabian
history and the genesis of Islam (Durkheim would apply the same logic to explain why some
Australian clans deviated from established totemic characteristics). Smith also devoted a
chapter to totemism, highlighting that the “totem animal is sacred and is often invested with
the character of a god” (p. 218). Then, based on linguistic evidence, inferred totemic mark-
ings, and other evidence, he connected early Arab society to female descent, exogamy, and
totemism. (Durkheim would later take up this trinity in his 1898 paper “La Prohibition de
l’inceste et ses origines.”)
In The Division of Labor (1893), Durkheim cited Kinship and Marriage with respect to
early Arab conjugal relations (noting that Smith was an especially good source). Durkheim’s
interest, however, was seemingly limited to culling data on prehistorical families.
The Religion of the Semites

Smith’s (1889) Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series, The Fundamental
Institutions is frequently cited by Durkheim, especially in Elementary Forms (Durkheim
[1912] 1995). The book itself is straightforward, with 11 lectures on the ancient Semites,
a large Middle Eastern population of pastoral nomads who once inhabited a geographic
region that covered parts of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Arabs and Jews are the best-
known Semitic groups, but they share a history with the Babylonians, Phoenicians,
Aramaeans, and Assyrians. These ancient nations are so important because the roots of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam originated in the Semitic culture of long ago. Yet, it was
not what Smith studied, per se, that made his work so out of the ordinary. Rather, it was
his focus on a single cultural tradition, his structural-functional approach to religion, his
novel methods, his theory of totemism as the baseline religion, his unusual clarity in iso-
lating the institutional components of early Semitic religion, and his positioning of reli-
gion as part of an institutional matrix that set Smith’s work apart from every other religious
scholar of his time.
Smith called Judaism, Christianity, and Islam “positive religions.” Unlike heathen reli-
gions that developed slowly from inadvertent forces, the positive religions can be traced to
“great religious innovators,” although the connection to ancient Semitic religion was never
completely severed:
The positive Semitic religions had to establish themselves on ground already occupied
by these older beliefs and usages. . . . No positive religion that has moved men has been
able to start with a tabula rasa. . . . [I]n form, if not in substance, the new system must
be in contact all along the line with the older ideas and practices which it finds in
possession. (Robertson Smith 1889:2)

Method of Inquiry. In the late nineteenth century, a general comparative method was typically
used to recreate prehistoric forms over time. When applied by less informed theoreticians, this
procedure often led to spurious correlations by ripping traits out of context (and meaning) or to
faulty constructions by arbitrarily generalizing traits from “primitive” to contemporary societies.
In contrast, Robertson Smith relied mostly on written sources to systematically match passages
from the Scriptures, ancient secular texts, and other source documents. How did he plan to recre-
ate a prehistoric religion without a written record? Smith did use the popular comparative method
for some generalizations, but otherwise, he did a truly revolutionary thing: He relied on textual
criticism (stemmatics) to reconstruct ancient Semitic religion.
Let me briefly describe this methodology (as Durkheim was a stickler for method and
surely took careful note). Like any comparative approach, it searches for similarities. But
instead of comparisons by analogy, this procedure restricts entities to homologies or ances-
tor-descendant relations. In historical linguistics, for example, the shared traits of a modern
language group are used to reconstruct the mother tongue, or in textual criticism, alternative
forms of handwritten manuscripts are compared to recreate or identify the oldest manuscript
(e.g., a biblical text) from which all others were derived. This scientific procedure is designed
to detect ancestral patterns from present-day sources by identifying cognates, or the genea-
logical relationships, among any entities believed to share a history.14
Smith began by isolating Middle Eastern populations believed to be descended from a
mother population and identifying them on the basis of location, customs, language cog-
nates, and other jointly held traits. Then, after assembling materials on these related nations
from sources that included archaeological sites, ethnographies, ancient secular documents,
and of course, the Hebrew Scriptures, he used their shared features (or derived traits) to
reconstruct the ancient Semitic religion that stood behind the Hebrew Bible.
The Reconstruction of Ancient Semitic Society. Smith knew his reconstruction rested on a slip-
pery slope (unlike his work on the Scriptures), because outside of his Arab sources, only
fragments existed on other ancient Semitic populations. Yet, he pushed forward, convinced
that if any progress were to be made on the Scriptures, it was time to look behind the biblical
passages, and he was confident he could provide “a fairly adequate analysis” of features
common to the Semitic field (Robertson Smith 1889:viii; see Black and Chrystal 1912:146).
Setting aside very real concerns, Smith introduced his topic with this irresistible invitation:
I invite you to take an interest in the ancient religion of the Semitic peoples; the matter
is not one of mere antiquarian curiosity, but has a direct and important bearing on the
great problem of the origins of the spiritual religion of the Bible. . . . Nations sprung
from a common stock will have a common inheritance of traditional belief and usage
in things sacred as well as profane, and thus the evidence that the Hebrews and their
neighbors had a large common stock of religious tradition falls in with the evidence
which we have from other sources. (Robertson Smith 1889:2–5)
In the beginning, the Semitics were nomadic people who moved about from place to
place. They interacted with supernaturals, but these relations were not with individual gods
but with natural agents connected to “the system of totemism”:
In the totem stage of society, each stock of savages believes itself to be physically akin
to some natural kind of animate or inanimate things, most generally to some kind of
animal. . . . [T]he idea is that nature, like mankind, is divided into groups or societies
of things, analogous to the groups or kindreds of human society. (Robertson Smith
1889:117–19)

