ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY New York State Colleges OF Agriculture and Home Economics Cornell University Cornell University Library HM 22.F8D8 Emile Durkheim's contributions to socio 3 1924 014 032 084 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014032084 EMILE DIJEKHEIM'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Volume LXIII] [Number 1 Whole Number 151 EMILE DURKHEIM'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY CHAKLES ELMER GEHLKE, Ph.D. Sometime Schiff Fellow in Columbia University Instructor in Sociology, Western Eesei-ve University COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., AGENTS, London : P. S. King & Son, Ltd. I9IS w Copyright, 1915 BY CHARLES ELMER GEHLKE MY FATHER AND MOTHER - PREFACE As the title of this study suggests, the scope of it is rela- tively limited. " Sociological theory " has been taken to include the study of the psychological phenomena con- ditioned by man's social life; the method and scope of sociology ; the problem of the conduct relations of the indi- vidual as a member of a social group; "social morphology" ; the causes of social changes; in short, what is usually de- nominated " general " sociology. Into the field of Durk- heim's specialized work on primitive social life no excur- sions have been made save for material illustrative of points coming up in the discussions of theory. Furthermore, no attempt has been made to attack the problem of the influ- ences that have helped to shape our author's views. This question has been treated by M. Simon Deploige,^ with the result of an acrimonious argument between Deploige and Durkheim.^ This controversy will be considered later.* It seems scarcely worth while to do more than to point out, in this connection, similarities between the thought of Durk- heim and that of several other writers, and to accept his statement as to the origin of his ideas. Professor fimile Durkheim was bom April 15, 1858. From 1879 to 1882 he was a student at the £,cole Normale Superieure. From 1882 tO' 1887 he served as professor of philosophy in various lycees. In 1887 he became a member of the Faculte des lettres of the Universite de BordeoMX, first as "charge d'un cours", later, in 1896, as Professor of Social Science. In 1902 he was called to Paris, serving at first as " charge d'un cours ", and since 1906, as Professor of Sociology and the Science of Education in the Faculte des lettres in the Universite de Paris. He is a member of ' Le Conftit de la morale et de la sociologie, ch. iv. 2 Ihid., pp. 393-413- ^ V^'ie infra, p. 83. 7] 7 8 PREFACE [8 the " Comite des travaux historiques et scientiiiques, section des sciences economiques et so dales ". Beside a large number of articles Professor Durkheim has published four important books : De la division du tror- vail social (1893) ; Les Regies de la Methode sociologique (1895) ; Le Suicide (1897) ! ^^^^ formes elementaires de la vie religieuse (1912). He is, in addition to this, founder of, director of, and collaborator on, the series of voltunes appearing periodically under the title of the " Annie Socio- logique "} The author wishes here tO' acknowledge his indebtedness to a number of persons who have been of assistance to him in the prosecution of this study. To Professor Durkheim, himself, the author is under great obligation for the kind- ness of the former in personally revising the bibliography of his works, since without this assistance there would have been serious gaps in it. To Professor Henry L. Moore, of Columbia University, he is indebted for the sug- gestion of the subject, and for a criticism of the earlier drafts; to Professor Franklin H. Giddings, for continued advice and encouragement; to his colleague. Professor J. S. Moore, and to Professor G. G. Laubscher, of Randolph- Macon College for Women, for assistance in their respec- tive fields; to his sister, Mrs. C. F. Miller, for aid in the reading of proof; to Mr. H. N. Shenton, of the Department of Sociology of Columbia University, for reading and criticising the study in the proof-sheets. His greatest debt, however, is to Professor J. E. Cutler, of the Department of Sociology of Western Reserve University. To the latter's unfailing encouragement and consideration, as well as to^ his kindness in reading and criticising the study in manu- script, its present appearance is largely due. However, the author wishes to assume all responsibility for its shortcom- ings, whether of matter or form. C E G April 27, 1914. 1 Vide infra, pp. 122, 185. CONTENTS CHAPTER I Introduction The scope and purpose of the study 15 Preliminary definitions ... .... 16 Durkheim's psychology of the individual mind . . . . ig The compounding of mental elements ... . . 20 His " interactionist " philosophy, and his criticism of Wm. James. 21 Comparison of Wundt's psychology and that of Durkheim . . 25 CHAPTER II The Social Mind The source and mode of origin of social representations 28 Characteristics of social representations; they are exterior to the individual mind . ... ... 32 They are qualitatively different from individual representations and differ among themselves . . 33 They are superior in impressive power to the individual representa- tions 36 They are internal with reference to the individual piind . ... 41 The purely individual elements of the content of the mind of the individual are of slight importance 43 Refractions of the social representations within and by the mind of the individual. - 4S The categories of individual thought, e.g., class, space, time, force, etc., are of social origia .... 46 Criticism of Durkheim's use of the term ''category " 52 The sociological role of education . 53 Resemblance of Durkheim's general position to that of certain American anthropologists ... 54 9] '■ 9 lO CONTENTS [lo CHAPTER III Social Facts and Social Causation Social facts; their criteria are exteriority and constraint • • • S8 Durkheim's theory of social causation; his criticism of other theories. 64 The individual cannot be an originative factor in the social process. 67 This is consistent with Durkheim's social psychology 67 The cause of the social fact is to be sought in the social milieu . . 7° This theory illustrated from Durkheim's works 71 Its mechanistic character 75 Distinction between sociology and psychology; " socio-psychic " facts 78 Durkheim's conception of collective psychology compared with Wundt's 80 Durkheim's philosophical position; his psychological realism ... 84 Durkheim and Bergson : Durkheim's view and the pragmatic view of religion .... 88 CHAPTER IV '\ The Major Premise in Durkheim's Thinking Durkheim's critics have usually attacked his conclusions only, and not his premise -93 This premise is the " mind-stuflf " theory . . 94 Durkheim's intellectualist position in psychology 96 He over-emphasizes the social origin of the content of the individ- ual mind; hence the weakness of his social-causation theory . 97 The genius; Durkheim's failure to allow for varying mental powers. 98 The "mind-stuff" theory is not necessary to account for the im- portance of social elements in the content of the individual mind. 100 The latter fact can be adequately explained on the basis of an "indi- vidualistic" psychology .... loi Durkheim's interest is in the content, not in the functioning of mind 104 He has neglected to give a true explanation of the origin of the social mind . . . .... 104 The "social reality" is explainable without Durkheim's psycholog- ical premise. ... . . . . 105 CHAPTER V Sociology and the Special Social Sciences Durkheim's early views as to the field of sociology 108 His attitude toward "general" sociology no II J CONTENTS III Logical cor sequences of his definition of social facts for the delimi- tation of the field of sociology iil The historj of sociology; the faults of Comte and Spencer . . 112 Durkheim's criticism of the modern conceptions of "general" sociology, especially those of Mill, Giddings, and Simmel . . 114 The faults of modern " general " sociology 115 In what re ipects the special social sciences are branches of sociology 118 The Annee Sociologique as illustrative of Durkheim's position on this point . . ... ... 122 CHAPTER VI . / Durkheim's Method Basic principles of the study of social phenomena 126 Social facts must be objectively treated 127 Distinction between normal and pathological ; various criteria . . 132 Durkheim's criterion for the normal is generality . . . 133 The constitution of social types ... 136 Durkheim's system of classification of societies is practically that of Spencer . . 137 Durkheim's criticism of the "ecole anthropologique" 138 The major premise of this school is the principle of the uniform evolution of culture, which is held also by Durkheim . . . 140 Methods of proof in sociology: he follows Mill, with modifications. 143 Durkheim's emphasis on the method of concomitant variations. 145 Criticism of Durkheim's method and his applications of it ... . 147 CHAPTER VII Durkheim's Ethical Theobies Durkheim's persistent interest in ethical problems 150 Definition of the science of morals and of moral facts 151 Durkheim's ethical theories are in general consistent with his psychological premise . . . . 156 The psychology of morality and its evolutionary aspects 157 Problem of the relation of the division of labor to morality . . 158 The psychology of "mechanical" and of "organic" social solidarity. IS9 The development of "organic" solidarity; the moral role of the occupational group . ■ • 162 Causes and conditions of the increase of the division of labor . . . 166 Three abnormalities of the modern division of labor . .... 168 The present crisis in morality, and Durkheim's remedy for it; namely a strengthening of the occupational unit of society . . . 171 12 CONTENTS [iz Durkheim's views compared with those of the syndicalists and with those of the anarchist Kropotkin 176 Some inconsistencies in Durkheim's ethical theories 178 CONCLUSION A brief resume of Durkheim's theory 182 His emphasis on social control is in line with much American soci- ological theory 183 Durkheim's theories and the French social milieu 183 List of abbreviations of titles of books and articles to which m'st frequent reference is made. Div. Tr. — De la division du travail social. Meth. — Les 'Regies de la methode sociologique. Suic. — ^Le Suicide. Vie Rel. — Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse. "Rep. Ind." — "Representations individuelles et representations col- lectives." A. S. — Annee Sociologique. Rev. Phil. — Revue Philosophique. Rev. Met. — ^Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale. 13] 13 CHAPTER I Introduction The aim and purpose of the study is to present in a rea- sonably detailed and yet compact form the essentials of Durkheim's sociological theory. Only one of his works, Les Regies, is purely theoretical and methodological; his system — so far as he may be said to have a " system " — is so scattered throughout his works that only a careful read- ing and collation of' material from a number of them would give even the average technically interested reader a fair idea of his contribution. Durkheim's importance as one of the leaders of modern sociological thought and research in France makes an interpretation and summary of his works of some value to the English-speaking sociologist who can- not spare the time for a thorough reading. It is with the hope that it may serve this purpose, that this study is put forward.'- Its plan is briefly to examine Durkheim's works with reference to his social psychology, his ideas of social causation, his conception of the field of sociology, of the method of sociology, and his treatment of the phe- nomena called moral. Little emphasis has been laid on tracing the development of Durkheim's ideas, largely for ' The general practice of the writer has been to translate the French, when quoting, as nearly literally as possible, adding the key words in the original when it seemed necessary. Sufficiently accurate refer- ences have been given to permit a more exact examination of the original than this text affords in its English versions of Durkheim's language. IS] IS 1 6 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [i6 the reason that, since the publication of his eariiest articles, (which were merely reviews of books by several prominent German writers of that time), there has been no funda- mental change in the views that he has published; and to analyze minutely each shifting of emphasis would not have been profitable within the scope of this study. This rela- tively static nature of Durkheim's theorizing has made pos- sible the utilization of works of his different periods as a set of almost indiscriminately authentic sources. Whenever a change of position has seemed significant, it has been duly noted. This introductory chapter will contain : first, a discussion of terminology; and second, a setting forth of Durkheim's conception of the mind of the individual, as preparation for the examination of his social psychology. Several preliminary definitions are here in place. The terms " societe ", " esprit ", " dme ", as found in Durk- heim's works, need to be clearly defined. The term " societe " Durkheim uses first of all in the sense of an aggregate, a group, of concrete individuals; e. g. " dans toute societe ",^ " les societes plus vastes ",* " la structure politique d'une societe ",^ " d'une societe a I'autre",^ "societes de mime race".^ The second use of the word is in a psychological sense. In these cases there is frequently some ambiguity. The emphasis seems at times to be on society functioning as a psychic whole composed of in- dividuals, and at other times the word is used as an equiva- lent term for " I'ame collective " , " conscience collective ", "vie collective", "vie sociaie" ; i. e. for the system of social states of mind composing the unity expressed by these ' Meth., p. vi, and p. 5. ' Div. Tr., p. 339. ' Mith., p. 18. * Meth., p. 132. MSth., p. 133, c/. Div. Tr., p. 46. Ij] INTRODUCTION 17 terms. As illustration of this latter usage we have : " cette synthese sui generis qui constitue toute societe "/ " le com- pose, c'est-a-dire la societe " ^ " La societe a pour sub- strat " ; " of the former usage, with an implied contrast : " de la societe et de la vie collective "/ " La vie sociale est cssentiellement spontanee et la societe ime chose natur- elle".'^ To avoid confusion, then, the terms "social group" will be used when the emphasis is on the concrete nature of the aggregation; "social mind", "collective mind", " social consciousness ", or " collective consciousness ", when the aggregation of individuals is considered as a psychic unity; and the term " society " when the large, the national or integral, group is meant. Durkheim's definition of the nature of the mind may well be indicated at this point although the discussion of it will appear later. " La vie mentale," he says, " est faite de representations ".° (This means, almost, " of ideas " ; the German term " Vorstellungen " is nearer the French than our word " ideas ". The term " represen- tations " will be used throughout this study in its French significance, rather than the word " ideas " ) This notion of the mental life is something like William James' conception of it as " the stream of consciousness ", as these quotations from Durkheim will show : " For the psycholo- gist the representative life is nothing else than an ensemble of representations " ; ■ " There is no such thing as ' thought- substance ' " ; ^ " The psychic life is a continuous succession of representations."^ As for " I' esprit", he defines it: ' Mith., p. XV. ^ Suic, p. 3Si- » " Rep. Ind.," p. 293. ' Meth., p. 148. ' Meth., p. 149- ^ " Rep- ^n<5- '" P- 274- ' Ibid., p. 281. ' Ibid., pp. 280-281. » lUd., p. 283. l8 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [i8 " the mind (I'esprit) itself, i. e., the representations present and past which constitute it." ^ And again, " It is not nec- essary to imagine a soul {^ame) separated from its body and leading in I know not what place {milieu) an existence shadowy {reveuse) and solitary." ^ , Durkheim's words, " Society has for a substratum ",* suggests the need of indicating what this " substratum " is. By it is meant the social group or " social aggregate whose mental interactions produce the states of the social mind. Concretely considered, this " aggregate " means for Durkheim, the political-social unit, either in its primitive manifestation as horde,'' clan,' tribe,^ and confederation,^' or in its later forms as city-state,' a civilized nation," and imperial state.^" The political society in its integrity is, however, not the only " social aggregate " ; there are also the groups which it includes : " religious sects, political schools, literary schools, occupational organizations {corporations profes- sionelles)".'^^ The general criterion by which to recognize a " social aggregate " is its tendency to act, as a group, co- ercively toward its constituent individuals. It is possible then to have " aggregates " concentric about the individual, all acting upon him, but in different and characteristic ways. An " aggregate " differing from these just named, but ' " Rep. Ind.," p. 287. ' Ibid., p. 297. ' Ibid., p. 293, quoted supra, p. 17. * Durkheim uses this term, MSth., p. 103. * Meth., p. 102. ' Ibid., p. 103, Vie. Rel., p. 3i7- ''Meth., p. 104. "Ibid. ' Div. Tr., p. 46 (implied) : Suic, p. 357, Meth., p. 8 (explicit). " M£th., p. 105. " Ibid., p. 8. 1 9] INTRODUCTION ig still characteristically social in its nature, is the family. It acts coercively on its members ; and as in other groups, its situation affects the form and intensity of this action.^ It is clear then that Durkheim does not mean " Society ", but rather, " a society ", when he uses the term " societe " as connoting a concrete aggregate of human beings. In this regard he differs from Comte and resembles Herbert Spencer ; ^ though his thought is not always quite consistent as regards this principle. Without an understanding, on the reader's part, of our author's conception of the mind of the individual, his social psychology would be comparatively difficult to grasp; and without a knowledge of his psychology, individual and social, his work as a whole would be almost completely un- intelligible. If it seems that a disproportionately large part of this study is occupied with this discussion, the fact has its justification in this characteristic of Durkheim's woi'k. Even the somewhat extended treatment of these topics to be found here can not be said nearly tO' exhaust the possi- bilities of the subject. At every point of the psychologicsil theory interesting bypaths of investigation have had to be passed by. Part of the material for this preliminary dis- cussion is scattered throughout his works ; the larger part of it is, however, concentrated in one article.* A citation in this article will serve as a starting point. For if the sensations, which are the primary basis of the in- dividual consciousness, cannot be explained save by the state 1 Suic, p. 213; vide infra, p. 72. ' Rev. Phil., Vol. Iv, pp. 469-470, " Sociologie et Sciences Sociales." s " Representations individuelles et representations collectives," Rev. Met., vol. vi, p. 273 et seq. 20 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [20 of the brain and of the organs — otherwise, whence could they come? — once they [sc. the sensations] exist, they compound themselves according to laws of which neither cerebral mor- phology nor cerebral physiology are capable of rendering any account. Thence come the images, and the images, grouping themselves in their turn, become concepts, and, in the degree that new states thus add themselves to the old, since they are separated by more numerous intermediaries [intermediaires] from that organic base upon which, indeed, the whole mental life rests, they are also less immediately dependent. Never- theless, they do not cease to be psychic; it is rather in them that one can best observe the characteristic attributes of mentality. 1 We note here the following points : (a) Sensations, the primary elements of the individual's states of mind, are referable, necessarily and directly, to cerebral states. (b) Once existing, the sensations compound themselves in a manner impossible to explain in the terms of cerebral physiology, merely. (c) The compounds thus formed are images; these may in turn be compounded into- concepts ; and the process does not necessarily end at that stage. Let us take up these points in order. The first is evi- dence of an " interactionist " philosophy so far as the rela- tion of mind to brain is concerned; i. e., that mental pro- cesses are due to, are caused by, the cerebral processes. That is one phase of this philosophy; the other is that mental processes in turn may be the cause of physical (t. e., physio- logical) processes. The origin of the most elementary pro- cess seems to be this : that by the interaction of the cerebral ' " Rep. Ind.," p. 300. Reference to the original will show the source of whatever obscurity this passage may possess. 21 ] INTRODUCTION 21 cells somehow or other a sensation is produced. This is quite clearly expressed in the following excerpt : Finally, it is also, it seems, the only way to comprehend how the sensation depends on the brain, while still constituting a new phenomenon. It depends on it because it is compounded out of molecular modifications: [otherwise, of what would it be made and whence would it come ?] but it is at the same time something else, because it results from a new synthesis sui generis, wherein those modifications enter as elements, but wherein they are transformed by the very fact of their fusion.^ This point, however, is to be carefully noted : that it is the mutual action of many cells, not the solitary action of one, that produces the sensation : ^ " But if then each idea or at least each sensation is due to the synthesis of a certain num- ber of cellular states, combined according to laws and by forces still unknown, it is evident that it can be the prisoner of no particular cell." ^ It is independent of the individual cell but dependent on the whole cerebrum as a functioning totality. This point is of considerable importance in the analogy which Durkheim draws between the individual ajid the collective representations, to be discussed in the next chapter. As for the action of the psychic elements on the body, Durkheim says : " A representation does not appear without acting on the body and on the mind [esprit]." ^ That this interactionist theory is an hypothesis somewhat difficult to defend is a commonplace of psychology and philosophy. Durkheim rejects the " automatism " and " epiphenomenalism " of Huxley and Maudsley which make ' "Rep. Ind.," p. 296; see also ibid., 297, " L'dme est dans le monde," etc. » " Rep. Ind.," pp. 294-S. ' " ReP- Ind.," p. 296. * " Rep. Ind.," p. 286, also 287, and Div. Tr., p. 64, " Une representa- tion," etc. 22 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [22 of consciousness a mere glow from the cerebral process, a mere " epiphenomenon ", and make of the individual con- scious self a mere interested spectator, helpless to interfere in the automatic process that is being carried on in the brain.^ ^ Consciousness, " the faculty of knowing what goes on within us," as Durkheim himself has defined it, in- creases pari passu with the decrease of the automatism of psychic life, and is therefore a reality. For it acts as a cause, decreasing the mechanism characteristic of physical phenomena. Here our author agrees with James and on practically the same'grounds.^ James is, however, in Durkheim's estimation, just as " materialistic " as Huxley and Maudsley. This for two reasons. First, James makes the element of retention in memory a function of the cerebral tissue.* ' Second, he makes association of ideas by similarity also a function of the brain-tracts, i. e., makes it association by cerebral con- tiguity. Against the first view Durkheim urges the objec- tion that it makes of memory, so essential a process in the building of character, a merely neural process. That, he says, is virtually an automatistic conception." Moreover, in his opinion, such a retention theory implies the necessity of the reappearance of images in the same order in which they were impressed on the cerebral substance.'^ James' second proposition, that association by similarity is ' " Rep. Ind.," pp. 274-5-6. ' See Wm. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i, p. 128, for an exposition and criticism of this view of Huxley and Maudsley. ' James, op. cit., vol. i, p. 138 et seq. * " Rep. Ind.," p. 277. * James, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 654-7. « " Rep. Ind.," p. 279. ' But James refutes this type of argument, op. cit., vol. i, p. 577. 23] INTRODUCTION 2^ explained by the simultaneous or immediately successive stimulations of the two different brain-tracts involved, Durkheim subjects to a criticism somewhat too detailed to be here reproducible.^ ^ As a substitute he proposes the solution, that, like animate and inanimate entities, repre- sentations (or images) may have a tendency to group them- selves by similarity. The similarity then has a dynamic value and exists in the ideas.^ * Durkheim is thus attempting to place his psychological theory on a " spiritualistic " basis, ^ i. e., to make it non- materialistic. But this lays him open to exactly the same sus- picion of " materialism " that he holds against James. The latter adheres to the doctrine of psycho-physical parallel- ism : that " the ascertainments of a blank, unmediated cor- respondence, term by term, of the succession of states of consciousness with the succession of total brain processes " is the " simplest psycho-physical formula " and the " last word " of a scientific psychology." James' assumption is one made for methodological reasons. With his philosoph- ical position on this point we have nothing to do here. In his criticism of James, Durkheim assumes a position much like that of Binet, whO' accuses the parallelists of being very cautious materialists.^ As a matter of fact, Durkheim, as was stated a few lines above, lays himself open to this 1 " Rep. Ind.," pp. 281-3. ' James, op. cit., vol. i, p. S78 et seq and p. 590 et seq. ' " Rep. Ind.," p. 286. " For James' criticism of this view see op. cit., vol. i, pp. 554, 578, S90- See also A. Binet, Mind and Brain, pp. 111-112. ^ Cf. his commendation of the spiritualiste psychology in Div. Tr., pp. 340-1, and Meth., pp. vii-viii. ^ James, op. cit., vol. i, p. 182 ; see also Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 80 ; and Titchener, Outlines of Psychology, p. 360 et seq. ' Binet, Mind and Brain, p. 215. 24 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [24 charge of adhering to a materialistic philosophy. The defi- nition of Renouvier : "One calls materialistic every philoso- phy which defines thought as a product of a compound whose elements do not imply thought," ' applies to Durk- heim without qualification. To call his. theory " spiritual- iste" (in the philosophical, not the sectarian sense of the term, of course) is then to give an unusual meaning to that word. He bases his claim to being " spiritualiste " on the fact that he makes thought a form of energy different from that exhibited in the physiological processes of the brain- cell ; and he endeavors to bolster up his theory by comparing the transformation of brain energy into mind energy with the transformation of energy of motion into energy of heat. Disregarding the fact that both motion and heat are forms of kinetic energy, can we not say that Durkheim is making of mental energy a form of physical energy merely? ^ Men- tal processes are caused by the functioning together di physi- cal units; in turn the former affect the latter. The only way in which Durkheim can satisfactorily vindicate his claim to being " spiritualiste " is by proving himself to be in philosophy an " idealist ". In that case the brain-cell would no longer be matter; it itself would be mind. After this metaphysical excursus let us next consider the second and thii-d points in Durkheim's psychological theory : * namely, the compounding of sensations into images, and the compounding of these into concepts which ' Quoted by Binet, op. cit., p. 205. ' Durkheim almost admits this in " Rep. Ind.," p. 293 : " There is no realm in nature which is not related (tienne) to the other realms. Nothing would then be more absurd than to erect the psychic life into a kind of absolute which sprang from nowhere and was attached in no way to the rest of the universe. It is quite evident that the state of the brain affects all the intellectual phenomena, and is the immediate factor among certain of them [the pure sensations]." s Vide supra, p. 20. 25] INTRODUCTION 25 are, in turn, compounded into still more complicated pro- ducts. This theory of the compounding of mental states has been called by James the " mind-stuff theory " ; ^ it is, he says, the theory used by the evolutionists, notably Tyn- dall and Spencer.^ Wundt has stated it quite explicitly, as the following ex- tract shows : ^ In the first place, the psychical elements unite to form com- posite psychical compounds which are separate and relatively independent of each other in the continual flow of psychical processes. Such compounds are, for example, ideas. . . . Other examples are composite feelings, emotions, or volitions. . . . Thus, ideas unite to form larger simultaneous ideational complexes or regular successions, while affective and volitional processes form a variety of combinations with one another and with ideational processes. In this way we have the inter- connection of psychical compounds as a class of synthetical processes of the second degree, consisting of a union between the simpler combinations. . . . The separate psychical inter- connections, in turn, unite to form still more comprehensive combinations. ... In this way combinations of a third de- gree arise, which we may designate by the general name psy- chical development. . . . The ascertainment of the laws of psychical phenomena depends upon the investigation of all the combinations of different degrees, the combination of ele- ments into compounds, of compounds into interconnections, and of interconnections into developments.* The similairity between this statement and that of Durk- ' James, Pr. of Psych., vol. i, p. 14S et seq. ' Spencer, Pr. of Psych., par. 60, quoted by James, op. cit., vol. i, PP- 151-3- ' See also Durkheira's review of Wundt's Ethik, in Rev. Phil., vol. xxiv, p. 113 et seq. of the article "La Morale en AUemagne." 'Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, pp. 25-26: italics are Wundt's or the translator's. ,26 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [26 heim '- is strong enough to warrant our considering them as parallel. A more detailed discussion will be devoted to this theory in connection with the views of our author on the nature of the social mind. Another feature of the psycho- logical position of Durkheim, his intellectualism, must also be postponed as a topic of discussion.^ We may now be in a position better to understand our author's criticism of James' theory that retention in memory is a neural process, not a psychic one, and that association by similarity is likewise a function of the cerebral sub- stance.^ Durkheim defends the theory that representa- tions .persist as such, i. e., as psychic rather than merely physiological entities.* This follows readily from the mind- stuff theory. Since only the sensations are the direct, im- mediate product of the molecular action of the brain-cells, and since all elements of mind-process higher than sen- sation are the products of an autonomous interaction of simpler elements, there is nothing to- tie them to the cere- bral substance, although James attempts to do so. Why should they not " soar in the vast void ", free from cellular shackles? Only by liberating the representation from the physical substratum does Durkheim seem to be able to con- ceive of a " spirituality ". Moreover, to explain the con- tinued absences of these representations from the field of consciousness (from one active recalling of them to the next) , he makes the assumption that consciousness is not a necessary condition for the existence of a representation.^ This position is somewhat reminiscent of that of Paulsen 1 Vide supra, p. 20. 2 Vide infra, p. 96. ^ Vide supra, p. 22. * "iRep. Ind.," pp. 289-292. = " Rep. Ind.," pp. 291-2. 27] INTRODUCTION 27 and of Fechner also/ Durkheim also suggests the possi- bility of secondary centres of consciousness/ ' whose func- tioning goes on without the cognizance of the conscious- ness connected with the central nervous system; a slight adumbration of a pan-psychist philosophy.* So that the absence of the empirical evidence of the presence of repre- sentations that are, so to speak, "not in use " is no proof that they do not exist. They may simply be hiding in that vast space, the unconscious, or perhaps better, the extra- conscious or the sub-conscious. We may then summarize Durkheim's psychology as fol- ( lows: he rejects automatism and parallelism as well; is an interactionist on the question of the relationship of mind and brain; mental processes are, in his view, largely repre- sentative rather than affective or volitional ; representations persist as such, when not in the field of consciousness, in the area of the extra-conscious; and, finally, and most im- portant of all, the representations are the integrations of more elementary psychic units and may themselves com- bine into higher compounds. ^ Paulsen, Intr. to Phil., p. 120 et seq.; on this point see also, James, op. cit., vol. i, p. 162 et seq. ' " Rep. Ind.," p. 292. ' James, op. cit., vol. i, p. 65 et seq. ■* Paulsen, op. cit., p. go et seq., and p. 131 et seq. CHAPTER II The Social Mind We have examined, in the first chapter/T)urkheim's con- ception of the representations of the individual mind as , compounds of mind-elements which may ultimately be re- solved into sensations; and of these sensations as produced by the interaction of cerebral cells, though not each a product of any one cell. A representation may be considered, accord- ing to this view, as of the brain-cell though not in it. " It is something new, to produce which certain characters of the cells have of course contributed, but to the constitution of which they are not sufficient, since it survives them and manifests different properties." ^ This explanation of the origin of the state of conscious- ness (or, to be more exact, of the representation) of the individual mind Durkheim compares with his theory of the origin and nature of the state of the social mind.^ Society, he says, has for its substratum the ensemble of the associated individuals. The system formed by their union,' which varies according to their number, their disposi- tion over the surface of the territory, the nature of and the number of ways of communication,* constitutes the base upon 1 " Rep. Ind.," p. 293. ^ For an early statement of this analogy see Meth., p. 136 and p. xvii. ' See also Suic, p. 35°; Meth., pp. 125-9; V^e ReL, pp. 22-23; Div. Tr., p. 46. * Of. Div. Tr., p. 342. 28 [28 2g] THE SOCIAL MIND 20 which the social life arises. The representations ^ which are the woof [trame] of it are derived from the relations estab- lished between the individuals thus combined, or between the secondary groups that are intercalated [intercale] between the individual and the whole society. Now if one sees nothing extraordinary in the fact that these individual representations, produced by the interactions of neural elements, should not be inherent in these elements, what is there surprising in the fact that the collective representations produced by the interactions of the elementary consciousnesses of which society is made, should not be derived directly from these latter, and, as a re- sult, should extend beyond them [les debordent] ? The rela- tion which, in this conception, unites the social substratum to the social life, is at all points analogous to that which one must admit [to exist] between the physiological substratum and the psychic life of the individual, if one does not desire to negate all that which is properly called psychology. ^ ^ Durkheim thus sets up an analogy between the rela- tion of the representations in the individual mind to the functioning brain-cells, a;nd the relation of the representa- tions in the social mind to the individuals in the social grotip. Having discussed the former relation, let us now examine the latter a little more closely. Durkheim says : The collective representations are exterior to the individual con- sciousnesses because they are not derived from the individuals taken in isolation but from their convergence and union [con- cours]. . . . Doubtless, in the elaboration of the common re- sult, each [individual] bears his due share; but the private ' This idea is repeatedly expressed by Durkheim; cf. Suic, p. 352-3, Div. Tr., p. 99, Meth., p. xvi, Revue Bleue, July 2, 1898, in the article : " L'Individualisme et les intellectuels," p. 12. ^ " Rep. Ind.," pp. 293-4. ' Cf. Durkheim's review of Schaeffle's Bau 11. Lehen, etc., Rev. Phil, vol. xix, p. 92. 30 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [30 sentiments do not become social except by combining under the action of the forces sui generis ^ which association develops. As a result of these combinations, and of the mutual alterations which result therefrom, they [the private senti- ments] become something else [autre chose]. A chemical synthesis results, which concentrates, unifies, the elements synthetized, and by that very process transforms them. . . . The resultant derived therefrom extends then beyond [de- borde] the individual mind as the whole is greater than the part. To know really what it is, one must take the aggregate in its totality. It is this that thinks, that feels, that wills, although it may not be able to will, feel or act save by the in- termediation of individual consciousnesses. This explains also why the social phenomenon does not depend on the personal nature of the individuals. It is because, in the fusion through which it evolves, all the individual characters, being divergent by definition, are mutually neutralized and cancelled. Only the most general properties of human nature remain unsubmerged ; and because of their extreme generality they would not be able to account for the very special and complex forms which char- acterize collective facts. ^ The general principle that a whole is greater than its parts (which appears in this quotation) may be illustrated by the biological conception that the phenomena of life are more than the mere physics and chemistry of the cell.^ The individualistic sociology, which explains society as a func- tion of the characteristics of individuals, is simply a recrudescence of the old materialistic metaphysics; an ex- planation of the " complex by the simple; of the higher by the lower; of the whole by its parts; which is a contradiction in terms." * Nor is the idealistic method, that, namely,. '■ See also Meth., p. 15 and pp. xv, xvi; also Vie Rel., p. 331. • " Rep. Ind.,'' p. 295. » " Rep. Ind.," pp. 297-8. * " Rep. Ind.," p. 298. 