The term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result

By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.

Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.

Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.

Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character.

Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.

Men have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons.