1 86 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



of a people or race," as commonly used, and holds that they are 

 merely a convenient label, or impersonal synthesis of individual 

 characteristics and that the characters of individuals are alone 

 real, effective and ever in activity. Thus instead of assuming as a 

 starting point for cosmic evolution a homogeneous mass, as did 

 Spencer, and denning progress in terms of differentiation and 

 integration, Tarde assumes a motley array of elements, each 

 possessing its own individual characteristics. 1 



Tarde takes his stand with the mathematical economists such 

 as Walras and Jevons and insists that the intellectual and volun- 

 tary activities of the self can be measured quantitatively and that 

 only so can sociology be a science. 2 This leads to a praise of the 

 statistical method of social measurements and to the introduction 

 of his social theory. 



The evolution of the present world-order, according to our 

 author, consists in resolving the mass resemblances into resem- 

 blances of detail, and in transforming the gross and obvious mass 

 differences into infinitely minute differences of detail. The 

 minute interagreement of minds and wills, which forms the basis 

 of social life, i. e., the presence of so many common ideas, ends, 

 and means in the minds and wills of all members of the same 

 society at any given moment, is due, not to organic heredity 

 nor to mere identity of geographical environment, but rather 

 to the effect of the suggestion-imitation process which, starting 

 from one primitive creature possessed of a single idea or act, 

 has passed this copy on to one of its neighbors, then to another, 

 and so on. 3 



The reciprocal suggestion-imitation relation between two 

 persons, Tarde holds, is the fundamental social fact and finds 

 illustration in the relation of mother and child and also in that 

 of teacher and pupil. 4 " The unvarying characteristic of every 

 social fact whatever is that it is imitative. And this character- 

 istic belongs exclusively to social facts." 4 



While imitation is the great principle of social uniformity, it is 

 never exact; and the refraction of imitation rays in the individual 



1 Social Laws, p. 210. 3 Ibid., p. 38. 



2 Ibid., p. 34. * Ibid., p. 41. 





