Iii/ilr;

t'ltl[ p.s'ych0I0;,-_v,"
latter book,

in;

.\m*mI ]is\'i'I|uIu,i;>\'

'l;n"dc said in the opening lines

of his preface to the

is often understood in a chimerical sense, which must be dis-

Th6

carded before anything else. It consists of conceiving a collective

spirit, a social consciousness, a we, which is supposed to exist
besides and above individual spirits. In our point of view, we
have no need whatsoever of this mysterious concept in order to
make a very clear distinction between ordinary psychology and
social psychology which we would rather call inter-spiritual.
Whereas the rst, in fact, deals with the relations between the
mind and the totality of other beings outside, the second studies
or should study the mutual relations between minds, their unifirst unilateral, then relateral and reciprocal inuences
ciprocal. (Emphasis in the original)

Of [h pLlbllCI T2lI'Cl, SOC12ll

psychology, and interaction
61'21

It was in Paris in

faur

189
Subei?vitgliilfivrilfe}:5l:)(l1:g1T;lia:(l':u]aiTl;r wo
-

of hp
.

'*"
ilnhgagtpgltle

:;>:l;l;1'Opi'nion etlfa Foule, a few years later. It is trule) thgt

'llaii:1e)fh}.']|ii
eveoin
'
beglzltriHipioigiiaipggpgph
hid Svenisc
0f;0lIZ:1Il(ll)2lt1()nlTlUL|I

In the opening lines of the first chapter, Tarde added:

Not pilly (isc: at crowd attract land exer: I1ilI';6sSlSt[tlblft.11;llfOIIil

-~-

I88

is

fed?) (f merciflenblif: h1ailsn:lz:~:I.d,lilr1i1<fcallIz>1rr1ige,irzji;i]in:/stiiteic fh1nlII:\c;6l?tI'lc:l

10
inlg h a spbl au sed a ve 3! diffZrent t YP Zf ublicctp appear,
"8 typ
of
0 P111111
ex
ension
1S
in
e
lllld6
{JV
(;se
g
pvtiatn
o
cpasels
neve:
one wf

calo
ahplsyc
dere 'lS mos
Oniiflfi)

perio ito be deve l ourI':1l'1"talIlE

e
r<eilStl(i
s,
ere
y maf
o cglow
pgy

't '6 Pu1

co Zctivgy,
pS'y'C 0lOg}llO
ope I a Slplritua
p:re_Y

he excluded the first and included the latter

three in hIi)sb oo
1'8
Isl:L m
Opimm,
er la Fouler published
1

git

prtS'1g 0 't a fa I thf)

t1S
3 dgr llpggs.
f
is con usion, an no a y no o
confuse the crowd with the piiblic, a word in itself subject to
various interpretations but which I shall attempt to define Preat stglne
ClSIy.b:N6 spieaqk oftlt1he pttlgllc at a theiter tl]i3e
is
is
nil er
cr
yiv
.h'lu
means
ic
iil:SlTll Y, an
eilel
evpu
u lsdmry name
(i eslgd
pi/pr
uguolps
F
imP0 an 0 pu an en o

Spat: a Or,

may easily discem an evolution in this sense.

In the 3.Il:.ll6Si):].:I'lvle,
remained caught in a vague interpretation of
imitation as Thggestion,
su lc er K
and Ofthe Crowd as a mostly physically
e second
article widened the scope somewhat. But only in the last-t
did he really hit on a clear interpretation of
imitation as i 11 tel$1Cg;QI]
W0 'amCk5
and
the public as a physically dispersed group
Tarde was
partly aware of all the implications in this. shift But vflio
a yheonly
lerpias
abok
(Ill
cluded both the rst and

--

earlier articles, published in 1892-93. However

tliis cha iv sdm two
<1> he
:3 ramt
work in the early nineties; (2) its application to
crowds ( an sects) in
Umse two earlier articles
esitant and inconsisteni;
b .
and (3) only its later a hcatio t
(3111
11:5
Wit:
(ihlgl
Since
(togelzger
0Ptn1on) was truly
remarkable,
andengsiltg S:1e1:lO];(1);I1[6d to an
emimly
nap
gm
If we look atTarde,s four

A few selected quotes may suffice to highlight his ndul d .

from Previous theorists. The expression (0/1('('ti\'i"
epdmm
A
or _\'()
/-V /Ir/Hgv

'
'
'
'
'
of imitation
latter_ day reading
clearly reflects his

uals
lsensh
w oastarlea
in iviidls

un' erStOf0'
o
ISPCFSIZOII

y m6? 2'1.
enme
CO it
"C310?
W Osghow
gevelops,
an from};
y Sepalate
ariseslb and
p
yslca the
public coniqes
Where
varieties am re ations ips wit those who are its irectors, its

iyu,.,,,,..,.

.e/ 1,,

/.-i./.

/\\'.||il |'|0|)<is, P

(my l|';||1|;|[|un)_
-

as

Iiuilr
reliitioiislii s to the cro
for good Zilijd evil, and iiv.:(:,,';ii:i7fii_i'i',',';xiii}
~

i:i>I1ihLhdei<ili.hi
What
Tiiiiihis

Wiii do

"

iihheiiieiftiheiiciriiniiioii aigiree wiitih ihativigourous

writ
icrhivitii s. It is theigra ol lhi.

ih

iefent lh1I1g-

ih,ih hih, is exh ore the background oi

and Socioiogisis in Frahhh

him9t0

1901

dishhhsihh

iiieem cemu P5YCh0logi.\t-.

e ieivents betweeni 1894 and
hhhiiipi is liC2iSifUI'[h6I'. Piis U'3l'lS|Cl
ihig ieapiiia in 1894 stimulated ll
hiiihha ipns lip between psycholoiw
ihihhrziiiehan rene his ideas on

scahdhii he

NOhiih_Nhhihhhh

ihiissivh

Al

ilii 9l1frontation

with the
hhwhiphi 1<h I e time, and the Dreylus
hhhhmih 6fIiihpUbllC opinion. Thlll
hhiighhi hilhflll lid (See for IHSIHHM"

popular press, the widespieiid Xhiio iiohg

een c osely observed and

i}h

rm'

Tarde as a provincial judge and criminologist

-

gi:ib:i1iiilii'Ih"hriiiehii1ieh5iCifi1ii1i:=<iilihfigililhii if)(i))Ii:i1Tl6I1l

town of Siiiihi ih

05;?)-i_ie

viiiiioii
famiiy

had

1:

oicer.\

bom in the small

ere. The old family

ii et

i<h

"Sell (t Ough hls 50' d1d)- I I

ocraiiic, as some authors do.
hihhinewiat 6llIlSIi but far less mlll

ihhhhihhi

Tarde,s Chief bihgihhhiii

Miigi

ihhhisi
P

Elva

2. Translated in Clark, Gabriel

T

28i_ respectively

hgi

of militaiy

\i?iV&S

a Roque_Gageae.3 The
Rhvhihiililih ?&I'lS[0C1fiIlC prex de hiltl
.
it wifs reinstated almost ll

Tgihdh

bhhh

then

fainiiily

ih'i hPra_neS'
ia ii e region had a long hu
x on gaulois had not been
0 I 0Se days in the same way as Paris,

"rd C""""'""

'

"11

50! Inuence

|)l

.l'|il-

we plan to invesiigaie in ibis Sihdyi

.\m ml /|.\\( /in/u_i;\'

the north, and the t-nsl wt-11..

ilowiiliill of the Second Empire, the
li(i)S[ iFl3I'lCOPfh;l$i:l2lll Will. the iihortiivc Commune hevolt, anitil eviiinithci
ou anger an
unuma episo es a ways remaine somew a is an
events here. This may help exPlain both Tardes eccentric Position

l late nineteenth-centllly French social philosophy and social science,

of the Dreyfus affair on his later thought it was the
lirst major Political drama he witnessed from nearby.
Tarde was a Catholic, but in a very personal wayi it seems. He was
not involved in the contemporly debates over clencalism. As fari as
his character was concerned, he had both mtrovert and extrovert traits.
His father had died when he was only seveni. In the course of his youth,
he developed a very Close relationship to his mother, and resented the
lesuit boarding school to which he was sent (calling it a Prison of
innocents).4 Ple was a brilliant student but developed several recur_
ring illnesses, including asthma and an eye disease. Ati times, these
kept him from reading and forced him to spend long periods ruminat_
ing previously absorbed ideas. These characteristics long dominated
his personality and thought. After he had worked out his own approach
and received some recognition, however, he eagerly joined both the
literary salons and the debates of his day.5
Taideishudiied law iin Toiiiiouse aindifaris, thiein retiiirriitiaid to Siarlaiit ais a
epu y ]Ll ge s assis an .
e gra ua y rose
roug
e ran s o ecome a full judge there in 1875, as his father had been._He married
soon thereafter and was to have three sons. So far, nothing destined
him to become an onginal thinker. In Private, he hadi already elaborated some ifar-ung theories. But he clearly lacked a stimulating intel_
lectual environment in which to test and develop them.
Siome time in the late seventies he wrote an anonymous (l) letter to
Theodule Ribot, iproposing a philosophers association that would
make a regular solollm to the countlyside and form ianiacademy in the
ancient isense.6 Ribot published P-jrllts of the letter, inviting the author
to identify himself, and to submit his ideas to the Revue Phzlosophzque.
From 188i) onward, Tarde became airegular collaborator of the review.
By the mideighties, his criminological contributions in tum attracted
the attention of Alexandre Lacassagne, leader of the Lyons school,
and the impact.

3. One early occupant had been

the astronomer/canon Jean Tardc
(l(|
colleague Of Galileo.
i

I(1(
1

277 -1|-ll

PP-

0'

5.

(;uhri1'ITurd(' at Ia Philosophie de IHixt0ire' p. 62, n. 4.

(cniiin ili-mils ol 'l2nili-s life and work were taken from obituaries by Espinas, Lacassagne,

()_

|ic;|vi'|_ /\ Ill |'.\|<li'_ mnl uI||.r_

|'ii';|\'i"l_ Ni-In I l|'t'H|]P/Ill/HI .\m

4. Miler,

fmmd ml

.I.

(I (Ir Tilnl,

p. 35.

