Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method: key extracts from Preface, Introduction, Chapters 1-4
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The Source of today’s exhibit is:
Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method, Second Edition, Edited and with a new introduction by Steven Lukes [Social Science Files subscriber], Translation by W. D. Halls, Palgrave Macmillan 1982, 2013
THE RULES OF SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD
[First edition was 1895]
Preface to the Second Edition (1901)
I
… How … could we possess the ability to discern more clearly the causes, of a different order of complexity, which inspire the measures taken by the collectivity? For at the very least each individual shares in only an infinitesimally small part of them; we have a host of fellow-fashioners, and what is occurring in the consciousness of others eludes us.
Thus our rule implies no metaphysical conception, no speculation about the innermost depth of being. What it demands is that the sociologist should assume the state of mind of physicists, chemists and physiologists when they venture into an as yet unexplored area of their scientific field. …
… Doubtless the idea that we form of collective practices, of what they are, or what they should be, is a factor in their development. But this idea itself is a fact which, in order to be properly established, needs to be studied from the outside. For it is important to know not the way in which a particular thinker individually represents a particular institution, but the conception that the group has of it. This conception is indeed the only socially effective one. But it cannot be known through mere inner observation, since it is not wholly and entirely within any one of us; one must therefore find some external signs which make it perceptible. Furthermore, it did not arise from nothing: it is itself the result of external causes which must be known in order to be able to appreciate its future role. Thus, no matter what one does, it is always to the same method that one must return. …
II
… [Since] society comprises only individuals it seems in accordance with common sense that social life can have no other substratum than the individual consciousness. Otherwise it would seem suspended in the air, floating in the void.
Yet what is so readily deemed unacceptable for social facts is freely admitted for other domains of nature. Whenever elements of any kind combine, by virtue of this combination they give rise to new phenomena. One is therefore forced to conceive of these phenomena as residing, not in the elements, but in the entity formed by the union of these elements. The living cell contains nothing save chemical particles, just as society is made up of nothing except individuals. Yet it is very clearly impossible for the characteristic phenomena of life to reside in atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. For how could living movements arise from amidst non-living elements? Furthermore, how would biological properties be allocated amongst these elements? … The hardness arises from the mixing of them. …
… Let us apply this principle to sociology. If, as is granted to us, this synthesis sui generis, which constitutes every society, gives rise to new phenomena, different from those which occur in consciousnesses in isolation, one is forced to admit that these specific facts reside in the society itself that produces them and not in its parts – namely its members. In this sense therefore they lie outside the consciousness of individuals as such, in the same way as the distinctive features of life lie outside the chemical substances that make up a living organism. They cannot be reabsorbed into the elements without contradiction, since by definition they presume something other than what those elements contain. Thus yet another reason justifies the distinction we have established later between psychology proper – the science of the individual mind – and sociology.
Social facts differ not only in quality from psychical facts; they have a different substratum, they do not evolve in the same environment or depend on the same conditions. This does not mean that they are not in some sense psychical, since they all consist of ways of thinking and acting. But the states of the collective consciousness are of a different nature from the states of the individual consciousness; they are representations of another kind. The mentality of groups is not that of individuals: it has its own laws. The two sciences are therefore as sharply distinct as two sciences can be, whatever relationships may otherwise exist between them. …
… In order to understand the way in which society conceives of itself and the world that surrounds it, it is the nature of society and not that of individuals which must be considered. The symbols in which it thinks of itself alter according to what it is. If, for example, it conceives of itself as deriving from an eponymous animal, it is because it forms one of those special groups known as clans. Where the animal is replaced by a human ancestor, but one that is also mythical, it is because the clan has changed its nature. If, above local or family divinities, it imagines others on whom it fancies it is dependent, it is because the local and family groups of which it is made up tend to concentrate and unite together, and the degree of unity presented by a pantheon of gods corresponds to the degree of unity reached at the same time in society. If it condemns certain modes of behaviour it is because they offend certain of its basic sentiments; and these sentiments relate to its constitution, just as those of the individual relate to his physical temperament and his mental make-up. …
III
… this is what is most essential in the notion of social constraint. For all that it implies is that collective ways of acting and thinking possess a reality existing outside individuals, who, at every moment, conform to them. They are things which have their own existence. The individual encounters them when they are already completely fashioned and he cannot cause them to cease to exist or be different from what they are. Willy-nilly he is therefore obliged to take them into account; it is all the more difficult (although we do not say that it is impossible) for him to modify them because in varying degrees they partake of the material and moral supremacy that society exerts over its members. No doubt the individual plays a part in their creation. But in order for a social fact to exist, several individuals at the very least must have interacted together and the resulting combination must have given rise to some new production. As this synthesis occurs outside each one of us (since a plurality of consciousnesses are involved) it has necessarily the effect of crystallizing, of instituting outside ourselves, certain modes of action and certain ways of judging which are independent of the particular individual will considered separately.
