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have intimate knowledge of its element—our individual consciousness—as well as of the composite
—the assembly of consciousnesses—and here one cannot make us take words for things. Now in this
case, we clearly establish that without the individual element the social element is nothing, and that
there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in society which does not exist piecemeal in a state of continual
repetition in living individuals and which did not exist in the ancestors of the present individuals.
I say that this is a singular privilege because everywhere else we are completely ignorant of what
there is in the depths of the element. For what is there in the innermost depths of a chemical molecule
or a living cell? We do not know. How then can we affirm, when these mysterious beings meet in a
certain manner, itself unknown, and cause the appearance of new phenomena, an organism, a mind, a
conscience, that there has been a sudden apparition at each degree of this mysterious scale, a creation
ex nihilo of something that was not there before, not even in germinal form? Is it not probable that if
we had an intimate knowledge of those cells, those molecules, those atoms, those unknowns that are
so often taken as givens, we should find that the exteriorization of phenomena seemingly created by
their rapprochement—phenomena which at present make us marvel—are in reality very simple? Note
the enormous postulate implied by these current notions, on which Mr. Durkheim deliberately leans in
order to justify his chimerical conception: that the simple relationship of several beings can itself
become a new being, and one often superior to the others. It is odd to see these men, who pride
themselves above all on being positive and methodical, everywhere pursuing the very shadow of
mysticism, clinging to such a fantastic notion.
Thus, in the only case in which the elements are known to us, we observe that they contain within
themselves the complete explanation and the complete existence of their composite. What should we
conclude from this? Precisely this: by a reasoning which is just the reverse of that of our learned
adversary we must infer that in all other cases it is the same. And if I, too, dared to push this idea to
its extreme, if I ventured to indicate the possible remodeling of universal science under the
inspiration of sociology, perhaps I should be led in turn into deep mysteries such as the Leibnitzian
region of monads, onto which, from many different avenues, the inquiring thought of our day seems to
converge. Perhaps then I should be led to say that one must choose between the ontological
phantasmagoria of Mr. Durkheim and our own neo-monadological hypothesis and that once the latter
is rejected the former must be accepted. But I do not care to venture on such metaphysical flights,
preferring to stay on the shores of fact.
Thus, like Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, like Herbert Spencer, let us solicit the secret of
sociology from collective psychology and from that accumulated psychology of the dead called
history, and from logic as well. We are told, however, that “between psychology and sociology exists
the same solution of continuity as between biology and the physicochemical sciences. Consequently
every time a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychical phenomena, we may rest
assured that the explanation is false.” This is like saying that in social matters any clear explanation
is necessarily an erroneous one. Further, “a purely psychological explanation of social facts cannot
help but overlook what is unique to them, that is, what is social.” I reply yes, if one wishes to account
for a collective fact only through the psychology and the logic of individuals and of real individuals,
but not if one also considers the psychology and the logic of the masses and of the dead.
Then we are told that “if in fact social evolution had its true origin in man’s psychical constitution,
it is impossible to see how this evolution could have occurred.” It seems to me that one can see even
less clearly without this psychical constitution how it could have arisen and developed. With it, on
the contrary, social progress is most simply explained, always on condition, however, that it be a
question of the mental nature and of states of mind not of man but of men, of men dissimilar and