monadology and sociology 2012 tarde

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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-

phy, as it publishes worksthat re-examine classical

philosophical thought.Transmission is the name

for what takes place.


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re.press Melbourne 2012

Gabriel Tarde

edited & translated by Theo Lorenc



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re.press

PO Box 40, Prahran, 3181, Melbourne, Australia

http://www.re-press.org re.press 2012The moral rights o the authors have been asserted

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record or this book is available rom the British Library

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Author: Tarde, Gabriel de, 1843-1904.

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

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

Series: Transmission.

Subjects: Sociology--Philosophy.Monadology.

Other Authors/Contributors:Lorenc, Theo.

Dewey Number: 301.01

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trANSLAtOrS PrefACe

The text used or this translation is the 1895 edition oMonadologieet Sociologie, in Gabriel Tarde (1895) Essais et mlanges sociologiques,Lyon, A. Storck / Paris, G. Masson, pp. 309-389. This text is a re-worked and expanded version o an article published in 1893 asMonads and Social Science (Les Monades et la Science Sociale),Revue Internationale de Sociologie, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 157-173 and vol.1, no. 3, pp. 231-246. The earlier version corresponds to chapters I,

IV, V and VI o the 1895 text. A small amount o material is in theearlier version o the text but not the later version; this is given inthe notes to this translation (minor stylistic variants between thetwo are not noted).

Two modern editions o the original text are available: ricAlliez (ed.), Le Plessis, Institut Synthlabo, 1999; M. Bergeron(ed.), Qubec, Cgep, 2002, available at http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/tarde_gabriel/monadologie/monadologie.html).

These editions give no sources o Tardes citations; J. Sarnes andM. Schillmeiers German translation (Gabriel Tarde, Monadologieund Soziologie, Frankurt, Suhrkamp, 2009) gives a ew but notall. I have attempted to trace all the citations, without completesuccess; however, it is likely that some passages marked as cita-tions in the text are paraphrases rather than verbatim quotes.Reerences given are to English translations where available.

Tarde uses the masculine gender throughout when reerring

to persons in general; the translation conorms to this usage.I would like to thank Isaac Marrero-Guillamn and Dan Cryan

or their assistance.


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Hypotheses ngo1

I

The monads, children o Leibniz, have come a long way since theirbirth. By several independent paths, unremarked by scientiststhemselves, they slip into the heart o contemporary science. It

is a remarkable act that all the secondary hypotheses implicit inthis great hypothesis, at least in its essentials i not in its strictlyLebnizian orm, are now being proved scientically. The hypoth-esis implies both the reduction o two entities, matter and mind,to a single one, such that they are merged in the latter, and at thesame time a prodigious multiplication o purely mental agents inthe world. In other words, it implies both the discontinuity o theelements and the homogeneity o their being. Moreover, it is only

on these two conditions that the universe is wholly transparent tothe gaze o the intellect. Now, on the one hand, as a result o hav-ing been sounded a thousand times and judged unathomable, 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 o an appearance,and nally denied altogether by the bravest souls, who have beenechoed rom every quarter. On the other hand, the progress o

chemistry leads us to arm the atom and to deny the materialcontinuity which the continuous character o the physical and liv-ing maniestations o matter, extension, movement and growth

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


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Monadology and Sociology

seem supercially to reveal. There is nothing more prooundlysurprising than the combination o chemical substances in de-nite proportions, to the exclusion o 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 i the con-tinuity o nuances were impossible without the discontinuity ocolours. The path o 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: O greatimportance, not only or this demonstration, but also especially or

its ar-reaching consequences, was Newtons assumption that thegravitation o a planet is only the sum o the gravitation o all itsindividual portions. From this immediately owed the inerencethat the terrestrial bodies gravitate towards each other; and ur-ther, that even the smallest particles o these masses attract eachother.2 With this viewpoint, which was much more original thanit seems today, Newton broke, and indeed pulverized the individu-ality o the celestial body, which had until then been regarded as a

superior unity whose internal relations bore no resemblance to itsrelations with other bodies. Great strength o mind was requiredto resolve this apparent unity into a multiplicity o distinct ele-ments linked to each other in the same way as they are linked tothe elements o other aggregates. The beginning o the progresso physics and astronomy can be dated to the day when this view-point replaced the contrary prejudice.

In this respect the ounders o cellular theory have shown

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

there is no vital orce, as a principle distinct rom matter, either

2. [Trans. Note: Ludwig Lange (1863-1936), History o Materialism: And Criticismo 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 o the key early propo-nents o the theory that all living organisms are made up o cells.]


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in the entirety o the organism, or in each cell. All phenomena ovegetable or animal lie must be explained by the properties o atoms[let us say o the ultimate elements rom which atoms are com-

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

ancient medical writers, has been pulverized into a great numbero innitesimal disorders o the histological elements. Moreover,thanks primarily to the discoveries o Pasteur, the parasitic theo-ry o illness, which explains these disorders by means o the in-ternal conicts o 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 ormed along anal-ogous lines. As Wurtz says: This is the new and essential point.The properties o the radicals are reerred to the elements themselves.Formerly they were considered as a whole. To the radical regardedas a whole was attributed the power o combining with or o beingsubstituted or simple bodies. This was the undamental point oview o Gerhardts theory o types. We now go urther. To discov-er and dene the properties o radicals we go back to the atoms o

which they are composed.5 This eminent chemists thought goesurther than our remarks above. The examples which he citesdemonstrate that, among the atoms o a radical, there is one inparticular on whose atomicity and as yet unsatised avidity, out-lasting the saturation o 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 o the nal section(Theory o the Cells) o T. Schwann, Microscopical researches into the accor-dance in the structure and growth o 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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but as highly complexconstructions, urnished with a specic ar-chitecture and animated by highly varied internal movements.8Physiologists, or their part, do not maintain that the protoplasm

is a homogenous substance, and judge only the solid part o thecell to be active and truly living. The soluble part, almost in its en-tirety, is nothing but a storehouse or uel and nourishment (or amass o excrement). Moreover, a better understanding o the solidpart itsel would doubtless lead us to eliminate almost everythingrom it. And, where will this process o elimination nish i notat a geometrical point, that is, at pure nothingness? Unless, as wewill explain below, this point is a centre. And, in act, 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 ocus whence it seems to aspireto radiate indenitely until the day when the cruel experience oexternal obstacles obliges it to close in on itsel in order to preserveits being; but we are getting ahead o 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 o the innitesi-mal calculus; and, or the same reason, the stunning and rapidsuccess o the theory o evolution. In this theory, a specic ormis, as a geometer would say, the integral o innumerable dieren-tials called individual variations, which are themselves due to cel-lular variations, whose basis consists o a myriad o elementarychanges. The source, reason, and ground o the nite and separateis in the innitely small, in the imperceptible: this is the proound

conviction which inspired Leibniz, and continues to inspire ourtransormists.