],,](~_ _\'ut|iI ]),\',\('/l(rIuif_\

who had just founded the Arr"/iivri ii ,

411//Int/u I /in It ( '1 iniim . I/0 'll ml.
.
upon, Tarde
became a regular collahoriitoi" ol the
Arcliivcs as well, and
later even a co-director. It turned out that
Tarde was more of an abstract
thinker th an L acassagne himself

(who was also

'
five
'
years younger),
and soon became the major spokesman
for the French in their escalal
ing dispute with the Italians
During these years there were also
major debates on crime and
punishment in France. Nye has shown
in an excellent stud Y (1984) that
there was a slow shift away from
biological determinism, and toward
psychological explanations. Tarde had
been in touch with Lombroso.
F .
.
.
.
erri, and others since
.
the early eighties,
but soon proved to be quite
critical of their theories. He reminded them
that physical anthropology
and social statistics had been inventions
of the Frenchmen Broca
and Qutelet; compared Lombroso
to coffee, which stimulates but
does not nourish; called his LUomo
Delinquente the sterile work of
an entire life; and said 1lDelitt0
Politico was fragmented, chaotic,
and contradictoiy.7 At one point,
he even attempted a statistical refutation of the thesis of a bom criminal
While strongly rejectin8 evolutionary atavism as an exp l anation,
'
Tarde became quite
'
'
infatuated
with
'
hypnotic suggestion for some time.
We have seen in the previous chapter
that the late eighties and early
nineties displayed a rapid rise in interest
in this phenomenon. Lawyers
soon applied it to the problems of
jury trials and criminal complicity
alike. Tarde and man y of h'is co ll eagues
wrote various
'
.
articles
'
.
and
.
.
papers on crimes in
which suspects claimed
they had be e n in
' d uce d b y
h yp notic suggestion.
'
3 McGuire
'
(l986d) has pointed
'
out that the Char
cot position was defended in the ciiminological
D lb
world
by the Swiss
.
. .
e oeuf, whereas the Bernheim
.
position was defended by the Bel ian
g
Ligeois. If the subject had still largely
been absent at the Rome
congress of 1885 , it came to dominate
the Paris con gress of 1889 an d
those that followed. Crow d s were,
of course, held to be particularly
'
susceptible to criminal suggestion.
Tarde s earl y articles on criminology
were collected in two successive books, La Criminalit Compare
(1886) and La Philosophiv
Pnale (1890). The latter9 (and another
work published that same year)
,

7. In the Archives

d/lnthropologie Criminelle, Tome ii, p. 33

(quoted by Milet 1970, p. 23>;
Acres du Troisime Congrs International
d/lntropologie C riminelle, p. 335 (quoted
b N '
1975, p. 114); Revue Philosophique,
Y
Y
19:61! (quoted by Milet 1970, p. 22);
and the R01/Mr
Philosophique, 30:33? ., respectively.
8. See also Tarde (1889), Le Magntlsme
Animal.
9. La Philosophie Pnale, pp. 3203.

already wmmmll
.

_\L.Vl.m| pnges

Ii)

.
- '
on crowd
phenomena.
We- hivlc pccn in
in carlier cha itcr how larde inspired Sighele , and how Slg 3 6 "1 urn
inspired Fgurnial (a pupil of Ti1fd$ mend
and Colleague LaCasS_agne)
nnd finally Tarde himself. We therefore need not return to the C1I'fILl1'g_
slanees under which Tardes rst article on the crowd was conceive .
.
'
The Third International Congress of Cnminal
, h ld '
Anthropologytheebml;
Brussels in the summer of 1892, featured few papers on
criminal, but quite a few on criminal suggestion Tafd 5 Paper
es
Crimes dcs Foules, fit in perfectly with K1118 trend H ow d oe S a Crowd form? he asked By virtue of what miracle
do so many people
once dispersed and indifferent to one aaother
develop solidarity, aggregate into a magnetic chain, shout t Z sage
el-les, run together, act concertedly? By the viitueof sympat yo, Ale
source of imitation, and the vital principle of social bodies.
1mongli Ta;des system focused on imitation, this first paper and artice
came close to identifying it entirely with suggestion. In line Wlh
earlier works by Sighele and Foumial, and thelater work ofllse Eon, he
' ted on 3 regression
supposedly occurring in crowds. Li e t em, 6
'
in sis
devoted ample attention to the supposed inhibition of higher, and rein
foreement of lower, mental functions. hike them, he also deg/0;?
ample attention to the supposed differentiation and mediation o tBis
process by physical, biological, psychological, and social factors. 3
contrast, he devoted relatively _little space to mutual. influence, an
laced strong emphasis
' on the one-sided nature of cnminal sugge stion.
P
There are always those who lead (meneurs) and those who are led
(mens), he Sald , and P enal res P onsibility should be assigned accordingly. In this sense Tardes oft-quoted first paper and article on the
criminal crowd was, rather atypiCl, and d emonstrate d hm e O
f his
'
approach.
unique
' later t urn o f mind, as,
Yet, there were already isolated hints of his
.
.
for instance, in his
discussion on the relation between crowds an d
sec t s A handful of leaders awakens this latent power and dift$ it
i
'
'
to a certain
ra ll ylng
P oint , he COHIiI1u6d, but
for thls mmal. lm"
ulse to be followed and for this embryo of the crowd to grow quickly
P
_ a previous work, basically very similar, should have been accom,
.
.
p lished in their
'
from spin
o sp irit, a silent
minds . A slow contagion
.
and tranquil imitation, has always preceded and prepared these quick
'
'
'

'
these no is y and swaY in
that characterize popucontagions,
g imitations

..

'tt

IO.

..
-.-; , (0n;,rr*\
, l-I nlzrmmmiu
'
I
Les (iiim-~. l'l"t |tIll|t\, In /\tIl.\ du Tmmrme
|, /\ tiny li.iii=|.iliin|)

(i,.,m.l],,

l'/l I ilhrupvlngiv

...-

/H,/,'

lilf movenicnls." The work of crowds, lic

(tllI\llltlL(l.
pared by the work of sects. "

is always PH"

Tarde further developed this idea in

his second article on the subject.
Foules et sectes du point de vue criminel
(crowds and sects from ;|
criminal viewpoint), published the following
year. Riots were often n
by-product of crowd events organized
by the mainstream socialists.
such as strikes, demonstrations, or
meetings. But other acts of political
violence did not involve physical assemblies
of people at all. Marginal
activists such as the Blanquists and the
anarchists, for instance, saw
themselves rather as an avant garde.
They felt small groups or even
individuals could act as a catalyst in bringing
about revolution. In these
cases, collective persuasion was of
a different nature, Tarde felt.
On
the one hand, he affirmed, a crowd
tends to reproduce itself on the
first occasion, to reproduce itself at more
and more regular intervals.
and purifying itself each time to
organize corporatively in a kind ol
sect or party; a club starts out open
and publicly, but little by little it
closes and contracts; on the other
hand, the leaders of the crowd arc
most often not isolated individuals,
but sectarians. Sects are the yeast
of crowds. Whatever serious or grave thing
a crowd accomplishes.
good or bad, has been inspired by
a corporation [association].12
ln
this case, Tarde said, one may indeed
claim metaphorically that certain
associations are bom criminals,
since they have been formed with
the purpose of committing crimes.
Others, however, are only occa
sionally criminal, since they start out
with a noble goal, which is then
perverted. In both cases, these sects
are often subject to the same
mechanisms of regression that characterize
crowds.
Yet, in the article Tarde was already
placing less emphasis on sug
gestion and more on imitation proper.
He also pointed occasionally to
even wider phenomena: a preparation
of souls by conversations or
readings (p. 378), and the formation
of opinion (p. 387). Tarde included both early articles on the
crowd in a book titled Essais wt
Mlanges Sociologiques, published
in I895. The title indicated that hc
was trying to move beyond criminology,
toward psychosocial science
in general. He had meanwhile published
a first summary outline of
an
entirely new approach that was well received
by specialists. It added to
his modest fame and contributed to
a major change which was to
resound throughout his later life and
work.

ll.
12.

Foules et Sectes du Point de Vue

Criminel," Revue des Dru! MrI!|rl:'.v, p.
370 (inv
translation).

,,,/

/),\\'(/ll?/U_LI'V\'

I05

lior 5()mc time, 'lkiidc's liicnils and zidniircrs had been trying to ling
him a more prestigious job. In late I893 the minister Of_lUSllC askc
him to prepare a memorandum on the reorganization of crime S[a[l3(l}(1IS
in France, and in early 1894 even invited him to come and head t Z
Statistical department of the Ministry Of JllSl0- 511196
hls belove
mother had died a few years before, Tarde felt free to accept the OfferAt fifty-one he left his native Sarlat and moved to Pans.
lh this regard it is important to point out, that Tarde Was not ]uSt a
philosopher; He was also a mathematician. 3Statistics are ah sooiometre, he said in an oft-forgotten phrase. Like his Frenc Icontemporary Durkheim, he felt they were the key to psyCheS0C1 SCI;
ence_ However, they differed strongly over the specific uSeS 0
Statistics, and over their applications in sociology.
Tardes years in Paris, then, were dominated by two development;
lhtellectually, he embroiled himself in an escalating debate with Dughoim over the nature of sociology and its relation to psychology. T IS
forced him to further elaborate his own theories and to apply therglr to
proper contemporary phenomena, such as the emergencg of
32
public Opinion. Politically, Tarde was COI1fI'.OI"ltd'Wllh a rarcilia rnate
velopment in that domain: the Dreyfus affair, which was to omi
French public life for several years.

Sociologism, psychologism, alld the

DurkheimTarde debate
Tardes arrival in the capital almost coincidedwith the begiinnigg pifa
major debate on the new science of sociology in France (an .111 ele in
the Western world as a whole). In this regard, most histories od Zoeiolcgy identify three major spokesmen and ctnrents: Wormsnaizi
e
5o_called biologistic approach, Durkheim and the so-ca le _sto
eiologistic approach, and finally Tarde and the so-called psyc o ogis ic
approach,
h.lOSO_
Ren Worms (1869-1926) was to hold degrees in science, p i
phy, literature, law, and economics. In 1893, when he was Qnty txxlirg
ty_four years old, he had begun to setup an elaborate lIlfI2lS[X'LlCfLl16
was to allow Social science to ourish. In the same year, he Iounl Z
the Revue Inremarionale de Sociologie, the lnstitut Intemationa e
'
~
t d th Bibliothe ue des Sciences
Socia
' les. The very next
SOClOil)g|liri?
year,
liitfrrritional
ic
gongress
-s
t
~ of Sociology was held In P11Tl$~
.

Ibid., pp. 73-4 (my translation).

IS),

|t

|_

_|._.

U-it

lril-iirl lillllfvu

|I

Uh

|||!(u iH'\ llll

Worms succccdcd in enlisting the suppoit
ol many old the most famous
social scientists both in France and al>|"o;|d.
ln the following year, Inc
revived the Socit de Sociologie de Paris,
which would hold monthly
meetings.

Meanwhile Dick May (pseudonym

for Mlle Jeanne Weill) had
raised funds to found a College Libre
des Sciences Sociales, an early
Predecessor of the Present-day Ecole des Hautes Etudes
Sociales. Al
though this newly emerging little world
grouped people from entircl y
different horizons, Worms himself long
remained caught in the evolu
tionist paradigms of early sociology
witness his book Organisme (I
Socit (1896). But he was soon faced
with a formidable challenge by
another early sociologist.

During these years, various psychologists

and sociologists
ing to free themselves from their Darwinian/Spencerian were try
roots. In
French sociology, the most significant
advances were made by Emile
Durkheim (1858-1917). He was an assimilated
Jew from the north
east, a background that proved highly
signicant during the Dreyfus
affair, to which we will retum. At
the time he was lecturing at the
University of Bordeaux. In line with
the theoretical ideas of Comte and
the statistical analyses of Qutelet,
he developed a functional approach
to social phenomena. Since Napoleonic
days, France had been trying
to work out unifomi administrative procedures,
also yielding mutually
comparable social statistics. The Third
Republic reinforced this trend.
By the early nineties long series of relatively
reliable data on crime and
death rates became available, contrasting
various regions and causes,

for instance,
In 1897 Durkheim published a pioneering
study on suicide (in pan
based on data from Tardes department).
14 It began with

the observation (also made by Qutelet and other

predecessors) that regional and
other differences remained fairly constant
over time. Suicide, Durk
heim concluded therefore, should not
just be considered an abnormal
phenomenon resulting from individual
predispositions, but a normal
henomenon resulting from group processes
(such as reli ious life).
lile distinguished egotist, altruist, and
anomic suicide. AgIlOlDl6, he
said, is a social condition in which norms
have disintegrated or disappeared, thus facilitating deviant behavior.
This was the situation tl1reatening (certain Parts of) contemporar)
France.
14. The

Italian Ferri also wrote a study on suicide

and homicide. Note that suicide
is often
considered a sociological subject, whereas
homicide is considered a criminological
onc.

