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8
LOGICAL LAWS OF IMITATION *1
1888
Our problem is to learn why, given one hundred different innovations conceived of at the same time—
innovations in the forms of words, in mythological ideas, in industrial processes, etc.—ten will
spread abroad, while ninety will be forgotten. In order to solve this question systematically let us first
divide those influences which have favored or hindered the diffusion of successful or non-successful
innovations into physical and social causes. But in this book let us pass over the first order of causes,
those, for example, which make the people of southern countries prefer new words composed of
voiced to those composed of whispered vowels, and the people of northern countries, the opposite. In
the same way there are in mythology, in artistic or industrial technique, or in government, many
peculiarities which result from a racial conformation of ear or larynx, from cerebral predispositions,
from meteoric conditions or from the nature of fauna and flora. Let us put all this to one side. I do not
mean that it has no real importance in sociology. It is of interest, for example, to note the influence
which may be exerted upon the entire course of a civilisation by the nature of a new and spontaneous
production of its soil. Much depends upon the spot in which it springs; the conditions of labour, and,
consequently, the family groups and political institutions of a fertile valley are different from those of
a moor more or less rich in pasture-land. We must thank those scholars who devote themselves to
researches of this character, researches which are as useful in sociology as studies upon the
modification of species by the action of climate or general environment are in biology. It would be
erroneous to think, however, that because we had shown the adaptation of living or social types to
external phenomena we had thereby explained them. The explanation must be sought for in the laws
which express the internal relations of cells or of minds in association. This is the reason why, in this
discussion of pure and abstract, not of concrete and applied, sociology, I must set aside all
considerations of the above nature. . . .
Invention and imitation are, as we know, the elementary social acts. But what is the social
substance or force through which this act is accomplished and of which it is merely the form? In other
words, what is invented or imitated? The thing which is invented, the thing which is imitated, is
always an idea or a volition, a judgment or a purpose, which embodies a certain amount of belief and
desire. And here we have, in fact, the very soul of words, of religious prayers, of state administration,
of the articles of a code, of moral duties, of industrial achievements or of artistic processes. Desire
and belief: they are the substance and the force, they are the two psychological quantities which are
found at the bottom of all the sensational qualities with which they combine; and when invention and
then imitation takes possession of them in order to organise and use them, they also are the real social
quantities. Societies are organised according to the agreement or opposition of beliefs which
reinforce or limit one another. Social institutions depend entirely upon these conditions. Societies
function according to the competition or co-operation of their desires or wants. Beliefs, principally
religious and moral beliefs, but juristic and political beliefs as well, and even linguistic beliefs (for
how many acts of faith are implied in the lightest talk and what an irresistible although unconscious
power of persuasion our mother tongue, a true mother indeed, exerts over us), are the plastic forces of
societies. Economic or aesthetic wants are their functional forces. . . .
Now, how is progress effected? When an individual reflects upon a given subject first one idea