OF SOCIETY. 561 



present heterogeneous as following upon the former 

 homogeneous constitution of society through the pressure 

 of increasing population and the battle for existence 

 goes hand in hand with his objection to base sociology 

 upon psychology. For inasmuch as the individuality of 

 different minds is only a later product of the common 

 social consciousness, so it is not possible to get any 

 insight into the latter by starting with an investigation 

 of the former by the introspective method. In a special 

 work in which he deals with the ' Eules of the Sociologi- 

 cal Method ' he therefore confines sociological studies to 

 what he terms " social representations " or " Institutions." 

 These social facts or institutions cannot be reduced to 

 individual representations, for they do not result from 

 the latter but rather dominate them. The essential 

 character of a social fact is that it controls or coerces 

 the individual ; the fact that the social conscious- 

 ness has more reality than the individual consciousness 

 ran M. Durkheim into that sort of scholastic realism of 

 which his opponents accuse him. 1 Among these the 

 most prominent and original is M. Tarde. 



1 The theory of M. Durkheim 

 furnishes one of the most striking 

 examples of that tendency of 

 thought which I have termed the 

 synoptic. This starts always from 

 the consideration of a totality, a 

 complex ; considering this to be 

 the prius and not a later product 

 of the assemblage of its parts. And 

 this the author lays down as a 

 general principle applicable to the 

 study of the phenomena of society 

 no less than to those of life in 



Treatise on Sociological Method, 

 where he defends his principles 

 against various criticisms of op- 

 ponents: "La cellule vivante ne 

 contient rien que des particules 

 mineVales, comme la socie'te ne con- 

 tient rien en dehors des individus ; 

 et pourtant il est, de toute Evi- 

 dence, impossible que les ph^no- 

 menes caracteristiques de la vie 

 resident dans des atomes d'hydro- 

 gene, d'oxygene, de carbone et 

 d'azote. Car comment les mouve- 



general and even of inanimate ments vitaux pourraient-ils se pro- 

 phenomena. Thus he says in the duireauseind'e^mentsnonvivants? 

 Preface to the 2nd edition of his I Comment, d'ailleurs, les proprie'te's 



VOL. IV. 2 N 