Earlier, Durl\hci|n

haul

I-_\\

"'

'

publislied anclh

1*-

Pmnccrlllgl

II

*ll_'fl[)',:llaiLl'11~;

Rgles de la Mllimlv Sv1'i"l"8l_' whlch

fugued 59:1? Oglb; main_
to a separate territory of eitclusive expertise. SOCIZ1 acts, Saint
rained, must be seen as things exercising H C0llet1/Z COT;
individual beings. Social facts could only be )?pla1I1Cb )1/oi el
facts, and should not be reduced to psychological or io <l>1gica;tristi(-:
Still earlier, Durkheim had discussed the social factis c at:
of primitive and modern societies. The former, he said, vrler

terized by 8 high degree of 1'_5m_blance

betwen In W1 tua t
mechanical form of social solidarity. The lttefr
confrigr
characterized by a high degree of differentiation, (llV1S1OI;1O
,
an organic form of solidarity. Th1S nwdem S1tY_i
Owe) and
needed a common faith (ln the French People, _f1' lgstalgfeilaq
collective conscience to keep it il'01T1 <ll1"mgTat1Pg;
eself
held more or less liberal pr_0gress1v_e polltleel Convlctlols llm
ulglican
provided a tailor-made scientific ideology for the
ica iep
bloc, which was seeking to stabilize and consoi ate
e
g
through nationalist education.
Durkheim quickly formed his Own Seh001 feun I e 103$
ne Sociologique (1893), Whlfih _$n canlg
to _Surp_as nd I ces
Worms group, particularly for _1tS1nle'l
m_ ufnxersmes Zhag varil
In hindsight, however, Durkheim s sociologistic aprgoac
ous shortcomings. In his eagerness to proclaim the In eipgn
sociology, he tended to sever all ties With psychology as enYHiS
of a mediating link in PSyh0511gY or S_c1al PS}? O
?gyi_l
due emphasis on collective consensus and social stabi ity,uu1t e
th
often blinded him to the ways in which new ideas and cha engps core
existing order emerge-15 Paradoxleally. It W68 the seemipgly nihat
traditional approach of a somewhat moreconservative t pi er
avoided these pitfalls and p0intedt0 H P0SS1b1e alternative-I l$_PFPde
nent was Tarde, the rst new president Of the Soelete SW10 ogique
Paris, and previously a key InembY of the Worms
group
-

Tarde had always aspired t0 being m0fe than H Small-IOQVH Judffcgg

even a well-known criminologist._ In fact, he had agreahy piglished
quite a number of literary and Ph110S0Ph131 txksih gt
T P
little before the 189f0s,
sgme Of(;lVtl:l;)
lteoszgeggs
(in new versions) a ter e a move
-

I5. Sec (owl

1|"/I l.

(-<><lill|"

ll

_ki

li '-"
~

(I979)

_md

mhcm

I/H

i/ii

u/ I/ll /ml-/it

instance, he published a collection of poeins and sliort stories, but

soon
changed his mind and bought back the remaining stock. In the eighties,
he also wrote a few longer science ction stories. One,
The Bull,

Giants, was a reflection on the Psychophysiologiwl debates of the

decade, depicting a society in which the head of each newborn
infant
was placed into a mold in order to produce the proper bumps
(and
therefore gifts) for science and play. The other, A Fragment

of Future
History Was a more direet retieetion on soeiologieal Phenomena
do
seiihing a World in Whieh the sun had heeonle eiitinet and nian was
roreed underground With all the ehanges in soeiai relations
that
implied. The two stories were not published until the nineties, however; the latter being widely acclaimed for its originalityie
Tarde was literally an eeeentrie in niany resPeets- His
thought
showed more ainity with Anglo-Saxon individualism than with
the
various kinds of collectivism (socialism, nationalism) which came
to
dominate French republicanism (and even neoconseivatism) in his
day.
He had niore airinity with eighteenth ahd early nineteehth'eentuly
French thinkers than with many of his contemporaries. In a
way this
eiilturai leeway helPed hiih see through the shorteolhings or eeitain
eonternporary ideas and lay the groundwork for oyereoniing
theml-lire so inany Pioneers of his day, Tarde was Well aedualnted
with
the historical background of philosophy and recent developments
in
neighboring countries. His thought was clearly related to certain English, German, and French schools. His central notion of imitation,
for
instance, was basically an offshoot from a long tradition of British
thinkers sueh as Smith the Mills and SPeneer- They felt that individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness would automatically
lead
to soeiai Progress, heeause egotisin would he held in eheek by synr
pathy and innovations would spread through imitation. One iniinediate Predeeessor or Tarde in this reslieet was Bagehot, WhOse i>OOk
Physics and Politics contained an entire chapter on the role of imitation
in nation building. It was translated into French and underwent a rapid
sueeession or rePrints-17 Tardeis tripartite iheehanlsni or imitation
opposition, and invention, furthermore, was clearly reminiscent
of the
Hegelian scheme of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
I6. The English translation was prefaced by H. G. Wells. It has been published again
in recent
I7. iiieriingihei was published in 1872, the French translation in 1877. Sighcle
(1891. Inn )
referred to a fth French printing of I885. According to several authors, the
Russian
psychosociology of Mikhailovsky (1842-1904) contained similm ('li'n|t'||l\

/,i,,/in Strpittl

p.\'_\'i'/In/u_t(v

tilt)

Fina|ly_ his tlioui-_li|s on the history of ideas Were in turn insPired hy

n sueoession ol" French predecessors all Of WhOni shared
a Vivid
interest in psychology, philosophy, logic, mathematics, and time Se-

ries. The rst of these was (dc) Condillac (1715-80), author of Essai
Sn; [Origins des Connaissances Humdines (essay on the origins of
nnman knowledge) and other works, W110 distinguished thoughts arid
passions, and already tried to formulate the laws governing their asso_
ciation. The second was Maine de Biran (1766-1824), author of Essai
sur les Fondements de la Psychologie and other works, which emphasized the importance of ideas, and the primacy of inner life. The third
and foremost inuence was Antoine COu111Ot (1,307-77) author ot
Considrorions stir la Marche des Ides 6! des Evnements dons lea
Temps Modernes (reections on the course of ideas and events in
modern times) and other works, which developed a probabilist view of
soeial change, It was to the memory Of COuII1ot that Tarde dedicated
his rst and most renowned study of psychology and soeioiogy~ Miiet
(I970) wrote a detailed monograph on the background of Tardes philosophy of history. A related contemporary French author, one might
add, was Fouille, who (also) emphasized the extraordinary role of
ides forces in historical change. It should be noted, however, that
Tarde took painstaking care in distinguishing his own thought from that
of others,
As early as the 1370s, Tarde had embarked on devising a wideranging philosophical system of his own, He had written two mannscripts, La Dirence Universelle and L68 P0$$iblas, and a hook; L
Rptition et lEv0luti0n des Phnomenes. Although they remained
unpublished for some time,i8 they already contained the essential ingredients of his later thought. One may distinguish four axioms. First:
The real emerges from the possible ii1fOugh eontingehey Seeehdi
The real is articulated by resemblances and differences. Third: The
philosopher and the scientist Should study these resenihiahees and
differences in their repetition. Fouhi The nature of the Prevaieht
repetition is different in physics (vibration), biology (heredity), and
sociology (imitation). Thus the social fact par exeellenceis imitation,
and psychology and sociology should focus on discovering its laws.
In the course of the 1880s, Tarde attempted to do just that in various
aI.tic16S which he contributed to [he Revue Phil0S0phiqM and
Other

journals A

ma-tor Study by Lubek

|x, Smite oi ll it llllllrtl Ill lu\

W(>l|\ on

U98 has Shown that as early as the

I.'()p]m.\'iIin!| I/riiw-r".n>II1', |mb||\l|i-ll in I897.

200

'1'/11'

em if]

II/1' /in//n"

mideighties, Tarde embarked on a pionccring work in two parts, to bc

titled Psychologie Sociale et Logique Sociale. The rst pait, however,
was published in 1890 as Les Lois de lImitati0n. His rst major
.
.
.
.
.
.
. .
noncriminological work, it
rapidly established him
as an original
thinker. The second part was published in 1895 as La Logique Soia1e,_19 and a popular summary followed
in 1898, Les Lois Sociales
Esquzsse d une Soclologze.
Every now and then, Tarde said, new ideas occur: an invention is

'l}m/1'. Suriul

f Tarde,s

k,

hblc

5'

um

201

]).\'_\'('II()I()_I{_y

summary 0

stem

m3d@- MOTC Qftn Old ideas are C9Pied3 imita-ti0l'1 is the I'U1O"
occasion, however, certain people resist imitation, and opposition
occurs. Thus society is characterized by the spreading of novelties
(fashion) and the conservation of habits (custom). The social process is
a continual interweaving of these various tendencies.
What Tarde meant may best be illustrated by the well-known water
metaphors. On the one hand, one may think of smaller and larger drops
falling into a pond, creating a pattem of widening circles, penetrating
each other and disappearing again. On the other hand, one may think
of tiny streams owing into rivers, seeking a bed, eroding banks,
pounding dams, etcetera. Society is like one large irrigation system:
with currents, undercmrents, and countercurrents in constant ux.
The psychosocial realities to which these three forms of imitation
apply are twofold, Tarde said. On the one hand, there is the cognitivc
aspect of beliefs (croyances). On the other hand, there is the
aective/conative aspect of wishes (dsirs). Both may be considered quane
tities: the latter force usually being stronger than the former. According
to Tarde, these characteristics of the person correspond to various other
elements. Clark (1969, p. 39) summarized this system as shown in
Table 5. On the basis of this conceptualization, Tarde attempted
to
discover the laws governing imitation.
He said these existed on various levels. First, there were logical
laws. The spreading of an innovation, for instance, may depend on il
rational consideration of its practical uses. The elements are introduced
in a collective meditation, they are confronted in a logical
duel."
and this may lead to logical coupling an acceptance of the
innovir
tion (possibly in a somewhat adapted form). Second, there were extra
logical laws. Imitation often conforms to psychological and so
ciological preconditions. Those who are closer to the source ol
19.

Milet (1970, p. 31) had La Logique s()('i(lI( publlslltd in l><')l_ <-i...i in.-i, ,, (,, ,,, WM
The title page of my copy bears the nicnlion I895.

Probabilistic
Conditions

Credibility
Desi]-ability

Pergonality
characteristics
B1if
Desire

social
imitation
patterns
CIe(lLlllty

Docilny

Social
beliefs

Public opinion
General Wlll

BM

cultural
elements

Truth
Va ue

Source: T. N. Clark, Gabriel Tarde on Communication and Social Inuence (Chicago:

UI1iv- of Chicago PMS 1969) P~ 39'

innovation will adopt it sooner than those who are farther away. Those
who possess prestige and power are more easily imitated than Others,
and so on.
In various articles and books, Tarde contrasted this approach with
the biologism of Worms and the sociologism of Durkheim. Sociology, Tarde said, could only be built on (social) psychology. Durkheim, of course, did not fail to retort that this approach amounted to
psychologism instead. For several years, then, their rapidly escalating
debate marked the new eld of sociology.
Both authors were trying to work out a foundation for this young
discipline, and inevitably did so in opposition to contemporary views.
Tarde was fteen years older than Durkheim (and was to die thirteen
years earlier). He was already middle-aged when he published his rst
work on (psycho) sociology in 1890. Durkheim, by_ contrast, was
much younger when he published his doctoral thesis 111, 1893. It inreferences to Tarde s work, and
cluded a dozen mostly critical
review
in
the Revue f)hll0S0phlqu. Yet,
Tarde reacted with a critical
the exchange was still courteous. In 1894 Durkheim addeda substantial footnote on Tarde to the article that was to become the first chapter
of his landmark book on sociological methodology. Tarde reacted with
a rebuttal of Durkheim at the First International Congress of Sociology
in Paris.
In October that year, they met for the first time. Afterward they
exchanged letters, emphasizing that the debate was entirely scientic
and not at all personal. In the spring of 1895, for instance, Durkheim
wrote to 'l3mli-: I thank you for letting me know that this doctnnal
(llSl}'_l'tt|l|i||l lltN\ not diminish the cstccm which you kindly choose to
lllvl' lul ltll'_ I iln In ll lli"lil In ltll ytlll lllill, lflllll lily Sltlt, lily (ltlLlLllLl

Au

I/H.

