the debate between tarde and durkheim

Script by Eduardo VianaVargas, Bruno Latour, Bruno Karsenti, Frederique A|« t-Touati,Louise SalmonEnglish translation by Amaleena Damle, Matei Candea

`Do you recall the discussion between Durkheim and my father, at the Eè cole desHautes Eè tudes Sociales? Before they had even said a word, one sensed by theirfaces, their looks, their gestures, the distance that lay between these two men.One knew that such a discussion was sheer madness. ''

Guillaume De Tarde (1)

Introductory notesA momentous debate concerning the nature of sociology and its relation to othersciences took place between Gabriel Tarde and Eè mile Durkheim at the Eè cole desHautes Eè tudes Sociales in 1903. Unfortunately the only available record of the eventis a brief overview which English readers may find in Terry Clark's 1969 edited volumeOn Communication and Social Influence (University of Chicago Press, Chicago).

The present recension of the debate, therefore, is based on a script consisting ofquotations from the works of Gabriel Tarde and Eè mile Durkheim, arranged to form adialogue. All text, save that in square brackets, consists of quotations from publishedworks by Eè mile Durkheim and Gabriel Tarde. A short version of it was acted out,in French, by Bruno Latour (Gabriel Tarde), Bruno Karsenti (Eè mile Durkheim), andSimon Schaffer (The Dean), under the direction of Frederique A|« t-Touati, on 14 March2008, at McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, UK, as partof the conference Tarde/Durkheim: Trajectoires of the Social. A podcast video of it isavailable at http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/47/.

* * *

The Dean, Mr Alfred Croiset[Ladies and Gentlemen,On behalf of the Directors, Eè mile Boutroux and Eè mile Duclaux, and the SecretaryGeneral, Dick May, I am delighted to welcome you to the Eè cole des Hautes Eè tudesSociales, at our premises of 16 rue de la Sorbonne.

Founded exactly three years ago, in November 1900, as an institute for the teachingof social sciences, the Eè cole des Hautes Eè tudes Sociales aims to study the highlycomplex ensemble of questions that are most markedly and directly social. Not beingin the least hostile to theory, it is nonetheless primarily concerned with the concrete,and with an engagement with the issues of our time.

Last July the 10th International Sociology Congress was dedicated to the ` RelationsBetween Psychology and Sociology''. Following on from this theme, we have chosen todedicate a series of conferences to the ` Relations Between Sociology and Other Social

The debate between Tarde and DurkheimÀ

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2008, volume 26, pages 761 ^ 777

doi:10.1068/d2606td

(1) Quotation from Paulhan (1980, page 20).{Contact: Eduardo VianaVargas, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; e-mail:[email protected]; Matei Candea, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge,Cambridge CB2 3RF, England; e-mail: [email protected]

Sciences and Auxiliary Disciplines'' in the compass of the sociology course at the Eè coleSociale for the academic year 1903 ^ 4.

A fledgling discipline, sociology has a definite impact on the apprehension ofcurrent social questions. Two eminent colleagues will speak for this discipline today.They will define it and demonstrate its specificity, exposing the methods that they deempertinent to this discipline within the context of a contradictory discussion.

It is, then, as President of the Board of Directors and President of the TeachingCommittee at the Eè cole de Morale et de Pedagogie, that I have the honour tointroduce:

To my right, Mr Gabriel Tarde, Professor at the Colle© ge de France, Chair ofModern Philosophy, a member of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiquessince 1901, but also a board member of our ecole, and member of the teachingcommittee at the Eè cole de Morale et de Pedagogie. He is the author of the celebratedLaws of Imitation and has recently published a work entitled Economic Psychology.

To my left, Mr Eè mile Durkheim, Deputy Chair of Educational Science at theFaculte des Lettres of the Universite de Paris since 1902, he has published the highlyacclaimed Rules of Sociological Method and is the founder of Annee sociologique, thejournal that reviews the year's international sociological production.

Gentlemen, I yield the floor to you, beginning with the younger Mr Durkheim,let us begin with a definition of your conception of sociology in relation to the othersciences.]

Durkheim Sociology has recently become fashionable. The word, which was littleknown and almost disparaged ten years ago, has entered into everyday use. Increasingnumbers discover a calling for it, and the general public seems well-disposed towardsthe new science. Much is expected of it.

And yet, we must admit that the results it has yielded so far are rather less than onemight expect given the wealth of publications, and the interest with which they arereceived. [...] This is because, in most cases, sociology is not asking a specific question.It has not yet gone beyond the age of philosophical constructions and syntheses.Instead of taking up the task of casting light on a restricted portion of the social field,it prefers a dazzling generality where every question is reviewed, and none is specifi-cally addressed. This method may indeed amuse the public's curiosity by giving, as theysay, illuminations on all sorts of subjects, but it can hardly produce anything objective.[...] A newborn science is entitled to err and fumble, as long as it is aware of its errorsand fumblings in such a way as to prevent their recurrence. Sociology should nottherefore renounce any of its ambitions; but, on the other hand, if it wishes to liveup to the hopes which have been built up around it, it must strive to become more thanan eccentric kind of philosophical literature. [...] The sociologist, instead of baskingin the glow of philosophical meditations about social things, should take as the objectof his research a clearly delimited group of facts, which one can, as it were, point to, ofwhich one can say clearly where they begin and where they end, and to these he shouldfirmly hold on! Let him carefully interrogate the auxiliary disciplinesöhistory, ethnog-raphy, statisticsöwithout which sociology is impotent! [...] If he proceeds in this way,even though his factual inventories may be incomplete and his formulas too narrow,he will have accomplished a useful task which the future can continue [1897a].

The Dean [Mr Tarde, it is now your turn to clarify the object of sociology in relationto other sciences.]

