OF SOCIETY. 563 



reflection of the one by the other." In this phenomenon 

 M. Tarde finds the germ of the original social fact. He 

 agrees with M. Durkheim in maintaining that the primi- 

 tive fact of social life is some kind of control or coercion 

 under which the individual is placed ; but whilst M. 

 Durkheim finds this in the coercive action of the 

 " Collective " over the " Individual," M. Tarde goes a se. 



° Tarde's 



step further back and explains this by the influence of opposed 



•^ J. ./ individual- 



two individuals on each other. " It is not sufficient to '^^'"^ theory, 

 recognise the imitative character of every social pheno- 

 menon. I maintain, moreover, that from the beginning 

 this imitative relation has existed, not between one in- 

 dividual and a confused mass of persons as it exists very 

 frequently later on, but between two individuals alone, 

 of which the one, the infant, is born into the social life, 

 and of which the other, the adult, socialised already long 

 before, serves as an individual model. In advancing 

 during life we frequently regulate ourselves on collective 

 and impersonal models of which we are, at the same 

 time, usually" unconscious ; but before speaking, think- 

 ing, acting, as we speak, think, or act in this world, we 

 began to speak, think, and act as he or she speaks, thinks, 

 and acts. And this he or she is one or the other among 

 those familiar to us. If we look carefully we never 

 find more than a certain number of hes or she's, which 

 have become blurred and confused by multiplication. 

 However simple this distinction may be, it is for- 

 gotten by those ^ who, in any social institution or 

 work, will not allow to individual initiative the creative 

 role, but think they say something by stating, e.g., 



^ Referring evidently to M. Durkheim. 



