Tarde Gabriel, Monadology and Sociology

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Gabriel Tarde

Monadology

and Sociology

Edited & translated by

Theo Lorenc


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MONADOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY


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TRANSMISSIONTransmission denotes the

transfer of information,objects or forces from one

place to another, fromone person to another.

Transmission impliesurgency, even emergency:a line humming, an alarm

sounding, a messengerbearing news. ThroughTransmission interven-

tions are supported, andopinions overturned.

Transmission republishesclassic works in philoso-

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philosophical thought.Transmission is the name

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Gabriel Tardeedited & translated by Theo Lorenc



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This work is Open Access, published under a creative commons license whichmeans that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work aslong as you clearly attribute the work to the authors, that you do not use thiswork for any commercial gain in any form whatsoever and that you in no wayalter, transform or build on the work outside of its use in normal academicscholarship without express permission of the author (or their executors)and the publisher of this volume. For any reuse or distribution, you must makeclear to others the license terms of this work. For more information see thedetails of the creative commons licence at this website:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Author: Tarde, Gabriel de, 1843-1904.

Title: Monadology and sociology / Gabriel Tarde ; translated byTheo Lorenc with afterword and notes.

ISBN: 9780980819724 (pbk.)ISBN: 9780980819731 (ebook : pdf)

Series: Transmission.

Subjects: Sociology--Philosophy.Monadology.

Other Authors/Contributors:Lorenc, Theo.

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v

CONTENTS

Translators Preface 1Monadology and Sociology 5

Afterword: Tardes Pansocial Ontology 73


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5


Hypotheses ngo1

IThe monads, children of Leibniz, have come a long way since theirbirth. By several independent paths, unremarked by scientiststhemselves, they slip into the heart of contemporary science. Itis a remarkable fact that all the secondary hypotheses implicit inthis great hypothesis, at least in its essentials if not in its strictlyLebnizian form, are now being proved scientically. The hypoth-esis implies both the reduction of two entities, matter and mind,to a single one, such that they are merged in the latter, and at thesame time a prodigious multiplication of purely mental agents inthe world. In other words, it implies both the discontinuity of theelements and the homogeneity of their being. Moreover, it is onlyon these two conditions that the universe is wholly transparent tothe gaze of the intellect. Now, on the one hand, as a result of hav-ing been sounded a thousand times and judged unfathomable, theabyss which separates movement and consciousness, object andsubject, the mechanical and the logical, has at length been calledonce more into question, relegated to the status of an appearance,and nally denied altogether by the bravest souls, who have beenechoed from every quarter. On the other hand, the progress ofchemistry leads us to affirm the atom and to deny the materialcontinuity which the continuous character of the physical and liv-ing manifestations of matter, extension, movement and growth

1. [Trans. Note: The epigraph references Newtons famous tag hypothe-ses non ngo (I make no hypotheses), in theGeneral Scholium to the PrincipiaMathematica.]


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Monadology and Sociology6

seem supercially to reveal. There is nothing more profoundlysurprising than the combination of chemical substances in de-nite proportions, to the exclusion of any intermediate proportion.

Here there is no evolution and no transition: the dividing lines areclear and stark; and yet hence arises everything which is suppleand harmoniously graduated in phenomena, almost as if the con-tinuity of nuances were impossible without the discontinuity ofcolours. The path of chemistry is not the only one which seems tolead us in its progress to the monads; so too do physics, the naturalsciences, history, and even mathematics. As Lange says: Of greatimportance, not only for this demonstration, but also especially for

its far-reaching consequences, was Newtons assumption that thegravitation of a planet is only the sum of the gravitation of all itsindividual portions. From this immediately owed the inferencethat the terrestrial bodies gravitate towards each other; and fur-ther, that even the smallest particles of these masses attract eachother.2 With this viewpoint, which was much more original thanit seems today, Newton broke, and indeed pulverized the individu-ality of the celestial body, which had until then been regarded as asuperior unity whose internal relations bore no resemblance to itsrelations with other bodies. Great strength of mind was requiredto resolve this apparent unity into a multiplicity of distinct ele-ments linked to each other in the same way as they are linked tothe elements of other aggregates. The beginning of the progressof physics and astronomy can be dated to the day when this view-point replaced the contrary prejudice.

In this respect the founders of cellular theory have shownthemselves to be Newtons true heirs. In the same way they havebroken apart the unity of the living body, they have resolved it intoa prodigious number of elementary organisms, isolated and egois-tic, eager (avides) to develop themselves at the expense of the exte-rior, where the exterior includes their neighbouring brother cellsas well as the inorganic particles of air, water, and all other sub-stances. Schwanns3 position on this point has been no less fer-tile than Newtons. Thanks to his cellular theory, we know thatthere is no vital force, as a principle distinct from matter, either

2. [Trans. Note: Ludwig Lange (1863-1936),History of Materialism: And Criticismof its Present Importance, vol. I, trans. E. C. Thomas, London, Kegan Paul, Trench,Trbner, 1925, p. 311.] 3. [Trans. Note: Theodor Schwann (1810-1882) was one of the key early propo-nents of the theory that all living organisms are made up of cells.]


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Gabriel Tarde 7

in the entirety of the organism, or in each cell.All phenomena ofvegetable or animal life must be explained by the properties of atoms [let us say of the ultimate elements from which atoms are com-

posed], whether these be the known forces of inert natureor forc-es hitherto unknown.4 There is surely nothing more positivist orbetter conformed to a healthy and serious science than this radi-cal negation of the vital principle, against which vulgar spiritual-ism likes to protest. However, it is clear where this tendency willlead us, if drawn to its logical conclusion: to the monads, whichfull the most daring promises of Leibnizian spiritualism. Likethe vital principle, illness, which was treated as a person by the

ancient medical writers, has been pulverized into a great numberof innitesimal disorders of the histological elements. Moreover,thanks primarily to the discoveries of Pasteur, the parasitic theo-ry of illness, which explains these disorders by means of the in-ternal conicts of miniscule organisms, nds more general appli-cation every day, and indeed excessively so, to the point where itshould provoke some reaction. But parasites, too, have their para-sites. And so on. The innitesimal again!

The new theories in chemistry have been formed along anal-ogous lines. As Wurtz says: This is the new and essential point.The properties of the radicals are referred to the elements themselves.Formerly they were considered as a whole. To the radical regardedas a whole was attributed the power of combining with or of beingsubstituted for simple bodies. This was the fundamental point ofview of Gerhardts theory of types. We now go further. To discov-er and dene the properties of radicals we go back to the atoms ofwhich they are composed.5 This eminent chemists thought goesfurther than our remarks above. The examples which he citesdemonstrate that, among the atoms of a radical, there is one inparticular on whose atomicity and as yet unsatised avidity, out-lasting the saturation of all the others, the combination which isproduced ultimately depends.

Like stars, like living things, like illnesses, like chemical radi-cals, nations are nothing more than entities which have long been

4. [Trans. Note: These two sentences are marked as a citation in the text, butappear to be not a verbatim quote but a summary paraphrase of the nal section(Theory of the Cells) of T. Schwann,Microscopical researches into the accor-dance in the structure and growth of animals and plants, trans. H. Smith, London,Sydenham Society, 1847.] 5. [Trans. Note: A. Wurtz,The Atomic Theory , trans. E. Cleminshaw, London,Kegan Paul, 1880, pp. 265-266 (Tardes emphasis).]


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taken for true beings in the ambitious and sterile theories of so-called philosophical historians. Has it not, for example, been suf-ciently repeated that it is foolish to seek the cause of a political or

social revolution in the inuence of writers, of statesmen, or of anykind of instigator, and that it rather springs spontaneously fromthe genius of the race, from the bowels of the people, that anony-mous and superhuman agent? But this convenient point of view,which consists in mistakenly seeing the creation of a new beingin a phenomenon generated by the encounter of real beings (albe-it a genuinely new and unforeseen phenomenon), can be upheldonly provisionally. Having been rapidly exhausted by the literary

abuses it has suffered, it is conducive to a serious return towards aclearer and more positive form of explanation, which accounts fora given historical event only by individual actions, and particularlyby the action of inventive men who served as a model for othersand reproduced thousands of copies of themselves, like mother-cells of the social body.