Tarde It is natural for an emerging science to depend upon those sciences that arealready constituted, sociology, for example, upon biology. It is also natural for a

762 The debate between Tarde and Durkheim

developing science to seek to fly the nest and attempt to establish its own separatedomain. The burgeoning field of sociology is precisely at this juncture, it seeks toconstitute itself by itself and for itself. This is a kind of egoism, a scientific individualism,useful to a certain extent as is any other egoism, be it animal or human, but harmfulto the individual himself beyond a certain measure. [...] The sterility of such preten-sions is well known; they misrecognise the solidarity of the various sciences andconsequently the profound unity of universal reality. In the case of sociology, too, weshould beware the expenditure of such vain efforts; and I believe I perceive here andthere the symptoms of such a distraction, which could be disastrous. Let us try toprevent it: let us seek out, with all the necessary precision, but without claiming anabsolute autonomy for our dear science, the boundaries of the field that is properlyhers to clear and cultivate . [...] What is or rather what are social facts, the elementarysocial acts, and what is their distinctive character? [...] The elementary social fact is thecommunication or the modification of a state of consciousness by the action of onehuman being upon another. [...] Not everything that members of a society do is socio-logical. [...] To breathe, digest, blink one's eyes, move one's legs automatically, lookabsently at the scenery, or cry out inadvertently, there is nothing social about such acts.[...] But to talk to someone, pray to an idol, weave a piece of clothing, cut down a tree,stab an enemy, sculpt a piece of stone, those are social acts, for it is only the social manwho would act in this way; without the example of the other men he has voluntarilyor involuntarily copied since the cradle, he would not act thus. The common character-istic of social acts, indeed, is to be imitative. [...] Here is, then, a character that is clearcut and what is more, objective. [...] And I am amazed to have been reproached forfocusing, in this definition, on the externally graspable fact without any regard to itsinternal source, and this reproach addressed to meöby whom? By [my distinguishedcolleague] Mr Durkheim, who himself professes precisely the necessity of foundingsociology upon purely objective considerations and of exorcising this science, so tospeak, by chasing psychology out of itöpsychology which, it is claimed, is not its soulas has been believed until now by all its founders, from Auguste Comte to Spencer, buton the contrary its evil genius [1895a, pages 63 ^ 66].

The Dean [I believe we have the disagreement clearly articulated: Mr Durkheim wouldyou like to elaborate on your thoughts?]

Durkheim Mr Tarde claims that sociology will arrive at this or that result; but wecannot say what the elementary social act is in our current state of knowledge. Thereare too many things we do not know and the construction of the elementary social factcan only be arbitrary under these conditions [1903a, page 164].

Tarde It is not necessary for sciences to be definitively constituted in order to formulatelaws. Research must proceed according to a guiding idea. And, in point of fact, thesocial sciences have not owed their progress to certain rules of objective method; theyhave achieved it by tending towards [...] the social microscopy that is intermentalpsychology [1903, page 164].

DurkheimWhatever the value of this intermental psychology, it is unacceptable for it toexercise a sort of guiding action on the specific disciplines of which it should in fact bethe product. [1903a, page 164]. A purely psychological explanation of social factscannot [...] fail to miss completely all that is specific, ie social, about them [1894,page 131]. [T]here is between psychology and sociology the same break in continuityas there is between biology and the physical and chemical sciences. Consequently,every time a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychological phenomenon,we may rest assured that the explanation is false [1894, page 129].

The debate between Tarde and Durkheim 763

Tarde And yet, for all his objections and unbeknownst to himself, the importance ofrepetitionö[that is to say] of imitation once againöimpinges upon [Mr Durkheim].In order to prove the radical separation, the absolute duality in nature that he claimsto establish between the collective fact and the individual facts which, in my view,constitute it, but, according to him, refract it from the outside (we know not how), hewrites [I quote] ``Some of these ways of acting and thinking acquire, as a result ofrepetition, a sort of consistency that precipitates them, so to speak, and isolates themfrom the particular events in which they are one day embodied.'' [...] And the proof ofthis isölisten to thisöthat collective habit, or custom, [I quote once again] ``expressesitself once and for all in a formula which is repeated from person to person, which istransmitted by education, which becomes fixed through writing'' [end of quotation].Without the preoccupation that blinds him, [my opponent] would see the obvious,namely that he has just involuntarily provided fresh proof of the eminently socialor rather socialising character of imitative repetition. [...] Mr Durkheim seems togravitate towards some sort of theory of emanation. For him, I repeat, the individualfacts that we call social are not the elements of a social fact, they are only themanifestation of it. As for the social fact, it is itself the superior model, the PlatonicIdea, the model ... and thus the idea of imitation in social matters, imposes itself evenon its greatest adversaries. But let's move on ... [1895a, pages 67 ^ 69].

Durkheim Terms [...] must be taken in a strict sense. Collective tendencies have anexistence of their own; they are forces as real as cosmic forces, albeit of another sort;they too affect the individual from without, albeit through other channels. The proofthat the reality of collective tendencies is no less than that of cosmic forces, is that thisreality is demonstrated in the same way, namely by the uniformity of effects. [...] Since,therefore, moral acts [...] are reproduced with [great] uniformity [...], we must likewiseadmit that they depend on forces external to individuals. Only, since these forcesmust be of a moral order and since, except for individual man, there is no othermoral being in the world but society, they must be social. But whatever we chooseto call them, the important thing is to recognize their reality and conceive of them asa totality of forces which cause us to act from without, like the physic-chemical forcesto which we react. So truly are they things sui generis and not mere verbal entitiesthat they may be measured, their relative sizes compared, as is done with theintensity of electric currents or luminous foci. [...] Of course, this offends commonsense. But science has encountered incredulity whenever it has revealed to men theexistence of a previously unknown force. Since the system of accepted ideas must bemodified to make room for the new order of things and to establish new concepts,men's minds resist through mere laziness. Yet we have to be clear. If there is such athing as sociology, it can only be the study of a world hitherto unknown, differentfrom those explored by the other sciences. This world is nothing if not a system ofrealities [1897b, pages 309 ^ 310].

Tarde At first glance, one cannot make sense of this; but once initiated into thedoctrine of the author, here is what it means: it is not the more or less of general-isation, of imitative propagation of a fact, which constitutes its more or less socialcharacter; it is the more or less of coercivityöIndeed, according to [my opponent], forby this point we have merely uncovered the half of his thought, the definition of thesocial fact is double. One of its characters, as we know, is [again I quote, that it] ` existsindependently of its individual expressions''. But there is another character, no lessimportant, which is to be coercive [1895a, page 70].


