“The category of class was at first indistinct from the concept of the human group; it is the rhythm of social life which is at the basis of the category of time; the territory occupied by the society furnished the material for the category of space; it is the collective force which was the prototype of the concept of efficient force, an essential element in the category of causality.”

— Émile Durkheim, book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Source: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1912, p. 488

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Émile Durkheim43

French sociologist (1858-1917) 1858–1917

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