Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the second are determined modes of action.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Organized belief in spirituality - that's what a religion is.
Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.
Our religious belief usurps the place of our sensations, our imaginations of our judgment. We no longer look to actions, trace their consequences, and then deduce the rule; we first make the rule, and then, right or wrong, force the action to square with it.
Various religious systems have been given to humanity at different times, each suited to meet the spiritual needs of the people among whom it was promulgated, and, coming from the same divine source: - God, all religions exhibit similar fundamentals or first principles.
Religion is one dimension of culture, a transcendent element of it.
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.
Both state and church have as their object actions as well as convictions, the former insofar as they are based on the relations between man and nature, the latter insofar as they are based on the relations between nature and God.
Religious faith, like political belief, should be based on reasoning, on the development of thought and feelings. The two things are inseparable.
A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.
Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge - the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.