Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/736

 722 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

It is worthy of note, however, before consideration of M. Tarde's and Professor Baldwin's views, that they approached their sub- ject from different sides. Professor Baldwin, as is well known, arrived at his conclusions from the side of individual psychology, through study of the mental development of the child ; while M. Tarde reached his theories from the sociological side, through study of the phenomena of crowds, crazes, fads, fashions, and crime. He saw that the underlying fact in these social phe- nomena namely, the process of suggestion and imitation could be generalized and used as the basis of a system of social philosophy. The repetition of the act of one person by another under the influence of suggestion offered, he thought, " the key to the social mystery." 1 The influence of one mind upon another was explained by this suggestion-imitation process, and consequently all changes and movements in society. 2 "Society is imitation," he says, "and imitation is a species of somnambu- lism." 3 Moreover, imitation is "the elementary social phenome- non," 4 "the fundamental social fact;" 5 it is the criterion of the social and alone constitutes society. "The unvarying character- istic of every social fact whatsoever is that it is imitative. And this characteristic belongs exclusively to social facts." 6 The unity of society, both on its functional and structural sides, M. Tarde argues, is wholly due to the process of imitation. "This minute interagreement of minds and wills, which forms the basis of social life .... is not due," he maintains, "to organic hered- ity . . . . ; it is rather the effect of that suggestion-imitation process which, starting from one primitive creature possessed of a single idea or act, passed this copy on to one of its neighbors, then to another, and so on." 7

Consistently with the above positions, M. Tarde declares that all the activities of men in society, from the satisfying of simple organic needs to the inventions of science and art, are in one way or another outcomes of the process of imitation. 8

1 Social Laws, p. 47. * Social Laws, p. 56.

'Ibid., p. 39. *Ibid., p. 41.

3 Les Lois de ^Imitation, p. 95. 1 Ibid., pp. 38, 39.
 * La Logique sociale, p. 76. Ibid., pp. 39-41.