But why should such a transormation, which is incomprehen-sible i presented as a sum o denite and discrete dierences, bereadily understood i we consider it as a sum o innitely smalldierences? We must show rst o all that this is a real contrast.Suppose that, by some miracle, a body disappears and is annihilat-ed rom the place A where it was, then appears and comes back into

beingat the place Z a metre away rom A, without having traversedthe intermediate positions: such a displacementis beyond the powero our mind to grasp, while we would never be astonished to seethis body move rom A to Z along a line o juxtaposed positions.

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


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rom this? I the innitesimal diered rom the nite only by degree,i at the basis o things as at their perceptible surace 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, thereore, isqualitatively dierent rom the nite; movement has a cause dis-tinct rom itsel; being is not exhausted by what appears in phe-nomena. Everything comes rom the innitesimal and everythingreturns to it; nothing in the sphere o the nite and complexasurprising act which nobody is surprised atappears suddenly,nor dies away. What should we conclude rom this, i not that the

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

This growing importance which the growth o knowledgegrants to the concept o the innitesimal is all the more curious

since the latter, in its ordinary orm (leaving aside or a momentthe monadic hypothesis), is nothing but a mass o contradictions.I will leave to Renouvier12 the task o 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 inscribed as a reminderin the inventory o our intellectual

assets? This absurdity could very well be only the outer coveringo a reality alien to everything we know, outside everything, spaceand time, matter and mind Outside mind? I so, the monadichypothesis should be rejected but this must be examined ur-ther. However this question is resolved, these tiny beings whichwe call innitesimal will be the real agents, and these tiny varia-tions which we call innitesimal will be the real actions.

Indeed, it seems to ollow rom the preceding that these agents

are autonomous, and that these variations clash and obstruct one11. [Trans. Note: Tarde may be thinking here o the work o Georg Cantor and

Richard Dedekind in the 1870s and 1880s on the set-theoretical oundations onatural number.]

12. [Trans. Note: Charles Renouvier (1815-1903), philosopher. Renouvierstrongly criticized the concepts o innite and innitesimal magnitude as logi-cally contradictory.]


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

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

sive and ragmentary, will then be abrupt and total, however radi-cal the project. The slowness o social modications is explainedonly by the act that the other plans or reorm or ideals o the Statewhich all other members o a nation knowingly or unknowinglyentertain run contrary to this plan. In the same way, i 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 ormation o an organism should be subject to the progress o

its embryonic phases, an obstacle opposed to the immediate real-ization o its adult stage which was nonetheless rom the begin-ning the aim o the germs impulse.

The idea o the straight line, let it be noted, is not the exclusiveproperty o geometry. There is a biological rectilinearity and a logi-cal rectilinearity. In the same way that, in passing rom one pointto another, the abbreviation or diminution o the number o inter-vening points cannot continue indenitely and must stop at the

limit which we call the straight line, just so, in the passage romone specic orm to another, rom an individual state to another,there is a minimal, irreducible intervening series o orms or stateswhich must be traversed, which alone may perhaps explain the ab-breviated repetition by the embryo o some o the successive ormso its ancestors; and similarly, in expounding a body o knowledge,is there not a way to go straight rom one thesis to the next, anddoes it not consist in linking them by a chain o logical positions

or positings which necessarily come in between the two? A tru-ly surprising necessity. This rational, rectilinear order o exposi-tion, much avoured by introductory books which summarize ina ew pages the labour o centuries (and the limit o the ambitiono such volumes), coincides requently but not invariably, and inmany points but not in all, with the historical order o appearance


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o the successive discoveries which are synthesized in the science.Perhaps this is the case with the amous recapitulation ophylog-enyby ontogeny,13 which would then be the rectication and not

only the prodigious acceleration o the more or less winding pathalong which the ancestral orms, the accumulated biological inven-tions which are bequeathed all together to the ovule, ollowed oneanother in previous eras.14

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

evolves. It evolves not by a series or a competition o blind group-ings, or o ortuitous and involuntary adaptations to the observedacts, in conormity with the procedures o transormation which itwrongly attributes to living nature, but by the accumulated eortso perectly aware scientists and theoreticians, knowingly and vol-untarily occupied in modiying the undamental 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 or them age-

neric ormwhich they are working to speciy, each in his own way.But, among these various products o the unprecedented ermen-tation created by Darwin, there are only two which add to or sub-stitute or the masters own idea something truly new and ertile. Ireer rstly to the evolution by association o elementary organismsinto more complex organisms ormulated by Edmond Perrier,15and secondly by the evolution by leaps or crises,16 which, suggest-ed and predicted some years ago by Cornets prescient writings,17

13. [Trans. Note: Reading ontogense with the 1893 text; the 1895 text has auto-gense (autogeny).]

14. [Trans. Note: The theory o ontogenetic recapitulation, most amously or-mulated by Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,holds that the developing embryo recapitulates in miniature the evolution othe species.]

15. [Trans. Note: Edmond Perrier (1844-1921), zoologist. As described by Tarde,Perrier propounded the theory that higher organisms evolved rom colonies or as-sociations o smaller organisms. See E. Perrier, Les Colonies animales et la orma-

tion des organismes, Paris, Masson, 1881. The 1893 text cites Perriers courses atthe Museum (the National Museum o Natural History in Paris) and adds the ol-lowing ootnote: This biological theory has the advantage that it agrees in everypoint with the linguistic theory o the ormation o languages by the aggregationo 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 his Trait de lenchanement des ides ondamentales,


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o hidden workers who collaborate in realizing some specic planor reorganization previously conceived and willed by one amongtheir number?

II

This should, I think, suce to demonstrate how science tendsto pulverize the universe and to multiply beings indenitely.However, as already noted, science tends no less distinctly to uniythe Cartesian duality o matter and mind. Hence it is inevitably ledto, let us say not anthropomorphism, butpsychomorphism. Monismcan eectively be conceived in three ways (I am o course aware

that this has been said many times beore): either by seeing move-ment and consciousnessor example the vibration o a cerebralcell and the corresponding mental stateas two sides o a singleact, in which case one misleads onesel by this reminder o the an-cient Janus; or by not denying the heterogeneous nature o matterand mind, but making them ow rom a common source, rom ahidden and unknown mind, a position which gains nothing but atrinity instead o, and in the place o, 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, is mine, exclusively mine, and that it iscomposed o my states o mind or o their possibility to the extentthat it is armed by me, that is, to the extent that this possibilityis itsel one o my states o mind. I this interpretation be rejected,

the only option is to admit with the monadologists that the wholeexternal universe is composed o souls distinct rom my own butundamentally similar. In accepting this latter point o view, it sohappens that one removes rom the ormer its best support. To rec-ognize that one knows nothing o the being in itsel o 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 o it, as may eas-ily be shown, has or its only content our states o mind; and as, ab-

stracting away our states o mind, nothing remains, either it is onlythese states o mind which are armed when we arm this sub-stantial and unknowable X, or it must be admitted that in arm-ing some other thing, we arm nothing. But i it is the case thatthis being in itsel is undamentally similar to our own being, thenit will no longer be unknowable, and may consistently be armed.


