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efore this aesthetic flower of civilizations began to bloom, its first buds appeared on the tree of
languages; and although less fruitful in visible results than the discourse of an elite, the elementary
discussions (entretiens terre à terre) between primitive people are not lacking in great social
importance.
Never, except in a duel, does one observe an individual with all the force of one’s attention unless
one is talking with him, and that is the most constant, the most important, and the least observed effect
of conversation. It marks the apogee of the spontaneous attention that men lend each other, 3 by which
they interpenetrate to a much greater depth than in any other social relationship. By making them
confer, conversation makes them communicate via an action as irresistible as it is unconscious. It is,
consequently, the strongest agent of imitation, of the propagation of sentiments, ideas, and modes of
action. A captivating and much applauded discussion is often less suggestive because it avows the
intention of being so. Interlocutors act on each other from close at hand, 4 not by language alone but by
the tone of their voices, glances, physiognomy, magnetic gestures. It is rightly said of a good
conversationalist that he is a charmer in the magical sense of the word. Telephone conversations,
which lack the majority of these interesting elements, tend to be boring unless they are purely
utilitarian.
Let us sketch as briefly as possible the psychology or rather the sociology of conversation: What
are its varieties? What have been its successful stages, its history, its evolution? What are its causes
and its effects? What are its relations to social peace, to love, to transformations of language,
customs, and literatures? Each of these aspects of so vast a subject would require an entire volume,
and we cannot claim to exhaust them here.
Conversations differ greatly according to the natures of those talking, their degree of culture, their
social situation, their rural or urban origin, their professional habits, their religion. They differ in
subjects treated, in tone, in ceremony, in rapidity of delivery, in length. The average speed of
pedestrians in various world capitals has been measured, and the published statistics show quite
great variation in these speeds, as well as the constancy of each one of them. I am convinced that, if it
were judged relevant, the rapidity of speech in each city could be measured just as well and that it
would be found to be very different from one town to another, as from one sex to another.
It seems that as people become more civilized, they walk and speak faster. In his Voyage to Japan
Mr. Bellessort notes “the slowness of Japanese conversations, the shaking of the head, the immobile
bodies kneeling around a brazier.” All travelers have also noted the slowness of speech of the Arabs
and other primitive peoples. Does the future lie with the peoples who speak fast or with those who
speak slowly? Probably with the former, but I think it would be well worth the effort to treat this
aspect of our subject with numerical precision; for such a study would be amenable to a sort of social
psycho-physics. At the moment, the elements for this are lacking.
Conversation takes on an entirely different tone, even a different rapidity between inferior and
superior than between equals, between relatives or than between strangers, between persons of the
same sex than between men and women. Conversations in small towns between citizens linked to one
another by hereditary friendships are and must be quite different from conversations in large cities
between educated people who hardly know each other. Both talk about what they know best and what
they have in common in the realm of ideas. However, since the latter do not know each other
personally, what they have in common with each other they also have in common with a great many
other people—whence their penchant for general subjects, for discussing ideas of general interest.
But small town citizens have no ideas more common and at the same time better known than the
peculiarities of the lives and characters of the people they know—whence their propensity for gossip