a durkheim fragment
TRANSCRIPT
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 1/11
A Durkheim FragmentAuthor(s): George SimpsonSource: The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 70, No. 5 (Mar., 1965), pp. 527-536Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2774974
Accessed: 25/09/2010 02:22
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://links.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you
have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you mayuse content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://links.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
American Journal of Sociology.
http://links.jstor.org
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 2/11
the americaniournal of sociology
Volume LXX Number 5 March 1965
A DurkheimFragment
George Simpson
ABSTRACTIn 1921 Marcel Mauss published from manuscript and with notes of his own the last lecture of a
course on the family which Emile Durkheim had given at the University of Bordeaux in 1892. Thisarticle is an edited English translation, with an introduction by the American editor, of this historicaldocument-one of the earliest indications of the direction some of Durkheim's later work was to takeand an early contribution to the sociology of the family in its own right.
In preparing a book on lmile Durk-
heim containing an arrangementof selec-
tions from his work in sociology with com-
mentaries and a short introduction,* I
sought to include some piece of systematic
thinkingby him on the family. I could findreadily available only an article published
posthumouslyin Revue philosophique(XCI
[January-June, 1921], 1-14). This article,
prefaced by a short note by Marcel Mauss
and edited by him, consists of a lecture
Durkheim had delivered at the University
of Bordeauxin 1892 at the end of a course
on the sociology of the family. This lecture
had been delivered from manuscript. But
the manuscriptas it came down to Mauss
was faulty in spots, and he added to thetext from the notes he had taken as a stu-
dent at that lecture. Mauss also appended
footnotes to the printed version to explain
or expand, on the basis of Durkheim's
general views, sentences and ideas which
by themselvesmight appearabstruse.
Mauss confirms in his preface, written
in 1921, that there is little publicly avail-
able by Durkheim on the sociology of the
family as a specific topic and that Durk-heimnever got around to preparingfor pub-
lication material that he had worked on
relative to it.
I therefore gave up the idea of a sepa-rate section on the family in my book onDurkheim, but not the thought of publish-ing this significant document saved for
sociological posterity by Mauss. The trans-lation of this article hence resuscitates a
neglected documenttucked away for nearly
a half-century in a French journal and
accordinglylost sight of. The article is an
exampleof Durkheim'svery earlysociologi-
cal thinking and shows him to have been
involved with ideas that were to markmuch of his later work in sociology. The
term conjugal family-in recent years so
widely stressed as the accurate description
of the present form-shows up here as one
of long standing with Durkheim, predatingcurrent usage.
In 1892, when he delivered this lecture
on the conjugal family, Durkheim had not
yet published his controversialdissertation
at Paris on the division of labor. But the* George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (New York:
Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1963).
527
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 3/11
528 THEAMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY
emphasis in this lecture on comparativelaw and jurisprudence as indexes of the
state of social relationships at given timesin given societies and of the direction in
which they were changing foreshadowshis
extensive use of them in the Division ofLabor in Society,t both to establish the
types of solidarity he found in the evolu-
tionary scheme and to propound a now
widely recognized, ingenious criminological
theory. Furthermore, this article showsDurkheim to have mapped out the guide-
lines of his later theory of the evolution ofindividualrights and personalautonomy, in
this case shown by the changes that had
taken place in the modern conjugal family
as compared with earlier forms of the
family. Then, too, we discover that Durk-
heim's work on suicide was already under
way and that his ideas on the relation of
marriage and the family to the suicide
rate were beginning to crystallize. Surpris-
ingly, even his idea on the significancethat
occupational or professional groups were
destined to have in future social organiza-
tion shows up here, although generally ithas been assumedthat this idea grew out ofhis work on the division of labor and that it
was publicized first in his preface to thesecond edition of that work in 1902. Final-ly, Durkheim's view of society as the centerof morality appears in rudimentary formin this article on the conjugal family.
Three-quarters of a century ago Durk-heim's thinking must have been an eye-opener to the students at the University ofBordeaux. Durkheim was giving the firstcourses in sociology ever given in France,and the sophisticationthat subject requiresand can arouse when learnedly pursuedmust have stood out boldly against thepretentious bourgeois backdrop of life un-der the Third French Republic.
