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a formula comparable to the type of itinerary planned in advance that the railroad companies propose
to and do impose on tourists. Not that I reject analogies and comparisons (which actually I have used
a great deal), but here it must be said that the terms of the comparison have been poorly chosen. The
analogue of a living being, which reproduces itself according to a constant formula of evolution, is
not a nation taken as a whole or even considered in one of its general aspects (language, government,
religion, and so fourth). . . .
Furthermore, nothing obliges us to solve these problems; we know that a science is based on an
order of facts when from among those facts we succeed in grasping the general facts allied to each
other, that is, groups of similar facts which repeat themselves, groups which increase and decrease,
whose increases and decreases are subject to measurement and calculation, and which present
themselves as bound to one another in either direct or inverse relationship. Are these groups of
similarities anything other than quantities? And quantity basically is only repetition and similarity, in
other words, a general fact; and wherever there is quantity there is science. It seems, in truth, that the
idea of quantity is found in its purest state only in the physical sciences, but perhaps this is only an
illusion. In any case, here as elsewhere, quantity is always resolved into grouped repetitions. The
weight of a given chemical substance, of a volume of oxygen or nitrogen, is no more than the more or
less numerous group of similar molecules of which it is composed; the heat of a body consists of the
more or less numerous group of more or less voluminous and rapid calorific vibrations with which it
is agitated. The vitality of animal or vegetable tissue, of muscular or mucous tissues, is also a quantity
which consists of a multiplication of entirely similar cells. Finally, when social statistics, as it
always ought to have, has a bearing on similar human acts or human products and does not, as it too
often does, group together heterogeneous things, its curves reveal numerical highs and lows which are
comparable to the preceding ones. The parallelism or the inversion of these various curves have a
significance analogous to that of the quantitative correlations expressed by the physicists’ formulas or
the naturalists’ remarks. Thus before all else every science presupposes quantities and repetitions, but
its own characteristic quantities and repetitions, which add themselves, as elements of its formulas, to
the quantities and repetitions of those sciences inferior to it. This implies first of all that there is a
mode of repetition particular to physical phenomena and another particular to biological phenomena
and yet another particular to social phenomena. The autonomy of social science will thus be assured
if it is shown that it has its own characteristic mode of repetition. . . .
VI
Now, just what is the characteristic social repetition? As we have already said, it is imitation, the
mental impression from a distance by which one brain reflects to another its ideas, its wishes, even
its ways of feeling. Once it can be shown that, despite exceptions or simply ostensible objections, it
is imitation which is the elementary and universal social fact, I presume no one will deny the
autonomy of social science. For, without any doubt whatsoever, imitation can be reduced neither to
generation nor to undulation. This does not keep these last two modes of repetition, the so-called
biological and physical factors, race and climate, from exercising a large influence on the direction of
the currents of imitation, and thus from having considerable, though auxiliary and subordinate,
importance for sociology.
It will be easy to prove that imitation is implied in all social relations whatsoever, that it is the
common bond of these relationships. But let us say first that these social relationships can be
classified in a certain number of categories: linguistic, religious, scientific, political, legal, moral,
economic, aesthetic.