31 J THE SOCIAL MIND ^l which explains parts by wholes, preferable to the opposite method. Rather must the whole explain the whole, the complex the complex, society the social fact, etc. Durkheim's adherence to the mind-stuff theory was dis- cussed in the first chapter. This theory is carried over into, his conception of the social mind. He says, for example : Moreover, while indeed residing in the collective substratum by which it is attached to the rest of the world, the collective life does not, however, reside in it in such a way as to be absorbed thereby. It is at the same time distinct from and dependent upon it, as the function is related to the organ. Doubtless, since it springs from it [sc, the substratum] — for whence would it otherwise come? — the forms that it assumes at the moment that it frees itself {sc, from the substratum] and which are, as a result, fundamental, bear the mark of their origin. This is why the first matter of all social consciousness is narrowly bound to the .number of social elements, the manner of their grouping and distribution, etc., i. e., to the nature of their substratum. But once the first store of representations has been thus accumulated, they become, for the reasons we have mentioned, partially autonomous realities living their own lives. ^ They have the power of mutual attraction and repul- sion, of forming all sorts of syntheses, which are determined by their natural affinities and not by the state of the milieu in which they evolve. As a result, the new representations, which are the product of these syntheses are of the same nature; they have for proximate causes other collective representations, and not this or that characteristic of the social structure.^ ^ 1 Cf. Vie Rel., p. 603. ' " Rep. Ind.," p. 299. ' Perhaps this series of syntheses may be made more intelligible by a somewhat schematic summary that may be reminiscent of certain tables of measures that have troubled the school-boy. This arrange- ment is the following : 32 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [32 It must be remembered that Durkheim means by the term " mind " {dme, esprit) no metaphysical entity, but merely the stream of mental states considered as a unity.^ There- fore the fusion, blending, interaction of individual minds in social contact with each other must ultimately be a blending of states of mind of the individuals; and of these states of mind Durkheim emphasizes the representations as most im- portant.^ Let us proceed to the examination of the specific charac- teristics of the social representations, the general relations of which to the individual mind we have just been consid- ering. The first of these characteristics is the exter- iority of the social representation with reference to the individual mind, upon which something has already been said. By the " exteriority " of the special representation to the particular mind is meant the property it possesses of coming to this mind from outside it. The social repre- sentations are of two sorts, those produced by the inter- action of individual minds ; ^ and those produced by the autonomous interaction of these products of this first sort with each other.* Logically then, such represen- WITHIN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND TVIany brain-cells produce (by their interaction) a sensation. Many sensations produce (by their interaction and combination) an image. Many images produce (by their interaction and combination) a concept. Many concepts produce (by their interaction and combination) a representation. WITHIN THE SOCIAL MIND Many individual representations produce (by their interaction and combination) a social representation. Many social representations produce (by their interaction and com- bination) a social representation of a higher, more purely social kind. 1 Vide supra, p. 17. ^ Vide infra, p. 96. • " Rep. Ind.,'' p. 295, " si Von," etc. * Ibid., pp. 299-300, " mais une fois," etc. 33] THE SOCIAL MIND 03 tations must be exterior tO' the individual mind, which is only one of the constituent units of the social mind. No individual consciousness can contain more than a " par- celle " of the social mind/ Religious ideas come to the individual from^ without;^ e. g., totemism.^ Science* is a great ensemble of ideas coming to the individual scientist from the outside ; it is knowledge socialized, "the product of a vast co-operation ". Likewise, " social currents ", such as those which drive individuals to suicide,'^ " do so because they come from without the particular minds. This char- acteristic of exteriority is considered by Durkheim as one of the two chief criteria of " social " facts . ^ The other is constraint; it is closely related tO' exteriority, and is based on the superiority of the social representation to the indi- vidual representation. Aside from its exteriority to the individual consciousness, the social representation is also different in kind from the individual representation. " The group thinks, acts, feels quite differently than its members would, were they iso- lated." * " When individuals are associated, their associa- tion can give rise to a new life." " " By aggregating, inter- penetrating, fusing, the individual minds give birth to a being, psychic if you will, but which constitutes a psychic individuality of a new sort." ^° The collectivity is spoken ^ Suic, p. 357. "^ Vie Rel., p. 13. ' Ibid., p. 246 et seq., and pp. 256-7. * A. S., vol. xi, p. 44. ° Meth., pp. 9, 10, 13. ° Suic, pp. 353-4- ^ Vide infra, p. 60. * Meth., p. 128. ' Ibid., also " Pedagogic et sociologie," Rev. Met., vol. xi, p. 46. 1° Meth., p. 127 ; see also Div. Tr., p. 46 " the psychic type of society " ; Vie Rel., p. 22, "Society is a reahty sui generis; its representations have a content altogether different from that of individual represen- tations;" also Suic, p. 352. 34 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [34 of in. another place ^ as a "fecundating" force. Objec- tively considered, too, the collective representations differ from those of the individual. This is illustrated by the con- trast between the thoughts, emotions and actions of a mob and the characteristic thoughts, emotions and actions of its members when isolated.^ Durkheim is profuse in his description of states of the social mind, " social facts ", as he calls them.^ Their hetero- geneity with regard to states of the individual mind is, we have just seen, an oft-repeated idea.* But to make the dis- tinction perfectly clear, he should have discussed the spe- cific nature of the state of the individual mind. This he has not done. Only by indirect methods can we gain an idea of this profound difference. If social representations are of the same general order of entities as that to which individual representations belong, i. e., if both are representations in the same sense of the word; if the social are produced originally out of the fus- ing, blending, interacting of individual representations, then any difference which may exist between the two types must be referable to their substrata, respectively the individual brain, and the aggregate of interacting individual minds. Durkheim states this by implication in several places. He speaks of the " special mechanism of collective thought " ; '* " Society has different passions, habits, needs." ° Indeed, what the collective representations translate is the way ' " Fed. et soc," Rev. Met., vol. xi, p. 49. 2 Meth., p. 10. ^ Vide infra, p. 58. * E. g., Meth., p. 130, " quel abtme," etc. ° A. S., vol. xi, p. 45. * A. S., vol. ii, p. 25, " De la Definition des phenomenes religieux," see also "Rep. Ind.," p. 299, " c'est pourquoi," etc. (Italics in the text are mine: C. E. G.) 35 J THE SOCIAL MIND 35 in which the group conceives itself {se pense] in its relations with the objects that affect it. Now the group has a different constitution than that of the individual, and the things that affect it are of a different nature. Representations expressing neither the same objects nor the same subjects can not de- pend on the same causes. To understand the way in which the society represents itself and the world surrounding it, one must consider the nature of the society and not that of the indi- viduals.^ In other words, since the true inwardness of an entity is in its relations, the social mind is other than the individual mind because it has other relations. Its mental life is then of necessity different from that of the particular conscious- ness. Not only do social representations differ from individual representations, but they show marked variations among themselves. Here again Durkheim points out the nature of the substratum as the determining factor. Each aggre- gate of men is composed of a greater or smaller number of individuals; it is spread in its own peculiar way over the surface of the earth; it has certain kinds and degrees of communication.^ All of these are significant features of the substratum. The states of the social mind vary according to these conditions of the substratum. " There are," says Durkheim, in criticizing Tarde's " iip- terpsychologie" , " crowds of all sorts, publics of all sorts; each has its own rnanner of reacting [reagir] ".^ " It re- mains the truth that moral, juridical, economic institutions are infinitely variable." * ■ The idea of a universal society, or of a universal civilization is foreign to Durkheim's ' Meth., pp. xvi-xvii. ' " Rep. Ind.," pp. 293-4 and Div. Tr., p. 342. * A.S., vol. ix, p. 134. * Meth., pp. 93-96. 36 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [36 method.^ He is consistent, then, when he studies societies and civilizations by grouping them into types,^ and discusses them within narrower limits of classification, even to the extent of making them mere tribal classes.^ Each society has its own set of ideas ; e. g., the moral cosmopolitanism of to-day could not have arisen in the Roman city-state.* Each social group displays its own characteristic form or degree of such general tendencies as, for instance, that of suicide. The simplicity of primitive religious phenomena is correlated with the simplicity of the primitive social groups in which they arise.'' We shall see, in Chapter VI, the importance of this conception for Durkheim's sociologi- cal method. We turn next to the question of the superiority of the social mind, i. e., of its representations, to the individual mind and its states. Eirst,of_all, society is superior (" iiv- Uniment ", Durkheim says) to the individual in time and space." Keeping in mind his frequent use of the term " so- ciety " as synonymous with the " social mind " we may ac- cept this paraphrase of the statement; that the system of representations called social surpasses in time as it does in space the representational systems which are called indi- vidual. This superiority is concretely symbolized in educa- tion, which is the conscious impressing upon the individual mind of the content of the group mind, its ideas, habits, judgments, emotions, most of them productions of the past.' 1 Vide infra, p. 139. ^ Meth., ch. iv. ^ A. S., vol. xi, p. ii, " au contraire" etc.; ihid., vol. xii, p. 46. * Div. Tr., Pref. to the first edition, p. xxxviii. ' Vie Rel., p. 7. * Meth., pp. 126, 128-9 ! also Vie Rel., pp. 22-23, 633 et seq. ; also " La Determination du fait moral," Bulletin de la societe frangaise de philosophie, vol. vi, pp. 13 1-2. ' Meth., p. II. 27] THE SOCIAL MIND 37 The individual is furthermore inferior to the society, be- cause it is manifold, and he is single. This sounds like an empty truism; but expressed in the modified form that the influence of the group over the individual is proportional to the size of the group, it is not so empty of real signifi- cance. It is illustrated by the fact that the impotence of the individual in a crowd increases with the numbers of the crowd. "... In the heart of a less numerous family the sentiments, the common memories, cannot be very in- tense." ^ The reason for this is that " the intensity which collective sentiments attain depends on the number of minds (consciences) experiencing them in common ".^ Expressed in the terms of modern psychology, the individual's impres- sion is proportional, ceteris paribus, to the number of repe- titions of the suggestion or to the number of sources of such a repeated suggestion.^ Out of Durkheim's conception of the way in which col- lective representations originate, there develops also the idea of their superiority due to their hierarchical posi- tion. They are, as it were, at the top of the psychic scale. They are the final product of the representation- making process. First come the representations of the in- dividual mind, themselves a product of compounding of lesser elements; then the combinations of the former into social representations; and finally the highest type of all, the combinations of these purely social mind-elements into states of mind faf removed from the cerebral cell and its functioning. An illustration of this last type and its for- mation is the mythology which once formed, keeps on grow- ing, apparently by its own inherent power of combining and ^ Suic, pp. 213-4. ' Ibid., also Vie ReL, p. 297. ' For a statement of this explanation in somewhat the same way see Div. Tr., pp. 66-67. 38 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [38 recombining its elements, independently of the situation of the social group within which it has arisen.^ It exists in the high altitude of a pure mentality, a "hyper-spirituality", as Durkheim calls it.^ There are a number of specific state- ments of this idea. " The collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic life, since it is a consciousness of consciousnesses." ^ " Beyond the individual [jc. in the psychic order] there is the society." * " It [jc. the society] is infinitely superior to each individual force, because it is a synthesis of individual forces." '* " The highest reality of the intellectual and moral order — society." ° Durkheim is fond of repeating the idea that society is an entity morally superior to the individual — " morally ", in the sense of having a " power which dominates him, and before which he bows ".' The submission of the individual to certain rules of conduct is a submission to a " moral " authority.^ This is an essential part of the relation of the individual to the collective mind. Again he says : " The in- dividual is dominated by a moral reality that surpasses him; it is the collective reality." " This is illustrated by the phenomenon of suicide; the individual suicide succumbs to a social tendency to self-murder. The majesty of society, its moral impressiveness, is clearly evidenced in those phe- nomena called religious. Not only are religious phenomena ' " Rep. Ind./' pp. 299-300. ' " Rep. Ind.," p. 302. ' Vie Rel., p. 23. * Vie Rel, pp. 637-8. ' A. S., vol. ii, "De la Def. des Phen. Rel.," p. 23; also Meth., p. 15, " et s'il retentit," etc. » Vie Rel., p. 23. ' Meth., p. 150. 8 A. S., vol. ii, " De la Def. des Phen. Rel.," p. 23. ' Siiic, p. X. ^^] THE SOCIAL MIND ^g of strictly social origin (i. e., arising not out of the particu- lar mind, but out of the interaction of many minds ^), but they are also expressions of the individual's relations to a reality. Otherwise they would be simply " a vast hallucina- tion and phantasmagory of which humanity has been the dupe." - TKis"" reality " is the social reality.^ The contrast between " sacred " and " profane ", which our author con- siders as characteristic of all religions, is at base a contrast between the ideas, feelings, and actions having respectively a social and an individual origin and significance.* The " sacred " has its prestige because of the fact that the reality in which it is inherent is a reality of a kind superior to that of the individual. It is a consistent part of Durkheim's con' ception of religion that a deity expresses in a personal form the power of the society, a power clearly felt, though not so consciously defined. God is society "apotheosized"; so- <:iety is the real God." This identity is adumbrated in the totem animal, a " sacred " object; and more clearly shown in the personal deity, Jahveh, or Zeus. The tribal god is, like the totem animal, often confusedly conceived of as a member of the group; another evidence of the close rela- tionship between group and deity. The importance of these two characteristics of the col- lective representations, namely, their exteriority and their superiority with reference to the individual mind and its states, will be more evident when, in the next chapter, we consider the two " criteria " of " social facts " : their exter- iority and their constraining power. Another important phase of Durkheim's conception of '^ A. S., vol. ii, "De la Def. des Phen. Rel.," p. 24. » Ibid. 3 Vie Rel., p. 23; also Suic, p. 352. See also infra, p. 91. * Vie Rel., pp. 49-67. ^ Vie Rel., p. 295 ; Suic, p. 352 ; " Rep. Ind.," p. 294. 40 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [40 the nature of the social mind and of its representations re- quires a somewhat detailed examination at this point : it is the idea that the social representation is internal to the in- dividual mind. Before beginning this discussion, however, a preliminary problem must be solved, namely, what proportion of the individuals of a social group are affected by the social repre- sentations. On this point Durkheim is not altogether clear. In one place he says that the collective consciousness is "dif- fused throughout the whole extent of the society." ^ Speak- ing of the social sentiments, the doing violence to which constitutes a criminal act, he remarks "they are found in all the consciousnesses ",^ and describes them as : " the ideas and tendencies common to all the members of society ".* Again: " It [sc. a collective sentiment] resounds in each of them [sc. individual consciousnesses] ".* " There are in the consciousnesses of each of us twO' consciousnesses," one of which " we have in common with our whole group." ^ So far it seems to be the whole group that is involved in the functioning of the social consciousness. But Durk- heim makes several statements that seem to contradict that idea. He says : " It, the social representation, is exterior to each average [moyen] individual taken separately." ° " Then, of all the particular minds that compose the great mass of the nation, there is none to which the collective cur- rent is not exterior." ' " The average man is not without something of this same sentiment." ^ " The ensemble of beliefs and sentiments common to the average [la moyenne] of the members of the same society forms a system clearly ^ Div. Tr., p. 46. ' Ibid., p. 70. " Ibid., p. gg. < Meth., p. 15. '■Div. Tr., p. 99. 6 Suic, p. 356. ' Ibid., p. 3S7. ' Ibid. 41 J THE SOCIAL MIND 4 1 defined and having a life of its own ; it might be called the common or collective consciousness." ^ " Observe at that same moment the average of the individuals. You will find indeed in a great number of them something of that moral state [sc. a patriotic disinterestedness at times of national crisis], but infinitely attenuated." ^ __ These last five quotations seem to indicate that not all, but the average, the great mass, the majority, of the mem- bers of the social group share the social representations. However inconsistent this may be with what precedes, the inconsistency is still not a matter of any fundamental im- portance. The difference between the two groups of state- ments may indicate merely a difference of emphasis ; in the first the stress falls on the generality of the social states of mind; in the second a more accurate view of the situation is expressed. Having disposed of this preliminary question, let us row examine what we may for the sake of convenience call the " intemality " of the social representation. An appropriate statement of our author may be quoted here: "the aggre- gate in its totality . . . thinks, feels, wills, though it could not will, feel, or act save by the intermediation of particu- lar minds." ^ This is by no means the only expression by Durkheim of the idea that the social representation is in the individual consciousness. " There is nothing," he says in La Division du travail social, " in the social life that is not in the individual minds." * And in Les Regies, he writes : " It is a state of the group [sc. mind] repeated in the individuals." ^ 1 Div. Tr., p. 46. * Suic, p. 3S7- ' " Rep. Ind.," p. 295. * P. 342. ^ P. 14. In this connection see also: Snic, pp. 352-3 and 357 (the sentence in italics). 42 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [42 These social representations, then, are very much of the nature of materials which not only can but must exist in the particular containers, the individual minds. Let us now consider the relation of the individual and -collective mental elements to each other in the mind of the individual. Durkheim strives to keep this dualism of the two kinds of representations intact throughout his theory. There are [he says] in each of us two consciousnesses; the one, which we have in common with our whole group, which, as a result, is not ourselves but society alive and active within us ; the other, which represents, on the contrary, only ourselves in what we have of personality and distinctness, in what makes us individuals.^ What is the nature of these individual representations that share the occupancy of the individual's mind with the social representations ? It was noted above ^ that there are marked differences between the two types of representa- tions, and the nature and origin of the social representations were explained. A quotation will serve to open the subject: There is a sphere of psychic life which, however developed the collective type may be, varies from man to man, and belongs to each one in particular; it is that formed by the representa- tions, the sentiments, and the tendencies relating to the organ- ism and its states ; it is the world of internal and external sen- sations and of the movements thereto directly bound. This 1 Div. Tr., p. 99 ; also Rev. Met., vol. xi, " Pedagogie et sociologie," p. 46; also Vie Rel., p. 386, et passim; the extreme statement of this view is given in extenso in the Bulletin de la societe frangaise de philosophic, March, 1913, in the article " Le Probleme religieux et la Dualite de la Nature humaine." 2 Vide supra, p. 33. 43 J THE SOCIAL MIND 43 primary basis of all individuality is inalienable ajid does not depend upon the social state. ^ Another statement is as follows : In each of us, we may say, there exist two beings [etres], which, while being inseparable save by abstraction, are none the less distinct. One is composed of all the mental states which are related only to ourselves and to the events of our personal life. It is this that one could call the individual being. ^ Again he says : " Aside from the vague and uncertain ten- dencies which can be due to heredity, the infant, entering life, brings only his individual nature." * This idea is re- peated a few pages later : " but between these vague and confused predispositions, mingled moreover with all sorts of contrary predispositions, and the definite and particular form they take under the action of society, there is an abyss." * There is in none of these excerpts a clear and explicit statement of the nature of the individual mind. Representations are mentioned; but the mental elements stressed seem to be sensations, "motions" (impulses?), and predispositions. This would seem to make the content of the individual mind of slight importance. In fact, even in one of the earliest statements of this view, Durkheim makes the " psychic " facts (i. e., the states of the individual mind) " in large part only the prolonging of the former (i. e., the social facts) in the interior of the conscious- nesses ".° On the same page he adds : "The majority of our states of consciousness would not be produced in isolated ' Div. Tr., p. 17s. ' Rev. Met., vol. xi, p. 46. • Ihid. * Ibid., p. 49. ' Div. Tr., p. 342, footnotes i and 3. 44 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [44 beings, and would be produced quite otherwise in beings grouped in another way." ^ Undoubtedly, the psychic processes of the individual as such are facts of no very great importance to Durkheim.^ The individual's mental life seems to come, after all, prin- cipally from the social environment in which he exists.'' In the essay " Pedagogie et sociologie ", Durkheim points out that even so intimate and personal a thing as the attitude of the individual toward his own body has been the subject of social regulation; from time to time we have had ideals of ascetism, athleticism, aestheticism, and hygiene, each exerting in its turn an enormous influence over the conduct of the individual in this attitude. In a recent article, " Le Probleme religieux et la Dualite de la Nature humaine ",* as well as in his most recent book,^ Durkheim has continued this minimizing of the individual elements in the psychic life of the individual. A quotation will illustrate : " Even more generally, I have shown that the mind [dme] is the collective consciousness incarnated in the individual, and that, for that reason, it is opposed to the body, the basis of our individuality. The duality of man is then reduced to the antithesis of society and the individual." * The individual mind is not, however, a wholly passive receptacle for the impressions coming to it from the social environment. The " social " states of mind " would not be possible, if the individual constitutions did not lend them- ' Ibid., p. 342. Another though not so explicit a statement is found ibid., pp. 99-101. ' Meth., p. 130. * Vie Rel., pp. 388-390. * Bulletin de la societe frangaise de philosophie, March, 1913. ' Vie Rel. " Bull. soc. fran. phil., March, 1913, p. 74. 45] THE SOCIAL MIND 4c selves to them." ^ Not only is the individual's psychic nature needed for the social representation, but it also affects the 'nature of the latter. " Each of them con- stitutes a special milieu where collective representations tend to be refracted and differently colored." ^ These re- fractions are, according to a statement of our author, really dual in their nature, belonging to two different fields ; they are at the same time psychic {i. e., of individual origin) and social. They might be called " socio-psychic ".^ They are like the phenomena of a border or " mixed " science such as biological chemistry.* The very wide scope of the representations having a social origin will be more evident after the discussion of the definition of " social facts " in Chapter III. Compared with those of individual origin, they are apparently, for Durkheim, the sole content of the individual's mind, so far as that content is more than a mere set of physiological processes. The social mind consists, as we recall, of the system of representations, tendencies, sentiments, produced by the interaction of the individual minds and by the con- tinuation of the process of combining the mental elements that are known as " social ". But if the scope of the indi- vidual mind be confined to the narrow limits given by our author, where are the individual representations out of which, by the process of fusion and blending, the social representations are to be compounded? Is it fair to call such an elementary complexus of psychic processes a " mind ", in the sense of a system of representations? Not only does societ}^ (or better, perhaps, the " social ' Div. Tr., p. 342 ; see also Meth., 130. ' Vie Rel., p. 387, top; cf. also Meth., pp. 12, xxiii, footnote. ' Meth., p. 14. * On the use of this term " socio-psychic " see also Div. Tr., p. 341, " l>ar consequent," etc. See also infra, p. 154, footnote 3. 46 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [46 mind ") seem, in Durkheim's theory, to furnish the ma- terial for the mould, as we may call the individual mind, but it also shapes the mould. To put it in concrete psycho- logical terms, the categories of the individual mind, such as those of time, space, and causation, are not inherent in it; i. e., they have no hereditary physiological origin; they are, like religious ideas, customs, laws, and morals, given tO' the individual by his society. This is an idea that is prominent: in our author's more recent works. He has advanced the thesis that the forms of social organization have provided the classificatory forms existing in the mind, namely, the " categories " ; and that, furthermore, the hierarchical na- ture of logical classes is due to the hierarchical nature of the social groupings from which they are derived.^ One is far from being on safe ground {fondc, Durkheim says) when admitting, as evidence, a statement that men classify quite naturally, by a sort of internal necessity of their in- dividual understanding; one ought, on the contrary, to ask what it is that could have led them to arrange {disposer) their ideas in this form, and where they could have found the plan of this remarkable arrangement.^ Only a vague consciousness of the resemblance between objects is the original psychic basis of the power of classifying. The very fact of the hierarchical order in classifying evidently corresponds to nothing in the world of sensible experience, nor in the sensory processes of the consciousness. It is to the hierarchical order of society that we must go- for this conception; " does not the word for ' kind ' [genre] desig- nate originally a family group. 'r™°f'?"' *"De quelques formes primitives de classification," A. S., vol. vi. This article (done in collaboration with M. Marcel Mauss, a frequent contributor to the Annee Sociologique) is the first formal statement of Durkheim's position on this problem. 2 Ibid., p. S- ""Ibid., p. (,, 47] THE SOCIAL MIND 47 To illustrate this general principle, Durkheim cites the fact that among the Australian natives, things are classed in different phratries; e. g., the sun may belong to one of two phratries, the moon to the other.^ We have here a simple bipartite classification, an elementary dichotomy. Each phratry may again be subdivided into two matrimonial classes, which in their turn will serve as class categories for things.^ The social importance of these social classes is carried over to the non-social things in the correspond- ing logical classes.^ We have here, then, a clear case of hierarchical sort. A similar system exists among the Zuni.' All things of the universe are divided into seven regional classes, those of the East, West, North, South, zenith, nadir, and the middle {milieu). Exactly the same classifi- cation is followed out in the divisions of the tribe within the pueblo; each of these seven tribal divisions is further sub-divided into three clans (except that of the " milieu ", which has but one) ; each division has its own area, which is determined with reference to this scheme of classes. The evidence cited by Durkheim seems to show that the social classification was antecedent to the regional ; and that the latter is therefore an application of the former. This same spacial classification of non-social as well as of social entities is repeated among the Siouan Omahas, the Osages, the Ponkas.° It is found among the Wotjoballuk," studied by Howitt in Australia, and also in other primitive socie- ties the world over, though often in somewhat variant forms. The Chinese system of divination, which is at the ' Ibid., p. g. ' Ibid., p. 10. » Ibid., p. 13. * Ibid., pp. 34-5. ^Ibid., pp. 45, 48, so. « Ibid., p. 50. 48 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [48 basis of Taoism, also has as a foundation a regional classi- fication of the things of the physical universe.^ Thus the tribe is the logical ancestor of the genus; and the phratry of the species. Out of the association of certain things with members of certain social groups (tribes, phra- tries, clans, etc.) came the classification of these things with these human beings; out of the hierarchy of tribe, phratry, and clan came the hierarchy of genus, species, class ; out of the unity of society was imagined the universe of things, the supreme logical whole.^ The reasons for the association of things with this or that social grouping is to be sought in the manifestly affective nature of the states of the social mind from which these associations have evolved. There is a basis for it in the emotional values in- herent in all psychological associative processes which in- volve elements of the social life.^ This explains why primi- tive classifications seem illogical to us; logic has to do with clearly defined concepts — this primitive classification has its lines of demarcation of classes blurred by the emotional nature of the representations expressed in it.* The ad- vance of our modern science is accomplished partly, at least, by the ever-increasing subjection of categories and conceptions having such emotional values to free and rigor- ous examination.^ This general argument with some unimportant modifica- tions is stated at considerable length in the latest and long- est of Durkheim's works, Les Formes elementaires de la vie religieuse. This book has a dual purpose : to determine, by the analysis of the simplest religion known, what are the elementary forms of the religious life; and to show how the logical categories have a religious, and therefore a ^ Ibid., pp. 52-3 and SS-62. Ibid., pp. 66-68. ° Ibid., p. 69. * Ibid., p. 71. ^ /jj^^ p y^. 49] THE SOCIAL MIND 49 social, origin. The religious origin of social phenomena does not appear in this latest work as a new conception of our author.^ The question arises, also, whether this is the most accurate way of expressing the place of the religious in the history of social development. It is a commonplace in the study of primitive life that religion in primitive societies is not highly specialized as a social activity. It is solidaire with morality, with the social organization. Is it really better to assign it to a prior stage in the evolution of human collective life, to say that all activity and thought of primitive man develop out of religion, or to say that all these phases of primitive life are colored by an emotional tone which in that way, and to varying degrees, makes them " religious " ? The particular categories which Durkheim in la Vie Re- ligieuse names as of social origin are those of time and space, kind, force, efficacy (causation), and, possibly, con- tradiction. Time, Durkheim holds, is not conceivable except by a process of distinguishing its different moments. The private memory of each individual is a part, but not the whole, of the continuity of time. The time-category is an "outline {cadre), abstract and impersonal, enveloping not only one individual existence but that of humanity. ... It is not my time that is so organized, but time as it is ob- jectively thought of by persons of the same civilization." ^ The indispensable points of reference in time are borrowed from social life. The periodicity of rites and fetes is re- flected in the units of time, — weeks, months, etc. A similar view holds good for space. Space is not ' See A. S., vol. ii, p. iv. Moreover this same idea Seems to be con- tained in Wundt's Ethik according to Durkheim's review of that work in Rev. Phil., vol. xxiv, pp. 118-119. ' Vie ReL, p. 14- 50 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [50 homogeneous, but differentiated. The marks of differen- tiation are of social origin, as we have seen in the essay on classification/ The category of kind or class was also treated there. The Vie Religieuse summarizes the points made in the essay,^ emphasizing the fact that the "affinity" that determines the attraction of things into social cate- gories has an emotional element that is religious in its col- lective manifestations; i. e., that the associations of non- social things with social groups arises through a process of giving the former a " religious " significance.^ The category of force is the logical formulation of the " mana ", " orenda ", " wakan " of primitive man's practi- cal cosmology.* " Mana " is, to Durkheim, simply an ob- jectified collective force projected into things." His conception of causality implies a really productive force. This causal relation is clearly found in the primitive man's conception of the efficacy of his magic.^ And magic is simply the utilization of this " mana " force which the savage has imagined as existing in the physical vcsx- verse.'^ Attempts to derive from this conception of causality a category originating in the observation of an empirical universe have fallen down, since the external world can show only co-existence and sequences, but not causes.' Nor can the will-power of the individual be its source; for that would mean personifying force, and the primitive concep- tion of force is not as personal, but as impersonal; in addition, this impersonal force is communicable; a prop- erty which personality does not possess. The only forces that we can really know must be forces which act upon us ' Ihid., pp. IS-17. ' Ihid., p. 205 et seq. ' Ihid., p. 211 et seq. ''Ibid., pp. 290-2. ^ Ihid., p. 519. ^Ihid., p. 518. ' Ihid., pp. 281-2. 8 Ihid., pp. 519-520. jlj THE SOCIAL MIND ^I within our consciousness; and the truly primitive concep- tion of force demands impersonality; both these require- ments are satisfied by forces that are " collective ", in the sense of coming to the individual's mind from v^^ithout, and originating (as was discussed above) not in one, but in the many minds. But the category of causality is more than the mere affir- mation of the existence of a force.^ It implies a necessary bond between what we call the cause phase of force and the efifect phase of force. This necessary connection is sup- plied a priori to the specific phenomena under considera- tion; but it is in reality, in its general form, derived from the authoritative dictum of the society, that phenomenon B always follows phenomenon A ; as, for instance, that the mimetic rites of the Australians' " intichiuma " ^ are in- variably followed by the increase of the totem animal or plant; which is the accepted and approved conviction of each member of the totemic group.^ And, finally, the all-inclusive category of totality, as was stated also in the earlier essay (that on primitive classification), is the logical formulation of the best known (to the savage) of all totalities, the whole social group.* Both the traditional empiricist and apriorist conceptions of the origin of the categories are thus discarded by Durk- heim.° His " social " origin of these mental forms is of- fered as a substitute for these explanations. The impres- sion of " necessity " which they seem to give when ex- ' Ibid., p. 524. ' See Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, ch. vi. ' Vie Rel., p. 525. ' Vie Rel., p. 629. We might, with fairness, ask for a "social" origin for that other well-known category, namely that of number. ° Ibid., pp. 19-21. 52 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [52 amined objectively is really due to the fact that they are social representations/ with all the prestige that such an origin gives (as was indicated above) ; they are therefore, for the individual mind, a priori : and their origin outside the individual mind satisfies the empiricist's requirement of objectivity.^ The question now arises, as to whether Durkheim is talk- ing about the " categories " of space, time, causation, etc., or about the concrete images which must represent them in the mind. Is the " category " of space a power of the mind, one of its inherent capacities, or a part of the content of the mind ? James, for example, seems to consider the cate- gories as such powers of the mind, features of its inherited structure, rather than as the actual forms into which im- pressions coming to the mind from without are fitted.^ Durkheim himself has admitted the essence of this prin- ciple held by James. Doubtless, the relations which they [the catego^-ies] express, exist in an implicit way, in the individual consciousness. The individual lives in time, and has, as we have said, a certain sense of temporal orientation. He is situated at a definite point in space, and it has been maintained, with good reason, that all sensations have something spacial about them. . . . However, all these relations are personal to the individual con- cerned in them, and, consequently, the notion which he can acquire of them cannot extend beyond his narrow horizon. * This quotation seems to strengthen our contention that ' Ibid., pp. 21-22. ' Ibid., p. 27. ' James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, ch. xxviii, pp. 617-619, 629 et seq.; also Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, pp. 102-158, on spacial and temporal ideas. * Vie Rel., pp. 628-9. 