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were perfect. It is this ideal, an ideal that is happily beyond realisation, that we are fast approaching. The rapid diffusion of telephones in America from the moment of their first appearance there is one proof in point. This ideal is almost reached already in the matter of legislative innovations. Laws or decrees which were once slowly and laboriously administered in one province after another are today executed from one end to the other of a state the very day of their passage or promulgation. This occurs because in this case there is no hindrance whatsoever. Lack of communication in social physics plays the same role as lack of elasticity in physics. The one hinders imitation as much as the other, vibration. But the imitative spread of certain well-known inventions (railroads, telegraphs, etc.), tends to diminish, to the benefit of every other invention, this insufficiency of mental contact. As for mental dissimilarity, it likewise tends to be effaced by the spread of wants and ideas which have arisen from past inventions and whose work of assimilation in this way facilitates the propagation of future inventions. I mean of future non-contradictory inventions. When wants or ideas are once started, they always tend to continue to spread of themselves in a true geometric progression. 3 This is the ideal scheme to which their curve would conform if they could spread without mutual obstruction. But as such checks are, at one time or another, inevitable, and as they continue to increase, every one of these social forces must eventually run up against a wall which for the time being is insurmountable and must through accident, not at all through natural necessity, fall temporarily into that static condition whose meaning statisticians in general appear to so little understand. In this case, as in all others, a static condition means equilibrium, a joint standstill of concurrent forces. I am far from denying the theoretic interest of this state, because these equilibria are equivalent to equations. If, for example, I see that the consumption of coffee or chocolate has ceased to increase in a certain country at a certain date, I know that the strength of the desire there for coffee or chocolate is exactly equal to that of certain rival desires which would have to remain unsatisfied, considering the average fortune, by a more amble satisfaction of the former. The price of every article is determined in this way. But does not every one of the annual figures in progressive series or slopes also express an equation between the strength, at a certain date, of the desire in question and the strength of competing desires which hindered its further development at the same date? Moreover, if progression ceased at one point rather than at another, if the plateau is neither higher nor lower than it is, is it not because of a mere accident of history, that is to say, because of the fact that the opposing invention, from which arose the antagonistic wants that barred the progress in question, appeared at one time and place rather than at another, or because of the fact that it actually did appear instead of not appearing at all? Plateaux, let me add, are always unstable equilibria. After an approximately horizontal position has been sustained for a more or less prolonged time, the curve begins to rise or fall, the series begins to grow or diminish with the appearance of new auxiliary and confirmatory or antagonistic and contradictory inventions. As for diminishing series, they are merely, as we see, the result of successful growths which have suppressed some declining public taste or opinion which was once in vogue; they do not deserve the attention of the theorist except as the other side of the picture of the growing series which they presuppose. Let me also state that whenever the statistician is able to lay hold of the origin of an invention and to trace out year by year its numerical career, he shows us curves which, for a certain time, at least, are constantly rising, and rising, too, although for a much shorter period, with great regularity. If this perfect regularity fails to continue, it is for reasons which I will shortly indicate. But when very ancient inventions like monogamy or Christian marriage are under consideration, inventions which have had time to pass through their progressive period and which have rounded out, so to speak, their
whole sphere of imitation, we ought not to be surprised if Statistics, in its ignorance of their beginnings, represents them by horizontal lines that show scarce a deviation. In view of this, there is nothing astonishing in the fact that the proportion of the annual number of marriages to the total population remains about constant (except in France, I may say, where there is a gradual diminution in this proportion) or even in the fact that the influence of marriage upon crime or suicide is expressed each year by pretty much the same figures. Here we are dealing with ancient institutions which have passed into the blood of a people just like the natural factors of climate, seasons, temperament, sex, and age, which influence the mass of human acts with such striking uniformity (which has been greatly exaggerated, however, as it is much more circumscribed than is generally supposed) and with a regularity that is also remarkable, in quite a different way, again, in connection with vital phenomena like death and disease. . . . . . . These curves are now relegated to the last page, but they tend to encroach upon the others, and, perhaps, before long, at any rate, at some time in the future when people have been satiated with declamation and polemic, just as very well read minds begin to be with literature, and when they will read the papers merely for their multifarious statements of exact and ungarnished fact, they will usurp the place of honour. The public journals, then, will become socially what our sense organs are vitally. . . . The ideal newspaper of this kind would be one without political articles and full of graphical curves and succinct editorials.
- 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 100 and 101: comes to him and then another until
- 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 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.
- Page 150 and 151: 16 THE PUBLIC AND THE CROWD *1 1901
- Page 152 and 153: past; after the family it is the ol
- Page 154 and 155: simple epiphenomenon, in itself ine
- Page 156 and 157: of more than these two categories.
- Page 158 and 159: sorrow, with conviction or with pas
- Page 160 and 161: Opinion 17 OPINION AND CONVERSATION
- Page 162 and 163: press of our own time, and at all t
- Page 164 and 165: privileged groups, a court, a parli
- Page 166 and 167: efore this aesthetic flower of civi
- Page 168 and 169: . . . The greatest force governing
- Page 170 and 171: deep, entirely psychological and co
whole sphere of imitation, we ought not to be surprised if Statistics, in its ignorance of their<br />
beginnings, represents them by horizontal lines that show scarce a deviation. In view of this, there is<br />
nothing astonishing in the fact that the proportion of the annual number of marriages to the total<br />
population remains about constant (except in France, I may say, where there is a gradual diminution in<br />
this proportion) or even in the fact that the influence of marriage upon crime or suicide is expressed<br />
each year by pretty much the same figures. Here we are dealing with ancient institutions which have<br />
passed into the blood of a people just like the natural factors of climate, seasons, temperament, sex,<br />
and age, which influence the mass of human acts with such striking uniformity (which has been greatly<br />
exaggerated, however, as it is much more circumscribed than is generally supposed) and with a<br />
regularity that is also remarkable, in quite a different way, again, in connection with vital phenomena<br />
like death and disease. . . .<br />
. . . These curves are now relegated to the last page, but they tend to encroach upon the others, and,<br />
perhaps, before long, at any rate, at some time in the future when people have been satiated with<br />
declamation and polemic, just as very well read minds begin to be with literature, and when they will<br />
read the papers merely for their multifarious statements of exact and ungarnished fact, they will usurp<br />
the place of honour. The public journals, then, will become socially what our sense organs are<br />
vitally. . . . The ideal newspaper of this kind would be one without political articles and full of<br />
graphical curves and succinct editorials.
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