The Dean [You then both clearly disagree on the question of knowing how appropriateit is to autonomise the specific facts that sociology is concerned with but also on thequestion of their exteriority and, in sum, on the strength with which this world imposesupon us.]

Durkheim We must delineate, in a precise fashion, the exact field of sociology. Itembraces one single, well-defined group of phenomena. A social fact is identifiablethrough the power of external coercion which it exerts or is capable of exerting uponindividuals. The presence of this power is in turn recognisable because of the existenceof some pre-determined sanction, or through the resistance that the fact opposes toany individual action that may threaten it. However, [I grant you that] it can alsobe defined by ascertaining how widespread it is within the group, provided that, asnoted above, one is careful to add a second essential characteristic; this is, that it existsindependently of the particular forms that it may assume in the process of spreadingitself within the group. [...] moreover, this second definition is simply another formula-tion of the first one: if a mode of behaviour existing outside of the consciousnessesof individuals becomes general, it can only do so by exerting pressure upon them [1894,pages 56 ^ 57]. That is what social phenomena are when stripped of all extraneouselements. As regards their private manifestations, these do indeed have somethingsocial about them since in part they reproduce the collective model. But to a largeextent each one depends also upon the psychical and organic constitution of theindividual, and on the particular circumstances in which he is placed. Therefore theyare not phenomena which are in the strict sense sociological. They depend on bothdomains at the same time, and one could [if you so wish,] call them socio-psychical[1894, pages 55 ^ 56].

Tarde By this definition, nothing would be more social than the relationship estab-lished between victors and vanquished through the invasion of a stronghold or thefall into slavery of a conquered nation; nor would anything be less social than thespontaneous conversion of a whole population to a new religion or a new politicalfaith preached by enthusiastic apostles! The mistake here is so noticeable to my mindthat one is forced to wonder how it could have been born and taken root in sucha powerful intelligence. [Mr Durkheim] tells us: [...] given that the social fact isessentially external to the individual, ``it cannot infiltrate the individual withoutimposing itself ''. I fail to see the validity of this inference. Food is also external tous before being absorbed. Is that to say that swallowing and assimilation are theconstraints exercised by food upon the cell that appropriates it? That is not even trueof the birds we force-feed in our barnyards, which certainly prefer to be force-fedthan to die of hunger [1895a, page 71].

Durkheim [Mr Tarde's] proposition is purely arbitrary. [He] may of course state thatin his personal opinion nothing real exists in society but what comes from theindividual, but proofs supporting this statement are lacking and discussion is there-fore impossible. It would be only too easy to oppose to this the contrary feeling of agreat many persons, who conceive of society not as the form spontaneously assumedby individual nature as it blooms outwards, but as an antagonistic force restrictingindividual natures and resisted by them! [1897b, page 311].

Tarde It follows, according to [you], that it is not permissible to describe as socialthose individual acts where the social fact manifests itself, for example, the words ofan orator (a manifestation of language), or the genuflections of a devotee (a mani-festation of religion). No, as each of these acts depends not only on the nature of thesocial fact, but furthermore on the mental and vital constitution of the agent and


the physical environment, these acts are types of hybrids, sociopsychical or sociophysicalfacts, with which it is important no longer to tarnish the scientific purity of the newsociology [1895a, pages 69 ^ 70].

Durkheim Undoubtedly, this state of dissociation [between the social and the individ-ual] does not always present itself with equal distinctiveness. It is sufficient fordissociation to exist unquestionably in [...] numerous important instances [...], for usto prove that the social fact exists separately from its individual effects. Moreover, evenwhen the dissociation is not immediately observable, it can often be made so with thehelp of certain methodological devices. Indeed it is essential to embark on suchprocedures if one wishes to refine out the social fact from any amalgam and so observeit in its pure state. Thus certain currents of opinion, whose intensity varies accordingto the time and country in which they occur, impel us, for example, towards marriageor suicide, towards higher or lower birth-rates, etc. Such currents are plainly socialfacts. At first sight, they seem inseparable from the forms they assume in individualcases. But statistics afford us a means of isolating them [1894, page 55].

Tarde [Oh!], if [...] one depends upon statistics as an essentially `objective' source ofinformation, one is deluding oneself. The oracles of this sibyl are often ambiguous andin need of interpretation. In truth, official statistics function as yet too imperfectlyand have functioned for too short a time to bring any conclusive factors to thedebate that concerns us [1895b, page 154]. [I know this all the better since it is I,Mr Durkheim, who provided you, at your request, with the statistics of the officeI led and which have contributed to your opus on suicide ...].

Durkheim That imitation is a purely psychological phenomenon appears clearly fromits occurrence between individuals connected by no social bond [as indeed I show inthe book you mention] [1897b, page 123].

The Dean [I believe we have reached a crucial point of the debate. It concerns thedifference in importance given by you to imitation in social matters. Would you like toelaborate this more precisely?]

Tarde Insofar as it is a socialising agent, imitation must of necessity exist before thesociety it prepares. Certainly no single act of imitation of one living being by anothercan suffice to associate them, any more than a single hair can form a head of hair...öbut by beginning to imitate a being who is capable in turn of imitating you [...], youbegin to enter into socialising relations with him, which will necessarily become socialrelations if the acts of imitation are multiplied and centralised. [...] According to[you,] Mr Durkheim, in order for imitation to be the essential social fact, it shouldonly take place between beings who are already associated. But by that very token,if they were associated before it, it would not be the characteristic social fact. It couldnot be the socialising agent, the socialising cause, if it did not preexist its effect [1897,pages 224; 224n].

Durkheim A man may imitate another with no link of either one with the other or witha common group on which both depend, and the imitative function when exercised hasin itself no power to form a bond between them [1897b, page 123].

Tarde It unfailingly has this poweröand I would add it only has this poweröaslong as it is an imitative propagation of psychological facts. For I have alwaysexplained that imitation as I use the word, is a communication from soul to soul[1897, pages 224 ^ 225].


Durkheim A sneeze, a choreiform movement, a homicidal impulse may be transferredfrom one person to another even though there is only chance and temporary contactbetween them [1897b, page 123].

Tarde But this ` chance and temporary'' contact, when repeated, when multiplied,becomes a real social union [1897, page 225].