53] THE SOCIAL MIND 53 Durkheim uses the term " category " in its formal, not in its functional sense. The capabilities of the use of categories exist within the individual mind, inherent in it ; the specific categories are the result of experience — either, we may say, the experience of the individual mind in the physical uni- verse, or that of the individual mind receiving ready-made, or at least partly worked out, the concepts which the society has used in the classification of the world of things and relations. This view of the categories as a content of mind rather than as a capacity of mind, is, we need hardly re- mind the reader, quite consistent with Durkheim's concep- tion of the mind as a system of representations, rather than as a functioning whole. We may, at this point, introduce the conception that our author has of education and its social function. " All education," he says, " consists in a continuous effort to impose on the child ways of seeing, feeling, and acting to which it would not spontaneously come." ^ And again: "... the child, entering life, brings with it only its own in- dividual nature. Society faces then, so to speak, in each new generation a tabula paene rasa upon which it must construct from the beginning ... It {sc. the education) creates in man a new man." ^ It is, then, the function of education, using that term in its largest significance, to construct on the foundation X)f an individual mind itself lacking almost completely in content, that vast superstructure of ideas, feelings, habits, that the society has developed out of its situation in the physical universe. In brief form we may thus summarize our author's con- ception of the relation of the social mind {i. e., the com- plexus of mental states arising in the first instance from the ' Meth., p. II. ' " Pedagogic et sociologie,' Rev. Met., vol. xi, pp. 46-47. 54 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [54 interaction of individual minds) to the individual mind {i. e., the complexus of mental states arising vi^ithin the cerebral system of the individual) :f^the individual mind furnishes the sensation elements, the impulses to activity, the emotional tendencies, and some representations (though these latter are neither many nor important) ; the social mind furnishes the great mass of the representations, of the ways of feeling and the ways of acting. These social representations must exist within the individual mind, but their origin is outside of the individual mind, to which they come with force, impressive because of the varied super- iority of the source whence they spring, over the source of the individual representations, "f In its most extreme form this view makes of the mind or soul (dine) of the individual merely the incarnation of the social mind in the individual.^ Aside from its psychological orientation, this theory of Durkheim's as to the relation of the individual and the social minds is somewhat like the view of the relation be- tween the social environment and the individual mind that is held by a group of American anthropologists and psy- chologists, numbering, among others, F. Boas, W. I. Thomas, John Dewey, and A. A. Goldenweiser. This view has been expressed by these men usually in connection with the discussion of the differences between the mind of primitive man, and the mind of civilized man.^ 1 Quoted supra, p. 44. ' F. Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, ch. iv; also Journal of Amer- ican Folklore, vol. xiv, pp. i-ii, title of article same as of book just named. W. I. Thomas, Sex and Society, pp. 251-303. John Dewey, " Interpretation of Savage Mind," Psychological Re- view, vol. ix, pp. 217-230. It is worth while to note also the agreement of Wundt with this view; see Volkerpsychologie, vol. i, p. 18, "So betrachtet, erscheint das geistige Leben des primitiven Menschen von dem des Kulturmen- 55] THE SOCIAL MIND rg^ Briefly expressed, their view is as follows : there is a uni- form structure of the human mind that is shared by all the races of mai. This structure is considered as the " charac- teristic faculties of the human mind, perception, memory, inhibition, abstraction," in Thomas' words : ^ or, according to Boas, as the " organization ", the group of laws which determine the mode of thought and of action irrespective of the subject-matter of mental activity. Subject to such laws are the manner of discrimination between perceptions, the manner in which perceptions associate them- selves with previous perceptions, the manner in which a stim- ulus leads to action, and the emotions produced by stimuli.^ This conception of the structure of the mind is in most respects like that of Durkheim concerning the nature of the individual mind. Though none of these writers may share our author's psychological presuppositions of the mind- stuff theory, there is still a marked resemblance here. The most explicit statement by any one of this group of the im- portance of the environment, social and material, in fur- nishing the actual subject-matter of the mind, is in one of Dewey's articles. He discusses in this article the " pattern " of mind which the occupation of primitive man tends to produce. schen, abgesehen von dem Einschlag, den dort von aussen zugefiihrte Kulturguter, hier Rudimente friiherer Stufen bilden, nicht weniger verschieden wie der Bumerang des Australiers oder der primitive Pfeil des Buschmanns von der Schnellfeuerwaffe der heutigen Gewehrtechnik. Doch jene geistigen Unterschiede sind nicht sowohl formaler als realer Art. Sie beziehen sich nicht auf die Formen der Vorstellungen, Gefiihle, Triebe, und Willenshandlungen, sondern auf den Inhalt des geistigen Lebens, von dem aus nur schwache, eben durch die iibereinstimmenden Grundeigenschaften der Seele gesponnene Faden die hoheren Stufen der Kultur mit ihren Anfangen verbinden.'' ' Thomas, op. cit., p. 262. ' Boas, lour. American Folkl., art. cit., p. 2. 56 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [56 Occupations determine the fundamental modes of activity, and hence control the formation and use of habits. These habits, in turn, are something more than practical and overt. "Apper- ceptive masses " and associational tracts of necessity conform to the dominant activities. The occupations determine the chief modes of satisfaction, the standards of success and fail- ure. Hence they furnish the working classifications and defi- nitions of value ; they control the desire processes. Moreover, they decide the sets of objects and relations that are important, and thereby provide the content or material of attention, and the qualities that are interestingly significant. The directions given to mental life thereby extend to emotional and intellec- tual characteristics. So fundamental and pervasive is the group of occupational activities that it affords the scheme or pattern of the structural organization of mental traits. Occu- pations integrate special elements into a functioning whole. * He adds, on the same page, " we may well speak, and with- out metaphor, of the hunting psychosis or mental type ". We have in this quotation from Dewey clearly a difference in psychological approach from that of Durkheim. But we have also a clear recognition of the importance of the environment, social and material. For the technique of hunting is in every savage group a socially preserved and a socially transmitted body of procedure, as well as a means of adaptation to the physical environment. In his review of M. L. Levy-Bruhl's Les Fonctions men- tales dans les societes inferieures/ Goldenweiser has ex- pressed his approval of Levy-Bruhl's insistence on the importance of the social milieu as furnishing the materials (the " collective representations ") of the individual mind. Levy-Bruhl has in this work, as in his earlier work, La ' Dewey, Psychological Review, art. cit., vol. ix, pp. 219-220. ' Goldenweiser, American Anthropologist, (New Series), vol. xiii^ pp. 121-130. 57] THE SOCIAL MIND 57- Morale et la science des moeurs, accepted the general point of view of Durkheim as to the nature and origin of social phenomena/ Goldenweiser notes also the resemblance, in this matter of general position, of Levy-Bruhl to that of Hubert and Mauss, in their " Esquisse d'une theorie gene- rale de la magie 'V and to that of Durkheim and Mauss in the article on primitive classification which we have cited earlier in this chapter.^ It is not intended by this comparison between Durkheim and this American group to have it appear that they are identical in their views. But it is worth while to point out the fact that our author represents another phase of the ten- dency to consider the role of the environment, whether it be the strictly social or the physical milieu, as one of funda- mental if not of supreme importance in the explanation of social phenomena. ' See Durkheim's slightly qualified approval of the position of" L.-B. in the work on primitive mentality in A. S., vol. xii, p. 35. ^ A. S., vol. vii, pp. 1-146. ' A. S., vol. vi, pp. 1-72. It may also be noted here that the above- mentioned book of Levy-Bruhl is published in the series known as the Travaux de I'Annee Sociologique, published under the direction of Durkheim. Levy-Bruhl is one of the group of French sociologists who have been associated with Durkheim in his adherence to the theories that are being examined in this study. For a statement of the former's allegiance to our author, see La Morale, etc., p. 14, CHAPTER III Social Facts and Social Causation We have previously considered the psychology which is not only the foundation, but in many respects also the super- structure, of Durkheim's sociological theory. We shall now examine a phase of that theory which is, tt> a certain ex- tent, methodological in its nature, but which is neverthe- less so intimately connected with his psychology that the two may not be separated in the discussion. This phase is his conception of the nature of social phenomena — of " faits sociaux ", as he calls them. They are defined in these words : they consist in ways of act- ing, thinking, and feeling, exterior to the individual and en- dowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they impose themselves upon him. Consequently they could not be confused with biological [organiques] phenomena, since they consist of representations and of actions ; nor with the psychic phenomena, which have existence only in the individual con- sciousness and through it. They constitute thus a new variety [sc, of phenomena], and it is to them that ought to be given and reserved the epithet " social ".^ This definition shows, in the light of what has already been said, that " social facts " and " social representations " are in fact simply two temis for the same phenomena; with the emphasis in the case of the first on the quasi-material, and in the case of the second on the purely psychic (though ' Meth., p. 8. 59] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION e^g still objective) features of this type of phenomena. The statements in Durkheim's works in which the two terms seem to be used interchangeably are too numerous to be cited in full. In the lines immediately following the statement last quoted, Durkheim says that these " social facts ", having not the individuals but the society (i. e., the social group) for a substratum, are correctly so named. This, it will be remembered, is exactly what is said con- cerning the social representations.^ This is a decided limitation of the scope of social phe- nomena, as usually defined. It does not admit, as do so many definitions, that everything in society is " social ". Durkheim thinks that to define " social " in the latter Vv^ay takes away from " society " all the individuality that it may possess as a separate field O'f scientific investigation.^ The special characteristics of social phenomena, exter- iority to the individual, and power of constraint over him, are for our author merely criteria, not explanations. He has been accused of attempting to solve the problems aris- ing out of the interactions of men in social groups by means of the principle of social control. That is not his aim. His theory of social causation is, as we shall see later in this chapter, soniething quite different from that. Re- peatedly he wards ofif the attempts that have been made to saddle on him a theory so " simpliste " in its nature. It is repugnant to his entire methodological attitude.^ He aims to delimit the field of research, not to include in it too many kinds of phenomena, nor to explain them by a single, all- inclusive principle. The basis of his choice of these characteristics or criteria 1 Vide supra, pp. 34, 35, see also " Rep. Ind.," p. 294, middle of page. 2 MSth., p. S. ^ Meth., p. XX. See also ch. vi. 6o DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [6o of " socialness " is a purely practical one. They ought to be, he says, " immediately discernible " and evident prelim- inary to the research/ But while he admits mere utility to be the reason for their use, he has apparently not dis- covered any new criteria since selecting these. Con- sistently throughout all of his writings " exteriority " and " constraint " are emphasized as the criteria par excellence of social phenomena. Many of the facts that he studies are, of course, those studied by other writers who do not accept this delimitation which he demands; but he studies them because they answer to his description of the social fact. The psychological reasons for the exteriority of social representations to the individual mind were discussed in the preceding chapter." A phase of his conception of social facts that is intimately related to his psychology may next concern us. It is this : the social fact must be considered as strictly " social " ; i. e., not as the appeai^ance in the indi- vidual of the " refracted " social representation, but as the social fact itself, viewed from the collective side, not in its individual manifestation. Two or three quotations will make this point clearer. What constitutes them [sc, social facts] are the beliefs, ten- dencies, practices of the group taken collectively. As for the forms which the collective states take, in being refracted in the individuals, these are things of another sort. . . . In- deed, certain of these [sc, social] ways of acting and thinking acquire, by reason of their repetition, a sort of consistency, which, so to speak, precipitates them and isolates them from the particular events which reflect them. They thus take a body, a sensible form which is their own, and constitute a 1 Meth., p. xxi. 2 Vide supra, pp. 32, 33. 6iJ SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION gi reality sui generis, quite distinct from the individual facts which manifest this reahty. The collective habit exists not only in a state of immanence in the successive acts which it determines, but by a privilege of which we find no example in the biological realm, expresses itself once for all by a for- mula which is repeated from mouth to mouth, which is trans- mitted by education, which is fixed even by writing. Such is the origin and the nature of juridic and moral rules, aphorisms and popular proverbs, articles of faith wherein the religious or political sects condense their beliefs, codes of taste [ffout] which the literary schools prepare, etc. None of these can be found quite entire in the applications that are made of them by the individuals, since they can exist even without being actually applied.'- . . . One can define it [sc, a social fact] by the diffusion it presents in the interior of the group, provided that one take care to add, as a second and essential characteristic, that it exists independent of the individual forms it takes in so diffusing.^ Where this critical mark of dissociation of the social fact from its individual manifestations is not evident, it can often be revealed by artifices of method. Statistical rates do this very well for certain kinds of phenomena. Treating, as they do, the mass phenomena and not the individual, they show by their regularity the existence of, e. g., social ten- dencies to marriage, to divorce, to suicide, that are wholly independent of the individual cases that go to make up the mass result.'' Not only do we have social facts that have acquired a de- gree of " consistency ", such as codes, morals, etc., but there are such social facts as currents of enthusiasm, indig- nation, pity, that pass through even the least organized of ' Meth., pp. 12-13. ' Ibid., pp. 15-16. ' Suic, p. 360 also p. 349. 62 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [62 societies, the crowd. These, too, originate, not in any indi- vidual mind, but in the minds of all and come to the indi- vidual from without/ The other criterion of the " social fact ", constraint, has its psychological basis in the superiority of the social representation over the individual representation. It will not be necessary here to repeat any part of the discussion of constraint which occupied us in the preceding chapter.^ An interesting point presents itself in connection with this second criterion. The mere generality which has so frequently passed for the criterion of a social fact is, of course, for our author, no criterion at all. More than that, wherever it is found, it is only the expression of the ob- ligatory — i. e., collective — character of a phenomenon. A custom is general because it is imposed ; not imposed because it is general.^ " It is in every part because it is in the whole; not in the whole because it is in every part." * Occasionally the seeming absence of the criterion of constraint may be shown to be only apparent and not real, by reason of the generality of the phenomenon, which may indicate its strictly " social " character. The invariable presence of the element of obligatoriness in social facts is best illustrated by morals, " mores " (moeurs), customs, conventions, codes of taste and style, religious dogmas and beliefs, as well as ritualistic acts, eco- nomic phenomena,^ and the material instilled by education. Are all facts that are social according to Durkheim's 1 Meth., p. 9. 2 Vide supra, p. 36. ^Meth., pp. 14, IS. * Ibid. ^ On economic phenomena as " social " in the Durkheimian sense, see Meth., pp. 6, 7 ; also " La Determination du fait moral," Bull, de la Soc. frang. de Phil., vol. vi, p. 134. 63] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION 63 definition of an exclusively psychic nature ? To admit this would mean the exclusion of the facts of social morphol- ogy, of the structures of social groups of all kinds, from the field of investigation of the sociologist. For them Durk- heim makes room in these terms : These ways of being are imposed on individuals quite as the ways of doing of which we have spoken. Indeed, when one wishes to know how a society is divided politically, of what these divisions are composed, how complete the fusion exist- ing between them is, it is not by the aid of a material inspec- tion and by geographical observations that one can succeed [sc, in learning] ; for these divisions are moral [sc, social] at the same time that they have some basis in the physical nature. It is only on the pages of the public law that this organization can be studied, for it is this law which determines it [sc, the organization] , quite as it determines our relations domestic and civil. It is, then, no less obligatory. If the population crowds into our cities, instead of spreading over the rural districts, it is because there is a current of opinion, a collective impulse which imposes on the individuals this concentration. . . . The roads determine in an imperious way the directions of internal migration and exchange, and even the intensity of these ex- changes and migrations, etc. Consequently there would be room to add, at the most, to the Hst of phenomena which we have enumerated as presenting the distinctive sign of a social fact one category more [sc, the morphological] .... But this addition is not even useful; for these ways of being are only consolidated and integrated [consolidees] ways of doing. The political structure of a society is but the way in which the different component segments have become accustomed to living one with another.^ Whatever we may think of this analysis of the relation of the structure of society to its functioning, it is certainly " Meth., pp. 17-18. ■64 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [64 difficult to see wherein roads, and the mechanism of trans- portation are imposed by the will of the social group upon the individual. The line of the least physical resistance is by far the most important factor in determining methods and routes of transportation and communication. The social mind decrees the location of roads and the means of trans- portation (if it does so at all consciously) according to the social needs and these in nearly every instance are satis- fied by the arrangement based on the principle of the mini- mum expenditure of effort. Our next task is to consider a topic of dual importance, namely, Durkheim's conception of the nature of social cau- sation and with it the closely related one of the differences between sociology and psychology. Each of these phases might be treated in a separate chapter, the first in a chapter on method, the second in a chapter on the field of sociology. But, as will be evident, both these phases are so intimately interrelated, and so closely tied up with the psychological discussion that has preceded that they may well be treated together and at this point. The single question underlying these two phases is this: what is the source of change in social phenomena? Is change due to the individual innovator, imitated by his fellows, as Tarde has explained it? Or, is the source of change outside of the individual? If change in social phe- nomena is individually initiated, then sociology, in its ex- planatory, which is also its scientific, phase becomes a mere continuation of the psychology of the individual mind.^ Any social change is then ipso facto explainable by the psychology that can explain the mind of the individual in which this change originated. If the source of change lies •outside the individual mind, then the fields of sociology and ' Meth., pp. 124-S and Suic, p. ix. 65] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION 65 of psychology are distinct. Sociology then has its own ex- planatory function. Let us first present Durkheim's criticism of " utility " as an explanation of social phenomena. A good example of this is the Spencerian explanation of the formation of so- ciety by the demonstration of the utility of co-operation.^ The sole situation, however, in which utility can be of sig- nificance for causation is where the individual observes the utility of a still non-existent entity, and brings it into exist- ence. Now if social facts, like material phenomena, or psychological phenomena, were within the power of the in- dividual to modify, the cognizance of utility could lead tO' modification. But being " social " facts which impress them- selves on the individual from without, they can be changed only by forces affecting the social mind directly.^ Moreover, in further criticism of this theory of utility, Durkheim notes that facts may exist without a function, as, e. g., a custom which has survived that state of society in which it had a useful role.^ Any attempt to bolster up the utility hypothesis by appealing to a " fundamental tendency " which has utility, is a vain proceeding. There is no necessary connection between tendency and utility. A tendency is a " force which has its own nature ; for that nature to be aroused [suscite] or altered, it does not sufifice that we should find it of some advantage ". A tendency like the mis-named " instinct of self-preservation " requires the concomitance of certain conditions before it can be a cause.* Another proof of the weakness of the idea of utility as an explanation of social phenomena lies in the fact that, despite the diversity ' Meth., p. III. ' Meth., p. 112. ' Ibid., p. 113. * Ibid., p. 114. 66 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [66 of individuals and of th^ ends that they pursue, social facts continue to fall into great resemblance classes. The cul- tural uniformities among widely separated groups of men is evidence to that effect. The cause of social facts is not, then, to be sought in their utility or function; though the former can account for their survival, if not for their arrival.^ Another type of explanation of social facts solidaire with the explanation by utility, is in great favor with so- ciologists, says Durkheim.^ This is the " psychological ", using this term as referring only to the processes of the in- dividual mind. It is found in two forms ; both based on the hypothesis that social life is an outgrowth of the indi- vidual's life. The one form conceives the individual as consciously modifying the social thought and structure toi certain ends ; the other assumes that there are certain fun- damental and inherent tendencies in human nature, from which the society's mental processes are a necessary growth. This latter was the explanatory principle of both Comte and Herbert Spencer. The former states it thus : ^ " The social phenomenon is, fundamentally a simple development of humanity, without the creation of any faculties ". For Comte the dominant fact of social life is progress; and progress springs out of a tendency of self -development. So simple and inevitable is this process, that mere deduction could determine the phases of progress in the earlier stages of history. For Spencer there were two factors — the physi- cal milieti, and the moral and physical constitution of the in- dividual. Society was the product of the interaction of these two groups of factors. Its characteristics were, therefore, directly dependent on the nature of the individual. The ^ Ihid., p, 117. * Ibid., p. 120. ' Quoted by Durkheim, Meth., p. 121. 6y] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION 67 social processes could all be interpreted as modified individ- ual activities and social structures as the products of these individual activities.^ ^ The method followed by Spencer and others is to make the family a result of the reproductive instinct; punishment the result of individual resentment; economic activity the result of the instinct of acquisitiveness, etc. Durkheim disagrees with all of this. Throughout his works he insists that this type of explanation is fallacious." He writes very positively concerning this point : " Every time that a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychic phenomenon, one may be sure that the explanation is false." * This principle follows as a logical consequence to Durkheim's conception of the differences in origin, and ' MSth., pp. 122-3-4. ' For a criticism of the "inherent sociability" of man as a social force, see ibid., p. 132. , ' It may be worth while to cite a number of these criticisms. Suic, pp. 107, 117; 350-1; A. S., vol. ix, p. 133; criticisms of Tarde's explanation of the social process as imitation. Imitation, D. says, pre- supposes society. Imitation is really the simultaneous functioning of a number of members of a social group in response to the stimulus of a social fact impressed on the individuals from without, by the society, (a conception not wholly unlike that of Giddings' "Like response to the same stimulus,'' Inductive Sociology, p. 57 et seq.). Div. Tr., p. 341 and footnote, p. 342, a criticism of Spencer, as above. Vie Rel., p. 246 et seq.; criticism of the derivation of the group totem from the individual totem, a view held by Boas, Swanton and other ethnologists. D. would reverse the derivation. Vie Rel., p. 320 et seq.; criticism that reHgion grew out of fear of the individual {cf. criticism of Spencer on same point, Meth., p. 123). A. S., vol. ii, p. 24. "Def. Phen. Rel." Religion not derived from an individual sentiment, but from a state of the social mind. Rev. Phil., vol. xl, p. 6og. Criticism of Westerraarck's History of Human Marriage for the "impropriety of the method which consists in explaining the social by the psychic." Suic, pp. ix, X, criticism of psychological explanation of the family, and reHgion. On the latter point see ihid., p. 352. * Mcih., p. 128. 68 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [68 hence in nature, between the social and the individual repre- sentations. The social representation (to recall a point already fully treated) is different from the individual repre- sentation because it arises out of the interaction of a dif- ferent system of units. It springs, not from the individual mind, but from the fusion, the blending of that mind with other minds like itself. To admit a " psychological " explan- ation of the social phenomenon would be to waive the cen- tral requirement of the whole Durkheimian sociology. To do this would be, in the phraseology of our author, " to denature social facts ". ^ The " exteriority ", tO' the in- dividual mind, of the social representation is clearly inex- plicable on a " psychological " basis ; while any attempt to make the other characteristic of a social fact, namely, con- straint, a " psychological " factor, by assimilating it to " self-control ", is also a failure. Self-control, inhibition, is the means whereby the social constraint acts in the indi- vidual; but it is only the means and is not identical with social constraint.^ Since the nature of the individual is thus eliminated from consideration as a cause, or originative centre of social phenomena, the social mind is left as the single psychic source of the new in social life.^ This position is not un- like that of the biologist who refuses to explain the facts of life solely by a reference to the principles of physics and chemistry.* ^ Indeed, Durkheim discusses the question as ' Meth., p. 124. ^ Ibid., p. 125. ' Ibid., pp. I2S-6. * Ibid., p. 128 and Suic, p. 350. * It is worth while to note here that a marked trend of biologists, in the United States at least, is strongly in the direction of the very principle that Durkheim considers quite unsound, namely of explaining life by the processes of non-living matter, making of biology, in part at least, mere physics and chemistry. 69] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION 69 to whether his method is in harmony with a fundamental principle, that all aggregates, being, upon final analysis, re- solvable into the same ultimate units of matter, differ only in the nature of the arrangement of these fundamental units.^ In other words, it is to the individuality of the aggregate that one must appeal for the explanation of the facts arising within it, and not to the characteristics of the component units. ^ The objection may be raised that, while society, once formed, may thereafter be the sole source of the new aris- ing within it, this theoiy of Durkheim falls down when the origin of society is considered. This latter, surely, must be referable to the nature of the individuals coming together to form the society. But this objection is, in our author's opinion, merely specious.'' When, he asks in sub- stance, was society formed? Everywhere and at all times of which we have knowledge we find it antecedent to the particular individual,* impressing on him its mass of tra- dition, its standards of all kinds, with a pressure, sometimes unfelt, like that of the atmosphere, but always present. Any questioning of this as a condition of all time in the past leads merely into vague guessing as to what m-ght have been the case in times of which we know, and can know little or nothing, with scientific accuracy.'^ Now so far as we consider " society " in the sense of forms of as- sociation of any kind whatever, this position of Durkheim may be tenable. We do not know of any " pure " indi- vidual, in the sense of a person who is a member of no 1 MHh., p. 127. > Ibid., p. 128. 8 Meth., pp. 128-9 ; also vide supra, p. 36. *• Ibid. ° Ibid., pp. 129-130. yo DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [70 social group. There may easily never have been such a monstrosity. But there are social aggregates which have been formed in historical times, by the voluntary coming together of individuals on the basis of common faith or mutual profit and protection. Among these there must have been a stage of association in which the group mind was not yet formed, in which the individual was the decid- ing factor. Is it justifiable to leave out of consideration in sociology the problem of the formation of the group mind? So much then for the negative phases of Durkheim's theory of social causation. What are its positive features? He tells us that " The determining cause of a social fact ought to be sought among the antecedent social facts, and not among the states of the individual consciousness". "The \ function of a social fact cannot but be social; i. e., it con- / sists in the production of effects socially useful." ^ These statements indicate the general outlines of the theory. Its more detailed analysis may now be taken up. As a preliminary step we may recall the fact that Durk- heim regards the facts of social "morphology" as so closely related to those of social " physiology " ^ — i. e., the structure as solidaire with the process — ^that nO' special at- tention need be given the former. The following rule then states the principle to be followed : " the first origin of all social process of any importance ought to be sought in the internal constitution of the social milieu." * This is clearly in accord with what was said above.* The individuality of the group is an individuality constituted by the particular mode of organization of the units. The units of this inter- ' Meth., p. 135. ' Ibid., p. 137. ' Ibid., p. 138. 71 ] SOCIAL PACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION yi nal social milieu are persons and things. " Among the \ things, beside material objects incorporated in the society/ i must be included the products of former social activity, the ; law, established customs, literary and artistic monuments." ^ Of whatever apparent importance these incorporated things may be, they are in reality not of fundamental significance. At most they may modify, in a somewhat inert manner, the speed and direction of social evolution.^ It is the truly human milieu that is the active factor in social change. The principle task of the sociologist is to discover which properties of this milieu are most significant in affecting the course of social phenomena. Our author informs us that two of these have been discovered : the number of units in the social group, or the " volume " of the society; and the degree of concentration of the mass, the " dynamic density ". " The dynamic density of equal volumes can be defined as a function of the number of individuals who are effectually in relations with each other not merely of a commercial sort; i. e., who not only ex- change services, . . . but who live a common life." * To use an economic term, it is a sort of " rapidity of circula- tion " of social representations. The degree of coalescence of the social segments is a most significant index of the dynamic density of a people. An atomic condition of these units implies a slight dynamic density. *• The physical density of the population, in the demo- graphic sense of the term " density ", is ordinarily, though not invariably, a measure of the dynamic density. Ease 1 See also Meth., p. xiv, footnote; and Rev. Phil., vol. xix, p. 87, for a similar statement in a review of Schaeffle's Bau u. Leben, etc. 'Meth., p. 138. See also Suic, p. 354- ' Meth., p. 139- * Meth., p. 139. * Ibid., p. 140. 72 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [72 of travel, high degree of communication between regions, may serve the purpose of increasing dynamic density quite as well as a massing of population.^ The social milieu, and, especially, the human part of it, is not an ultimate causal fact. Depending, as it does, partly on its own inherent properties, as causes, and partly on its relations with other social groups, it is a primary cause of social phenomena only in the sense of explaining scientifi- cally a large number of the latter.^ What is true of the society in its totality, as, e. g., the nation, is true also of the smaller, special inilieux, the family or the professional group. The family life, the professional life, will vary accordingly as the volume and the dynamic density of their respective groups vary.^ ^ " If we reject this conception of the social milieu as the determining factor of the collective evolution, sociology is unable to establish any relation of causality," says Durk- heim.^ The sole contribution it can then make is an ascer- tainment of the succession of social states. A mere knowl- edge of succession gives no basis for scientific prevision. What is needed is a demonstration why a certain state suc- ceeds another certain state. Comte and Spencer in their conception of social evolution, were, practically, limited em- ' The principal use of these characteristics of the social 'milieu is found in Div. Tr., the discussion of which is to be found below, in chapter vii. ' Mcth., p. 142. ' Ibid., pp. 142-3. * The effect of internal conditions of the family milieu on the strength of the family's influence over its members is illustrated in a statement in Suic, pp. 211-214. It is there maintained that suicide varies in- versely as the density of the family (i. e. its average size) ; and that this is due to the weakening of the family's power as a group because of its decrease in density. '> Meth., p. 143. 73] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION 73 piricists/ for they stated only the order of succession of social stages. Mere ascertainment of succession having given us no clue to the real nature of social causation, we are driven outside of the simply rectilinear series of social facts in our search for an explanation of the changes that take place in social life. Can the environment exterior to a given social group be the determining, the " critical " factor? Of the environ- ment of the group, one element, the other social groups, can have an effect only on the defensive and offensive mili- tary phases of the group life.^ All the physical influences of the environment can affect the group only through its internal social milieu. So in the nature of the latter we must seek the determining elements that make state B fol- low state A. It is in place here to point out a possible inconsistency between Durkheim's theory of social causation and his de- finition of social facts. A social fact, we recall, is a way of thinking, acting, or feeling, exterior to the individual and endowed with a power of coercion.'* That is, it is a " state of the collective consciousness ". Durkheim says, moreover, " the determining cause of a social fact ought to be sought among the antecedent social facts, and not among the states of the individual consciousness ".* But in the elaboration of the theory of social causation we find the basis of the argument changed. We read : Indeed, if the determining condition of social phenomena con- sist, as we have shown, in the very fact of association, they ought to vary with the forms of that association, i. e., accord- ^Meth., pp. 145-6. 2 Ibid., p. 143. 3 Ibid., p. 8. ^Ibid., p. 135. 74 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [74 ing to the ways in which the constituent parts of society are grouped.^ . . . The principal effort of the sociologist ought to be then, to discover the different properties of this [sc, " social "] milieu which can exert action on the course of social phe- nomena.