This is not all: these ultimate elements which form the nalstage of every science, the social individual, the living cell, thechemical atom, are ultimate only from the point of view of theirparticular science. They themselves, as we know, are composite,not excepting the atom itself which, according to Thomsons hy-pothesis of the vortex atom,6 the most plausible or the least un-acceptable of the conjectures which have been attempted on thissubject, would be a whirling mass of simpler elements. Lockyers7 studies of solar and stellar spectra have led him to supposeandthe conjecture seems probablethat certainweak lines observedby him are due to the elements of which are composed certain sub-stances that on our planet are regarded as incomposite.

Scientists who live in daily contact with the so-called elementshave no doubt of their complexity. While Wurtz shows himself tobe favourable to Thomsons hypothesis, Berthelot says for his part:The deeper study of the elementary masses which, on our cur-rent understanding, constitute the simple bodies leads every daymore and more to an understanding of them not as indivisible at-oms, homogenous and admitting of movement only as a whole,

6. [Trans. Note: J. J. Thomsons nebular or vortex atom theory, prior to thediscovery of the electron, posited that the atom consisted of nebular vortices inthe ether. As of the writing ofMonadology and Sociology , little was known of theinternal structure of the atom.] 7. [Trans. Note: Norman Lockyer (1836-1920), astronomer and pioneer of astro-nomical spectroscopy.]


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Gabriel Tarde 9

but as highly complex constructions, furnished with a specic ar-chitecture and animated by highly varied internal movements.8 Physiologists, for their part, do not maintain that the protoplasm

is a homogenous substance, and judge only the solid part of thecell to be active and truly living. The soluble part, almost in its en-tirety, is nothing but a storehouse for fuel and nourishment (or amass of excrement). Moreover, a better understanding of the solidpart itself would doubtless lead us to eliminate almost everythingfrom it. And, where will this process of elimination nish if notat a geometrical point, that is, at pure nothingness? Unless, as wewill explain below, this point is a centre. And, in fact, in the true

histological element (which is designated only improperly by theword cell) what it is essential to take into account is not its limitor envelope, but rather the central focus whence it seems to aspireto radiate indenitely until the day when the cruel experience ofexternal obstacles obliges it to close in on itself in order to preserveits being; but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

There is no way to call a halt to this descent to the innitesi-mal, which, most unexpectedly, becomes the key to the entire uni-verse. This may explain the growing importance of the innitesi-mal calculus; and, for the same reason, the stunning and rapidsuccess of the theory of evolution. In this theory, a specic formis, as a geometer would say, the integral of innumerable differen-tials called individual variations, which are themselves due to cel-lular variations, whose basis consists of a myriad of elementarychanges. The source, reason, and ground of the nite and separateis in the innitely small, in the imperceptible: this is the profoundconviction which inspired Leibniz, and continues to inspire ourtransformists.

But why should such a transformation, which is incomprehen-sible if presented as a sum of denite and discrete differences, bereadily understood if we consider it as a sum of innitely smalldifferences? We must show rst of all that this is a real contrast.Suppose that, by some miracle, a body disappears and is annihilat-ed from the place A where it was, then appears andcomes back intobeing at the place Z a metre away from A,without having traversedthe intermediate positions: such adisplacementis beyond the powerof our mind to grasp, while we would never be astonished to seethis body move from A to Z along a line of juxtaposed positions.

8. [Trans. Note: Marcellin Berthelot (1827-1907), chemist. The citation has notbeen traced.]


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However, note that in the rst case, we would have beenno less amazed had we seen such an abrupt disappearance and reappear-ance take place over a distance of half a metre, or of 30, of 20, of

10, of 2 centimetres, or of any perceptible fraction of a millime-tre. Our reason, if not our imagination, would be just as struckin the last case as in the original example. In the same way, if weare presented with two distinct living species, be they very distantor closely related, a fungus and a labiate herb, or two herbs of thesame genus, in neither case will it be comprehensible that onecould suddenly and with no transition turn into the other. But, ifwe were to be told that by hybridization the fertilized ovule of the

one had undergone a deviation, extremely slight at rst and thengradually increasing, from its habitual pathway, we would have nodifficulty in accepting this. It will be argued that the inconceiv-ability of the rst hypothesis is due to a prejudice which has beenformed in us by the association of ideas. Nothing could be truer,and precisely this proves that reality, the source of the experiencewhich gave birth to this prejudice, conforms to the explanation ofthe nite by the innitesimal. For pure reason, and still more rea-son alone, would never have guessed at this hypothesis; it wouldeven, perhaps, be more inclined to see in the large the source ofthe small than in the small the source of the large, and it wouldgladly believe in divine forms which are completeab initio, whichcould envelop a clod of earth all at once and penetrate it from theoutside to the inside. It would even willingly agree with Agassiz9 that, from the outset, trees have been forests, bees hives, men na-tions. Science has been able to eliminate this point of view only bythe rebellion of contrary facts. To mention only the most obvious,it is the case that an immense sphere of light spread through spaceis due to the unique vibration, multiplied by contagion, of one cen-tral atom of ether,10that the entire population of a species origi-nates from the prodigious multiplication of one unique rst ovu-lary cell, in a kind of generative radiation,that the presence ofthe correct astronomical theory in millions of human brains isdue to the multiplied repetition of an idea which appeared one dayin a cerebral cell of Newtons brain. But, once more, what follows

9. [Trans. Note: Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), palaeontologist. Tardes reference isto Agassiz defence of special creationthe position that animal species and hu-man races were separately created by Godand of the xity and unchangeabil-ity of the species thus created.]

10. [Trans. Note: The ether, in the physics of Tardes time, is the all-pervadingsubstance which serves as the medium through which light propagates.]


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Gabriel Tarde 11

from this? If the innitesimal differed from the nite only by degree,if at the basis of things as at their perceptible surface there exist-ed only positions, distances, and displacements, why would a dis-

placement which is inconceivable in the nite realm change itsnature in becoming innitesimal? The innitesimal, therefore, isqualitatively different from the nite; movement has a cause dis-tinct from itself; being is not exhausted by what appears in phe-nomena. Everything comes from the innitesimal and everythingreturns to it; nothing in the sphere of the nite and complexasurprising fact which nobody is surprised atappears suddenly,nor dies away. What should we conclude from this, if not that the

innitely small, in other words the element, is the source and thegoal, the substance and the reason of all things?While the prog-ress of physics leads physicists toquantify nature in order to un-derstand it, it is remarkable that the progress of mathematics leadsmathematicians, in order to understand quantity, to resolve it intoelements which are not at all quantitative.11

This growing importance which the growth of knowledgegrants to the concept of the innitesimal is all the more curioussince the latter, in its ordinary form (leaving aside for a momentthe monadic hypothesis), is nothing but a mass of contradictions.I will leave to Renouvier12 the task of pointing them out. By whatpower could the absurd grant to the human mind the key to theworld? Is it not because, through this purely negative concept, weaim at but do not reach, or look at but do not see, a much morepositive concept which we do not own, but which should nonethe-less be inscribedas a reminder in the inventory of our intellectualassets? This absurdity could very well be only the outer coveringof a reality alien to everything we know, outside everything, spaceand time, matter and mind Outside mind? If so, the monadichypothesis should be rejected but this must be examined fur-ther. However this question is resolved, these tiny beings whichwe call innitesimal will be the realagents, and these tiny varia-tions which we call innitesimal will be the realactions.

Indeed, it seems to follow from the preceding that these agentsare autonomous, and that these variations clash and obstruct one

11. [Trans. Note: Tarde may be thinking here of the work of Georg Cantor andRichard Dedekind in the 1870s and 1880s on the set-theoretical foundations ofnatural number.] 12. [Trans. Note: Charles Renouvier (1815-1903), philosopher. Renouvierstrongly criticized the concepts of innite and innitesimal magnitude as logi-cally contradictory.]