Durkheim They need have no intellectual or moral community between them norexchange services nor even speak the same language, nor are they any more relatedafter the transfer than before [1897b, page 123].

Tarde It follows that for [you] the mark of a social link is the existence of anintellectual or moral community between men, or at least that they speak the samelanguage... [...] And would Mr Durkheim be so kind as to tell us howöother than bythe diffusion and accumulation of examplesöthis intellectual community [...] or thismoral community [...] could have emerged? Would [you] tell us also how the individualsof a nation find themselves speaking the same language, if not by means of an imitativetransmission from parents to children, and amongst contemporaries? [1897, page 225].

Durkheim [O]ur method of imitating human beings is the same method we use inreproducing natural sounds, the shapes of things, the movements of non-human beings.Since the latter group of cases contains no social element, there is none in the formercase. It originates from certain qualities of our representational life not based upon anycollective influence. If therefore imitation were shown to help in determining thesuicide-rate [for instance], the latter would depend directly either in whole or in partupon individual causes [1897b, pages 123 ^ 124].

Tarde I have already answered [...] this superficial objection by noting that the imita-tion I speak of is an interpsychic communication. But the emptiness of the objectiondeserves to be pointed out [1897, page 226].

Durkheim But before examining the facts, let us determine the meaning of the word.Sociologists so commonly use terms without defining them, neither establishing normethodically circumscribing the range of things they intend to discuss, that theyconstantly but unconsciously allow a given expression to be extended from the conceptoriginally or apparently envisaged by it to other more or less kindred ideas. Thus, theidea finally becomes too ambiguous to permit discussion. Having no clear outline, itis changeable almost at will according to momentary needs of argument without thepossibility of critical foreknowledge of all its different potential aspects. Such is notablythe case with what is called the instinct of imitation [1897b, page 124].

Tarde As for my theory (not as [you,] Mr Durkheim disfigur[e] and parod[y] it, butas I have explained it elsewhere), I have applied it to all orders of social fact [1897,page 232].

The Dean [So, would you clarify for us the meaning of imitation?]

Durkheim This word [imitation] is currently used to mean simultaneously the threefollowing groups of facts: [...] a sort of levelling [...] which leads everyone to think orfeel in unison [... ;] the impulse which drives us [...] to adopt the ways of thoughtor action which surround us [...]; [and] ape-like imitation for its own sake. Now thesethree sorts of facts are very different from one another. [...] It is one thing to share acommon feeling, another to yield to the authority of opinion, and a third to repeatautomatically what others have done. No reproduction occurs in the first case; in thesecond it results only from logical operations, judgements and reasonings, [which are]


themselves the essence of the phenomenon; and thus reproduction cannot be thedefinition. It becomes all embracing only in the third case. [...] The name of imitationmust then be reserved solely for such facts if it is to have a clear meaning, and weshall say: Imitation exists when the immediate antecedent of an act is the representation ofa like act, previously performed by someone else; with no explicit or implicit mentaloperation which bears upon the intrinsic nature of the act reproduced intervening betweenrepresentation and execution [1897b, pages 124 ^ 129].

Tarde [You, Mr Durkheim, understand] imitation in such a narrow sense that it is tobe wondered how, in spite of this narrowness, [you have] found it to play a notable partin suicide [1897, page 224]. I have [indeed] been accused here and there of ` often callingimitation facts to which this term is poorly suited''. This is a surprising criticism,coming from a philosopher. After all, the philosopher seeking a term for a newgeneralisation has only two choices: either, if all else fails, to create a neologism,oröand this is undoubtedly better by faröto extend the meaning of an older word.The question is whether I have extended improperly [...] the meaning of the wordimitation. [...] I would be open to this charge of impropriety if, by extending themeaning of the word I had rendered it shapeless and devoid of signification. But Ihave always left it with a precise and characteristic meaning: that of the action ata distance, of one mind [esprit] upon another [1890, pages vii ^ viii], [...] through whichthe one [...] modifies the other mentally, with or without reciprocity [1902, pages 1 ^ 2].I could much more rightly be accused of having unduly extended the meaning of theword invention. For I have indeed applied this term to any individual initiative,irrespective not only of its degree of consciousnessöfor often the individual innovatesunbeknownst to himself, and indeed even the most imitative of men is innovative insome respectsöbut also without the slightest regard for the relative difficulty or valueof the innovation. [...] Yet even in this case, I believe I was right to do a slight violenceto commonplace language by terming inventions or discoveries the simplest innova-tions; all the more so since the easiest innovations are not necessarily the least fruitful,any more than the most difficult always prove to be the most useful [1890, page ix].

Durkheim If, as has been said, imitation is really an original and especially fecundsource of social phenomena, it should show its influence especially in suicide since nofield exists over which it has more sway. Suicide will thus help us to verify by decisiveexperiment the reality of the wonderful power ascribed to imitation [1897b, page 133].

Tarde This I deny. However important imitation may be to the phenomenon of suicide(and as [you your]self cannot deny, a very great number of suicides are explained in thisway, even by [your] own evidently narrow and exceedingly limited definition of theword), imitation plays an infinitely greater role in the formation and propagation oflanguages, of religions, of arts... Thus I cannot accept as in any way ` decisive'' theexperiment which [you presume] to conduct [1897, page 228].

Durkheim If this influence exists, it must appear above all in the geographic distribu-tion of suicides. In certain cases, the rate characteristic of a country or locality shouldbe transmitted, so to speak, to neighbouring localities. We must thus consult the map.But methodically. [...] To be assured that imitation causes the spread of a tendency oridea, one must see it leave the environments of its birthplace and invade regions notthemselves calculated to encourage it. For, as we have shown, imitative propagationexists only where the fact imitated, and it alone, determines the acts that reproduce it,automatically and without assistance from other factors. [...] First of all, no imitationcan exist without a model to imitate [...]. Having established these rules, let us applythem. The customary maps [...] are inadequate for this investigation. They do not


actually permit the observation of the possible effects of imitation where they mustbe most perceptible [...]. So we have drawn a map [...] especially for the study ofthis question [...]. Its study has given the most unexpected results. [...] In short, allthe maps show us that suicide, far from being grouped more or less concentricallyaround certain centres from which it radiates more and more weakly, occurs inroughly (but only roughly) homogeneous masses with no central nucleus. Such aconfiguration does not in any sense indicate the influence of imitation [1897b, pages133 ^ 137].