^ " Determining cause " and " determining condition " ; these two terms refer respectively to antecedent social facts and to the constitution of the social milieu. In the one case we have a psychic phenomenon, a state of consciousness A which is the cause of the state of consciousness B. In the second, if " detennining condition " is equivalent to " de- termining cause ", the state B is caused, not by state A, but by the constitution of the social milieu — which is a mor- phological, not a psychic, fact ; certainly not a " social " fact, in the strict Durkheimian sense of that phrase. To take refuge in the distinction between " condition " and " cause " would be a possible way out. But a clear state- ment of the difference between these two terms is lacking. The working out of this theory of social causation is illustrated in la Division du travail social and also in le Suicide. In both these works, as is indicated in Chapter VII, we have the explanation of a social fact. In the former it is the division of labor, in the latter, suicide. The development of the argument in each book seems to indi- cate that Durkheim does mean to distinguish between " cause " and " condition ". The division of labor is not " caused " by the increased " dynamic density " of the population ; that is a " condition " of its increase.^ Further- more, suicide is caused by " courants suicidogenes " ; its quantity varies as the strength of these currents,* which 1 Ibid., p. 138. ' Ibid., p. 139. 3 Div. Tr., p. 237 et seq. * Suic, p. 336. 75] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION 75 varies from group to group. This variation in strength is inversely correlated with the strength and cohesiveness of the social group. We have here, then, " conditions " quantitatively modifying the " cause ", though they do not actually appear as the cause of the phenomenon under con- sideration, namely, a suicide. In " la Prohibition de I'inceste " ^ we have this statement of social causation : " If new states [sc. of the social mind] are produced, it is largely because the old states have been grouped and combined." But in a footnote Durkheim men- tions the changes in the social substratum as part causes. Here, too, we have, then, both conceptions, of cause and of condition, introduced. Another noteworthy feature of Durkheim's theory of social causation is its mechanistic tendency. We have seen that the inherent characteristics of the individual as such are barred by our author from playing a part in the social process. The individual as a conscious innovator was also dismissed from the consideration ^ of the sociologist. The latter phase of Durkheim's theory is closely related to the idea of the social process as a mechanically-caused evolu- tion, in the sense of one that depends not on a consciously directed working out toward certain ends, but on forces that work blindly as do those of the physical universe. There are a number of examples of this " mechanism " in Durkheim's work. The cause of the increase of the divi- sion of labor is in the increase of the dynamic density of society, which is accurately measurable by the fluctuations in the density of population, a phenomenon not of the con- sciously willed type, surely. The size of the family afifects the suicidal tendency of the members of the family, as we saw above. In another article he says : " But we have just ^ A. S., vol. i, p. 69. " Vide supra, pp. 67, 68. 76 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [76 seen how these groupings [sc, of states of the social mind] could have a totally different cause than the anticipated representation of the result flowing from them "/ And in another : " Such is the cause which has determined the pro-: gressive weakening of penalties. We see that this result has been produced mechanically. . . . This great transfor- mation has not taken place in view of a preconceived end, nor under control of utilitarian considerations." ^ This mechanism is not logically required by Durkheim's general sociological position. The social group thinks ; ' therefore there is nothing to hinder its thinking out ends and acting upon them. The objections that may, consistently with Durkheim's theory, be raised against the conscious action of the individual as a source of the new in social life, do not hold against conscious action by the group. However the logic of the situation may stand, as a matter of fact, Durkheim does not treat society as a self-directing, but rather as an automatically directed, entity. Despite his strong opposition to the individual causation theory, our author still finds it difificult to keep " psycho- logical " explanation entirely out of his reasoning. There is, of course, some room for admitting the nature of the individual, as the unit of the society, to be at least a sec- ondary factor in social causation. The very fact of the ex- istence of the social representation in the mind of the indi- vidual means that there must be some interaction between the two. For example, in order to explain the intensity of some of the states of the social mind, Durkheim shows that their violence is due to the re-enforcement, in the mind of each individual, of the latter's own state of mind, by a ^ A. S., vol. i, p. 6g. "La Prohibition de I'inceste," etc. 2 A. S., vol. iv, p. 92. " Deux Lois de revolution penale.'' ° MHh., p. xvi ; and " Rep. Ind.," p. 295. 77] SOCIAL PACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION yy similar state of another or of other members of the group/ This is such an explanation as even the most " individual- istic " psychologist might have given. Occasionally, too, we find that our author forgets that his " individual " is so thoroughly dependent on the social mind for his mental content; for example, he says: "If, as we may say, this synthesis sui generis which constitutes every society is evolved out of new phenomena, different from those that take place in the isolated [solitaires] con- sciousnesses. . . ." " " The group feels, thinks, acts, quite differently from the way in which its members would feel, think, and act, if they were isolated ".^ The explanation of this apparent inconsistency lies in the fact that these quotations are from early works.* The individual then loomed larger in Durkheim's estimation. The elements of the over-emphasis of the social nature of the individual mind were present in the theory at that early date ; but they were as yet undeveloped to their full possibility. There is a sense in which our author admits the indi- vidual to some slight share in the origination of social states, without being inconsistent. It amounts to saying, however, that human society is what it is because it is com- posed of human beings, each one of whom has a certain fixed, and definite, psychic nature. This may have a cer- tain conditioning power over the rate of social change : but it can in no wise introduce new elements into the change- process.^ A seeming exception to the exclusion of the in- dividual from social causation is worth noting. The public official, the statesman, the genius, all may be innovating ' Div. Tr., p. 67. ' Aleth., p. xvi. ' Meth., p. 128. * See bibliography. * Meth., pp. 1 13-4 and p. 130. 78 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [78 1 members of the social group. But it is after all only ap- parently that they introduce new social elements. In reality they are merely expressions of the power of the society, lent to them for the ends of society.^ The distinction between the fields of sociology and of psychology needs little discussion after what has been said concerning Durkheim's idea of social causation. The sharp lines of demarcation between the social phenomena and the psychological phenomena imply a similar separation of the sciences treating these twO' groups of fact.^ Sociology cannot be a development out of psychology, for the social fact is as distinct from the psychological fact as is the bio- logical from the physical or the chemical. But Durkheim does not forbid the use of psychology to the sociologist. It should, like biology, serve as a propaedeutic. It is to be used for interpreting facts, or, at least, the explanation of the sociologist may not violate the laws of psychology.^ In the field of education the two sciences meet at a common task.^ Education, says Durkheim, is not, as according to the etymological common-place, a mere " drawing-out " pro- cess. It is also a filling-up process. The individual, in order to live in a certain social environment, must have the ideas and habits of action appropriate and general to that environment. It is the task of sociology, then, to de- termine what is appropriate for the member of a certain social group to know and to do ; that is, to determine what shall be the material put into the individual's mind. Psy- chology decides how the actual process of education may best be carried on; it has to do with the technique of edu- ^ Meth., p. 137, footnote. For a criticism of this view see infra, ch. iv, pp. g8, 99. ' Suic, p. ix and p. 352. ' Meth., p. 162. . * Rev. Met., vol. xi, " Pedagogie et sociologie.'' 79] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION jg cation; with the methods of getting into the mind of the immature member of society what sociology has decreed suitable for that member.^ One group of phenomena falls within the border-land between sociology and psychology, namely those that he calls " socio-psychic " facts. These are the private manifestations of social phenomena, partly social, since they reproduce in part a collective model. But each of them depends also, and in large part, on the organic-psychic constitution of the individual, on the particular circumstances in which he is placed. They are not strictly sociological phe- nomena. They belong to two realms at once, one could call them socio-psychic.^ An illustration would be the fact that each individual, while getting his religion, his morals, his technique, from the social mind, nevertheless so modifies them that they be- come " his religion, his morals, his technique ".^ Else- where ^ Durkheim mentions them again ; they are the sub- ject-matter of what may be called the " mixed " science of " socio-psychologie " , which resembles such sciences as bio- chemistry. He does not, however, put any emphasis, theo- retical or practical, on either these phenomena or the sci- ence that treats of them. In conclusion we may say that Durkheim is revealed as a psychological sociologist par excellence (using that ad- jective in the accepted, not in the Durkheimian, sense). For him all phenomena in man's social life are psychic. There are twO' kinds of psychic phenomena, however ; those arising in the system of the individual mind, and those ' Ibid., pp. 50-51. ' Meth., p. 14. ^ Meth., p. xxiii, footnote. Italics are Durkheim's. * Div. Tr., p. 341. 8o DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [go arising in the system of the social mind. The former are studied by the science of " individual " psychology, or psy- chology, simply; the other kind are treated in " collective " psychology, or sociology/ It is interesting to compare the theory of social causation and that of the relation of sociology to psychology held by Durkheim with the theories held by the German psychologist Wundt. The resemblance between the theories of these two men concerning the compounding of mental states was noted above.^ In the introductory chapter of his Volkerpsycho- logie Wundt expounds those principles of his psychology, which, applied to the collective life, are denominated in the title of that book. The views of Durkheim and Wundt on these topics are in general parallel, though at points they converge and again diverge. A few quotations will suffice to show this. Wundt says : The psychic life of a society is inextricably interdependent with the life of the individuals belonging to it, and therefore all psychic phenomena [which we refer to the society as such, even though they would not be possible without association and its interactions,] still have their final source in the indi- vidual characteristics.^ Here we have more importance ascribed to the individual than that with which Durkheim credits him. Our author does not seek the "final source" in the nature of the individual but in the nature of the reactions between that individual and others like him. The individual nature is a " condi- tion " of the psychic life of society. But Wundt, it must be admitted, does not come far from Durkheim's position when he says, a few lines below, in presenting his criteria ' " Rep. Ind.," p. 302, footnote. ^ Vide supra, p. 25. ' W. Wundt, Volkerpsychologie, vol. i, p. 4. 8i] SOCIAL PACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION gl of a collective phenomenon as opposed to an individual creation : " The first [sc, criterion] is that an indefinite number [unbestimmt viele] of members of a society have collaborated upon it in such a way that the reference of it to any particular individual is excluded." As to the indi- vidual as an initiating force in society Wundt and Durk- heim are in close accord. " Rather is it," says the former, "... society that sets free [auslost] in the individual psychic powers through which he himself reacts upon it [sc.j society] ; and of all that he may contribute to the col- lective accumulation only that remains effective which was already preconstructed [vorgebildet] in the society." ^ This is much like our author's idea that society furnishes the content of the individual's mind. Again Wundt says: " Volkerpsychologie is based on the fact that society creates independent psychic values which are rooted in the mental characteristics of individuals, but are themselves of a spe- cific kind, and provide the individual mental life with its most important content." " The relation between psychol- ogy and Volkerpsychologie as indicated in the statement of the latter as : " an extension and continuation of psychol- ogy to the phenomena of the collective life " ^ is not unlike Durkheim's essentially psychological approach to the social phenomena; e. g., see the statement concerning " psycho- logie individuelle " as opposed to " psychologie collective " or " la sociologie touie entiere ".* Another quotation from Wundt : " Volkerpsychologie would be impossible if the so- ciety did not continually create new values for the psycho- logical understanding of which the means of individual psychology are inadequate." ^ 1 Ihid., p. IS. ^ Ibid., p. 19. ' Ibid., p. 4. * " Rep. Ind.," p. 302, footnote. * Wundt, op. cit., p. 19. 82 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [82: At the same time it should be noted that Wundt does not draw the same sharp line between psychology as indi- vidual and as collective, that Durkheim insists upon. The former says in another work, that the two are not so much different departments as different methods. The so-called "Vblkerpsychologie" corresponds to the method of pure observation ; the' objects of observation in this case being the mental products that have been developed in the course of history, such as language, mythological ideas and customs. . . . The necessary connection of these products with social communities, which has given to "Volkerpsychologie " its name, is due to the fact that the mental products of the indi- vidual are of too variable a character to be the subjects of ob- jective observation. The phenomena gain the necessary degree of constancy only when they become collective. . . . "Volker- psychologie " is distinguished from individual, or as it may be called because of its predominant method, experimental psy- chology.^ There is a noticeable similarity between the treatments by these two writers of the problem of social causation. Wundt, like Durkheim, recognizes the individualistic in- terpretation of history usual with historians as intimately connected with their frequent explanations of the social evolution process as thought-out development of a plan, or of many plans.^ The principle shortcoming of this indi- vidualistic theory of social change lies in the fact that those who hold it have not freed' themselves from the conception of a metaphysical soul-entity, which makes any soul but an individual one an impossibility; in that case, all psychic phe- nomena must be referred to the individual soul. But if the soul is considered in its " actuality " as " a unity of psychic ^ Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, p. 23. ' Wundt, Volk.. p. 19. 83] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION 83 phenomena", the group-soul (" Volkseele ") becomes in- telligible and necessary.^ Tarde's insistence on imitation as the predominant social activity, Wundt, like Durkheim, rejects as unsound; and, like the latter, he makes the simultaneous appearance of a new social element in a number of members of a group a result of some influence affecting at once the many indi- viduals of the society, but emanating from no particular individual of the group.^ ^ ^ Ibid., p. 20. 2 Ibid., p. 22, also Suic, p. 117. * Deploige's view that Durkheim's working hypotheses are largely, as the former says, "made in Germany" (see Le ConAit de la morale et de la sociologie, p. 151, for this statement and ch. iv, pp. 122-151 for the elaboration of the argument) was mentioned early in the preface (see supra, p. 7). It may be worth while at this point to summarize Deploige's statement. From Comte, he says, Durkheim has inherited the " positivist " spirit, the disdain for metaphysics, for the search after final causes,, and the idea of natural causation in society. Espinas contributed the idea of the social reality as of the psychic order (p. 126). The re- maining important elements of Durkheim's system are derived from the Germans (p. 127). Wagner, SchmoUer, Schaeffle, have furnished him his fundamental postulate of the reality of the society apart from' its existence as a mere grouping of individuals. Durkheim's visit to. Germany (about 1886) explains how- he came under the influence of these economists. Furthermore the conception of sociology as a method which the special social sciences ought to adopt {vide infra, ch. v) is taken from Schaeffle. Wundt has inspired Durkheim's dis- dain for the psychological and finalistis theory of social causation, and his enthusiasm for the sociological and mechanistic causation principle; and Wundt's Ethik furnished the basis for Durkheim's ethical theories, as set forth in "la Determination du fait moral", (Bull, de la soc. fr, de Phil., vol. vi) ; that from Simmel's Einleitung in die M oralwissen- schaft came the idea of society as God. While Deploige does not actually accuse our author of claiming all these elements of his system as the products of his own originative genius, the general impression made, (and apparently intentionally- made) by this analysis is equivalent to such an accusation. Durkheim answered these statements about his system in the columns of the 84 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [84 The question of Durkheim's philosophical position is to such a marked degree involved in the criticisms that have been made of his work that it seems well tO' briefly consider it. By many of his critics our author has been accused of reviving in his sociology a realism akin to that of the Scho- Revue Neo-Scolastique (the journal in which this attack had first appeared), and the letters of Durkheim as well as the replies of his critic are reprinted in the "Appendix" of Deploige's work. Durkheim defends himself in the following points : that while in Germany he did not come under the influence of the " Socialists of the Chair ". That he got his " social realism " {vide infra, in this chapter for a discussion of the philosophical bearings of Durkheim's theory) from Comte, Spencer, Espinas, and not from Schaeffle and the German economists. That he gives Wundt's Ethik credit in the essay on the moral fact. That he did not get the idea of society as God from the above-mentioned book of Simmel, because he did not know that book. That, while admitting a similarity between his and Wundt's views on sociology as related to psychology, he had really gotten this idea of the separation of the two fields from his master at the Ecole Normale Supcrieure, Boutroux. In the latest volume of A. S. no. xii, in reviewing this book of Deploige, our author claims that his " social realism " goes back to Renouvier. (See p. 326). That he furthermore denied all claim to originality of his ideas, except the claim" to having been the first to introduce these views into France and into French thought. And that whatever influence the Germans may have had on him, it was not of the sort that Deploige has claimed it was. Deploige's book, (as the writer showed in a review of it in the Political Science Quarterly of March, 1913) is an apologetic for the social philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, involving a severe criticism of the Durkheimian sociology. Its statements are not always free from ex parte bias; nor. are its quotations of Durkheim, as the latter has illustrated in the review in the A. S., vol. xii, always accurate: the writer has had occasion to verify this for himself. Many of the criticisms that Deploige makes of Durkheim seem, however, reasonable. On the question of the German origin of Durkheim's theories, Pro- fessor Durkheim has, of course, the final word. The most funda- mental resemblance of Durkheim to Wundt, that of the common psychological assumptions, Deploige has not emphasized, if he men- tions it at all. It is evident certainly, that there is a marked resem- blance between these two writers ; and beyond pointing this out we may scarcely go. 85] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION 85 lastic philosophers. The idea that a society is not a mere sum of individuals, but that the system which their asso- ciation produces has a specific reality ; ^ that social facts are tO' be considered in their collective, not in their indi- vidual aspects; ' that they can exist as social facts, without being actually manifested in individual cases ;^ all these statements of our author have been severely criticised by Tarde and others. Tarde cites, as the height of Durkheim's realism, the remark, " Eliminate the individual and society remains ".* Durkheim, whatever his extremities of posi- tion, has not gone as far as this misquoted line would seem to indicate. His social psychology, as we have examined it, in theory, at least, does not wholly discard the individual; though there is a decided under-emphasis of the latter in his causation theory, as will be shown in the succeeding chap- ter. The individual, reduced even to the mere body with a brain, is, at its lowest terms, still a modifying power over the social representations.^ "' The most vulnerable point that Durkheim presents to the attack is that involved in his statement that social facts exist apart from their individual manifestations." As Tarde points out, this " rests on an equivoque " ' Language, cus- ' Meth., p. 127. ' Ibid., p. 12. ' Ibid., pp. 12-13. * Tarde, La logique sociale, p. viii. This is quoted out of its context j Durkheim has been discussing the individual as a causal factor in society, and after ehminating him by logical process, he says : " Or, I'individu ecarte, il ne reste que la societe;" the meaning of the state- ment is certainly not what Tarde ascribes to it. (See Meth., pp. 125-6 for the whole argument.) ' See " Rep. Ind.," pp. 295, 298 ; also Suic, p. 350 and Meth., p. 127. * Vide supra, p. 60. ' Tarde, " La Sociologie elementaire," Annales de I'Institut Inter- national de Sociologie, 189S, pp. 219-220. 86 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [86 toms, law, religion, come to each member of the social group from without; but does this mean that a language, e. g., could exist without any of those who use it? Does it not mean merely, that, though any given individual may dis- appear, the language still lives on the tongues of his co- linguists? The fact that a social fact may become crystal- lized into a definite, more or less invariable, form, such as a proverb shows, or may even be written down and so fixed for all time, is, as Giddings long ago showed, no evidence for its independent objective reality. " The written page is meaningless apart from the knowledge of the living reader. . . . But at any given moment they \_sc., the laws in a code] exist in a multitude of interacting minds, and are therefore objective as well as subjective to each indi- vidual." ^ Now Durkheim is not a realist in the extreme Scholastic sense of that word, as was, e. g., William of Champeaux.' He does not make of society, of the objective French or English nation, the reality, while the individual Frenchman or Englishman is only an attribute, a modification, or varia- tion, of this " universal ". That the functioning whole, like a chemical compound or a living cell, or an organism, has reality, and unity, different from that of its constitu- ents is a statement that not even Tarde, Durkheim's sharp- est critic, denies.^ But psychologically Durkheim is a real- ist; and he has become quite extreme in his psychological realism, as was pointed out above.* So far as the individual appears at all in Durkheim's later theory, he has become only a body; he is no longer a soul {ame). His soul is the ^ Giddings, Principles of Sociology, pp. 146-7. 2 See Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy, etc., loc. cit., " realism.'' 'Indeed, Tarde admits this kind of "reality" in an article, "La Realite sociale " ; Rev. Phil., vol. lii, pp. 457-477. * Vide supra, p. 44. Sy] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION gy mind of society incarnated in his body. The social mind is all the mind that exists; and in this sense the social is the only real. It is not difficult to locate this theory philosophically. Tarde ^ and Dunan ^ both accuse our author of being a Platonic realist; and to that extent metaphysical in his presuppositions. Of this accusation Durkheim has admitted as true the resemblance between his social representations and the Platonic ideas. " Face to face with this sys- tem of ideas [notions], the individual mind is in the same situation as the vovg of Plato, before the world of ideas. It [sc, the individual mind] is compelled to absorb them [se les assimiler], for it needs them in order to be able to have communion with its fellows ; but the absorption is al- ways imperfect." '" And he notes a difference between his " social representation " and the " idea " of Plato. " The ideas of Plato are self-sufficient. They have no need of matter in order tO' exist; they cannot mingle with matter without undergoing a kind of degradation. On the con- trary, society has need of individuals in order to exist." * We have then in this theory a type of realism, differing somewhat from that of Plato, and much from that of the Scholastic realist ; but one which, based on a certain modem psychological assumption, still presents the essential char- acteristics of a realism: it makes, in its extreme form, the universal (i. e., the social), consciousness the reality, and the individual consciousness, except as the incarnation of this social mind, is not much more than a name. ' Tarde, " Soc. elem.," p. 216. ' Bull, de la Soc. fr. de Phil., vol. vi, p. 169. 3 Vie Rel., p. 622. * Bull, de la Soc. fr. de Phil., March, 1913, p. 74, " Le Probleme reli- gieux et la dualite de la nature humaine." 88 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [88 In a recent history of French hterature ^ the suggestion is made that Durkheim represents in sociology the same tendency that Bergson shows in philosophy. There is of course a possibility that from Boutroux, under whom both Durkheim and Bergson studied at the Ecole Normale Superienre, may have come an impulse driving both in the same direction. Durkheim has acknowledged his indebt- edness to Boutroux for the idea of the sharp distinction between the phenomena of different fields; ^ {e. g., between the social and the psychological, like that between the biologi- cal and the physical or chemical). The emphasis which our author lays on this heterogeneity ; his insistence on explain- ing facts of each order of combination by the principles of that order, and not in terms of a lower order; these char- acteristics of Durkheim' s theory may be compared with Bergson's idea that the physico-chemical explanations of life, despite their high development, include only a small part of the reality of life-processes: and that the same de- fect is to be found also in the cerebro-physiological ex- planations of mental states.^ The context of these state- ments of Bergson should, however, be kept in mind; he is endeavoring to show that the mechanistic hypothesis of the sciences dealing with inanimate matter is wholly inappli- ' Wright, C. H. C, History of French Literature, p. 832. " The ease with which Bergsonism adapts itself to nearly all the active tendencies of today has made it extremely popular among those in- terested in new religious, ethical, social, political, or aesthetic questions. . . . Here it falls in with the tendencies of unconscious pragmatists. The French lay sociologist gets over moral and religious instability by the idea of a social organism, which may impose its own sanctions, whether of law, public opinion, conscience or reason : Durkheim, an extreme positivist, argues that God is society, and that society fur- nishes to morals all the support it gets from revealed religion." 2 Vide supra, footnote to p. 83. • Bergson, Creative Evolution, pp. 354-5. 89] SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION gg cable to the sciences of life, so far as explanation goes. The true understanding of vital phenomena comes through intuition, says Bergson. Durkheim, on the other hand, has nothing but scorn for those attempts to know social pre- nomena by any other means than the most scientific methods ; in other words, what Bergson would call " me- chanistic " methods.' And when our author studies the social mind, he breaks it up into dead particles, such as law- codes, moral regulations, religion, etc., just as the scientist must always (and according to Bergson, rightly) do." Possibly one might interpret in a Bergsonian sense the con- clusion oi La Vie religieuse, namely^ that religious phe- nomena express a true reality, that of society, as an " in- tuitive " judgment by mankind, full of vital truth.^ On several minor points there is some correspondence. For example, both writers conceive of consciousness as a force decreasing psychic automatism, or at least accom- panying such a decrease.* But on other points they differ widely. There seems to be little similarity between the kinds of psychology to which they hold. Durkheim is an intel- lectualist; Bergson certainly is not. Durkheim makes the higher mental processes independent of, the lower de- pendent on, the brain processes. Bergson, on the other hand, denies the necessity of a brain for the existence of consciousness,^ and denies that consciousness springs from the cerebral process.^ To the layman in philosophy the similarity between these two thinkers is not very striking. One more adept in the philosophical field might discover ^ Meth., p. 43. ' Bergson, op. cit., p. 93. ^ Ibid., pp. 268-9. * Ihid., p. 179, and " Rep. Ind.," p. 274 ; see supra ch. i, p. 22. * Creat. EvoL, p. no. " Ibid., p. 262. ■go DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [90 greater likenesses, but there are none that are preeminently outstanding. Only so far, however, as there is a relation between Bergsonism and pragmatism can we assume any profound likeness between our author and his fellow-coun- tryman. This is put forward as a possible bond of similarity be- tween them, but it is one on which the writer is free to admit his inability to give a definitive statement. The con- nection has been suggested by an interesting comparison that may be drawn between certain phases of Durkheim's theory of the nature of religion, and the pragmatic theory of religion put forward by William James in his Varieties of Religions Experience. Religious phenomena are expres- sions, Durkheim says, of a reality — the social reality.^ The objective content of these phenomena is of fundamental •significance only because of this fact.^ The universal dis- tinction in all religions between the sacred and the profane, is after all, a distinction between the class of entities that are social and those that are individual.^ " It [jc, religion] is, above all, a system of ideas by means of which the indi- viduals represent to themselves the society of which they are members." * In other words, religious elements have a value apart from their mere objective content. They have a pragmatic value. They " work ". They are an expression of the inner oneness of the individual with the mind of his group. For James also the concrete manifestations of religion may not be significant in themselves. " It does not follow," he says, " because our ancestors made so many errors of ' Vie Rel., p. 322. ' Ihid. ' Ibid., p. 307. * Ibid., p. 323. gij SOCIAL FACTS AND SOCIAL CAUSATION gi fact and mixed them with their rehgion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being re- ligious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate real- ity at the only points where reality is given us to guard." ' This ultimate reality is mediated to us through the subcon- scious self .^ What it is, the very term " ultimate " bars our knowing; but each interprets it in his own way; so we have James' own personal belief that "... the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness; . . . the two become continuous at cer- tain points and higher energies filter in." * Both Durkheim and James, then, make of religion a means of laying hold of reality: the former sees this reality in the social mind that he postulates ; and the latter in postu- lated other worlds of consciousness; both show that these realities are usually expressed in terms of a God or of Gods. More than this : James speaks of the actual energy that flows into the worshipper in the " faith-state " or in the " prayer-state ",* just as Durkheim says : " Above all, the religious life presupposes the putting into play of forces sui generis which elevate the individual above himself, and which transport him to another milieu than that in which is unrolled his profane existence, and which make him live a very different life, higher and more intense." ^ More than this, Durkheim's conception of the moral fact as a social fact, and hence as the product of the activities of the group mind, rather than as a supernatural, or meta- physical rule, is in harmony with the pragmatic tendency ^ James, Var. Rel. Exp., p. scxj. ^ Ibid., p. 511. » Ibid., p. 519. * Ibid., p. 519 and p. S09- = Bull, de la Soc. fr. de Phil, March, 1913, p. 63, " Le Probl. Rel. et la dual, hum." g2 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [52 in modern ethical study. For in this field the connection between actual conditions of life and the resulting conduct regulations, has led in the work of such men as Sumner to an acceptance of the principle that the " folkways " and " mores " of a group, can be judged by no arbitrary cri- terion: that what the group permits or prescribes is ipso facto the good. The only test here is the " workability " of the particular rule or code of rules. We may assume, then, that there is a possible resemblance between the philosophical orientation of Durkheim and that of Bergson, if we are justified in admitting as evidence a connection between the pragmatism of James, for ex- ample, and the Bergsonian philosophy. James himself has expressed his agreement with the fun- damental philosophical position of Bergson in a number of essays.^ And while their approaches to the problems they deal with are in many respects diverse, they still represent the same basic tendency away from the expression of ex- perience in the terms of an absolutism which is not inherent in the universe of experience, but purely the product of man's conceptual life and method. ' See James, A Pluralistic Universe, Lecture vi, passim. Some Problems of Philosophy, pp. 37, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 200, 219. Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 156, 188. Bergson has commented on his similarity to James in Rev. Phil., vol. Ix, p. 229; and in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Method, 1910, p. 385. In the latter he approves the state- ment which James had made in the Pluralistic Universe of Bergson's views. CHAPTER IV The Major Premise in Durkheim's Thinking The objections to Durkheim's views which have been advanced from time to time are, in the main, directed at statements which are in reality logical conclusions. Durk- heim's premises have not been examined by his critics. The earlier criticism, down to the appearance of " Repre- sentations individuelles et representations collectives " , was justified in this method; for the psychological basis of our author's theories as revealed in that essay was, up to that time, implicit and not explicit. Tarde, as we saw, called Durkheim an "ontologist", a "scholastic" and a "medieval realist " } On the basis of what the latter had published up to the time of this classification of him, it seems not unde- served. Deploige in his book,^ published in 191 1, makes no advance over Tarde's criticism in this respect, for he does not go back to the psychological assumptions on which Durkheim's work is based, but criticises it as it appears. Tosti, in 1897 and 1898, subjected the social causation theory of Durkheim, as it appears in he Suicide, to a severe and just criticism; but he did not go behind this theory." More recently Leuba has questioned the theory of the purely " social " origin of religious phenomena, as put forward in Durkheim's earlier statements (i. e., those antedating La ' Tarde, La Logique sociale, p. viii. 2 Vide supra, ch. iii, p. 83. ' American Journal of Sociology, vol. iii, p. 464, and vol. iv, p. 171. 93] 93 54 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [94 Vie religieuse) without, however, attacking the source of the fault criticised/ Fouille adopted ^ the same type of critical examination as the others cited. Durkheim's theories can be fairly evaluated only if they are considered in relation to his fundamental theory of the compounding of mental states. In this process of combin- ing and recombining, a system of mental states is evolved, which is the final and highest'' product — the social mind. Wundt * offers this process in explanation of the nature and origin of all the more complex mental products. On the other hand, James insists that this theory is in- correct. He devotes an entire chapter of the Principles of PsycfTofogy to a statement of his position with reference to it." And while he is free to admit the difficulties in- volved in a theory of the unitary functioning of the mind, he still believes the other theory quite untenable. The theory of the compounding of psychic states is, in so far as concerns the states of the social mind, decidedly metaphysical. To talk about souls or minds fusing and uniting, when the souls are simply streams of consciousness, is either a mere figure of speech, or metaphysics. The sim- plicity of it, however, makes this a very seductive theory. It accounts for the more complex mental states so easily that to reject it seems a hypercritical proceeding. The accept- ance or the rejection of this fusing theory is indeed not a question which the sociologist can decide, if Wundt accepts it, and James rejects it. Durkheim's attempts to support his conception of the social mind, the dme collective^ by analogy are not suc- ''■ Am. lour. Soc, vol. xix, p. 322-342. See especially p. 333 et seq. ' Fouillee, Les Elements sociologiques de la morale, p. 158-174. ^ Vide supra, p. 37. * Vide supra, p. 25. ° James, op. cit., vol. i, ch. vi. 55 ] DURKHEIM'S PREMISES gj cessful. He says that this dme collective, because it is a system of representations produced by the interaction of in- dividual minds or of the states of individual minds, is therefore different from the individual mind, just by reason of its being a compound, in the same way that water is dif- ferent from hydrogen and oxygen, or the organism from the individual cells that compose it, or the representation within the individual mind from the physiological process of the brain-cell from which it is ultimately derived. An analogy, to be useful as an explanation, should be moder- ately exact; term for term there should be some marked similarity between the elements compared. In what re- spects, aside from the merely specious one of their both being compounds, is the social mind or the social represen- tation like the organism or the chemical compound ? Where is the similarity of the individual mind to the chemical element or to the cell, apart from their being constitu- ent parts of a larger whole? An acquaintanceship at first hand with the mind puts our knowledge of it on an entirely different basis from the knowledge which we have of a cell or a chemical element. We are our minds. If we know anything directly, it is our minds. So that in knowing what the cell is, or what the element is, we are in an entirely different situation from that in which we are when knowing the mind.