H I/H.

I,/,/I.

Iiirilr

for your work and person remains fully iiitiicl."-" llut the tone soon
tumed from irony to sarcasm. Tarde made highly critical references lo
Durkheims notion of social facts in some of his articles and books ol
those days; Durkheim devoted an entire chapter of his famous book on
suicide to a refutation of Tardes notion of imitation. After 1898 (that is
to say at the height of the Dreyfus affair), the polemic tumed sour and
divided the sociological world for years to come?
For a long time, Tarde and Durkheim lived geogra hicall rather
close to each other, but apparently without getting tggethefi Tarde
remained in Sarlat (only a hundred miles east of Bordeaux) until 1894,
when he came to Paris. Two years later he started lecturing at Boutmys unofficial Beole Libre des Sciences Politiques (see Chapter 1, on
Taine) and at Weills similarly unofficial College Libre des Sciences
Sociales. It was only in 1900 that he was made a professor at the
oicial College de France (and a member of the equally official Acadmie des Sciences Morales et Politiques). His request to change the
title of the chair from philosophy to psychological sociology was
turned down, and upon his death four years later he was succeeded by a
philosopher Bergson.22 Durkheim, on the other hand, lectured in
Bordeaux until 1902, when he was made a professor at the Sorbonne in
Paris. Within a year, mutual colleagues organized lectures and a public
debate between Durkheim and Tarde the culmination of their longlasting dispute.
T. Clark noted that the debate represented more than a simple
disagreement of personalities; in it, two conicting traditions of
thought, two opposing sectors of French society, two hostile sets of
institutions did battle (p. 8). On the one hand, there was Caite
sianism. The legacy associated with Descartes was identified with
reason, order, and authority, and housed in the bureaucratic institutions
exemplifying this esprit de gomtrie such as the governmental
administration and the state educational system. On the other hand was
the basic cultural conguration of spontaneity: It was a mentality
of
artistic creation, romantic subjectivism, and personal invention guided
by an esprit de finesse (ibid.).
Tarde reproached Durkheim that his self-contained world of social
20. Milet in Tarde (1973). p. 24,11. 10 (my translation).
21. Van Heerikhuizen, Het Eigenaardige van de Sociologie, ch. 3a; Lukes,
Emile Durkheim, cli
16
22. Milet (1970, pp. 26, 383 ff.) notes certain affinities between the tlioiiglits
BefgSOn.

of

lll}

-~
.\ii1iI/ /i_\\i/iiiIu_i.\
1

facts and collective coiiscioiisiiess was it reilication, and excludcg

social conict. l_)lll'kilLllIl retoited that larde s concept of ll'l1lI3llOnlH
his psychological reductionism were vague and C0I1If11d1t1'Y-_ n_ta
way, it was the age-old discussion over the relation between cqlntinuli Y
and change, the whole and the parts. Each contended that the at E
twisted his message and used debater s tncks t0 gel thf uPPT
posi
10I1S
up
indefensible
H
and
took
cases
their
overstated
both
fact,

in

one time or another.

There can be little doubt, however, that Durkheim came

(glut

tlie

winner. His inuence on French s0C11gY gmw Helge; Otutshz;

whereas Tardes impact diminished. This was pIT1Y ill? tot e 3;:
Tarde had always remained a loner, lecturing 0Y_1lY 1_T Yeah
prestigious (but still somewhat marginal) official instituttion, w erw
Durkheims fifteen years at an equally official (but muc linorzllh
ential) institution enabled him to build a powerful n6IV\;]OI , w e
the end penetrated the entire university system, the tealc er s tco gv 61,1
and the lyces. Lubek and others have surmnarized [115 con ragi
by saying that Tarde may have dV1Pd an exemp
par; g atic
para lgm
but unlike Durkheim, lacked the support of a
community.23
le has
Lubek has also demonstrated how the outcome o t is s
continued to affect social science even today. Between t Chml d On;
111:and the early 1980s, the Social Science Citation Index Z ovii
less
t
an
against
Wt)
to
Durkheim,
references
thousand
than four
dred to Tarde. Since the 1970s, however, there 1S a tin}ih_revi1vaas
interest in Tarde. This is largely due to the redisc0VTY_ 91 15 rot;
predecessor of social psychology, interactionist socioh<_>gY,_ a llfn
studies, communication research, and most of all due to 15 P1ifrlg
years gkilld)
views on opinion fonnation. The ideasof his later
and
llS
\_*/:5 QM-my);
show a further development in this direction,
d t. | .
vsit
related to the events of the day, particularly to the Affaip
A, which revealed the power of Opinion with a capita .

960$

The Dreyfus affair and the emergenciof modern public opinion

'
century. IN W ll ll iii".
Over the last few decades of the nineteenth
'
'
a
rear
have
I " Y [Ll ' I H i t l U H
"i '
interaction gr.idu.illy emerged. We
~

Tarde iinil
2

l.

SUP .il-.i

.i

ll

"

In

Iii-.|itioiiiili/;|l|o|i iil Sm |o|<'l "

-I

|"""|'l "'

|'

Hi

I/iv era of the public

France was the first major
European nation to introduce
universal
(male) suffrage on a l as ti
ng b asis.
'
Compulsory education
'
had fuither
the debate on public issues.
'
fwidened
The press law of the early
.
.
avored wide-ranging
1880S
.
freedom of ex r
.
P eSS1oI1(elthough thls
what limited again by the
lois scelerates of the mid-1890s)was somenewspapers (which began
. Pop ular
to s rin
Empire and the beginning of P g up toward the end of the Seeottd
the Third Republic) were
ourishing. The
largest rst hit the mi'll'ion
copy mark in
' the memorable
days of the late
nineties. The rap id rise
'
in
'
newspaper circulation
'
'
durin
'
preceding the First World
g these deeades
War, and its relative stabilization
during the
decades preceding the Second
World War, can easily be
discemed from
Table 6 (compiled from
Frmy 1977).
Whereas there had been
an average of less than
one newspaper in
two households during
'
'
the early Third
'
Republic,
there
was an average
of more than one n
eWsP*P
1
"3
First
"S a e ou reak of the
'
World War. This
' e mergence of a
popular press profoundly
.
ened the horizons
broad. of the average citizen Le Petit.
. .
.
Parisien, which
soon to surpass Le Petit
w
Journal as the largest d
.
editorial in 1893: To read
=11'1 Y, noted in an
ones newspaper is to live
the universal life,
the life of the capital,
of all the towns , of all France,
the life of all
nations. . . . It is thus that
in a great country like Fran
thought, at one and the
same time, animates
the whole population. . . . It is the newspaper
which
'
establishes
'
this
' sublime con]n]u_
nion of souls [minds] across
d'istances. "24 The emergence
of the popular press, then, created a
major precondition for
the emergence of
modem pubic opinion :
not the elite OPIHIOH that
liberal and other
theorists had long postulated
as a keY t 0 democratic
.
.
'
functioning,
true mass opinion . It communicated
but a
new mood s to the public
.
whole city or an entire
of a
. .
country. The political c onsequences
.
.
.
of this. new
sit ua tion were far-reaching.
One of the public moods
cultivated by a vast majorit
of n
was nationalism. Some,
however, sought to exacerbate
it to the
treme, in order to make
political capita
' 1 out of it. The
odd alliance of
Blanquist socialists, radicals,
militarists, monarchists,
and clencalists
that had 1'ine d up behind
'
Boulanger a few years earlier
now sought to
revive itself around a new
unifying theme and found
,
It
'
111
' xenophobia.
Pans had gradually

become the cultural capital

of Europe, and
France had become the
'
mo st cosmopolltan
'
natlon
of Europa In his

WWTWMW
ya,
'

if?/o

24. October 13. Quoted

by Zeldin, France 1848-I945,
Vol. 4, p IKI

Ab

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'
The crowd Walling
'
'
for news t S ide
the building
0 f L t1 Cocarde as seen in an 1890
.
.
.
H
French hook "" ht Pm
,
(From Cl. Bellanger
(6 d_) Histoire
by Clv.'S gm
;,{n(ruli'iIi- Iu/in-nu/}'iiri(iii.\'e.
Paris, Prcsscs Universitaires dc France. 1972. 0PP- P.
2xx_ ()iI)'_m.|| .1.-.->-mil hv l~ l'"*'Y"
"1~"" h y F. 06.1"
' *"
_Imumi/. |l('"' l
-

"'

,'~

206

The cm

15/

//ir

IJHII/H

of newspaper circulation under the Third

Republic in France (in thousands)

Table 6. Evolution

Newspapers

1867

Le Temps (1861)
Le Petit Journal (1866)
Le Figaro 0866)
L8 P81ll Rpublique (1875)
Le Petit Paris"
mi (1876)
La Lanterne (1877)
LIntransigeant (1880)
La Croix (1883)
Le Marin (1884)
Total Paris
Total Provinces
Total France

I914

1920

23

45
850

00

ios
l96
39

16
47
1,295

155

28

72

46

300
647

_
200
963

Population
Inhab. per copy

1912

37,000
38.9

2 000

5 50011

4 O00

750
2,750

38,000
13.8

I78
8|

"53;myw3niuvZJ
<

,
1421

it Z
1

la ,?*..$il;1;,'-':.*?,,T"I~;,
.2;a;a
.18
wvw
wzw/ex
N
,
%

usei

qt

313

"

-==a=a==..i.-==-;===--

=1

::=

Xi

1.

W
F

..

..

W-MW

.. .

=='

,~I

3;

W,

24%,}

*1

,.

xv

X,

~13
. ,,*1
t ti

gr

>

ii;

lg.

'

===;;;:\..=.

at

8*
\

>0
-- V'

ihwl

'

w~;a
wt

1*

aw

@-

- it

ta

1%

Iv

>>

..
Q

=sI=E_=555=5===-.=-

3.7

data.

Source: D. and M. Frmy, Quid I978 (Paris, RTL/Laffont, 1977), p. 1322.

study on Intellect and Pride in France, Zeldin (p. 16) gives the gures
wn in a e
Around the turn of the century, foreign residents and recently naturalized citizens amounted to some 4 percent of the total population
(and at least double that proportion of the active population). Many of
these People were immigrant workers from neighboring countries
.
~.
.
.
.
.
.
.
This created quite a bit
of friction with
local labor in certain bordcr
areas, but they were marginal in the power structure and could therefore hardly be depicted as a direct threat to the nation. On the other
hand, the Catholic press made much more out of the Free Masons
.
l_
Protestants, and Jews in high places in
the big cities who often
originated from the betrayed Alsace-Lorraine region and had Gcr-

..

tat

~==-

41 ,000

at

500
'
5 500

40,000
4.2

.~

W
1

11,000

ta

I41 1

9,500"

,,,,

4_

"$1

pp

2( )7

p.\'_v('li0log_v

1w*W'Y< -w~<'i1'-i~""'"' 1""'M"~.:t,,',

,";;f$fr;,:(a,~M,; L5?

