Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/417

 REVJEIVS 397

needs, spiritual tendencies, exist in us at first only as realizable virtuali- ties under the most diverse forms, in spite of their vague primordial similarity. Among these possible realizations it is the imitated indi- cation of a first initiator which determines the choice of one rather than another." Accordingly Tarde holds (p. 41) that this fact of imitation is the pass-key to the social mystery. It will furnish the formulas which will reduce the apparent chaos of history and of human life to orderly expression.

Tarde's weakness is just at this point. The play of imitation in human affairs is beyond question. But that imitation tells the whole story is preposterous. Tarde's theory claims to account for the inces- sant appearance of variation in men's ideas, feelings, and actions; but the claim is unfounded. He assumes "^lite initiators" at the begin- ning of the social process, but he asserts that after this initial moment all the members of society are mere imitators. I suppose he would say that the first soldiers who used powder and shot, instead of pikes and arrows, simply imitated former soldiers in using weapons; the increased effectiveness of the weapons does not count. The inventors of armor-clad vessels imitated all the sea fighters in protect- ing themselves against other sea fighters. The means employed are merely imitative combinations of previous elements, etc., etc' No one will be satisfied a great while with this stretching of the truth.

The effect of M. Tarde's second chapter, " Opposition of Phenom- ena," upon my mind, is to impeach, rather than to confirm, his main thesis. Tarde divides oppositions in human societies into the three chief forms of war, competition, and disputation. His contention is, first, that each of two opposing social factors is itself the terminus of a "radius of imitation ; " second, that the opposition between these factors is merely a mediary affair, destined to disappear in the even- tual adaptation (p. 104). The former of these propositions is the origi- nal thesis to be proved, and the chapter on " opposition " certainly makes the thesis no more probable. As I understand Tarde's claim,

■This seems to be the import of a passage on p. 134, the implications of which are utterly arbitrary, viz.: "We must avoid confounding, as is so often done, the progress of instruction, a simple fact of imitation, with the progress of science, a tact of adaptation; or the progress of industrialism with the progress of industry itself ; or the progress of morality with the progress of moral theory; or the progress of militarism with progress of the military art ; or the progress of language — i. e., its territorial spread — with the progress of language in the sense of refinement of its grammar and the enrichment of its dictionary." This passage will be referred to below.