^ Even the analogy between the production of the social states of mind by the combination and interaction of indi- vidual states of mind and the production of the individual state of mind by the interaction of the brain-cells is a weak one. Even if, according to the mind-stuff theory, the social states may be decomposed logically into the most elementary processes of the individual mind, the analogy is ' C/. Tarde, La Socialogie eUmentaire, p. 221 et seq. ; also Leuba^ op. cit., pp. 334-S ; also Deploige, op. cit., passim. g6 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICA-L THEORY [gQ certainly open to objection. Is it justifiable to compare the material brain-cell with the individual state of mind, at the same time that one compares the individual state of mind with the social? We see here another evidence of Durk- heim's materialistic conception of the origin of mental processes, (jvhich was noted in Chapter I/^ To insist so vigorously on a distinction between the individual-psychic and the social-psychic and then calmly to derive the psychic in its elementary form from matter, seems, to say the least, to be straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. A phase of Durkheim's psychology which needs passing notice is his intellectualism. The social mind for him, like the individual mind, is a system of representations; i. e., of the intellectual, as opposed to the emotional and the voli- tional elements of the mental process. The latter two phases of mind are not wholly disregarded, but they are seldom, if ever, stressed.^ In this respect Durkheim is out of touch with the modern tendency of psychology away from intellectualism. Psychologists are inclining more and more toward a conception of the state of mind as a complexus of simultaneously coexisting phases, the cog- nitive, the affective, and the volitional; and that further- more the volitional, or motor phase, and the emotional phase are more significant of mental processes in their funda- mental nature than is their cognitive phase.' We must remember (to come back to the direct line of ^ Vide supra, pp. 23, 24. ^ The intellectualist bias of the main arguments is by this time quite evident to the reader. A few citations of the admission of emo- tional elements into his discussion of the social psychology will suffice. " Rep. Ind.," p. 29s ; Meth., p. 9 ; Div. Tr., pp. 70-71 ; Vie ReL, pp. 453 and S9S; ^. S., vol. ix, p. 159; A. S., vol. vi, pp. 69-71. » On this point, cf. Titchener, E. B., Outlines of Psychology, p. 359 ; James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 526; Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, pp. 14-18; Hoffding, H., Outlines of Psychology, p. 100. p-7] DURKHEIM'S PREMISES gy our argument) that Durkheim reduces the principle of human individuality to the simple and fundamental basis of biological difference. The mind of the individual being in its entirety a part of the social mind, the body becomes the sole differentiating factor/ This contention of our author was criticized in an earlier chapter.^ It is an over- statement, to say the least, of the importance of the social mind as against the individual mind. Wundt, the resem- blance of whose theory to Durkheim's has been suggested, does not seem to relegate the individual mind to so unim- portant a role. His voluminous works on physiological psychology indicate that he considers the structural and functional phases of the individual's mental apparatus quite as important as the content phase. That Wundt is prim- arily the psychologist and Durkheim the sociologist ac- counts in part for this difference of emphasis. A consider- able part of Durkheim's opinion may be traced to the in- exorable logic that drives him, apparently, to the conclusion that, since no element of the content of the individual's mind can be wholly free from the modifying influences of the social mind, the whole content of his mind must be ascribed to these influences ; thus leaving room for the indi- viduality only in the purely physiological processes and structures. But by far the most vulnerable side of this theory is its treatment of the individual as a causative factor in the social process. Durkheim's position on this question was considered earlier in this study,' along with that of Wundt. According to the former, )no individual can be the origi- nator of social facts. There are, it is true, certain objec- 1 Vide sapra, pp. 86, 87. 2 Vide supra, ch. ii, p. 45. 3 Vide supra, p. 68. gS DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [98 tions, valid on general grounds, against this view, that fall down if we accept, with Durkheim, the mind-stuff hypothe- sis. That is, they are not sound arguments against the theory (of social causation) unless we disregard this major premise. For example, it may be urged that a social mind, being a part of the universe, must be related to the rest of the universe. (This is implicit in Durkheim's phil- osophy.) The rest of the universe consists of other social minds, of individual minds, and of physical phenomena. With the relation of a social mind to its constituent individ- ual minds we are familiar. The 'relation of a social mind to other social minds, and to the physical world, ought then to be a relation mediated through the individual minds. For how could changes in the physical world get into the social mind save through, ultimately, the sensations of the individuals? Would not the individual mind then be an originative centre with reference to the social mind? In reply Durkheim might say that while the individual mind may be affected by the change in the physical world, the social representation that would be produced because of this cosmic change would be a combination of fonner states of the individuals' minds modified by their combining with the new state traceable to the cosmic change; and in so far as it was a truly social representation coming to the individual from without it could not be individually origi- nated. In other words, our definition of a social fact (itself really a restatement of the psychological hypothesis) auto- matically bars any fact from consideration as social unless it be clearly not individual in origin. The strongest case against a purely social causation theory is that presented by the study of the genius. Whether we accept the Durkheimian major premise or not, the genius is an unanswerable argument against barring the individual as a causal factor in the social life. Durkheim does not gg] DURKHEIM'S PREMISES gg admit this importance of the genius; though the specific references to the genius are very rare in his writings,^ they are of one tenor. - The genius, it must be remembered, is, consistently with Durkheim's most recent statements, only a superior kind of mould for the reception of social representations. He has simply a finer cerebral endowment than the mediocre or inferior individual. His mental content, like that of the lowest member of his social group, is entirely derived from the social mind of the group. Whatever superiority he may seem to have is really only lent to him by the society in which he lives. Naturally such a " genius " cannot be an originative factor in society. Now this view, which is the logical conclusion from Durkheim's premise, is for practical reasons untenable. To admit that a " genius " exists, means nothing unless it means that he has originative power in society. To say that Goethe or Napoleon merely expressed the social tendencies of their age is scarcely an explanation of why those tendencies were not as well ex- pressed by any Saxon peasant or French grenadier. Grant- ing even that the essence of genius is merely the superiority of a particular cerebral cortex, that cortex is then an origi- native factor in society. And what about those men of genius that are bom too soon — a Galileo or a Socrates? What social group's tendencies do they express? It is certainly true that the genius may, and usually does, speak the tongue of his age and group — but that he adds no new words to that tongue cannot be admitted, — unless we desire to say that he is no genius. The weakness of this theory of social causation lies in an implied intellectual equality of an unreal and impossible kind. To say, as Durkheim does,' that the differences in ' A passing reference, Metk, p. 137, footnote. 2 ^uir n 'if^'Z-A. ' Suic, p. 363-4. lOO DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [iqo the characteristics of various individuals neutralize each other is more or less nonsense. Does the criminal neutral- ize the philanthropist, the imbecile the genius? Even if we grant that the " collective " state of mind is produced by the fusion of individual states, must we necessarily con- ceive of the individual states, regardless of their individual, and varying sources, as being all of equal value and force in the fusing process? If mentality be at all corre- lated with physical endowment, it is fair to assume the same variability in the products of different minds. Why should not the mental products of the genius then be of superior importance in that fusion out of which comes the social state of mind? How else can we explain the domi- nance of an individual, a phenomenon common in the as- sembly, in the committee, if not so frequent in the larger group of the nation? For surely the rule passed by the assembly, or the committee, and designed to govern its in- dividual members is a " social fact " in the Durkheimian sense. The basic weakness of the group psychology of our author is tO' be found then in its mechanistic assumption of the automatic co-operation of a number of equal forces, the product of which is naturally not more imputable to any one of these forces than to any other. That in a society the contribution of a genius is not unmodified by the con- tributions of the rest of the members of the society is easily granted; but that it may not be the deciding influence in shaping a collective judgment seems founded neither in fact nor in logic. Social mind is of the nature of a living entity; such a theory of its origin is, to use a favorite term of Durkheim's, a " simplisme ". It is possible then, to conceive of the individual as an originative force in the production of social phenomena even while granting the major premise of Durkheim that the social mind is a compound of individual mental states. lOi] DURKHEIM'S PREMISES loi The individual becomes of the first importance, however, when we abandon this premise, and attack the problem of the social mind from a different psychological vantage- point. Let us start frankly with the " individual " mind, while admitting with our author that no " pure " indi- vidual ever existed. The individual whose mind we make the point of de- parture for our analysis of the social mind, brings with him into his mundane existence an organic cerebral structure, correlated with which are certain psychic predispositions : the instincts, their accompanying emotions, and other in- nate tendencies, like suggestibility, imitativeness, sym- pathy; a plasticity that is of vital importance in habit for- mation; some power of choice (whether scientifically or pragmatically verifiable). Every individual of normal in- heritance has a sort of standard equipment for the mental life; but the sizes and qualities of the various parts of the equipment differ among the various individuals, sometimes over a considerable range of variability. This makes pos- sible, by a mere chance combination of these elements in their various grades and quantities, an indefinitely large variety of inherited mental structures. The process of development of this inherited mental structure of the individual is in part a ripening of these tendencies through their functioning when the proper stimulus from the environment impinges upon the nervous system. This environment is ultimately physical; but it is mediated to the growing infant by other members of the social group. With some few things the infant is in direct contact ; but his environment is principally that of persons. His conduct is regulated at first by a more or less auto- matic establishment of pleasure-pain associations with var- ious acts and later by the approval or disapproval of his social group. Some elementary conceptions, like that of I02 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [102 Space, he may get directly through sensation, unmediated by the educative processes of the social group. But by far the largest part of his mental content he gets from his social environment; either unconsciously, as when he absorbs the conviction that his family or tribe or nation is preeminently distinguished and superior; or consciously, through the direct teaching of his elders in the home, the school, or the workshop. There is no point, however, at which one can say: here the inherited mental structure stops; beyond this only the content of the mind, social in its origin explains the state of the individual mind. (The two, structure and con- tent, are solidaire.^ The structure is modified according to the nature of the material on which it practices. The ma- terial is modified according to the nature of the structure that seizes hold of it. When this process has been com- pleted in the sense that the original plasticity of the mind has been somewhat decreased, and the mind has become a relatively permanent arrangement of habits, impulses, memories, the result is an adult individual. If this be a correct analysis of the process of development of the indi- vidual mind, then the individual mind is largely of social origin. That is, its content is formed chiefly of material which the individual has received from other individuals of his social milieu, and its form has been modified by the char- acter of this material. Up to this point in our analysis we have been consid- ering the individual as an absorptive centre in the social group. He has also another function; he is active, influ- ences others, as he himself is influenced. His mind, as formed by the milieu of his infancy, childhood and adoles- cence, has attained a certain consistency. His sphere of activity widens with his approach to and entrance upon adult life. He becomes an active instead of a merely pas- sive unit of the social group. He influences strongly those I03J DURKHEIM'S PREMISES 103 fellow-members of his group who are in immediate contact with him. Through these immediate neighbors his influ- ence is passed with weakened force tO' those other members of his group not in the same close touch with him as are his neighbors. He is a radiating centre of psychic influence. And such, in greater or less degree, is every other normal member of the same group. Each individual mind is there- fore a function of all the other minds, though of course not the same function of each one of them. There are qualita- tive differences in the effects that minds have upon each other : in one case the effect is largely wrought through the intellectual phase of the interaction; in another through the affective and volitional phases. Two minds may have an unequal effect, within the same phase of mind-activity, upon a third mind, e. g., one of the two may be a much stronger centre of suggestion than the other is. This highly fragmentary and merely suggestive statement of the interaction processes of the minds of individuals in social groups, does, in spite of its brevity, show how infi- nitely complex the social situation is on its psychic side. At this point may be suggested a possible justification of the principle upon which Durkheim lays so much emphasis ; namely, that social phenomena should be objectively consid- ered, as concrete products of the " social mind ". In his theory, the genesis of these phenomena is quite simple, once his psychological premise is granted. On the other hand, in the conception of the social mind as directly explainable by the mental processes of interacting indi- viduals, which we have here briefly sketched, there is an enormous complexity, which can be resolved only by at- tacking the problem of the nature of the individual mind and its functioning in society. In its entirety the social- psychic process baffles all but kn attempt at broad gener- alization. Durkheim cuts this Gordian knot by referring I04 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [104. the interaction of minds in society and the process of de- riving from this interaction a product in the form of a social fact to a psychological theory that is highly meta- physical. He then starts, as it were, in medias res with this social fact, the product. Thus the entire emphasis of his psychology (individual as well as social) is on the con- tent of the mind. The functional side of the mind's acti- vities interests him but little. However satisfactory such a method may be from the point of view of actually attack- ing concrete problems in sociology, it falls short at the most difficult and crucial point : that of explaining the origin of the social facts in a way that is scientifically verifiable. An analysis of the origin and products of the social mind has been the principal content of some of the most sig- nificant work in sociology. Le Bon and Tarde, as well as other psychologists, have studied the psychological mechan- ism of the crowd, and of the social groups greater and more stable than the crowd. Often this explanation has been one-sided; e. g., Tarde's insistence on the social process as being imitation alone; but, when balanced by other ex- planations, it has usually been very useful and illuminating. Psychologists like McDougall have analyzed the psychic apparatus of man and its significance for social life. Gid- dings has analyzed the process of formation of mental co- herence in society, and of consciously directed cooperation. Baldwin and Cooley have studied the logical and psycho- logical relations of the self and the other-than-self within the consciousness. Ross has treated descriptively the con- ditions that are antecedent to, and the accompaniment of, the harmonious functioning of men living in association. All of these workers have made contributions in the field of genetic social psychology; they have explained how the mutual interaction of minds in society results in the for- mation of a functioning unity, which may be called the " social mind ". 105] DURKHEIM'S PREMISES 105 It is significant that when Durkheim attempts to explain just how the individual minds interact to produce the social mind, he lapses into something almost like that individual psychology which he so utterly contemns/ He said (early in his career, it is true) ^ that general sociology ought to. study the formation of the collective consciousness. Aside from the essay on individual and collective representations, he has studied the formation of the collective conscious- ness only to the extent of repeating as a theme with slight variations, " that it is formed by the interaction, the fusing, the mingling of the individual minds." Concrete illustra- tions of how the minds of individuals A, B, C, D, have pro- duced the social mind (ABCD) or its products (abed) he does not explain — because he cannot so explain them and remain true to his premise. On the other hand, given the premise of the mind-stuff theory, the whole problem is solved. This brings us to the question: what is the social mind, if we may not or can not conceive of it in the Durkheimian sense ? Our minds, as individual members of a group of asso- ciating minds, are in constant interaction; each mind is a function of all the others. There is thus a basic oneness in diversity. Out of this socially produced oneness, plus na- tural psychological uniformity, springs, in reaction to com- mon stimulation, a like response. Without going into a prolonged analysis of this phenomenon, such as Giddings has made, we can summarize the process by saying that it eventuates, on its functional side, in a uniformity of action consciously perceived and directed by the agents, with a value heightened, by reason of the magnitude of the 1 Vide supra, p. 67. 'Rev. Phil, vol. xxii, p. 80 (1886). ,Io6 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [io6 reciprocal suggestive processes involved, far beyond the limits of the value of the purely individual act. Out of this fact of superior valuation comes the prestige of our author's "social" fact (as he himself has indicated).^ These social types of action acquire an emotion-tone, and a volitional force (due to the effect of the repeated and vol- uminous suggestions from other members of the group) which set them apart from the specifically individual actions that have not been thus accentuated. There is nothing in any type of activity which ipso facto makes it social. Any element of the individual's activity (as Durkheim himself has pointed out) " may be so stressed — witness the fact that every type of man's action has at ■one time or another, in some group or other, been the object of social prescription, i. e., has been a social fact in Durk- heim's sense of the term. The content of the social mind then is that common area of all the individual fields of consciousness on which the. social emphasis falls. At the same time this content is an integral part of the content of the individual mind. The mutual strengthening of the volitions, emotions, and ideas that are peculiar to this area, gives to the individual that sense of oneness with his fellows which we pragmatically regard as the consciousness of the social mind in which the individual minds are actively functional parts. Therefore it is not necessary to accept Durkheim's con- ception of the nature of mental processes in general in order to explain that reality which is in so peculiar a way both outside us, and within us : namely, that system of interact- ing minds the objective side of which we call the social group. ^Div. Tr., p. 67. 2 Vide supra, p. 44. 1 07] DURKHEIM'S PREMISES 107 This view allows just as much objectivity to the concrete products of social interaction as does Durkheim's theory. For example, why should laws or customs be any less objec- tive if we deny that they exist as entities outside of their individual manifestations? In fact, it is a remarkable para- dox that a semi-Platonic idea should be, by virtue of its pure detachment from the individual manifestation, objective! Moreover, we are thus enabled to free ourselves from that one-sided intellectualism which is so integral a part of Durkheim's psychology. The volitional and afifective phases of the mental process can, consistently with our theory, receive the full emphasis that they are now recog- nized as deserving. These phases are neither adequately evaluated in Durkheim's theory, nor are they accounted for in his fundamental hypothesis. CHAPTER V Sociology and the Special Social Sciences Durkheim's conception of the relation between sociol- ogy and psychology was discussed in Chapter III. The point to be considered in this chapter is that of the rela- tionship between sociology and the other social sciences, economics, political science, history, public and compara- tive law, Kultwgeschichte, etc. How distinctly does our author consider that the field of sociology is marked off from that of these special sciences? If there is an over- lapping of fields, how extensive is it? Are the methods of sociology or its points of view different from those of these other sciences ? In one of the earliest formal articles over his name,"- Durkheim expresses his views as to what sociology is and as to what it ought to be. Sociology [he says] has often been reproached with being very vague and ill-defined; it must be admitted that it has more than once merited this reproach. If, indeed, it ought to study all phenomena occurring within societies, it is not a science, but the science. . . . We, for our part, believe that it has a more limited scope, and a more precise object. For a fact to be sociological, it must interest not merely all the individuals taken separately, but the society itself, i. e. the etre collectif} Religion, considered merely as a set of beliefs and prac- ' Rev. Phil., vol. xxii, 1886, " Les fitudes de Science sociale," a critical review of works by Spencer, Regnard, Burdeau, Coste, Arreat, and Schaeffle. » Ibid., p. 66. 108 [108 log] THE SPECIAL SOCIAL SCIENCES 109 tices referring to a supernatural being, as mere products of the imagination, has no value for the sociologist, though it has for the psychologist. The sociologist and the historian of religions have two different tasks. " Not that religion has not a place in sociology. But the sociologist ought to undertake solely to determine its social role." He also says : " The sociologist ought then tO' consider economic facts, the state, morality, law, religion, as so many func- tions of the social organism, and he will study them as phe- nomena taking place within the limits of a circumscribed and definite society " ^ This will mean that economics, political science, the study of law and morals, shall lose their autonomy, cease tO' be summaries of logical concepts of a priori reasoning, and shall become what they really should be, studies of various phases of the social whole, the nation. Sociology, then, includes three particular sciences : the first, which studies the state; the second, which studies the regula- tive functions, law, morals, religion ; and the third, which studies the economic functions of the society. Besides this normal sociology, there is a pathological sociology of which criminology is the part farthest advanced. . . . These special studies {sc, economics, etc., and criminology], however, do not exhaust the field of sociology. . . . There exists a general sociology which has for an object to study the general prop- erties of social life. It is these particularly that are treated in the works of Comte, SchaefHe, Lilienfeld, Le Bon, Gumplowicz, Sicilian], etc. But it must not be thought that it has been created ex nihilo. On the contrary, it finds its materials all prepared in the three special sciences just mentioned, and of which it is a kind of synthesis. ... It is the task of general sociology to study the formation of the collective consciousness, the principle of the division of labor, the function and Hmits of natural selection and of the struggle for existence within soci- ' !bid., p. 7g. no DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [xiq eties, the law of the heredity or of the continuity of the social evolution, etc., etc. Have we not here the materials for some fine [belles'] generalizations?' The salient features, then, of this early exposition of our author's conception of the field and the relationships of soci- ology are these: (i) The phenomena occurring within so- ciety, religious, moral, political, economic, are to be con- sidered under the aspect of their significance as collective facts, not merely as general facts. So far as they relate only to each individual in the social group they are of no value to the sociologist. So far as they relate to all of the group as a collective unity they are of value. This is the earliest statement by Durkheim of the nature of the social fact, which we have more fully discussed in Chapter III. Another way of expressing this early view is to consider such facts as social so far as they are " functions of the social organism ". (2) There is a " pathological " sociol- ogy, studying abnormal social facts. (3) There is also a general sociology, a synthesis of the facts presented by the special social sciences. Durkheim, while confessing a belief in the existence of a general sociology, has never emphasized it either in his dis- cussions of the method and scope of sociology or in his treatment of sociological problems. Occasionally he men- tions it with approval ; ^ but his publications fail to reveal 1 Ibid., pp. 79-80. * E. g., A. S., vol. i, p. iv. " It is a branch of sociology no less useful than the others, and if it lends itself more easily to the abuse of gen- erality and of fancy, this is not a necessity of its nature. Nevertheless, we admit that our efforts will tend above all to call forth studies treat- ing the most limited subjects, and belonging to special branches of sociology. For, since general sociology can be only the synthesis of these special sciences, since it can consist only iai a comparison of their most general results, it is not possible except in the degree that these are advanced." And in the preface of vol. ii, of the A. S. (p. i) he re- peats this idea. in] THE SPECIAL SOCIAL SCIENCES m anything that looks even at a distance like the general sociology such as has been put forward by the authors whom he cites in the excerpt just quoted. The nearest approach to it is Les Regies de la mSthode sociologique, and that con- tains only a few fragments of what might be developed into a system of general sociology. As we shall see in the discussion of his methodology in Chapter VI, Durkheim practically changes his idea of pathological sociology; at least in regard to making crime a pathological social fact,, as he seems to do in the excerpt we have just mentioned. While in Les Regies Durkheim does not stress the prob- lem of the scope of sociology, except in its relation to psy- chology, he treats the definitions of " social fact " at con- siderable length; the conception that he has of it is signifi- cant for the relation of sociology to the special social sci- ences^ as we shall soon see. " We come then," he says, " to the point of expressing in a precise way the domain of sociology. It consists only of a determinate group of phenomena. A social fact is to^ be recognized by the power of external coercion which it exercises or is capable of exercising on the individual." ^ What are the logical results of such a limitation of the social fact? Does it set apart for the special field of sci- entific activity of the sociologist any group of phenomena not already the subject-matter of social sciences? From the quotations that have been made it is clear that religious,^ moral, and juridic ' facts, possessing as they all do the characteristics of collectivity, and of compulsory power, are included within the field of the strictly " social ". Eco- nomic facts are essentially, though perhaps not so obviously,, 1 Meth., p. 15, see also ibid., p. 8, and supra, ch. iii, p. 58. ' Cf. A. S., vol. ii, p. 23. » Cf. A. S., vol. vii, p. 375. 112 DVRKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [112 as coercive as those of morality or of law. Phenomena of social morphology, as we saw before/ Durkheim also con- siders as belonging to this general class of phenomena. The facts of a truly scientific political science are social in the sense that our author uses this terai. Since all phe- nomena that have occurred within society and have been recorded fall within the field of history, many social facts are, of course, included in the material of historical inves- tigation. Thus it is clear, that, given the definition of " social fact " to which Durkheim is committed, the field of sociology is logically not clearly distinct from that of the special social sciences, but to some degree these fields must overlap. That overlapping may be so great as to constitute coincidence of areas. In the essay, " Sociologie et sciences sociales," we have a comparatively recent and explicit discussion of Durkheim's views on the question.^ The thesis of this essay is a double one; its two parts are: (i) " Sociology is, and can be, only the corpus, the system, of the social sciences." (2) " This rapprochement \^sc., of the social sciences] under a common rubric does not constitute a mere verbal operation, but it implies and indicates a radical change in the method and the organization of these sciences." ' As a preliminary to the defence of these propositions Durkheim discusses the views of Comte, Spencer, John St. Mill, Giddings, and Simmel, on the relation of sociology to the various social sciences. Sociology, he says, was cradled by philosophy. Only a! philosopher could create a science de novo. All of Comte's predecessors as well as his opponents were philosophers; ■• Vide supra, ch. iii, pp. 62, 63. ' Rev. Phil., vol. Iv, 1903. 3 Ibid., p. 465. 1 13 J THE SPECIAL SOCIAL SCIENCES 113 SO it is natural that sociology should have arisen in the thought of the philosopher Comte. While over all natural facts, including those of society, Comte posited a reign of law, still, to him the various fields were very clearly dis- tinct. Hence, sociology, being a science, had in common with other sciences only its positive method. Moreover, the few social sciences of that day, e. g., economics, were far from being scientific. They were extremely ideologi- cal, and not inductive. Out of this condition of the social sciences arose Comte's disdain for them in general."' Spencer, too, was an ideologist and a philosopher. He made, however, two distinct advances on Comte's work; he reintegrated society with nature, made its evolution a part of cosmic evolution; and he introduced the idea of so- cieties, as against the " society " of Comte. This permitted the introduction of classification of societies, a step neces- sary if a science was tO' be built up.^ Comte's path, as was logically inevitable, was soon shown to be a cul-de-sac. His one supreme contribution, the law of the three stages, could lead nowhere, for it was the grand conclusion, mis-placed at the beginning of the science instead of at its end. It did not present that " fe- cundity " and " continuity " characteristic of truly scien- tific conceptions. Comte's followers never got beyond it. The only progress in a science is a progress by specializa- tion, and such progress was impossible in Comte's system.' Sociology, in our time, Durkheim believes, has not progressed far beyond Comte. One tendency which is really a retrogression from Comte's position calls for notice. Modern sociologies are largely philosophic in method and 1 Rev. Phil., vol. Iv, 1903, pp. 466-469. ' Ibid., pp. 469-47(1. ' Ihid., pp. 470-1. 114 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [114 content; in so far they are like that of Comte. But they nearly all attempt to explain society by a single fundamental principle : imitation, struggle for existence, race conflict, or physical environment. In that respect they fall short of Comte's ideal of a social synthesis which included all facts of social life; because the single fundamental principle, in itself alone, would lead inevitably to specialization. Mod- ern writers have eliminated the tendency to specialization from sociology. " While each of the social sciences is lim- ited," they say, " to a determinate category of social phe- nomena, sociology has for its subject-matter social life in general ; it is as the general social science that it constitutes a distinct individuality." ^ What is meant by the word " general " as it is used in this title, " general sociology " ? There are two ways of interpreting it. A " general "' science may be ( i ) a science concrete, , synthetic, where the other sciences are abstract and analytic ; " general " in the comprehensive sense, as including all the phenomena 01 society; (2) a science abstract, analytic, taking from the material of the other sciences the elements common to all, and being hence of a high degree of indefiniteness ; an ex- tensive use of the term. The first definition is that held to by Mill.^ According to Durkheim, Mill conceives of the field of sociology as one including all the states of a society in their coexist- ences ("correlations"), i. e., the "static" problem; and in their successions, i. e., the dynamic problem. Our author's objection to this conception of a general sociology is based not so much on theoretical as on practical consid- erations. He says : > Ibid., pp. 472-3. ' Ibid., p. 473. Iig THE SPECIAL SOCIAL SCIENCES 115 A whole so heterogeneous [sc, the mass of material that Mill would include] could not be studied en bloc as if it were en- dowed with an objective unity. It is an infinite world of whicli one can have only an abbreviated conception. So far as one attempts to embrace it at a glance and in its entirety, one must be resigned to perceiving it broadly and summarily, i. e. con- fusedly. It is then necessary that each part of it be studied by itself; each is vast enough to serve as matter for a whole science. And so this general and unique science called soci- ology resolves itself into a multitude of distinct, although soli- daire, branches.^ Even the border regions between two of these branches are to be studied by the specialist in either one or the other of the two, and not by the " general " sociologist.'^ Of the sociologists who use the word " general " in the- second sense of the term, Giddings is chosen by Durkheim as representative.