HUMAN AGGREGATION AND CRIME. 447 



HUMAN AGGREGATION AND CRIME. 



By M. G. TARDE. 



"TTNTIL our own days, through that crisis of individualism 

 ^ which has prevailed since the last century, crime has been 

 regarded as the most essentially individual thing in the world ; 

 and the notion of what might be called undivided crime was lost 

 among criminologists, as was that also of collective sin among 

 theologians. Whenever the attempts of conspirators or the ex- 

 ploits of a band of robbers forced the recognition of the existence 

 of crimes committed collectively, the criminal nebulosity was 

 promptly resolved into distinct individual offenses of which it was 

 regarded as only the sum. But now the sociological or social- 

 istic reaction against this great egocentric illusion is turning 

 attention toward the social side of acts which are mistakenly 

 attributed to the individual. Hence curious inquiry has been 

 directed to the criminality of sects concerning which nothing is 

 more profound than M. Taine's labors on the psychology of the 

 Jacobins and, more recently, to the criminality of mobs. These 

 are different species of the same genus ; the criminality of the 

 group ; and the study of them together may be useful and op- 

 portune. 



The difficulty is not to find collective crimes, but to discover 

 crimes which are not collective, which do not involve in some de- 

 gree the complicity of the surrounding. So much is this so that 

 we may well ask whether there are any crimes really individual, 

 the same as we doubt whether there are any works of genius that 

 are not a collective result. Analyze the mental state of the most 

 vicious and most isolated malefactor, at the moment of his deed ; 

 or that of the most enthusiastic inventor at the hour of his dis- 

 covery ; and having subtracted from it all in the make-up of his 

 feverish condition which comes from education, companionship, 

 apprenticeship, and the accidents of life what is left ? Very lit- 

 tle ; yet something, perhaps something essential, which does not 

 need to be isolated to be itself. 



Nevertheless, it is permissible to denominate, individual crimes 

 any acts performed by a single person under the operation of 

 vague, distant, and confused influences of some indefinite and in- 

 determinate other one ; and we may reserve the epithet collective 

 for acts brought about by the immediate and direct collaboration 

 of a limited and precise member of coexecutants. 



There are, indeed, in this sense, individual acts of genius ; or, 

 rather, there is the quality of individuality only in case of genius. 

 For, it is remarkable that while morally, collectivities are suscep- 

 tible of the two contrary excesses of extreme criminality and ex- 