Maryanski 363
Smith did not know if later nature gods evolved directly out of totemism, but “there can
be no reasonable doubt that it is evolved out of ideas or usages which also find their
expression in totemism, and therefore must go back to the most primitive stage of savage
society” (p. 118).
The cornerstone of early Semitic religion, Smith stressed, was a preoccupation with fixed
rituals and practices. Smith underscored that in early Semitic religion, it was not the attri-
butes of things that mattered “but only the relations of things to one another, and the stated
forms of intercourse between the gods and men to which these relations gave rise” (Robertson
Smith 1889:88). Supernaturals were not distinct entities; it was only in later stages of reli-
gion that explicit ideas about divine beings arose—and as purely secondary phenomena.
What mattered in ancient religion were fixed and “sacred institutions” (p. 88). He also
emphasized that even in early totemism, “religion was a moral force . . . [as] the laws of
society . . . were also the laws of morality” (p. 53). The performance of religious rites was
thus obligatory for everyone and essential for social solidarity. As Smith expressed it, “[r]
eligion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society,
and in all that was necessary to this end every man had to take his prescribed part, or break
with the domestic and political community to which he belonged” (p. 30).
In depicting early Semitic religion, Smith made a sharp distinction between magic and
religion. Magic and sorcery exist outside of religion, he said, because they deal with vague,
unbounded forces and involve antisocial rites. Magic supernaturals are also perceived as arbi-
trary and unrestrained, whereas religious supernaturals are aligned with regulation, authority,
and a meaningful, stable context. The religious sphere also involves a stable, friendly, and
natural solidarity between superhuman forces and a community of worshippers:
Religion is not an arbitrary relation of the individual man to a supernatural power, it is

a relation of all the members of a community to a power that has the good of the
community at heart, and protects its law and moral order. (Robertson Smith 1894:55)
A strict dividing line between magic and religion was essential for Smith, because he was
convinced that the “element of order and statedness, which makes fixed institutions possible,
was in fact that which made religion, as distinct from mere superstition, possible” (Robertson
Smith 1889:88).
To clarify this distinction, Smith offered the following explanation: In the earliest totemic
stages, supernatural forces were simply tangible species who had friendly relationships with
humans, plants, animals, and, indeed, the entire physical environment. In time, these forces
became associated with local dwelling places that influenced their actions and behaviors.
With a local supernatural now linked with a fixed locality, the close contact between this
being and the community is stabilized and strengthened. In turn, the physical space that a
supernatural occupies gradually becomes a fixed and sacred locality for the rites performed
by the community. There are degrees of holiness, and physical contagion extends holiness
not just to holy beings but also to holy ground, holy stones, holy groves, holy times, holy
symbols, and other objects in contact with sacred beings. As time passes, a fixed set of rules
of holiness are manifest in restrictions and taboos placed on certain natural phenomena,
which are taken away from common use (Robertson Smith 1889:132ff., 142–50). For Smith,
the rules of Semitic holiness show clear marks of their origin in a system of taboos:
[T]he idea of holiness comes into prominence wherever the gods come into touch
with men; holiness is not so much a thing that characterizes the gods and divine
things in themselves, as the most general notion that governs their relations with

humanity. . . . Holy places and things are not so much reserved for the use of the god
as surrounded by a network of restrictions and disabilities which forbid them to be
used by men except in particular ways, and in certain cases forbid them to be used at
all. (Pp. 134, 139)
In Robertson Smith’s (1889:132) judgment, “the distinction between what is holy and
what is common is one of the most important things in ancient religion.” In addition, “sacred
institutions, in some shape or other, are primary and as old as religion itself” with far-reaching
consequences (p. 88). As religion evolves, this separation of the profane from the sacred
continues, as performance of ritual acts in a sacred locality become part of faith acts. Over
time, new local sanctuaries, altars, and later, temples are constructed on sacred ground for
the divine presence and for new godheads. As religion evolves, each generation learns to
respect the supernaturals and to observe the rules of holiness. Finally, Smith highlighted how
the forces driving religion can even function to shape human cognition:
The power of religion over life is twofold, lying partly in its association with
particular precepts of conduct, to which it supplies a supernatural sanction, but
mainly in its influence on the general tone and temper of men’s minds, which it
elevates to higher courage and purpose, and raises above a mere brutal servitude to
the physical wants of the moment, by teaching men that their lives and happiness are
not the mere sport of the blind forces of nature, but are watched over and cared for
by a higher power. (P. 248)
In Religion of the Semites, Robertson Smith (1889) offered the first comprehensive treat-
ment of ancient Semitic culture by reconstructing what he believed were its first religious
institutions. Although he never formulated a general theory of religion, he was certain he had
laid down its first principles: Totemism was the first religion; ritual preceded belief in ancient
religion; and a fixed orientation, taboos, and separation of the sacred from the profane were
essential in the making of a religious institution. Furthermore, what held for Semitic people
“holds good,” he felt, for all humanity in the earliest stages of religious history.
Discussion and Analysis