INTRODUCTION
… [Herbert] Spencer’s voluminous sociological work has hardly any other purpose than to show how the law of universal evolution is applied to societies. …
CHAPTER I
What is a Social Fact?
… Every individual drinks, sleeps, eats, or employs his reason, and society has every interest in seeing that these functions are regularly exercised.
… [In society] there are ways of acting, thinking and feeling which possess the remarkable property of existing outside the consciousness of the individual. …
… It may be objected that a phenomenon can only be collective if it is common to all the members of society, or at the very least to a majority, and consequently, if it is general. This is doubtless the case, but if it is general it is because it is collective (that is, more or less obligatory); but it is very far from being collective because it is general. It is a condition of the group repeated in individuals because it imposes itself upon them. It is in each part because it is in the whole, but far from being in the whole because it is in the parts. …
… The presence of constraint is easily ascertainable when it is manifested externally through some direct reaction of society, as in the case of law, morality, beliefs, customs and even fashions. But when constraint is merely indirect, as with that exerted by an economic organization, it is not always so clearly discernible. Generality combined with objectivity may then be easier to establish. Moreover, this second definition is simply another formulation of the first one: if a mode of behaviour existing outside the consciousnesses of individuals becomes general, it can only do so by exerting pressure upon them. …
… the number and nature of the elementary parts which constitute society, the way in which they are articulated, the degree of coalescence they have attained, the distribution of population over the earth’s surface, the extent and nature of the network of communications, the design of dwellings, etc., do not at first sight seem relatable to ways of acting, feeling or thinking. …
… A society’s political structure is only the way in which its various component segments have become accustomed to living with each other. If relationships between them are traditionally close, the segments tend to merge together; if the contrary, they tend to remain distinct. The type of dwelling imposed upon us is merely the way in which everyone around us and, in part, previous generations, have customarily built their houses. The communication network is only the channel which has been cut by the regular current of commerce and migrations, etc., flowing in the same direction. Doubtless if phenomena of a morphological kind were the only ones that displayed this rigidity, it might be thought that they constituted a separate species. But a legal rule is no less permanent an arrangement than an architectural style, and yet it is a ‘physiological’ fact. A simple moral maxim is certainly more malleable, yet it is cast in forms much more rigid than a mere professional custom or fashion. Thus there exists a whole range of gradations which, without any break in continuity, join the most clearly delineated structural facts to those free currents of social life which are not yet caught in any definite mould. This therefore signifies that the differences between them concern only the degree to which they have become consolidated. Both are forms of life at varying stages of crystallization. …
… Our definition will therefore subsume all that has to be defined it if states:
A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual an external constraint;
or:
which is general over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations.
