Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/491

 SUICIDE IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT STUDIES 477

to express it. The question is not whether the word indicating the fact be more or less well selected, but rather if the fact itself be true or not. After Baldwin's studies on imitation, which seem, however, to be completely ignored by Durkheim, it would be an aimless enterprise to waste words in demonstrating the efficacy of imitation in social life. The fact, moreover, is so overwhelmingly evident that Durkheim, although strongly deny- ing it, is, at every moment, unconsciously brought to presuppose it in all his interpretations, as every impartial and competent reader of his book will undoubtedly be disposed to admit.

V.

Thus, by a strange irony, the outcome of this book on sui- cide is just the contrary of what the author expected it to be. Instead of demonstrating the alleged independence of the social phenomenon from the action of individual factors, it ends in the best verification of the opposite conception of social fact as resulting from the combined studies of Tarde and Baldwin. In spite of Durkheim's vigorous dialectic temper and his ability in the collection and presentation of statistical data, his desperate attempt to prove the positive character of his conception of society is a complete failure. Social causes, social influences, social integration, all the formulae by which Durkheim endeavors to concrete his conception of the independence of the social fact from the action of individual causes, are mere words, if we do not refer them to the living element of the individuals whose mutual interaction makes society. The utility of Durkheim's work lies chiefly in the fact that it brings about the reductio ad absurdum of his sociological system, the most apt to mis- lead scientific inquiry into the field of social phenomena by its false character of objectivity and the magistral arrangement of pseudo-proofs. The way is now cleared of a great obstacle. We must, henceforth, keep straight to the path through which the greatest conquest of modern thought has been made in the line of sociological research I mean the discovery of that law of imitation which, in spite of Durkheim's grammatical or philo-