This is not because of any direct response by Otto to Durkheim; as far as can be told, they never met in person, nor did the German theologian and the French sociologist discuss each other's works. Rather, the contrast between these two influential books demonstrates the presence of an issue that has persisted in the interpretation of religion. Durkheim, who analyzes the sacred as originating in a symbolic projection of the clan or tribal group identity, stands as a polar opposite to Otto, who portrays the holy as a power far greater than, and lying far beyond, the human realm.
Although Otto does not seem to have reacted directly to Durkheim, he did write an article in 1910 that was sharply critical of a figure Durkheim found attractive: the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, whose Völkerpsychologie (Leipzig, 1900–1909) offered an evolutionary theory of religion as a social phenomenon, the product of group fantasy. Otto flatly denied the possibility of a social account of customs and myths in the absence of a capacity for religious feeling in the individual, and he asserted the uniqueness of such a feeling as a distinctively human spiritual capacity.
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