CHAPTER II
Rules for the Observation of Social Facts
… The problem … is how to discover the sequence of [society’s] evolution. Yet, even supposing this evolution exists, its reality can only be established when the science has been worked out. Thus the evolution cannot be made the subject of research unless it is postulated as a conception of the mind, and not a thing. Indeed, this is so much a wholly subjective idea that this progress of humanity does not exist. What do exist, and what alone are presented to us for observation, are particular societies which are born, develop and die independently of one another. If indeed the most recent societies were a continuation of those which had preceded them, each superior type might be considered merely as the repetition of the type at the level immediately below it, with some addition. They could all then be placed end-on, so to speak, assimilating together all those at the same stage of development; the series thus formed might be considered representative of humanity. But the facts do not present themselves with such extreme simplicity. A people which takes the place of another is not merely a prolongation of the latter with some new features added. It is different, gaining some extra properties, but having lost others. It constitutes a new individuality, and all such distinct individualities, being heterogeneous, cannot be absorbed into the same continuous series, and above all not into one single series. The succession of societies cannot be represented by a geometrical line; on the contrary, it resembles a tree whose branches grow in divergent directions. …
… It is true that, viewed from a distance, history does take on somewhat neatly [the] simple aspect of a series. One perceives only a succession of individuals all moving in the same direction, because they have the same human nature. Moreover, since it is inconceivable that social evolution can be anything other than the development of some human idea, it appears entirely natural to define it by the conception that men have of it. But if one proceeds down this path one not only remains in the realm of ideology, but assigns to sociology as its object a concept which has nothing peculiarly sociological about it.
Spencer discards this concept, but replaces it with another which is none the less formed in the same way. He makes societies, and not humanity, the object of his study, but immediately gives to societies a definition which causes the thing of which he speaks to disappear and puts in its place the preconception he has of them. Indeed he states as a self-evident proposition that ‘a society is formed only when, besides juxtaposition, there is co-operation’; it is solely in this way that the union of individuals becomes a society proper. Then, starting from this principle, that co-operation is the essence of social life, he divides societies into two classes according to the nature of the predominant mode of co-operation.
‘There is’, he states, ‘a spontaneous co-operation which grows up without thought during the pursuit of private ends; and there is a co-operation which, consciously devised, implies distinct recognition of public ends.’ …
[crime]
… [Some writers focus on] religious crimes, or crimes against etiquette, ceremonial or tradition, etc., which, although they have disappeared from our modern legal codes, on the contrary almost entirely fill the penal law of past societies.
… [This] error of method causes certain observers to deny to savages any kind of morality. They start from the idea that our morality is the morality. But it is clear that it is either unknown among primitive peoples or exists only in a rudimentary state, so that this definition is an arbitrary one. If we apply our rule, all is changed. To decide whether a precept is a moral one or not we must investigate whether it presents the external mark of morality. This mark consists of a widespread, repressive sanction, that is to say a condemnation by public opinion which consists of avenging any violation of the precept. Whenever we are confronted with a fact that presents this characteristic we have no right to deny its moral character, for this is proof that it is of the same nature as other moral facts. Not only are rules of this kind encountered in more primitive forms of society, but in them they are more numerous than among civilized peoples. A large number of acts which today are left to the discretion of individuals were then imposed compulsorily. We perceive into what errors we may fall if we omit to define, or define incorrectly.
CHAPTER III
Rules for the Distinction of the Normal from the Pathological
… We do not even know how to determine approximately the moment when a society is born and when it dies. All these problems, which even in biology are far from being clearly resolved, still remain wrapped in mystery for the sociologist. Moreover, the events occurring in social life and which are repeated almost identically in all societies of the same type, are much too diverse to be able to determine to what extent any particular one has contributed to hastening a society’s final demise. In the case of individuals, as there are very many, one can select those to be compared so that they present only the same one irregularity. This factor is thus isolated from all concomitant phenomena, so that one can study the nature of its influence upon the organism. … But in sociology, since each social species accounts for only a small number of individuals, the field of comparison is too limited for groupings of this kind to afford valid proof.
