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comes to him and then another until from idea to idea, from elimination to elimination, he finally seizes upon the guiding thread to the solution of the problem and then, from that moment, passes quickly out from the twilight into the light. Does not the same thing happen in history? When a society elaborates some great conception, which the curious public pushes forward before science can correct and develop it, the mechanical explanation of the world, for example, or when it dreams in its ambition of some great achievement like the use of steam in manufacture or locomotion or navigation before it can turn its activity to exploiting it, what happens? The problem that is raised in this way at once prompts people to make and entertain all kinds of contradictory inventions and vagaries which appear first here and then there, only to disappear, until the advent of some clear formula or some suitable mechanism which throws all the others into the background and which serves thenceforward as the fixed basis for future improvements and developments. Progress, then, is a kind of collective thinking, which lacks a brain of its own, but which is made possible, thanks to imitation, by the solidarity of the brains of numerous scholars and inventors who interchange their successive discoveries. (The fixation of discoveries through writing, which makes possible their transmission over long stretches of time and space, is equivalent to the fixation of images which takes place in the individual brain and which constitutes the cellular stereotype-plate of memory.) It follows that social like individual progress is effected in two ways, through substitution and through accumulation. Certain discoveries and inventions can only be used as substitutes, others can be accumulated. Hence we have logical combats and logical alliances. This is the general classification which we will adopt, and in it we shall have no difficulty in placing all historical events. Moreover, in different societies discord between fresh desires and old, between a new scientific idea and existing religious dogmas, is not always immediately perceived nor perceived within the same period of time. Besides, when the discord is perceived, the desire to put an end to it is not always equally strong. The nature and intensity of the desire vary with time and place. In fact, Reason exists in societies as well as in individuals; and Reason in all cases is merely a desire like any other, a specific desire which like others is more or less developed by its own satisfactions as well as created by the very inventions or discoveries which have satisfied it; that is to say that systems, programmes, catechisms, and constitutions, in undertaking to render ideas and volitions coherent create and stimulate the very desire for their coherence. . . . Everything, even the desire to invent, has the same origin. In fact, this desire completes and is part of the logical need for unification, if it is true, as I might prove, that logic is both a problem of a maximum and a problem of equilibrium. The more a people invent and discover, the more inventive and the more eager for new discoveries they grow. It is also through imitation that this noble kind of craving takes possession of those minds that are worthy of it. Now, discoveries are gains in certitude, inventions, in confidence and security. The desire to discover and invent is, consequently, the twofold form which the tendency toward achieving a maximum of public faith takes on. This creative tendency which is peculiar to synthesising and assimilating minds often alternates, is sometimes concomitant, but in all cases always agrees with the critical tendency towards an equilibrium of beliefs through the elimination of those inventions or discoveries which are contrary to the majority of their number. The desire for unanimity of faith and the desire for purification of faith is each in turn more fully satisfied, but in general their ebullitions either coincide with, or follow closely upon each other. For just because imitation is their common source, both of them, the desire for stable as well as that for absolute faith, have a degree of intensity proportionate, other things being equal, to the degree of animation in the social life, that is, to the multiplicity of relations between individuals. Any fine
combination of ideas must first shine out in the mind of the individual before it can illumine the mind of a nation; and its chance of being produced in the individual mind depends upon the frequency of the intellectual exchanges between minds. A contradiction between two institutions or two principles will not harass a society until it has been noted by some exceptionally sagacious person, some systematic thinker, who, having been checked in his conscious efforts to unify his own group of ideas, points out the aforesaid difficulty.—This explains the social importance of philosophers.