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another as much as they compete. If everything comes from theinnitesimal, it is because an element, a unique element, initiatessome change, movement, vital evolution, or mental or social trans-

formation. If all these changes are gradual and apparently con-tinuous, this shows that the initiative undertaken by the element,even if it receives some support, has also encountered some resis-tance. Let us imagine that all the citizens of a State, without excep-tion, are fully in favour of a programme of political reorganizationspringing from the brain of one among their number, and moreparticularly from one point within this brain; the complete over-haul of the State according to this plan, rather than being progres-

sive and fragmentary, will then be abrupt and total, however radi-cal the project. The slowness of social modications is explainedonly by the fact that the other plans for reform or ideals of the Statewhich all other members of a nation knowingly or unknowinglyentertain run contrary to this plan. In the same way, if matter wereas inert and passive as is generally believed, I do not see why move-ment, in other words gradual displacement, should exist, nor whythe formation of an organism should be subject to the progress ofits embryonic phases, an obstacle opposed to the immediate real-ization of its adult stage which was nonetheless from the begin-ning the aim of the germs impulse.

The idea of the straight line, let it be noted, is not the exclusiveproperty of geometry. There is a biological rectilinearity and a logi-cal rectilinearity. In the same way that, in passing from one pointto another, the abbreviation or diminution of the number of inter-vening points cannot continue indenitely and must stop at thelimit which we call the straight line, just so, in the passage fromone specic form to another, from an individual state to another,there is aminimal , irreducible intervening series of forms or stateswhich must be traversed, which alone may perhaps explain the ab-breviated repetition by the embryo of some of the successive formsof its ancestors; and similarly, in expounding a body of knowledge,is there not a way to gostraight from one thesis to the next, anddoes it not consist in linking them by a chain oflogical positionsor positings which necessarily come in between the two? A tru-ly surprising necessity. This rational, rectilinear order of exposi-tion, much favoured by introductory books which summarize ina few pages the labour of centuries (and the limit of the ambitionof such volumes), coincides frequently but not invariably, and inmany points but not in all, with the historical order of appearance


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Gabriel Tarde 13

of the successive discoveries which are synthesized in the science.Perhaps this is the case with the famous recapitulation of phylog-eny by ontogeny ,13 which would then be the rectication and not

only the prodigious acceleration of the more or less winding pathalong which the ancestral forms, the accumulatedbiological inven-tions which are bequeathed all together to the ovule, followed oneanother in previous eras.14

The real support which the theory of evolution gives to themonadological hypotheses will be still more evident if we imaginethis great system in the new forms which it will soon take on, andwhose outline can already be seen. For evolutionary theory itself

evolves. It evolves not by a series or a competition of blind group-ings, or of fortuitous and involuntary adaptations to the observedfacts, in conformity with the procedures of transformation which itwrongly attributes to living nature, but by the accumulated effortsof perfectly aware scientists and theoreticians, knowingly and vol-untarily occupied in modifying the fundamental theory to t it asclosely as possible to the scientic data known to them, and also tothe preconceived ideas they hold dear. This theory is for them a ge-neric form which they are working tospecify , each in his own way.But, among these various products of the unprecedented fermen-tation created by Darwin, there are only two which add to or sub-stitute for the masters own idea something truly new and fertile. Irefer rstly to theevolution by association of elementary organismsinto more complex organisms formulated by Edmond Perrier,15 and secondly by theevolution by leaps or crises,16 which, suggest-ed and predicted some years ago by Cornets prescient writings,17

13. [Trans. Note: Readingontogense with the 1893 text; the 1895 text hasauto- gense (autogeny).] 14. [Trans. Note: The theory of ontogenetic recapitulation, most famously for-mulated by Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,holds that the developing embryo recapitulates in miniature the evolution ofthe species.] 15. [Trans. Note: Edmond Perrier (1844-1921), zoologist. As described by Tarde,Perrier propounded the theory that higher organisms evolved from colonies or as-sociations of smaller organisms. See E. Perrier,Les Colonies animales et la forma-

tion des organismes, Paris, Masson, 1881. The 1893 text cites Perriers courses atthe Museum (the National Museum of Natural History in Paris) and adds the fol-lowing footnote: This biological theory has the advantage that it agrees in everypoint with the linguistic theory of the formation of languages by the aggregationof several words into one.]

16. [Trans. Note: The 1893 text adds the English phrase saltatory evolution.] 17. [Trans. Note: Antoine Augustin Cournot (1801-1877), mathematician, econ-omist and philosopher. See hisTrait de lenchanement des ides fondamentales,


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has spontaneously sprouted anew18 here and there in the minds ofseveral contemporary scientists. The specic transformation of apre-existing form in view of a new adaptation, according to one of

these theorists, must have come aboutat a given moment in a qua-si-immediate manner (that is, I think, very short relative to the pro-digious duration of species once they are formed, but perhaps verylong with respect to our brief existence) and, he adds, by aregular process and not by groping its way forward. Similarly, for anothertransformist, the species, from its relatively rapid formation up toits equally rapid decomposition, actually remains xed within cer-tain limits, because it is essentially in a state of stable organic equi-

librium. Deeply troubled in its own constitution by any excessivechange in its environment (or by any internal revolution due to thecontagious rebellion of an element) the organism goes beyond itsspecies only, as it were, to roll onto the slope of another species,itself in stable equilibrium, and there remains for some period oftime which for us would be an eternity.

Of course, I need not here discuss these conjectures. It is suf-cient to note that they are growing, or rather advancing throughthe undergrowth, still lowly but pervasive, while natural selectionloses ground every day, showing itself better at purifying formsthan perfecting them, and better at perfecting them than fun-damentally modifying them. I would add that, by the one or theother of the two ways mentioned above, we are necessarily led topopulate and ll living bodies with spiritual or quasi-spiritual at-oms. To what may we ascribe theneed for society which Perriersees as the soul of the organic world, if not to tiny persons? Andwhat could this transformation be, thisdirect, regular , and rapidprocess imagined by other thinkers, if not the accomplishment

section III.8, uvres compltes, Vol. III, N. Bruyre (ed.), Paris, Vrin, 1982, pp.267-277.] 18. [Trans. Note: The 1893 text adds: sprouted anew at once in the mind oftwo contemporary scientist, both avowed transformists. By one of those coinci-dences which often occur in the history of science, and which invariably denotethe full maturity of an idea whose hour has come and which imperiously de-

mands attention, the latter of the above-mentioned hypotheses, published in 1877by the American naturalist Dall, was presented in 1879 at the scientic sectionof the Academy of Brussels by the Belgian scientist de Slys Longchamps as hisown discovery. The idea in the next sentence is credited to de Slys Longchamps(Michel-Edmond de Slys Longchamps (1813-1900), naturalist) and in the sen-tence following (another transformist) to Dall (William Healey Dall (1845-1927),naturalist). See W. H. Dall (1877) On a provisional hypothesis of saltatory evolu-tion. American Naturalist , vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 135-137.]


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Gabriel Tarde 15

of hidden workers who collaborate in realizing somespecic plan for reorganization previously conceived and willed by one amongtheir number?

IIThis should, I think, suffice to demonstrate how science tendsto pulverize the universe and to multiply beings indenitely.However, as already noted, science tends no less distinctly to unifythe Cartesian duality of matter and mind. Hence it is inevitably ledto, let us say not anthropomorphism, but psychomorphism . Monism can effectively be conceived in three ways (I am of course aware

that this has been said many times before): either by seeing move-ment and consciousnessfor example the vibration of a cerebralcell and the corresponding mental stateas twosides of a singlefact, in which case one misleads oneself by this reminder of the an-cient Janus; or by not denying the heterogeneous nature of matterand mind, but making them ow from a common source, from ahidden and unknown mind, a position which gains nothing but atrinity instead of, and in the place of, a duality: or, nally, by hold-ing resolutely that matter is mind, nothing more. This last thesisis the only comprehensible one, and the only one which truly leadsto the desired reduction. But there are two ways in which it may beunderstood. We may say with the idealists that the material uni-verse, other egos included, ismine, exclusively mine, and that it iscomposed of my states of mind or of their possibility to the extentthat it is affirmed by me, that is, to the extent that this possibilityis itself one of my states of mind. If this interpretation be rejected,the only option is to admit with the monadologists that the wholeexternal universe is composed of souls distinct from my own butfundamentally similar. In accepting this latter point of view, it sohappens that one removes from the former its best support. To rec-ognize that one knows nothing ofthe being in itself of a stone or aplant, say, and at the same time to stubbornly persist in saying thatit is, is logically untenable; the idea which we have of it, as may eas-ily be shown, has for its only content our states of mind; and as, ab-stracting away our states of mind, nothing remains, either it is onlythese states of mind which are affirmed when we affirm this sub-stantial and unknowable X, or it must be admitted that in affirm-ing some other thing, we affirm nothing. But if it is the case thatthis being in itself is fundamentally similar to our own being, thenit will no longer be unknowable, and may consistently be affirmed.