Lacking this factual proof, there is no alternative to deductive reasoning, whose conclusions can have no value except as subjective presumptions. We will be able to demonstrate, not that a particular occurrence does in fact weaken the social organism, but that it should have that effect. To do this it will be shown that the occurrence cannot fail to entail a special consequence esteemed to be harmful to society, and on these grounds it will be declared pathological. But, granted that it does bring about this consequence, it can happen that its deleterious effects are compensated, even over-compensated, by advantages that are not perceived. Moreover, only one reason will justify our deeming it to be socially injurious: it must disturb the normal operation of the social functions. Such a proof presumes that the problem has already been solved. The proof is only possible if the nature of the normal state has been determined beforehand and consequently the signs whereby normality may be recognized are already known. Could one try to construct a priori the normal state from scratch? There is no need to show what such a construction would be worth. This is why it happens in sociology, as in history, that the same events are judged to be salutary or disastrous, according to the scholar’s personal convictions. Thus it constantly happens that a theorist lacking religious belief identifies as a pathological phenomenon the vestiges of faith that survive among the general collapse of religious beliefs, while for the believer it is the very absence of belief which is the great social sickness. Likewise for the socialist, the present economic organization is a fact of social abnormality, whereas for the orthodox economist it is above all the socialist tendencies which are pathological. To support his view each finds syllogisms that he esteems well founded.
The common weakness in these definitions is the attempt to reach prematurely the essence of phenomena. Thus they assume that propositions have already been demonstrated which, whether true or false, can only be proved when the progress of science is sufficiently advanced. This is nevertheless a case where we should conform to the rule already established. Instead of claiming to determine at the outset the relationship of the normal state, and the contrary state, to the vital forces, we should simply look for some immediately perceptible outward sign, but an objective one, to enable us to distinguish these two orders of facts from each other.
Every sociological phenomenon, just as every biological phenomenon, although staying essentially unchanged, can assume a different form for each particular case. Among these forms exist two kinds. The first are common to the whole species. They are to be found, if not in all, at least in most individuals. If they are not replicated exactly in all the cases where they are observed, but vary from one person to another, their variations are confined within very narrow limits. On the other hand, other forms exist which are exceptional. These are encountered only in a minority of cases, but even when they occur, most frequently they do not last the whole lifetime of an individual. They are exceptions in time as they are in space.1 We are therefore faced with two distinct types of phenomena which must be designated by different terms. Those facts which appear in the most common forms we shall call normal, and the rest morbid or pathological. …
… There is one order of variations above all which it is important to take into account because these occur regularly in all species: they are those which relate to age. Health for the old person is not the same as it is for the adult, just as the adult’s is different from the child’s. The same is likewise true of societies. Thus a social fact can only be termed normal in a given species in relation to a particular phase, likewise determinate, of its development. Consequently, to know whether the term is merited for a social fact, it is not enough to observe the form in which it occurs in the majority of societies which belong to a species: we must also be careful to observe the societies at the corresponding phase of their evolution. …
… Only very rarely do animal species require to assume unexpected forms. The only normal modifications through which they pass are those which occur regularly in each individual, principally under the influence of age. Thus they are already known or knowable, since they have already taken place in a large number of cases. Consequently at every stage in the development of the animal, and even in periods of crisis, the normal state may be ascertained. This is also still true in sociology for those societies belonging to inferior species. This is because, since a number of them have already run their complete course, the law of their normal evolution has been, or at least can be, established. But in the case of the highest and most recent societies, by definition this law is unknown, since they have not been through their whole history. The sociologist may therefore be at a loss to know whether a phenomenon is normal, since he lacks any reference point.
He can get out of this difficulty by proceeding along the lines we have just laid down. Having established by observation that the fact is general, he will trace back the conditions which determined this general character in the past and then investigate whether these conditions still pertain in the present or, on the contrary, have changed. In the first case he will be justified in treating the phenomenon as normal; in the other eventuality he will deny it that characteristic. For instance, to know whether the present economic state of the peoples of Europe, with the lack of organization that characterizes it, is normal or not, we must investigate what in the past gave rise to it. If the conditions are still those appertaining to our societies, it is because the situation is normal, despite the protest that it stirs up. If, on the other hand, it is linked to that old social structure … we shall be forced to conclude that this now constitutes a morbid state, however universal it may be. It is by the same method that all such controversial questions of this nature will have to be resolved, such as those relating to ascertaining whether the weakening of religious belief and the development of state power are normal phenomena or not. …
… We can then formulate the three following rules:
1 A social fact is normal for a given social type, viewed at a given phase of its development, when it occurs in the average society of that species, considered at the corresponding phase of its evolution.
