Review of Social Laws: An Outline of Sociology by

As the editor of the volume remarks, M. Tarde has here summarized his theoretical work and shown it to constitute a system. In this reduction of the system to its outlines its great ingenuity is [563] impressed upon the reader much more forcibly than by the detailed presentation contained in M. Tarde’s larger works. At the same time the essential artificiality of the doctrines likewise comes out in plainer relief, proceeding as they do, for the most part, and particularly as regards their general features, on a bold and dexterous use of metaphor and analogy. It seems not improbable that, as a result of the conciseness, not to say boldness, with which the ingenious artifices of the theory are here brought out, the volume may contribute materially to curtail the vogue of M. Tarde’s sociological doctrines. The essential superficiality of the formulations offered is shown, e.g., in

such generalizations as this: “Habit is merely a sort of internal heredity, just as heredity is only externalized habit. Heredity, then, is the form of repetition appropriate to life, just as undulation, or periodic movement, is its physical, and imitation its social form” (p. 22). Again: “Every real opposition implies a relation between two forces, tendencies, or directions” (p. 88). Under this elastic, not to say ambiguous term, “opposition,” are comprised such diverse phenomena as mechanical action and reaction, arithmetical positive and negative, variations of degree, war, industrial competition, discussion, hesitation. It is plainly by a felicitous use of analogy alone that the comprehensive term “opposition” can be made to serve in the discussion of matters so disparate as these. All this is of a character to suggest the moralizing speculations of the eighteenth century and prepares one to meet the metaphysical conception of a spiritually guided progress, expressed in the conclusion that, “It would appear … that the strife of opposition fulfills the role of a middle term in the social as it does in the organic and inorganic worlds” (p. 133).