1880

584

763

.i
Social

'I'url'.'

...

Since the Middle Ages, Jews had often been excluded from the
possession of agricultural land throughout Europe and from the priicIiC6 Of $01116 tI&di[iOI13l trades. ThiS had often led them IO live in ll1L
urban areas and enter modern professions ranging from nance and
trade to intellectual and creative endeavors. In the course of the cap
italist, industrial, social, and democratic revolutions, mziny of them
came to play a key role in promoting secular Iilicizilisin.

,,

/V

"
.

>-w<Ka

.;1>ia%%@l

if

VI!

,
-=;a;==.=._.;a;:_.__,=a;

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,

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at
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WWW

(Top) A newsstand goes up in ames during a demonstration in 1393- (Bottom) The

following day, people read the paper next to an overtumed newsstand. (From R. (16

Livois, Histoire gnrale de la Pfesse f"1"11iS'- V01 2- Lusi

34L O'lli""' i mbumhque Nauonalel

5P$~ 1965, P-

'

H H

0/ I/H

'

I, /H
I

Table 7_ Foreign res,-den. and nummneun-any

in France during tne lane, half of the
nineteenth Century
Foreign

i35i

330,900
497,000

13,500
15,300

:23

1891

1:130:000

1901

1,034,000

2%

1861

1701700

Total

513,600

vl~ 3- I"'eC "4

Si"'
T Zeldin F"e 848_1945'
Pride (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1980), p.

Jaws becam

I I

l6.

p Omlnen among entrepreneurs and workers,

6
.

25

'

sc111-

'

Some. stuck to orthodoxy but mt aSS1m11atd' 1"

Spite of thls many remamed marked as Cultural Outslders t a certain
ainbigouslPoSiti0n,may_help to explain their Outstanding
S. O Cu. um imovailons In gnefal and to ha emergence
apan . from thc
of psychosoclal
.
mainstream,
' Sclence 99In pamcular'26 The" place
C
' '
hristian
however, made it easier to associate them
18.8 and zimsts

80,000 in France; only a tiny fraction were recent arrivals. Yet, they
provided a convenient target for French nationalism, capable of uniting
proletarians, shopkeepers, and bourgeois alike against the enemy
within against Rothschild, Ravachol & Company as one antiSCl'1litiC leader put it.29
It was suddenly discovered that prominent bankers of the controversial Panama canal project (Reinach and Herz), as well as prominent
socialist theorists (Marx, Lassalle) were Jews of German extraction.
Agitators found their plot theory went down extremely well among
certain sectors of the population, including the most rebellious ones.
The French nationalist leader Barres said the anti-Jewish formula
was extremely powerful in mobilizing the population because it was
based on hatred. Listen to the crowd shouting Down with the Jews
in the meetings it is Down with social inequality which one should

. .
.
,,
hear. The French antisemitic leader Drumont conrmed that the
masses . . . more surely guided by their instincts than we are by our
horses
knowled g e, des P ise the conservative P art Y, theY ee it J'ust like
.
.
.
flee the dead.3 At the time, therefore, the German socialist leader
Bebe] plainly characterized antisemitism as the socialism of fools.
This foolishness was provided with a certain air of scientic validity
by the race theories of the day, however, which identied the Jews as a
parasitic people living o" the knowledge and wealth of the superior Aryansy In the book precedmg his Psychology ofpeoples, Gustave

Naturalizations
(Previous decade)

msidets

Ycar

209

illll/'t/('.' Suriul ps_vi'liulug_v

with the 1"aPid hange_5 thfeatening traditional 5f>itY to dPi_t them

as agents of subversion. It also proved conducive to the revival of

Le Bon alluded to the Jewish ban on idols, and concluded that

the Jews have possessed neither arts, nor sciences, nor industry,
nor anything of that which constitutes a civilization. They have
never made even the faintest contribution to the edication of
human knowledge. They have never surpassed that semibar~
barous state of peoples without a history. If they ended in having
cities, it is because living conditions, amidst neighbors which had

ami$@miIi$m-

The pogroms of the 1880s and 18905 had accelerated Jewish migra_
tion from Eastem to Central Europe, and to a lesser extent to Western
Europe. The French Revolution had emancipated the Jews. During
the late nineteenth century, however, their number did not exeeed

arrivad at a Supgrior level of evolution made it 3 necessity for

25. An interesting though controversial study of their socioeconomic position in certain Euro
pean countries La conception matrialiste de la question juive was written by a Jewish

them,31

Trotskyite from Belgium, Abraham Lon. It was reconsidered by Rodinson a.o. in l97l. ()i|

"f

T''"i""' h- 2h same Sbj S Ah'd" The 0"3i"

26. Keller, Und Wurden Zerstreut unter alle Vlker (p. 465), mentions Freud, Marx Lombroso
Lazarus, and Steinthal, among many others, but omits Durkheim and a great many (ll|lt|
early sociologists and psychologists.
27.Lon (LaConception ateria isle de la Question

'
'~
'

Juive,
ch. 7) mentions a migration
tiom

'M"l'

Easmm Europe of an average of 1000 Jews Per ya bctwun .moo ml I880 50'0()O. PM
Y ear in the 1880 s an d 1890 , an dth en l 3-5.000 per yCi.lT-Ulllli tht lint Woilil W.ir_ Lohtl tiii
Rodinson and others) mcntions a migration ot 3,5 inilliiiii iN'|Wtt'II liittii iiiiil WM.
~

.~

It is true that the publication of an earlier version of this chapter in the

Revue Sclennque had ehclted lmmedlata Cnt1clSm' But Le Bon per28

rum., me

Gd,0

_.

I789

260

2). The M.'iu|ui~. ilc Miiics. Sec Slernhcll, Lu l)r0ilr' R1v0lulinniiuir1', p. I78.
W S_mh,.||V In [nun], R,whnmnmn,.e' pp 3()q_ |i;7 ,.eS|m.|m.|y (my 0nm|n|H,")
_

Ir\

It niii ii

I\III\|iII|lI|\_ |i (\|

(lily lttlllhiilllnli)
.

Tarde: Social psychology

The em Of ll"? public

210

sisted (and the discussion was proudly reprinted only a few years ago
by political admirers, as an example of a courteous exchange).32
It should be acknowledged that in those days, many other authors
held similar views. That same year, Georges Vacher de Lapouge published his notorious LAryen Son Role Social, and Edouard Drumont
had published his equally notorious La France Juive just a few years
before. Antisemitic newspapers and organizations were springing up
everywhere. They were eagerly waiting for a major opportunity to
demonstrate the treachery of the Jews. In 1894 they seemed to have
found it at last.

During the spring of that year the largest daily, Le Petit Journal, started
a serialized novel, Les Deux Frres, written by Ltang. It told of
obscure schemers who stole a batch of secret documents from the
.
Frenc h war Ministry, add ed a note manifestly oifenng them to the
enemy, imitated the handwriting of a captain they meant to implicate,
had the incriminating materials discovered at his home, and then
tipped off a newspaper to stir up a public outrage. This scenario may
have given some people an idea, because it closely resembled the affair
that unfolded later in the autumn of that same year.
The rst phase of the affair began when antisemitic officers at the
French intelligence agency claimed to have discovered a note offenng
at'
secret documents among the wastepaper of the German military
tach in Paris. They also claimed to have traced it to a Jewish captain
working at the French War Ministry, originating from the contested
Alsace-Lorraine region and with a German name: Dreyfus. Experts
(including the criminologist Beitillon) later conrmed that the handwriting closely resembled his. The accusers claimed to possess even
more incriminating clues, but declined to produce them because of
their condential nature. They also tipped off Drumonts newly
founded amisemitlc daily La Lib,-e Pa,-Ole, which had earlier revealed

mi.

aPPrvali which continued to resound throughout the festive l''t"

Quarter the whole evening. Shortly after New Yi::ir's Day, l)rcyl'us was
32.

Rm

rlm" Jul/.\' (/||Il.\' Ii!

('i\'ili.\u!inri (Piiiis Ir Aiiiii. Ill IN

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the role of Jewish bankers in the Panama scandal.

.
On the eve of Christmas 1894, Dreyfus was condemned for high
treason. According to one observer, a large crowd outside the prison
and 0l1I'thu$e in the Rut? du Ctlerche Midi (that is t $3), around tilt
comer from where Tarde lived) greeted the verdict with savage crics ol

mwwemv ta reexes WW

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4:

l ii

The degradation of the traitor Dreyfus at the Ecole Militaire." Front page oi lht
1895. (From Cl. Bcllangcr (cd. )_
illustrated supplement of Le Petit Journal, Jan. . 13,P6
Uni flair d_ F
P
.
, , le d la
H._ .
fr CL,
L
C
VCTSI
f SSCS
aI'1S,
8
PTESSC fl'l1IlL1lS
l.Sl0lI" 88718711
W72 opp P. 289)

stripped of his rank before the assembled troops at the nearby lilcolc
Mimairc, H |ym_h mob pmsslng against the galcS_33 The |(,||(,winll
iiionlh lic was \tIl| oll to the notorious prison colony of |)cvil's Islam!

ll

'|lii~ |.i-In

/Iumui
ml |_,_

Al

|~.-liti- i-iii

lli

Jr l \llt*~'@ 1"
bl .,..

tum li (ii

ll'|ll|lVl ol lhr ll|lIIlllI(I\|l\iI\(\l liziiilivi I, Ill lna -wvrii Vtlllllllt

I, In lU_ ll)_(|ll(I|l'\Ill!-1'tI|li('l\/ilillill. 'lIIlll|UlI|\l|||ill

ll"! l\'iil

2l2

'I'/iv cm 0/ I/Ii

limlv: Social p.\'_v<~ImIog_v

/PH/'/11'

(off Guyana) by a howling crowd. 'l'hcre was just one snag: He kept
,
,
,
proclaiming his innocence. His elder brother, a doctor friend (with
an
interest in hypnotic suggestion, by the way), and a Jewish journalist
took up his plight.34 But it was to take three full years, before their
timid protests found a significant echo in public opinion. The second
phase started when a new head at the intelligence agency found that
secret information was still being passed on to the German embassy.
The prime suspect was a dubious major by the name of Esterhazy, and
his handwriting more or less matched the original note as well. After
an aide came up w ith more fake evidence
'
against
'
Dreyfus, and after it'
became clear that his
superiors
wanted to take him off the case, he
confided in a lawyer friend who in turn alerted the vice-president of
the senate, Scheurer-Kestner, himself a Protestant with a German
name. B y th en, o th ers a begun to take an interest in the case as well.
- .
.
.
.
.
. .
.
Among thCl'l'l WHS EIIHIC Zola: an al'ltlC1flC3llSt
a.l'l[lIIllllt3.I'lSt) Of
Italian descent who had just completed his multivolume c ycle of best '
seller novels, Les Rougon Mae-quart. He contributed various articles to
Le Figaro denouncing the crowd psychology of hate mongers, and the
popular masses unconscious longing for another caesar.35 When
the liberal-conservative daily turned reluctant, he went over to the
newly founded radical newspaper LAurore to continue his crusade.
In mid-January 1898 the course of events accelerated. On the 11th,
the real culprit Esterhazy was acquitted by the court, and acclaimed by
a joyful crowd. Scheurer-Kestner was not reelected as a vice president
of the Senate. The prospects of the Dreyfusards looked dim, unless
something dramatic occurred. Zola therefore decided to shift his po
lemic into a higher gear. He wrote his famous open letter to the President of the Republic, claiming that the army high command had
willfully tampered with the evidence, and daring them to sue him. He
.
once again referred to crowds, psychology, and the collective madness
induced by the press campaigns. The chief editor, the radical leader
Clemenceau himself, converted the oft-repeated phrase JAccuse"
from the end of the article into a headline covering the entire front
_

page.