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Thus monism leads us to universal psychomorphism.Hitherto, however, monism has been demonstrated less than ithas been armed. It is true that when one sees physicists like

Tyndall, naturalists like Haeckel, philosophical historians and art-ists like Taine, and theorists o all schools,19 express the suspicionor the conviction that the hiatus between inside and outside, be-tween sensation and vibration, is an illusion, then even i theirarguments may not be convincing, the agreement o their con-victions and presentiments has some importance. But, as soon asthey attempt to put their nger on the alleged identity, this pre-sumption loses all orce in the ace o the evident discord o the

juxtaposed terms which they are trying to identiy, namely move-mentand sensation.

The reason is that at least one o these terms is an unortunatechoice. The contrast between the purely quantitative variations omovement, whose deviations are themselves measurable, and thepurely qualitative variations o sensation, whether they concerncolours, odors, tastes or sounds, is too shocking to our mind. Buti, among our internal states, distinct ex hypothesi rom sensation,

there were to be ound some which vary quantitatively, as I haveattempted to show elsewhere,20 this singular character would per-haps allow us to attempt to use them to spiritualize the universe. Inmy view, these two states o the soul, or rather these two orces othe soul which are called belie and desire, whence derive arma-tion and will, present this character eminently and distinctly. Bythe universality o their presence in all psychological phenomena,both human and animal, by the homogeneity o their nature rom

19. [Trans. Note: John Tyndall (1820-1893), physicist; Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), biologist and naturalist; Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893), historian and liter-ary critic. All argued or some orm o dual-aspect monism, in which mind andmatter are seen as two aspects o a single underlying reality. Tyndall, sometimesremembered as a thoroughgoing materialist, also seriously considered the idea oa primeval union between spirit and matter, such that they would be two oppo-site aces o the sel-same mystery (Scientic Use o the Imagination (1870), inFragments o Science, London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1879, vol. II, pp. 101-136,on p. 133). Haeckel propounded a monism which recognizes one sole substance

in the universe, which is at once God and nature; body and spirit (or matter andenergy) it holds to be inseparable (The Riddle o the Universe, trans. J. McCabe,London, Watts & Co., 1929, p. 16). Taine, nally, describes mind and matter asone and the same tongue, written in dierent characters (On Intelligence, trans.T. D. Haye, London, L. Reeve & Co., 1871, pp.297-8.)]

20. [Trans. Note: The theory o belie and desire as psychological quantitiesgoes back to Tardes early (1880) essay La Croyance et le dsir (Belie and desire,in Essais et mlanges sociologiques); see particularly section II.]


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Monadology and Sociology8

o 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.Belie and desire have the unique privilege o including un-conscious states. There certainly exist unconscious desires andjudgements. These include, or example, the desires implicit inour pleasures and pains, and the judgements o localization andso on which are incorporated in our sensations. By contrast, un-conscious and unelt sensations are a maniest impossibility; i aew minds have thought to posit them, it is either because they

have used this phrase mistakenly to reer to sensations which arenot armed or discerned, or because, while understanding thatit is really necessary to admit unconscious states o mind, theyhave wrongly understood sensations as capable o being suchstates. In addition, the acts which have been used to support thehypothesis o 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 o the brain) has as itsconstant and indispensable collaborators innumerable other con-sciousnesses whose modications, external with respect to us,are or them internal states. Ball says: Certain physiologists whotake an interest in psychology have proved that we cannot orgetanything. Traces o our previously received impressions accumu-late in the cells o our brains, where they remain latent inde-nitely, until one day a superior inuence awakens them rom the

tomb where they were buried in sleep When in the course o aconversation one tries to remember a name, a date, or a act, theinormation sought oten escapes us, and only several hours lat-er, when we are thinking o something else entirely, does it comespontaneously to oer itsel to us. How can we explain this un-expected revelation? It is because a mysterious secretary, a skilulautomatonhas been working or us while the intellect [he shouldhave said ourown intellect, the directing monad] neglects these

trivial details.24

complex psychic activity o the higher organism to be the result o the psychic ac-tivity o the cells which compose it. For a more in-depth exposition, see Zellseelenund Seelenzellen, Leipzig, Alred Krner Verlag, 1909.]

24. [Trans. Note: Probably Benjamin Ball (1833-1893), psychologist. The cita-tion has not been traced.]


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orce in the image o our eorts. Only Hegel glimpsed this truth,to judge by his conceit o composing the world rom sequenceso armations and negations. Hence perhaps, despite certain ab-

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

towards certitude, as the movement o stars and atoms moves to-wards their denitive agglomeration, the idea o orce leads natu-rally to the idea o substance, where, weary o the agitations o anillusory phenomenalism, grasping nally realities which are takenor immutable, idealist and materialist thought each in turn takereuge. But, o these two ascriptions to the mysterious externalnoumena o 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 or that, and that it is adelusion to pretend that one can explain vital, physical or chemi-cal phenomena by psychological acts, since the latter are alwaysmore complex than the ormer. But, though I admit the complex-ity o sensations and the complete legitimacy o explaining themby physiological acts, I cannot admit this o desire nor o belie. Imaintain that analysis cannot get its teeth into these irreducible

concepts. There is an unnoticed contradiction in the position that,on the one hand, an organism is a mechanism constructed in con-ormity to purely mechanical laws, and, on the other, that all thephenomena o mental lie, including the two mentioned above, arepurely products o the organization created by this lie, and do notexist prior to it. I, in act, the organized being is only an admi-rably constructed machine, it should unction like any other ma-chine, in which not only no new orce but not even any radically

new product can possibly be created by the most marvellous ar-rangements o wheels and cogs. A machine is nothing but a spe-cial distribution and direction o pre-existing orces which traverseit without essentially altering it. It is nothing but a change o ormo raw materials which it receives rom outside and whose essencedoes not change. I then, once more, living bodies are machines,