As noted, in 1907, Durkheim denied that Wundt’s Ethik was the source for his ideas on reli-
gion, connecting his theories instead to an 1895 revelation. If Deploige’s charges were
groundless accusations, it is curious that Durkheim so dramatized this source as a revelation
that obviated his earlier ideas on religion. As Fournier (2013:202) wrote, “There is some-
thing surprising, even astonishing, about Durkheim’s ‘revelation.’ ” Indeed, Durkheim could
simply have named Fustel de Coulanges (his mentor) as his primary source. In his classic
work, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome,
Fustel ([1864] 1889) proposed that religion is a collective affair, religion and social structure
correspond with one another, and religious beliefs and practices are the basis for social inte-
gration. He also depicted society as a unified whole. Under his tutelage, Durkheim became
familiar with an implicit structural-functional perspective on how the parts of society fit and
change together. In fact, Radcliffe-Brown (1945:36) recognized Fustel as one of the first
scholars to appreciate the “social function of religion.” Fustel was also a pioneer kinship
theorist (see Trautmann 1987:179ff.) and introduced Durkheim to stage-model theorizing
and such kinship nomenclature as the gens (clans), phratries, and tribes. In gratitude,
Durkheim dedicated his Latin dissertation to his memory. In fact, many scholars have

Maryanski 365
recognized the influence of Fustel on Durkheim (see Herrick 1954; Jones 1993; Kuper 1985;
Lukes 1972; Nisbet 1974; Prendergast 1983–84). Yet, Fustel was not mentioned this time
around. Durkheim’s homage (twice) to a Scottish theologian and virtual stranger must have
been a truly heartfelt sentiment. It would seem, as Pickering (1984) concludes, that when
Durkheim taught his 1894–95 religious course, he had discovered in Smith’s work some-
thing of unexpected and deep, lasting value.
Durkheim’s 1895 Course on Religious Sociology

The notes from Durkheim’s 1894–95 religion course are lost, but he did write to a good
friend that it dealt largely with “les formes élémentaires de la religion” (quoted in Pickering
1984:69). Mauss ([1930] 1983:145) also recounted that his uncle’s course was focused on
the origin of religion, adding that during that time, they “were contented with the work of
Frazer and, above all, Robertson Smith.”
Schools of comparative religion proliferated during the nineteenth century, with scholars
intent on uncovering the origin and laws of religious development. Robertson Smith was not
affiliated with any school, but it could be said he belonged to the Scottish school of totem-
ism, in company with his two Scottish friends, John McLennan (1827–81) and Sir James
Frazer (1854–1941). McLennan wrote Primitive Marriage, a theoretical work on the origin
of society, hordes, female descent, and exogamy (McLennan [1865] 1970). In 1869–70, he
published “The Worship of Plants and Animals,” which brought totemism into the public eye
by highlighting its social and religious nature and the claim that the nations of antiquity
likely passed through a totemic stage of development (McLennan [1869–70] 1896). After
McLennan’s sudden death in 1881, Smith merged most of McLennan’s ideas into his own
research on ancient Semitic society, bringing together a trinity of anthropology, theology,
and sociology. So, when Durkheim read Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (Robertson
Smith 1889), it was not centered on the Holy Scriptures but on ancient Semite society and
its heathen gods. In fact, the bones of Smith’s framework—from his claim that female
descent was the first blood kinship, through his coupling of exogamy with totemism, to his
claim that totemism was the basal religion—were all derived from McLennan’s sociological
approach to religion and society. James Frazer, in turn, became Smith’s protégé when the
two met at Cambridge. Smith encouraged Frazer to do a comprehensive analysis of totem-
ism, and he published it as editor of the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; Smith
also found a publisher for Frazer’s book Totemism (Frazer 1887).
Could Durkheim’s revelation also involve McLennan or Frazer? While all three Scotsmen
were instrumental in establishing totemism on a par with other schools of comparative reli-
gion, Durkheim had read McLennan’s Primitive Marriage years before; during his 1888–89
lecture course on the family, he called it one of the “most important” books (Durkheim [1888]
1978:216). Durkheim also read Frazer’s Totemism well before 1895 (see Pickering 1984:68).
Jones (1986, 2005), however, rightly highlights the importance of Frazer’s study of totemism
and his Golden Bough (Frazer 1890) to Durkheim’s work after 1895. Moreover, Jones pro-
poses that Durkheim’s revelation may have more to do with the early Frazer than with Smith.
Both Durkheim and Smith relied heavily on Frazer’s totem monograph and his superabundant
materials in The Golden Bough. But Durkheim pointed to Smith and the weight of the evidence
points to him as well, although when Durkheim referred to Robertson Smith and “his school”
in his 1907 letter (Durkheim [1907] 1982:259–60), I think he was paying homage to all mem-
bers of the Scottish School of totemism in the 1890s. Although Durkheim’s new understanding
did not directly involve McLennan or Frazer, Robertson Smith’s reconstruction of ancient
Semitic society rests on a creative application of their ideas.15

