Life in Society

Abstract

Religious anthropology also contains the religious conception and doctrine of the different forms of social life. Social life is an integral part of individual life. Sometimes it is felt to be the most important factor in it; that is in the cases when the full personality of an individual is only acknowledged when he is a member of a particular community. Social life is in these instances a higher form of individual life and determines it in various respects. This is the most characteristic part of religious anthropology. We are here not so much concerned with the different forms of religious communities (in the stricter sense) belonging to the cultus, as with the anthropological significance which religious believers ascribe to community life. It was known that the individual was more than simply an individual, and that this supra-individual aspect was part of man’s essential being.