Durkheim on How to Explain Society

  Emile Durkheim's 1895 Rules of the Sociological Method sets forth some of the most pervasive ideas of 20th century social science, and no section of the book more so than this 5th chapter.  Most importantly, here he distinguishes explanation by cause and by function; and he presents a strong critique of the reductionist explanation of social forms by individual psychology and/or intention. The latter arguments, of course, put him in opposition to most of the social contract and rationality theorists of the Liberal tradition, including Hobbes, Locke, Comte, Spencer, Tylor, and Adam Smith (as well as late 20th century reductionisms like sociobiology). He always worked from a social evolutionist model, and he nearly always used positivist vocabulary (including the organismic analogy), but the value of his work transcends both. As usual, I've excluded most footnotes (the major ones are to his own 1893 Division of Labour in Society), but I've included several substantive statements which appear as footnotes. This translation (by Sarah A. Solovay & John H. Mueller) was published in 1938 by the Free Press of Glencoe. I've left it untouched except for the final footnote, which was translated confusingly.
RULES FOR THE EXPLANATION OF SOCIAL FACTS

The establishment of species [i.e., types of society] is, above all, a means of grouping facts in order to facilitate their interpretation. But social morphology is only an introduction to the truly explanatory part of the science. What is the proper method of this part?

I
    Most sociologists think they have accounted for phenomena once they have shown how they are useful, what role they play, reasoning as if facts existed only from the point of view of this role and with no other determining cause than the sentiment, clear or confused, of the services they are called to render. That is why they think they have said all that is necessary, to render them intelligible, when they have established the reality of these services and have shown what social needs they satisfy.
    Thus Comte traces the entire progressive force of the human species to this fundamental tendency "which directly impels man constantly to ameliorate his condition, whatever it may be, under all circumstances"; and Spencer relates this force to the need for greater happiness. It is in accordance with this principle that Spencer explains the formation of society by the alleged advantages which result from co-operation; the institution of government, by the utility of the regularization of military co-operation ; the transforma-
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tions through which the family has passed, by the need for reconciling more and more perfectly the interests of parents, children, and society.
    But this method confuses two very different questions. To show how a fact is useful is not to explain how it originated or why it is what it is. The uses which it serves presuppose the specific properties characterizing it but do not create them. The need we have of things cannot give them existence, nor can it confer their specific nature upon them. It is to causes of another sort that they owe their existence. The idea we have of their utility may indeed motivate us to put these forces to work and to elicit from them their characteristic effects, but it will not enable us to produce these effects out of nothing. This proposition is evident so long as it is a question only of material, or even psychological, phenomena. It would be equally evident in sociology if social facts, because of their extreme intangibility, did not wrongly appear to us as without all intrinsic reality. Since we usually see them as a product purely of mental effort, it seems to us that they may be produced at will whenever we find it necessary. But since each one of them is a force, superior to that of the individual, and since it has a separate existence, it is not true that merely by willing to do so may one call them into being. No force can be engendered except by an antecedent force. To revive the spirit of the family, where it has become weakened, it is not enough that everyone understand its advantages; the causes which alone can engender it must be made to act directly. To give a government the authority necessary for it, it is not enough to feel the need for this authority; we must have recourse to the only sources from which all authority is derived. We must, namely, establish traditions, a common
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spirit, etc.; and for this it is necessary again to go back along the chain of causes and effects until we find a point where the action of man may be effectively brought to bear.
    What shows plainly the dualism of these two orders of research is that a fact can exist without being at all useful, either because it has never been adjusted to any vital end or because, after having been useful, it has lost all utility while continuing to exist by the inertia of habit alone. There are, indeed, more survivals in society than in biological organisms. There are even cases where a practice or a social institution changes its function without thereby changing its nature. The rule, Is paler quem justae nuptiae dectarant [legal marriage with the mother establishes the father's rights over the children], has remained in our code essentially the same as it was in the old Roman law. While its purpose then was to safeguard the property rights of a father over children born to the legitimate wife, it is rather the rights of children that it protects today. The custom of taking an oath began by being a sort of judiciary test and has become today simply a solemn and imposing formality. The religious dogmas of Christianity have not changed for centuries, but the role which they play is not the same in our modern societies as in the Middle Ages. Thus, the same words may serve to express new ideas. It is, moreover, a proposition true in sociology, as in biology, that the organ is independent of the function -in other words, while remaining the same, it can serve different ends. The causes of its existence are, then, independent of the ends it serves.
    Nevertheless, we do not mean to say that the impulses, needs, and desires of men never intervene actively in social evolution. On the contrary, it is certain that they can hasten or retard its development, according to the circumstances
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which determine the social phenomena. Apart from the fact that they cannot, in any case, make something out of nothing, their actual intervention, whatever may be its effects, can take place only by means of efficient causes. A deliberate intention can contribute, even in this limited way, to the production of a new phenomenon only if it has itself been newly formed or if it is itself a result of some transformation of a previous intention. For, unless we postulate a truly providential and reestablished harmony, we cannot admit that man has carried with him from the beginning -potentially ready to be awakened at the call of circumstances - all the intentions which conditions were destined to demand in the course of human evolution. It must further be recognized that a deliberate intention is itself something objectively real; it can, then, neither be created nor modified by the mere fact that we judge it useful. It is a force having a nature of its own; for that nature to be given existence or altered, it is not enough that we should find this advantageous. In order to bring about such changes, there must be a sufficient cause.
