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sphgymograph and pneumograph, mechanical statisticians, so to speak, of contractions and pulsations
and respiratory movements.
In the second place, the sociological statistician would never forget that his proper task was the
measurement of specific beliefs and desires and the use of the most direct methods to grasp these
elusive quantities, and that an enumeration of acts which resembled each other as much as possible
(a condition which is badly fulfilled by criminal statistics among others), and, failing this, an
enumeration of like products, of articles of commerce, for example, should always relate to the
following, or, rather, to the two following ends: (1) through the tabulation of acts or products to trace
out the curve of the successive increases, standstills, or decreases in every new or old want and in
every new or old idea, as it spreads out and consolidates itself or as it is crushed back and uprooted;
(2) through a skilful comparison between series that have been obtained in this way, and through
emphasising their concomitant variations, to denote the various aids and hindrances which these
different imitative propagations or consolidations of wants and ideas lend or oppose to one another
(according to the varying degrees in which the more or less numerous and implicit propositions of
which they always consist, more or less endorse or contradict one another). Nor should the
sociological statistician neglect the influence, in these matters, of sex, age, temperament, climate, and
seasons, natural causes whose force is measured, at any rate when it exists, by physical or biological
statistics.
In other words, sociological statistics have: (1) to determine the imitative power which inheres in
every invention at any given time and place; (2) to demonstrate the beneficial or harmful effects
which result from the imitation of given inventions and, consequently, to influence those who are
acquainted with such numerical results, in their tendencies towards following or disregarding the
examples in question. In brief, the entire object of this kind of research is the knowledge and control
of imitations. . . .
When the field of sociological statistics has been clearly defined, when the curves relating to the
propagation, that is to say, to the consolidation as well, of every special want and opinion, for a
certain number of years and over a certain stretch of country, have been plainly traced, the
interpretation of these hieroglyphic curves, curves that are at times as strange and picturesque as
mountain profiles, more often as sinuous and graceful as living forms, has still to be made. I am very
much mistaken if our point of view will not prove very helpful here. The lines in question are always
ascending or horizontal or descending, or, if they are irregular, they can always be decomposed in the
same way into three kinds of linear elements, into inclines, plateaux, and declines. According to
Quételet and his school, the plateaux would belong preeminently to the satistician; their discovery
should be his finest triumph and the constant object of his ambition. According to this view, the most
fitting foundation for a social physics would be the uniform reproduction, during a considerable
period, of the same number, not only of births and marriages, but also of crimes and litigations. Hence
the error (it no longer exists, to be sure, thanks, especially, to recent official statistics concerning the
progressive criminality of the last half-century), of thinking that the latter figures have, in reality, been
uniformly reproduced. But if the reader has taken the trouble to follow me, he will realise that,
without detracting at all from the importance of the horizontal lines, the ascending lines, indicating as
they do the regular spread of some kind of imitation, have a far higher theoretical value. The reason is
this: The fact that a new taste or idea has taken root in a mind which is constituted in a certain fashion
carries with it no reason why this innovation should not spread more or less rapidly through an
indefinite number of supposedly like minds in communication with one another. It would spread
instantaneously through all these minds if they were absolutely alike and if their intercommunication