The translation presented here is a re-finement by me of one first roughedout by
Miss Katharine 0. Parker at my requestthrough the kind offices of Mr. John T.
Hawes of the Thomas Y. Crowell Com-
pany and then gone over by Dr. Louis
Lister. Material which appears in brackets
was inserted by Marcel Mauss as French
editor, and the numbered footnotes are
also his. Mauss put his initials after each
footnote but I have omitted them here.
G. S.
THE CONJUGAL FAMILY
CONCLUSION OF THE COURSE ON THE FAMILY
This is the seventeenth and last lecture
of the course on the family that Durkheim
gave in 1892 at Bordeaux. It was delivered
to us students on April 2 of that year.
For a long time Durkheim had intendedto publish the whole body of his researches
on the family. Shortly before the war how-
ever, while undertaking the publication of
his treatise on ethics, he wavered. He
thought of publishing only the substance
contained in his course on ethics in the
family, which constitutes the second part
of his courseon ethics. The war intervened.Long before his death Durkheim had defi-
nitely given up the project-a project that
everyone who had taken this course wanted
him to complete. He suggested that we pub-lish only his work on ethics in the family.
Durkheim's treatment of the family
could certainly not have been completed
definitively without a great deal of work
concernedwith verification and elucidation.
Knowledge of family law, especially family
law in primitive societies, has come a long
way since 1892.
But, seen again after more than a quarter
of a century, so much of the course is still
so apt and profound that we consider it
t EmileDurkheim,De la division du travailso-cial (Paris, Felix Alcan, 1893) trans. by George
Simpson as Division of Labor in Society (New
York, Macmillan, 1933) and republished by TheFree Press in 1948.
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 4/11
A DURKHEIMFRAGMENT 529
our duty to allow the widest possible publicto derivebenefit from it.
This concluding lecture is quite short,and Durkheim would no doubt have felt
called upon to expand it. Considerabledata on the history of the family and ofmarriagein the Middle Ages may be found
in Anne'esociologique, beginning with thefirst issue, under the heading "FamilyOrganization," for which Durkheim wasresponsible until his death. These data
would easily help to support this conten-tion.
MARCEL MAUSS
THE CONJUGAL FAMILY
I use this name for the family estab-
lished in societies descended from the Ger-
manic peoples-that is, among the most
civilized peoples of modern Europe. I shall
describe its most essential characteristics
as they emerged through a long evolution
to becomefixed in our Civil Code.
The conjugal family comes about as a
contraction of the paternal family.1 The
latter included the father, the mother, and
all generations descended from them ex-
cepting daughters and their descendants.
The conjugal family consists only of the
husband, the wife, and minor and unmar-
ried children. Among the members of a
group thus constituted there are definite
distinctive kinship relationshipswhich existonly among them and within the limits towhich paternal aut-hority extends. Thefather is responsible for supporting thechild and for his upbringinguntil he attainsmajority.The child in turnis entirelyunder
the father's authority; he controls neitherhis person nor his wealth both of which
are in his father's keeping. He has no civil
responsibility; that belongs to his father.
But when the child is of age to marry
-for the civil majorityof twenty-oneyears
still leaves him under his father's tutelage
as far as marriagegoes-or as soon as thechild, at whatever moment, is legitimatelymarried, all these relationships cease. Thechild henceforth has his own personality,his separateinterests,and responsibilityforhimself. He can, to be sure, continue to liveunder the father's roof, but his presencethere is only a material or purely moralfact; it no longer has any of the legal con-sequences that it had in the paternalfamily.2Cohabitation,moreover, very oftenceases even before the child reaches hiscivil majority. In any event, once thechild is married he generally sets up hisown home. To be sure, he maintains tieswith his parents; he owes them support incase of illness, and he has, inversely, aright to a certain portion of the familywealth for he cannot [in French law] betotally disinherited. These are the onlylegal obligations that have survived [fromearlier family patterns] and the secondseems destined to disappear.Nothing hereresembles that state of perpetual depend-ence that was the basis of the paternalfamily and of the patriarchal family. Weare now face to face with a new familytype. Since the only permanent elementsin it are the husband and the wife, sinceall the childrensooner or later depart fromthe [paternal] homestead,I propose to callthis new family type the "conjugalfamily."