    For example, we have explained the constant development of the division of labor by showing that it is necessary m order that man may maintain himself in the new conditions of existence as he advances in history. We have attributed to this tendency, which is rather improperly named the "instinct of self-preservation," an important role in our explanations. But, in the first place, this instinct alone could not account for even the most rudimentary specialization. It can do nothing if the conditions on which the division of labor depends do not already exist, i.e., if individual differences have not increased sufficiently as a consequence of the progressive disintegration of the common consciousness and
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of hereditary influences. It was even necessary that division of labor should have already begun to exist for its usefulness to be seen and for the need of it to make itself felt. The very development of individual differences, necessarily accompanied by a greater diversity of tastes and aptitudes, produced this first result. Further, the instinct of self-preservation did not, of itself and without cause, come to fertilize this first germ of specialization. We were started in this new direction, first, because the course we previously followed was now barred and because the greater intensity of the struggle, owing to the more extensive consolidation of societies, made more and more difficult the survival of individuals who continued to devote themselves to unspecialized tasks. For such reasons it became necessary for us to change our mode of living. Moreover, if our activity has been turned toward a constantly more developed division of labor, it is because this was also the direction of least resistance. The other possible solutions were emigration, suicide, and crime. Now, in the average case, the ties attaching us to life and country and the sympathy we have for our fellows are sentiments stronger and more resistant than the habits which could deflect us from narrower specialization. These habits, then, had inevitably to yield to each impulse that arose. Thus the fact that we allow a place for human needs in sociological explanations does not mean that we even partially revert to teleology. These needs can influence social evolution only on condition that they themselves, and the changes they undergo, can be explained solely by causes that are deterministic and not at all purposive.
    But what is even more convincing than the preceding con-
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side rations is a study of actual social behavior. Where purpose reigns, there reigns also a more or less wide contingency; for there are no ends, and even fewer means, which necessarily control all men, even when it is assumed that they are placed in the same circumstances. Given the same environment, each individual adapts himself to it according to his own disposition and in his own way, which he prefers to all other ways. One person will seek to change it and make it conform to his needs; another will prefer to change himself and moderate his desires. To arrive at the same goal, many different ways can be and actually are followed. If, then, it were true that historic development took place in terms of ends dearly or obscurely felt, social facts should present the most infinite diversity; and all comparison should be almost impossible.
    To be sure, the external events which constitute the superficial part of social life vary from one people to another, just as each individual has his own history, although the bases of physical and moral organization are the same for all. But when one comes in contact with social phenomena, one is, on the contrary, surprised by the astonishing regularity with which they occur under the same circumstances. Even the most minute and the most trivial practices recur with the most astonishing uniformity. A certain nuptial ceremony, purely symbolical in appearance, such as the carrying-off of the betrothed, is found to be exactly the same wherever a certain family type exists; and again this family type itself is linked to a whole social organization. The most bizarre customs, such as the couvade, the levirate, exogamy, etc., are observed among the most diverse peoples and are symptomatic of a certain social state. The right to make one's
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will appears at a certain phase of history, and the more or less important restrictions limiting it offer a fairly exact clue to the particular stage of social evolution. It would be easy to multiply examples. This wide diffusion of collective forms would be inexplicable if purpose or final causes had the predominant place in sociology that is attributed to them.
    When, then, the explanation of a social phenomenon is undertaken, we must seek separately the efficient cause which produces it and the function it fulfils. We use the word "function," in preference to "end" or "purpose," precisely because social phenomena do not generally exist for the useful results they produce. We must determine whether there is a correspondence between the fact under consideration and the general needs of the social organism, and in what this correspondence consists, without occupying ourselves with whether it has been intentional or not. All these questions of intention are too subjective to allow of scientific treatment.
    Not only must these two types of problems be separated, but it is proper, in general, to treat the former before the latter: This sequence, indeed, corresponds to that of experience. It is natural to seek the causes of a phenomenon before trying to determine its effects. This method is all the more logical since the first question, once answered, will often help to answer the second. Indeed, the bond which unites the cause to the effect is reciprocal to an extent which has not been sufficiently recognized. The effect can doubtless not exist without its cause; but the latter, in turn, needs its effect. It is from the cause that the effect draws its energy; but it also restores it to the cause on occasion. and
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consequently it cannot disappear without the cause showing the effects of its disappearance.
    For example, the social reaction that we call "punishment" is due to the intensity of the collective sentiments which the crime offends; but, from another angle, it has the useful function of maintaining these sentiments at the same degree of intensity, for they would soon diminish if offenses against them were not punished. Similarly, in proportion as the social milieu becomes more complex and more unstable, traditions and conventional beliefs are shaken, become more indeterminate and more unsteady, and reflective powers are developed. Such rationality is indispensable to societies and individuals in adapting themselves to a more mobile and more complex environment. And again, in proportion as men are obliged to furnish more highly specialized work, the products of this work are multiplied and are of better quality; but this increase in products and improvement in quality are necessary to compensate for the expense which this more considerable work entails. Thus, instead of the cause of social phenomena consisting of a mental anticipation of the function they are called to fill, this function, on the contrary, at least in a number of cases, serves to maintain the pre-existent cause from which they are derived. We shall, then, find the function more easily if the cause is already known.
    If the determination of function is thus to be delayed, it
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is still no less necessary for the complete explanation of the phenomena. Indeed, if the usefulness of a fact is not the cause of its existence, it is generally necessary that it be useful in order that it may maintain itself. For the fact that it is not useful suffices to make it harmful, since in that case it costs effort without bringing in any returns. If, then, the majority of social phenomena had this parasitic character, the budget of the organism would have a deficit and social life would be impossible. Consequently, to have a satisfactory understanding of the latter, it is necessary to show how the phenomena comprising it combine in such a way as to put society in harmony with itself and with the environment external to it. No doubt, the current formula, which defines social life as a correspondence between the internal and the external milieu, is only an approximation; however, it is in general true. Consequently, to explain a social fact it is not enough to show the cause on which it depends; we must also, at least in most cases, show its function in the establishment of social order.