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not yet organized, mass? Almann, o the Royal Society o London,says: The movements o spores seem requently to obey a real vo-lition; i the spore encounters an obstacle, it changes direction and

moves back by changing the movement o its cilia.26 A railway me-chanic could do no better. Nonetheless, this spore is only a cell de-tached rom an immobile and insensible plant, to which we grantno will and no intelligence. But, lo and behold, intelligence andwill all o 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 useul to its goal, to itsparticular cosmic plan whence proceed all its movements, the vi-

tal element reveals and unolds its hidden resources. At rst mixedwith an innity o others in an indivisible lump o protoplasm,at the desired moment it calls a halt to its indivision, it enclosesand sequesters itsel with a compact group o vassals, it throws updeensive ramparts o calcium; or else it stretches out its agellalike a rower extending his oars, and moves towards its prey. Everybody o water contains myriads o these unicellularliving beingswhich construct or themselves a skeleton o concentric spheres

as transparent as crystal, and o a perect symmetry and beauty.Evidently the single cellunder consideration could not accomplishthese prodigious eats alone, and we must rather conclude that itwas only the soul o a whole people o workers. But what expendi-ture o 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 springday exhibits 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 great egosdisposing o the vast resources o a gigantic cerebral state, are su-perior to those o the tiny egos conned in the miniscule city o ananimal or even plant cell. Surely, i we were not blinded by the prej-udice o always considering ourselves superior to everything, suchcomparisons would not be to our advantage. At root, it is this prej-udice which prevents us rom believing in the monads. In its age-

long eort to interpret everything outside us in terms o mecha-nism, even those things which most break orth with accumulatedsigns o genius, namely living beings, our mind as it were blowsout all the lights o the world or the sole benet o 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 that a small amount o in-telligence suces to explain the social work o bees and ants. But ione grants this small amountand judges it necessary to account or

the products o these insectswhich are in any case very simple,like the products o 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 dealo intelligence and many intelligences were necessary.A remarknaturally suggests itsel at this point: Since the accomplishment othe simplest and most banal social unction, which has persistedunchanged over centuries (or example, the reasonably regular co-

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

It would doubtless be necessary to reject this conclusion i itwere proven, or had even a modicum o probability, that beyond acertain degree o corporeal smallness, intelligence (I do not meansensory intelligence as we know it, butpsyche, the genus o whichall intelligence known to us is only a species) was impossible. Ithis impossibility were established, we could deduce that all psy-chological phenomena are results radically dierent rom theirconditions, even though all intelligent beings observed by us, or

more generally all beings which have a psyche, proceed rom par-ents or ancestors who equally have a psyche, and even though thespontaneous generation o intelligence is a hypothesis even lessacceptable, i such a thing be possible, than the spontaneous gen-eration o lie. But however ar we penetrate into the microscopicand even ultra-microscopic depths o the innitely small, we willalways discover living seeds and complete organisms, in which ob-servation or induction will lead us to recognize the characteristics

o animality as much as o vegetation, since the two kingdoms areindistinguishable in minimis. As Spottiswoode says: A diameter

27. [Trans. Note: Alred Espinas (1844-1922), sociologist. The reerence is tohis work Des Socits animales [Animal Societies], Paris, G. Baillire, 1877. In act,Espinas own view o the scope o intelligence in social insects is closer to Tardesthan the text may suggest.]


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o 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 o bodies innitely beneath these dimen-

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

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

its o the psychic, nonetheless common sense arms that, by andlarge, beings much smaller than ourselves are much less intel-ligent; and, ollowing this progression, we are sure to arrive, onthe path o increasing smallness, at the absolute absence o 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 i we juxtapose thesetwo commonsensical armations, the one unmotivated, the other

likely, it is clear that they emerge rom the prejudice o anthropo-centrism. In reality, we judge beings to be less intelligent the lesswe understand them, and the error o thinking the unknown to beunintelligent goes hand in hand with the error, which we will ex-amine below,29 o thinking the unknown to be indistinct, undi-erentiated, and homogenous.

The oregoing should on no account be seen as a disguised pleain avour o the teleological principle (principe de nalit), which is

now so rightly discredited in its ordinary orm. Perhaps, in act,rom a methodological point o view, it would be preerable 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 o unctions, to the extent that it exists at all, is nothing but atransaction o contrary interests and claims; where in the normal

state, and in the most balanced individual, useless unctions 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 o 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, i it is to be one thing, it will ipso acto become in-adequate as an explanation o reality. Between its innity, whichsupposes the coexistence o contradictories, and its unity, whichdemands perect agreement, we must choose,or else make, in amarvellous ashion, the one proceed rom the other, each in turn,the latter rom the ormer, then the ormer rom 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 ora moment that one o our human States, composed not o a ewthousand but o a ew quadrillions or quintillions o 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 o its statisticians, whose gures, made up o very largenumbers, recurred with extreme regularity. When a political or

social revolution, which would be revealed to us by an abrupt en-largement or diminution o some o these numbers, took place inthis State, we might well be certain that we would be observinga act caused by individual ideas and passions, but we would re-sist the temptation to become lost in superuous conjectures onthe nature o 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 o the normal numbers. Wewould thereby arrive at least at clear results and symbolic truths.Nonetheless, it would be important rom time to time to recall thepurely symbolic nature o these truths; and precisely this is theservice which the theory o monads can oer to science.

III

We have seen that science, having pulverized the universe, neces-

sarily ends up by spiritualizing the dust thus created. However,we now ace an important objection. In any monadological or at-omistic system, all phenomena are nebulous clouds resolvableinto the actions emanating rom a multitude o agents who areso many invisible and innumerable little gods. This polytheismthis myriatheism, one might almost sayleaves unexplained the


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enlarged sphere o action (or analogy leads us to believe that grav-ity, like all other physical orces, 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 o 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 o the elements, each o them existsin its entirety in the place where it acts. The atom, in truth, i wedraw the implications o this point o view which is naturally sug-gested by Newtons law (which a ew thinkers have occasionally

tried, and ailed, to explain by the pressure o the ether), ceases tobe an atom; it is a universal medium[milieu universel] or aspires tobecome one, a universe in itsel, not only, as Leibniz wished to ar-gue, a microcosm, but the entire cosmos vanquished and absorbedby a single being. I, having thus resolved this rather supernat-ural conception o 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 only

remaining simplication would be to explain natural laws, thesimilarity and repetition o phenomena and the multiplication osimilar phenomena (physical waves, living cells, social copies) bythe triumph o certain monads who desired these laws, imposedthese orms, subjected to their yoke and levelled with their scythea people o monads thus subjugated and made uniorm, althoughborn ree and original, all as eager (avides) as their conquerorsto dominate and assimilate the universe.Just as much as space

and time, natural laws, those equally rootless and antastical enti-ties, would thus nally nd their proper place and their point oapplication among known realities. They would all have begun,like our civil and political laws, by being the designs and projectso individuals.Thus we would in the simplest way possible meetthe undamental objection made to any atomistic or monadologi-cal attempt to resolve the continuity o phenomena into an ele-mentary discontinuity. What do we place within the ultimate discon-

tinuity i not continuity?We place therein, as we will explain againbelow, the totality o other beings. At the basis o each thing areall real or possible things.

30. According to Laplace, thegravic fuid, to use his expression, is propagatedsuccessively, but with a velocity at least millions o times aster than light. In oneplace he says 50 million times, in another 100 million.