It caused

a Sensation

A few
of the Intellec days later, L Aurore published a Manifesto
,
,
tuals In which a numb of weH'kn0wn sclemlsts and Wnters Jomed
Zola in his call for a fair trial. It was here that the word intellectual
,

34. Matthieu Dreyfus, Dr. Gilbert, and Bernard Lazare. Sec G1|lll|llkI', "l)!:'\'fi4.\i|nl.\'," p, lat
35. See Zola, L'A'aire Dreyfus, pp. 39 and 4l.
36. Zola, I.'Af/hire I)rr{v/u.\", pp. l l5~ Z2.

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escalating Press Cmpig

(TP)_DYl1m0I1t'$ amismitic daily La Lib" Parlfle
The traitor Dreyfus
The Jewish plot (Sept. 10, 1896). (From R. Gauthier

titled

_"
(d.) Diyfusards

'1

',

.3

Cl

P? Mhard 1965 after

) .( mom)
me?a S
radical daily L'Aur0re titled I Accuse Letter to Pthe132
President of the Republic by
Emie Zola (Jan. 13, 1898). (From W. Keller, Und warden zerstreut unter alle Vlker.
Munich/Zurich: Knaur, 1966, after p. 272.)
,

214

'I'/11'

rm

<5]

I/ll /'llI'/It

ll:/ilv. Suriril p.s'_v<'/ml0_i,'_v

acquired its present-day meaning of opinion leader." The antisemites

reacted with dozens of demonstrations clamoring Down with thc

Jews and Long Live the Arn"iY~ The) niehiiiled an estimated tel"
thousand in Marseiiie Bordeaux, and Angers; three th0uSI1d ill
Nantes; two thousand in Rouen; more than a thousand in Lyons and

Dyeni and erewds aise gathered in Reiins, Naney saint-Die, Bar-it

Due and nian) other tvvns~37 The denienstratiehs seen turned int"
riots attacking Jewish houses. A veritable pogrom occurred in the
French colony of Algeria, where some 160 shops were plundered, sct
atire, or devastated
The politician Poincare compared the nationwide agitation to a nervous breakdown. His radical colleague Reinach later interspersed his
famous reconstruction of the events with references to hypnotic suggestien, and even devoted several Pages to an extensive summary dis
the erewd psychology ef Sigheie, Fdiirhiai Le Bah, and Tardesx
Meanwhile, Zeta had indeed been shed, and taeed the eehit in FehI11arY- Bnt the entieek reniained griin- That month, the revisionist ihteiieetliais revived the higue (Pour ia Defense) des Dreits de
iHninie a grnP tetaiing seine 8,000 PePie- Faeihg theih, hWever, was a far more formidable alliance of anti-Dreyfusard leagues.
Later that Year, fer instanee the Ligne de ia Patrie FranaiS was
founded; it came to represent some 100,000 people.39
Arneng the earl) erewd PsYeh9igists theinseives, nene Piayed ii
particularly prominent role in the debate. But the psychopathologist Lc
Ben was eieari) an anti'DreYhisard whet fer eneei dehdiiheed the
esmPiitan eiite and Praised the XenPhhie masses in his P~Weh0i'
ogie ti" Soeiatisme (PP- 6i2 and 340, arneng thers)~ BY eehtrast, the
ieading eriniineiegists er the Freneh seheeii sdeh as Laeassagne and
Tafde (like these Of the itaiiali sehdei, slleh as Ldmhresd, FeI'riand Sigheie) defended the fhie of iavv- Tarde never teek Piitieai
Positions in his Writings, however, her is there evidenee that he
rushed te sign a Petition shPPerting Dreyfus eahse, as Barrevvs
would have it.4
37. Stemhell, La Droite Rvolutionnaire, p. 232.
38. Poincars speech of January 30 in Limoges is quoted in Zevaes, LAaire Dreyfus, p. l I)
Reinachs Histoire de lAaire Dreyfus references to crowd psychology are particulzulv
elaborate on pages 289, but can be found throughout the third (and to a lesser extent Ihr
other) volumes.
39. These figures are given by Debray, in Le Pouvoir lnrellez-rue! vn I~'rum-0, p. 67, n. l.
40. As Barrows (1981) notes on the last page of her hook, in wlml |n;|v h.w<- lwcli slip ol ||ll'

Dtirkncim, tin), was prudent at rst; being a Jew from the northeast
with a German nnme himself, and married to a (not closely related)
Dreyfus at that. But he soon made up his mind, and became secretary
general of the Bordeaux chapter of the Ligue pour la Dfense des
Droits tie 1*H0mme_ when Bi-nnetire (later an activist in the Opposing Ligue de la Patrie Frangaise) attacked the intellectuals, Durkheim published an article in the Revue Bleue, defending their special
rote in soeiety,41
The dividing line between anti-Dreyfusards and Dreyfusards often
ran through institutions, parties, and even families. For two years, it
was hardly possible to have a dinner party without people quarreling
ever The Affair During that same period, public figures fought no less
than twenty well-publicized duels over it.42
The third phase was a protracted struggle, in which first one side,
then the other, seemed to have the upper hand. For the time being, the
revisionist bloc remained fairly small. In the spring of 1898 elections,
the Left continued its advance, but several outspoken Dreyfusards
were not elected while fifteen nationalists and four antisemites were.
In spite of new revelations on procedural errors committed during the
Original trial, and 3 suicide note by an officer involved in forging
evidence, Zola felt forced to flee to London in order to escape arrest.
The fourth phase began only in February 1899, when president Felix
Faure, who had consistently opposed a revision, died during a secret
assignation with 3 woman. Anti-Dreyfusard leaders (encouraged by
monarchist backers) tried to tum his funeral procession into a protest
march on the presidential palace and a military putsch, but they failed.
The new president proved more open-minded, and by June a new
cabinet was formed in which the republican parties put aside their
differences in the interest of a united defense of the constitution. Zola
retumed from exile, and Esterhazy confessed. But the army high command still refused to yield. Upon his retrial, Dreyfus was condemned
again, albeit with extenuating circumstances. He was pardoned
shortly thereafter, but it was only seven years later, on the eve of a 14th
of July, that he was fully rehabilitated (and given a decoration for his
plight). The law had prevailed, but only very, very narrowly. It was
3l1OIh6I' lesson, b0th fOI' th d6f6IldI'S Of parliamentary democracy Eld
its enemies_
4|

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215

ll I981 ),
\I/.111:

Ifrnilv Durkheim, ch. l7; Goddijn, Soviulogic, Sorrialisme en Democra-

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was l earned . The authoritarian
nationalists, who had already
discovered the potential of the caesar-type formula
durin g th~
Boulanger episode, discovered the power of racist agitation
durin th Dreyfus affair. It exploited suspicion and hate which crowd
psychofogy
had identied HS 1'IlOI'C pOWl'fUl ITIOITVCS than SOlld&I'lty
and l()Vc_
Fl1l'thCln101'e it discgvgfed that the resulting vi0]enCc Could ha used U
intimidate selected opponents. Ahrendt said: What ha i
'
pp('n"( "I
_

France in the eighties and nineties happened thirty and forty years later
in all European nation-slales.43
The defenders of constitutional nile coined the term intelleetuals"
in the modern sense of the word, and discovered their potential as
opinion leaders. They also discovered the true nature of public opiir
ion, and the positive role it can play in a mass democracy. The battle of
crowds had turned into a battle of ublics On the one hand there was a
majority of newspapers headed by the antisemitie La Libre Parole,
circulating 500,000 copies on its best days. It changed the nature of the
lynch mob, urging its public to join the crowds and trying to recruit

demonstrators as readers again. On the other hand, there had been a

minority of newspapers headed by the Dreyfusard LAur0re, circulating 300,000 copies on its best days. It tried to debunk the general
paranoia with a constant appeal to reason and justice.
Halasz, in a book on the affair subtitled The Story of a Mass Hysterza, concluded, The disease which afflicted French public opinion
appears as the rst instance of its kind in history whose full course was
documented in print. The press offered not only a day-by-day recording
of the mass delusion and its heroic cure, but was also the medium
through which the event itself came to pass. The top gures of the
Dreyfus Affair were writers; the events themselves, articles in news~
papers; the combat, polemics; the weapon, the pen.44 An entirely new
era had begun. It was precisely this fact, its background and its consequences, that Tarde discussed in his key 1898-99 articles.

Tardes studies on crowds and publics,

conversation and opium"

__4

ll

.,

I7

~4

(Top) First of all: let us not speak about the Dreyfus

affair! (Bottom) They did
discuss it. Cartoon by Caran dAche illustrating the divisive
effects of the alfair on
French public opinion. (From: C. Grimberg and R. Svanstrom,
Histoire universellv,
Vol.
(Fr. ed). Verviers: Marabout, 1965_)

wh at

'2

il

move to the caplta comp may C anged hls hfe' He began

frequenting the literary salons of Paris, met many of the intellectual
celebrities of his day, and often struck up a correspondence with them.
His house at number 62 Rue Saint Placide was right in the heart of the
.
a Hat
d La. Quarter h lfwa b twee th t
r h.
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the Dreyfus affair. the Ecole Militaire and the Sorbonne. During these
Tarde

years he clearly became mom closely mtemsted In the polmcdl pm43. Ahrendl. The Origins 0fTOIali!arianism, p. 79. The dillicrence was, according to sortie, that
several ol the l~ii-nrli antisemitie leaders acknowledged that they simply exploited the |lll'llll
wlu-te.|- inativ I-I the (it-iinan nazi leaders actually helieved in it.
I ,tN
4-1. ('41/mm: /hi \/|I\ Ill

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cess. Earlier he had applied his general theory of social change to law.
in Les Transformations du Droit (I893; the transformations of law).
Now he applied it to politics in Les Transformations du Pouvoir (1898;
the transformations of power). Still later, he was to apply the amended
repetition-opposition-adaptation framework to economics.45
Throughout Tardes work of the 1890s, the emphasis continued to
shift. This is obvious from the gradual change in his use of the key
notion of imitation. Nowhere in his voluminous works does he give a
precise denition of this process, but he likened it to other topical
subjects. In the rst edition of Les Lois de lImitati0n (1890; the laws
of imitation). he likened it to suggestion, for instance. Society is
imitation, he said, and imitation is a kind of somnambulism.46 At
the time he strongly emphasized the role of leaders (meneurs)
and
hierarchy (imitation from top to bottom, from inside to outside). In his
rst article on crowd psychology, too, he largely conceived of imitation and suggestion as unilateral processes. In the preface to the second
edition of 1895, however, he already likened imitation to any interspiritual photographic imprint, so to say, whether intentional or not,
passive or active.47 Still later, he even came to speak of inter-

reection.

