ABSTRACT
On the basis of the first observations, Vilfredo Pareto raises the question whether the residues, which are themselves an expression of sentiments, are in turn determined by external causes of a material nature. At a certain period in his life, Pareto was influenced by what is called social Darwinism, that is, the application to human societies of some of Darwin's ideas, such as the struggle for survival and natural selection. And he was inclined to explain struggles between classes and societies in terms of the struggle for survival. Let us not forget that residues and derivations are words arbitrarily chosen to designate phenomena which we arrive at by an inductive analysis. It is by beginning with concrete data, i.e., human behavior, and by repeated analysis, as it were, that one obtains the expressions of emotions which are the residues and the pseudo-rational formalizations which are the derivations.