—And the greater the amount of mutual intellectual stimulation and, consequently, the greater the circulation of ideas within a nation, the more readily will such a difficulty be perceived. In the course of the nineteenth century, for example, the relations of man to man having been multiplied beyond all expectation as a result of inventions in locomotion, and the action of imitation having become very powerful, very rapid, and very far-reaching, we should not be surprised to see that the passion for social reforms, for systematic and rational social reorganisations has taken on its present proportions, just as, by virtue of its previous conquests, the passion for social, especially industrial, conquests over nature has known no bounds. Therefore it is safe to predict that a century of adjustment will follow upon the past century of discovery. (Does not the nineteenth century deserve this name?) Civilisation requires that an afflux of discovery and an effort to harmonise discoveries shall coincide with or follow one another. On the other hand, when societies are in their uninventive phases they are also uncritical, and vice versa. They embrace the most contradictory beliefs of surrounding fashions or inherited traditions; and no one notes the contradictions. And yet, at the same time, they carry within themselves, as a result of the contributions of fashion and tradition, much scattered thought and knowledge which would reveal from a certain angle a fruitful although unsuspected self-consistency. In the same way they borrow out of curiosity from their different neighbours, or cherish out of piety as a heritage from their different forefathers, the most dissimilar arts and industries, which develop in them ill-assorted needs and opposing currents of activity. Nor are these practical antinomies, any more than the aforesaid theoretical contradictions, felt or formulated by anybody, although everybody suffers from the unrest which they provoke. But at the same time neither do such primitive peoples perceive that certain of their artistic processes and mechanical tools are fitted to be of the greatest mutual service and to work powerfully together for the same end, the one serving as the efficient means of the other, just as certain perceptions serve as intermediaries in explaining certain hypotheses which they confirm. . . . I have now pointed out how the social need for logic, through which alone a social logic is formed, arises and develops. It is at present necessary to see how it sets about to obtain satisfaction. We already know that its two tendencies are distinguishable, the one creative, the other critical, the one abounding in combinations of old accumulable inventions and discoveries, the other in struggles between alternative inventions or discoveries. We shall study each of these tendencies separately, beginning with the latter. Suppose that a discovery, an invention, has appeared. There are straightway two facts for us to note about it: its gains in faith, as it spreads from one person to another, and the losses in faith to which it subjects the invention which had the same object or satisfied the same desire when it intervened. Such an encounter gives rise to a logical duel. . . . Studied in detail, then, the history of societies, like psychological evolution, is a series or a simultaneous occurrence of logical duels (when it is not one of logical unions). What happened in the case of writing had already happened in that of language. Linguistic progress is effected first by imitation and then by rivalry between two languages or dialects which quarrel over the same country
- Page 50 and 51: accepting facts which repeat themse
- Page 52 and 53: a formula comparable to the type of
- Page 54 and 55: significance of this proposition. T
- Page 56 and 57: These non-imitative similarities be
- Page 58 and 59: were these initiatives imitated, an
- Page 60 and 61: values? This is a fairly well found
- Page 62 and 63: service to the rank of wealth. Agai
- Page 64 and 65: an idol, weaving a garment, cutting
- Page 66 and 67: By joining our point of view, howev
- Page 68 and 69: have intimate knowledge of its elem
- Page 70 and 71: After this admittedly incomplete in
- Page 72 and 73: We should note that matriarchy is e
- Page 74 and 75: of the tribes, then of the cities o
- Page 76 and 77: Lecture by Mr. Durkheim 4 A DEBATE
- Page 78 and 79: The third session, presided over by
- Page 80 and 81: 5 BASIC PRINCIPLES *1 1902 Let us b
- Page 82 and 83: epetition is their common tendency,
- Page 84 and 85: I 6 INVENTION *1 1902 However dange
- Page 86 and 87: shown by World Fairs, where the ind
- Page 88 and 89: and churchmen often did likewise. I
- Page 90 and 91: Imagine the effect produced by that
- Page 92 and 93: 7 OPPOSITION *1 1898 Let us, first
- Page 94 and 95: he has in his thoughts, at the same
- Page 96 and 97: Fortunately, the truth is not so sa
- Page 98 and 99: III. The Laws of Imitation
- Page 102 and 103: and one of which is crowded back by
- Page 104 and 105: 9 EXTRA-LOGICAL LAWS OF IMITATION *
- Page 106 and 107: 10 PROCESSES OF IMITATION *1 1890 A
- Page 108 and 109: IV. Personality and Attitude Measur
- Page 110 and 111: aspect of effort is desire, and tha
- Page 112 and 113: like the solidification of liquids,
- Page 114 and 115: evolution which is the inverse of t
- Page 116 and 117: V. Methodology, Methods, and Quanti
- Page 118 and 119: the charm of theory? If history is
- Page 120 and 121: only a commercial treaty, or a new
- Page 122 and 123: were perfect. It is this ideal, an
- Page 124 and 125: 13 QUANTIFICATION AND SOCIAL INDICA
- Page 126 and 127: auditory or motor. In an overexcite
- Page 128 and 129: certain records or by the practical
- Page 130 and 131: consolation, but is it a matter of
- Page 132 and 133: eally a pure accident in the course
- Page 134 and 135: VI. Social Stratification
- Page 136 and 137: Will not a time come when, although
- Page 138 and 139: VII. Social Control and Deviance
- Page 140 and 141: And what crimes are involved! Mr. G
- Page 142 and 143: with our subject? To read certain s
- Page 144 and 145: satisfaction in a select and health
- Page 146 and 147: —when this aberration triumphs, i
- Page 148 and 149: thank you.