II
    Having distinguished between these two approaches, we must determine the method by which they may be developed. At the same time that it is teleological, the method of explanation generally followed by sociologists is essentially psychological. These two tendencies are interconnected with one another. In fact, if society is only a system of means instituted by men to attain certain ends, these ends can only be individual, for only individuals could have existed before society. From the individual, then, have emanated the needs and desires determining the formation of societies; and if it is from him that all comes, it is neces-
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sarily by him that all must be explained. Moreover, there are in societies only individual consciousnesses; in these, then, is found the source of all social evolution.
    Hence, sociological laws can be only a corollary of the more general laws of psychology; the ultimate explanation of collective life will consist in showing how it emanates from human nature in general, whether the collective life be deduced from human nature directly and without previous observation or whether it must be related to human nature after the latter has been analyzed.
    These terms are almost literally those used by Auguste Comte to characterize his method. "Since," says he, "the social phenomenon, conceived in its totality, is fundamentally only a simple development of humanity, without the creation of any special faculties whatsoever, as I have established above, all the effective dispositions that sociological investigation will successively discover will therefore be found at least in the germ in this primordial type which biology has constructed in advance for sociology." According to him, the predominant fact in social life is progress; and moreover, progress depends on an exclusively psychological factor, namely, the tendency which impels man to perfect his nature more and more. Social facts would then be derived so directly from human nature that during the first phases of history they might be directly deduced from it without the necessity of having recourse to the observation of society. It is true that, as Comte confesses, it is impossible to apply this deductive method to the more advanced periods of evolution. But this impossibility is purely a practical one. It is due to the fact that the distance between the point of departure and the point of arrival becomes so consider-
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able that the human mind risks going astray, if it undertakes to traverse it without a guide. But the relation between the fundamental laws of human nature and the ultimate products of social progress does not cease to be intimate. The most complex forms of civilization are only a development of the psychological life of the individual. Thus, while the theories of psychology are insufficient as premises for sociological reasoning, they are the touchstone which alone can test the validity of propositions inductively established. "A law of social succession," says Comte, "even when indicated with all possible authority by the historical method, ought to be finally admitted only after having been rationally related to the positive theory of human nature, either in a direct or indirect way." Psychology, then, will always have the last word.
    Such is likewise the method followed by Spencer. Indeed, according to him, the two primary factors of social phenomena are the external environment and the physical and social constitution of the individual. Now, the former can influence society only through the latter, which thus becomes the essential force of social evolution. If society is formed, it is in order to permit the individual to express his nature; and all the transformations through which this nature has passed have no other object than to make this expression easier and more complete. It is by reason of this principle that, before proceeding to his research in social organization, Spencer thought it necessary to devote almost the entire first volume of his Principles of Sociology to the study of the physical, emotional, and intellectual aspects of primitive man. "The science of sociology," he says, "sets out
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with social units, conditioned as we have seen, constituted physically, emotionally, and intellectually, and possessed of certain early acquired notions and correlative feelings." And it is in two of these feelings -fear of the living and fear of the dead- that he finds the origin of political and religious government. He admits, it is true, that once it is formed society reacts on individuals. But it does not follow that society itself has the power of directly engendering the smallest social fact; from this point of view it exerts an effect only by the intermediation of the changes it effects in the individual. It is, then, always in human nature, whether original or acquired, that everything is based. Moreover, this action that the social body exercises on its members cannot be at all specific, since political ends have no separate existence but are simply a summary statement of human needs. It can then be only a duplication of private activity. In industrial societies, particularly, we are unable to see where social influence has a place, since the object of these societies is, precisely, to liberate the individual and his natural impulses by ridding him of all social constraint.
    This principle is not only at the basis of these great doctrines of general sociology, but it likewise fathers an equally large number of specific theories. Thus, domestic organization is commonly explained by the sentiment parents have for their children, and children for their parents; the institution of marriage, by the advantages it presents
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for the married pair and their progeny; punishment, by the anger which every grave attack upon his interests causes in the individual. An economic life, as economists of the orthodox school especially conceive and explain it, is definitely dependent upon a purely individual factor, the desire for wealth. In morality, the duty of the individual toward himself is made the basis of all ethics. As for religion, it becomes a product of the impressions which the great forces of nature or of certain eminent personalities awaken in man,
    But, if such a method is applied to social phenomena, it changes fundamentally their nature. To prove this, let us recall the definition we have given. Since their essential characteristic is their power of exerting pressure on individual consciousnesses, it follows that they are not derived from the latter and, consequently, that sociology is not a corollary of individual psychology. For this power of constraint is evidence of the fact that social phenomena possess a different nature from ours, since they control us only by force or, at the very least, by weighing upon us more or less heavily. If social life were merely an extension of the individual being, it would not thus ascend toward its source, namely, the individual, and impetuously invade it. If the authority before which the individual bows when he acts, feels, or thinks socially governs him to this extent, it does so because it is a product of social forces which transcend him and for which he, consequently, cannot account. The external impulse to which he submits cannot come from him, nor can it be explained by what happens within him. It is true that we are not incapable of self-control; we can restrain our impulses, habits, and even instincts, and can arrest their development by an act of inhibition. But these
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inhibitory movements should not be confused with those constituting social constraint. The process of the former is centrifugal; of the latter, centripetal. The former are elaborated in the individual consciousness and then tend to externalize themselves; the latter are at first external to the individual, whom they then tend to fashion in their image from without. Inhibition is, if you like, the means by which social constraint produces its psychological effects; it is not identical with this constraint.
    When the individual has been eliminated, society alone remains. We must, then, seek the explanation of social life in the nature of society itself. It is quite evident that, since it infinitely surpasses the individual in time as well as in space, it is in a position to impose upon him ways of acting and thinking which it has consecrated with its prestige. This pressure, which is the distinctive property of social facts, is the pressure which the totality exerts on the individual.