Robertson Smith’s Agenda

To reconstruct ancient Semitic religion, Robertson Smith faced a daunting task because,
as noted earlier, aside from his Old Testament and Arabian sources, only fragments existed
on other Semitic cognates. Yet, he had McLennan’s evolutionary framework as well as
Frazer’s survey of totemism and the proofs of The Golden Bough. He also had his tried-
and-true method for identifying the jointly held characteristics of any cognate network.
So, he assembled his materials and connected the dots—from the relations of individuals
to their gods, to the relations of gods to particular localities, and then, to the cult of totem-
ism and its relations to plant and animal species. Furthermore, by putting McLennan’s
theories into the mix, he linked ancient Semitic nations with totemic clans, female descent,
exogamy, and even the incest taboo. Despite the paper-thin evidence, he was optimistic he
had recreated (albeit with lots of conjecture) the underlying structure of ancient Semitic
civilization.
Durkheim was surely pleased that Smith’s ideas resonated so well with his own. In fact,
nobody was more in tune with Durkheim’s assumptions that religion was a collective phe-
nomenon, that it was grounded in real and practical things, that all religions had moral and
obligatory dimensions, and that religion was, above all, for the welfare of society. What
Durkheim needed was a framework on which to hang these assumptions and a means to
study religion empirically. Was naturism the answer? It had appeared to work with his 1893
stage model, but was it the right solution? Despite its grounding in sensory experience,
naturism as a supernatural force was still illusionary and did not offer much more than
Spencer’s ghost theory or Guyau’s cosmic society.
In comparison, Robertson Smith had a provocative thesis, a rigorous method, and a socio-
logical framework. And, unlike other researchers whose entities were studied in a free-float-
ing environment detached from the empirical world, Smith’s entities were nations with
historical connections. This gave Smith the capacity to stage Semitic society on its ancestral
homeland, where he could start with a baseline religion and trace its developmental phases
over time. By confining his analysis to related entities, adopting McLennan’s sociological
framework, and utilizing Frazer’s totem data, Robertson Smith had the tools to construct a
grand story of the Arabian Peninsula: He wrote a luminous text that lifted the curtain on the
social structure and religious institutions of early Semitic society. The outcome of such a
creative amalgamation, as Boutroux ([1912] 1970:6) once quipped, is that “it often happens
that the most common-place idea assumes a new aspect by reason of the new relations in
which it finds itself.”
Durkheim’s Turn to Totemism

Durkheim acknowledged his debt to Smith in 1907, but signs of such a remarkably pene-
trating vision should be traceable long before in his lectures, published writings, and per-
sonal letters. Shortly after his revelation, Durkheim published Rules of the Sociological
Method (1895a), in which religion is barely mentioned. More telling, in December 1895,
in his review of Westermarck’s (1891) The History of Human Marriage, there are hints of
a developing regard for totemism. While Durkheim’s review is not about religion, but a
sweeping negation of Westermark’s reliance on psychology to explain the social (objec-
tions not new for Durkheim), what is eye-catching is his response to Westermarck’s claim
that youngsters raised together develop a natural sexual aversion to these playmates as
adults that drives them to marry outside the household. In sharp disapproval, Durkheim
(1895b:621) wrote,

Maryanski 367
Westermarck is wrong about the causes of exogamy, which are all religious and are
closely linked to totemic institutions, and on the origins of the successive forms of
conjugal society and their evolution.
Durkheim did not elaborate, but his pairing of religion with totemic institutions is surprising
and appears to be a sudden conversion. An 1897 letter by Paul Lapie to Célestin Bouglè (two
of Durkheim’s associates) also points to a deepening involvement with religion:
. . . My visit to Durkheim was long and rather confused. . . . Basically, he explains
everything, at this moment, by religion; the prohibition of marriage between relatives
is a religious matter; punishment is a phenomenon of religious origin; everything is
religious. I protested but gently against a certain number of assertions that appeared
doubtful to me; but I do not have the requisite competence to dispute a gentlemen who
is so well informed and so sure of his current assertions.—Apart from that, he is
charming. . . (quoted in Besnard 1983:64; emphasis in original)
A move to totemism is also evident in Durkheim’s ([1897:1978) review of Labriola’s “Essais

sur la conception matérialiste de L’histoire,” where he refutes the Marxist doctrine that eco-
nomic materialism is the key force in history:
Not only is the Marxist hypothesis unproved, but it is contrary to facts which seem
well established. . . . We know of no way to reduce religion to economics, nor of any
attempt to accomplish this reduction. No one has yet shown under what economic
influences naturism arose out of totemism. (P. 129; emphasis added)
By 1897, naturism is now an outgrowth of totemism. And by 1898, Durkheim is confiding

to Mauss that “[f]undamentally, the sociological importance of the religious phenomenon is
the culmination of everything I’ve done; and it has the advantage of concretely recapitulat-
ing our entire orientation, more concretely than the formulations I have used up till now”
(quoted in Fournier 2006:38).
But is Robertson Smith responsible for Durkheim’s new sense of religion? First, I believe
(along with many scholars) that Smith provided Durkheim with the blueprints for a true
sociology of religion. Durkheim knew religion was a collective thing, but it was Smith who
clearly articulated how the obligatory nature of religion cemented communal relations.
Second, while both Smith and Durkheim approached religion from a functional perspective,
it was Smith who carefully detailed the intimate connection between religion and social
structure. Third, Smith underscored a crucial distinction between magic and religion, the
critical significance of tabu for setting things apart by restriction or prohibition, and the
polarity between the sacred and the profane. In arguing for a sociological approach to reli-
gion, he confirmed Durkheim’s conviction that the social environment drove both the struc-
ture and content of religion. Indeed, Smith proposed that the black box of human cognition
was fundamentally shaped by religious functions.
One insight that Smith hinted at but never expressed was who the gods really are.16 Yet,
in Smith’s lucid exposition of all the multiplex relations in a religious community, Durkheim
seemingly found the answer to this long-standing question. He now knew who stood behind
the gods. In Suicide (Durkheim 1897:352–53), he first expressed it as “[t]he power . . . is
society, of which the gods are its reified form.” And, in a more sweeping statement, he wrote,
Religion is, in the end, the system of symbols through which society becomes aware of
itself; it is the way of thinking proper to the collective being. Hence, here is a vast

collection of mental states that would not have produced themselves if the individual
consciousnesses had not united, that are the result of this union and juxtaposed
themselves to those derived from individual natures. We can analyze these latter as
minutely as possible, never will we discover anything that can explain how these
singular/uncommon beliefs and practices began and developed, where totemism is
born, how naturism emerged from it, how naturism itself became here the abstract
religion of Yahweh, there the polytheism of the Greeks and the Romans, etc. (P. 353;
emphasis added)
A New Template for Social Solidarity