2 The results of the preceding method can be verified by demonstrating that the general character of the phenomenon is related to the general conditions of collective life in the social type under consideration.
3 This verification is necessary when this fact relates to a social species which has not yet gone through its complete evolution.
[crime cont.]
… [Since] there cannot be a society in which individuals do not diverge to some extent from the collective type, it is also inevitable that among these deviations some assume a criminal character. What confers upon them this character is not the intrinsic importance of the acts but the importance which the common consciousness ascribes to them. Thus if the latter is stronger and possesses sufficient authority to make these divergences very weak in absolute terms, it will also be more sensitive and exacting. By reacting against the slightest deviations with an energy which it elsewhere employs against those that are weightier, it endues them with the same gravity and will brand them as criminal.
Thus crime is necessary. It is linked to the basic conditions of social life, but on this very account is useful, for the conditions to which it is bound are themselves indispensable to the normal evolution of morality and law.
Indeed today we can no longer dispute the fact that not only do law and morality vary from one social type to another, but they even change within the same type if the conditions of collective existence are modified. …
CHAPTER IV
Rules for the Constitution of Social Types
Since a social fact can only be labelled normal or abnormal in relation to a given social species, what has been stated up to now implies that a branch of sociology must be devoted to the constitution and classification of these species.
This notion of social species has moreover the very great advantage of providing us with a middle ground between the two opposing conceptions of social life which for a long time have caused a division of opinion. I refer to the nominalism of the historians and the extreme realism of the philosophers. For the historian, societies constitute so many individual types, heterogenous and not comparable with one another. Each people has its own characteristics, its special constitution, its law, its morality and its economic organization, appropriate only to itself, and any generalization is almost impossible. For the philosopher, on the other hand, all these special groupings, which are called tribes, cities and nations, are only contingent and provisional aggregates without any individual reality. Only humanity is real, and it is from the general attributes of human nature that all social evolution derives. Consequently, for the historians history is only a sequence of events which are linked together but do not repeat themselves; for the philosophers these same events have value and interest only as an illustration of the general laws which are inscribed in the constitution of men and which hold sway over the course of historical development. For the former what is good for one society could not be applied to others. The conditions for the state of health vary from one people to another and cannot be theoretically determined; it is a matter of practice and experience of trial and error. For the philosophers these conditions can be calculated once and for all for the entire human race. It would therefore seem that social reality can only be the object of an abstract and vague philosophy or of purely descriptive monographs. But one escapes from this alternative once it is recognized that between the confused multitude of historical societies and the unique, although ideal, concept of humanity, there are intermediate entities: these are the social species. In the idea of species there are found joined both the unity that any truly scientific research requires and the diversity inherent in the facts, since the species is the same everywhere for all the individuals who comprise it, and yet, on the other hand, the species differ among themselves. It remains true that moral, judicial and economic institutions, etc. are infinitely variable, but the variations are not of such a nature as to be unamenable to scientific thought. …
I
At first sight there seems no other way of proceeding than to study each society in detail, making of each as exact and complete a monograph as possible, then to compare these monographs with one another, to see how they agree or diverge, and finally, weighing the relative importance of these similarities and divergences, to classify peoples into similar or different groups. In support of this method we should note that it is the sole one acceptable for a science based on observation. In fact the species is only the summary of individuals; how then is it to be constituted, if we do not begin by describing each one and describing it in its entirety? Is it not the rule to pass to the general only after having observed the particular, and that particular completely? This is why on occasion some have wished to defer the study of sociology until the indefinitely distant time when history, in its study of particular societies, has arrived at results sufficiently objective and definite as to admit useful comparisons to be made.
