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 398 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

it would be expressed in the concrete: " Charles the First was the latest term of one series of imitations ; Cromwell the latest term of another series; the Restoration, or the Act of Settlement, the accommodation or ' adaptation ' of the two." Or " Bourbonism was the end term of one series of imitations ; Jacobinism of another ; Bonapartism their ' adap- tation.' " Of the claim thus expressed, we may say, without much risk: first, if any historian believes that either the Stuarts, or the Puritans, or the Bourbons, or the Jacobins can be disposed of in terms of " imi- tation," he would confer a favor upon the sociologists by making him- self known ; second, even assuming that the primary thesis were estab- lished, the formulation thus far does more to raise the hypothesis of an undetected factor in the process of " adaptation " than to satisfy the mind with the simple factor " imitation." In other words, to recur to the last illustration, Tarde's own argument has the effect of provok- ing the presumption that a something, which we may call Napoleon- ism, was a real coordinating factor in the reaction between Bourbon- ism and Jacobinism. Tarde's own argument seems, therefore, to make rather toward a conclusion more like Baldwin's, viz., a " dialec- tic of social growth" (Social and Ethical Interpretalions, p. 543). He has not yet made it credible either that " imitation " is the sum and substance of both thesis and antithesis, or that " imitation " is the combining agency by force of which the synthesis, or equilibrated social status, results.

In chap. 3, "The Adaptation of Phenomena," the author describes adaptation as a condition of the elements composing an aggregate. It is of two degrees : first, that presented by the relations of the component elements of an aggregate to each other ; second, that which unites these elements to the systems in which they are con- tained, or, in a word, to the environment (p. 117). "Adjustment within itself differs very greatly in every order of facts, from adjust- ment to external conditions; just as repetition of self (habit) differs from repetition of others (heredity or imitation), as opposition within the self (hesitation, doubt) differs from opposition to others (conflict, competition.)" All science is progressive endeavor to think the adjustment actually given in the portion of reality contemplated (p. 118). This is true of sociology, from its first forms in theology (p. 123), through its forms as philosophy of history, down to the evo- lutionary sociologists (p. 124). At this point Tarde brings the fol- lowing indictment against the evolutionists : "The same error always reappears in their method, viz., they believe that in order to discover