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IV

But this implies rst o all that everything is a society, that everyphenomenon is a social act. Now, it is remarkable that science, ol-

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

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

That a philosopher such as Spencer should assimilate soci-

eties to organisms32 is not surprising, and undamentally notnew, except perhaps or the extraordinary expenditure o imagi-native erudition in the service o this view. But it is truly remark-able that a highly circumspect natural scientist such as EdmondPerrier can see in the assimilation o organisms to societies thekey to the mysteries o living things and the ultimate ormula oevolution. Having said that one may compare an animal or a plantto a populous town, in which numerous corporations fourish, and

that 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 ur-nished by the degrees o consanguinity to express the relations oanimals to each other, beore supposing that they were genuinelyrelated and in eect consanguineous, so the comparisons o or-ganisms to societies and societies to organisms have recurredceaselessly to the present day, without anyone seeing in these

comparisons anything more than orms o 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 Social

Organism (1860), in Essays: Scientic, Political and Speculative, London, Williamsand Norgate, 1868, vol. I, pp. 384-428.]


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

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

rom? Observe that, in our social world, everything which resultsnot rom a competition o intermingled plans which clash togeth-er, but rom 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 rom a thought which is ree, ambitious and strong, mastero itsel and o others, seems to obey some internal necessity indisplaying the luxury o striking regularity and symmetry. Everydespot has a love o symmetry; i a writer, he must have constantantitheses; i a philosopher, repeated dichotomies and trichoto-mies; i a king, ceremony, etiquette, and military parades. I so,

and i, as will be shown below, the possibility o individuals ex-ecuting their plans completely and on a large scale is a sign o so-cial progress, it ollows necessarily that the symmetrical and regu-lar nature o living things attests to the high degree o perectionachieved by cellular societies, and to the enlightened despotism towhich they are subject. We should not lose sight o the act that,since cellular societies are a thousand times older than humansocieties, the ineriority o the latter is hardly surprising. Besides,

human societies are limited in their progress by the small num-ber o men which the planet can support. The greatest empire othe world, China, has only 300 or 400 million subjects. An organ-ism which contained only this number oultimate anatomical ele-ments would necessarily be placed towards the bottom o the scaleo plant or animal lie.


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

jection. Some have contrasted the variability o human societies,even those which are slowest to change, with the relative xity oorganic species. But i, as can be shown, the almost exclusive causeo the internal dierentiation o a social orm should be sought inthe extra-social relations o its members, that is, in their relations,either with the auna, the ora, the soil, the atmosphere o theircountry, or with the members o oreign societies which are dier-ently constituted, this dierence is not surprising. Due to the very

nature o its arrangementwhich is entirely supercialand not vo-luminous, almost without thicknessto the extreme dispersion oits elements, and to the multiplicity o intellectual and industrialexchanges between one people and another, the social aggregate omen includes an unusually low proportion o essentially conserva-tive intra-social relations between its members, and prevents themrom maintaining among themselves the omnilateral social rela-tions presupposed by the globular orm o a cell or an organism.

In support o 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 dierent cases glabrous, hairy, spiny, etc. This cannotbe explained solely by the heterogeneity o the external environ-ment, which is presumed to be greater than that o the internalenvironment. This latter point is not at all proven. Besides, and

consequently, it is always the external cells which set in motionthe variations o the rest o the organism. The proo is that the in-ternal organs o new species, although modied to some extentrelative to the species rom which they emerge, always undergo alesser modication than do the peripheral organs, and seem to belaggards on the path o 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 ermentation produced by

the introduction o new ideas which mobile populations, sailors,37. To cite only one example, M C Vogt says (in 1879, at a congress o Swiss nat-

uralists, speaking oArchaeopteryx macroura, intermediate between reptiles andbirds): I believe I have proved that adaptation to ight [in reptiles in the processo becoming birds] works rom the outside to the inside, rom the skin to the skel-eton, and that the latter can remain perectly intact while the skin has alreadycome to develop eathers.


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soldiers returned rom campaigns in distant parts such as theCrusades, bring back every day rom oreign 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 o secondary objections which the

application o the sociological point o view may encounter alongits way. Since, ater all, the undamental nature o 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 ollowed to the

ultimate depths or the ultimate precipices, but rather the ghosts oideas which oat aimlessly in the mind. The universal sociologicalpoint o view seems to me to be one o these spectres which hauntthe brains o our speculative contemporaries. Let us rom the startsee where it will lead us. Let us push ideas to their extreme, at therisk o being taken or extravagant. In this matter in particular,the ear o ridicule is the most antiphilosophical o sentiments. Allthe developments which ollow will be aimed at demonstrating the

proound renewal which the sociological interpretation must, orshould, bring about in every domain o knowledge.

As a preamble, let us take an example at random. From ourpoint o view, what is signied by the great truth that every ac-tivity o the soul is linked to the unctioning o some bodily ap-paratus? It comes down to the act that in a society no individualcan act socially, or show himsel in any respect, without the col-laboration o a great number o other individuals, most o them

unknown to him. The obscure labourers who, by the accumula-tion o tiny acts, prepare the appearance o a great scientic the-ory ormulated by a Newton, a Cuvier, or a Darwin, compose insome sense the organism o which this genius is the soul; andtheir labours are the cerebral vibrations o which this theory is theconsciousness. Consciousness means in some sense the cerebralgloryo the brains most inuential and powerul element. Thus,let to its own devices, a monad can achieve nothing. This is the

crucial act, and it immediately explains another, the tendency omonads to assemble. This tendency expresses, I believe, the needor a maximum o expended belie. When this maximum is at-tained at the point o universal cohesion, then desire, now entire-ly ullled, 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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sometimes have as much merit, erudition, and orce o thought, asthe celebrated beneciary o their labours, or indeed even more. Imake this remark in passing, to address the prejudice which leads

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

V

This may all seem very strange, but, undamentally, it is much less

strange than the view which hitherto has been commonly accept-ed among scientists and philosophers, and rom which the univer-sal sociological point o view should logically deliver us. It is trulysurprising to see men o science, so stubborn in repeating at everyturn that nothing is created, admit implicitly as though sel-evidentthat relations between distinct beings can o themselves become newbeings numerically added to the ormer. Nonetheless, this is admit-ted, perhaps unsuspectingly, whenever, having set aside the mo-

nadic hypothesis, one tries by means o any other hypothesis, andin particular by the play o atoms, to account or the advent o twocrucial beings, namely that o a new living individual, and that oa new ego. Unless we reuse the name o being to these two reali-ties which are the prototypes o any concept o being, we are orcedto admit that, as soon as a determinate number o mechanical ele-ments enter into a certain kind o mechanical relation, a new liv-ing thing which previously did not exist suddenly exists and is

added to their number; more strictly, we should admit that, assoon as a given number o living elements nd themselves drawntogether in the desired ashion within a skull, something as realas, i not more real than these elements is created in their midst,simply in virtue o this drawing together, as i a number could beincreased by the disposition and rearrangement o its units. Theordinary concept o the relation o conditions to outcome, which isso much abused by the natural and social sciences, conceals this

almost 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, prooundand intimate relation between natural elements becomes the cre-atoro a new and superior element, which in turn assists in thecreation o another yet higher element; at every step o the scale o