But in reality this circumspection is only scientific in appearance. It is untrue that science can formulate laws only after having reviewed all the facts they express, or arrive at categories only after having described, in their totality, the individuals that they include. The true experimental method tends rather to substitute for common facts, which only give rise to proofs when they are very numerous and which consequently allow conclusions which are always suspect, decisive or crucial facts, as Bacon said, which by themselves and regardless of their number, have scientific value and interest. It is particularly necessary to proceed in this fashion when one sets about constituting genera and species. This is because to attempt an inventory of all the characteristics peculiar to an individual is an insoluble problem. Every individual is an infinity, and infinity cannot be exhausted. Should we therefore stick to the most essential properties? If so, on what principle will we then make a selection? For this a criterion is required which is beyond the capacity of the individual and which consequently even the best monographs could not provide. Without carrying matters to this extreme of rigour, we can envisage that, the more numerous the characteristics to serve as the basis for a classification, the more difficult it will also be, in view of the different ways in which these characteristics combine together in particular cases, to present similarities and distinctions which are clear-cut enough to allow the constitution of definite groups and sub-groups.
Even were a classification possible using this method, it would present a major drawback in that it would not have the usefulness that was at first its rationale. Its main purpose should be to expedite the scientific task by substituting for an indefinite multiplicity of individuals a limited number of types. But this advantage is lost if these types can only be constituted after all individuals have been investigated and analysed in their entirety. It can hardly facilitate the research if it does no more than summarize research already carried out. It will only be really useful if it allows us to classify characteristics other than those which serve as a basis for it, and if it furnishes us with a framework for future facts. Its role is to supply us with reference points to which we can add observations other than those which these reference points have already provided. But for this the classification must be made, not on the basis of a complete inventory of all individual characteristics, but according to a small number of them, carefully selected. Under these conditions it will not only serve to reduce to some order knowledge already discovered, but also to produce more. It will spare the observer from following up many lines of enquiry because it will serve as a guide. Thus once a classification has been established according to this principle, in order to know whether a fact is general throughout a particular species, it will be unnecessary to have observed all societies belonging to this species – the study of a few will suffice. In many cases even one observation well conducted will be enough, just as often an experiment efficiently carried out is sufficient to establish a law.
We must therefore select for our classification characteristics which are particularly essential. It is true that these cannot be known until the explanation of the facts is sufficiently advanced. These two operations of science are linked, depending upon each other for progress. However, without plunging too deeply into the study of the facts, it is not difficult to surmise in what area to look for the characteristic properties of social types. We know that societies are made up of a number of parts added on to each other. Since the nature of any composite necessarily depends upon the nature and number of the elements that go to make it up and the way in which these are combined, these characteristics are plainly those which we must take as our basis. It will be seen later that it is on them that the general facts of social life depend. Moreover, as they are of a morphological order, one might term that part of sociology whose task it is to constitute and classify social types social morphology.
The principle of this classification can be defined even more precisely. Indeed, it is known that the constituent parts of every society are themselves societies of a simpler kind. A people is produced by the combination of two or more peoples that have preceded it. If therefore we knew the simplest society that ever existed, in order to make our classification we should only have to follow the way in which these simple societies joined together and how these new composites also combined.
II
[Herbert] Spencer understood very well that the methodical classification of social types could have no other basis. [He stated:]
‘We have seen that social evolution begins with small, simple aggregates, that it progresses by the clustering of these into larger aggregates, and that after consolidating such clusters are united with others like themselves into still larger aggregates. Our classification then must begin with the societies of the first or simplest order.’
Unfortunately, to put this principle into practice we should have to begin by defining precisely what is understood by a simple society. Now, not only does Spencer fail to give this definition, but he esteems it almost impossible to do so. This is in fact because simplicity, as he understands it, consists essentially of a certain rudimentariness of organization. Now it is not easy to state precisely at what moment the social organization is crude enough to be termed simple; it is a matter of judgement. Thus the formula he gives for it is so vague that it can fit all sorts of societies. [He affirms:]
‘Our only course is to regard as a simple society, one which forms a single working whole unsubjected to any other end and of which the parts cooperate, with or without a regulating centre, for certain public ends.’
