First published in English in 1953, this volume represents a collection of three essays written by seminal sociologist and philsopher Emile Durkheim in which he puts forward the thesis that society is both a dynamic system and the seat of moral life. Each essay stands alone, but their connecting thread is the dialectic demonstration that a phenomenon, be a sociological or psychological one, is relatively independent of its matrix.

The essays provide a valuable insight into Durkeheimian thought on sociological and philsophical matters and offer an excellent guide to Durkheim for students of both disciplines.