The new element manifested in thisfamily type with regardto internal organi-zation is a shattering of the ancient familycommunism such as never before encoun-
'The preceding lecture had dealt with the pa-
ternal family. This was the name given by Durk-
heim to the family institutions of the Germanic
peoples, which he sharply distinguished from those
of the Roman patriarchal family. The principal
difference lay in the absolute and overwhelming
concentration of power in Rome through the patria
potestas exercised by the paterfamilias. Character-
istic of the paternal family were the rights of the
child, of the wife, and especially the rights of
relatives on the maternal side. 2 Collective responsibility, etc.
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 5/11
530 THEAMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY
tered. Up to this time,3indeed, communismremainedthe basis of all familialgroupingswith the possible exception of the patri-
archal family. In this latter type, in effect,
the position of ascendancy acquiredby thefather4 had cut into the communistic
character of the family association. But
this character was far from disappearing
completely. Paternal power in this case
ultimately emanates from a transformation
of the old communism; it is communismno longerbased on the family itself [living]
conjointly but on the person of the father
alone. Accordingly, the family group there
forms a whole whose units no longer have
distinct individuality.5 But with the con-
jugal family things are no longer the same.
Each of the members of the conjugal
family is an individual with his own sphere
of action. However, because of his imma-
turity, the minor sphere of action is sub-
ordinated to that of the father. The child
may have his own material wealth, al-
though it is controlled by the father until
the child is eighteen years of age. Yet this
control does not relieve the father of cer-
tain obligations toward the child (seearticle 385, Civil Code). The minor mayeven possess certain goods that are free
of such control-goods that he has acquiredthrough his own labor or that he has re-
ceived with the proviso that his parentsmay not make use of them (article 387,
Civil Code). Finally, as regards personal
relationships, the father's disciplinary
rights over the minor are severely limited.
All that remainsof traditionalcommunism,
along with the parents' right of usufruct
over the property of the child under six-
teen years of age, is the rigidly circum-
scribed right of the descendant" to an-
cestral property as a consequence of therestrictions on the willing of property.
But what is even newer and more dis-
tinctive in this type of family is the ever
growing intervention of the state in theinternal life of the family. The state hasindeed become a factor in family life. The
state can intervene and punish the fatherif he oversteps certain limits. Through its
magistrates, the state presides over boards
of guardians; it takes the orphan minor
under its wing where there is no appointedguardian; it declares and sometimes peti-tions for injunctions against the adult. Arecent law even authorizes the court to
abrogate paternal power in certain cases.But one fact, more than any other, showshow great is the transformationthe family
has undergone in these circumstances. The
conjugal family could not have sprungfromthe patriarchal family [or even from the
paternal family or from a mixture of thetwo types without the intervention of thisnew factor, the state.]7 Up to now familyties could always be broken, either by the
relative. . . . who wished to quit his
family or by the father on whom he de-pended. The first case could occur in the
agnate family [and also] in the paternal
family.9 The second [case] could occur
only in the patriarchal family. With the
conjugal family the ties of kinship havebecome completely indissoluble. The state
in taking them under its protection has
3Until this type of family appeared.
' Durkheim alludes here to the right of bequeath-
ing property and to the right of sale.
5Durkheim had abundantly shown that the pa-
triarchal family, particularly the Roman, involved
the concentration in the person of the paterfamilias
of the rights of the old group of joint agnates.
8 In French law. But it should not be forgottenthat in the first paragraph of this lecture Durk-
heim set himself the task of explaining particularlythe family as seen in the Civil Code of 1892.
' I have added these two phrases from old notestaken during this course and in accordance withthe context. In the manuscript the sentence appears
only in the margin.
8 Himself (?) Word illegible but of no signifi-
cance.
9Durkheim here alludes to one of his earlierlectures where he contrasted looseness in barbarian
laws with expulsion from the patriarchal familythat in Greece and Rome broke asunder agnaticties.