The prefix inter was rather rare in his early works, but it came to
dominate his later thought: interspiritual, intermental, inte1psychological. In his last articles on crowd psychology, then, imitation came
to mean interaction as a continual and mutual process. This also paralleled the gradual widening of his scope: from crowd events proper to
social movements and currents of opinion. Whereas social inuence
in
assembled groups may well be conceived as a form of suggestion, he
felt, social inuence in dispersed groups is better thought of as a fomi
of interaction. By continuing to shift the emphasis, Tarde cut loose
from the old paradigms of crowd psychology and made it possible to
bypass and transcend Le Bons limited approach. Recognition of this is
often missing from historiographies of the crowd psychologies of the
period and puts Tardes contribution in an entirely different
P6rSp6CliV-49
45. La Psychologie Economique (1902).
46. Tarde (1290/1979). p. 95.
47- Tard (1890/1979), t>- viii
48. Tarde (1893/1901), p. 29.
49. Both Moscovicis 1981 chapters on Tardes crowd psychology and Boefs
1984 book on
crowd psychology and the interactionist tradition fail to note the link I .ul>ek's I981
study uu
the lost social psychology of Tarde," by contrast, does 1-t-out-tit/t~ its ||tt|nnt;i||ce.

Itutlw: Social

/1.\1\t'Iiolo_t;_\'

2|)

Tardes Iftmlt-.\' (Iv I.\'y('lml()gie Sociale (I898) was one of the very
first books in any tnajor Westem language to include that term in their
title. That year, Tarde discovered the nature and power of modem
public opinion. This coincided with the height of the Dreyfus affair.
When I interviewed Tardes youngest son Guillaume in 1981, he conrmed that it was highly plausible there was a link, and referred back
to that memorable day in January 1898 when as a thirteen-year-old boy
he heard newspaper vendors in the nearby Rue de Rennes shout the
headline of Zolas sensational attack on the military high command in
the daily LAur0re. He remembered how his father sent the maid for a
copy, and after reading it exclaimed repeatedly: Cest extraor-

dinaire! The family also maintains that Tarde was an outspoken Dreyfusard, and got embroiled with various colleagues over the affair.5
Tardes key article Le Public et la Foule was published in the
Revue de Paris in July of that year, just when Zola felt forced to ee
abroad. The article contained only two explicit references to the Dreyfus affair, and two more to Drumont and antisemitism. Upon close
reading, however, one can easily discem a dozen more implicit allusions to the affair, particularly in the opening (pp. 5, 12, 13, 14, 15,
17) and concluding sections (pp. 52, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61). From the last
section, one can also infer that it may have been Tardes original
intention to write an article about the crimes of publics, just as he
had written earlier on the crimes of sects and the crimes of
crowds. But he apparently changed his mind in the process, recognizing that the whole question had much wider implications.
As observed in the introduction to this chapter, Tarde began the
article by contrasting publics and crowds. Crowds, he said, were a
primitive, natural phenomenon determined by the action of the looks
of others. Publics, on the other hand, were a civilized, cultural phenomenon determined by the thought of the looks of others. One
can be part of only one crowd at a time. From this follows the far
greater intolerance of crowds, and consequently of nations dominated
by the spirit of crowds. By contrast, one can belong and in fact
one always does belong simultaneously to several publics. Thus it
follows that the gradual substitution of publics for crowds . . . is
always accompanied by progress in tolerance (Tarde in Clark 1969, p.
281). Yet, this difference should not be overestimated. The man of
'
'
b
one book ls to bf: feared It has een S aid- but what is he beside the man
~

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V\I||l

t;ml|.tmm- do 'larde in his Paris appartment, November I8, I981.

220

77"

1""

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'/"' I"//"'

'IlinI<': Social

of one newspaper! This ma" is eaeh er "5 at heart, er "early

therein lies the danger of modem times (p. 283).

59, and

p.v_v<'liuIog_v

22l

opinion and its roots in informal communication was clearly linked

to the events of the dav_

The aoyanees ln eornnlhnleatlon ereateo the sensatlon or aetn'

ahtY, Tarde maintained, and the imPFVemem Of Printing teehnlt-Ines
involved ever wider groups in opinion formation. Popular newspapers
consolidated political organizations, and generated currents of opinion. Meanwhile there was a high degree of mutual penetration among

The article discussed the transformation of conversation from village gossip to the literary salons of the Enlightenment period, noting
the simultaneous expansion of letter writing and nostal serviees_s3
The newspaper has thns finished the age_old work that eonversation
began that eorrespondenee extended, hnt that always remained in a

yarlohs Pnolles reshltlng ln a larger (Pnhlle) OPlnlon' whereas Phys"

real ano olologleal raetors traee sex age) stlll Played a major role l"
crowds, psychological and social factors (faith, goals) dominated publics. Both crowds and publics had four forms of existence: expectant, attentive, expressive, or active. (Note that these temis have occasionally been mistranslated in English.)5l
All in all, Tarde continued, publics are less cruel than crowds,

state

althohgn erowos are always lnsplreo by Phones Furthermore lnol

ylohals are always shperlor to ootn Pnhhes and eroos- The danger
for new democracies is the growing difficulty for thoughtful men to
escape the obsession and fascination of turmoil. The contribution ole
intellectuals, therefore, lay not so much in their discoveries, he

The emergence of public opinion profoundly changed the nature of

politics: It suppressed the conditions which make possible the absolute power of the governing groan This nower was greatly favored, in
aetnalitv hv the loeal splitting of oninion" to 3()2)_ Universal soffrage and the omninotenee of parliamentary majorities were only made

eonehtoee out ln their roree or reslstanee Let them beware lr they

should separatel
His other crowd article of this period, LOpinion et la Conversai
tion, extended this argument. It was published in the same Revue (Iv
Paris in late,Augtist 1899, immediately after Zolas_retum from exile
and Dreyfus s retrial. A manuscnpt of the article is in the Lacassagnc

possible by the prolonged and accumulated action of the press, the sine
qua non of a great leveling democracy (p. 305). Since the Enlightennient, therefore neonle had been interested in the study of intersoiritnal relations, internsvehologv, and soeial nsyehology,
Tarde elaimed (1899 in Tarde, 1901, p. 140). He further emphasized
this point in his preface to the book edition of his articles, L0pini0n et
la Foule (1901). As we have seen in the introduction to this chapter, it
advocated a collective or social psychology based on the study of
the inntnal relations between minds" (r,_ v)_
ln l9OO_l, Tarde also nnhlished other artieles, L'Esr,rit des
Gronnes and La psvehologie lnterinentale_54 At the College de
pranee he leetured on intermental psychology during his rst year
and on, rtinternsvehologv daring his last vear_ some of his notes on
these snhieets snrvive todav_ An nnnnhlished mannseript on in-

arenlyes
ln Lyons The tltle Page hears
a large hanowrltten eomrnent?
M
9??
'
5)
ayoe aoo some Pages on the Aam - - tenlphasls ln the orlglnal)Tarde probably decided against it: There were only a few minor
additions. The article once again contained a number of indirect refer
ences to the affair, but no direct discussion of it. Tarde may have felt
that in the eyes of some, his scientific reections would inevitably he
turned into a political polemic. He may even have been only panly
aware of his major source of inspiration. Yet his discussion of puhlie
-

sparse and scattered outline the fusion of personal opinions

into local opinions, and this into national and world opinion, the grandiose nnitieation of the nnhlie mind (Tarde in Qlark 1969, p_ 313)_
Thns emerged modern nnhlie opinion ()pll-llol-l, as we define it, is a
rnornentarv, more or less logieal elnster of judgments whieh, respond-

of

ing to current problems, is reproduced many times over in people of

the sarne oonntrv at the same time in the same soeiety" (p_ 3()())_

terpsychology outlined it as the science of the relationship between

51. Tarde (1901, p. 38) speaks of manieres dtre." The American edition (Clark I969, p. Ewen
wrongly translates this as SIg6$ Of being-" The Seeond Point ls less oh"lohs~ hnt tn "' "t

the1btiTd'

" ll 8 l "ld Pref XP$$"

a

'"*'~"'

r d'"""*""""l-

"* "

translation for manifestantes" in his categorization ol crowils (t'onip;ire pp. 42 l Ill "ll
French edition with pp. 2923 in the American um") Al-.o we the ItlII1lli\S on |'.||lt .n-it

Blumer ln the last soetlon ot ltlla olllllttor"

52. Alouler peril-tic qu,-lqu,-_\ ]Nlilt'.\ ii-in I'A//tin,

53. According to Tarde, the number of letters sent in France rose from 2.5 million in I700 to ll)
'
I90), p. us). Nolclliail
million Ill I777, 63 mll||Ol'1 III 1330, and 773 million In lX)Z(lhrtle
ilh. ihoilm, iht.nhhh,_ ol the word -thnhlie-~ also thnt-S hhhi the l:nlh,hh.ihht.ht tent. the

,h,,,,,tn.
ll

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lit

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i

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222

Tilt 1'/it 0/ //I! /rillt/tt'

IilItlt'.' Social

[various] consciousnesses. It was to he distinguished from both psychology (which Tarde said was devoted to consciousnesses taken in
their individuality) and sociology (which it explains but does not
constitute).
At one point in the document he said Interpsychology studies the
behavior [!] of groups. At another point he spoke of the interactions
[!] between conseiousnesses, and specied these as those between
individuals, and those between individuals and groups (such as crowds
and publics). He also identied the three technical procedures to be
employed: (1) the creation of laboratories; (2) the use of statistics; and
(3) direct observation.55 One of the projects Tarde considered in this
context was the direct observation of group behavior in schoolyards. lt
is clear, then, that Tarde was really on the brink of elaborating a
surprisingly modern social psychology when he died in 1904.
.

Tarde and the Amencan connection

In the rst few years after his death, Tardes sons attempted to continue
his work; particularly the second son, Alfred de Tarde (1880-1925).
According to the key study by Lubek (1981) previously mentioned, his
law thesis elaborated certain concepts from his fathers last major
work, La Psychologie Economique. Together with Teutsch, he founded
aRevue de Psychologie Sociale as early as 1907, later renamed La Viv
Contemporaine, but it disappeared in 1908. Together with Massis (un
der their common pen name Agathon), he also carried out one of the
rst primitive polls in France, published in the journal L0pinion (later
to become La Vie Frangaise). They did a number of interviews (though
110$ Slahdfdild)
With 3 Sample (though I10! fepfesehlliv) Of Sllldl
from lyces and grandes coles, in order to determine the mood ol
the future elite. They also had some well-known gures react to its
results. In line with their own neoconservative sympathies, they oh
served a taste for action, a new political realism, patriotic faith, and a
revival Of Catholicism-S6
In 1909 Tardes sons also edited a short biography and an anthology
introduced by Tardes successor at the College de France, the philoso
55. See Milet (1970), pp. 3969 (my translation). Also see Tarde (I973), pp. I69 fl.
56. See Les Jeunes Gens d'Aujourdhui(l9l3), which attracted so much attention that it lllltl to
be reprinted many times during that same year. Alfred de 'liutIt- also tlt-It-iitletl his lutlit-i~.
legacy with heavy and sometimes dubious attacks apaiiist l>uiltli<-un

p.\_vt'/mlug_v

Ill

pher Bergson. 'l'hat satne year, a monument was inaugurated in 'l'ardes

native Sarlat. A year later, Matagrin published an elaborate study on
LaPsychol0gie Sociale de Gabriel Tarde. After that, however, 'lardes
inuence began to wane in France. Chapters were still devoted to 'l';n't|e
and/or his interpsychology in handbooks such as Dumass Train (/l
Psychologie (1924, vol. 2, book III, ch. 3), Blondels Intmdut-tioii ii In
Psychologie Collective (1928, rst part, ch. 3), and Essertier's I/llltr
sophes et Savants Frangais au XXe Sicle (1930, vol. 5, ch. 3). But a
Tardean tradition as such never really took off, and when Opinion
research and social psychology finally emerged in France alter the
Second World War, they were largely imported from abroad. Curiously
enough, many of the French pioneers in these fields were unaware ol
the true extent of Tardes contributions even to certain foreign approaches that they were now ready to embrace. To illustrate this, l will
cite one key figure from two successive postwar generations of social
s cholo ists.
P yfhe rit is Jean Stoetzel, the founder of modern opinion lL!s'tlI\|l in
France. He did mention Tarde as a pioneer of group psyt~liolopy" in
his doctoral thesis Esquisse dune Thorie des 0[)lIlll)!|.\' ( I943; outliniof a theory of opinion). But he failed to mention him as ll piont-t-i ot
opinion theory in many of his subsequent works. Slot-I/el's toutii
bution to Gurvitchs Trait de Sociologie even went so tar as to ilt-.il
with the psychology of interpersonal relations without |'(ltllIll}'_ to
Tarde and also failed to include him in a list ol loundt-is ol sot l.l|
psych0l0gy.57
The second key gure is Serge Moscovici one oi the most pionu
nent present-day social psychologists in France, who also puhlisht-d
several studies on collective behavior. In his interesting book on the
social role of active minorities, he criticized dominant paradigms and
proposed an alternative, genetic model without apparently hcin;'_
aware that it had various elements in common with that of 'lartle's
American successors of the Chicago School (the signicance of which
we will return to). His more recent study on crowds emphasized the
role of Tarde as a kind of trait d union between Le Bon and Freud, hut
failed to mention his contributions to the interactionist tradition and its

S7.