    But, it will be said that, since the only elements making up society are individuals, the first origins of sociological phenomena cannot but be psychological. In reasoning thus, it can be established just as easily that organic phenomena may be explained by inorganic phenomena. It is very certain that there are in the living cell only molecules of crude matter. But these molecules are in contact with one another, and this association is the cause of the new phenomena which characterize life, the very germ of which cannot possibly be found in any of the separate elements. A whole is not identical with the sum of its parts. It is something different, and its properties differ from those of its component parts. Association is not, as has sometimes been believed, merely an infertile phenomenon; it is not simply the putting
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of facts and constituent properties into juxtaposition. On the contrary, it is the source of all the innovations which have been produced successively in the course of the general evolution of things. What differences are there between the lower and higher organisms, between highly organized living things and protoplasm, between the latter and the inorganic molecules of which it is composed, if not differences in types of association? All these beings, in the last analysis, resolve themselves into the same elements, but these elements are here in mere juxtaposition, there in combination, here associated in one way, there in another. One may even inquire whether this law does not apply in the mineral world and whether the differences separating inorganic bodies are not traceable to this same origin.
    By reason of this principle, society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics. Of course, nothing collective can be produced if individual consciousnesses are not assumed; but this necessary condition is by itself insufficient. These consciousnesses must be combined in a certain way; social life results from this combination and is, consequently, explained by it. Individual minds, forming groups by mingling and fusing, give birth to a being, psychological if you will, but constituting a psychic individuality of a new sort.* It is, then,
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in the nature of this collective individuality, not in that of the associated units, that we must seek the immediate and determining causes of the facts appearing therein. The group thinks, feels, and acts quite differently from the way in which its members would were they isolated. If, then, we begin with the individual, we shall be able to understand nothing of what takes place in the group. In a word, there is between psychology and sociology the same break in continuity as between biology and the physicochemical sciences. Consequently, every time that a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychological phenomenon, we may be sure that the explanation is false.

    *In this sense, and for these reasons, one can, and must, speak of a collective consciousness distinct from individual consciousnesses. In order to justify this distinction, it is not necessary to posit for the former a separate personal existence; it is something special and must be designated by a special term, simply because the states which constitute it differ specifically from those which constitute the individual consciousnesses. This specificity comes from the fact that they are not formed from the same elements. The latter result from the nature of the organicopsychological being taken in isolation, the former from the combination of a plurality of beings of this kind. The resultants cannot, then, fail to differ, since the components differ to that extent. Our definition of the social fact, moreover, only drew in another way this line of demarcation.  (footnote appears on 103-4)

    Our critics will perhaps maintain that although society, once formed, is the proximate cause of social phenomena, the causes determining its formation may still be psychological in nature. They grant that, when individuals are associated, their association can give rise to a new form of life; but they claim that the new form can take place only for reasons inherent in individuals. But, in reality, as far back as one goes in history, the principle of association is the most imperative of all, for it is the source of all other compulsions. As a consequence of my birth, I am obliged to associate with a given group. It may be said that later, as an adult, I acquiesce in this obligation by the very fact that I continue to live in my country. But what difference does that make? This "acquiescence" is still imperative. Pressure accepted and submitted to with good grace is still pressure. Moreover, let us look more closely at the nature of my acquies-
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cence. For the present, it is most certainly imposed upon me, for in the vast majority of cases it is materially and morally impossible for us to strip off our nationality; such a change is generally considered apostasy. Likewise in the past, which determines the present, I could not have given my free consent. I did not desire the education I received, which, more than any other thing, fixes me to my native soil. Finally, for the future, I cannot give my acquiescence, for I cannot know what the future is to be. I do not know all the duties which may be incumbent upon me at some future time in my capacity as a citizen. How could I acquiesce in them in advance?
    We have shown, then, that the source of all that is obligatory is outside the individual. So long, then, as we do not desert the facts, the principle of association presents the same character as the others and, consequently, is explained in the same manner.
    Moreover, as all societies are born of other societies without a break in continuity, we can be certain that in the entire course of social evolution there has not been a single time when individuals determined by careful deliberation whether or not they would enter into the collective life or into one collective life rather than another. In order for that question to arise, it would be necessary to go back to the first origins of all societies. But the questionable solutions which can be brought to such problems could not, in any case, affect the method by which we must treat the facts given in history. Therefore, we do not need to discuss them.
    But one would be strangely mistaken about our thought if, from the foregoing, he drew the conclusion that sociology, according to us, must, or even can, make an abstraction of man and his faculties. It is clear, on the contrary, that the
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general characteristics of human nature participate in the work of elaboration from which social life results. But they are not the cause of it, nor do they give it its special form; they only make it possible. Collective representations, emotions, and tendencies are caused not by certain states of the consciousnesses of individuals but by the conditions in which the social group in its totality is placed. Such actions can, of course, materialize only if the individual natures are not resistant to them; but these individual natures are merely the indeterminate material that the social factor molds and transforms. Their contribution consists exclusively in very general attitudes, in vague and consequently plastic predispositions which, by themselves, if other agents did not intervene, could not take on the definite and complex forms which characterize social phenomena.
    What an abyss, for example, between the sentiments man experiences in the face of forces superior to his own and the present religious institution with its beliefs, its numerous and complicated practices, its material and moral organization! What a contrast between the psychic states of sympathy which two beings of the same blood experience for one another, and the detailed collection of legal and moral regulations that determine the structure of the family, the relations of persons among themselves, of things with persons, etc.! We have seen that, even where society is reduced to an unorganized crowd, the collective sentiments which are formed in it may not only not resemble, but even be opposed to, the sentiments of the average individual. How much greater must be the difference between them when the pressure exerted on the individual is that of a well-organized
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society, in which the action of the traditions of former generations is added to that of contemporaries! A purely psychological explanation of social facts cannot fail, therefore, to allow all that is characteristic (i.e., social) in them to escape.