^. He believes the subject-matter of general sociology to be the universal, common elements of all social processes, economic, political, etc. It is not logically subsequent, but antecedent, to the special social sciences; it is the basis of them; "its far-reaching conclusions are the postutates of the social sciences." Against this view Durkheim advances three objections: (i) Logically antecedent or not, the materials for such a general science are those of the special sciences; (2) these elementary- forms, which are not " primitive " but are " universal ", are nowhere revealed in a pure isolation from their local variations ; the lack, however, of a system of classification makes this isolation a matter of arbitrary determination; (3) the general sociologist will be dropping constantly ' Ibid., p. 474. ' Ihid., p. 475. ' Ihid., pp. 476-9. See, also, Giddings, Princ. of Sociology, p. 33 et seq: Il6 ^ DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [nS into the specialist's field to handle materials with which he is not competent to deal. All these inevitable shortcomings, due to a faulty method, make this type of general sociology merely a " methodical philosophy ", such as that which Comte attempted. Let us interrupt for a moment the development of Durk- heim's thesis, in order to examine a little more closely his criticism of the view held by Giddings. This criticism is rooted in the profound difference between the psychological approaches of the two thinkers. Durkheim, as we saw in) Chapter III, separates the social- from the individual-psy- chic. Now the " universal elements " of Giddings are indi- vidual-psychic entities ; they are the elements common to all forms of association; association is rooted in, and built upon, the individual's psychic nature. For Durkheim the social, though of the psychic order, is not, except in the most vague way, dependent upon the individual's psychic processes. Thus Durkheim cannot account for any indi- vidual-psychic elements common to all phases of social life as such. To resume Durkheim's argument. We have, besides these two conceptions of " general " sociology held by Mill and Giddings, still another, that of Simmel. For this writer the distinction between the special social sciences and general sociology is based on the differences between the " content " of society, i. e., the phenomena occurring within it, and the container, i. e., the association itself within which these phenomena appear. Association is the sole entity expressly social, and sociology is the science of association in abstracto. The form, or container, is not the social structure, but the system of relations between parts, including such things as the division of labor, com- petition, domination, subordination, etc. Our author criticises this conception on the following 117] THE SPECIAL SOCIAL SCIENCES ny grounds: by what right, he asks, does Simmel separate containers from contained? Both are aspects of the same whole. Furthermore, there is no clear definition of the sociological field/ Summarizing then the weaknesses of " general sociol- ogy " as conceived of by these various writers : this sci- ence has not marked off any definite portion of the field of research ; each worker attempts to cover it all ; and this nec- essarily results in a semi-philosophic kind of generalization. The practical result is that sociology is marking time and getting nowhere. To take the position assumed by Durkheim on this ques- tion does not mean, he assures us, that the idea of a positive science of societies, comparable to biolog)', should be abandoned. Quite on the contrary, this idea main- tains its value even to-day, and it must be utilized resolutely. Only, in order to be fertile, it must be applied to the appro- priate material, i. e. the totality of social facts without excep- tion. We may not isolate this or that aspect of this totality to make of it the special object of a new science \sc., general sociology] ; any more than biology \sc., " general "] may treat one part of biological phenomena rather than another. So- ciology is nothing if it is not the science of societies consid- ering at the same time their organization, their functioning, and their development. All that enters into their constitution or into the course of their development belongs to the socio- logist. Such a multitude of phenomena cannot be studied, evidently, except through a number of special disciplines, among which social facts are apportioned, and which comple- ment each other. Consequently, sociology can be only the system of the social sciences." 1 Rev. Phil., vol. Iv, 1903, pp. 480-1. ^ Ibid., p. 485. See also A. S., vol. i, pp. i, iv; A. S., vol. ii, pp. i, ii; Suic, pp. vi, vii, viii. Il8 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [ng What does it mean, to call the special social sciences branches of sociology ? " To integrate them in sociology- is not merely to impose on them a new generic name, it is to show that they should change their direction [s'orienter dans un sens nouveau]. The problem is to impregnate the detail of facts . . . with that notion of natural law, the extension of which to the social realm in general is the great glory of Comte." ^ In this way the sociologist con- tinues in the spirit of Comte and Spencer, though not with their method. This would be a very difificult task were it not for the fact that in the past fifty years the workers in the special social sciences have been orienting themselves in a sociological direction, without formally assuming the name of " sociologists ".^ They show this tendency in many ways. History, for example, no longer picks out the individual, peculiar, and isolated phenomena which are difificult to subject to any conception of ordered sequence, but it studies institutions, the permanent elements of society, which af- ford material for comparisons in time and space. Com- parative jurisprudence applies the scientific method to an- other field. Economics has ceased to be purely ideological, a priori^ universal, and has become inductive; it studies the facts in their local and temporal variations. Besides these there have arisen new branches of social science. Anthro- pology — ethnology, Kulturgeschichte , comparative study of religions, comparative ethics — all these have seized upon the synthetic method of science. And while these syn- theses are often only descriptive, and sometimes frag- ' Rev. Phil., vol. Iv, pp. 483-6. ' Cf. Durkheim's review of Ed. Meyer's Geschichte des Altertums, in A. S., vol. xi, p. 12, " Cette culture, M. M. I'appelle anthropologique : mais le mot importe peu a la chose. Au fond, c'est bien de sociologie Meth., p. 3. ' Meth., Preface to the second edition, p. x. » Ibid. 126 [126 127] DURKHEIM'S METHOD 127 examined: his definition of " social facts " and his principle of social causation.^ There remain to be considered four other important elements of his practice. Briefly stated they are the following: the principles that should govern the observation of social facts; the distinction between the normal and the pathological in sociological study ; the nature of social types ; and the logical means for adducing positive proof in sociology. ( I ) The Principles for the Observation of Social Facts Every science is in its early phases ideological, says Durk- heim.^ By this he means that it then consists largely of a logical development of one or more leading concepts. Ob- served facts are utilized at best merely as illustrations of these leading principles, not as the material from which these principles are derived by induction.^ The constant tendency is to treat the concepts as if they were the actual concrete material of the science; they are confounded with the objective realities. Moreover, these concepts are fre- quently, if not usually, the simple, common (vulgadre) ideas about things ; * often enough involving inaccuracy as to fact; as, e. g., those of the Ptolomaic system of astronomy. They are the " notiones vulgares", or " praenotiones " of Bacon.^ Besides this, no sooner is such a science created, than it is transformed into an art ; or, more exactly, it starts as an art, with practical aims. Thus chemistry tried in its alchemistic days to find the philosopher's stone. Nowhere is this ideological method so common and so seductive as in the social field." The psychic origin of social 1 Vide supra, ch. iii. ' Meth., pp. 20-21. ^ Ibid., p., 21. * Ibid. 5 Ibid., p. 23. " Ibid., p. 24. 128 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [128 phenomena, as it is ordinarily conceived, makes the deriva- tion of such phenomena from ideas a simple and apparently logical process. Thus it seems easy to consider that the idea of contract lies at the basis of society. Again, the enormous and complicated mass of facts in the social realm makes a summary and arbitrary view of its phenomena a simple way out of the difficulties of the problems it presents. In the social field especially we are in danger of accepting the " praenotiones " in the absence of scientific terminology and definition. Comte and Spencer each attempted a science of society, but without success. Comte failed because, inconsistent with his intent to treat social phenomena as facts of the natural order, and as subject tO' " positive " methods of study, he tried to explain all social facts by means of his theory of the evolution of humanity.^ Spencer was not successful because he arbitrarily set up juxtaposition and co- operation as the defining characters of society. Moreover, his " industrial " and " militaristic " societies are both ideo- logical conceptions.^ Out of these two writers' definitions can be derived, by a process of deductive reasoning, all the characteristics of the society that they discuss. Be- side these writers, whom Durkheim singles out as best illustrating this tendency, nearly all the other writers in the fields of ethics and economics have used this method. In ethics the utilitarian principle, or the categorical imper- ative, is set up as the principle of morality, and the concrete rules of conduct are then derived from one or the other.' In economics the actual facts are used merely as illustrations of how the desire for riches works itself out logically in actual life; how the principle of value, d'erived not from ' Meth., p. 25. ' Ibid., p. 27. ^ Ibid., p. 30. 129] DURKHEIM'S METHOD 120 facts, but solely by deductive processes, is illustrated in the market ; and so on/ " * That these sciences in their early stages were to a large extent developed in practice, naturally w^eakened them in so far as their scientific value was concerned. Now the radical need of the social sciences, according to our author, is to become " positive ", i. e., essentially, " in- ductive ", " scientific " in the accepted sense of the term. Durkheim says : " This book is above all an effort to treat the facts of the moral life according to the method of the positive sciences." * A necessary antecedent step in all such treatment is to eliminate hindering metaphysical presuppo- sitions, as well as the " praenotiones " which are usually of even a more humble origin.'' For extreme libertarian metaphysics, of a sort to overthrow the principle of neces- sary causation, must be dropped or there can be no science of any sort. Moreover this rule (of eliminating meta- physical presuppositions) implies in itself no " metaphysical conception, no speculation as to the fundamental nature {fmid) of things." ° This statement of Durkheim's im- plies at the most a desire on his part to avoid entangling philosophical alliances, for we see that his psychology is based on a metaphysical hypothesis. But this need not be held against him as an unpardonable offence against scientific 1 Meth., pp. 31-32. .' This criticism by Durkheim was noted in the discussion of social causation, vide supra, p. 59. ' There are numerous other criticisms by our author, beside these stated in Les Regies; cf. A. S., vol. i, p. 69; A. S., vol. ii, p. 16; Rev. Phil., vol. xxiv, " La Science positive de la morale en AUemagne," pp. 42, 276; A. S., vol. X, p. 383 et seq. * Div. Tr., p. xxxvii. » Ibid. * Meth., p. xiii. 130 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [130 method ; for, as a matter of fact, no science is wholly without a metaphysical background. It must at least have as a basis some " Erkenntnisstheorie ", as Bergson has shown.^ The fundamental principle of the Durkheimian "positive" method is to treat social facts as things (choses). "A thing is in fact whatever is given or offered to, or rather, imposes itself upon, the observation. To treat phenomena as things is to treat them as data constituting the point of departure of the science"; in other words, to study eco- nomic values — not economic " value " — to study " mores " not ethics (morale). Consistent with his psychology, as we have found it, social facts are to be studied apart from the conscious subjects in whose minds they must exist.^ They are to be considered from without (du dehors). The objectivity of social facts is an objectivity shown by their persistence in consciousness; no mere willing can remove them or change them. As psychology has changed from the inexact introspective method to the exact experimental method in which psychical processes are measured scientifi- cally, so sociology must change from its introspective, "psychological" (in the sense of "individual-psycholog- ical ") ^ method to an objective, " exterior " method. This change is easier for the sociologist than it was for the psychologist, because of the more objective nature of social facts.* In the course of applying this principle of treating social facts as things, certain subsidiary rules must be observed. The first of these is to eliminate (ecarter) all the " prae- ^ Bergson, Creative Evolution, p. 194. - Vide supra, p. 61. 2 As explained in the discussion on social causation, vide supra, p. 67 et seq. * Meth., pp. 37-39; also vide supra, p. 61. Cf. also Wundt, Out- lines of Psychology, pp. 22-23. 131 j DURKHEIM'S METHOD 131: notiones",^ i. e., those conceptions formed outside the sci- ence, for other than scientific purposes; especially those to which sentiment is attached. These are very numerous in- the sociological field. The second rule is but the positive side of this injunction: It is this: never take for an object of study anything but a group of phenomena defined in advance by certain exterior characters common to all, and tO' include in the same re- search all phenomena included within that definition.^ Noav this scientific delimitation of the fact to be studied is ulti- mately traceable to the non-scientific or " common-sense "" definition of it; one frequently must start from that as a point of departure. But the crude definition must be scien- tifically qualified. It was a neglect of this simple rule that led to Spencer's confusing the monogamy that he found at the beginning of social evolution with that which he dis- covered in modem societies. Durkheim says,^ they are not at all the same phenomena. The early " pairing " family was unregulated; modern monogamy is a legally enforced- arrangement. Between these two types there is, therefore,, only a specious resemblance. The use of the conventional every-day definition of monogamy, instead of a specific de- finition, was the basis of this error of Spencer's. The third rule is to eliminate as far as possible the per- sonal equation, the individual judgment of the observer, by considering social facts " from a side where they present themselves isolated from their individual manifestations." * ' Meth., p. 40 ; cf. Div. Tr., p. xlii. ' Meth., p. 4S. ' Meth., p. 48. For other statements of this principle of exact, scien- tific definition as a rule for the sociologist see: A. S., vol. ii, pp. 1-2,. " Puisque la sociologie religieuse, etc.," p. 16, " Seule, la, etc.,' ; Vie Rel.^ p. 6, " Par la," etc., pp. 31-32, " Non pas que, etc." * Meth., p. 57- 132 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [132 The facts treated in sociology should be those having the highest degree of objectivity. Social currents are refrac- tory material for the sociologist (except in so far as he can measure them indirectly through statistical rates, as, e. g., the tendency to suicide)/ Customs, lavirs, etc., are good ma- terial — as Durkheim has tried to show by his use of them in La Division da travail — ^because they are clearly objective and well defined, at least where they have been assembled in ■codes. (2) The distinction between normal and pathological Observation, if practiced merely as indicated in the rules just examined, necessarily confuses two diverse varieties of the species " social facts " : namely, those that ought to be and those that ought not to be ; the normal and the patho- logical.^ Durkheim disagrees with those who' deny the nor- mative function of science; for if science cannot declare what shall be the goal of human action, of what practical importance is it? ^ If it cannot decide as to ends, how may it speak with authority as to means? The distinction be- tween means and ends is a difficult one to draw ; any means may become an end. The ideological method permits a, solution of this dilemma;* but since our author has set himself against that method, it is necessary to find some sci- entific way of solving the problem as to what is normal and what is not. This whole difficulty arises in the first place out of Durkheim's desire to consider science as having both a practical and a " scientific " function." In the search for a criterion of normality we find a num- ber of standards suggested. Absence of pain, adaptation 1 Meth., p. 13 and Suic, p. 360. ^ Meth., p. 59 ; cf. also Div. Tr., p. xxxix and Div. Tr., ist ed., p. 33. ' Meth., p. 60. * Ibid., p. 61. * Ibid., pp. 61-62; also Div. Tr., pp. xxxviii-xxxix. 133] DURKHEIM'S METHOD 133 to environment, survival value, perfect functioning, all these have been put forward. But pain may be absent in a mortal disease and may accompany a slight indisposition ; " adaptation " and " perfect functioning " beg the whole question ; " survival-value " can be measured only by a se- lective death-rate. How would a death-rate for social facts within a social group be determined ? ^ None of these will do because they all involve unjustifiable assumptions. What is needed here is an " objective, exterior, and immediately perceptible mark " " of the normal. This mark is the " gen- erality " of the phenomenon. " We shall call normal those facts which present the most general forms and we shall give to the others the name of morbid or pathological." ^ Thus we can have a "normal type," a sort of "abstract in- dividual ", constituted of " the most frequent characters of the species in their most frequent forms " ; this " normal type " can then be said to be the " average (moyeny type ".* " Certain qualifications of this general definition must be noted. Normality is always relative to the species,, and to certain stages of the individual or racial develop- ment, when the term is applied to living things. That which is normal for the mollusc is not normal for man; that which is normal for the child is not so for the old man ; and the normal for the savage is not normal for the civilized man." Durkheim adds, however, that morbidity (maladie) is " natural ", in the sense of being a naturally caused phe- * Meth., pp. 62-68. 2 Ibid., p. 69. ^ Ibid., p. 70. •* Durkheim does not distinguish between the arithmetic average and the mode. Clearly he is using the term "'average type" in the sense of the " modal type.'' * Cf. Div. Tr., 1st ed., p. 34. A moral fact is normal for a given social type when it occurs in the average society of that kind. " Meth., p. 71- ^34 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [134 nomenon, even though it be not " normal " ; ^ a statement quite in accord with what we know of one great group of •diseases, the zymotic. A special characteristic of the oppo- site of morbidity, namely, health (sante), is also to be noted; Ihat is its desirability as compared with " maladie "/ There is a good reason for this; on the whole, those characteristics are normal which have tended to survive; those are ab- normal which have tended to disappear through selective processes. This is, however, an apparent acceptance in part of the " survival-value " criterion mentioned above as ■one of those rejected by our author.^ It is important for practical purposes that a reason for this " normality " (namely, the characteristic of generality, found within a given class of social facts) should be ascer- 'tainable ; and in every case the normality should be logically checked up.* These statements are illustrated in a situ- a;tion such as this: a custom may persist into a period in which it is not solidaire with the conditions of the group that practices it.* It is then normal in appearance only. A careful comparison of the present condition with the earlier one alone can reveal whether the normality of a custom of to-day is real or only specious." Durkheim summarizes his rules of method with reference to the normal and patho- logical as follows : (i) A social fact is normal for a given social type, consid- ered at a given phase of its development, when it is found in the average of the' societies of that species [espece] consid- ered at the corresponding phase of their evolution. (2) One can verify the results of the preceding method by showing that the generality of the phenomenon is bound up 1 Meth., p. 72. ' IMd., p. 75. 2 Vide supra, p. 133. * Meth., p. 74. '" Ihid., p. 75. ° Ibid., p. 77. 135] DURKHEIM'S METHOD i^e with {tient a) the general conditions of the collective life of the social type considered. (3) This verification is necessary when this fact is related to a social species which has not yet accomplished its integral evolution/ As an illustration of the use of this method, Durkheim submits the proposition that crime is not a pathological phenomenon ; and that it may even be a useful factor in the social health (sante).^ His argument may be summarized thus : crime is found in all societies ; it is therefore normal. It may, however, become a pathological phenomenon when its quantity is abnormal. Its positive value rests on these considerations: crime (such as murder) could be made socially impossible only by increasing the social pressure against it to such a degree that no one could commit a criminal act. But this would mean increasing the pressure to such an extent that misdemeanors formerly only venial would now have the significance of crimes, because the social sentiments tO' which they would do violence would be as strong as those that had formerly reprehended the more serious offences against society. Murder would cease to exist ; but lesser offences would now be as reprehensible as murder formerly was. Any society with so rigid a control would be quite incapable of progress. As a matter of fact, the criminal has occasionally been the useful social leader. Socrates was such a criminal. The variability of the individuals composing society explains the existence of crime, and it is also out of this variability that progress must be expected.' \ It would seem better to say, not that crime 1 Metk., p. 80. ^/did., pp. 80-93. 3 Cf. Rev. Phil., vol. xxxix, p. 518-523, for Durkheim's defence of this position against the attack of Tarde, whose article is found ibid., pp. 148-162, " Criminalite et sante sociale" 136 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [135 itself is useful, but that the condition of which crime is a symptom is a sine qua non of social advance. (3) The co'nstitution of social types Normality is to be considered with reference to a certain type. What is our author's conception of a social type? Historians treat each individual nation as a thing sui genr- eris. Philosophers treat the individual nation as simply il- lustrating the fundamental principles of social life. Be- tween these nominalistic and realistic ideas of social groups we may put a golden mean, the idea of a social species (espece).'- This problem may be attacked by the monographic method; but that necessitates choosing certain standards of classification, for otherwise the mass of monographs (even if complete) would be of no value. What shall these criteria of class be? How numerous shall they be made? It is clear that the larger the number of criteria of a species the more difficult will be its identification, and hence a small number is desirable.'^ If the nature of a society de- pends on the nature and number of its component elements, and on the mode of their combination, then it is clear that in the simpler units of society lies the clue to a proper sys- tem of classification.^ Durkheim points out that this method, followed by Her- bert Spencer, has as a basis of classification a passing from the simple to the complex which is also the genetic principle of classification.* Spencer's elementary unit is a " simple " society. " We cannot in all cases say with pre- cision what constitutes a simple society. . . . Our only course is to regard as a simple society one which forms a 1 Meth., pp. 94-96. ' Ibid., pp. ',7-99. ' Ibid., p. 100. ' Cf. Giddings, Principles of Sociology, p. 63. 1 37 J DURKHEIM'S METHOD i^^ single working whole unsubjected to any other, and of which the parts co-operate with or without a regulating centre, for certain public ends." ' This is too loose a definition in Durkheim's estimation;, for Spencer's classification masses Homeric Greeks, tenth- century fiefs, Chippewas, Coast Negroes, and' Abyssinians in one class.^ " Simple " should imply the " absence of parts "/ Now the simplest social group is, in our author's estimation, the horde; defined in an earlier work* as "a mass absolutely homogeneous, whose parts are not distin- guished from each other, and consequently would not be arranged among themselves; which, in a word, would be lacking (deponrvie) both definiteness of form and organi- zation." It is an aggregation of individuals without a sub- aggregation intervening between it and the individual members. It is true, Durkheim admits, that precisely such a unit is not known in history; but we know a multi- tude of social groups formed directly out of these units by a single combination (repetition) . The result of this single combination is the clan, which is everywhere the ultimate actual unit. This is an exception to Durkheim's principles of method. The unit of classification should be one that may be objectively studied. The " horde " is not such a unit. Then why use it? The rest of Durkheim's system of classification is practi- cally like that of Spencer. The former has " simple poly- segmentary " groups, mere aggregations of clans, like the tribe of the Australians ; these combine into " polysegmen- tary societies, simply compounded " ; these into " polyseg- ^ Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. i, part ii, pp. S37-8. ^ Spencer, op. cit., p. 540. ' Meth., p. 102. * Div. Tr., p. 149. 138 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [138 mentary societies doubly compounded "/ Spencer has " simple ", " compound ", " doubly compound " groupings. The principle is exactly the same.^ Besides this simple doubling and redoubling, Durkheim admits various other modes of compounding, in which groups of different stages of complication are united into new types of aggregation. Both these writers admit the approximateness of this sys- tem of classification,^ and rightly so, for it has all the virtues of a good classification except a basis in ascertained fact. Civilized nations, by the time they have become his- torical, are complicated far beyond the possibility of having any such simple scheme as this applied to them, and of primitive groups we have only the most fragmentary his- tory on which to base any such genetic classification. For Durkheim at least the scheme seems inconsistent with the profession that he makes of being a " positive " scientist. The qualifications that he finds it necessary to introduce into the system — i. e., the degree of coalescence of the seg- ments ; * the variability introduced by differences in environ- ment together with the absence of a social heredity fixing the social type as the biological type is fixed — severally are tacit admissions of the weakness of the scheme.^ Normality, as we have seen, is, in Durkheim's view, al- ways relative to the species, to the stage of development. As a logical outcome of that principle he repeatedly insists that the method of the " ecole anthropologique " (repre- sented by Tylor, Frazer, Westermarck, Lang, Spencer, Crawley) is wrong, because it takes examples of the same social phenomena from widely scattered and enormously ' Meth., p. 104. '' Spencer, op. cit., pp. 539-542. ' Meth., p. 105 and Spencer, op. cit., p. 542. * MHh., p. 106. ^ Ibid., pp. 107-8. 139] DURKHEIM'S METHOD i^g diverse groups of mankind, and then compares these ex- amples. On the contrary, it is our author's beHef that for the sociologist as for the historian, the social facts are a function of the social system of which they are a part; they cannot be understood if detached from it. . . . The compara- tive method would be impossible if there were no social types, and it cannot be usefully employed save within the interior of the same type.^ Undoubtedly this is an important and useful principle. To be intelligible a social phenomenon must be considered in relation to its social context. This is thoroughly con- sistent with Durkheim's social psychology; and it is con- sistent also with the view held increasingly among psycholo- gists and anthropologists, that the varying content of mind explains apparent differences in the mental activities of dif- ferent social groups.^ The method that Durkheim criticises rests ultimately on an assumption of a psychological uni- formity, the fo'nn of which is so fixed and powerful that variation in environment cannot materially afifect the nature ' Vie Rel., p. 133. This opinion is repeatedly expressed by Durk- heim in reviews of works by the members of the ecole anthropolo- gique and others using their method. E. g. : A. S., vol. ii, p. 534. Review of Von Mayr's Statistik u. Gessell- schaftslehre. A. S., vol. iv, p. 341. Review of Steinmetz, Die neueren Forschungen zur Geschichte der menschlichen Familie. A. S., vol. V, p. 37S-6. Roman rights of testation not comparable to those of the middle ages. A. S., vol. vi, p. 352. Review of Crawley's Mystic Rose. A. S., vol. X, p. 385. Review of Westermarck's Origin and Develop- ment of the Moral Ideas. In A. S., vol. xi, pp. ii-iii, burkheim shows a new tendency in social classification, namely, to classify the types of civilization by the name of the group possessing them ; e. g. as " Bantou ", " Pueblo ", etc. 2 Cf. supra, p. 54- 140 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [140 of the products of the human mind. A further implication of this point of view is that whenever we find a certain cus- tom, or culture element of any sort, we must assume that it has originated in one, and only one, way, irrespective of locality. It is assumed that there has been a uniform de- velopment of culture and civilization all over the world. Hence the importance which " survivals " have for many of this school which Durkheim attacks. For a " survival " is significant only in so' far as the course of civilization has been approximately uniform the world over. If a capture symbol is in use in the marriage ceremony of a given group, civilized or not, and if there is no historical evidence of a stage of marriage by real capture in that particular group, then the symbol means nothing, unless we assume that that group passed through the same stages as another group which actually showed marriage by capture in historical times. This evolutionary hypothesis has been so severely attacked in recent years as to make an off-hand acceptance of it dangerous. Combined with it is of course the corollary that not only have certain elements developed always in a certain sequence, but that any given series of culture developments (such as art or technology) is accompanied at each phase by certain par- allel series, invariably present in a certain corresponding ABCDE phase. That if t? ct-TTV ^'"^ ^^° series of successive stages in two culture elements in one group of men, we must expect that in other groups we will find A with R, B with S, C with T, etc.^ ' The criticism of this method is summarized in Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, chs. vi, vii. As an illustration of the application of this critical principle see A. A. Goldenweiser, " Totemism, an Analyti- cal Study," lournal of American Folklore, vol. xxiii, pp. 179-293, in which it is shown that the elements usually considered to be solidaire within the phenomenon called " totemism," are as a matter of fact 141] DURKHEIM'S METHOD i^j Despite the fact that Durkheim criticises the logical con- clusions of this premise of uniform development, as they are shown in the unregulated choice of examples of one phe- nomenon from all kinds of social and cultural environments, he himself, implicitly and explicitly accepts the premise itself. His implicit acceptance of it is shown in his very system of classification. This is, as we have seen, quite Spencerian in its logical inevitableness of compounding and re-com- pounding. No hint is dropped as to the possibility of the splitting of a single group into two groups except in an allusion to colonization, which has no significance for the problem of classification as it stands in the text.^ Yet the splitting is not only possible, but it has been demonstrated as a historical fact.^ Such an invariability of the development of social organi- zation from the horde to the clan, to the simple poly seg- mentary groups, etc., is not significant for the sociologist except upon the assumption, that the development of culture, as well as of social organization, has necessarily been a linear one, everywhere uniform. The horde or the clan, consid- ered as a social " species ", means nothing unless it is cor- related with certain culture-phases which are different from those of the next species. — the tribe, or simple polyseg- mentary group. It is then manifestly inconsistent for our quite different among different culture groups. That is, the elements called in their collective aspect by that term are not the same elements in Australia as on the Northwest Coast of North America. A criticism of Herbert Spencer's indiscriminate lumping of data from all over the world is to be found in an article by Dewey, " Interpretation of Savage Mind," Psychol. Rev., vol. ix, p. 217. For a frank acceptance of the evolutionary standpoint in ethnology, see A. Lang, " Method in the Study of Totemisra," American Anthropologist, New Series, vol. xiv, pp. 368-382. " Meth., p. 108. = Boas, op. cit., p. 188. 142 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [142 author to object to the logical conclusion (carried, it is true, farther than he himself carries it) of a premise that he him- self holds. Durkheim's latest expressions ^ concerning the importance of the social environment should apparently lead to the abandonment of the rigid system of classification on which, in his earlier work, he rests his judgment of social normality. We find good examples of the explicit statement of the evolutionary hypothesis in La Vie religieuse. When one undertakes to explain a human fact [chose] taken at a given point of time — whether it be a question of a religious belief, a rule of morality, a juridic precept, an aesthetic tech- nique, an economic regime — one must begin by going back to its most primitive and simple form, seeking to account for the characters by which it is defined at that period of its exist- ence, then showing how it has, little by little, developed and become complicated, how it has become what it is at the given moment.^ ... If then, in the very low [humbles] societies which have been studied, we have really succeeded in seeing some of the elements of which are composed the most funda- mental religious notions, there is no reason for not extending to ether religions the most general results of our research.* Elsewhere we find similar statements : It is credible that the system [sc, of classification] of the Zuni is in reality a development and a complication of the Austra- lian system.* . . . Primitive classifications do not then consti- tute exceptional singularities, without analogy to those in use among the most civilized peoples ; they seem, on the con- * Vide supra, p. 44. ' Vie ReL, pp. 4-5. ' Ibid., p. 594. * A. S., vol. vi, " De quelques Formes primitives de classification", PP- 44-S- 1 43 J DURKHEIM'S METHOD 143 trary, to connect themselves [se rattacher] without a break [solution de contmuite] to the first scientific classifications.^ In a criticism of Boas' statement that in the Kwakiutl tribe of British Columbia, the ordinary direction of change from metronymy to patronymy seemed to be reversed, he expresses a doubt as to the truth of that statement, assum- ing that the change must be always in a certain direction.^ These expressions show that our author is certainly an ad- herent to the evolutionary hypothesis school which he criti- cizes so vigorously for being, as we see, a little more ex- treme than himself. (4) Methods of proof in sociology The method which, according to Durkheim, must be pre- eminent in the sociologist's technique is the comparative method.' We have already seen how this method is to be safeguarded by exact definition and by considering normal- ity always with reference to the type of the social group. Experiment, as Mill pointed out, is not feasible in social science.* Durkheim's comment on this assertion of Mill, is that, since the latter said the same thing about the use of that method in biology and in physiological chemistry, his mere statement can now scarcely carry the weight it once did.^ Furthermore, Durkheim is fundamentally opposed to Mill's principle that one effect may be due to one of several different causes.'' ' This, he thinks, is a total negation of causality, reducing it to mere chronological sequence.' ^A. S., vol. vi, p. 66. ^ A. S., vol. iii, pp. 338-9. ^ Meth., pp. 153-4. * Mill, A System of Logic, bk. vi, ch. vii. '■Meth., pp. 154-5. ^ Ibid., pp. iSS-6. ' Mill., op. cit., bk. iii, ch. x. " Cf. Div. Tr., p. 35 : " L'unite de I'efifet revele I'unite de la cause " 1 and ibid., p. 50 , " Un meme fait ne peut avoir deux causes." 144 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [144 This criticism evidences a more or less metaphysical concep- tion of causation, on Durkheim's part. For the scientist, chronological sequence, or concomitant variation are the only objective evidences of causal relations. Causality per se as an internal necessity cannot be objectively determined. That necessity may perhaps be recognized by a sort of Berg- sonian " intuition ", but not by " scientific " methods. This principle of Mill's has been used by some sociolo- gists, who have referred phenomena like crime, suicide, etc., each to several different causes. This is bad method, according to our author. But he himself has done that very thing, attempting, however, to conceal his use of the prin- ciple by an artifice of method. In Le Suicide he first gives a general definition of the phenomenon of suicide. Then in discussing the causes of suicide he makes it due on the one hand to the breakdown of group restraint, and on the other to intensity of group control over the individual.^ Clearly here we have two causes, and diametrically opposed ones at that. But Durkheim's artifice is to dififerentiate be- tween several kinds of suicide. The " egoistic " and " anomic " suicides are due to the breakdown of group con- trol; while the "altruistic" kind (that of the patriot like Arnold von Winkelried, for example) is due to the inten- sity of social control. This certainly seems like a tacit admission of the truth of Mill's proposition. But as enun- ciated formally by Durkheim the proper principle is, " For a certain effect there is one cause ".' The various forms of logical procedure in the comparative method (as elaborated by Mill ') Durkheim does not value as of equal utility to the sociologist. The "method of residues" ' Suic, b. ii, ch. ii, iii, iv, v. ' Meth., p. 157; this principle is also consistent with the evolutionary hypothesis. ' Mill, op. cit., bk. vi, ch. vii. 1 45 J DURKHEIM'S METHOD I^^ is of little value, because it requires the elimination of all factors except one. With the enormous complexity of social phenomena this is practically impossible. The " method of agreement " and the " method of difference " are for the same reason not applicable to sociological ma- terial.^ The " method of concomitant variations ", how- ever, is of great value for the sociologist.^ ^ The elimina- tion of all factors save one is not necessary in the use of this method. Moreover the simple fact of parallelism of trend in two phenomena, if the number of individual cases is sufficiently large, proves the existence of some kind of relation between them. This is a highly objective way of showing the existence of a causal bond of some sort. It may be that of the several variants to which the method is applied one is the cause ; or they may all be the results of a single cause that does not appear in the group itself.* The method of concomitant variations is the logical for- mulation of a method ^ that has received much attention from the statisticians since the application of it to data of physical heredity by the late Sir Francis Galton in his Nor- tural Inheritance. The Pearsonian coefficient, the coeffi- cient of contingency, as well as other more or less simple mathematical devices have been applied not only in the bio- logical field but also to sociological and economic data in the solution of problems of causation. Durkheim, how- ever, in spite of his use of a simple mathematical form of the method of concomitant variations in Le Suicide, does not seem to have kept up with progress in this field. Natur- ally his absorption in the ethnological field accounts for the ' Meth., pp. 158-9. ' Ibid., pp. 159-160. ' Cf. Giddings, Prin. of Soc, p. 64, for advocacy of the use of the ' method of concomitant variations, and for a criticism of Mill. * Meth., p. 161. ° Cf. Giddings, op. cit., p. 64. 