Did Durkheim act on his statement that his “previous research had to be started all over
again” after his revelation? One change was the dropping of naturism, which was underway
in 1895 if we accept his retort to Westermarck that “the causes of exogamy . . . are all religious
and are closely linked to totemic institutions” (Durkheim 1895b:621). One fallout of his shift
to totemism was that it put him at odds with his own portrayal of the primitive horde and his
twofold distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity in The Division of Labor. In
conceptualizing a protosociety, Durkheim and Smith shared a belief in the primitive horde.
And, in reconstructing the origin of society, both agreed that to stabilize such an undivided
aggregate without blood ties required some sort of fixed orientation among horde members.
So their starting points were the same. In Durkheim’s scheme, stabilization of a horde required
the swallowing up of personal consciences into an enveloping collective conscience—his
fixed orientation. In Smith’s (1889:117–18) scheme, stabilization required the “emancipa-
tion” of personal consciences from the “dread of certain natural agencies” by an alliance with
an animal or plant species symbolized by a totem—his fixed orientation. Both scenarios fos-
tered a “unity of minds,” but in Durkheim’s ([1888] 1978:206) scheme, this unity rested on
robotic likenesses to keep horde members tethered to a common conscience, which is why, of
course, he labeled it a mechanical solidarity. Durkheim described this form of solidarity as
fragile, or easily broken, when compared to organic solidarity, because when the collective
conscience weakens, so does mechanical solidarity as traditional beliefs and values become
less relevant (Durkheim [1893] 1984:104–6). Another drawback is that organic solidarity is
not a natural outgrowth of mechanical solidarity. Moreover, they are so incompatible that the
new solidarity cannot take root before the old solidarity largely disappears. Durkheim
acknowledged that this transition would see a softening of stability until the new and superior
form of organic solidarity could crystallize—hence his discussion of “abnormal forms” in
The Division of Labor (Durkheim [1893] 1984:120ff., 226ff.).
In comparison, Smith’s scheme required only that horde members identify with a totem
species. To be successful, individuals were obliged to routinely engage in visible fixed ritu-
als and practices that laid the footings for the first working institutions. Hence, totemism was
far more than a source of solidarity or a stage of religion; totemism also gave birth to soli-
darity-generating rites and practices and, later, corresponding beliefs. Once a totemic system
took shape as a mechanism of solidarity, it was available as an anchor for fixed and stable
social institutional systems. In so doing, totemism actualized society and could ground the
differentiation of new institutional domains by providing solidarity over collectively held
moral codes symbolized by totems. It would also provide intergenerational continuity
through time.
After 1895, if one follows the evidence, Durkheim had already settled on religion’s essen-
tial role in giving a greater value to totemism as a fundamental mechanism of integration.
Indeed, it is easy to imagine Robertson Smith looking over Durkheim’s shoulder when he
wrote these words in 1897:

Maryanski 369
Sociologists and historians tend more and more to meet in the confirmation that
religion is the most primitive of all social phenomena. From it, by successive
transformations, have come all the other manifestations of collective activity; law,
ethics, art, science, political forms, and so on. Everything is religious in principle.
(Durkheim [1897] 1978:129)
Thus, despite the fact that mechanical and organic solidarity are still famously identified
with Durkheim’s analysis of societal evolution, they never again appear in his writings after
The Division of Labor. If one looks at Durkheim’s adaptation of Smith’s ideas, what he came
to realize was that the roots of solidarity underlying totemism are similar to the cultural basis
of his organic solidarity. In both, individuality is preserved in a nonkin social matrix of struc-
tural interdependences, while the social whole generated by these interdependences is cul-
turally integrated by totems signifying moral codes to which individuals develop collective
attachments through emotion-arousing rituals—a mechanism of cultural integration that, he
believed, first appeared in the earliest societies. It also allowed for developmental changes
over time without a break in social stability. By dropping his two types of mutually incom-
patible solidarity, Durkheim could resurrect the collective conscience that he had once por-
trayed as slowly withering away and shift its meaning to harmonize with what became a
more favored term, collective representations. Through Robertson Smith, Durkheim was
exposed to a social force that could stabilize solidarity around a totem without the need for
fused minds or blood ties:
The idea that kinship is not purely an affair of birth . . . has quite fallen out of our
circle of ideas; but so, for that matter, has the primitive conception of kindred
itself. . . . To know that a man’s life was sacred to me . . . it was not necessary for me
to count cousinship with him by reckoning up to our common ancestor; it was enough
that we belonged to the same clan and bore the same clan-name. (Robertson Smith
1889:255)
From there, it was only a short step for Durkheim to appreciate that totemism was the foun-
dation for a sense of society itself. Totemism anchored everything.
Conclusion: The Smith and Durkheim Theoretical Legacy

