FORMULAE OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 1 87 



or groups and the new complex rays resulting from various desire- 

 belief combinations and oppositions are the mainspring of varia- 

 tion and progress.2 



Tarde differs from Ratzenhof er in making the idea of a satisfier 

 precede desire. He grants the impelling force of organic need but 

 holds that this is a vital rather than a social factor.^ The social 

 substance or thing invented or imitated is "an idea or voUtion, 

 a judgment or a purpose, which embodies a certain amount of 

 belief smd desire. Desire and belief: they are the substance and 

 the force, they are the two psychological quantities which are 

 found at the bottom of all the sensational qualities with which 

 they combine, and when invention and then imitation takes 

 possession of them in order to organize and use them, they also are 

 the real social quantities." ^ Belief and desire according to our 

 author are not social forces until they come to a head in invention 

 and are transmitted by imitation. But beliefs and desires are 

 not always supplementary or co-ordinate, coming frequently into 

 conflict and this fact leads Tarde to a discussion of the laws of 

 opposition. 



The social forces thus classified drive individuals on by co-opera- 

 tion and opposition, and by struggle and survival produce ulti- 

 mately a more or less complete harmony. " Any aggregation 

 whatever," he says, " is a collection of individuals jointly adapted, 

 either some adapted to the remainder or all to a common func- 

 tion. An aggregate means an adaptate. Moreover different 

 aggregates which have relations with one another may be co- 

 adapted; this constitutes an adaptate of a higher degree, and an 

 infinite number of such degrees may be distinguished. For the 

 sake of simplicity, let us distinguish merely between two degrees 

 of adaptation; adaptation of the first degree is that which the 

 elements of the system in question have among themselves; 

 adaptation of the second degree is that which unites these ele- 

 ments to the systems which surround them, that is, to what is 



^ The Laws of Imitation, p. 22. 



2 Social Laws, pp. 100 f. For Tarde's use of " imitation " and his justifica- 

 tion of it, including in the term counter-irxntSLtion, see Introduction, Les Lois d& 

 V Imitation; also Social Laws, p. 42 n. 



^ The Laws of Imitation, p. 145. •* Ihid., pp. 92, 93. 