146 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [146 lack of emphasis of statistical method in the social sciences felt in his recent works. In this respect his Les Regies is now of course out of date, so' rapidly has scientific method advanced in the last twenty years/ Mere concomitance is, however, meaningless, Durkheim warns us, unless interpreted with the aid of deductive rea- soning.' This warning is always in place. Some strange results can be obtained by an application of this method to data without a deductive check. Even the most exact meth- ods require checking; for it has been shown, for example, that there is a positive correlation between the prevalence of cancer in women and the sale of peanuts ! Durkheim says that the absence of a logical reason for a causal nexus should drive the investigator to search for a third factor (if only two are actually involved in the problem) as the common cause of the other two. Another reason for the usefulness of this method of con- comitant variations is that it can be applied to cases in which relatively few facts offer themselves as a basis for investi- gation. These few facts may be most carefully scrutinized and criticized. A small amount of good material is thus better than a large amount of poor. The sociologist finds the restriction to one method more than compensated for by the richness of the material that he may control. The enormous changeability of social life, with the mass of concrete evidences, both contemporaneous and historical, make him an envied man among the scien- tists.* 1 Two references to statistics: Rev. Phil., vol. Iv, p. 492 (cited supra, p. 119) and A. S., vol. ii, pp. 533-5- * Cf. Div. Tr., p. xlii. " Durkheim disagrees with the position of Mill who lumps this method (of concomitant variations) with the other three methods; see Mill, op. cit., bk. vi, ch. vii. 147] DURKHEIM'S METHOD 147 This method our author has used most conspicuously in La division du travail social, and in Le Suicide. In the first he shows the inverse concomitant variation of the di- vision of labor with reference to the ratio between the amount of " repressive " law to the amount of " coercive " law/ In the latter work a simple statistical form of the method is used to show how marital condition affects the rate of suicide.^ Finally the question arises as to which social groups are to furnish the materials for this method. For facts of great generality, with an abundance of statistical material, one society (nation, tribe?) will suffice to give us very useful results; as, for instance, in the case of suicide. In other cases, where the phenomena are not heterogeneous except in time, there should be comparison of several groups of the same " species ", while facts of universal importance, fam- ily, property, marriage, must be studied not only in some given " species " ^ but also in the " species " that have pre- ceded it in the genetic classification, if a satisfactory explan- ation of their origin is to be attained.'' The most general statement of this point is as follows : " One cannot explain a social fact of some complexity, except on the condition of following its whole integral development through all the social species (especes)." And he adds a further qualifica- tion : " To consider the societies, which one compares, at the same period of their development." ° Durkheim's sociological method, aside from his concep- 1 Vide infra, p. 165. ^ Vide infra, p. 172. Cf. also Meth., p. 13 and Siiic, p. 360, on statistics as a means of measuring " social currents ". ' A translation of espece, the general term Durkheim uses in talk- ing about classes of societies. *MSth., p. 169. ^ Ihid., pp. 170-1. 148 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [148 tion of social facts and of social causation, presents little that is new, or distinctive. He expresses the general desire of sociologists to be scientific, objective; and on this as with the social psychology, he takes a characteristically Durk- heimian attitude. His criterion of the normal, namely, generality, is alsO' consistent with his " objective " ten- dencies. His conception of the classification of societies is Spencerian; but in the methodology of proof he follows Mill with some minor modifications, as we have seen, but without notably improving on the work of the latter. Durkheim appears in his methodology as the logician rather than as the scientist. His is a method that is, in most respects, logically coherent ; but its practicality is not always so evident. Nor can it be said that our author has avoided the pitfall of ideology against which he so urgently warns the sociologist. His choice of criteria of the social fact illustrates this failing. The social fact is one that presents clearly the characteristics of constraining power over the in- dividual, and exteriority to the individual mind. A simple, straightforward definition, apparently ; but when we go back of this definition we find it to be simply a concise statement of an elaborate system of psychological metaphysics. His system of sociology "flows out of this definition, as we have seen, for the reason that it is a great major premise. This is the essence of ideological method. Another case of ideology is found in his theory of the causation of suicide. Since suicide is a social tendency it comes to the individual from without, with coercive force. Then why do not all individuals in the society commit suicide? Because the group is cohesive and powerful enough to protect them against it. It controls them in the opposite direction. In other words, the control by the group is the explanation of social. facts, and is not a mere definition of them. No one will deny the need of accurate definition in sociol- 149] DURKHEIM'S METHOD 149 ogy. But, in any science, definitions are the expression of the consensus of opinion of the workers in that science. An inch, for example, is the distance that has been agreed upon, by scientists, as an inch. Not until there is some agreement on the part of sociologists as to definitions will the view of the individual worker as to definitions be of more than philosophical significance. For science, as Durkheim has reminded us, is a social co-operation. In this respect sociol- ogy is not much worse off than economics, in which field continental areas of paper have been sacrificed in a barren logomachy. The only solution of the problem of a scien- tific sociology seems to lie in the idea of cooperation as to the fundamental definitions, and in the fertile principle on which Durkheim has laid so much stress, namely, specializa- tion by the individual sociologists. CHAPTER VII Durkheim's Ethical Theories Durkheim's earliest work in the field of morals is found in two articles : " Les £tudes de science sociaie " and " La Science positive de la morale en Allemagne ".^ What is sig- nificant for our present interest in the first of these articles is Durkheim's very strong opposition to Spencer's and Coste's individualistic tendencies,^ and, more especially, his conception of the regulative function of law, morals, and religion in society.^ In the second article we find Durkheim pointing out, with approval,* the increasing emphasis by certain writers of the collective,^ rather than the individual side of phenomena occurring in social life; the solidarity of economic and moral phenomena; and the objective, in- 1 The first appeared in the Rev. Phil., vol. xxii, the second in ihid., vol. xxiv ; they are, respectively, a critical review of Spencer, Ecclesias- tical Institutions (part iv of the Princ. of Soc.) ; A. Regnard, L'Etat, etc. ; A. Coste, Les Questions Sociales contemporaines ; A. Schaeffle, Die Quintessenz des Socialismus; and a similar discussion of the so- cial-economic theories of Wagner, Schmoller, Schaeffle, Ihering, Post, and of the Ethik of Wundt. ' Rev. Phil., vol. xxii, pp. 66, 76. ' Ibid. * Rev. Phil., vol. xxiv, p. 278. ^ Cf. Revue Internationale de I'Enseignement, vol. xiii, p. 437, in the article by Durkheim, " La Philosophic dans les universites alle- mandes", this statement: "But it is hardly to be contested that what we (the French) have at this moment the greatest need of is to re- awaken within us the taste (goUt) for the collective life." 150 [150 151] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 151 ductive treatment of social phenomena of all kinds, par- ticularly those of the moral field. Therefore we may say that the ethical field has had from very early stages in his career an attraction for our author. The resemblances between his ideas and those of these writers has been com- mented on, as we saw above,^ by Deploige, and also, passim, in this study. Durkheim has put so much stress on the moral phenomena of social life that a discussion of his sociological theory without a treatment of this topic would be quite inadequate. Indeed, it is not always easy to distinguish in his thought between the strictly " moral " and the more general " social " fact. We recall that social facts are defined as " ways of thinking, acting and feeling, exterior to the individual, and endowed with a power of coercion, by virtue of which they impress themselves on him." ^ Since, thereby, social facts include " juridic rules, moral regulations, religious dogmas, financial systems, etc.," ^ the field of social facts includes the field of ethical investigation, the science of morality, or whatever one wishes to call the study of human conduct. The views of our author as to the phenomena which are called " moral " will be here examined with regard to four points : (i) The method of the study of moral phenomena; (2) The definition of moral phenomena; (3) The psychology of morality and its evolutionary as- pects ; (4) The practical side of his moral theories, with special reference to " syndicalist " theory. ( I ) The method of the study of. moral phenomena The method which Durkheim uses in dealing with moral ^ Vide supra, p. 83. = Meth., p. 8. ' Ihid., p. 9- 152 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [152 facts has already been suggested/ It is intended as an objectice, as a " positive " method, since it is, of course, to be used in the social field. ^ As psychology has freed itself from the introspective, ideological method and has become objective and strictly scientific,^ so also must the sci- ence of moral phenomena free itself. It must no longer use facts as mere illustrations of basic principles, but must de- rive these principles from an inductive study of the facts. It must be a " science des moeurs ",* rather than a philos- ophy of morality. It cannot, he says, weaken morality; for it questions not the validity of the moral reality, but the validity of the methods of studying the moral reality, of the explanations of it that have been given. ^ This objective method in the study of ethical phenomena is now the gener- ally accepted one, but in the days of Durkheim's earlier works it was just coming into use, as, for instance, at the hands of Spencer and Wundt. The names of only a few of the men who have used this method, e. g., Westermarck, Hobhouse, Sumner, Paulsen, Dewey, indicate that the ad- vances in this field have come about by a careful use of it. (2) The definition of moral phenomena The object of this science is variously denominated by Durkheim as " faits m,oraux "," " la realite morale "J " la morale ",^ " les faits de la vie m^orale",^ "les moeurs",^" 1 Vide supra, p. 127. ' Div. Tr., p. xxxvii. ' Ibid., 1st ed., pp. 4, 15-20. (Omitted in later editions.) * Durkheim uses the term : " Science de la morale," Rev. Phil., vol. xxiv, p. 284, and Div. Tr., p. xxxvii ; also the term : " Science des , moeurs", in Rev. Phil, vol. xxiv, p. 284; though this does not ap- parently occur so frequently as the former. ^ Div. Tr., p. xlii and Rev. Phil., vol. xxiv, p. 284. ° Div. Tr., p. xxxvii. ' Ibid., p. xli. ' Ibid., p. xxxviii. ' Ibid., pp. xxxvii, xlii. " Ibid., p. 29. 153] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 153 These terms all express the objective nature of the material of the science that Durkheim desires to^ create. He says nothing about a " fundamental principle of morality " (such as has been the stock in trade of most moralists), except in criticism of this approach to the problem/ What is our author's definition of the moral fact which is the objective substance of this science? " Moral facts consist of rules of action recognizable byV certain distinctive characters." ^ What these characters are we can determine in part from phrases in which they are implied. " When a customary law (droit coutumier) passes to the state of a written law, ... if the custom continued to function silently, etc.," ^ are such phrases. Here the genetic relation between custom and law is clearly expressed. The definition of law (droit) is put in these terms : " Every precept of law can be defined as a rule of sanctioned con- duct." * The connection between law and morals is here plainly indicated; and by comparison with the immediately preceding quotation it can be seen that there is a close con- nection between law, morality, and custom.^ But in " La Determination du fait moral," a paper read by Durkheim before the Societe frangaise de philosophic, in 1906, the ex- plicit definition of moral facts is made as follows : ' Meth., pp. 30-31 also Div. Tr., p. xliii. ' Div. Tr., p. xxxvii. ' Div. Tr., p. 41 ; r/. also ibid., pp. 29-30. * nid., p. 33. ' In a part of the first edition of La Division du travail (pp. 4-38) omitted in the second edition, Durkheim gives another definition of the " moral." Society, he says, takes steps to prevent aberration from conduct called moral ; this social reaction follows necessarily, is predetermined, and is called a sanction. A moral fact consists then in a sanctioned rule of conduct. This sanction is the outvirard sign of the obligation accompanying the moral rule. The legal and moral are different only in the forms of sanction that apply to them. 154 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [154 All morality (morale) is presented to us as a system of rules of conduct. But all techniques are equally regulated by max- ims prescribing to the agent how he shall conduct himself in certain circumstances. What differentiates moral rules from others ? (i) It will be shown that moral rules are invested with a special authority, by virtue of which they are obeyed because they command. . . .VObligation is then one of the first char- acters of a moral rule. (2) But . . . the notion of duty implied in obligation does not exhaust the notion of the " moral ". ,A certain desirabil- ity is another character, no less essential than the first. ... It is this " desirable " character sui generis which is currently called the " good ".^ The moral reality, Durkheim continues, may be viewed in two Hghts: as objective and as subjective.^ By the former is meant the body of morals as they are con- cretely existent within the social group, incorporated perhaps in a written code; and by the latter the individual manifesta- tions of these objective, exterior elements of the moral real- ity.' Only the former, the morals as objectively existent, come into the scope of our author's study. We may ask further, wherein does the compulsion of the moral rule lie?* Violations of other rules, such as those of hygiene, are followed automatically by certain painful results, which might have been predicted by analysis. This is not the case with the results following violation of the moral rules. The results are not logically implicit in-these rules. They are added to the rules; " synthetized " with 1 Bulletin de la societe frangaise de philosophie, vol. vi, pp. 113-4. ^ Ihid., pp. 1 17-8. ' Cf. with the distinction made supra between social facts and their individual manifestations, p. 60. This seems to be an illustration of ■what Durkheim means by " socio-psychic " facts. * Bull. Soc. Phil., p. 120. 155] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 155 them; they are the so-called "sanction" attaching to the moral act. In other words, the act has no intrinsic quality that brings these results, as is shown by the fact that homi- cide is approved or disapproved by the same society under two different sets of circumstances. The " desirability " or " goodness " of a moral act is related to the pleasure that its performance frequently gives, despite the fact of its being done as duty, i. e., under a form of compulsion.^ This dual character of the moral fact is interestingly par- alleled by the dual character of the " sacred ", which is at once to be feared, or at least respected, and to be desired and loved.^ The essential solidarity of the religious and the moral fact is historically and psychologically ascertain- able; ^ the slow progress of the ascendency of the scientific method over the field of morals reveals how much of the conception of " sacredness " was attached to that of " right- ness . The moral fact is not completely defined by these two characters of obligation and desirability. In fact they are but a minimum definition. There remains to be considered the end, the aim, of the action; the duty must be directed; but toward what?^5 First of all, duties are directed only toward moral persons, toward rational beings. These are either the agent himself, or others than the agent. No act looking solely to the preservation of the agent is moral, in the common conception of the term; and if the agent himself is not a moral end, how can any individual, or even a group of individuals, as individuals, be such an end? Is there then any personality that can serve as the objective 1 Bull. Soc. Phil., pp. 121-2. ' Ibid., p. 125. ' Cf. Div. Tr., pp. 60, 68. * Bull. Soc. Phil., p. 126. 5 Ibid. 156 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [155 of moral action? Only the personality that we call the society.^ Kant postulated the existence of God to make morality /mtelligible. (So Durkheim (as he says) postulates a social personality to^ explain it.n Moi;ality begins only with life in J:he_group; that group may be of any kind whatever, familial, corporative, civic, national, international. This conception explains the two basic characteristics of morality in this way: The obligatory character of the moral rule comes from the sense of help- lessness and dependence which the individual experiences in the presence of the transcendent reality, the social mind.' And since the individual mind is penetrated through and through by the social mind, so as to be a part of the latter, we have an adequate explanation of the " desirability " of the moral fact. For in doing the moral act, the individual is following a tendency which is a part of his mental con- tent ; and thus functioning normally, he gets pleasure from the act. The sacredness also' of the moral is explained by the fact that it is a social product, and therefore has for the individual a superhuman value, which sets it apart from the individually originated facts, i. e., from the profane.^ This summary makes apparent the fact that Durkheim's ethical theory is quite consistent with his general social psy- chology as examined earlier in this study. In fact, the " de- sirability" of the "moral" fact is the only characteristic dis- ^ Durkheim says, in a footnote, ibid., p. 127, " The outlines of this argument are taken from Wund't Ethik." Cf. Durkheim's review of this work, Rev. Phil., vol. xxiv, p. 130. ' Bull. Soc. Phil., pp. 128-9. ' Ibid., pp. 131-3. * For a discussion of the nature of the sacred and the profane and their relations to his psychology, see supra, p. 39. These ideas are discussed at length in " Le Probleme religieuse et la dualite de la nature humaine," Bull. Soc. Phil., March, 1913; and in Vie Rel., bk. i, ch. i; bk. ii, chs. vi-viii. 157] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 157 tinguishing it from the more inclusive class of the " social " facts. This is quite in harmony with the concrete reality of every-day social life. The moral is not to be separated from the social by any hard and fast line. For example, when does the violation of convention become an immorality? When does the action of a social group become a conven- tion? The lines of demarcation between the social, as typi- fied in the conventional, and the strictly moral, are hard to draw with exactness. (3) The psychology of. morality and its evolutionary aspects The material for this part of our discussion is found largely in the work which is generally the best known of Durkheim's productions, namely. La Division du travail social. The point of departure of this book, as stated in the " Preface to the first edition ", is the " problem of the relation between the individual personality and the social solidarity. How does it occur, that, while becoming more autonomous, the individual depends more and more com- pletely upon his society? " ^ The problem involved is one' requiring a psychological analysis and an explanation, in terms of an evolutionary process, which shall agree with this analysis. Durkheim finds the answer to the question just propounded in a " transformation of the social solidar- ity due to a constantly increasing development of the division of labor." - The division of labor is a phenomenon, not merely of economic, but of wider social significance; administrative work, scientific work, show it; and it has been discovered to be a useful term to apply to certain of the fundamental prob- lems of physiology. Is it also a rule of human conduct? Is specialization enjoined by the social group upon > Div. Tr., p. xliii. ^ Ibid. 158 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [158 the individual? To this there is no clear answer; so- ciety demands that the individual be good for some thing; but it looks askance at his being good for only one thing/ The aim of La Division du travail is then to test the con- nection between the division of labor and the psychological position of the individual in the society. The problem is a three-fold one: (a) To determine the social function of the division of labor; (b) to determine its causes and conditions; (c) to determine its pathological forms." (a) The social function of the division of labor. By function is meant, not the system of vital movements exhibited by the agent, but the need v^rhich that agent satis- fies ; " function " in the sense of " role ". Civilization, although it may be considered a result of the division of labor, is not its function, i. e., its moral end or aim; for civilization itself is unmoral. The true function of the division of labor is to make possible new forms of society, based on a new type of solidarity, whose very existence is dependent upon it. The increased produc- tion of goods is a part of this function, but only of second- ary importance as compared with the larger social func- tion. A simple example of this creation of a new type of society is the creation of the family, partly because of the physiological division of labor embodied iV the differences between the two sexes. The more thoroughly the division of labor has entered into the social-economic relations of man and wife, the more stable, " solidaire ", the family has become, for the number of permanent ties has been in- creased.^ This is one type of cohesion or solidarity. 1 Div. Tr., pp. 4-7. ' Ibid., pp. 8-9. ' Ibid., pp. 23, 25. 159] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES ic^g (Durkheim does not explicitly define this term " solidar- ity".) The other solidarity is that of likeness, or that which Giddings calls " likemindedness ". The psychology of these two kinds of solidarity is of two different types. In the solidarity of interdependence the image of him who complements me becomes in my mind [en nous-meme] inseparable from the image of myself, not only because it is frequently associated with the latter, but be- cause it is its natural complement ; it becomes then an integral and permanent part of my consciousness.^ . . . This mechan- ism [sc.j of mental process] is not identical with that which lies at the base of those sentiments of sympathy of which re- semblance is the source. Of course there can be no solidarity between me and the other, unless the image of the other unites itself to the image of the me.^ But when the union results from the resemblance of the two images, it consists in an agglutination. The two representations become solidaire be- cause, being wholly or in part indistinct, they blend [se con- fondent] and form a single one, and are solidaire only in the degree that they blend. On the contrary, in the case of the division of labor, the two images are outside each other, and are bound together only because they are dififerent. Neither the sentiments nor the social relations arising out of them can be the same in both cases [i. e., both types of solidarity].^ The bearing of this analysis on the general problem of the division of labor is indicated by Durkheim in these words : " The division of labor is a condition of the exist- ence of our societies. By reason of it their cohesion is as- • Div. Tr., p. 25 ; in translating this passage the first person singular has been substituted for the first person plural of the original, be- cause of the exigencies of the English version. '■^ Cf. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order, p. 84 et seq. ' Div. Tr., pp. 2S-6. ,i6o DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [i6o sured, and through it are determined the essential traits of their constitution." ^ It is evident that the term "solidarity" is synonymous with " cohesion " of the individual members of the social group. The bonds that bind men together in a society are then proportional to the social solidarity ; and as laws are the outward signs of such bonds, the degree of solidarity of a society may be measured by the number of such laws, in a rough approximation to accuracy.^ Durkheim has entitled the solidarity that springs out of likeness, " mechanical " solidarity (because the units are merely juxtaposed) and that springing out of the division of labor, " organic " (because the units are interdependent like the parts of a living organism). Mechanical solidarity is correlated with a certain psychological relation of the in- dividual to the society; with a certain type of social organi- zation, and with a certain objective manifestation in the form of " repressive " law, which will be defined later. We have seen above that each of us has two conscious- nesses; the one containing states of mind personal to us and characteristic of us as individuals; the other containing those states that are common to the whole social group.^ It is the solidarity of these two systems of states within the in- dividual's mind that binds him to his society.* The indi- vidual is bound to- his social group with a strength that varies directly as : ( i ) the ratio between the volume of the common consciousness and the volume of the individual consciousness; (2) the average intensity of the states of the collective (i. e., "common") consciousness; (3) the de- gree of definiteness (determination) of these collective 1 Div. Tr., p. 27. '' Ibid., pp. 28-9. ^ Vide supra, p. 42. ■' Div. Tr., p. 74. l6l] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES i6l states/ It is clear then that the individual personality can exist only at the expense of this type of solidarity. " The solidarity which arises in resemblance is at its maximum when the collective consciousness exactly covers our whole [sc, individual] consciousness and coincides with it at all points; but at that moment our individuality is nil." ^ What happens when an act disturbs this solidarity ; i. e., runs counter to a given element of this social consciousness ? First of all, the very presentation of the opposite has the effect of stimulating the system of representations and emo- tions connected with the given element; this makes for a strong, possibly violent, reaction against the offensive act.^ Moreover the consciousness of each member (of the group so reacting) that his fellows share with him the possession of the common idea or emotion, tends to strengthen the idea of emotion within his own mind. Combined, these two tendencies of stimulation by opposition and by " con- sciousness of kind ", strengthen enormously the reaction which the society exhibits against the disturbance of its men- tal consistency. This reaction, if emotional (passionel) ,^ graduated in intensity according to the nature of the viola- tion,° applied through an intermediate body or organ of the group" offended,' is called punishment (peine). Any act drawing upon itself this punishment is called a crime. A crime differs from a mere moral offense in the fact that it violates the strong and definite states of the collective con- sciousness, while an immoral act is contrary to states of the collective consciousness possessing a lesser degree of 1 Div. Tr., pp. 124-5. 2 Ibid., pp. 99-100. ' Ibid., pp. 64-65. * !bid., p. 52 et seq. ^ Ibid., p. 55. ^ Ibid., p. 62 et seq. ''Ibid., p. 57- l62 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [162 fstrength and definiteness. The sanction is, in the case of the latter type of act, " diffuse ", instead of " definite " as in the case of crime. ^ That type of law which defines and states the penalty of the criminal act is called in Durkheim's work, " repressive ". This variety of solidarity, the rup- jture of which constitutes a ciime, is best exemplified in the 'primitive society. Within this type of society there is the largest possible resemblance between the individual mem- bers, as to physical and psychic characters.^ Among these peoples we find little or no division of labor. Their social organization is usually segmentary in character.^ Their laws are largely of the repressive kind; this is an indication of the mechanical solidarity that binds them together.* All of their social activity is penetrated with religious elements f this religiosity is another evidence of the like-mindedness. Communal ownership of property also shows that the in- dividual has not attained a high degree of importance in the social life; for private property implies a certain develop- ment of individuality." The " organic " solidarity, like the " mechanical " solidar- ity, has its psychological, morphological, and juridic corre- lations. In Durkheim's theory it is historically a develop- ment out of an earlier mechanical solidarity. The process of this evolution will be traced in brief fashion, in order to make clear the nature of this " end-product ", the organic solidarity. The morphological evolution consists in a change from the 1 Div. Tr., pp. 4S, 81. ' Ibid., p. 103 et seq. => Ihid., p. 149 et seq. also vide supra, p. 137. * Div. Tr., p. 108 et seq. * Ibid., p. 154. « Ibid., pp. 154-5. 163] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 163 segmentary type of society, in which the social group com- posed of like individuals is the unit {e. g., the horde or clan discussed in the preceding chapter), to the village type where the population is still organized on a partially segmen- tary plan, but is now on a territorial rather than a kinship basis. The first division of labor is within the village group ; but eventually there is a geographical division oi labor with commerce and manufactures on a large scale; with great cities and ports. Specialization spreads to every phase of life. This type of society is " organized " in the sense that it is composed of occupational groups {^corporations pro- fessionelles) which are interdependent functional units. This is indeed the real essence of modern social organiza- tion.^ This type of social organization increases pari passu with the decrease of the segmentary type of society ; though it is never completely realized. Some elements of segmen- tary organization persist, and the functional unit never be- comes the sole basis of the structural arrangement of so- cieties ; we continue to have national groups and other, smaller, territorial units.^ But "it is permitted to look for- ward to the continuation of this double movement, and to foresee that a day will come when our whole political and social organization will have a basis, exclusively, or almost exclusively, professional." ^ It is noteworthy that this idea of the coexistence of these two types of the organization of society, one based on the functional, and the other based on the territorial, or seg- mentary, principle, should be expressed by two students of society who approach their problems from quite different angles; namely, Giddings and Durkheim. The former's " social composition " refers to tribal, or in civilized so- ^Div. Tr., pp. 161-6. ^ Ibid., p. 166. " Ibid., pp. 166-7. l64 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [164 cieties, to local, groups as units; his "social constitution'" refers to the functional organization of societies.^ The evolution which the psychological phase of social solidarity undergoes may be summarily stated in a sentence. Society loses its hold over the individual, who' becomes thereby more autonomous. This takes place, in the terms used above, (a) by the decrease of the ratio of the volume of the collective consciousness to the volume of the indi- vidual consciousness, due to the disproportionate increase of the latter; (b) by the decrease in the intensity, and (c) by the decrease in the definiteness, of the states of the col- lective consciousness.^ In the organic solidarity to which this process is the necessary antecedent, the individual de- pends, instead of directly on the society, indirectly on it, by being directly dependent on the functional unit of the so- ciety.^ Both these psychological situations persist in social life, just as the segmentary and the organic types of social organization persist together. Nor does the individual, freed from the society as a whole, thereby completely free himself from all social restraint; the professional group — the functional unit — of which he must be a part, controls, though not with sO' stern a hand, the activities of the indi- vidual. The " organized " societies are not possible without a de- velopment of a system of rules which predetermine the func- tioning of each organ. In the degree that labor is divided, there are constituted a multitude of professional morales and laws [droits'] . But this regulation nevertheless leaves the circle of action of the individual greater [than under the ^ Giddings, Princ. of Soc, pp. 153, 171 ; see also a review of this work in A. S., vol. i, p. 149, by M. Bougie. ' Div. Tr., pp. 124-S. ' Ibid., p. 99. 165] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 165 regulation of the segmentary type of society]. First of all, the professional spirit [esprit] can have an influence only on the professional life. Beyond that sphere the individual en- joys the greater liberty, the origin of which we have just indicated. ... In the second place, as these rules have their roots only in a small number of minds, but leave the society in its entirety indifferent, they have less authority as a result of their lesser universality. They offer less resistance to changes.^ We see, in this statement of Durkheim, the individual liberated, then, to a considerable degree; for the society as a whole has loosed its hold on him ; while at the same time the functional group has not seized him in a correspond- ingly tight grasp. The significance of this fact will be noted later on in this chapter. Pari passu with the decrease of the power of the collective consciousness^ — which in Durkheim's opinion can be meas- ured with some degree of accuracy, — is the change from " repressive " to " restitutive " law. The latter type of law is that which regulates the coordinated activities of men in societies; which prescribes the individual's co- operative relations with his fellows, and delimits the field of his activities. It is the law of property, of administra- tion, of trade, of constitutions, of the family. There is no penalty {peine) attached to the violation of this type of law, not even the penalty of censure through public opinion, unless the insistance by the society upon restitu- tion, " remise en etat 'V be considered as a penalty. Strictly speaking this is no penalty; for such actions as this law considers do not offend the " strong states " of the col- lective consciousness. A study of the codes of peoples in 1 Div. Tr., pp. 289-290. « Ibid., p. 79- 1 66 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [i66 different stages of social development reveals a progressive decrease in the importance of the repressive, and a corres- ponding increase of this restitutive, law.'' Durkheim con- siders this another proof of the decrease of the strength of the social consciousness as a whole. (b) Causes and conditions of the division of labor. The causes of the increase in the division of labor, as our author sees them, are, first and foremost, the increase in the " moral density ",^ and in the volume, of societies, accom- panied by the effacement of the segmentary type of society.^ The need of increasing happiness Durkheim refuses to con- sider as a cause of increased specialization, for happiness is not always its result. He assumes here the position held by many psychologists that the hedonic calculus has little motive power in human conduct ; * that pleasure is the ac- companiment, not the cause, of certain kinds of action. The mechanism through which the increase in the division of labor is brought about by the increase in the moral density and the volume of the society, is the struggle for existence, which is of course heightened in severity by these two factors. "Specialize or perish!" is the alternative, and specialization follows. A secondary cause is the increase of the individual's autonomy; this is brought about largely by the decline of the segmentary type of society. This decline implies the in- crease of the size of the group within which social relations exist, and a consequent tendency to abstractness in its com- 1 Div. Tr., pp. 79-149. ' Called " dynamic density " in MSth., p. 141, and discussed above, vide supra, p. 74. ' Div. Tr., p. 237. * Cf. Ibid., pp. 48-9; also "Determ. du fait mor." Bull. Soc. Phil., vol. vi, p. 122. 167] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 167 mon ideas ; for these ideas are shared by many more indi- viduals and so tend to become more general. Coincident with this effacement of the segmentary organization of the society comes also a freeing of the individual from the re- straints of tradition, for he leaves his native environment, and goes away, tO' become a stranger, and hence to be under slight restraint ; especially if he goes to a city. All this has its influence on the division of labor, for it breaks down the power of the collectivity over the individual, which is the greatest bar to the progress of specialization.^ The relation of the division of labor to the moral situa- tion in society is thus made clear; it will be summarized a few pages below.^ Another phase of Durkheim's ethical theory, its practical bearing, claims attention at this point. It is our author's opinion that a science of morality of a merely speculative aim would not be worth an hour's trouble.^ Science should aid us in " finding out in what direction we should orient our activity, in determining the ideal toward which we are confusedly driving." * The sci- ence of morality will surely teach us a sane conservatism.' It is the science of morality which reconciles science and morality ; for at the same time that it teaches us to respect the moral reality, it furnishes us the means of ameliorating it." It is, then, quite consistent that the last section of the Division du trcnuail social should be taken up with a discus- ' Div. Tr., p. 267 et seq. An interesting discussion of the relation be- tween Spencer's and Durkheim's ideas concerning the division of labor must be passed over at this point, for want of space. 