ABSTRACT
One of the first reviewers of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life described it as the work of 'a veteran in Australian ethnology'. David Émile Durkheim argued that On the contrary it is the social arrangements that explain the power and nature of the religious idea. In the decade during which he developed the substance of The Elementary Forms, anthropology was still largely a prisoner of the cults of social evolution and historicism. Two assumptions in particular were yet scarcely questioned. One was that the nature of anything is entirely comprehended in its development, the other that the proper way to interpret the facts of human social life is by historical explanation. The conclusion of The Elementary Forms rings with a conviction that, inexplicable and disconcerting as aboriginal religious symbols might seem at first, 'the mystery which appears to surround them is wholly superficial and disappears before a more painstaking observation'.
