186 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
of a people or race,” as commonly used, and holds that they are 
merely a convenient label, or impersonal synthesis of individual 
characteristics and that the characters of individuals are alone 
real, effective and ever in activity. Thus instead of assuming as a 
starting point for cosmic evolution a homogeneous mass, as did 
Spencer, and defining progress in terms of differentiation and 
integration, Tarde assumes a motley array of elements, each 
possessing its own individual characteristics. 
Tarde takes his stand with the mathematical economists such 
as Walras and Jevons and insists that the intellectual and volun- 
tary activities of the self can be measured quantitatively and that 
only so can sociology be a science.?_ This leads to a praise of the 
statistical method of social measurements and to the introduction 
of his social theory. 
The evolution of the present world-order, according to our 
author, consists in resolving the mass resemblances into resem- 
blances of detail, and in transforming the gross and obvious mass 
differences into infinitely minute differences of detail. The 
minute interagreement of minds and wills, which forms the basis 
of social life, i. e., the presence of so many common ideas, ends, 
and means in the minds and wills of all members of the same 
society at any given moment, — is due, not to organic heredity 
nor to mere identity of geographical environment, but rather 
to the effect of the suggestion-imitation process which, starting 
from one primitive creature possessed of a single idea or act, 
has passed this copy on to one of its neighbors, then to another, 
and so on.? 
The reciprocal suggestion-imitation relation between two 
persons, Tarde holds, is the fundamental social fact and finds 
illustration in the relation of mother and child and also in that 
of teacher and pupil.* ‘“ The unvarying characteristic of every 
social fact whatever is that it is imitative. And this character- 
istic belongs exclusively to social facts.” 4 
While imitation is the great principle of social uniformity, it is 
never exact; and the refraction of imitation rays in the individual 
1 Social Laws, p. 210. 3 Tbid., p. 38. 
2 Tbid., p. 34. 4 [bid., p. 41. 
