560 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



importance, inasmuch as he considers it to be not only 

 a natural but a moral law, and this leads to a discussion 

 on the nature of morality which he, in opposition to the 

 view prevalent in the school of Kant and his successors, 

 does not distinguish from law, but of which he rather 

 considers law to be the authoritative expression. He 

 as. works out a philosophy of history which recognises two 



Durkheim's 



philosophy distinct phases of what he calls social solidarity corre- 



of history. 



spending to two kinds of law. The first phase is homo- 

 geneous or mechanical ; the second is organic. Eesorting 

 to analogies taken from biology, he shows how the 

 change from the first to the second is brought about by 

 the increasing volume and density of society necessi- 

 tating a more intense struggle for existence and in 

 consequence a partition of labour. 



In the first form of society there is no individual, but 

 only a common, consciousness. Only in the second or 

 organic state of society does the individual consciousness 

 acquire importance and a field of action, but it retains 

 the impress of the original and fundamental unity, i.e., 

 of the common consciousness ; this shows itself in the 

 existence of those altruistic tendencies which Comte 

 took as facts, but which have been so puzzling to those 

 who aimed at a monistic explanation of social phenomena. 

 In the first form of society law is purely repressive ; in 

 the second it is restitutive. 



The historical view which M. Durkheim takes of the 



science of society but comes already 

 as soon as, at the dawn of history, 

 the purely physical connection of 

 human beings is replaced by an 

 artificial connection based upon 

 statutes" (p. 110). "This is the 



conscious mental influence of the 

 governing class upon the whole of 

 society, and with it the biological 

 analogy ceases to be complete " 

 (p. 292). 