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to the monads. However, it may be posited, in my view correctly,that their content cannot be reduced to these two quantities alone.I shall shortly state what more I attribute to them. Returning to

the stated objection, then, I shall attack it at its very source, in thewidespread prejudice according to which the result is always morecomplex than its conditions, and the action more dierentiatedthan its agents, whence it ollows that universal evolution is nec-essarily a movement rom the homogenous to the heterogeneous,in a progressive and constant process o dierentiation. Spencerhas the merit, in particular in his chapter on the instability o thehomogenous,39 o having magisterially ormulated this belie, and

elevated it to the status o law. The truth is that dierence comesabout by diering and that change comes about by changing and,in thus being given as ends to themselves, change and dierenceattest to their necessary and absolute character; but it is not andcannot be proven that the total amount o dierence and changein the world is either growing or diminishing. I we look at the so-cial world, the only one known to usrom the inside, we see agents,men, much more dierentiated and more sharply characterized as

individuals, and richer in continual variations, than are the mech-anisms o government or the systems o laws or o belies, or evendictionaries or grammars, and this dierentiation is maintainedby their competition. A historical act is simpler and clearer thanthe states o mind o any o its actors. Moreover, as the popula-tion o social groups grows and the brains o their members areenriched with new ideas and new sentiments, the unctioning otheir administrations, their codes o law and conduct, their cate-

chisms, and the very structure o their languages become simplerand more regular, rather as scientic theories become simpler asthey are lled with more numerous and diverse acts. Our rail-way stations are constructed to a simpler and more standardizedorm than the castles o the Middle Ages, even though the ormerdraw on a much more diverse range o resources and skills. At thesame time we see that, i the progress o civilization in certain re-spects diversies individual human beings, it does so only on con-

dition o levelling them in other respects by the growing unior-mity o their laws, their habits, their customs, and their languages.In general, the similarity o these collective actors encourages theintellectual and moral dissimilarity o individuals, and extends

39. [Trans. Note: Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 5th ed., London, Williams &Norgate, 1887, ch. 13, pp. 401-430.]


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their sphere o action; and besides, i in the course o the civi-lizing movement, institutions, customs, clothing, industrial prod-ucts and so on, dier much less between one point and anotherin a

given territory, they dier much morerom one moment to anotherin a given span o time.

As or the ormula othe instability o the homogenous, it pre-supposes that the more homogenous something is, the more un-stable its internal equilibrium, to the extent that i it were absolute-ly homogenous, it would be unable to subsist rom one momentto the next. However, it is remarkable that space is the only typeo absolute homogeneity known to us, i its reality be admitted, as

Spencer does. How can it be, i this law holds, that this perectly ho-mogenous system o points and volumes has subsisted unalterablysince the beginning o time? To be sure, this argument no longerholds i the reality o space be denied, but regardless, this putativelaw is contradicted by a thousand examples o relative homogene-ity arising rom heterogeneity, the most striking o which are ur-nished by the observation o either human or animal societies.The aggregation o polyps, animals which are oten very compli-

cated, orms a colony or polypary, an extremely rudimentary ormo aquatic vegetable. The aggregation o men in tribes or nationsgives birth to a language, an inerior species o plant whose his-torical vegetation,40growth andfourishing, to use their own expres-sions, are studied by philosophers.

This, to repeat, is why the inusion o a sociological spirit intothe sciences would be eminently conducive to curing them o thisprejudice against which I have taken arms. It would then be clear

how we should understand this great and beautiul principle odierentiation, which Spencer extended so successully without,however, being able to reconcile it, as I believe we must, with theno less certain principle o universal co-ordination. The primor-dial nebula41 appears to us shrouded in the mists o time, and itis perhaps due only to this distance that it displays to us the ho-mogeneity which orms the point o departure or all cosmogonictheories. Do we have the least knowledge o what antecedent di-

versities were sacriced by the condensation o the elements intosimilar atoms, o the atoms into molecules and celestial spheres,

40. [Trans. Note: The use o the term vegetation (vgtation) to mean growthor development in general is less common now than in Tardes time in bothEnglish and French.]

41. [Trans. Note: The cloud rom which the solar system coalesced.]


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through the microscope, and rom then on, as Perrier says, thesoul o everything he did was the belie in the equal complexity oall animals, rom inusoria to man. Since solids and liquids are

more accessible to our senses than are gases, and the latter moreaccessible than is ethereal nature, we think that solids or liquidsare more dierent rom each other than are gases, and in physicswe speak oetherand not oethers (although Laplace uses this plu-ral) as we would speak only ogas and not ogases, i the latter wereknown to us only by their physical eectswhich are remarkablysimilarto the exclusion o their chemical properties. When wa-ter vapour crystallizes into a thousand dierent needles or simply

liquees into owing water, does this condensation really, as weare inclined to think, entail an increase in the dierences inherentin the water molecules? No; let us not orget the reedom whichthe latter ormerly enjoyed in the state o gaseous dispersion, theirmovement in every direction, their impacts, and their innitelyvaried distances. Is it then that the dierences have decreased?Again, no: all that has happened is that one kind o dierence hasbeen substituted or another, that is, internal dierences or mu-

tually external ones.To exist is to dier; dierence is, in a sense, the truly sub-

stantial side o things; it is at once their ownmost possession andthat which they hold most in common. This must be our startingpoint, and we must rerain rom urther explaining this princi-ple, since all things come back to itincluding identity, which ismore usually, but mistakenly, taken as the point o departure. Foridentity is only the minimal degree o dierence and hence a kind

o dierence, and an innitely rare kind, as rest is only a specialcase o movement, and the circle only a particular variety o el-lipse. To begin rom the primordial identity is to posit at the ori-gin o things a prodigiously improbable singularity, an impossiblecoincidence o multiple beings, at once distinct rom and similarto one another; or else the inexplicable mystery o a single simplebeing, which would subsequently, or no comprehensible reason,suer division. It is to commit a similar error to that o the ancient

astronomers who, in their chimerical explanations o the solar sys-tem, began with the circle and not with the ellipse, on the basisthat the ormer is more perect. Dierence is the alpha and omegao the universe; everything begins with dierence, with the ele-ments whose innate diversity (which various reasons make prob-able) can in my view be the only justication o their multiplicity;


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shrewdness and cunning, evolves to produce the uniorm and reg-ulated course o our great modern markets, provided with theirspecial thermometers known as stock exchanges; and in the end,

ar rom crushing individual skill beneath the authority o num-ber, the regularity and almost physical inevitability o the over-all economic acts support the unbridled impulse to speculationand the spirit o enterprise which take hold o these acts and playupon them, and in which the least psychological particularities othe players break orth lawlessly in sudden triumphs or catastro-phes. The incoherence and administrative quirks o a nation in itsembryonic state are gradually replaced by unity, stable administra-

tion and centralized power, all to the greater glory o statesmen,who are the operators o this machine and make use o it to ac-complish their historic deeds, each one sui generis like its author, amarvellous accident o planetary orces. Finally, the indisciplinedhordes o barbarian societies are superseded by our ne mecha-nized armies, in which the individual is nothing but a tool in thehands o a great captain who throws him into some battle dissimi-lar to every other, with its own name and date, reproducing on the

vastly enlarged scale o the battleeld the particular psychologicalstate which is his during the action.

