ABSTRACT
Emile Durkheim would have said that societies are machines for the making of gods. According to Durkheim, society favors the rise of beliefs because individuals, brought together, living in communion with one another, are able in the exaltation of festivals to create the divine, as it were, to create a religion. Durkheim also emphasizes the importance of two kinds of social phenomena, symbols and rites. Much of social behavior is addressed not to things themselves but to the symbols of things. Durkheim seeks to understand not only the religious beliefs and practices of the Australian tribes, but also the ways of thinking which are related to these beliefs. He derives a sociological theory of knowledge from his study of Australian totemism. In totemism, prohibitions apply not only to the totemic animals or plants but to objects on which the animals or plants are represented.