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Gabriel Tarde 17

one end of their immense gamut to the other, from the slightestinclination to believe or to want up to certainty and passion, andnally by their mutual penetration and by other no less striking

signs of similarity, belief and desire play exactly the same role inthe ego, with respect to sensations, as do space and time in the ex-ternal world with respect to material elements. It remains to beexamined whether this analogy does not conceal an identity, andwhether, rather than being simply forms of our sensory experi-ence, as their most profound analyst believed,21 space and time arenot perhaps primitive concepts or continuous and original quasi-sensations by which, thanks to our two faculties of belief and de-

sire, which are the common source of all judgements and henceof all concepts, the degrees and modes of belief and of desire ofpsychic agents other than ourselves are translated to us. On thishypothesis, the movement of bodies would be nothing other thantypes of judgements or objectives formulated by the monads.22

It will be seen that if this were the case, the universe wouldbecome perfectly transparent, and the open conict between twoopposing currents of contemporary science would be resolved. Forif, on the one hand, science leads us towards vegetal psychology,to cellular psychology, and soon to atomic psychology, in a wordto an entirely spiritual interpretation of the mechanical and mate-rial world, on the other hand its tendency to explain everything,including thought, in mechanical terms is no less evident. InHaeckels cellular psychology,23 it is curious to see the alternation

21. [Trans. Note: The reference is to Kants theory of space and time as pureforms of intuition in the Transcendental Aesthetic of theCritique of Pure Reason.Tarde speaks slightly loosely here, as Kant regards time as a form of inner as wellas outer (sensory) intuition.]

22. According to Lotze, if there is anything spiritual in the atom, this must bepleasure and pain, rather than a concept; I maintain exactly the contrary. [Trans.Note: If there is anything spiritual in an atom of material mass, we need not sup-pose that it has any concept (Vorstellung ) of its position in the world, or that thepowers it exercises are accompanied by any effort (Strebung ); but we may affirmthat it inwardly perceives the pressure or shock, the dilation or contraction whichit undergoes in the form of a feeling of pleasure or pain. (H. Lotze,Medicinische

Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele, Leipzig, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung,1852, p. 134 =Principes gnraux de psychologie physiologique, trans. A Penjon,Paris, G. Baillire & Cie, 1881, p. 133.] 23. [Trans. Note: For a brief statement of Haeckels cellular psychology, see hisThe Riddle of the Universe(1899), trans. J. McCabe, London, Watts & Co., 1929,p. 145: Just as we take the living cell to be the elementary organism in anato-my and physiology, and derive the multicellular animal or plant from it, so, withequal right, we may consider the cell-soul to be the psychological unit, and the


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of these two contradictory viewpoints between one line and thenext. But the contradiction is resolved by the hypothesis set outabove, and can only be resolved thus.

Moreover, this hypothesis is in no way anthropomorphic.Belief and desire have the unique privilege of including un-conscious states. There certainly exist unconscious desires andjudgements. These include, for example, the desires implicit inour pleasures and pains, and the judgements of localization andso on which are incorporated in our sensations. By contrast, un-conscious and unfelt sensations are a manifest impossibility; if afew minds have thought to posit them, it is either because they

have used this phrase mistakenly to refer to sensations which arenot affirmed or discerned, or because, while understanding thatit is really necessary to admit unconscious states of mind, theyhave wrongly understood sensations as capable of being suchstates. In addition, the facts which have been used to support thehypothesis of unconscious sensibility, already striking enoughin themselves, also serve to prove general conclusions consider-ably beyond this. They show that our own consciousness (that is,the directing monads or leading elements of the brain) has as itsconstant and indispensable collaborators innumerable other con-sciousnesses whose modications, external with respect to us,are for them internal states. Ball says: Certain physiologists whotake an interest in psychology have proved that we cannot forgetanything. Traces of our previously received impressions accumu-late in the cells of our brains, where they remain latent inde-nitely, until one day a superior inuence awakens them from thetomb where they were buried in sleep When in the course of aconversation one tries to remember a name, a date, or a fact, theinformation sought often escapes us, and only several hours lat-er, when we are thinking of something else entirely, does it comespontaneously to offer itself to us. How can we explain this un-expected revelation? It is because amysterious secretary , a skilfulautomaton has been working for us while the intellect [he shouldhave saidour own intellect, the directing monad] neglects thesetrivial details.24

complex psychic activity of the higher organism to be the result of the psychic ac-tivity of the cells which compose it. For a more in-depth exposition, seeZellseelenund Seelenzellen, Leipzig, Alfred Krner Verlag, 1909.] 24. [Trans. Note: Probably Benjamin Ball (1833-1893), psychologist. The cita-tion has not been traced.]


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That psychiatrists nd it necessary to have recourse to themetaphors of asecretary or an interior librarian to explain the phe-nomena of memory, constitutes a strong presumption in favour

of the monadic hypothesis. The monadological theory can there-fore readily appropriate for itself the arguments of the English andGerman psychologists on this subject. But since, after all, it seemsto be necessary to see as unconscious in some cases some states ofmind, let it be noted that in truth, a desire or an act of faith not onlycan exist without being felt, but actually cannot be felt as such, anymore than a sensation can be active by itself. Now, by this remark-able characteristic, the two internal forces I have named are dis-

tinguished for us by being objectiable (objectivable) to the highestdegree. Since they may apply to any sensation whatsoever, howev-er radically different these sensations may be from each other, tothe colour red as to the note C or D, to the smell of a rose as to thefeeling of cold or warmth, why may they not apply just as muchto unknown and, I submit, unknowable phenomena,ex hypothesi different from sensations, but no more or less distinct from sensa-tions than the latter are from each other? Why maysensation notbe seen simply as a species of the genusquality , and may not oneadmit that there exist outside usnon-sensory qualifying signs which,just like our sensations, may serve as the point of application forthe psychic forces par excellence, namely the static force called be-lief and the dynamic force called desire? It is perhaps from an in-stinctive and confused feeling of this truth that the idea of forcehas been built on the model of desire, and the key to the univer-sal enigma sought in this idea. Schopenhauer lifted the mask ofthis concept by calling it almost by its true name, will. But willis a combination of faith and desire, and the masters disciples,Hartmann among them, had to add the idea to the will.25 Theywould have done better to break apart the will and distinguish in itthe two elements. We may rightly be amazed that, among so manyphilosophical conjectures, it has occurred to nobody, at least ex-plicitly, to seek in the objectication ofbelief rather than of desirethe solution to the problems of physics and of life. At least explic-itly; for without knowing it, we conceive of mattercoherent andsolid substance, satised and at restnot only with the help of,but in the image and likeness of ourconvictions, as we conceive of

25. [Trans. Note: Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906), philosopher. WhereSchopenhauer based his thought on a strict separation of will and idea, Hartmannidentied the two as dimensions of the unconscious.]


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force in the image of our efforts. Only Hegel glimpsed this truth,to judge by his conceit of composing the world from sequencesof affirmations and negations. Hence perhaps, despite certain ab-

errations and strange subtleties, comes the air of architecturaland magisterial grandeur which pervades his ruined work, andwhich marks, in general, the superiority of substantialist systemsthroughout history, from Democritus to Descartes, over the liveli-est of dynamistic doctrines. Have we not seen monism, beneaththe brilliant light of the currently prevailing evolutionism, whichpushes to its limit the Leibnizian idea of force, attempting the re-newal of the Spinozan concept of substance? For, as will moves

towards certitude, as the movement of stars and atoms moves to-wards their denitive agglomeration, the idea of force leads natu-rally to the idea of substance, where, weary of the agitations of anillusory phenomenalism, grasping nally realities which are takenfor immutable, idealist and materialist thought each in turn takerefuge. But, of these two ascriptions to the mysterious externalnoumena of our two interior quantities, which is legitimate? Whymay we not dare to say that both are?

