igo ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



Tarde, explains socialization much as natural selection with Dar- 

 win explains biological evolution and the origin of species. 

 The social ideal is well expressed in the following: — 



* If we take the ideas of invention, imitation and social logic as a guiding 

 thread we are led to the more reassuring perspective of a great future con- 

 fluence ... of multiple divisions of mankind into a single peaceful human 

 family. The idea of indefinite progress, which is such a vague and obstinate 

 idea, has neither a clear nor precise meaning except from this point of view. 

 The necessity of a progressive march towards a great but distant goal is an 

 outcome of the laws of imitation. This goal, which becomes more and more 

 accessible in spite of apparent, although transitory, set-backs, is the birth, 

 the development, and the universal spread, — whether imder an imperial 

 or federated form is insignificant, — of a unique society. . . . We might 

 demand to what extent this collective dream, this collective nightmare of 

 society, was worth its cost in blood and tears if this grievous discipline, this 

 deceptive and despotic prestige, did not serve to free the individual in calling 

 forth, httle by Httle, from the depths of his heart, his freest impulses, his 

 boldest introspection, his keenest insight into nature, and in developing every- 

 where, not the savage individualities, not the clashing and brutal soul-stuffs 

 of bygone days, but those deep and harmonious traits of the soul that are 

 characteristic of personaHty as well as of civilization, the harvest of both the 

 purest and most potent individuaHsm and consummate sociability.^ 



Tarde is open to criticism chiefly in the following points: — 



1. His system is essentially logical rather than factual, and he 

 has not proven that logical classification fits life conditions. 

 Although there seems to be a straining towards consistency in the 

 belief-desire life of the individual, this is seldom attained, and 

 chaos is not uncommon. The same holds of the co-adaptive 

 process of socialization. 



2. His attempt to reduce life to mechanistic terms explicable 

 by mechanical laws fails in two particulars: (a) it leads to strict 

 determinism making the apparent freedom of individual and 

 social activity an illusion,^ and {h) it leads to a doctrine of socio- 

 psychical measurements which is contradicted by every-day 

 experience. The only possible way that evaluations can be 

 quantitatively compared is by first reducing them to their physi- 



1 The Laws of Imitation, p. xxiv. 



* Especially apparent in his discussion of suggestion and auto-suggestion: 

 " L'^tat social, comme I'^tat hypnotique, n'est qu'une forme de reve. . . . N'avoir 

 que des id6es sugg6r6es et les croire spontan6es: telle est Tillusion propre au som- 

 nambule, et aussi bien k rhomme social," Les Lois de VImitation, p. 83. 