    What has blinded most sociologists to the inadequacy of this method is that, taking effect for cause, they have very often designated as determining the conditions of social phenomena certain psychological states that are relatively definite and distinctive but which are, after all, only the consequence of these social phenomena. Thus a certain religious sentiment has been considered innate in man, a certain minimum of sexual jealousy, filial piety, paternal love, etc. And it is by these that religion, marriage, and the family have been explained.
    History, however, shows that these inclinations, far from being inherent in human nature, are often totally lacking. Or they may present such variations in different societies that the residue obtained after eliminating all these differences -which alone can be considered of psychological origin- is reduced to something vague and rudimentary and far removed from the facts that need explanation. These sentiments, then, result from the collective organization and are not its basis. It has not been proved at all that the tendency to gregariousness has been an inherited instinct of the human species from its beginnings. It is much more natural to consider it a product of social life, which was slowly developed within us; for it is a fact of observation that animals are or are not gregarious according to whether their habits oblige them to live a common life or to avoid it. We must add that the difference between even the more definite tendencies and social reality remains considerable.
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    There is, moreover, a way to isolate the psychological factor almost completely in such a manner as to determine precisely the extent of its action, viz., to see how race affects social evolution. Indeed, ethnic characteristics are organicopsychological in type. Social life must, therefore, vary when they vary, if psychological phenomena have on society the effects attributed to them. But no social phenomenon is known which can be placed in indisputable dependence on race. No doubt, we cannot attribute to this proposition the value of a principle; we can merely affirm it as invariably true in practical experience.
    The most diverse forms of organization are found in societies of the same race, while striking similarities are observed between societies of different races. The city-state existed among the Phoenicians, as among the Romans and the Greeks; we find it in the process of formation among the Kabyles. The patriarchal family was almost as highly developed among the Jews as among the Hindus; but it is not found among the Slavs, who are, however, of the Aryan race. On the other hand, the family type met among Slavs also exists among the Arabs. The maternal family and the clan are observed everywhere. The detail of legal procedure and of nuptial ceremonies is the same among peoples rnost dissimilar from the ethnic point of view.
    If all these things are true, it is because the psychological factor is too general to predetermine the course of social phenomena. Since it does not call for one social form rather than another, it cannot explain any of them. There are, it is true, a certain number of facts which are customarily attributed to the influence of race. In this manner is explained, notably, the rapid and intensive development of arts and letters in Athens, so slow and mediocre in Rome.
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But this interpretation of the facts, although classical, has never been scientifically demonstrated; it seems, indeed, to derive all its authority solely from tradition. The possibility of a sociological explanation of the same phenomena has not been explored, but we are convinced that it could be attempted with success. In short, when the artistic character of Athenian civilization is related with such facility to inherited aesthetic faculties, we show as little insight as did scholars in the Middle Ages when they explained fire by phlogiston and the effects of opium by its dormitive property.
    Finally, if social evolution really had its origin in the psychological constitution of man, its origin seems to be completely obscure. For we would then have to admit that its motivating force is some inner spring of human nature. But what could this be? Is it the sort of instinct Comte speaks of, which impels man more and more to express his nature? But that is begging the question and explaining progress by an innate "tendency toward progress" -a metaphysical entity of the very existence of which there is no demonstration. Even the highest animal species are not at all activated by the need to progress, and among human societies there are many which are content to remain indefinitely stationary.
    Or is this motivating force, as Spencer seems to believe, the urge for greater happiness which the increasingly complex forms of civilization are designed to satisfy more and more completely? We would then have to establish the fact that happiness increases with civilization, and we have else- where described all the difficulties to which this hypothesis gives rise. But further, even if one or the other of these
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two postulates were admissible, historical development would not thereby be rendered intelligible, for the explanation which would result from it would be purely teleological. We have shown above that social facts, like all natural phenomena, are not explained by the simple consideration that they serve some end. When it has been proved satisfactorily that the progressively more intelligent social organizations which have succeeded one another in the course of history have had the effect of satisfying more and more certain of our fundamental desires, we have not shown at all how these social organizations have been produced. The fact that they were useful does not tell us how they originated. Even if we were to explain how we came to imagine them and how we planned them in advance so as to picture to ourselves their services to us -a somewhat difficult problem in itself- the desires which called forth their existence do not have the power of drawing them out of nothing. In a word, admitting that social organizations are the necessary means to attain a desired goal, the whole question remains: From what source and by what means have these been created?
    We arrive, therefore, at the following principle: The determining cause of a social fact should  be sought among the social facts preceding it and not among the states of the individual consciousness. Moreover, we see quite readily that all the foregoing applies to the determination of the function as well as the cause of social phenomena. The function of a social fact cannot but be social, i.e., it consists of the production of socially useful effects. To be sure, it may and does happen that it also serves the individual. But this happy result is not its immediate cause. We can then complete the preceding proposition by saying: The function of
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a social fact ought always to be sought in it relation to some social end.
    Since sociologists have often misinterpreted this rule and have considered social phenomena from a too psychological point of view, to many their theories seem too vague and shifting and too far removed from the distinctive nature of the things they are intended to explain. Historians who treat social reality directly and in detail have not failed to remark how powerless these too general interpretations are to show the relation between the facts; and their mistrust of sociology has been, no doubt, partly produced by this circumstance. We do not mean to say, of course, that the study of psychological facts is not indispensable to the sociologist. If collective life is not derived from individual life, the two are nevertheless closely related; if the latter cannot explain the former, it can at least facilitate its explanation. First, as we have shown, it is indisputable that social facts are produced by action on psychological factors. In addition, this very action is similar to that which takes place in each individual consciousness and by which are transformed the primary elements (sensations, reflexes, instincts) of which it is originally constituted. Not without reason has it been said that the self is itself a society, by the same right as the organism, although in another way; and long ago psychologists showed the great importance of the factor of association in the explanation of mental activity.