It will perhaps be objected that this psychomorphismis a veryeasy solution, and all the more illusory for that, and that it is adelusion to pretend that one can explain vital, physical or chemi-cal phenomena by psychological facts, since the latter are alwaysmore complex than the former. But, though I admit the complex-ity of sensations and the complete legitimacy of explaining themby physiological facts, I cannot admit this of desire nor of belief. Imaintain that analysis cannot get its teeth into these irreducibleconcepts. There is an unnoticed contradiction in the position that,on the one hand, an organism is a mechanism constructed in con-formity to purely mechanical laws, and, on the other, that all thephenomena of mental life, including the two mentioned above, arepurely products of the organization created by this life, and do notexist prior to it. If, in fact, the organized being is only an admi-rably constructed machine, it should function like any other ma-chine, in which not only no new force but not even any radicallynew product can possibly be created by the most marvellous ar-rangements of wheels and cogs. A machine is nothing but a spe-cial distribution and direction of pre-existing forces which traverseit without essentially altering it. It is nothing but a change of formof raw materials which it receives from outside and whose essencedoes not change. If then, once more, living bodies are machines,


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the essential nature of those products and those forces which re-sult from their functioning which are known to us fundamentally(sensations, thoughts, volitions) attests that the substances which

nourish them (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen etc.) containhidden psychic elements. In particular, among these superior re-sults of the vital functions, there are two which are forces, andwhich, springing forth from the brain, could not have been creat-ed there by the mechanical play of cellular vibrations. Can it be de-nied that desire and belief are forces? Is it not clear that with theirreciprocal combinations, passions and intentions, they are the per-petual winds of historys tempests, and the waterfalls which turn

the mills of politics? What leads the world on and drives it in itscourse, if not beliefs religious or otherwise, ambitions and cupid-ities? These so-called products are forces to such an extent thatthey alone can produce societies, which many contemporary phi-losophers still maintain are true organisms. The products of an in-ferior organism would then be factors of a superior organization!Thus, in admitting the dynamical character of these two states ofmind, the conclusion (which in any case cannot be escaped by re-garding them as products) acquires a higher degree of rigour. Forwe know that the forces employed by machines always emergefrom them considerably less denatured than their raw materials. Itfollows that, if belief and desire are forces, it is probable that whenthey emerge from the body in our mental manifestations, they donot differ noticeably from how they were when theyentered , in theform of molecular cohesions or affinities. The ultimate foundationof material substance would then be open to us; and it is worththe trouble of examining whether, in following through the con-sequences of this point of view, we remain in agreement with thefacts established by science. And here I have the advantage of beingable to rely on the accumulated work of Schopenhauer, Hartmannand their school, who have, I believe, succeeded in showing theprimordial and universal character, not of will, but of desire.

To cite only one example, consider a small mass of protoplasm,in which no sign of organization has been discovered, a clear jel-ly like the white of an egg, as Perrier says. This jelly nonetheless,he adds, executes movements,captures animalcules, digests them ,etc. It evidently has appetite, and consequently must have a moreor less clear perception of what its appetite is for. If desire and be-lief are nothing but products of organization, whence comes thisperception and this appetite of an admittedly heterogeneous, but


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not yet organized, mass? Almann, of the Royal Society of London,says: The movements of spores seem frequently to obey a realvo-lition; if the spore encounters an obstacle, it changes directionand

moves back by changing the movement of its cilia.26 A railway me-chanic could do no better. Nonetheless, this spore is only a cell de-tached from an immobile and insensible plant, to which we grantno will and no intelligence. But, lo and behold, intelligence andwill all of a sudden appear in the daughter cell, even though theyexist not at all, even virtually, in the mother cell! Let us rather saythat, when it judges best to do so, when it is useful to its goal, to itsparticular cosmic plan whence proceed all its movements, the vi-

tal element reveals and unfolds its hidden resources. At rst mixedwith an innity of others in an indivisible lump of protoplasm,at the desired moment it calls a halt to its indivision, it enclosesand sequesters itself with a compact group of vassals, it throws updefensive ramparts of calcium; or else it stretches out its agellalike a rower extending his oars, and moves towards its prey. Everybody of water contains myriads of theseunicellular living beingswhich construct for themselves a skeleton of concentric spheresas transparent as crystal, and of a perfect symmetry and beauty.Evidently thesingle cell under consideration could not accomplishthese prodigious feats alone, and we must rather conclude that itwas only the soul of a whole people of workers. But what expendi-ture of psychic acts is required by such a task!

In truth, one might justiably wonder, when one compares tocellular inventions, cellular industries, and cellular arts, as a springdayexhibits them to us, our arts, our industries, and our little hu-man discoveries displayed in our periodical exhibitions, whether itis really certain that our own intelligence and will, those greategos disposing of the vast resources of a gigantic cerebral state, are su-perior to those of the tiny egos conned in the miniscule city of ananimal or even plant cell. Surely, if we were not blinded by the prej-udice of always considering ourselves superior to everything, suchcomparisons would not be to our advantage. At root, it is this prej-udice which prevents us from believing in the monads. In its age-long effort to interpret everything outside us in terms of mecha-nism, even those things which most break forth with accumulatedsigns of genius, namely living beings, our mind as it were blowsout all the lights of the world for the sole benet of its own little

26. [Trans. Note: George James Almann (1812-1898), botanist and zoologist.The citation has not been traced.]


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spark. Certainly Espinas27 is right to say thata small amount of in-telligence suffices to explain the social work of bees and ants. But ifone grants this small amount and judges it necessary to account for

the products of these insectswhich are in any case very simple,like the products of our industriesit must be admitted that toproduce their organization, so innitely superior in complexity, inrichness, and in adaptive exibility to all their works,a great deal of intelligence and manyintelligences were necessary.A remarknaturally suggests itself at this point: Since the accomplishment ofthe simplest and most banal social function, which has persistedunchanged over centuries (for example, the reasonably regular co-

ordinated movement of a procession or a regiment) demands, aswe know, so much preparatory training, so many words, so mucheffort, and so much mental force spent almost all in vainthenwhat torrents of mental or quasi-mental energy must be necessaryto produce these complex manoeuvres of simultaneously accom-plished vital functions, by not thousands but billions of differentactors, all of them, we have reason to think, essentially egotistical,and all as different from each other as the citizens of a vast empire!

It would doubtless be necessary to reject this conclusion if itwere proven, or had even a modicum of probability, that beyond acertain degree of corporeal smallness, intelligence (I do not meansensory intelligence as we know it, but psyche, the genus of whichall intelligence known to us is only a species) was impossible. Ifthis impossibility were established, we could deduce that all psy-chological phenomena are results radically different from theirconditions, even though all intelligent beings observed by us, ormore generally all beings which have a psyche, proceed from par-ents or ancestors who equally have a psyche, and even though thespontaneous generation of intelligence is a hypothesis even lessacceptable, if such a thing be possible, than the spontaneous gen-eration of life. But however far we penetrate into the microscopicand even ultra-microscopic depths of the innitely small, we willalways discover living seeds and complete organisms, in which ob-servation or induction will lead us to recognize the characteristicsof animality as much as of vegetation, since the two kingdoms areindistinguishable in minimis. As Spottiswoode says: A diameter

27. [Trans. Note: Alfred Espinas (1844-1922), sociologist. The reference is tohis workDes Socits animales[Animal Societies], Paris, G. Baillire, 1877. In fact,Espinas own view of the scope of intelligence in social insects is closer to Tardesthan the text may suggest.]


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of 1/3000 millimetres is approximately the smallest that a micro-scope allows us to see distinctly. But solar rays and electric lightreveal to us the presence of bodiesinnitely beneath these dimen-

sions. Tyndall had the idea of measuring them as a function oflight waves by observing a mass of them and noting the huesthey reected These innitely small bodies are not just gaseousmolecules; they include moreovercomplete organisms, and the il-lustrious scientist just cited has made a thorough study of the con-siderable inuence which these miniscule organisms exercise inthe economy of life.28

But, it will be objected, even if we cannot thus attain the lim-

its of the psychic, nonetheless common sense affirms that, by andlarge, beings much smaller than ourselves are much less intel-ligent; and, following this progression, we are sure to arrive, onthe path of increasing smallness, at the absolute absence of intel-ligence. Common sense indeed! Common sense also tells us thatintelligence is incompatible with excessive size and in this, it mustbe admitted, experience proves it right. But if we juxtapose thesetwo commonsensical affirmations, the one unmotivated, the otherlikely, it is clear that they emerge from the prejudice of anthropo-centrism. In reality, we judge beings to be less intelligent the lesswe understand them, and the error of thinking the unknown to beunintelligent goes hand in hand with the error, which we will ex-amine below,29 of thinking the unknown to be indistinct, undif-ferentiated, and homogenous.