Tarde Nor does it contradict it. Indeed, according to the theory of imitation a patternof progressively shaded concentric circles would obtain if suicide were a recentphenomenonöbut it is on the contrary very old. And wherever the action of imita-tion has been accumulating over a long period of time, its effects are as it werelevelled, compacted, classified. To use this as evidence against the imitative nature ofsuicide would be like denying the ondulatory character of heat, based on the observa-tion that a room is at an even temperature throughoutöwhereas it is heated up froma hot air vent or a hearth (which may in time have been put out) [1897, page 226].

The Dean [I am not certain whether this is a case of imitation or not, but if it is not,what would it be?]

Durkheim There are here neither imitators nor imitated, but relative identity in theeffects, due to relative identity in the causes. And this is readily understandable if, as isforeshadowed by all the preceding remarks, suicide depends essentially on certainstates of the social environment. For the latter generally retains the same constitutionover very considerable areas. [...] The proof that his explanation is true is that thesuicide-rate changes abruptly and completely whenever there is an abrupt change insocial environment. Never does the environment exert influence beyond its naturallimits [1897b, pages 137 ^ 138].

Tarde What is truly vague is this appeal to the social environment, the social rate, thecollective state, the conditions of existence, to all of these entities, unresolved nebulaewhich have been so many pretexts for the ontologists of social science from the subject'sinception [1897, page 231].

Durkheim In short, certain as the contagion of suicide is from individual to individual,imitation never seems to propagate it so as to affect the social suicide-rate. Imitationmay give rise to more or less numerous individual cases, but it does not contribute tothe unequal tendency in different societies to self-destruction, or to that of smallersocial groups within each society [1897b, page 140].

Tarde Here we have once again this hallucination: the social as distinct and separatefrom the individual. What is this social suicide rate which remains blissfully unaffectedby the greater or lesser number of individual suicides? [Allow me to answer:] the socialrate, the social milieu, the collective state, etc [are] as many nebulous divinities whichsave [you, Mr Durkheim] when [you have] entangled [your]self. [You do] not want meto resolve them into individual contagious facts, and [you are] right, for once themystery is dissolved, the prestige disappears and this phantasmagoria of words ceasesto impress the reader [1897, page 226].

Durkheim But a more general reason explains why the effects of imitation areimperceptible in statistics. It is because imitation all by itself has no effect on suicide.[What the chapter of Suicide which I have devoted to imitation] chiefly shows isthe weakness of the theory that imitation is the main source of all collective life.


No fact is more readily transmissible by contagion than suicide, yet we have seen thatthis contagiousness has no social effects. If imitation is so much without socialinfluence in this case, it cannot have more in others; the virtues ascribed to it aretherefore imaginary. [...] For it has never been shown that imitation can accountfor a definite order of facts and, even less, that it alone can account for them. Theproposition has merely been stated as an aphorism, resting on vaguely metaphysicalconsiderations. But sociology can only claim to be treated as a science when thosewho pursue it are forbidden to dogmatize in this fashion, so patently eluding theregular requirements of proof [1897b, pages 140 ^ 142].

Tarde I have precisely attempted to replace [...] metaphysical or rather ontologicalarguments with precise explanations, grounded in the intimacy of social life, of theinterindividual psychic relations which form the infinitesimal yet integrated element ofsocial lifeöand for this I am dubbed a vague metaphysician by ... Mr Durkheimhimself! [...] This said, however, I must note a real progress on Mr Durkheim's part.In [your] first book the only reference to the theory of imitation consisted in onedisdainful line in a note (cf The Division of Labour). Now, [you devote] a whole chapterto it, or one might indeed say a whole book, since [your] latest work seems to bedirected against me from start to finish [1897, pages 232 ^ 233].

Durkheim [Rather than being against you, this book is for a scientific sociology. In it]we have [...] successively set up the following propositions: suicide varies inversely withthe degree of religious, of domestic, and of political society. [...] So we reach the generalconclusion: suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of the social groupsof which the individual forms a part [1897b, pages 137 ^ 138].

Tarde Is that so? It very much depends on the meaning one gives to this equivocalexpression: the degree of integration of a society. If by this we mean the relativedensity and cohesion of a social group, that is to say the greater or lesser numberof its units and their greater or lesser physical closeness, then it is evident that theproposition flies in the face of the facts. [...] It is thus not in this merely physicalsense [...] that [Mr Durkheim] understands the expression. [...] The integration [youspeak] of implies a ``moral tightening'' and not merely a physical one. But one shouldbe precise. [...] To call this integration is rather strange in an author who chastisesme for my use [...] of the word imitation [1897, pages 235 ^ 236].

The Dean [We now see that what is a matter of imitation for one, is a matter ofintegration for the other. But would you like to tell us what is metaphorical, andwhat is not, in these matters?]

Durkheim It is not mere metaphor to say of each human society that it has a greater orlesser aptitude for suicide; the expression is based on the nature of things. Each socialgroup really has a collective inclination for the act, quite its own, and the source of allindividual inclinations, rather than their result [1897b, page 299].

Tarde A mysterious claim indeed. If by this [you mean] that the collective inclinationexists above and apart from all of the individual inclinations to suicide, that is puremyth. If [you] merely [mean] that for each particular individual, the inclination hefeels to suicide proceeds from the inclinations specific to the set of other individualswho wish to kill themselves, this is a mark of agreement with my theory of Imitation. Itseems that this latter meaning is right. Therefore [you, Mr Durkheim, are] my pupilwithout knowing it [1897, page 246].


Durkheim It is made up of the currents of egoism, altruism or anomy running throughthe society under consideration with the tendencies to languorous melancholy, activerenunciation or exasperated weariness derivative from these currents. These tendenciesof the whole social body, by affecting individuals, cause them to commit suicide [1897b,pages 299 ^ 300].