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 6/11
A DURKHEIMFRAGMENT 531
deprived individuals of the right to breakthem.
Such is the central zone of the modern
family.'0 But this central zone is sur-
rounded by secondary zones which com-plement it. These latter zones are-here
as elsewhere"-nothing else but earlierfamily types which have, so to speak,
moved down a step. There is first thegroup formedby ancestorsand descendants:
grandfather, grandmother, father, mother,
brothers and sisters, and the other an-
cestors from the earlier paternal family
now relegated from the first rank to the
second. In French law the group thus con-
stituted has preserved a fairly distinctcharacter. Thus where a man dies without
descendants,his property is divided among
his parents and his brothers and sisters or
their descendants. Second, beyond the
paternal family one finds the cognate
family,12 that is, the totality of all the
collaterals other than those we have just
mentioned but even more diminished and
weaker than in the paternal family. In
the paternal family, collaterals unto the
sixth and seventh degree and sometimeseven beyond still had very important
familial duties and rights. We noted ex-
amples of this fact last time.13 But theirrole in the family henceforth is practically
nil. Scarcely anything remains but a con-
tingent right to inherit, which itself can
be nullified through the exercise of testa-
mentary power where there are no de-
scendants or ancestors. For the first time
there remains no trace of the clan. (The
specificity of the two secondary zones no
longer seems to be as distinct as in earlier
types.)'4
* ** * ** *
Now that we are acquainted with the
latest family type that has been estab-
lished, we can take a look at the ground
traversed and take stock of the results
emerging from this long evolution.
The law of contraction or progressive
emergence has been thoroughly verified.
Invariably, we have seen emerging from
primitive groups increasingly restricted
groups which tend to absorb family lifecompletely.'5 Not only is the uniformity
0The word "zone" is used by Durkheim to des-ignate fairly close circles of kinship; it forms
part of his general nomenclature, made sufficiently
clear elsewhere."
just as the phratry exists alongside the clan,the clan alongside the uterine or masculine or
agnatic family, the agnatic family alongside the
patriarchal family, etc.
In a preceding lecture, Durkheim, in analyz-
ing the paternal Germanic family, had shown that,
for the first time in the history of family insti-
tutions, both maternal and paternal descent had
been placed on the same footing. The paternal
uncle and the maternal uncle, the uterine nephewand the masculine nephew, have the same rights.
He said: "That is why I propose to call the col-
lateral family thus constituted the cognate family";
and he quoted: "'The Sippe,' says Heusler, 'is ab-
solutely cognate. Thus kinfolk [translation of the
word Sippe]. [The French as printed here reads
"Ainsi la parentele (traduction Latine du mot
Sippe)," but the Latin really is "parentela" and
"parentele"is the French translation.-G. S.] in the
Salic law refers to relatives descended from one
or the other of the two sides, parentes tam de patre
quam de matre (chapter 42) . . ., etc'" (Institu-
tionen des DeutschenPrivatrechts,II, 172). Cf.
Ann6esociologique,VIII, 429.
I Durkheim here refers to what he had said
to demonstrate the extension of kinship in the
uterine line: the facts of penal responsibility in
the case of Wergeld (Salic Law, chap. lxxxviii) the
facts of the repurchase of the widow's right to
remarry, by the new husband, from her uterine
nephew and, in the absence of any other degrees
of relationship, even from the son of the maternal
cousin (Salic Law, chap. xliv); and other traces
of the maternal family properly so-called.
14
This sentence is in parentheses in the text andmay be skipped by those not familiar with Durk-
heim's nomenclature and with the importance he
attached to the study of what he called the sec-
ondary zones. In brief, Durkheim means that
whereas up to this point there are still, alongside
the restricted family, distinct traces of the con-
sanguine family and of the clan. In the modern
conjugal family, on the contrary, there are no dis-
tinct traces even of the cognate family, which is
now thought to be derived from the conjugal re-
lationship, that is, from a single basic couple.