The foregoing should on no account be seen as a disguised pleain favour of the teleological principle ( principe de nalit ), which isnow so rightly discredited in its ordinary form. Perhaps, in fact,from a methodological point of view, it would be preferable to denynature any goal and any idea than to claim, as many do, that all hergoals and all her ideas can be linked to a single thought and will.This would be a curious way to explain a world where beings areconstantly devouring each other; where, in each being, the agree-ment of functions, to the extent that it exists at all, is nothing but atransaction of contrary interests and claims; where in the normalstate, and in the most balanced individual, useless functions andorgans can be seen, in the same way as in the best-governed Statedissident sects will always spring up, and provincial particularities

28. [Trans. Note: William Spottiswoode (1825-1883), mathematician and physi-cist. The citation has not been traced.] 29. [Trans. Note: See chapter VI below.]


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will be religiously perpetuated by the citizens and of necessity re-spected by the rulers, even though they disrupt the unity whichis their dream! However innite one may suppose thought or di-

vine will to be, if it is to beone thing, it willipso factobecome in-adequate as an explanation of reality. Between its innity, whichsupposes the coexistence of contradictories, and its unity, whichdemands perfect agreement, we must choose,or else make, in amarvellous fashion, the one proceed from the other, each in turn,the latter from the former, then the former from the latter Butlet us not become involved with such mysteries. Either there is nointelligence at all in matter, or matter is wholly saturated with in-

telligence; there is no middle ground. And in truth, scienticallyspeaking, it comes down to the same thing. Let us suppose fora moment that one of our human States, composed not of a fewthousand but of a fewquadrillions or quintillions of men, hermeti-cally sealed and inaccessible as individuals (like China, but in-nitely more populous still, and more closed) was known to us onlyby the data of its statisticians, whose gures, made up of very largenumbers, recurred with extreme regularity. When a political orsocial revolution, which would be revealed to us by an abrupt en-largement or diminution of some of these numbers, took place inthis State, we might well be certain that we would be observinga fact caused by individual ideas and passions, but we would re-sist the temptation to become lost in superuous conjectures onthe nature of these impenetrable causes even though they alonewere the real ones, and the wisest option would appear to us toexplain as best we could the unusual numbers by ingenious com-parisons with clever manipulations of the normal numbers. Wewould thereby arrive at least at clear results and symbolic truths.Nonetheless, it would be important from time to time to recall thepurely symbolic nature of these truths; and precisely this is theservice which the theory of monads can offer to science.

IIIWe have seen that science, having pulverized the universe, neces-sarily ends up by spiritualizing the dust thus created. However,we now face an important objection. In any monadological or at-omistic system, all phenomena are nebulous clouds resolvableinto the actions emanating from a multitude of agents who areso many invisible and innumerable little gods. This polytheismthis myriatheism , one might almost sayleaves unexplained the


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universal agreement of phenomena, as imperfect as this may be.If the elements of the world are born separate, independent andautonomous, it is impossible to see why a great number of them

and many of the groups formed by them (for example all atomsof oxygen or hydrogen) resemble each other, if not perfectly, as isoften supposed without sufficient reason, at least within certainapproximately xed limits; it is impossible to see why many ofthem, if not all, appear to be captive and subjugated, and to haverenounced the absolute liberty which their eternity implies; andnally, it is impossible to see why order and not disorder, and inrst place the primary condition of order, namely increasing con-

centration rather than increasing dispersion, are the result of theirrelations. Thus it seems necessary to have recourse to new hy-potheses. As a complement to the closure of his monads, Leibnizmade each one acamera obscura where the whole universe of oth-er monads is represented in a reduced form and from a particu-lar angle; and moreover, he had to posit a pre-established harmo-ny, in the same way that, as the complement of their wanderingblind atoms, materialists must invoke universal laws or a singleformula embracing all laws, a kind of mystical commandmentwhich all beings would obey and which was not produced by anybeing, a kind of ineffable and unintelligible word which, havingnever been pronounced by anyone, nonetheless would be heardeverywhere and forever. Besides, both atomists and monadolo-gists equally represent their rst elements, which they claim arethe sources of all reality, as swimming in the same space and thesame time, which are two realities or pseudo-realities of a singularkind: deeply penetrating throughout the material realities whichwere supposed impenetrable, and yet radically distinct from thelatter, despite the intimacy of this penetration. All these charac-teristics are so many mysteries, which create a curious embarrass-ment for the philosopher. Is there any hope of resolving them byconceiving of open monads which would penetrate each other re-ciprocally, rather than being mutually external? I believe there is,and I note that on this point again, the progress of science, indeedof modern science in general and not only of its most recent devel-opments, favours the blossoming of a renewed monadology. TheNewtonian discovery of gravitation, of action at a distance (and atany distance) of material elements on one another, shows how dif-cult it will be to make a case for their impenetrability. Each ele-ment, hitherto conceived as a point, now becomes an indenitely


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Gabriel Tarde 27

enlarged sphere of action (for analogy leads us to believe that grav-ity, like all other physical forces, is propagated successively);30 andall these interpenetrating spheres are so many domains proper to

each element, so many distinct though intermixed spaces, per-haps, which we wrongly take to be a single unique space. The cen-tre of each sphere is a point, which is uniquely dened by its prop-erties, but in the end a point like any other; and besides, sinceactivity is the very essence of the elements, each of them existsin its entirety in the place where it acts. The atom, in truth, if wedraw the implications of this point of view which is naturally sug-gested by Newtons law (which a few thinkers have occasionally

tried, and failed, to explain by the pressure of the ether), ceases tobe an atom; it is auniversal medium [milieu universel ] or aspires tobecome one, a universein itself , not only, as Leibniz wished to ar-gue, a microcosm , but the entire cosmos vanquished and absorbedby a single being. If, having thus resolved this rather supernat-ural conception of space into real particular spaces or domains,we could in the same way resolve a single Time, that hollow en-tity, into multiple realities and elementary desires, then the onlyremaining simplication would be to explain natural laws, thesimilarity and repetition of phenomena and the multiplication ofsimilar phenomena (physical waves, living cells, social copies) bythe triumph of certain monads who desired these laws, imposedthese forms, subjected to their yoke and levelled with their scythea people of monads thus subjugated and made uniform, althoughborn free and original, all as eager (avides) as their conquerorsto dominate and assimilate the universe.Just as much as spaceand time, natural laws, those equally rootless and fantastical enti-ties, would thus nally nd their proper place and their point ofapplication among known realities. They would all have begun,like our civil and political laws, by being the designs and projectsof individuals.Thus we would in the simplest way possible meetthe fundamental objection made to any atomistic or monadologi-cal attempt to resolve the continuity of phenomena into an ele-mentary discontinuity.What do we place within the ultimate discon-tinuity if not continuity? We place therein, as we will explain againbelow, the totality of other beings. At the basis of each thing areall real or possible things.

30. According to Laplace, the gravic uid , to use his expression, is propagatedsuccessively, but with a velocity at least millions of times faster than light. In oneplace he says 50 million times, in another 100 million.


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IVBut this implies rst of all thateverything is a society , that everyphenomenon is a social fact. Now, it is remarkable that science, fol-

lowing logically from its preceding tendencies, tends strangely togeneralize the concept of society. Science tells us of animal societ-ies (see Espinas excellent book on this subject31), of cellular societ-ies, and why not of atomic societies? I almost forgot to add societ-ies of stars, solar and stellar systems. All sciences seem destinedto become branches of sociology. Of course, I am aware that, by amistaken apprehension of the direction of this current, some havebeen led to the conclusion that societies are organisms; but the

truth is that, since the advent of cellular theory, organisms have onthe contrary become societies of a particular kind, ercely exclu-sive cities as imagined by a Lycurgus or a Rousseau, or better still,religious congregations of a prodigious tenacity which equals themajestic and invariable strangeness of their rites, an invariabilitywhich nonetheless does not count against their individual mem-bers diversity and force of invention.