    Psychological training, more than biological training, constitutes, then, a valuable lesson for the sociologist; but it will not be useful to him except on condition that he emancipates himself from it after having received profit from its lessons, and then goes beyond it by special sociological training. He must abandon psychology as the center of his opera-
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tions, as the point of departure for his excursions into the sociological world to which they must always return. He must establish himself in the very heart of social facts, in order to observe them directly, while asking the science of the individual mind for a general preparation only and, when needed, for useful suggestions.* 

    *Psychological phenomena can have only social consequences when they are so intimately united to social phenomena that the action of the psychological and of the social phenomena is necessarily fused. This is the case with certain sociopsychological facts. Thus, a public official is a social force, but he is at the same time an individual. As a result he can turn his social energy in a direction determined by his individual nature, and thereby he can have an influence on the constitution of society. Such is the case with statesmen and, more generally, with men of genius. The latter, even when they do not fill a social function, draw from the collective sentiments of which they are the object an authority which is also a social force, and which they can put, in a certain measure, at the service of personal ideas. But we see that these cases are due to individual accidents and, consequently, cannot affect the constitutive traits of the social species which, alone, is the object of science. The restriction on the principle enunciated above is not, then, of great importance for the sociologist.
III
    Since the facts of social morphology are of the same nature as physiological phenomena, they must be explained by the principle just enunciated. All the preceding argument points to the fact that they play a preponderant role in collective life, and hence in sociological explanations.
    In fact, if the determining condition of social phenomena is, as we have shown, the very fact of association, the phenomena ought to vary with the forms of that association, i.e., according to the ways in which the constituent parts of society are grouped. Since, moreover, a given aggregate, formed by the union of elements of all kinds which enter into the composition of a society, constitutes its internal en-
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vironment (just as the aggregate of anatomic elements, together with the way in which they are disposed in space constitutes the internal milieu of organisms), we can The first origins of all social processes of any importance should be sought in the internal constitution of the social group.
    It is possible to be even more precise. The elements which  make up this milieu are of two kinds: things and persons. Besides material objects incorporated into the society, there must also be included the products of previous social activity: law, established customs, literary and artistic works, etc. But it is clear that the impulsion which determines social transformations can come from neither the material nor the immaterial, for neither possesses a motivating power. There is, assuredly, occasion to take them into consideration in the explanations one attempts. They bear with a certain weight on social evolution, whose speed and even direction vary according to the nature of these elements; but they contain nothing of what is required to put it in motion. They are the matter upon which the social forces of society act, but by themselves they release no social energy. As an active factor, then, the human milieu itself remains.
    The principal task of the sociologist ought to be, therefore, to discover the different aspects of this milieu which exert some influence on the course of social phenomena. Until the present, we have found two series of facts which have eminently fulfilled this condition; these are: (I) the number of social units or, as we have also called it, the "size of a society"; and (2) the degree of concentration of the group, or what we have termed the "dynamic density." By this last expression must not be understood the purely physical concentration of the aggregate, which can have no effect if the individuals, or rather the groups of individuals, re-
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main separated by social distance. By it is understood the social concentration, of which the size is only the auxiliary and, generally speaking, the consequence. The dynamic density may be defined, the volume being equal, as the function of the number of individuals who are actually having not only commercial but also social relations, i.e., who not only exchange services or compete with one another but also live a common life. For, as purely economic relations leave men estranged from one another, there may be continuous relations of that sort without participation in the same collective existence. Business carried on across the frontiers which separate peoples does not abolish these frontiers.
    Social life can be affected only by the number of those who participate effectively in it. That is why the dynamic density of a people is best expressed by the degree of fusion of the social segments. For, if each partial aggregate forms a whole, i.e., a distinct individuality separated by barriers from the others, the action of the members, in general, remains localized within it. If, on the contrary, these partial societies are, or tend to be, all intermingled within the total society, to that extent is the radius of social life extended.
    As for physical density -if is understood thereby not only the number of inhabitants per unit area but the development of lines of communication and transmission- it progresses, ordinarily,at the same rate as the dynamic density and, in general, can serve to measure it. If the different parts of the population tend to draw closer together, it is inevitable that they will build roads which permit it. From another angle, relations can be established between distant points in the social mass only if distance is not an obstacle,
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i.e., if it is bridged. However, there are exceptions, and we would lay ourselves open to a serious error if we always judged the social concentration of a society by the degree of its physical concentration. Roads, railroads, etc., can serve for commerce better than for the fusion of populations, of which they are only a very imperfect index. Such is the case in England, whose physical density is greater than that of France, but where the coalescence of social areas is much less advanced, as is proved by the persistence of local spirit and regional life.
    We have shown elsewhere how all growth in the volume and dynamic density of societies modifies profoundly the fundamental conditions of collective existence by rendering social life more intense, by extending the horizon of thought and action of each individual. We need not return to the application we then made of this principle. Let us add only that it has helped us to treat not only the still very general question that was the object of this study but many other more special problems, and that we have thus been able to verify its correctness by a considerable number of experiments. Nevertheless, we are far from claiming that we have found all the peculiarities of the social medium which may contribute to the explanation of social facts. All that we can say is that these are the only ones we have observed and that we have not been led to seek others.
    But the significance attributed by us to the social and, more particularly, the human milieu does not imply that
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we must see in it a sort of ultimate and absolute fact beyond which there is no reason for inquiry. It is evident, on the contrary, that its condition at each moment of history is itself a result of social causes, some of which are inherent in the society itself, while others depend on interaction between this society and its neighbors. Moreover, science is not concerned with first-causes, in the absolute sense of the word. For science, a fact is primary simply when it is general enough to explain a great number of other facts. Now, the social milieu is certainly a factor of this kind, since the changes which are produced in it, whatever may be their causes, have their repercussions in all directions in the social organism and cannot fail to affect to some extent each of its functions.
