138 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
it; further, that social progress is advanced by the contact and 
conflict of social ‘‘ souls ” by processes of imitation, assimilation, 
conflict and survival. 
EmiteE DurkHEIM (1858- _—+?) 
Social Realism 
Durkheim’s social philosophy is founded on Comte’s positivism 
modified somewhat by Espinas’ social realism, and the Volks- 
wirtschaftslehre of Wagner and Schmoller and the psychological 
teachings of Wundt.!. He makes advance on the authors pre- 
viously considered in two particulars: first, in his elaboration 
of the thesis that society has an objective reality, suz generis, and 
second, that this solidarity is on the one hand mechanical, based 
chiefly on consciousness of kind and expressed in repressive 
reactions against the individual, and on the other hand organic, 
based on division of labor and consciousness of supplementary 
difference and expressed in family life, friendship, co-operative 
endeavor and co-operative right. 
1. Society as a Reality, sui generis. This concept had already 
been developed by Comte, Schaffle, Espinas, Wagner, Schmoller, 
et al., and was being developed by Le Bon. Comte, however, 
considered only society, not societies; Schaffle connected sociol- 
ogy immediately with biology and individual psychology, making 
the individual, for the most part, the sociological unit; Espinas 
was interested chiefly in animal societies and greatly exaggerated 
the conscious social activity manifested in lower orders and 
approached more nearly than Durkheim to the crass realism of 
mediaeval philosophers. The German school was interested 
chiefly in the production of wealth from the nationalistic point of 
view together with the historical discussion of the subject, while 
Le Bon was busied with a study of the phenomena of crowds, and 
in the socio-psychical characters of social groups. Durkheim’s 
approach is purely sociological. His aim is to show that society 
is not merely a psychical organism but one that is socio-psychical, 
governed by laws different from those of individual psychology, 
1 Deploige, Le Conflit de la Morale et de la Sociologie, pp. 127, 128. 
