All pleasure is a sort of crisis; it is born, lasts a moment, and dies.
This metaphor seems to be a near-paradox. If something is pleasurable, how can it be also be a crisis as well? Durkheim reconciles this paradox by introducing it as a larger argument that happiness does not consist merely as the sum of various pleasures because pleasure is fleeting and always arrives with the foreknowledge that it will disappear as quickly as it appeared. Therein lies the crisis.
Each body of workers like a city which lead its own life.
This simile references historical demographics in which cities rose to meet specialized production requirements. Some cities were known for glass-making while others for producing wool, for example. And within cities there would congregate small populations centers whose shared experiences were related to the work they did rather than other character traits that might normally bring like minds together.
Suicide…is viewed sometimes as a contagious disease which has as the sources of irradiation the capitals and important cities.
Durkheim’s analysis of the toxic effect of urban living leads to this comparison of suicide as a disease which can be passed from inhabitant who has been infected by the effects of such living to another. He goes even further to suggest living away from the city offers no precaution against infection or contagion.
He is no longer anything but an inert piece of machinery
The effect of the division of labor which gives a man a job to do to which he has no practical interest in the outcome is one of dehumanization. Labor was originally work that required tending to because of a vested interest in the outcome. Factory labor removes this aspect of attention and transforms the work into a cog in the system.
man is a moral being only because he lives in society
Durkheim is making the point that society is a necessary for morality to exist. Morality is dependent on social interaction and if man is removed from society, those pressures to conform to a moral code easily and quickly break down. This metaphor arises from the opposing argument that posits the lack of moral behavior is directly related to societal influences upon people who are supposed to be naturally predisposed to moral behavior.