comes to him and then another until from idea to idea, from elimination to elimination, he finally<br />
seizes upon the guiding thread to the solution of the problem and then, from that moment, passes<br />
quickly out from the twilight into the light. Does not the same thing happen in history? When a society<br />
elaborates some great conception, which the curious public pushes forward before science can<br />
correct and develop it, the mechanical explanation of the world, for example, or when it dreams in its<br />
ambition of some great achievement like the use of steam in manufacture or locomotion or navigation<br />
before it can turn its activity to exploiting it, what happens? The problem that is raised in this way at<br />
once prompts people to make and entertain all kinds of contradictory inventions and vagaries which<br />
appear first here and then there, only to disappear, until the advent of some clear formula or some<br />
suitable mechanism which throws all the others into the background and which serves thenceforward<br />
as the fixed basis for future improvements and developments. Progress, then, is a kind of collective<br />
thinking, which lacks a brain of its own, but which is made possible, thanks to imitation, by the<br />
solidarity of the brains of numerous scholars and inventors who interchange their successive<br />
discoveries. (The fixation of discoveries through writing, which makes possible their transmission<br />
over long stretches of time and space, is equivalent to the fixation of images which takes place in the<br />
individual brain and which constitutes the cellular stereotype-plate of memory.)<br />
It follows that social like individual progress is effected in two ways, through substitution and<br />
through accumulation. Certain discoveries and inventions can only be used as substitutes, others can<br />
be accumulated. Hence we have logical combats and logical alliances. This is the general<br />
classification which we will adopt, and in it we shall have no difficulty in placing all historical<br />
events.<br />
Moreover, in different societies discord between fresh desires and old, between a new scientific<br />
idea and existing religious dogmas, is not always immediately perceived nor perceived within the<br />
same period of time. Besides, when the discord is perceived, the desire to put an end to it is not<br />
always equally strong. The nature and intensity of the desire vary with time and place. In fact, Reason<br />
exists in societies as well as in individuals; and Reason in all cases is merely a desire like any other,<br />
a specific desire which like others is more or less developed by its own satisfactions as well as<br />
created by the very inventions or discoveries which have satisfied it; that is to say that systems,<br />
programmes, catechisms, and constitutions, in undertaking to render ideas and volitions coherent<br />
create and stimulate the very desire for their coherence. . . .<br />
Everything, even the desire to invent, has the same origin. In fact, this desire completes and is part<br />
of the logical need for unification, if it is true, as I might prove, that logic is both a problem of a<br />
maximum and a problem of equilibrium. The more a people invent and discover, the more inventive<br />
and the more eager for new discoveries they grow. It is also through imitation that this noble kind of<br />
craving takes possession of those minds that are worthy of it. Now, discoveries are gains in certitude,<br />
inventions, in confidence and security. The desire to discover and invent is, consequently, the twofold<br />
form which the tendency toward achieving a maximum of public faith takes on. This creative tendency<br />
which is peculiar to synthesising and assimilating minds often alternates, is sometimes concomitant,<br />
but in all cases always agrees with the critical tendency towards an equilibrium of beliefs through the<br />
elimination of those inventions or discoveries which are contrary to the majority of their number. The<br />
desire for unanimity of faith and the desire for purification of faith is each in turn more fully satisfied,<br />
but in general their ebullitions either coincide with, or follow closely upon each other. For just<br />
because imitation is their common source, both of them, the desire for stable as well as that for<br />
absolute faith, have a degree of intensity proportionate, other things being equal, to the degree of<br />
animation in the social life, that is, to the multiplicity of relations between individuals. Any fine
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