Why is the legacy of Smith’s influence on Durkheim relevant now? One reason inheres in
setting the record straight in the history of ideas. Considering that the 1893 edition of The
Division of Labor had a run of fewer than 1,500 copies (see Fournier 2013:156), Durkheim’s
model of religious evolution with naturism was rarely seen. After 1902, the second edition
was used for all French editions and translations. Because Durkheim made no corresponding
changes in meaning in the surrounding text in the second edition, the inconsistent elements
have left different impressions, including the idea that Durkheim placed animism as the first
religion (see, e.g., Wallwork 1984:47). The resurrection of Durkheim’s first stage model clari-
fies the progression of his thinking as well as Réville’s role in shaping Durkheim’s early ideas
on religion. In addition, Robertson Smith’s contribution as a founder of the sociology of reli-
gion needs to be recognized because he is largely unknown in sociology. Today, the notion
that religion is a collective phenomenon is widely understood, but in Smith’s time, the pre-
vailing view held that religion originated in psychological phenomena. Smith was also an
early advocate of the historical comparative method, a scientific procedure used today in
textual criticism, linguistics, and biology (where it is known as cladistic analysis). In recent

years, religious scholars have revived Smith’s interfaith perspective, seeing it as a fruitful way
to approach the dynamics of religious pluralism in the postmodern era (see, e.g., Bediako
1999; Johnstone 1995). The evolution of religion has also been resurrected with most of the
enduring questions asked by Durkheim and Smith back on the table (see, e.g., Bellah 2011).
Smith’s and Durkheim’s approach to solidarity goes far beyond the narrow confines of
totemism or even the sociology of religion. Durkheim understood the multiplex elements
contained in totemism, which is probably why in Elementary Forms ([1912] 1915:103) he
expressed such dismay over the “inconvenience” of having to use the label totemism as his
umbrella concept, because it failed to capture the system’s complexity. For Smith and
Durkheim brought to light a fundamental mechanism for integrating any aggregate of indi-
viduals. While space forbids a lengthy discussion here (but forthcoming in my new book;
Maryanski forthcoming), their solution was a device—for them, a totem—that attaches indi-
viduals to each other through an emotionally charged symbolic source without a need for
blood ties or even complex structural ties. Yet, the rules that govern totem formations are not
“primitive” but simply reflect a rare ability humans have to associate merely on the basis of
sentiments, or a “sense of belonging,” as the criterion for membership. In contrast, nearly all
animal societies are integrated by blood-based or chain-linked affinities.
Traditional societies, of course, organize around kinship bonds. But Durkheim and Smith
understood that only lineages actually trace exact genealogical relations. Clans define kin sim-
ply from an apical ancestor without known genealogical links. And, sodalities, or associations
created to bring together individuals for specific purposes, are universal. In fact, this social
tendency has many complex facets—from generating a “sense of community” to cooperative
exchanges in large-scale societies among virtual strangers. Indeed, without the underlying
dynamics of totemism—whether religious or secular—macrosocial systems among humans
would not be possible. But, with totemism, Durkheim now had one fundamental and rigorous
mechanism to explain solidarity in both small and larger sociocultural formations. Hence, he
no longer needed to juggle the disparity between mechanical and organic solidarity.
Indeed, a main reason for caring about Smith’s influence on Durkheim’s theory of inte-
gration is that sociologists might now have second thoughts about using the concepts of
mechanical and organic solidarity to summarize Durkheim’s views. After 1895, his adoption
of totemism signaled a complete overhaul of his theory of social solidarity. By 1897, Peyre
(1960:12) wrote, Durkheim’s ideas had crystallized and that from then on, he devoted his
energies to the expansion and elaboration of his own ideas, culminating in Les formes élé-
mentaires de la vie religieuse (Durkheim [1912] 1995). Pickering (1998:2) agrees and con-
cludes that after Durkheim’s 1895 revelation, his masterful work was “in fact the culmination
of that revelation.” With this revelation, a wide-ranging model of social integration emerges.
Totem analogies are easily found in contemporary societies—from badges, buttons, or ani-
mal symbols for sports teams to flags, religion, or the idea of a motherland. In fact, the
generic traits underlying totemism are readily available today for dividing up social units
and often trigger an effervescence charged with emotion. Indeed, as Collins’s (2004) theory
of rituals underscores, solidarities are built up by the symbolization of totems to which indi-
viduals give emotion-arousing ritual homage. Nothing is really new under the totem sun; this
social proclivity is always there awaiting expression (with varying practices and beliefs).
This line of argument calls for research into the inherent dynamics of this old but little under-
stood form of integration, especially for macrosocieties. Thus, even today, more than 100
years since its publication, the essential argument of Elementary Forms continues to offer
direction to theoretical sociology, once it is recognized that the totem cults conceptualized
by Smith and Durkheim are but one instance of many possible manifestations of what is
actually a basic human mode of integration.

