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should be examined. Tarde remained singularly vague, however, about how it could legitimately be
inferred that regression in one particular series was the consequence of progression in another.
Durkheim’s discussion of Mill’s procedure of concomitant variations as well as his uses of it, among
other places, in Suicide were more precise than Tarde’s contributions in this respect.
Tarde’s use of statistical information affords an interesting contrast with Durkheim’s procedure.
Tarde’s theoretical orientation, we have observed, led him to consider time series as the basic form
of statistic for social analysis. In this respect, he differed with Quételet “and his school” no less than
with Durkheim. 87 Quételet had held that the type of statistical result that should be sought by the social
scientist was not the increasing but the constant time series. Indeed, for Quételet these “statistical
plateaus” represented the basic “laws of nature.” To focus on such social constants was to emphasize,
like Durkheim, structural causation, the significance of which Tarde minimized. Basic constants could
be found, Tarde held, in biological and geographical factors—sex, age, climate, time of year, and so
forth—and by recognizing the interplay of these factors with social forces he demonstrated less
dogmatism than Durkheim. But Tarde’s systematic orientation nevertheless prejudiced him against the
analysis of data involving differences between social groups at one point in time.
In his general discussions of statistical analysis one finds the particular cognitive set induced by
Tarde’s conceptual framework unusually narrowing. And if in certain of his close empirical analyses,
such as in “Social Control and Deviance,” 88 he began to break out of these limiting methodological
precepts, nevertheless he remained handicapped by them. To recall that Durkheim, even in such a
sophisticated work as Suicide, was perhaps still more confined by his particular theoretical
orientation does not excuse Tarde, but it highlights the degree to which empirical investigation was
structured for each man by a definite theoretical outlook. Despite its obvious limitations, such a
conception as Tarde’s of the use of statistical data guarded against the lifeless reporting of
uninterpreted tables so frequent in the work of the social statisticians of the period, as well as against
the too facile elaboration of “social laws” from the simple isolation of a few similar statistical
curves. 89
VI. The Origins and Functions of Elites
From his conceptual framework Tarde elaborated a series of ideas on social stratification that for the
period were unusually sophisticated. Because his thoughts on stratification were so intimately related
to his overall system, we have necessarily touched on them at several points above. Correspondingly,
propositions dealing with stratification are found throughout the selections below, but one particularly
stimulating discussion of “nobilities” is translated from Les transformations du pouvoir. 90
As used by Tarde, the term nobility was a shorthand designation for elite: his conception was
essentially one of functional leadership. He was close to the views later associated with the names of
Davis and Moore and Parsons 91 when he pointed out that the definition of a social superior depends
on the “social goods . . . pursued . . . by the majority of men of a given epoch and country,” and that
the qualities which make a man superior are his abilities to interpret the most important inventions of
his period. 92 In this way, the elite reflects the central values of the society even while leading it by
innovating changes in the value system.
Societies based on few inventions, according to Tarde’s deductions from his system, will in turn be
characterized by an elite narrowly skilled in these particular inventions. When increasingly numerous
and complex inventions are developed, several more sophisticated elites emerge, each of which is
skilled in a particular invention. An elite may thus achieve its eminence from success in war,