Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/419

 REVIEWS 399

regularity, order, logical progress, in the facts of society, the details must be left behind, because they are essentially irregular. A very high point of outlook must be taken so as to bring vast wholes within a panoramic view. It is assumed at the same time that the principle and source of all social coordination resides in some very general fact, whence it percolates by degrees and in progressive dilutions down into particular facts. In a word, man is carried along by a law of evolution within the action of which his initiative is only appar- ent" (p. 125). Tarde declares, on the contrary, that close adaptations are to be found only in the details of human facts; that the farther we go from the small and closely knit social group — from the family, school, workshop, congregation, convent, regiment — to city, province, nation, the less perfect and striking is the solidarity. At this point, again (p. 127), it seems to me that in recording a correct observation — viz., " civilization is characterized by the facilities which it offers for the realization of an individual programme of social reorganiza- tion " — Tarde points toward the very facts which will presently com- pel radical restatement of his hypothesis. This is still more evident a little later, when he says (p. 129): "We must look for elementary social adaptation in the brain itself, in the individual genius of the mventor. Invention — I mean that which is destined to be imitated, for that which remains shut up in the mind of its author does not count socially — invention is a harmony of ideas which is the mother of all the harmonies of men." In all this Tarde is dealing with factors in the situation with which his own thesis in its present form is irre- concilable. He is refuting himself. Tarde has done most notable service in calling attention to the function of imitation. His service ends when he attempts to make us believe that imitation is the social factotum. We may admit that " at each cerebral alliance of two inven- tions in a third, imitation is involved " (p. 133), but it is equally clear — or more so — that, as Tarde declares on the following page, " these two progressions — the imitative and the inventive — are continually inter- laced." The logical categories, "repetition," "opposition," "adapta- tion," give no license to assign rank and importance to one of these factors to the prejudice of the other. It is sheer dogmatism to imply (as in the passage quoted above from p. 134). that invention is simply and solely a function of imitation. The presumption is decidedly against it. Imitation is evidently a factor in the social reaction, and we must assign it due value. But variation, as Tarde himself is com- pelled to advertise, is a constant social phenomenon. Masking it