2 Vide infra, p. 170. ' Div. Tr., pp. xxxviii-xxxix. * Ihid., p. xxxix. ' Ibid., p. xl. ^Ibid., p. xli; cf. " Determ. du fait mor.," pp. 117, 136. l68 DURKHBIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [i68 sion of " the abnormal forms " of the division of labor, and that this should lead up to discussions of actual reme- dies. (c) The abnormal forms of the division of labor. Three of the most notable cases of abnormal accompani- ments of the modern division of labor are recurrent indus- trial crises ; the antagonism of laborand capital ; and the de- crease in the unity of science with the increase in the special- ization of scientific work.^ Durkheim is inclined to dis- credit the theory that these results grow necessarily out of the dispersive tendencies of the division of labor, and that (as Comte believed) a strongly neutralized government, and a philosophy of science can remedy the first two and the third, respectively.^ Government cannot provide a soli- darity which will prevent such abnormalities in the economic life of a people. The true reason for this " anomie ", this condition of ill-regulated division of labor, is to be found in the fact that the decline of " mechanical " solidarity has not been accompanied by the rise of a correspondingly satis- factory "organic" solidarity; the condition necessary for the latter being lacking. This necessary condition is that the various parts (of the society) shall be in close and continued contact; such has not been the case.^ More- over, the narrowing of the horizon of the machine-tender in modern industry is abnormal ; he should be able to see the significance of his work in its larger relations, which is at present an impossibility.* The class-struggle is a result of the division of labor; its direct cause is the fact that the lower classes are not satis- fied with the function they are compelled to perform.^ In ' Div. Tr., pp. 344-347- ' Ibid., pp. 350-2, 353-5. ' Ibid., pp. 360-3. ' Ibid., pp. 363-5. ^ Ibid., p. 367. 169] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 169, order that the division of labor may produce solidarity, it does not suffice that each have his task, but it is also neces- sary that that task be suitable {convienn^) } This is unfor- tunately not the case. The whole trouble lies in the compul- sory form that the division of labor has taken; this is a wholly abnormal phenomenon.^ Each individual in society should do the work for which he is best fitted by nature. Social inequalities should, in other words, correspond to natural inequalities. The struggle for existence will con- tinue to exist; but it ought to be regulated and made fair to all who must engage in it. It shall not be anarchical, but it shall be so organized as to make room for every quality of social value.^ Two important illustrations of institutions that tend to crystallize objective conditions of inequality in the struggle for existence are caste, and the inheritance of property.* Equality of the struggle is necessary, not merely as justice, but for the practical reason that the bonds that hold the in- dividual to his task and those that bind his task with that of others in the'society should be strong. Contract, for in- stance, must be spontaneous and free; but mere legal free- dom is inadequate, when the economic conditions of the contracting parties are such that one of them must contract or starve. ° There can be no just contract between inherited poverty and inherited wealth." Moreover, liberty is not inherent in natural conditions, it is rather the product of social regulation; and the task of the most advanced societies may be said to be the produc- tion of a state of justice through the process of regulation.' 1 Div. Tr., p. 368. ' Ibid., p. 370. 8/6id., p. 371. * Ibid., p. 372. ' Ibid., pp. 374-5- ^Ibid., p. 378. ' Ibid., pp. 380-2. 170 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [170 The perfect functioning of the division of labor and the true organic solidarity it would bring with it, are impossi- bilities without this regulated freedom and objective equal- ity. In conclusion, Durkheim defines the moral as " all that is a source of solidarity." ^ The problem proposed at the be- ginning of La Division du travail is then solved. The divi- sion of labor is a moral phenomenon ; just as the subordina- tion of the individual mind to the social mind is a moral phenomenon. Morality is " tout social ". An " individual morality " is an abstract conception corresponding to noth- ing in reality. " The duties of the individual toward him- self are in fact duties toward society." ^ The duty of a man is to specialize, to do one task well ; but at the same time he must foster the common sentiments and ideas; both these duties are elements of the moral life, tending to balance and to round it out.^ That other question (which " was the origin of the work ")* as to how the increase of personality of the indi- vidual could be reconciled with the individual's increased dependence on society, can now be answered. We have seen how, in successive ages the individual is slowly liber- ated from the uniformity of type which the larger social group, as the tribe, or the village, imposes on him. The very nature of personality is implied in the specialization of the social task. The personality ascribed to the individual in the segmentary society was no personality at all in this sense; it was simply the refracted mind of the society.^ The practical bearing of this discussion upon the actual 1 Div. Tr., p. 394. = Ibid., p. 395. ' Ihid., p. 397. * Ibid., p. xliii. ° Ibid., pp. 399-400. 171] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES lyi State of morality appears in ttie solution which Durkheim offers for modern economic and moral ills. In the " Con- clusion " of La Division du travail he points out that mod- ern morality, as well as modern economic life, is passing through a critical period. " Mores " and moral doctrine are alike in an indeterminate state. We know neither what we ought, nor why we ought. This is due to the fact that the individual has so rapidly freed himself from the sway of the society as a whole; and that the new organic type of society has not yet developed a new morality for him. The problem is in reality a dual one; to make stable and effec- tive the moral code of the individual, and to make possible a harmonious functioning of the various interdependent units of our organic social life, in order to eliminate the " anomie " that we have found to be pervading the eco- nomic relations of classes and groups in our modern society.^ Durkheim offers as a solution the development of the " group e professionel" , the functional unit, of the society, as the moral-forming and economic-regulatory group. This view is set forth in the conclusion of the book, Le Suicide, and again in the " Preface " of the second edition of La Division du travail. In the former work Durkheim introduces this idea in con- nection with his discussion of the remedies for the exces- sive rate of suicide common in most civilized countries. As we have seen,- there are three types of suicide, egoistic, anomie, and altruistic. Egoistic are those cases of suicide in which the individual's social group has lost its power over him so that he is no longer solidaire with it, and so falls an easier prey to the " courants siiicidogenes " than those who are protected against them by membership in a strong ^Div. Tr., pp. 40S-6. 2 Vide supra, p. 144. 172 DURKHBIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [172 social group. Anomic suicides are those that are due to the temporary rupture of the society's regulative control over the individual, as, e. g., in a time of economic crisis. Altru- istic suicides are those of soldiers dying for the glory of the flag, or the honor of the service. The last type is of comparatively slight numerical and practical importance. But the first and second urgently call for some preventive measures. These our author finds in a strong and stable social group whose regulation shall enfold the individual securely and continuously, which shall keep him solidaire with itself. What group shall this be ? The state? It is not a suitable moral unit, as we shall see.^ The religious so- ciety ? Its strength seems waning in these days of free in- quiry.^ The family? It no longer has the permanence nor the collective strength it once showed.^ But the " corporation" or "groups professionel" {e. g., the medieval guild) has existed in the past; it has flourished, disappeared, reappeared, in successive societies ; it has, then, inherent social values, or it would not display this hardi- ness." Since it is on the basis of functional units that society will inevitably be organized in the future,^ this seems at the least a possible group for the purpose in question. What are its qualifications as a moral group, i. e., as a group fit to regulate the conduct of its members? It has had such a function at various times in the past. In Rome and in medieval Europe there were moral and religious elements in its organization ; it frequently had special rites and patron saints." So far as the " corporation " is a part of the eco- ^ Suic, p. 429. ' Ihid., pp. 431-2. ' Ihxd., pp. 432-4. * Suic, pp. 434-S and D'w. Tr. pp. ix, x, xi. ' Ibid., pp. 166-7 and supra, p. 163. " Div. Tr., pp. xii-xv. I73J DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 173 nomic world is has no direct moral significance; for this latter is not a world in which moral principles are para- mount/ But the " corporation " has the possible elements of such a moral group; its members share ideas, interests, sentiments, occupation,^ origin and culture.^ That is, they have enough common elements to stock a " collective con- sciousness ". Moreover, the preponderance of the economic interests in the life of to-day * gives the group expressing those interests a high psychological value. The " corpor- ation " has the advantage over the family in this respect, that its smaller range of influence is more than balanced by its greater intensity of influence; while the family is becoming, at the same time, decreasingly permanent/ The state is wholly inadequate as a moral group. It lacks the complexity which such a function would demand of it; and it is too far from the individual." Between the individual and the state there must be intercalated a series of secondary groups that can really touch the individual.' Moreover, as the process of specialization progresses, the need of a small, responsive group, which can create suitable regulations for the conduct of its members, will increase.* Territorial units would, in modern times, be less than use- less for this purpose.^ The individual maintains his solidarity with society as a whole by being a member of a large functional group, and 1 Div. Tr., p. iv. ^ Ihid., p. xv. ' Suic, p. 435. * Div. Tr., p. iv. ^ Ibid., p. xix. ^ Ihid., p. xxxii and Suic, p. 448. ' Div. Tr., p. xxxiii. * Suic, p. 437- » Ibid., p. 448. 174 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [ly^ his individuality is maintained because the local sub-group of his occupational unit is locally specialized. The very solidarity of the large society is dependent upon its divisions being functional in their nature.^ The occupational group can develop a high degree of individuality; ^ it can become a source of " warmth which fires and re-animates the hearts, opens them tO' sympathy, sinks the egoisms." ^ It can be the source of those beneficial activities of education, recrea- tion, and aesthetic life. This phase of activity is already carried out by certain " syndicats " or labor unions.'' This is all a program for the future. At present there exist only the rudiments of a professional morality,^ and the first attempts at a genuine " corporation professionelle " The full moral value of this group is still to be developed. When we look at the " groiipe professionel " on the eco- nomic side we see its possibilities here also, as well as its exceedingly rudimentary state. What we actually have are "syndicats des ouvriers" and "syndicats des patrons"^ These organizations are private, without legal authority, hence lacking all regulatory power over their members. Furthermore there is no regular contact between the two types; no form of association which shall regulate their mutual activities with authority. The two types are in a con- stant state of warfare; their mutual contracts are treaties, not laws. They embody one phase of that " anomie " that was mentioned a few pages above. What can, or at least what ought, to be made of these organizations? First of all, Durkheim believes, they should 1 Suic, p. 449. ' Div., Tr., pp. xvi, xvii. ' Ibid., p. XXX. * Ibid., p. xxxi. ' Ibid., p. ii. ^ Ibid., p. vii. 175] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 173 be made definitely recognized organs of the social life/ The professional or functional organization of society, which, as we saw, is inevitably coming, will demand such associations. The state cannot regulate the activities of the functional unit ; the unit alone can and must do this work of regulation.^ The differences and disputes between em- ployers and employees must be settled by means of joint * representation on the governing board of the " corpora^ Hon ".^ (Durkheim evidently conceives the " corporation " as composed of all the individuals who are connected with a certain industry, employers and employees alike. ) The break- down of the medieval "corporation" was due to its inabil- ity to become more than a, local unit. When industry be- came national in its scope, it left the " corporation " an empty form.* The new " groupe professional " must, to survive, fit modern needs ; it must be, like modern industry, national and international in its extent." Its relations with the society as a whole must be regulated by a representative " organ " which shall act in harmony with the organ of the larger social life (the state, presumably). The two organs in their relations ought to remain distinct and autonomous, for each has functions that it alone can perform. If it is for the governmental assemblies to lay down the general principles of industrial legislation, it is impossible for them to diversify them according to the different sorts of indus- tries. It is this diversification which constitutes a special task of the " corporation "." Durkheim suggests, too, that the national " corporation " may ultimately be the electoral unit of society, just as the ' Suic, p. 436. ' Biv. Tr., p. vi. ' Ibid., p. xxviii, footnote. * Ibid., p. xxvi. ^ Ibid., p. xxvii. * Ibid., p. xxviii. 176 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [176 local " corporation " was formerly a political unit of the commune/ This idea of representation on the basis of functional units has lately been put forward by a number of political scientists. Durkheim warns us that the " corporation " can be no panacea for economic and social ills. Justice, in economic distribution, will be as important as in the present regime. In fact it is necessary as a condition of the satisfactory functioning of the system which is here proposed.^ In thus proposing an organization of society on the basis of the functional group, Durkheim has, in part, at least, as- sumed the fundamental position of the French syndicalists.* From a recent discussion of this labor movement in France the following points of resemblance and difference may be noted.* The syndicalist believes in the class struggle as an essen- tial element in social progress, hence as a good.^ Durkheim considers it an evil, an " anomie ". The state has no place in this system.® Durkheim, as we have seen, rather mini- mizes its regulatory power over economic functions. The syndicalist is, of course, for the abolition of the wage sys- tem and oi private property. '^ Durkheim does not go so far 1 Div. Tr., p. xxxi. ^ Ibid., p. xxxiv. ' It is worth while noting that this idea of the need of strengthening the moral life by increasing the strength of the functional group was reviewed by Durkheim when it appeared in a book by A. Coste, Les Questions sociales contemporaines. This review has already been mentioned. It is found in Rev. Phil., vol. xxii, pp. 73-4. ■' Levine, L., " The Labor Movement in France," Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, vol. xlvi: especially chapter v, " The Doctrine of Revolutionary Syndicalism." * Ibid., pp. 119, 125. ° Ibid., pp. 124, 130. ' Ibid., p. 127. 177] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES lyy — but points out the need of justice; and justice is, in his opinion, impossible in a contract between rich and poor. Again, the syndicat is fundamental in its nature, for it is the unit representing the largest interest of the worker. " The syndicat is a sphere of influence, which by the volume of its suggestion, and by the constancy and intensity of its action, shapes the feelings and ideas of the working-man after a certain pattern. In the syndicat the working-men in all ways are made to feel their group solidarity and their antagonism to the class of employers." ^ It is then, a "moral milieu " in Durkheim's use of that term, and fulfils his re- quirements for the " corporation ". Furthermore, the synr dicats, being national in their scope,^ fulfil another require- ment of the Durkheimian " corporation ". At the same time they are sufficiently decentralized to fit in with his ideas as to how far the local needs of the group should be empha- sized. " Direct action " ^ Durkheim of course does not mention. The scheme of the organization of a society as a producing group on the basis of the producing unit * is es- sentially like Durkheim's idea. He endeavors to solve the problem of the employer by agreements between the em- ployer and employee, by a sort of "syndicat ouvrier-patron- iste " ; while the syndicalist theory considers the employer as a temporary drag, to be eventually eliminated. Durk- heim also retains the state — but its functions are not much more regulative than those of the " Confederation generale du travail" would be in the projected syndicalist society. This comparison is in no wise intended to proclaim Durkheim as a syndicalist. It simply shows that there is surely a large amount of vitality in his idea of the func- tional organization of society, when the most striking labor 1 Levine, L., op. cit., p. 121. ' Ibid., p. 130. ^ Ibid., p. 122. * Ibid., p. 129. 178 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [178 movement of modern times apparently embodies some of the principles of his theory. Both Durkheim and the syndicalist believe society to be animated by a group of in- ternal forces, not by a set of forces outside it. Several of Durkheim's ideas resemble somewhat those of the anarchist Kropotkin. The resemblance is limited to the insistence by both on the inefficiency of the state tO' regulate economic life; ^ on the unfreedom of " free " contracts be- tween the weak and the strong; ^ on the possibility of volun- tary action as a basis for solidarity. Both point out the fact that the state has survived the change to the modem industrial system, while the " free corporations " and com- munes have not.' Kropotkin disbelieves strongly in the ex- treme division of labor and advocates a decrease of a spe- cialization, with manual labor for all members of society. Durkheim, as we know, believes in the division of labor as a moral principle. Kropotkin's theory would make the individual the ulti- mate source of morality. Durkheim's theory decentralizes morals as far as the "corporation"^ and emphasizes the latter as the ultimate morality-producing unit. There remain for consideration several points concern- ing which Durkheim seems not altogether consistent. " Social solidarity is a phenomenon which is entirely moral " ; * this is a statement which seems not quite to fit with the definitions of " moral " facts made elsewhere by Durkheim. For example: "Moral facts consist of rules of action recognizable by certain distinctive characteris- tics." ^ "All morality is presented to us as a system of rules of conduct." " Solidarity is cohesion ; it is not a rule or sys- ' P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, p. 41. ' Ibid., p. 161. ' P. Kropotkin, The State, p. 33. * Div. Tr., p. 28. * Ibid., p. xxxvii. ^ Bull. Soc. phil, vol. vi, pp. 113-4- 179] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES 179 tem of rules ; it may be considered as one of the products of the working-out of such rules, and as the aim of such rules. But it is not entirely a " moral " phenomenon. There is no objection to admitting its " moral " function, e. g., its rela- sionship to things expressly " moral " ; and this can per- haps explain away the inconsistency. A more serious inconsistency is evident in the relation- ship between the third portion of La Division du travail, " Les formes anormales " and that rule (discussed in Les Regies) of distinguishing the nomial from the pathological.^ "A social fact," he says in Les Regies,'^ is normal for a given social type considered at a given phase of its develop- ment, when it appears \^se produit] in the average of socie- ties of that species [espece], considered at the correspond- ing phase of their evolution." ^ The " formes anormales " of the division of labor which Durkheim treats in La Divi- sion du travail * are found in every advanced country of European civilization. To say that they are abnormal is to deny the likeness, according to the above definition, of European countries ; and this would be an assertion difficult to prove without the use of a much finer scheme of classifi- cation than that which Durkheim has put forward. His position seems here quite inconsistent with his methodologi- cal premise. The question arises, in connection with these " abnormal " forms, whether Durkheim is following the rule of his method which enjoins the study of " facts ". He traces the evolu- tion of the division of labor down to modern times; and when he has so far followed it, it turns out to be an ideo- logism, an ideal. The actual facts are full of " anomie " , are " abnormal ". This " anomie " can be, and is, explained, ' Meth., ch. iii. ' lUd., p. 80. ' Cf. Div. Tr., p. 34, 1st ed. * Vide supra, p. 168. l8o DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY [i8o as we have seen ; nevertheless there is here a departure from the path of strict objectivity for which a tardy repentance can not atone. A seeming inexactness of Durkheim's moral theory, as set forth in La Division, is somewhat modified by his later theories as to the relative extent of the social and individual minds. ^ The individual becomes more and more freed from moral restraint by the increase of the importance of the professional group, simultaneously with the decrease of the power of the segmentary group.^ This constitutes that greater individualization, the correlation of which with the greater dependence of the individual on society, suggested the problem of the book.* It is debateable whether this process of freeing the individual from moral restraint could, in the interests of the social group as a whole, be allowed to go as far as that. Durkheim offers a practical safeguard against this possible danger by suggesting the strengthen- ing of the professional group as a moral unit, as if he were well aware of this shortcoming. But even such a strength- ening is scarcely adequate. Since all morality is the pro- duct of group-life, and since the state is, as we have seen, impossible as a moral tmit, the individual's life must be, morally, onesided. How can the professional morality guard the family-morals and those also that are connected with all the other non-professional activities of life? It would seem that there must persist a certain amount of the control by the society as a whole, or at least of the local segmentary group ; weakened, it is true, but still effective.* In Durkheim's most recent statement of the relation of the individual mind to the collective consciousness, this need which has just been pointed out seems to be met. This state- 1 Vide supra, p. 44. '^Div. Tr., p. 289. ' Ibid., p. xliii. * Vide supra, p. 164. l8l] DURKHEIM'S ETHICAL THEORIES igl merit makes of the individual mind simply the " collective consciousness incarnated in the individual ".' In other words, the individual mind is not freed from the moral con- trol by the society after all, for the latter furnishes it with all its matter, and, a fortiori, with its moral content as well. In conclusion of this discussion of Durkheim's ethical theories it may be pointed out that he is consistently socio- logical in his view of morality. To him morality is always a system of rules emanating from a group, and imposed upon its members. At the beginning of social evolution this group was the clan or tribal aggregation. It later be- came the village, and, ultimately, the nation. In the future it should be the professional or occupational group. But so far as the individual's acts are " moral " they are referable to his membership in a group of some kind. At present the transition from the morality of that group which was at first tribal and local, and is now national, to the morality of the professional group has not yet been accomplished. The result is obvious, both in theory and in fact : there has been a breakdown of morality which is of some significance and which can be repaired only by the speedy organization and strengthening of the functional group of the society. ' Bull. Soc. phil, March, 1913, " Le Probleme religieux, etc.," p. 74. CONCLUSION A GLANCE back over the course of this study may now be useful. Durkheim's sociological theory may be very briefly sum- marized as follows. Upon the basis of a theory of the com- pounding of each type of mental state out of more ele- mentary mental processes, Durkheim erects the system of states which he calls the social mind, as the product of a compounding more complex thjin any that takes place within the individual mind. The representations within this sys- tem, being syntheses of representations of different indi- vidual minds, are therefore necessarily outside of any indi- vidual mind. And because of their origin outside of the in- dividual mind they have impressive power superior to those that are individually initiated. Hence the coercive char- acter of " social facts ", which are ultimately states of the social mind. Since scarcely any phase of the individual's mind is, or can be, free from the influence of socially origi- nated forces, Durkheim has reduced the essentially indi- vidual side of the particular mind to a minimum of sensa- tion and impulse. From this it is quite inevitable that the individual should not be an originative factor in the social process ; and that sociology, " collective psychology ", should be independent of " individual " psychology for its explanations. " Social ''facts," as defined by our author, are found within the field of each of the special social sciences; hence sociology becomes merely a method, and is not an autonomous social science with a field all its own. As for his method as a sociologist its sole distinction is found in 182 [182 183] CONCLUSION 182 those elements of it that are most closely attached to his social psychology. Morals are always group regulations; and the causes of their differences and their changes are to be sought in the varying social minds out of which they arise. In short, the whole system is, in its broad outlines, internally consistent; it follows logically out of the major premise of the compounding of states of consciousness. The emphasis that is being laid by other writers than Durkheim on the social origin of the content of the indi- vidual mind has been noted. While conservative opinion may disagree with the extreme statement that our author gives to this view, yet the tendency of sociologists is strongly in that general direction. Durkheim's emphasis on control as a criterion of the social has been shown to be one phase of this attitude. An American sociologist whose approach to sociological problems is in most respects radically dif- ferent from that of our author, namely Giddings, has still expressed a view as to the subject-matter of sociology that is in marked degree comparable to that of Durkheim. He has defined it as " the science of the origin, the process, the extent, and the results of type control of the variations from itself ;" ^ and again as " the science of the phe- nomena of discipline." " The work of other American sociologists, notably Ross, Cooley, and Sumner, also bears, in large part, directly upon this problem of the control rela- tion between the individual and his group. Undoubtedly this relation is being more and more emphasized as the essentially social relation. A question arises, in conclusion, which can have little significance except as a suggestion. Does Durkheim re- ' Giddings, "Social Self-control", Political Science Quarterly, vol. xxiv, p. 578. ' Ibid., p. 580. l84 UUKKHtLlM'i} i,ULiULUhH.AL THUUKy [i^, fleet, in his theories, the French social milieu ? Two point may be mentioned. First there is the fact that the " so ciety " of which Durkheim speaks is implicitly a grou] homogeneous as to nationality and race. Differentiation of a local nature are touched on, economic differentiation are stressed in his works, especially in La Division du fra vail social. But that is apparently the limit of the treat ment in any large way of differences within the socia group. This is quite intelligible if one remembers tha there is in Europe no more racially homogeneous nation o her size than France. It is quite natural that a problem o a group of problems with which a sociologist is not at al familiar at first hand should never be emphasized in hi theories. In striking contrast to Durkheim's tacit passini over of this phase of social relations, is the work of th Austrian, Gumplowicz. Both his Rassenkampf and hi Grundriss der Sociologie reflect in no uncertain lines th picture of Austro-Hungary with its German, Magyar, ani seven different Slavic groups ^ in almost continuous an^ tumultuous disharmony. The second point is one already commented on. Durk heim, as we have seen, looks forward to an ultimate organi zation of society on the basis of occupational groups. An it is in France that the syndicalist movement has made it most striking advances. It is precisely this group that ha contributed to the store of schemes for a socialistic societ the one of the organization of society on the basis of a func tional, e. g., occupational, grouping. Is it not possible ths here, too, our author reveals himself as, perhaps uncor sciously, solidaire with his nation; as a Frenchman as we as a sociologist? 1 Balch, E. G., Our Slavic Fellow Citizens, ch. iii. BIBLIOGRAPHY (A) The works of Durkheim, arranged chronologically within two groups, (a) his books, and (6) his articles and reviews. (a) Quid Secundatus politicae scientiae instituendae coniulerit. Bor- deatix, Gounouilhou, 1892. De la Division du travail social. Etude sur I' organisation des soci- etes superieures. Paris, Alcan, 1893. 2e. edition; avec une nouvelle Preface intitule " Quelques Re- marques sur les groupements professionels." Paris, Alcan, 1902. 3e. edition. Paris, Alcan, 191 1. Les Regies de la methode sociologique. (Appeared first as a series of articles in Rev. Phil., vol. xxxvii and xxxviii). Paris, Alcan, 1895. ze. edition, revue et auginentee d'une preface nouvelle. Paris, Alcan, igoi. 3e. edition, 1904 ; 4e. edition, 1907 ; traduction allemande, 1907 ; 6e. edition, 1912; trad, espagnolle. he Suicide; Etude de sociologie. Paris, Alcan, 1897. se. edition. Paris, Alcan, 191 1. Les Formes elementaires de la vie religieuse. Paris, Alcan, 1912. (Travaux de I'Annee Sociologique.) L'Annee Sociologique, Publiee sous la Direction de Smile Durk- heim. Vols. I-XII. Paris, Alcan, 1898-1913. (6) Review of SchaefHe, Bau und Leben des socialen Korpers; Rev. Phil, XIX, 1885. Review of Gumplowicz, Grundriss der Sociologie; Rev. Phil., XX, 188s. " Les Etudes de science sociale " ; Rev. Phil., XXII, 1886. " Les Sciences positives de la morale en Allemagne " ; Rev. Phil., XXIV, 1887. " La Philosophic dans les universites allemandes " ; Revue Inter- nationale de I'Enseignement, XIII, 1887. " Introduction a la sociologie de la f amille " ; Annates de la Faculte des lettres de Bordeaux, 1888. " Cours de science sociale ; Legon d'ouverture " ; Rev. Int. de I'En- seignm., XV, 1888. " Le Programme economique de Schaeffle " ; Revue d'economie politique, II, 1888. 185] l8s 1-86 BIBLIOGRAPHY [l86 " Suicide et natalite " ; Rev. Phil., XXVI, 1888. " Note sur la definition du socialisme " ; Rev. Phil., XXXVI, 1893. " L'origine du mariage dans I'espece humaine d'apres Wester- marck"; Rev. Phil., XL, 1895. " L'Enseignement philosophique et Tagregation de philosophic "; Rev. Phil, XXXIX, 1895. " Lo stato attuale degli studi sociologici in Francia " ; Riforma Sociule, fasc. VIII, IX, 1895. " Crime et Sante sociale " ; Rev. Phil., XXXIX, 1895. " II suicidio dal punto di vista sociologica " ; Rivista italiana di sociologia, I, Rome, 1897. " La Prohibition de I'inceste et ses origines " ; A. S., I, 1898. " L'Individualisrae et les intellectuels " ; Revue Bleue, 4e. serie, vol. X, i8g8. " Representations individuelles et representations collectives " ; Rev. Met., VI, 1898. " Lettre a I'editeur de I'Araerican Journal of Sociology " ; Am. Jour. Soc, III, 1898. " De la Definition des phenomenes religieux " ; A. S., II, 1899. " La sociologia ed il suo dominio scientifico " ; Riv. ital. di soc, IV, 1900. " La Sociologia en Frange au XlXe. siecle " ; Rev. Bleue, Mai 19 et 26, 1900. " Deux Lois d'evolution penale " ; A. S., IV, igoi. " De la Methode objective en sociologie"; Revue du synthase his- torique, II, 1901. (Appears also as the preface of the 2nd. edi- tion of Les Rdgles.) " Lettre a le Directeur de la Revue Philosophique " ; Rev. Phil., LII, 1901. " Sur le Totemisme " ; A. S., V, 1902. " De quelques formes primitives de classification. Contribution a I'etude de representations' collectives" {En collaboration avec M. Marcel Mauss) ; A. S., VI, 1903. " Sociologie et sciences sociales " {En collaboration avec M. Fau- connet) ; Rev. Phil., LV, 1903. " Pedagogic et sociologie " ; Rev. Met., XI, 1903. " Sur rOrganisation matrimoniale des societes Australiennes " ; A. S., VIII, 1905. " Reponse a une enquete sur la morale sans Dieu " ; " La Revue '', LIX, 1905. " On the relation of sociology to the social sciences and to phil- osophy " (" Sociologie et sciences sociales " is also translated in this same volume) ; Sociological Papers, vol. I, London, 1905. "" La Determination du fait moral " ; Bulletin de la Societe fran- (■aise de philosophie, VI, 1906. 187] BIBLIOGRAPHY 187 " L'fivolution et le role de I'enseignement secondaire en Frange " ; Rev. Bleue, se. serie, vol. V, 1906. "Le Divorce par consentement mutuel"; Rev. Bleue, Se. serie, vol. V, 1906. " Examen critique des systemes classiques sur les origines de la pensee religieuse " ; Rev. Phil, LXVII, 1909. " La sociologie religieuse et theorie de la connaissance " ; Rev. MSt., XVII, 1909. (Appears as preface to Vie Rel.) Chapter on method in the social sciences in Methode dans les sciences; Paris, Alcan, 191 o. " Le probleme religieux et la dualite de la nature humaine " ; Bull. Soc. phil., March, 1913. (B) Other works than those of Durkheim. Angell, J. R., Chapters from Modern Psychology; N. Y., 1912. Balch, E. G., Our Slavic Fellow Citizens; N. Y., igio. Baldwin, J. M., Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology; N. Y., 1905. Bergson, H., Creative Evolution (tr. by A. Mitchell) ; N. Y., 1911. "Lettre a I'fiditeur de Revue Philosophique " ; Rev. Phil., LX, 1905. "Apropos d'un article de Mr. Walter B. Pitkin, intitule: James and Bergson " ; Jo,urn. Phil.', Psych, and Scient. Methods, 1910. Binet, A., Mind and Brain (tr. anon.) ; London, 1907. Boas, F., The Mind of Primitive Man; N. Y., 191 1. "The Mind of Primitive Man''; Journ. Ainer. Folklore, vol. XIV, 1901. "Some Traits in Primitive Culture"; Journ. Amer. Folklore, vol. XVIL 1904. Boodin, J. E., " The Existence of Social Minds " ; Amer. Journ. Soc, July, 1913. Deploige, .S., Le conAit de la morale et de la sociologie; Paris, 1911. Dewey, J., " Interpretation of Savage Mind " ; Psychol. Rev., vol. IX, pp. 217-230. Faguet, fimile, " Sur le Suicide '' ; Revue Bleue, 4e. serie, vol. IX, 1898. Fouillee, A., Les Elements sociologiques de la morale ; Paris, 1905. Frazer, J. G., Totemism and Exogamy ; London, 1910. Giddings, F. H., Principles of Sociology; N. Y., i8g6. Inductive Sociology; N. Y., 1901. " Social Self-control " ; Political Science Quarterly, vol. XXIV, pp. 569-580. Goldenweiser, A. A., "Totemism, an Analytical Study"; Journ. Amer. Folkl, vol. XXIII, pp. 179-293- Review of L. Levy-Bruhl, Les Fonctions mentales dans les soci- etes inferieures; Amer. Anthropologist, New Series, vol. XIII, pp. 122-130. l88 BIBLIOGRAPHY [igg. Hoffding, H., Outlines of Psychology ; London, 1891. James, Wm., The Principles of Psychology (two vols.) ; N. Y., 1890. Some Problems of Philosophy; N. Y., 1911. Essays in Radical Empiricism; N. Y., 1912. A Pluralistic Universe; N. Y., igog. Kropotkin, P., The Conquest of Bread; N. Y., 1907. The State; London, 191 1. Lang, A., " Method in the Study of Totemism " ; Amer. Anthr. N. S., vol. XIV, pp. 368-382. Leuba, J. H., "Sociology and Psychology"; Amer. Journ. Soc, vol. XIX, pp. 323-342- Levine, L., " The Labor Movement in France " ; Col. Univ. Studies in Hist., Econ., and Pub. Law, vol. XLVI ; N. Y., 1912. Levy-Bruhl, L., Les Fonciions mentales dans les so.cietes inferieures ; Paris, 1910; Travaux de FAnnee Sociologique. La morale et la science de moeurs; Paris, 1903. Mill, J. S., A System of Logic ; N. Y. and London, 1904. Ormond, A. T., Foundations of Knowledge; London, 1900. Paulsen, R, Introduction to Philosophy (tr. by F. Thilly) ; N. Y., 1895. Royce, Josiah, Outlines of Psychology ; N. Y., 1906. Sorel, Georges, " Les Theories de M. Durkheim " ; Le Devenir Social, vol. I, 1895. Spencer, Herbert, Principles of Sociology; N. Y., 1898. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia; London, 1889. Stein, L., Die Sociale Frage; Stuttgart, 1903. Tarde, G., La Logique sociale ; Paris, 1904. " La Sooiologie elementaire " ; Annales de I'Institut international de sociologie; Paris, 1895. " Criminalite et sante sociale " ; Rev. Phil, XXXIX, 1898. " La Realite sociale '' ; Rev. Phil., LII, 1901. Thomas, W. I., Sex and Society; Chicago, 1907. Titchener, E. B., Outlines of Psychology ; N. Y., 1905. Tosti, G., " Suicide in the Light of Recent Studies " ; Amer. Journ. Soc, vol. Ill, 1897-1898. "Durkheim's Sociological Objectivism"; Amer. Journ. Soc, vol. IV, 1898-1899. Wright, C. H. C., A History of French Literature ; Oxford Press, 1912. Wundt, W., Outlines of Psychology (tr. by C. H. Judd) ; Leipzig, 1897. Volkerpsychologie; Leipzig, 191 1. 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It contains chapters on First Indications of British Interest; The Negotiations of Treat and Hamilton; British Recognition I'ostponed; Kennedy's Mission to Texas; The Monte- zuma and the Guadeloupe; first British Offer of Mediation; Elliot in Texas; The Robinson Armistice and the London Abolition Meeting; The Calhoun-Pakenham Correspondence; Aberdeen's Plan to Prevent Annexation; Aberdeen's Withdrawal from Joint Action with France; Elliot's Mission to Mexico; Texas Annexed; English Interest in the Annexation of California, International Law and Diplomacy of the Spanish-American War By ELBERT J. BENTON PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN ADELBERT COLLEGE 300 Pages. 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