But there are a number of peoples which satisfy this condition. The result is that he mixes somewhat at random under this same heading all the least civilized societies. With such a starting point one can perhaps imagine what the rest of his classification is like. Grouped together in the most astonishing confusion are societies of the most diverse character: the Homeric Greeks are placed alongside the fiefdoms of the tenth century and below the Bechuanas, the Zulus and the Fijians; the Athenian confederation alongside the fiefdoms of thirteenth-century France and below the Iroquois and the Araucanians.
The term ‘simplicity’ can only have a precise meaning when it signifies a complete absence of any component elements. A simple society must therefore be understood as one which does not include others simpler than itself, which at present not only contains merely one single segment, but which presents no trace of any previous segmentation. The horde, as we have defined it elsewhere [Division du travail social], corresponds exactly to this definition. It is a social aggregate which does not include – and never has included – within it any other more elementary aggregate, but which can be split up directly into individuals. These do not form within the main group special sub-groups different from it, but are juxtaposed like atoms. One realizes that there can be no more simple society; it is the protoplasm of the social domain and consequently the natural basis for any classification.
It is true that there does not perhaps exist any historical society corresponding exactly to this description, but (as we have shown in the book already cited) we know of very many which have been formed directly and without any intermediary by a combination or hordes. When the horde thus becomes a social segment instead of being the whole society, it changes its name and becomes the clan, whilst retaining the same constituent features. Indeed the clan is a social aggregate which cannot be split up into any other more limited in size. Perhaps it will be remarked that generally, where it is still observable today, it comprises a number of individual families. But firstly, for reasons that we cannot expatiate upon here, we believe that the formation of these small family groups postdates the clan; and secondly, precisely speaking, these do not constitute social segments because they are not political divisions. Everywhere that it is met with, the clan constitutes the ultimate division of this kind.
Consequently, even if we possessed no other facts on which to postulate the existence of the horde – and other facts exist which one day we shall have the opportunity to set out – the existence of the clan, that is to say of a society formed by the linking up of hordes, justifies our supposition that at first there were simpler societies which are reducible to the horde proper, thus making the latter the root source from which all social species have sprung.
Once this notion of the horde or single-segment society has been assumed – whether it is conceived of as an historical reality or as a scientific postulate – we possess the necessary support on which to construct the complete scale of social types. We can distinguish as many basic types as there exist ways in which hordes combine with one another to give birth to new societies, which in turn combine among themselves. We shall first encounter aggregates formed by a mere replication of hordes or clans (to give them their new name), without these clans being associated among themselves in such a way as to form intermediate groups within the total group which includes each and every one of them. They are merely juxtaposed like individuals within the horde. One finds examples of these societies, which might be termed simple polysegments, among certain Iroquois and Australian tribes. The arch or Kabyle tribe has the same character; it is a union of clans fixed in the form of villages. Very probably there was a moment in history when the Roman curia and the Athenian phratry was a society of this kind. Above them would be societies formed by the coming together of the societies of the former species, that is to say, polysegmentary societies of simple composition. Such is the character of the Iroquois confederation and that formed by the union of Kabyle tribes. The same is true originally of each of the three primitive tribes whose association later gave birth to the city state of Rome. Next one would find polysegmentary societies of double composition, which arise from the juxtaposition or fusion of several polysegmentary societies of simple composition. Such is the city, an aggregate of tribes which are themselves the aggregates of curiae, which in their turn break down into gentes or clans; such also is the Germanic tribe, with its count’s districts which subdivide into their ‘hundreds’, which in their turn have as their ultimate unit the clan, which has become a village.
