The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.

Maniacal suicide. —This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.

Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics... The group thinks, feels, and acts quite differently from the way in which its members would were they isolated. If, then, we begin with the individual, we shall be able to understand nothing of what takes place in the group.

Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

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.

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.