15Durkheim's whole theory, and particularly the
proofs, cannot be summarized in a note: the steady
contraction of the politico-domestic group, the
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 7/11
532 THEAMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY
of this evolution a resultant of what has
preceded it but it can be readily seen that
it is tied in with the most fundamentalcon-
ditions of historical development. A study
of the patriarchalfamily has clearly shown
us that the family must of necessity con-
tract in proportion to the expansion of
the social environment in which each in-
dividual is directly immersed.'6The more
limited the social environment, the better
it is situated to oppose individual diver-
gences. It follows that the only divergences
that can make their appearance are those
common to a sufficiently large number of
individuals to produce a mass effect and
triumph over collective resistance. Under
such circumstances only large family
groups can disengage themselves from po-
litical society. On the other hand, as the
social environment expands it makes pos-
sible greater play for private differences,
and those which are common to a very
small number of people accordingly cease
to be restrainedand can develop and per-
sist. At the same time, moreover, in ac-
cordancewith a general law already ob-
served operating in biology, differences
among individuals increase with the ex-
pansion of the environment.Now, if there
is one fact that dominates history, it is
that of the continuous expansion of the
social environmentwithin which each one
of us is bound up. The city succeeds the
village; to the urban environmentwith its
dependent hinterland of villages succeed
nations comprisingdifferentcities; to small
nations such as the Germanicprincipalities
succeed the huge societies of the presentday. Contacts between the different parts
of these societies are at the same time
getting closer because of the growth and
increasing rapidity of communications,
etc.'7
The constitution of the family is modi-
fied as its volume contracts. From this
point of view, the great change produced
is the progressive destruction of familial
communism. Communism originally en-
compassesall kinship relationships; all the
relatives live together and own property
in common. But as soon as a first dissocia-
tion appears in the original amorphous
mass, as soon as the secondary zones ap-
pear, communism retracts exclusively into
the primary or central zone. When theagnate family'8 emerges from the clan,communism ceases to be the basis of the
clan; when the patriarchal family detaches
itself from the agnate family, communism
ceases to be the basis of the agnate family.
Communism is finally, though gradually,
cut down to the core of the primary circle
of kinship. The father in the patriarchal
family is liberated from communism be-
cause he can dispose of domestic property
freely and on his own. Communism is
more marked in the paternal family be-
cause it is an earlier family type'9; yet
members of the paternal family may
possess personalproperty though they can-not use it or administer it by themselves.
transformation of the amorphous exogamous clan,
a vast consanguineous group, to the differentiated
clan, to families properly so-called, whether uterine
or masculine; then to the joint family of agnates;next to the patriarchal family, paternal and ma-
ternal; and next to the conjugal family. The domi-
nant theme of the history of family institutions
is, according to Durkheim, the reduction in the
number of family members and the concentration
of family ties. We may refer to his summary
of Grosse, Formen der Familie (Annee sociologique,
I, 326 ff.).
6Durkheim here alludes to his deduction of the
patriarchal family, Roman and Chinese, which
he interpreted as a feudal concentration of agnatic
grouping under one family head. M. Granet in
Polygynie sororale (1920), using excellent Chinesetexts, has admirably thrown light on this fact.
I A conclusion is missing here (and also in my
course notes) but evidently it is "the family group
may thus grow smaller, to an extreme limit."
' Durkheim here means the joint agnatic family
(the joint family of Sumner Maine, slavic Zadruga,
etc.).
1 In a preceding lecture Durkheim had demon-
strated that the paternal Germanic family does not
necessarily presuppose the joint agnatic family but
issued directly from the family characterized byuterine descent and has kept many traces of it.
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 8/11
A DURKHEIMFRAGMENT 533
Finally, in the conjugal family there re-main only vestiges of communism; thisdevelopment is linked with the very same
causes as the precedingone. The same im-
pulses that led to the contraction of thefamily circle are responsible for the pro-gressive individuation of family members.
The more extensive the social environment,the less restrictive, we repeat, the develop-ment of private differences.Some of these
differences are unique to each individual,
to each memberof the family, and they too
become continually more numerous and
more significant as the field of social rela-
tions widens. Where these individual dif-
ferences meet feeble resistance, they in-evitably develop broadly outside and are
sharpened and systematized. Since they
belong to the individual personality, that
personality necessarily develops as a con-
sequence. Each person takes on more of
an individual physiognomy, a personalmanner of feeling and thinking. Now, un-
der these conditions communism becomesmore and more impossible since it presup-
poses, on the contrary, identity-fusion of
all consciences into a single common, all-embracing conscience. We can thereforebe certain that this displacement of com-munism that characterizes our family lawnot only is not a passing accident but will,
on the contrary, be increasingly accen-
tuated unless, through some unforeseeableand practically inconceivable miracle, the
fundamental conditions that have domi-
nated social evolution from the beginning
should change.
Does family solidarity emerge weakenedor strengthened as a result of these
changes? It is very difficult to answer this
question. On the one hand, it is stronger,
since kinship ties are now indissoluble.Yet, on the other hand, the obligations to
which kinship gives rise are less numerousand far-reaching. What is certain is that
family solidarity has been transformed.Family solidarity depends on two factors:
persons and things. We are attached to our
family because we are attached to the
people who compose it. But we are at-tached to it also because we cannot dowithout material things, and under theregime of familial communism it is the
family that possesses these things. Withthe destruction of communism, thingseventually cease to cement family life.Family solidarity becomes completely per-
sonal. We are attached to our family onlybecause we are attached to the persons of
our father, our mother, our wife, our
children. Formerlyit was entirely different-the ties that rested on things were more
important than those resting on people,the whole organization of the family was
intended primarily to keep domestic goodswithin the family, and all personal con-
siderations were, by comparison,secondary.That is what tends to become of the
family. But if this is so, if things held
in common cease to be a factor in domestic
life, then the right of succession no longerhas any basis. The right of succession has,
in fact, become nothing more than family
communism persisting under the regimeof private property. If communism is re-
treating, then, disappearing from all thezones of the family, how can this rightbe maintained? As a matter of fact ithas been regressing in a most consistent
fashion. Originally it appertains inde-feasibly to all relatives, even the most dis-tant collaterals.But soon there appears theright to bequeath property, which cripplesthe right of succession as far as the secon-
dary zones are concerned. The right of
collaterals to the property of the deceased
takes effect only if the deceased has putno obstacles in the way, and the power
which the individual possesses to set upsuch obstacles increases continually. Fi-nally, the right to bequeath property pene-trates even into the primary zone, into thegroup formed by parents and their chil-dren-the father can totally20 or partiallydisinherit his children. There can be no
'Here, according to my old course notes, Durk-
heim indicated that Anglo-Saxon laws alreadyrecognized this absolute right to bequeath property.
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 9/11
534 THEAMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY
doubt that this trend is destined to con-
tinue. By that I mean not only that the
right to bequeathpropertywill become ab-
solute but that the day will come when the
individual will no more be permitted to
bequeath his property to his descendants,
even by means of a will, than he has been
permitted [since the French Revolution]
to bequeath them his officesand his status.
For the transmission of property by will
is but the last, and the most tenuous,
form of hereditary transmission. Today
there are already assets of the highest
worth that can no longer be transmitted
in any hereditaryway. [These are pre-
cisely] offices and status.2' A whole cate-
gory of workerscan no longer today trans-
mit the fruits of their labor to their chil-
dren; that is, those workers who earn
honor and fame but not wealth. It is cer-
tain that this rule will be generalized
further and that hereditary transmissionwill become increasingly delimited.
From yet another point of view, this
change is becoming more and more essen-
tial. So long as wealthis transmitted by
heredity, there are rich and poor by birth.