We need not develop at greater length these few points, since there can be no question here of undertaking a classification of societies. It is too complex a problem to be dealt with incidentally in that way; on the contrary, it supposes a whole gamut of long and detailed investigations. We merely wished, through a few examples, to clarify the ideas and demonstrate how the principle behind the method should be applied. Even what has been expounded should not be considered as constituting a complete classification of lower societies. We have simplified matters somewhat, in the interests of greater clarity. Indeed, we have assumed that every higher type of society was formed by a combination of societies of the same type, that is, of the type immediately below. But it is not impossible for societies of different species, situated at different levels on the genealogical tree of social types, to combine in such a way as to form new species. At least one case of this is known: that of the Roman Empire, which included within it peoples of the most diverse kind.
But once these types have been constituted, we need to distinguish different varieties in each one, according to whether the segmentary societies which serve to form a new society retain a certain individuality or, on the contrary, are absorbed in the total mass. It is understandable that social phenomena should vary not only according to the nature of their component elements, but according to the way in which they are combined. Above all they must be very different, according to whether each of the subgroups retains its own immediate life or whether they are all caught up in the general life, which varies according to their degree of concentration. Consequently we shall have to investigate whether, at any particular moment, a complete coalescence of the segments takes place. This will be discernible from the fact that the original component segments of a society will no longer affect its administrative and political organization. From this viewpoint the city state is sharply differentiated from the Germanic tribes. With the latter the organization based on the clan was maintained, although blurred in form, until the end of their history, while in Rome and Athens the gentes and the γε ́νη ceased very early on to be political divisions and became private groupings.
Within the framework elaborated in this way one can seek to introduce new distinctions, according to secondary morphological traits. However, for reasons we shall give later, we scarcely believe it possible or useful to go beyond the general distinctions which have just been indicated. Furthermore, we need not enter into detail. It suffices to have postulated the principle of classification, which can be enunciated as follows:
We shall begin by classifying societies according to the degree of organization they manifest, taking as a base the perfectly simple society or the single-segment society. Within these classes different varieties will be distinguished, according to whether a complete coalescence of the initial segments takes place.
III
… We have just seen that societies are only different combinations of one and the same original society. But the same element can only combine with others, and the combinations deriving from it can in their turn only do so in a limited number of ways. This is particularly the case when the constituent elements are very few, as with social segments. The scale of possible combinations is therefore finite, and consequently most of them, at the very least, must replicate themselves. Hence social species exist. Moreover, although it is still possible for certain of these combinations to occur only once, this does not prevent their being a species. Only we can say that in cases of this kind the species is made up of one individual entity. [Footnote: Was this not the case with the Roman Empire, which indeed appears to have no parallel in history?]
Thus there are social species for the same reason as there are biological ones. The latter are due to the fact that the organisms are only varied combinations of the same anatomical unity. However, from this viewpoint, there is a great difference between the two domains. With animals, a special factor, that of reproduction, imparts to specific characteristics a force of resistance that is lacking elsewhere. These specific characteristics, because they are common to a whole line of ancestors, are much more strongly rooted in the organism. They are therefore not easily whittled away by the action of particular individual environments but remain consistently uniform in spite of the diverse external circumstances. An inner force perpetuates them despite countervailing factors in favour of variation which may come from outside. This force is that of hereditary habits. This is why biological characteristics are clearly defined and can be precisely determined. In the social kingdom this internal force does not exist. Characteristics cannot be reinforced by the succeeding generation because they last only for a generation. This is because as a rule the societies that are produced are of a different species from those which generated them, because the latter, by combining, give rise to an entirely fresh organizational pattern. Only the act of colonization is comparable to reproduction by germination; even so, for the comparison to be exact, the group of colonizers should not mix with some other society of a different species or variety. The distinctive attributes of the species do not therefore receive reinforcement from heredity to enable them to resist individual variations. But they are modified and take on countless nuances through the action of circumstances. Thus, in seeking out these attributes, once all the variants which conceal them have been peeled away, we are often left with a rather indeterminate residue.
This indeterminate state is naturally increased the greater the complexity of the characteristics, for the more complex a thing, the more the possible number of combinations which can be formed by its constituent parts. The end result is that the specific type, beyond the most general and simple characteristics, is not so clearly delineated as in biology. [END]
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