Tarde The final pages of the chapter on egotistic suicide are beautiful, evincing ametaphysical poetry akin to Schopenhauer's, but one should not examine them tooclosely: they are pure mythology. Society is raised to the status of a person, indeed ofa divine person. [...] Durkheim is an atheisticöand therefore inconsistentöBonald.[... You leave] us only one alternative: either the tyranny of the rule, which manglesour nature, which wounds our freedom, or the suicide which suppresses our existence.To be either a monk, or a suicideöthere is no middle ground. Read this for too longand you will find yourself espousing anarchism ... [1897, pages 237, 244, 247].

Durkheim [Social facts] are [...] not inaccurately represented by rates of births,marriages and suicides, that is, by the result obtained after dividing the averageannual total of births, marriages and voluntary homicides by the number of personsof an age to marry, produce children, or commit suicide. Since each one of thesestatistics includes without distinction all individual cases, the individual circumstanceswhich may have played some part in producing the phenomenon cancel each other outand consequently do not contribute to determining the nature of the phenomenon.What it expresses is a certain state of the collective mind [1894, page 55].

Tarde This amounts to recognising, in terms of social links, only the relation of masterto subject, of teacher to student, without any regard to the free relations betweenequals. And it is to purposefully ignore the obvious: that, in schools themselves, theeducation that children give one another freely by imitating each other, [...] brings themmuch that is more important than that which they receive and submit to by force. Suchan error can only be explained by linking it to this other one, that a social fact,qua social, exists outside all its individual manifestations. Unfortunately, by thus objec-tifying and pushing to the limit the distinction, or rather the absolutely subjectiveseparation, of the collective phenomenon and the particular acts of which it is com-posed, Mr Durkheim casts us back into plain scholasticism. Sociology does not meanontology. I own that I have great difficulty in understanding how it could be that,` the individuals subtracted, Society remains''. [...] Are we going to return to the realismof the Middle Ages? I wonder what advantage one gains, under the pretext of refiningsociology, by emptying it of all its psychological and living content. One seems to besearching for a social principle where psychology does not enter at all, created expresslyfor the science one is fabricating, and which seems to me even more chimerical thanthe former vital principle [1895c, pages 61 ^ 62].

The Dean [We have, then, two particularly clear-cut disagreements on the autonomy ofsociology, on its power of coercion, on the importance of imitation, and, since we arespeaking of realism, it seems to me we are reaching the great question of the relationshipbetween the parts and the whole.]

Durkheim Because society is only composed of individuals, it appears to be commonsense that social life can have no other substratum than individual consciousness;otherwise it appears to be up in the air, floating in empty space. Yet, what is so easilydeemed inadmissible with regard to social facts, is commonly admitted for other reignsof nature. Every time elements, whatever they are, combine together and release, bythe very fact of their combination, new phenomena, it must be understood that these


phenomena are situated, not in the elements, but in the whole formed by their union. Theliving cell contains nothing other than mineral particles, just as society contains nothingother than individuals; and yet, it is evidently impossible for the phenomena characteristicof life to reside in atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. [...] Life is in thewhole, not in the parts. [...] Let us apply this principle to sociology. If, as has beenconceded, this synthesis sui generis that constitutes every society releases new phenomena,different to those that occur in solitary consciousnesses, it must be admitted that thesespecific facts reside in the very society that produces them, and not in its parts, that is tosay in its members [1901, page xvi].

Tarde [Yes, I agree:] When we consider one of the greater social phenomena, such as agrammar, a code, or a theology, [it is true that] the individual mind appears so triviala thing beside these monumental works that the idea of regarding it as the sole artisanconcerned in the erection of these enormous cathedrals seems to some sociologistsquite absurd; and one may [indeed] be readily excused if, without perceiving that onethereby abandons all attempt at explanation, one is drawn into saying that these worksare eminently impersonal; there is but a step from this position to that of my illustriousopponent, [you,] Mr Durkheim, who [insists] that they are not functions of the indi-vidual, but his factors, and that they have an existence independent of human person-ality, and rule man with despotic might, by the oppressive shadow which they cast overhim. But how have these social realities come into being? (I say realities, for, although Ioppose the idea of a social organism, I am far from challenging the concept of certainsocial realities, concerning which some understanding must be reached.) I see clearlythat, once formed, they impose themselves upon the individual, sometimes, thoughrarely, with constraint, oftener by persuasion or suggestion or the curious pleasurethat we experience, from childhood up, in saturating ourselves with the examples ofour myriad surrounding models, as the babe in imbibing its mother's milk. This I seeclearly enough; but how were these wonderful monuments constructed, and by whom,if not by men and through human efforts? [1898, pages 124 ^ 125].

Durkheim It is due to the thoroughly engrained habit of applying to sociologicalmatters the forms of philosophical thought that [our] preliminary definition has oftenbeen seen as a sort of philosophy of the social fact. It has been said that we explainedsocial phenomena through constraint, just as, [you,] Mr Tarde, explain them throughimitation. We had no such ambition and it didn't even cross our mind that this mighthave been attributed to us, it being so contrary to all method.What we were proposingwas not to anticipate the conclusions of science by means of a philosophical view, butsimply to indicate by which external signs it is possible to recognise the facts thatshould be dealt with, in order that the scientist may find them where they are andnot confuse them with others. The aim was to delimit the field of enquiry as much aspossible, not to flounder about in some exhaustive intuition. Thus we very willingly acceptthe reproach that this definition does not express all the characters of the social fact, and,consequently, that it is not the only one possible. There is, indeed, nothing inconceivableabout the social fact being characterised in many different ways; for there is no reason thatit should only have one distinctive property. All that matters is choosing the propertywhich seems most appropriate for one's purpose. It is indeed quite possible to employseveral criteria concurrently, according to the circumstances. And we ourselves havefelt this to be occasionally necessary in sociology; for there are cases where the characterof constraint is not easily recognisable. All that is required, since we are concerned withan initial definition, is that the characteristics employed are immediately discernableand can be recognised before research. Other definitions have sometimes been opposedto ours, but it is precisely this condition which they do not fulfil [1901, page xx].