It can thus be seen rom these examples that, strangelyenough, order and simplicity are maniest in the composite eventhough oreign to its elements, and then once more disappear inthe higher composites, and so on up the scale. But in the caseo social evolutions and social aggregations, o which we orm apart and where we have the advantage o being able to grasp at the

same time the two ends o the chain, the lowest and the higheststones o the edice, we can clearly see that order and simplicityare simply mediating terms, alembics in which elementary diver-sity is potently transgured and, as it were, sublimated. The poetand the philosopher essentially, and secondarily the inventor, theartist, the speculator, the politician, and the tactician: these arethe terminal owers o any national tree;46 their blossoming de-pends upon the work o all the aborted germs o innate, extra-

social (or in some cases anti-social) characteristics, which every

46. I do not at all mean to place all o these on the same level. Among otherdierences, one may harbour hopes or dreams o a lie o perected civilization,when everyone would have his own poetry and his own philosophy, but one can-not imagine a lie where everyone had his own great discovery, his own grandprize in the lottery, or his own political or military role.


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The doubts which might have persisted on this point ater Laplacewere dispelled by Le Verrier.51 Every living species wants to perpet-uate itsel endlessly; something in it struggles to maintain its ex-

istence against everything which endeavours to dissolve it. In thisrespect it is like a government, or like the most precarious min-istry whose essential role is always to proclaim, believe and wishthat it is installed in power or all eternity. There is no long-extinctplant or animal species, now extant only as a ossil, which did notonce embody a legislative assurance, an apparently well-oundedcertainty o living as long as the Earth. All these things which havepassed away were once called to endless lie, supported by physi-

cal, chemical, and vital laws, as our despots and our ministers bytheir code o laws and by their army. Our solar system too willdoubtless perish, like so many others whose wreckage is visiblein the skies; and indeed, who knows i the molecular orms them-selves will not disappear, having come into existence in the courseo the ages at the expense o those which preceded them?

But how can all o this have died, or how could it die? How, ithere is in the universe nothing but supposedly immutable and

all-powerul laws aiming at stable equilibria, and a supposedly im-mutable substance to which these laws apply, how could the actiono these laws on this substance produce this magnicent ourish-ing o varieties which rejuvenates the universe at every moment,and this series o unexpected revolutions which transgure it?How could the least ornament creep into these austere rhythmsand enliven even a little the eternal psalmody o the world? Fromthe marriage o the monotonous and the homogenous what could

be born but tedium? I everything comes rom identity, aims atidentity and returns to identity, what is the source o this dazzlingtorrent o variety? We may be certain that the undamental natureo things is not as poor, as drab, or as colourless as has been sup-posed. Forms are only brakes and laws are only dykes erected invain against the overowing o revolutionary dierences and civ-il dissensions, in which the laws and orms o tomorrow secretlytake shape, and which, in spite o the yokes upon yokes they bear,

in spite o chemical and vital discipline, in spite o reason, in spite

51. [Trans. Note: Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827, mathematician and astrono-mer) was instrumental in developing a mechanical theory o the stability o thesolar system. Urbain Le Verriers (1811-1877) prediction o the planet Neptune(1846) and its subsequent discovery by observation provided urther conrma-tion o Laplaces model.]


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non-chemical? I this is judged improbable, or rather impossible,we must admit that an originary atomic orm transmitted throughvibration, starting rom a pointthat o hydrogen, or example

imposed itsel throughout the whole or almost the whole o ma-terial extension, and that, by breaking away in succession romthe primordial hydrogen, at long intervals o time, all the otherso-called simple bodieswhose atomic weights, as we know, areoten exact multiples o that o hydrogenwere ormed. But howcan we explain such ssion on the hypothesis that the primitive el-ements are perectly homogenous and governed by the same law,which, it seems to me, should rather consolidate by the identity o

their structure the identity and immutability o their nature? Willit perhaps be argued that the accidents o astronomical evolutioninvolving the primitive elements could have produced or catalysedchemical ormations? Unortunately this hypothesis seems to meto have been very clearly ruled out by the discovery o the spectro-scope. Since, according to this instrument, all the so-called simplebodies or many o them enter into the composition o the most dis-tant planets and stars, which have evolved independently o each

other, common sense tells us that the simple bodies were ormedbeore the stars, as cloth beore clothes. It ollows that the piece-meal dismembering o the primitive substance admits o only oneexplanation: namely, that the particles were originally dissimi-lar, and that their schisms were caused by this essential dissim-ilarity. There is thus some reason to think that hydrogen, or ex-ample, as it exists today ater so many successive eliminations oremigrations, is noticeably dierent rom the ur-hydrogen, which

would have been a pell-mell o discordant atoms. The same obser-vation applies to all the simple bodies which were subsequentlyengendered. In being thus exhausted and reduced, each was con-solidated in its equilibrium, and ortied by its very losses. But, iso, it is highly improbable, despite the extraordinary stability thusacquired by the oldest atomic or molecular orms, that completesimilarity obtains among the elements which subsist in each. Itwould have suced, or the rening o each orm to come to an

end, i the internal dierences o its elements had diminished to apoint where it was no longer impossible or the elements to coex-ist. These innitesimal citizens o mysterious cities are so distantrom us53 that it is no wonder that the noise o their internal dis-

53. I say distant rom us, not only by the incommensurable distance betweentheir smallness and our relative immensity, and, conversely, between their relative


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wholly unwarranted importance.In this respect, the Hegeliansystem can be considered the last word in the philosophy o Being.Embarked on this path, one will have to concoct impenetrable, and

basically contradictory, concepts o becoming and disappearance,the old empty pap o Teutonic ideologues.55 By contrast, nothingcould be clearer than the concepts ogain and loss, o acquisitionand divestment, which take this place in the philosophy o Having,i we may thus name something which does not yet exist. Betweenbeing and non-being there is no middle term, whereas one canhave more or less.

Being and non-being, ego and non-ego: barren oppositions

which obscure the real correlatives. The true opposite o the ego isnot the non-ego but the mine; the true opposite o being, that is ohaving, is not non-being but what is had.