Maryanski 371
Appendix
French Text from the 1893 Edition of The Division of Labor
Le fait qui, peut-être, manifeste le mieux cette tendance croissante de la con-science com-
mune, c’est la transcendance parallèle du plus essentiel de ses éléments, je veux parler de la
notion de la divinité. A l’origine, les dieux ne sont pas distincts de l’univers; mais tout les
êtres naturels qui sont susceptibles d’avoir quelque influence sur la vie sociale, d’éveiller les
craintes ou les espérances collectives, sont divinisés. Ce caractère ne leur est d’ailleurs pas
communiqué du dehors, il leur est intrinsèque. Ils ne sont pas divins parce qu’un dieu habite
en eux; ils sont eux-mêmes les dieux. C’est à ce stade de l’évolution religieuse que l’on a
donné le nom de naturisme. Mais peu à peu les dieux se détachent des choses avec lesquelles
ils se confondaient. Ils deviennent des esprits qui, s’ils résident ici ou là de préférence, exis-
tent cependant en dehors des formes concrètes sous lesquelles ils s’incarnent; c’est le règne
de l’animisme.* Peu importe qu’ils soient multiples ou qu’ils aient été, comme chez les Juifs,
ramenés à l’unité; dans un cas comme dans l’autre, le degré d’immanence est le même. S’ils
sont en partie séparés des choses, ils sont toujours dans l’espace. Ils restent donc tout près de
nous, constamment mêlés à notre vie. Le polythéisme greco-latin, qui est une forme plus
élevée et mieux organisée de l’animisme, marque un progrès nouveau dans le sens de la tran-
scendance. La résidence des dieux devient plus nettement distincte de celle des hommes.
Retirés sur les hauteurs mystérieuses de l’Olympe ou dans les profondeurs de la terre, ils
n’interviennent plus personnellement dans les affaires humaines que d’une manière assez
intermittente. Enfin, avec le christianisme, Dieu sort définitivement de l’espace; son royaume
n’est plus de ce monde; la dissociation entre la nature et le divin est même si complète qu’elle
dégé-nère en antagonisme. En même temps, la notion de la divinité devient plus générale et
plus abstraite, car elle est formée non de sensations, comme dans le principe, mais d’idées. Le
Dieu de l’humanité a nécessairement moins de compréhension que ceux de la cité ou du clan.
French Text from the 1902 Edition of The Division of Labor

Le fait qui, peut-être, manifeste le mieux cette tendance croissante de la conscience com-
mune, c’est la transcendance parallèle du plus essentiel de ses éléments, je veux parler de la
notion de la divinité. A l’origine, les dieux ne sont pas distincts de l’univers, ou plutôt il n’y
a pas de dieux, mais seulement des êtres sacrés, sans que le caractère sacré dont ils sont
revêtus soit rapporté à quelque entité extérieure, comme à sa source. Les animaux ou les
végétaux de l’espèce qui sert de totem au clan sont l’objet du culte; mais ce n’est pas qu’un
principe sui generis vienne leur communiquer du dehors leur nature divine. Cette nature leur
est intrinsèque; ils sont divins par eux-mêmes. Mais peu à peu, les forces religieuses se
détachent des choses dont elles n’étaient d’abord que des attributs, et elles s’hypostasient.
Ainsi se forme la notion d’esprits ou de dieux qui, tout en résidant de préférence ici ou là,
existent cependant en dehors des objets particuliers auxquels ils sont plus spécialement rat-
taché.*..Par cela même, ils ont quelque chose de moins concret. Toutefois, qu’ils soient
multiples ou qu’ils aient été ramenés à une certaine unité, ils sont encore immanents au
monde. Séparés, en partie, des choses, ils sont toujours dans l’espace. Ils restent donc tout
près de nous, constamment mêlés à notre vie. Le polythéisme gréco-latin, qui est une forme
plus élevée et mieux organisée de l’animisme, marque un progrès nouveau dans le sens de la
transcendance. La résidence des dieux devient plus nettement distincte de celle des hommes.
Retirés sur les hauteurs mystérieuses de l’Olympe ou dans les profondeurs de la terre, ils
n’interviennent plus personnellement dans les affaires humaines que d’une manière assez
intermittente. Mais c’est seulement avec le christianisme que Dieu sort définitivement de

l’espace; son royaume n’est plus de ce monde; la dissociation entre la nature et le divin est
même si complète qu’elle dégénère en antagonisme. En même temps, la notion de la divinité
devient plus générale et plus abstraite, car elle est formée non de sensations, comme dans le
principe, mais d’idées. Le Dieu de l’humanité a nécessairement moins de compréhension
que ceux de la cité ou du clan.
*A. Réville, Religions des peoples non civilizes, I, 67 et suiv.; 11, 230 et suiv.
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Randall Collins, Robert Jones, David Franks, Vartan Messier, Jonathan Turner, Patricia
Turner, Hans Jørgen Lundager Jensen, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments. The manuscript
is greatly improved because of their generous help and advice.
Notes
The title of this article is adopted from Guy Swanson’s (1960) The Birth of the Gods; Swanson wrote that
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life is “one of the most stimulating [books] in all the literature about
society” (p. vii).
1. Durkheim was awarded a government fellowship for independent study in 1885 to 1886, and he spent
part of his sabbatical in Germany. Durkheim would later write that his engagement with German schol-
arship helped him gain a “sense of social reality, of its complexity and of its organic development”
(quoted in Geiger 1972:140–41; also see Alpert 1961:38–42; Lukes 1972:86–95).
2. See, for example, Alexander (1982), Beidelman (1974), Besnard (1981), Collins (2005), Evans-
Pritchard (1965), Giddens (1972), Johnstone (1995), Jones (1986), Kuper (1985), LaCapra (1972),
Lukes (1972), Richard ([1923] 1975), Rivière (1995), Stanner (1975), Strenski (1998), Sumpf (1965),
Thompson (2002), Tiryakian (1979), and Wentworth (1976).
3. In his Les Religions Des Peuples Non-civilisés, Réville (1883) concluded that naturism preceded ani-
mism in religious development. Durkheim would later use Réville’s scheme in his first sketch of the
developmental stages of religion.
4. Guyau (1854–88) was a gifted poet, social philosopher, and the author of nine books. He died in 1888
at the age of 34, shortly after Durkheim reviewed The Non-religion of the Future.
5. See Orru’s (1983) “The Ethics of Anomie: Jean Marie Guyau and Emile Durkheim” for a discussion
of Guyau’s use of the term anomie in a positive sense.
6. The earliest evidence of Durkheim’s pragmatic approach to religion is found in lecture notes taken in
1883 to 1884 by Durkheim’s student André Lalande, when Durkheim was a lycée philosophy instructor
(see Gross 2004:1ff.). Durkheim also touches lightly on novel aspects of religious-like phenomena in
his assessment of Ferneuil’s (1889) The Principles of 1789 and Social Science (see Durkheim [1890]
1973:36–37).
7. Durkheim wrote the first outline in 1884 and a first draft in 1886 (Mauss [1928] 1962).
8. Durkheim also proposed that everyone tied to a “collective conscience” of likenesses is similar in body
and mind.
9. Durkheim ([1893] 1984:145, 117) reasoned that “there is a sphere of psychological life which, no mat-
ter how developed the collective type may be, varies from one person to another and belongs by right
to each individual.”
10. Durkheim cited Réville’s (1883) Les Religions Des Peuples Non-civilisés in Spencer’s review and the
first and second editions of The Division of Labor. In the first edition, he adopted Réville’s view that
naturism preceded animism, along with his definitions of what these religions entail.
11. Smith was a prolific writer, especially on the Old Testament (e.g., The Prophets of Israel and Their
Place in History ([1882] 2002). He also published outside his field on topics that ranged from calculus
to the wonders of electricity. In 1994, a special interdisciplinary conference was held at the University
of Aberdeen to honor the legacy of the brilliant Robertson Smith (see Bediako 1995; Johnstone 1995;
Riviére 1995).
12. Smith was no stranger to controversy. In 1881, in the “great heresy case,” Smith was formally charged
in the Scottish ecclesiastical courts with heresy and then removed from his professorship and chair of