    What has just been said of the general social milieu can be repeated for the social milieus of each of the partial groups it comprises. For example, according as the family is large or small or lives a life more or less complete, domestic life will vary. Similarly, if professional groups extend their function over an entire territory instead of remaining restricted, as formerly, to the limits of a city, their professional activity will be very different from what it was formerly. More generally, professional life will be quite different according to whether the milieu of each profession is strongly restricted or whether it is unrestrained, as it is today. Nevertheless, the action of these particular milieus could not have the importance of the general milieu, for they are themselves subject to the influence of the latter. We must always return to the general milieu. The pressure it exerts on these partial groups modifies their organization.
    This conception of the social milieu as the determining factor of collective evolution, is of the highest importance.
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For, if we reject it, sociology cannot establish any relations of causality. In fact, if we eliminate this type of cause, there are no concomitant conditions on which social phenomena can depend; for if the external social milieu, i.e., that which is formed by the surrounding societies, can take some action, it is only that of attack and defense; and, further, it can make its influence felt only by the intermediary of the internal social milieu. The principal causes of historical development would not be found, then, among the concomitant circumstances; they would all be in the past. They would themselves form a part of this development, of which they would constitute simply older phases. The present events of social life would originate not in the present state of society but in prior events, from historical precedents; and sociological explanations would consist exclusively in connecting the present with the past.
    It may seem, it is true, that this is sufficient. Indeed, it is currently said that history has for its object precisely the linking of events in their order of succession. But it is impossible to conceive how the stage which a civilization has reached at a given moment could be the determining cause of the subsequent stage. The stages that humanity successively traverses do not engender one another. We understand that the progress achieved at a given epoch in the legal, economic, political field, etc., makes new progress possible; but how does it predetermine it? It is a point of departure which permits of further progress; but what incites us to such progress?
    Are we to admit an inherent tendency which impels humanity ceaselessly to exceed its achievements either in order to realize itself completely or to increase its happiness; and is the object of sociology to rediscover the manner in
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which this tendency developed? Without returning to the difficulties such a hypothesis implies, in any case laws which would express this development cannot be at all causal, for relation of causality can be established only between two given facts. Now, this tendency, which is supposed to be the cause of all this development, is not given; it is only postulated and constructed by the mind from the effects attributed to it. It is a sort of motivating faculty that we imagine as underlying movement, in order to account for it; but the efficient cause of a movement can only be another movement, not a potentiality of this kind.
    All that we can observe experimentally in the species is a series of changes among which a causal bond does not exist. The antecedent state does not produce the subsequent one, but the relation between them is exclusively chronological. Under these circumstances, all scientific prevision is impossible. We can, indeed, say that certain conditions have succeeded one another up to the present, but not in what order they will henceforth succeed one another, since the cause on which they are supposed to depend is not scientifically determined or determinable. Ordinarily, it is true, we admit that evolution will take the same direction as in the past; but this is a mere postulate. Nothing assures us that the overt phenomena express so completely the nature of this tendency that we may be able to foretell the objective to which this tendency aspires as distinct from those through which it has successively passed. Why, indeed, should the direction it follows be rectilinear?
    This is the reason for the restricted number of causal relations or laws established by sociology. With a few exceptions, of whom Montesquieu is the most illustrious example, the older philosophers of history tried solely to
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discover the general direction in which humanity orients itself, without seeking to relate the phases of this evolution to any concomitant condition. However great the services Comte has rendered to social philosophy, the terms in which he has stated the sociological problem do not differ from the preceding philosophers. Thus his famous law of the three stages of history has no relation of causality; if it is true, it is, and can be, only empirical. It is a bird's-eye view of the elapsed history of the human species. It is entirely arbitrary to consider the third stage as the definitive state of humanity. Who knows whether another will not emerge from it in the future?
    Likewise the law which predominates in Spencer's sociology does not seem to be any different in its nature. If it were true that we tend at present to seek our happiness in an industrial civilization, nothing assures us that, in epochs to follow, we shall not seek it elsewhere. The prevalence and persistence of this method may be accounted for by the fact that we have usually seen in the social milieu a means by which progress is realized, not the cause which determines it.
    From another angle, it is again with relation to this same milieu that the utility or, as we have called it, the function of social phenomena must be measured. Among the changes used by the social milieu, only those serve a purpose which are [sic] compatible with the current state of society, since the milieu is the essential condition of collective existence. From this point of view again, the conception we have just expounded is, we believe, fundamental; for it enables us to explain how the useful character of social phenomena can vary, without however depending on a volitional social order. If we represent historic evolution as
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impelled by a sort of vital urge which pushes men forward, since a propelling tendency can have but one goal, there can be only one point of reference with relation to which the usefulness or harmfulness of social phenomena is calculated. Consequently, there can, and does, exist only one type of social organization that fits humanity perfectly; and the different historical societies are only successive approximations to this single model. It is unnecessary to show that, today, such a simple view is irreconcilable with the recognized variety and complexity of social forms. If, on the contrary, the fitness or unfitness of institutions can only be established in connection with a given milieu, since these milieus are diverse, there is a diversity of points of reference and hence of types which, while being qualitatively distinct from one another, are all equally grounded in the nature of the social milieus.
