140 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



individual, prior to the individual and making him what he is, — 

 in this going back to Comte only with refinements. That is, 

 Durkheim gives specific content to the concept of society as a 

 socio-psychical organism: it is the psychical somewhat over 

 against the individual which forms that particular spiritual en- 

 vironment into which he is born and which moulds his life. This 

 environment, moreover, is not one but multiple. The individual 

 is born into and moulded by the psychic somewhat represented by 

 his particular family, later by that of the school he attends, later 

 still by that of his vocational associations. Then there is the 

 specific socio-psychic moulding power of his community and 

 state. 



2. The Nature of Social Solidarity. — This social solidarity, 

 according to our author, is of two kinds, mechanical and organic. 

 His purpose in De la Division dn Travail Social is to work out 

 a positive ethics and in order to have an objective " common to 

 all," — an object for scientific investigation, — all phenomena of 

 the inner life of individuals must be correlated to objective ex- 

 pressions. The social consciousness expresses itself in laws, 

 institutions, etc., and these are of a nature to be studied scienti- 

 fically. The solidarity of society based on similarities or 

 "consciousness of kind" is expressed in mores and crystallized 

 primarily in " repressive right." " The bond of social solidarity 

 to which repressive right corresponds is that whose rupture consti- 

 tutes crime. . . . One knows what the bond is, then, by know- 

 ing the particular crime which is considered most important. . . . 

 The essential characters of crime are those which are found where- 

 ever there is crime whatever may be the social type. Now the 

 only characters which are or have been recognized as common to 

 all are the following: (1) crime clashes with the sentiments which 

 are possessed by all normal individuals of the society under 

 consideration; (2) these sentiments are strong; (3) they are 

 definite. Crime, then, is the act which clashes with the strong 

 and definite states of collective consciousness." l The difference 

 between the immoral act and the crime, he holds, is merely that 

 the former violates sentiments diffused in individuals throughout 



1 De la Division du Travail Social, Table of Contents, p. 462. 