Maryanski 373
Hebrew and Old Testament at the Free Church Divinity College at the University of Aberdeen. His
crime was publishing “radical” Biblical articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
13. In the preface to Kinship and Marriage, Smith ([1885] 1963) tells his readers that the sociological
framework for his book stems from John McLennan’s theories on society, exogamy, kinship, and the
like (see McLennan [1865] 1970).
14. Textual criticism as a defined method is usually associated with the father of modern textual criticism,
Karl Lachmann (see Maas 1958; Platnick and Cameron 1977). Smith’s approach closely followed
the work of two well-known champions of the higher criticism, Julius Wellhausen (in Germany) and
Abraham Kuenen (in Holland).
15. Jones (1986, 2005) offers many reasons for why he believes Frazer had more to do with Durkheim’s
revelation and that only later did Durkheim turn to Smith’s work. By 1900, Frazer had renounced
his original views of totemism, saying he was factually mistaken, giving rise to serious intellectual
differences between Frazer and Durkheim. As Durkheim tried to uphold Frazer’s early account of
totemism, Frazer (1899:282) was widely expounding his new theory that totemism was a “co-operative
system of magic,” undermining Durkheim’s thesis. Yet, Frazer’s early publications were nearly all
descriptive, and he had no early theory of totemism. His approach to religion was also more psycho-
logical than sociological, as his focus was on the “primitive mind” and mythology (see Ackerman
1987:63ff.). Durkheim also strongly disapproved of Frazer’s method of assuming that similar traits, no
matter how scattered about or from whatever society, still had the same meaning. The moral or social
functions of phenomena were also of less concern for Frazer. As Harris (1968:205) put it: “Frazer’s
scheme . . . remains wholly alien to a science of society.” The point here is that by 1907, Durkheim was
unlikely to make any laudatory comments about Frazer. Yet, Durkheim knew he had benefited from
the early Frazer, and McLennan, which is why I believe his nod to “the works of Robertson Smith and
his school” alluded to the Scottish school of totemism in the 1890s (Durkheim [1907] 1982:259–60;
emphasis added).
16. Robertson Smith (1889:24) did say that once he completed his investigations, he would consider the
“metaphysical nature” of the gods, but his research ended with his untimely death in 1894 at the age
of 48.
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Author Biography
Alexandra Maryanski is professor of sociology at the University of California at Riverside. She is the
coauthor of four books, an edited Handbook on Evolution and Society to be published this month, and many
dozens of articles and book chapters. This article is an offshoot of her soon-to-be-completed book, On the
Origin of Religion: A Reanalysis of Émile Durkheim’s Theory of Religion.

The Birth of The Gods Robertson Smith An

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The Birth of the Gods:

Durkheim’s Turn to Religion as

Certainly, I lay no claim whatsoever to some impossible originality. I am truly

1University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

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The Unsolved Mystery

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Durkheim’s Early Writings on Religion

Jean-Marie Guyau’s Non-religion of the Future

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The Division of Labor

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to an expanding network of interdependent tasks. To dramatize how the ecclesiastical author-

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•• Religion is a collective phenomenon found only in established societies (1886).

William Robertson Smith

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Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia

The Religion of the Semites

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Religion is not an arbitrary relation of the individual man to a supernatural power, it is

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Discussion and Analysis

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Durkheim’s 1895 Course on Religious Sociology

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Robertson Smith’s Agenda

Durkheim’s Turn to Totemism

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A move to totemism is also evident in Durkheim’s ([1897:1978) review of Labriola’s “Essais

By 1897, naturism is now an outgrowth of totemism. And by 1898, Durkheim is confiding

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A New Template for Social Solidarity

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Conclusion: The Smith and Durkheim Theoretical Legacy

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French Text from the 1902 Edition of The Division of Labor

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