Tarde Unfortunately this hypothesis is entirely at odds with experience [l'observation].Here in sociology we have a rare privilege, intimate knowledge both of the element,which is our individual consciousness, and of the compound, which is the sum[assemblee] of consciousnesses; here, no one can make us mistake words for things.And what we clearly see in this case is that if the individual is subtracted nothingremains of the social, and that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in society, whichdoes not exist, in a state of division and continual repetition, in living beings, or thatdid not exist in the dead individuals who came before them. [...] [Besides,] what is thereat the very heart of the chemical molecule, of the living cell? We do not know. How,then, not knowing this, can we state that, when these mysterious beings encounter eachother in some way, itself unknown, and make new phenomena appear before our eyes,an organism, a brain, a consciousness, there has been, at each step taken on thismystical ladder, a sudden apparition, creation ex nihilo of something that previouslydid not exist, even as a germ? Is it not likely that, if we knew these cells intimately,these molecules, these atoms, these unknown elements of the great problem, so oftentaken as givens, we would find it very simple to exclude the phenomena which seem tobe created by their combination, these phenomena which now amaze us? Notice theenormous assumption implied by the current notions that Mr Durkheim explicitlyrelies on to justify his chimerical conception; this assumption is that the mere relationbetween several beings can become itself a new being, often superior to the others. It isstrange [it is strange!] to see minds that pride themselves on being above all positive,methodical, minds that hound and harry even the shadow of mysticism, being attachedto such a fantastical notion [1895a, pages 75 ^ 76].

Durkheim A thought which is to be found in the consciousness of each individual anda movement which is repeated by all individuals are not for this reason social facts.These are so far from being constituted by repetition, that they exist outwith theirindividual incarnations. What constitutes a social fact is a belief, tendency or practiceof the group taken collectively, which is something else entirely than the form it mayassume when it is refracted through individuals [1894, page 54].

Tarde How could it be refracted before existing, and how could it exist, let us speakintelligibly, outside of all individuals? The truth is that a social thing, whatever it mightbe [...] devolves and passes on, not from the social group collectively to the individual,but rather from one individual [...] to another individual, and that, in the passage ofone mind into another mind, it is refracted. The sum of these refractions, from theinitial impulse of an inventor, a discoverer, an innovator or modifier, whoever it mightbe, unknown or illustrious, is the entire reality of a social thing at a given moment;a reality which is constantly changing, just like any other reality, through imperceptiblenuances; this does not prevent a collectivity from emerging out of these individualvarieties, an almost unchanging [constante] collectivity, which immediately strikes theeye and gives rise to Mr Durkheim's ontological illusion. For it is, beyond the shadowof a doubt, a veritable scholastic ontology that the learned writer is attempting toinsert into sociology, in place of the psychology he battles with [1895a, pages 66-67].

Durkheim My proposition could only be opposed by agreeing that a whole is qual-itatively identical with the sum of its parts, that an effect is qualitatively reducible tothe sum of its productive causes; which amounts to denying all change or to making itinexplicable. Someone has, however, gone so far as to uphold this extreme thesis, butonly two truly extraordinary reasons have been found for its defence. First, it has beensaid that [here I am quoting you, my distinguished colleague] ` in sociology we have,a rare privilege, intimate knowledge both of the element, which is our individual


consciousness, and of the compound, which is the sum of consciousnesses''; secondly,that through this double introspection [and you have just reiterated this] ``we clearlyascertain that if the individual is subtracted nothing remains of the social'' [1897b,page 311].

The Dean [I believe we have now understood what separates you and it seems uselessto go any further down this track: you will not reach an agreement. But it seems to methat Mr Durkheim should respond to this serious accusation of `mysticism'. The wordseems rather strong, does it not? Might this be due to the manner in which you eachunderstand the role of contingency?]

Durkheim For Mr Tarde [...] all social facts are the production of individual inventions,propagated by imitation. Any belief and any practice would have at its origin anoriginal idea, born of an individual brain. Every day, millions of inventions of thisnature would occur. But while most would perish, a few would succeed; they areadopted by other members of society, be it because they seem useful to them, orbecause their author is invested with a singular authority transmitted to everythinghe produces. Once generalised, the invention ceases to be an individual phenomenonto become a collective phenomenon.öWell, there is no science of inventions, suchas Mr Tarde conceives them; for they are only possible thanks to inventors, andthe inventor, the genius, is ` the ultimate accident'', a pure product of chance [1900,page 131].

Tarde [Conversely] Mr Durkheim spares us such terrible tableaux.With him, no wars, nomassacres, no brutal invasions. Reading him, it seems that the river of progress has flowedsmoothly over a mossy bed undisturbed by froth or somersaults. [...] Evidently, he inclinestowards a Neptunian, rather than a Vulcanian, view of history: everywhere he seessedimentary formations, nowhere igneous upheavals. He leaves no place for the accidental,the irrational, this grimacing face at the heart of things, not even for the accident ofgenius [1893, page 187].

Durkheim Certainly, once a genius is postulated, then one can very well look for thecauses that favour the mental connections in him, whence new ideas are produced, andhere is probably what Mr Tarde call the laws of invention. But the essential factor inany innovation is the genius himself, it is his creative nature, and this is the productof entirely fortuitous causes. Furthermore, since the mysterious source of the ` socialriver'' is in him, accident is thus placed at the root of social phenomena. There is noabsolute necessity to this belief or that institution appearing at this or that historicalmoment, in this or that social setting. According to whether chance allows theinnovator to be born sooner or later, the same idea might take centuries to sproutor might bloom straight away. Therefore there is an entire category of inventionswhich might follow each other in whatever sequence: they are those that don'tcontradict one another, but are, on the contrary, helpful to each another. [...] Thus,the notion of law, which Comte had finally [and laboriously!] succeeded in introduc-ing into the sphere of social phenomena, a notion that his successors strove to clarifyand to consolidate, is here obscured, veiled [trampled underfoot]. Whim and caprice,once they are placed in the heart of things, are thereby permitted to seep into thoughtalso [1900, page 132].