The deep and accelerating divergence between the course oscience strictly speaking and that o philosophy comes rom theact that the ormer, happily, has chosen or its guide the verbHave. For science, everything is explained byproperties, not by en-tities. Science disdains the unsatisactory relation o substance to

phenomenon, two empty terms which only are only the doubles oBeing; it makes only moderate use o the relation o cause to e-ect, in which possession appears in only one o its two orms, andthe less important, namely possession by desire. But science hasmade considerable use and, unortunately, abuse o the relation oproprietor56 toproperty. The abuse has consisted primarily in hav-ing misunderstood this relation by ailing to see that the real prop-erty o any proprietor is a set o other proprietors; that each mass,

each molecule o the solar system, or example, has or its physicaland mechanical property not words like extension, mobility andso on, but all the other masses, all the other molecules; that eachatom o a molecule has or its chemical property, not atomicities or

55. [Trans. Note: In Hegels logic, the disappearance (Verschwinden) o beinginto non-being and vice versa generates becoming (Werden) (Science o Logic, vol1, book 1, sec 1, ch 1.C.1, Unity o Being and Nothing).]

56. [Trans. Note: Tardes concept o property (proprit) is deliberately ambig-

uous between the sense o goods owned and the sense o characteristic or qual-ity. The term proprietor (propritaire) is standard in both French and English ora person who has a property in the rst sense, but not in the second. In English-language analytic philosophy, instance is sometimes used to describe an entitywhich has a property in the second sense (which instantiates the property), butthis brings with it an implicit ontology o properties which is incompatible withTardes; I have thereore retained the term proprietor. The theory o properties isdiscussed urther in the Aterword.]


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anities, but all the other atoms o the same molecule; that eachcell o an organism has or its biological property, not irritability,contractibility, innervation, and so on, but all the other cells o the

same organism, and in particular, o the same organ. Here pos-session is reciprocal, as in every intra-socialrelation; but it can beunilateral, as in the extra-socialrelation o master to slave, or o thearmer to his cattle. For example, the retina has or its property,not vision, but the luminously vibrating ethereal atoms, which donot possess it; and the mind possesses mentally all the objects oits thought, to which it in no way belongs. Is this to say that the ab-stract terms, mobility, density, weight, anity, and so on, express

nothing and correspond to nothing? They mean, I think, that be-yond the real domain o every element, there is its conditionallynecessary domain, that is certain although unreal, and that the an-cient distinction between the real and the possible, in a new sense,is not a chimera.

The elements are, certainly, agents as much as they are pro-prietors; but they can be proprietors without being agents, andthey cannot be agents without being proprietors. Moreover, their

action can be revealed to us only as a change in the nature otheir possession.

On closer investigation, it will be seen that the sole cause othe superiority o the scientic point o view over the philosoph-ical point o view is the ortunate choice o undamental rela-tion adopted by scientists, and that all the remaining obscuritiesand weaknesses o science spring rom the incomplete analysiso this relation.

For thousands o years, thinkers have catalogued the dierentways o being and the dierent degrees o being, and have neverthought to classiy the dierent types and degrees o possession.Possession is, nonetheless, the universal act, and there is no bet-ter term than acquisition to express the ormation and growth oany being. The terms correspondence and adaptation,57 broughtinto ashion by Darwin and Spencer, are more vague and equivo-cal, and grasp the universal act only rom the outside. Is it true

that the birds wing is adapted to air, the shs n to water, the eyeto light? No, no more than the locomotive is adapted to coal, or the

57. [Trans. Note: Adaptation reers to Darwins concept o the process throughwhich a population becomes better suited to its environment through natural se-lection. Herbert Spencer developed Darwins idea by seeing adaptation as a pro-cess o increasing correspondence between the organism and its environment.]


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I look at, listen to, or study nature, rocks, water, or even plants,each object o my thought is a hermetically closed world o ele-ments, which all doubtless know each other or grasp each other

intimately, like the members o a social group, but which can beencompassed by me only as a whole and rom the outside. Thechemist can only hypothesize the atom, and is certain o neverbeing able to act on it individually. Matter, as the chemist under-stands and uses the concept, is a compact dust o distinct atoms,whose distinctions are eaced by their enormous number and bythe illusory continuity o their actions. In the living but inanimate,or apparently inanimate, world, can our monad nd some less con-

used phantom, and grasp it? It seems it can. The element, already,intuits the element; the girl who tends a ower loves it with a devo-tion which no diamond could inspire in her.

We must, however, look to the social world to see monads laidbare, grasping each other in the intimacy o their transitory char-acters, each ully unolded beore the other, in the other, by theother. This is the relationpar excellence, the paradigm o posses-sion o which all others are only sketches or reections. By per-

suasion, by love and hate, by personal prestige, by common beliesand desires, or by the mutual chain o contract, in a kind o tightlyknit network which extends indenitely, social elements hold eachother or pull each other in a thousand ways, and rom their com-petition the marvels o civilization are born.

Are not the marvels o organization and lie born rom a simi-lar action, rom vital element to vital element, and doubtless romatom to atom? I am inclined to think so, or reasons which it would

take too long to explain here. Must it not be likewise or chemicalcreations and or astronomical ormations? Newtonian attractionsurely acts rom one atom to another, since the most complicatedchemical operations do not alter it at all.

In that case, the possessive action o monad upon monad, oelement upon element, would be the only truly ertile relation.As or the action o a monad, or at least o an element, on a con-used group o indiscriminate monads or elements, or conversely,

it would only be an accidental perturbation o the wonderul workswrought by the elements duel or by their marriage. As much asthe relation o element to element is creative, so the relation o ele-ment to group is destructive, but both are necessary.

Unilateral possession and reciprocal possession are, likewise,necessarily united. But the latter is superior to the ormer. It is


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But when I speak o conquest and ambition with respect tocellular societies, it is rather o propaganda and devotion that Ishould speak. This is all metaphorical, o course, but nonetheless

one should choose ones terminology and points o comparisonwisely; and moreover I would ask the reader not to orget that, ibelie and desire, in the pure and abstract sense in which I under-stand these two great orces, the only two quantities o the soul,have the universality which I ascribe to them, it is barely meta-phorical to use the term idea or the application obelie-orce tointernal qualitative indicators (which, however, bear no relation toour sensations and images)the term intention or the applica-

tion odesire-orce to one o these quasi-ideasthe term propagan-da or the communication rom element to element, not o coursea verbal communication but o unknown specic character, o thequasi-intention ormed by an originating element,the term con-version or the internal transormation o an element into whichthere enters, in place o its own quasi-intention, that o another,and so on. Bearing these remarks in mind, let us proceed.

When an empire wishes to extend its power, it sends, to a sin-

gle point on the globe and not a large number o points at once,not a single man but an enormous army which, once this point isconquered, directs elsewh

monadology and sociology 2012 tarde

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