That a philosopher such as Spencer should assimilate soci-eties to organisms32 is not surprising, and fundamentally notnew, except perhaps for the extraordinary expenditure of imagi-native erudition in the service of this view. But it is truly remark-able that a highly circumspect natural scientist such as EdmondPerrier can see in the assimilation of organisms to societies thekey to the mysteries of living things and the ultimate formula ofevolution. Having said that one may compare an animal or a plantto a populous town, in which numerous corporations ourish, andthat blood cells are like merchants carrying with them in the liquidwherein they swim the complex baggage which they trade, he adds:In the same way that we have employed every comparison fur-nished by the degrees of consanguinity to express the relations ofanimals to each other, before supposing that they were genuinelyrelated and in effect consanguineous, so the comparisons of or-ganisms to societies and societies to organisms have recurredceaselessly to the present day, without anyone seeing in thesecomparisons anything more than forms of expression.We, onthe contrary, have arrived at the conclusion that association played

31. [Trans. Note: See note 27 above.] 32. [Trans. Note: Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), philosopher. See The SocialOrganism (1860), inEssays: Scientic, Political and Speculative, London, Williamsand Norgate, 1868, vol. I, pp. 384-428.]


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a considerable, if not exclusive role in the gradual development of organisms, and so on.33

It should however be noted at this point that science also in-

creasingly assimilates organisms to mechanisms, and that it low-ers the barriers previously erected between the living and the in-organic worlds. Why then may the molecule, for example, not bea society just as much as the plant or the animal? The relativeregularity and permanence of the apparent opposition betweenphenomena of a molecular order and phenomena of a cellularor vital order should in no way lead us to reject this conjecture,if, with Cournot, we consider further that human societies pass,

in the process of becoming civilized, from a barbaric and as itwere organic phase to a physicaland mechanical phase. In the rststage, all the general facts of the instinctive development of theirgenius, in their poetry, their arts, their languages, their customsand their laws, curiously recall the characteristics and processesof life; and thence they pass by degrees to an administrative, in-dustrial, scientic, reasonable, and in a word mechanical phase,which by the great numbers which it has at its disposal, arrangedin equal heaps by the statistician, gives rise to the appearance ofeconomic laws or pseudo-laws, which are so analogous in manyrespects to physical laws, and particularly to the laws of statics.From this similarity, which is supported by a whole mass of facts,and for which I refer the reader to CournotsTreatise on the Orderof the Fundamental Ideas,34 it follows rst of all that the chasmbetween the nature of inorganic beings and the nature of livingthings is not unbridgeable (contrary to an error which Cournothimself makes on this point), since we see the same evolution,that of our societies, take on alternately the attributes of the latterand those of the former. It follows secondly that if a living thingis a society,a fortiori a purely mechanical being must also be one,since the progress of society consists in mechanization. A mol-ecule would then be, compared to an organism or to a State, onlya kind of innitely more numerous and more advanced nation,arrived at the stationary period which J. S. Mill calls forth withall his will.35 33. [Trans. Note: For Perrier, see note 15 above. This citation has not been traced(Tarde may be paraphrasing rather than citing exactly).] 34. [Trans. Note: Cournot,Trait (note 17), section IV.1 (ed. cited pp. 296-311).] 35. [Trans. Note: See J. S. Mill, Of the Stationary State,Principles of PoliticalEconomy , vol. II, book IV, ch. 6, 5th ed., London, Parker, Son & Bourn, 1862, pp.320-326.]


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Let us move immediately on to the most specious objection yetmade to this assimilation of organisms, anda fortiori of physicalthings, to societies. The most striking contrast between nations

and living bodies is that living bodies have dened and symmet-ric contours, while the borders of nations or the walls of cities aredrawn on the earth with a capricious irregularity which clearlydemonstrates the absence of any pre-ordained plan. Spencer andEspinas have responded in different ways to this difficulty,36 but, Ibelieve, there is another possible response.

The contrast cannot be deniedit is a very real onebut itadmits of a plausible explanation; here I offer a simplied version

of this explanation for ease of understanding. Leaving to one sidethe dened and symmetrical nature of organic forms, let us fo-cus solely on another characteristic linked to the former, namelythat the length, breadth and height of an organism are never inextreme disproportion to one another. In snakes and poplar trees,height or length is noticeably greater than the other dimensions; inatsh the thickness is much less; but, in any case, the dispropor-tion visible in these extreme forms cannot be likened to that con-sistently displayed by any given social aggregate. Take for exampleChina, which has a length and breadth of 3000 kilometres, but anaverage height of only 1 or 2 metres, since the Chinese are rathershort and their buildings low. Even a mediaeval state consistingof a single fortied town tightly constrained within its defensivewalls, and whose houses of several oors overhang the streets, stillhas a very small thickness compared to its horizontal extension.But does this latter example not put us on the trail of the desiredsolution? It is in order to better resist external attack that a city isfortied and agglomerated, and that oors mount up; if in mod-ern capitals, where this huddling-up is not imposed by the insecu-rity of the times, houses still tend to become ever taller, this is fora reason which often conicts with the preceding, namely to sat-isfy the need felt by an ever-growing number of men to participatein the social advantages of the greatest possible assembly of peoplein the smallest possible space. If this lively instinct of sociabilitywhich makes men want to agglomerate themselves, either to bet-ter defend themselves or to develop themselves more fully, did not

36. [Trans. Note: Spencers and Espinas responses are in fact broadly simi-lar, and primarily rest on questioning the presumption that the forms of organ-isms are necessarily well-dened and symmetrical (see e.g. Spencer, The SocialOrganism, edition cited, pp. 393-394; Espinas,Les Socits animales, pp. 216-217).]


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rapidly encounter an impassable limit, it is likely that we would seenations composed of clusters of men towering into the air, support-ed on the earth without spreading over it. But it is hardly necessary

to indicate why this is impossible. A nation which was as high asit was wide would surpass the breathable zone of the earths atmo-sphere by a considerable distance, and the earths crust provides nomaterial sufficiently solid for the titanic constructions demandedby such urban development in a vertical direction. Besides, beyonda height of a few metres, the resulting inconveniences outweighthe advantages, as a result of mans physical makeup, in which allthe senses and organs respond exclusively to the demands of hori-

zontal expansion. Mans nature is to walk rather than climb, to seeforwards and not up or down, and so on. Finally, the enemies hefears do not y in the air but wander on the earth. In this light, itwould be of no use to a nation to bevery tall . For cellular aggregatessuch as animals or plants, the situation is otherwise. They are justas likely to be unexpectedly attacked from above as from the side,and must therefore be prepared to defend themselves in every di-rection. Moreover, the constitution of the anatomical elementswhich make up living bodies is nowise limited to co-ordination inthe horizontal plane. There is therefore no obstacle to the unlimit-ed satisfaction of the sociable instincts which we see in them.

This said, do we not see that, the more a social aggregate growsin height at the expense of its two other dimensions, and in thisrespect diminishes the (albeit still considerable) distance whichseparates it from organic forms, the more it comes to resemble thelatter also by its regularity and by the increasing symmetry of itsexternal shape and internal structure? A large public corporation,a government school, a barracks, or a monastery are all so manyhighly centralized and highly disciplined small States, which con-rm this perspective on the facts. Conversely, when an organizedbeing such as a lichen on occasion takes the form of a thin layer ofwidely spread cells, it will be noted that its contours are ill-denedand asymmetrical.