Tarde [I quote you once more] ``The determining cause of a social fact should be soughtamongst the antecedent social facts and not amongst individual states of consciousness.''Let us apply this: the determining cause of our railway networks should be soughtneither in the states of consciousness of Papin,Watt, Stephenson, and others, nor in the


logical series of conceptions and discoveries which have illuminated [qui ont lui a© ] thesegreat minds, but rather in the road networks and mailcoach services of yesteryear. [...]There is a fetish, a deus ex machina, that the new sociologists make use of, like anOpen Sesame, every time they are embarrassed, and it is time to point out this abusewhich is becoming truly worrying. This explanatory talisman is the milieu. [Ah!] Reachfor that wordöwhat more needs to be said? The milieu is the multipurpose formulawhose illusory profundity serves to disguise the emptiness of the idea. Thus, they havenot hesitated to tell us, for example, that the origin of all social evolution should besought exclusively in the properties ``of the internal social milieu.'' [...] As for thisphantom-milieu, this ghost we delight in summoning up, to which we lend all sortsof marvellous virtues, so that we are exempt from recognising the existence of the trueand truly beneficial geniuses by whom we live, in whom we move, without whom wewould be nothing, let us eliminate it from our science as soon as possible. The milieuis a nebula which, upon closer inspection, resolves into different stars, of very unequalsizes [1895a, pages 78 ^ 79].

The Dean [But then, if I understand you both correctly, you disagree not only onthe role of innovation and genius in history, but also on the very question of whata science should be?]

Durkheim Mr Tarde's theory appears to be the very negation of science. [...] It places,indeed, the irrational and the miraculous at the foundation of life and, consequently, ofsocial science. If we adopt Mr Tarde's point of view, we see that social facts are theresult, more often than not, of simply mechanical causes, unintelligible and foreign toany finality since there is nothing more blind than imitation [1895a, pages 85 ^ 87].Here, indeterminacy is made into a principle. Consequently, this is no longer science.It is not even the methodical philosophy that Comte had tried to institute; it is a veryparticular mode of speculation, somewhere in between philosophy and literature,in which a few very general theoretical ideas are trailed around through all possibleproblems [1903b, page 479].

Tarde This is not an appeal to mystery, but rather to the profound and underappre-ciated ability to affirm a beyond to the horizon of facts and not to misjudge, at least,what one cannot know. If to affirm the unknown is to use our ignorance, to deny theunknown is to be ignorant twice over [1910, page 41]. [I will say, however, that]Mr Durkheim's principal idea [...] rests on a pure conception of his mind that he haswrongly taken for a suggestion of facts. It only presents, in any case, a highly partial andrelative truth, very insufficient as a single foundation or principle of a sociologicaltheory. [...] One may well, then, be amazed at the confidence it inspires in Mr Durkheimand at the virtue he attributes to it in leading us necessarily to a higher or more humanMorality and Justice [1893, page 189].

Durkheim As Mr Tarde says [...], the origin of our disagreement is elsewhere. It stemsabove all from the fact that I believe in science whereas Mr Tarde does not. For howcan one believe in science who reduces it to an intellectual game, capable at best ofinforming us about what is possible and impossible, but incapable of serving in thepositive regulation of behaviour? If it has no other practical use, it is not worththe effort. And if one hopes in this way to disarm one's recent adversaries, one isstrangely mistaken; in reality, one returns their weapons to them. Undoubtedly, scienceby this definition would no longer be able to disappoint the expectations of men;but only because men would no longer expect very much from it. It will no longer beexposed to accusations of bankruptcy; but only because it will have been declared minorand incapable in perpetuity. I cannot see what either it or we stand to gain by this.


For what is thus placed above reason is sensation, instinct, passion, all the base andobscure parts of ourselves. Let us indeed make use of these when we cannot dootherwise. But when one sees in them something other than a stopgap that little bylittle must surrender its place to science, when one attributes to these things apreeminence of some kind, then, although one may not be openly speaking of therevelations of Faith, one is a more or less consequent theoretical mystic. And mysticismis the reign of anarchy in the practical sphere, because it is the reign of fantasy in theintellectual sphere [1895b, page 523].

Tarde It is by asking of science something beyond what it can give, it is by giving itrights that exceed its already quite vast range, that one has given rise to belief in itsalleged failure. Science has never failed to keep her true promises, but a great manycounterfeit bills marked with her counterfeit signature have been circulated in hername, that she now finds impossible to redeem. It is pointless to add to their number[1895b, page 162].

Durkheim Faced with the results which the comparative history of institutions hasalready produced, there can no longer be any question of purely and simply denyingthe possibility of a scientific study of societies; furthermore, Mr Tarde himself means tocreate a sociology. Only, he conceives it in such a manner that it ceases to be a truescience, in order to become a very particular form of speculation where imaginationplays the dominant role, where thought is not considered to have a duty to the regularobligations of proof or to the ascertaining of facts [1900, pages 130 ^ 131].

Tarde Mr Durkheim believes he is honouring science by making it a sovereign over thewill, by giving it the power not only to point out the most pertinent means by whichthe will may achieve its overarching goal, but even to dictate the direction of this NorthStar of conduct [1895b, pages 161 ^ 162]. If I had to formulate a maxim on this subject,it would address the moral as well as the intellectual conditions which the discovery oftruth places upon us. A little modesty and simplicity behoves an adolescent science,just like a young man on the cusp of life; it should refrain from a doctrinal tone andfrom scholarly jargon. One should approach it with a benevolent and informal cast ofmind, and also, and above all, with a vibrant and joyful love of the subject. [...] Thefirst requirement for being a sociologist is to love social life, to sympathise with menof every race and every country brought together around one hearth, to research withcuriosity, to discover with delight what tender devotions may be hidden in the hut of thereputedly most ferocious savage, sometimes even in the lair of the criminal; finally,never to believe readily in the stupidity, in the absolute viciousness of man in the past,nor in his present perversity, and never to despair of his future [1895a, page 94].

Durkheim Mr Tarde is confusing [...] different questions, and [I] refuse to comment ona problem he has not broached as yet and that has nothing to do with this discussion[1903a, page 165].

The Dean [I think we can stop there. I remind you that this contradictory debatebetween our eminent colleagues served as an introduction to the sociology course atthe Eè cole des Hautes Eè tudes Sociales, during the course of which students will havenumerous chances to discuss these presuppositions. I think now is the moment to giveour heartfelt thanks to both speakers.]


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the debate between tarde and durkheim

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