262 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 268. 



well described by Tarde in the following pas- 

 sage : " Social transformations are explained by 

 the appearance, to a certain extent accidental 

 as regards time and place, of certain great ideas, 

 or rather by a considerable number of ideas, 

 small or great, easy or difficult, usually unper- 

 ceived at their origin, rarely brilliant, generally 

 anonymous, but ideas always new, and which, 

 by reason of this newness, I will allow myself 

 to baptize collectively as inventions or discov- 

 eries " (Lois de 1' Imitation, p. 2). 



Invention breaks away from the bonds of 

 imitation. Instead of exact repetition and re- 

 production of the old pattern it adds some- 

 thing, however little, to it, and this in the 

 direction of improvement. This is a permanent 

 gain, because the improved state immediately 

 becomes in turn the subject of imitation. The 

 word invention is given the greatest possible 

 latitude. It embraces everything that departs 

 in the least from the strict line of exact repro- 

 duction and perpetuation of the existing type. 

 A thousand causes lead to it. Tarde has not 

 worked these out as well as he might. Neces- 

 sity may have been the primordial mother of 

 invention as a condition to further existence. 

 But with the growth of mind a certain degree 

 of nonconformism naturally arose. The ob- 

 stacles to the satisfaction of desire (opposition) 

 bred discontent and induced efforts to overcome 

 them. Mind is the naturally aberrant element 

 in the world, and deviations from the straight 

 path of custom resulted. At long intervals, 

 few and far between, even as now, the inven- 

 tors, i. e,, the innovators, made their appear- 

 ance, with the results described by Tarde. 



What, now, is the relation of invention to 

 imitation and opposition ? It is the product of 

 the joint action of both of these. We saw that 

 imitation and repetition constitute causation in 

 the domain of thought and ideas, also in that 

 of life. They are the force at work in these 

 fields. They are the causa efficiens, the vis a 

 tergo, that propels the vital and psychic worlds. 

 As such they obey the Newtonian law, and the 

 motion resulting is in straight lines. Cause and 

 effect are in intimate contact, and this repeti- 

 tion, or rectilinear motion is simply continu- 

 ance, i. «., continuity. But opposition interferes 

 with this, tends to arrest motion, constrains 



and transmutes it. So far the process is genetic. 

 But mind is ielic. It is a final cause. It was 

 developed as a meansof overcoming opposition, 

 of surmounting obstacles, of avoiding resistance, 

 and of circumventing counter-forces, in order 

 to attain foreseen ends. This is the essence of 

 invention, which is therefore born of the repet- 

 itive nisus in conflict with the obstructive en- 

 vironment, i. e., of imitation and opposition. 



As invention seems to be wholly the product 

 of the higher mind and late in origin, it might 

 be supposed that, unlike imitation, repetition 

 and opposition, it would have no homologue in 

 the animal world or on the plane of mere vital 

 existence, and still less in the field of purely 

 physical phenomena. Not so, however. Just 

 as in the organic world, heredity is the homo- 

 logue of imitation, and environment is the 

 homologue of opposition, so variation, the 

 product of heredity and environment, is the 

 homologue of invention, the product of imita- 

 tion and opposition. Dropping now into the 

 physical world, where, as we saw, causation is 

 the homologue of imitation, and collision is the 

 homologue of opposition, we see that the 

 product of these is evolution, which is therefore 

 the true cosmic homologue of invention. 



Adaptation, as the final great social law, is 

 perhaps more fully treated in this little book 

 than in any of Tarde's previous volumes. He 

 devotes the third and last chapter to it, occupy- 

 ing 58 pages of the English text. And yet this 

 is the least satisfactory part of Tarde's system 

 thus far. This is not because it is not equally 

 important, but because it is not set forth with 

 anything like the originality and power that 

 characterize his treatment of the other great 

 laws. This is perhaps partly because he found 

 the field thoroughly worked over by the biolo- 

 gists, and there is so little new in sociological 

 adaptation. But he says justly that adaptation 

 " expresses the profoundest aspect under which 

 science views the universe." He perceives 

 that it is a progressive coordination of social 

 phenomena, and in a sense a synthesis of repeti- 

 tion and opposition, just as in biology it is a de- 

 velopment as the result of a synthesis of hered- 

 ity and environmental resistance. But he does 

 not work out the mode of operation of this law in 

 a way analogous to that in which Darwin worked 