We may discover the signicance of this symmetry which, asa rule, is enjoyed by living forms, by another kind of considerationborrowed once more from our societies. In vain have theorists at-tempted to explain this symmetry by considerations of functionalutility. We may prove as much as we like, with Spencer, that lo-comotion demanded that organisms pass from radial symmetryto bilateral symmetry, which is lesser but more perfect, and that


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where the maintenance of symmetry was incompatible with thehealth of the individual or the perpetuation of the species (for ex-ample in atsh), the symmetry has been broken, in an exception

to the general rule. But it should not be forgotten that whereverpossible, all that could be retained of the primordial symmetrywhence life originated (probably spherical, that is to say full andvague), and all that could be derived from the precise and trulybeautiful symmetry at which life arrives in its progress, has beenconserved or realized. Through the whole gamut of plant and ani-mal life, from diatoms to orchids, from corals to man, the tenden-cy towards symmetry is evident. Where does this tendency come

from? Observe that, in our social world, everything which resultsnot from a competition of intermingled plans which clash togeth-er, but from an individuals design executed without hindrance,is symmetrical and regular. Kants philosophical monumentwhere volumes and chapters harmoniously reect one another;the administrative, nancial and military systems established byNapoleon I; the cities which the English have built in Guyana,with their streets drawn by ruler, meeting at right angles, end-ing in a square surrounded by lowered porticos; our churches,our railway stations, and so on; everything, to repeat, which ema-nates from a thought which is free, ambitious and strong, masterof itself and of others, seems to obey some internal necessity indisplaying the luxury of striking regularity and symmetry. Everydespot has a love of symmetry; if a writer, he must have constantantitheses; if a philosopher, repeated dichotomies and trichoto-mies; if a king, ceremony, etiquette, and military parades. If so,and if, as will be shown below, the possibility of individuals ex-ecuting their plans completely and on a large scale is a sign of so-cial progress, it follows necessarily that the symmetrical and regu-lar nature of living things attests to the high degree of perfectionachieved by cellular societies, and to the enlightened despotism towhich they are subject. We should not lose sight of the fact that,since cellular societies are a thousand times older than humansocieties, the inferiority of the latter is hardly surprising. Besides,human societies are limited in their progress by the small num-ber of men which the planet can support. The greatest empire ofthe world, China, has only 300 or 400 million subjects. An organ-ism which contained only this number ofultimate anatomical ele-ments would necessarily be placed towards the bottom of the scaleof plant or animal life.


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Gabriel Tarde 33

Having thus met the objection which draws on organic formto argue against the similarity of organisms to social groups, itbehoves us to say a word about another not inconsequential ob-

jection. Some have contrasted the variability of human societies,even those which are slowest to change, with the relative xity oforganic species. But if, as can be shown, the almost exclusive causeof the internal differentiation of a social form should be sought inthe extra-social relations of its members, that is, in their relations,either with the fauna, the ora, the soil, the atmosphere of theircountry, or with the members of foreign societies which are differ-ently constituted, this difference is not surprising. Due to the very

nature of its arrangementwhich is entirelysupercial and not vo-luminous, almost without thicknessto the extreme dispersion ofits elements, and to the multiplicity of intellectual and industrialexchanges between one people and another, the social aggregate ofmen includes an unusually low proportion of essentially conserva-tive intra-social relations between its members, and prevents themfrom maintaining among themselves theomnilateral social rela-tions presupposed by the globular form of a cell or an organism.

In support of the above view, we may remark that external cu-taneous cells, which have a monopoly on the principal extra-socialrelations, are in every case the most easily modiable. Nothing ismore variable than the skin and its appendages; in plants, the epi-dermis is in different cases glabrous, hairy, spiny, etc. This cannotbe explained solely by the heterogeneity of the external environ-ment, which is presumed to be greater than that of the internalenvironment. This latter point is not at all proven. Besides, andconsequently, it is always the external cells which set in motionthe variations of the rest of the organism. The proof is that the in-ternal organs of new species, although modied to some extentrelative to the species from which they emerge, always undergo alesser modication than do the peripheral organs, and seem to belaggards on the path of organic progress.37

Is it necessary to point out that, in the same way, most revolu-tions in a State are due to the internal fermentation produced bythe introduction of new ideas which mobile populations, sailors,

37. To cite only one example, M C Vogt says (in 1879, at a congress of Swiss nat-uralists, speaking ofArchaeopteryx macroura, intermediate between reptiles andbirds): I believe I have proved that adaptation to ight [in reptiles in the processof becoming birds] works from the outside to the inside, from the skin to the skel-eton, and that the latter can remain perfectly intact while the skin has alreadycome to develop feathers.


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soldiers returned from campaigns in distant parts such as theCrusades, bring back every day from foreign lands? One wouldhardly be mistaken in seeing an organism as a jealous and closed

city, just as the ancients dreamed.I will pass over a number of secondary objections which theapplication of the sociological point of view may encounter alongits way. Since, after all, the fundamental nature of things is strictlyinaccessible, and we are obliged to construct hypotheses in orderto penetrate it, let us openly adopt this one and push it to its con-clusion. Hypotheses ngo, I say naively. What is dangerous in thesciences are not tightly linked conjectures, logically followed to the

ultimate depths or the ultimate precipices, but rather the ghosts ofideas which oat aimlessly in the mind. The universal sociologicalpoint of view seems to me to be one of these spectres which hauntthe brains of our speculative contemporaries. Let us from the startsee where it will lead us. Let us push ideas to their extreme, at therisk of being taken for extravagant. In this matter in particular,the fear of ridicule is the most antiphilosophical of sentiments. Allthe developments which follow will be aimed at demonstrating theprofound renewal which the sociological interpretation must, orshould, bring about in every domain of knowledge.

As a preamble, let us take an example at random. From ourpoint of view, what is signied by the great truth that every ac-tivity of the soul is linked to the functioning of some bodily ap-paratus? It comes down to the fact that in a society no individualcan act socially, or show himself in any respect, without the col-laboration of a great number of other individuals, most of themunknown to him. The obscure labourers who, by the accumula-tion of tiny facts, prepare the appearance of a great scientic the-ory formulated by a Newton, a Cuvier, or a Darwin, compose insome sense the organism of which this genius is the soul; andtheir labours are the cerebral vibrations of which this theory is theconsciousness. Consciousness means in some sense thecerebral glory of the brains most inuential and powerful element. Thus,left to its own devices, a monad can achieve nothing. This is thecrucial fact, and it immediately explains another,the tendency ofmonads to assemble. This tendency expresses, I believe, the needfor a maximum of expended belief. When this maximum is at-tained at the point of universal cohesion, then desire, now entire-ly fullled, will be annihilated, and time will come to an end. Letus also observe that the obscure labourers I mentioned above may


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Gabriel Tarde 35

sometimes have as much merit, erudition, and force of thought, asthe celebrated beneciary of their labours, or indeed even more. Imake this remark in passing, to address the prejudice which leads

us to judge all external monads inferior to ourselves. If the ego isonly a director monad among the myriads of commensal monadsin the same skull, why, fundamentally, should we believe the latterto be inferior? Is a monarch necessarily more intelligent than hisministers or his subjects?

VThis may all seem very strange, but, fundamentally, it is much less

strange than the view which hitherto has been commonly accept-ed among scientists and philosophers, and from which the univer-sal sociological point of view should logically deliver us. It is trulysurprising to see men of science, so stubborn in repeating at everyturn that nothing is created , admit implicitly as though self-evidentthat relations between distinct beings can of themselves become newbeings numerically added to the former . Nonetheless, this is admit-ted, perhaps unsuspectingly, whenever, having set aside the mo-nadic hypothesis, one tries by means of any other hypothesis, andin particular by the play of atoms, to account for the advent of twocrucial beings, namely that of a new living individual, and that ofa new ego. Unless we refuse the name of being to these two reali-ties which are the prototypes of any concept of being, we are forcedto admit that, as soon as a determinate number of mechanical ele-ments enter into a certain kind of mechanical relation, a new liv-ing thing which previously did not exist suddenly exists and isadded to their number; more strictly, we should admit that, assoon as a given number of living elements nd themselves drawntogether in the desired fashion within a skull, something as realas, if not more real than these elements is created in their midst,simply in virtue of this drawing together, as if a number could beincreased by the disposition and rearrangement of its units. Theordinary concept of the relation of conditions to outcome, which isso much abused by the natural and social sciences, conceals thisalmost mythological absurdity which I have described, but none-theless still harbours it at its very root. Once embarked on thiscourse, there is no reason to stop: every harmonious, profoundand intimate relation between natural elements becomes thecre-ator of a new and superior element, which in turn assists in thecreation of another yet higher element; at every step of the scale of


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phenomenal complexity, from the atom to the ego,via a series ofincreasingly complex molecules, then the cell or the Haeckelianplastidule,38 then the organ and nally the organism, there will ap-

pear as many newly created beings as newly apparent unities and,up to the ego, one will proceed invincibly on the path of this errorand encounter no obstacle, since it is impossible for us to know in-timately the true nature of the elementary relations which arise insystems of external elements of which we do not form a part. But aserious pitfall appears when we arrive at human societies; here weare at home, we are the true elements of these coherent systems ofpersons which we call cit

Tarde Gabriel, Monadology and Sociology

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