The moral conditions of our social life are
such that societies cannot be maintained
unless extrinsic inequalities among indi-
viduals are evened out. This statement
must not be taken to mean that all men
ought to become equal. On the contrary,
intrinsic inequality will become more and
more pronounced. But social inequalities
must come to reflect only differences in
personal worth without that worth's be-ing exaggerated or debased by some ex-
ternal factor. Now, hereditary wealth is
one of these extraneous factors. It renders
to some advantages not derivative from
personal worth that nevertheless bestow
upon them superiority over others. Thisinjustice, which strikes us as increasingly
intolerable, is becoming increasingly ir-reconcilable with the conditions for ex-istence of our present-day societies. Every-
thing thus serves to demonstrate that the
right of succession, even through the ve-hicle of a will, is destined to disappear step
by step.Yet, however necessary this transforma-
tion, it will be far from easy. The rule ofhereditary transmission of goods un-
doubtedly has its roots in the old familial
communism which is disappearing. Butin living practice we have become so ac-
customedto this rule, it is so tightly bound
up with all of our organizedactivities, thatif it were abolished without replacement
social life would itself dry up at its livingsource. In fact we are so geared and ac-customed to it as to make the prospect oftransmitting the products of our laborsthrough heredity the mainspring of our
activities. If we pursued only personal
ends, we would be much less stronglymotivated to work, since our work has
meaning only insofar as it serves some-
thing beyond ourselves. The individual is
not an adequate end for himself. When he
takes himself as his end he falls into a
state of moral misery which leads him to
suicide.22Our attachment to work lies in
its capacity to enrich the domestic patri-
mony, to add to the well-being of our
children. If this prospect were taken from
us, a powerful moral stimulant would beremovedin one fell swoop. Hence the prob-
lem is not as simple as it might, at first
glance, seem. In order to realize the ideal
we have just sketched, we must gradually
substitute something else for the main-
spring that threatens to fail us. Something
other than personal and domestic interest
I According to my notes, Durkheim at this point
in this lecture added important considerations
on the outmoded character of literary, industrial,
and commercial property (copyrights and patents)
which fall in the public domain and which the pro-
prietor cannot transmit after a certain lapse of
time. He returns to this subject at another point
in this lecture.
22 By this time Durkheim had already given
his first course on suicide. Here can be recognized
ideas he published in 1896 in his book on the
subject.
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 10/11
A DURKHEIMFRAGMENT 535
must stimulate us to work. But general
social interest is too far removed from us,too vaguely perceived, and too impersonal
to become this effective motive. We must,
then, be tied to some other group outside
the family, more circumscribed than po-
litical society, nearer to us, and touchingus more closely. Those very rights that the
family is itself no longer capable of exer-
cising must accordingly be transferred to
this other group.
What group can this be? Could it bematrimonial society? We have observed
the continuous, steady growth of this
society, its consolidation and its ever
greater coherence. The importance it as-
sumes in the conjugal family marks the
apogee of this development. Indeed, not
only does marriage become well-nigh in-
dissoluble in this family type, not only
does monogamy there become nearly
perfect, but marriage itself now presents
two new characteristics which evince the
strength it has amassed.First, it has completely left off being a
personal contract and has become a publicrecord. Marriage is contracted under the
auspices of a [magistrate] of the state;not only does the ceremonyhave this pub-
lic characterbut indeed the marriageitself
is not valid unless the public formalities
demanded are precisely fulfilled. Now, as
we know, no judicial act assumes such
solemn forms unless it is laden with vast
significance.Second, in addition to these external
conditions for marriage, the organizationof matrimonial relationships presents a
special characteristic without parallel in
the history of the family up to now. This
characteristic is the presence of the rule
of common property between spouses, a
community of property which may refer
to all goods or be restricted to acquisi-
tions. Commonproperty is the general rule
in matrimonialsociety. Though it can be
evaded, it exists in full right if there are
no contravening conventions. Thus, while
communism was departing from domesticsociety, it was making its appearance inmatrimonial society.23 Could not matri-
monial society be destined to replace do-
mestic society in the function spoken of
above, and could not conjugal love be themainspringcapable of producing the same
results as love of family?
Not at all. Conjugal society by itself is
too ephemeral,its vistas are too restricted
for such results. To become attached to
our work we must be cognizant that it will
survive us, that something from it will re-
main after us, that it will be of service to
those whom we love even after we have de-
parted. We possess this feeling as a mat-
ter of course when we work for our family,
since it continues to exist after us. But
conjugal society, quite to the contrary, is
dissolved by death in each generation.
Spouses do not long survive each other.