    The question just treated is, then, closely connected with that of the constitution of social types. If there are social species, it is because collective life depends, above all, on concomitant conditions which present a certain diversity. If, on the contrary, all the principal causes of social events were in the past, each society would no longer be anything prolongation of its predecessor and the different societies would lose their individuality and would become only diverse moments of one and the same evolution. Since, on the other hand, the constitution of the social milieu results from the mode of composition of the social aggregates -and these two expressions are essentially synonymous- we now have the proof that there are no more essential characteristics than those assigned by us as the basis of sociological classifications. Finally, we must now understand, better than previously, how unjust it would be for
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our critics to point to these words, "external conditions" and "milieu," as an accusation that our method seeks the sources of life outside the living being. On the contrary, the considerations just stated lead us back to the idea that the causes of social phenomena are internal to society. Rather, we ourselves could more justly criticize the theory which derives society from the individual for trying to extract the internal from the external (since it explains the social being by something other than itself) and the greater from the smaller (since it undertakes to deduce the whole from the part). So little have our principles misinterpreted the spontaneous character of every living being that, if we apply them to biology and psychology, we shall have to admit that there also the individual life is entirely developed within the individual.
IV
    A certain conception of society and collective life emerges from the group of rules just established. But first let us set forth the contrary theories which divide opinion on this point. For some, such as Hobbes and Rousseau, there is a break in continuity between the individual and society. Man is thus naturally refractory to the common life; he can only resign himself to it when forced. Social ends are not simply the meeting-point of individual ends; they are, rather, contrary to them. Thus, to induce the individual to pursue them, it is necessary to constrain him; and the social task consists par excellence in the institution and organization of this constraint. Since, however, the individual is regarded as the sole reality of the human realm, this organization, having for its object to hinder and confine him, can only be conceived as artificial. It is not founded in nature, since this organization is destined to do human nature vio-
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lence by preventing it from behaving in an antisocial manner. It is a work of art, a machine constructed entirely by hand of man, which, like all products of this kind, is only what it is because men have willed it so. A decree of the will created it; another can transform it.
    Neither Hobbes nor Rousseau seems to have realized how contradictory it is to admit that the individual is himself the author of a machine which has for its essential role his domination and constraint. At least, it seemed to them sufficient for the elimination of this contradiction that it be disguised in the eyes of those who are its victims, by the clever artifice of the social contract.
    It is from a quite different idea that the philosophers of natural law, the economists, and, more recently, Spencer have taken their inspiration. For them social life is essentially spontaneous and society is a natural phenomenon. But, if they confer this character upon it, it is not because they find in it a specific nature but merely because they find its basis in the nature of the individual. No more than the aforementioned thinkers do they see in it a system of things existing separately, by reason of causes peculiar to itself. But, whereas the former conceived of it only as a conventional arrangement which is attached by no bond to reality and is supported in mid-air, so to speak, Spencer and the economists give as its bases the fundamental instincts of human nature. Man is naturally inclined to the political, domestic, and religious life, to commerce, etc.; and it is from these natural drives that social organization is derived. Consequently, wherever it is normal, it has no need to impose itself. When it has recourse to constraint, it is because it is not what it ought to be or because the circumstances are abnormal. In principle, we have only to leave individual
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forces to develop freely and they will tend to organize themselves socially. Neither one of these doctrines is ours. To be sure, we do make constraint the characteristic of all social facts. But this constraint does not result from more or less learned machinations, destined to conceal from men the traps in which they have caught themselves. It is due simply to the fact that the individual finds himself in the presence of a force which is superior to him and before which he bows; but this force is an entirely natural one. It is not derived from a conventional arrangement which human will has added bodily to natural reality; it issues from innermost reality; it is the necessary product of given causes. Also, recourse to artifice is unnecessary to get the individual to submit to them of his entire free will; it is sufficient to make him become aware of his state of natural dependence and inferiority, whether he forms a tangible and symbolic representation of it through religion or whether he arrives at an adequate and definite notion of it through science. Since the superiority of society to him is not simply physical but intellectual and moral, it has nothing to fear from a critical examination. By making man understand by how much the social being is richer, more complex, and more permanent than the individual being, reflection can only reveal to him the intelligible reasons for the subordination demanded of him and for the sentiments of attachment and respect which habit has fixed in his heart.* 

    *This is why [not] all constraint is... normal and why that constraint which corresponds to some social superiority, i.e., intellectual or moral, alone merits the name. But that which one individual exercises over the other because he is stronger or wealthier, especially if this wealth does not express his social value, is abnormal and can only be maintained by violence.

    It would be only a singularly superficial criticism, therefore, that would attack our concept of social constraint by restating the theories of Hobbes and Machiavelli. But if,
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contrary to these philosophers, we say that social life is natural, our reason is not that we find its source in the nature of the individual. It is natural rather because it springs directly from the collective being which is, itself, a being in its own right, and because it results from special cultivation which individual consciousnesses undergo in their association with each other, an association from which a new form of existence is evolved.* If, then, we agree with certain scholars that social reality appears to the individual under the aspect of constraint, we admit with the others that it is a spontaneous product of reality. The tie which binds together these two elements, so contradictory in appearance, is the fact that this reality from which it emanates extends beyond the individual. We mean to say that these words, "constraint" and "spontaneity," have not in our terminology the meaning Hobbes gives to the former and Spencer to the latter. 

    *Our theory is even more unlike that of Hobbes than that of natural law. For the partisans of this latter doctrine, collective life is natural only in the measure in which it can he deduced from individual nature. Now, only the most general forms of social organization can, strictly speaking, be derived from this origin. As for the details of social organization, they are too much removed from the extreme indeterminateness of psychological traits to be connected to them; they appear, then, to the disciples of this school quite as artificial as they appear to their adversaries. For us, on the contrary, all is natural, even the most peculiar social order; for all is grounded on the nature of society.

    To summarize, the objection can be raised to most of the attempts which have been made to explain social facts rationally that they have lost sight of all ideas of social discipline or have maintained it only by deceptive subterfuges. The principle we have just expounded would, on the contrary, create a sociology which sees in the spirit of discipline the essential condition of all common life, while at the same time founding it on reason and on truth.
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