Consequently, one of them cannot be a
strong enough reason to make the other
sacrifice momentary pleasures. That is
why marriage does not have the same
counteractive influence against suicide asthe family has.24Only one group is, accordingly, to be
found that is close enough to the indi-vidual to hold him tightly and lasting
enough to allow him a vast perspective.
This group is the occupational or profes-
sional group. Only this group, in my view,is able to perform the economicand moral
functions which the family has become
increasingly incapable of performing. In
order to work out of our present state ofcrisis, the termination of the rule of he-
reditary transmission is not enough. Men
must gradually become attached to their
occupational or professional life. Strong
groups relative thereto must be developed.
In the hearts of men, professional duty
' Durkheim here mentioned to us some rights
of the surviving partner: the reservation of usu-
fruct in French law and the right of succession
ab intestat in Anglo-Saxon law.
2 See Durkheim's Suicide.
8/7/2019 A Durkheim Fragment
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-durkheim-fragment 11/11
536 THEAMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY
must take over the place formerlyoccupied
by domestic duty. This moral level has
already been attained by that elite we
have mentioned, which demonstrates thatthis transformationis not impracticable.25
(This change, moreover, will not take
place in one fell swoop); [for a long time]
a great many traces of traditional usage
will remain. Parents will always be im-
pelled to work in order to feed and rear
their families. But this motive will not
alone suffice)26 [to make the family dis-
perse and disappear. The professional
group, on the contrary, is by its very
nature perpetual].A few words on the secondary effect
upon marriage.Under the paternal family,
free, unregulated union coexisted along-
side of marriage,but in the conjugal family
such unregulated union is almost totally
repressed. [It no longer gives rise to any
rule of law.] The more tightly the familyis organized the more does marriage tendto be the exclusive basis of kinship.
[The] causes [for this fact are as fol-
lows:] Marriage establishes the family
[and at the same time] springs from it.
Any sexual union not contracted undermatrimonialregulation is accordingly sub-
versive of duty and of domestic bonds.
Where, moreover, the state itself is a
party to family life, free union undermines
public order. From another point of view,
this result is inevitable. The members of
every moral society have obligationstoward
one another; and, when they attain a cer-
tain importance, these obligations assume
a juridical aspect. Free, unregulatedunion
is a conjugal society without such obliga-tions. Hence it is an immoralsociety. And
that is why children reared in such en-
vironmentsshow so many moral defects-
they have not been exposed to a moral
environment.A child cannot have a moral
upbringing unless he lives in a society
whose every member feels his obligationstoward every other member. For outsidesuch a society there is no morality. Hence
[to the extent that the legislator and
ethics concern themselves with this prob-lem] the tendency is not to make a free
union of every marriage but to transform
every union, even a free union, into a
marriage however imperfect.
Such are the general conclusions to be
drawn from this course of lectures. The
family has progressed through concentra-
tion and personalization. The family un-
dergoes steady contraction; at the sametime, relations in it assume an exclusively
personal character in consequence of the
progressive obliteration of family commu-
nism. Whereas the family loses ground,
marriage contrariwisebecomes stronger.
EMILE DURKHEIM
25The manuscriptcontainsno traceof the devel-opment given by Durkheimto this idea. Thanksto my notes, I can reconstructit approximatelyas follows: ["Civilservants,soldiers,scholarswhorenderto the state a lifetime of poorly compen-satedlabor-can they look forwardto transmittingproperty? Those authors, those artists, those
scholars, those engineers,those inventors whosework so soon falls into the publicdomain,whoseliterary, artistic, and industrialownershipis sohighlyephemeral-can they transmitto theirchil-dren the material fruits of their work? Whydo they work? Is not theirwork just as effectiveand even more effectivethan that of others?Thus
one may workwithout the sole objeetiveof accu-mulatingan inheritancefor one'schildren"].
' Durkheimhimselfaddedthe parenthesesin themanuscript.In any eventhe hadutteredtheseideasto us and I was ableto completethe last of them.He undoubtedlyintended to insert them in alater version. [This footnote as printed in thearticlein French endswith a commaand withoutMauss'sinitials.G. S.]