Milel (W711). p. 55; Lubck (1981). p. 372. See also Jean Miiisoiiiiviivv. N:iis\:iiirt' rt
\lk:Vt'ltI|i||t|Ilt||l d'une discipline en France - l.a psyt-hologie sociale" in R lloudou_ It
llouiin .t||il, an-l A t;u.ud, eds. (Will); and Jean Mlll\tllI|ltllVt_ In I'.\\'. IniIu_i_-ii- Sm Itlll

224

T/"' "'1' fl //"' /"//"1

alternative approach to crowd psycho|ogy.~" ()ne ol the very few social

Scientists in France to recognize Tardes originality at an early stage
WaS the Statistician Raymon Boudon. Apart from that,
Tardes reputation in France survived only in criminology.
One should of course bear in mind that even during his life, Tardes
social psychology was appreciated by only a small circle of
French
colleagues. Lubek says the sales of his most famous work in this
eld,
LS L0iS dc l'Imitati0n, did not exceed 4,600 copies over the first
few
decades; and the sales of Les Lois Sociales did not even exceed
2,500
copies. Yet, several of these copies did travel to French-reading
colleagues abroad. Some of Tardes work was even translated in
various foreign languages: Russian, Spanish, German, and English.
I have
already mentioned that Tardes thought differed substantially
from that
of most of his French contemporaries and t in better with Anglo~
Saxon traditions. It may not be surprising, then, that aspects of
his
approach survived better in the United Kingdom and best in the United
States. In fact, his inuence on early American psychosocial science
was considerable indeed, and in some respects greater than
is often
ak1lWledgedWe may begin with his resonance in the eld of psychology.
Founder of the eld in America, William James, later wrote to his
British
colleague Wallas, for instance: I myself see things a la
Tarde"
(quotcd in the latlefs bk The Gr@411 $061.6), h~ 3). An even closer
link existed, however, to the thought of another major founder
of
American psychology: James Mark Baldwin (1861-1934). He studied
in Berlin and Leipzig, translated Ribots French book on
German
psychology, and visited Paris to interview the protagonists
of the
Salpetriere-Nancy debate. Upon his retum to North America,
he
founded the first psychological laboratory in Canada, published
one of
the rst psychological handbooks in the United States, and
started the
Psychological Review and other major journals
(With CaII11)- /\l
58
'

Neither his Social Inuence and Social Change (1976' Psychologie des Minorils
Activri
1979) nor his Luge des Foul (1981, The Age 0}/the Cmwd_ 1985)
mention Tm_d(_l.;

contribution to the interactionist approach in crowd psychology. The latter

book nientioiis
Park and his German thesis (p. 83), but only in relation to Le Bon.
59. See, for instance, Boudon in Tarde ( 1890/1979).
60. In 1972, the Comit dc Coordination des Recherches (riiiiiiioIoy_i<|iics iiistitiitcd
an aiinual
Gabriel Tarde award.
61. For 1890-1921 and 1895-1913, respectively. Si-r l nln-L tltmli, |~
">7

Iii/i/in" Sm"iul

/i.\'_v<'/mIu;,'_v

235

Princeton, Baldwin tlcvelupcd major theories on Mental [)('V('I(J/)Illl'IlI

in the Child and the Rare (1894) and Social and Ethical I!lI(!'])l'(I(I
tions in Mental Development (1897). The latter book was subtitled A
Study in Social Psychology, and referred to the lack in linglish ol ;|
book on Social Psychology which can be used in the universities" (p.
vii). In both works, imitation was identified as a fundamental social
psychological phenomenon.
In the preface to the latter book Baldwin also observed, l find my
opinions in the matter of the social function of imitation lying near
those of M, G. Tarde (p. viii). A year earlier, Baldwin had hailed the
brilliant formulations of one of the most authoritative and dis
tinguished writers in sociology and social psychology in his foreword
to the American translation of Tardes book on social laws. And a year
later, he wrote to his French colleague proposing to label imitation in
order of priority the sociological principle (of) TardeBaldwin, since
they had both discovered it independently. At the same time, how
ever, he demanded that the psychological principle be named after
himself alone,
But the American edition of Tardes original study on imitation was
delayed that year by problems over payment of the translator, one Park
(it is unclear whether he was related to the sociologist of that name, to
whose crucial role we will retum). The postponement lasted until
1899, when a volunteer resumed the translation, and it was not until
1903 that it came out. Here again, sales probably did not exceed 2,000
copies over the rst few decades and it reached only a limited public
of specialists. But over the following years, secondary studies such
as Michael Daviss doctoral dissertation Gabriel Tarde An Essay in
Sociological Theory (1906) and his book Psychological Interpretarioris
of Society (1909) contributed greatly to the spreading of Tardes fame.
If we look at Tardes role in the emergence of Anglo-Saxon social
psychology, it is interesting to consider the publication of McDougalls
Introduction to Social Psychology and Rosss Social Psychology in
1908 which put the new interdiscipline on the map and on the agenda

in the Anglo-American World. The Circu.lati0.n 0.f both books was .11".
greater than that of all of Tardes works
in this field. The former title
SOld 100,000 COplS OVl' I116 I16X[ fW (lC21dCS, I116 l1lilC1' 43,000 COPjS_63 But T3rdg mark was gleay visible Qn b()lh_
(,3, |_..|..~i,

(ii

qlwlll

|ti~|>i-it--I Hi

I,

|.|-

l"lI

mi up ml, |t'\|wt'llVtly.
,....|

|ll!-

|I"~|N\1lVi'lv Sec |.lllI(|\ (Wt-ill, p

Nil

TIN (-Ill 0/ I/Ir

226

luhlr: Sufi! I).\.W./H)/HQ,

/rill/ll

Wllllem_MeDeegell the Brlrleh _pllyelelel"lel ell peyeheleglel wee

wee re elrllgrere re Arrlerleerlerer lrl ere eereer Sell remelllee eeeelll
somewhat in the older biological paradigms. His 1908 book focused on

,,

emphasized the social psychological foundations of socicty.""" (hi

cago theorist George Herbert Mead, too, owed some of the locus ol
his work to Tarde dccordin to a S eciahswo
g
p
. '
William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki introduced the COIltt|)l ol
attitude here, in their famous 1918 study, The Polish l('u.\'unI.
Speaking of the diffusion of cultural traits the latter recognized that a
very consistent theory of this process was developed by (iahril-I
Tarde.7 One of the first attempts to measure attitudes and social
distance was undertaken by the psychologist Emory S. Bogardus, who
received his Ph.D. in Chicago and considered Tarde the chief lounllcr
of social psychology.71 The idea of measurement had been suggested
to him by the Chicago sociologist Robert Park (l864l944), whosc
role in the diffusion of Tardan ideas has bean rccogniyd hm
underestimated
~

he Sa1 S"S f ma, b 8" l"d an em" haP"

elmitation P13) and babe, and referred to Tarde repeatedly" Edward

(leee_l95 l) by eenrreer an Amerleerl eeeleleglsr wee hell

rrevelee re Eerepe eee Freeee Wee meerl mere er e Tereeerr lle
eerleleeee the prereee re rlls leee eeek ey peyleg llearrrelr hemege re
rlle genres er Geerlel Teree end rlle leeernpereele Leis de rlmlr
lien Aeeerelrlg re Clerk Reese eeek preeeely Served as the me
lmperrerlr Velllele rer the elrreelen er Tereele rheeghr ln Amerleerm
M*" 355? Fame Wk Social C"l F1909 was Said
follow Tarde soriginal thought so closely that at times it seemed like a
free translation of fragments of his book on imitation.
If we look at Tardes inuence on early sociology in America,
nally, we find that there was hardly a major founder of that eld who
Rees

The famous 'Introduction to the Science of Sociology, which Park

published with Burgess in 1921 had a Strong Tardcan monk in it

er leeer eeme er Tereee leeee en lrrllrerlee eerl

rrlem
as
all
lmperrerlr eerlrrleerlelr Clerk glves e Sempllnlr
weleerrlee
of their opinions: Franz Boas said he was profoundly impressed by

Although it failed to include an excerpt from his work, it containcll

more references to the French author than to such luminaries as (olnli-,
Durkheim Simmel Weber or evgn to Cooley and Thomas]; w|.R,

the eeelr erl lmlrerlerl; Charles A Ellweee eeveree pert er llle eeererel
elseerrerlerr re Teree; Frellkllrl H Gleelnge eele_ eeelelegy ewell
mere re lllm rllerl re erly ether eellremperery; Wllllem Ogeerrl wee
?l*1 lrlrleerleee Y Teree; Lester were eellee llllll ene er the leee
leg rhlrlkers er eur rlrrle and Se rerrlree lll _my eplrllen llewever ele
most substantial yet somewhat neglected link was_the one between
Tarde and the psychological sociology of the Chicago School.

as Tardes

wee rler

rerlllller Wlrh

on the eeeaslerl er tee reerrh eellrenary er elelembees eelseeverye

er Amerlee eee the Crlleege Urllversel_EXpeSlrlen Jehll D Beekerel
ler had generously funded the establishment of a university therc.
which was to lure the best and the brightest away from the lvy

entire approach focused on social imitation, Park's approacll

centered on social interaction (ch. 5). Whereas Tarde assigned a cl-nllal
role to opposition and adaptation, Park assigned it to colnpction/
conflict and accommodation/assimilation (chs. 6-9). This pLl'S|\kt"|lV\
was further elaborated by Herbert Blumer, the founder of the so L'Zlll(tl
Symbolic imeractionist tradition

All of this is important in the context of this

study in that it rcvcals a

work and thought. Zllltl
Tardes
latter-day
link
between
and
direct
strong
a major approach to collective behavior today a link that has been
overlooked by the other historians in this eld.

League re that eeerrllng elry' The Seelelegy Department was heaeell

by Albion Small, who called Tarde perhaps the most prominent figure

As mentioned in the introduction to this study, two major traditions

stand out today on the one hand the Social psychological ~~(lcm

lust at Present among the founders of the new Scieme-"67 1* was hm

that the interactionist tradition evolved. Some of it went back to

dividuation approach, first outlined by Festinger and his like, illltl

later elaborated by Zimbardo and othem It focuses On 3 i-mm 0|

Charles Herrerl Ceeley Wlle eppreeleree Tareers werk beeaese he

psychological regression and on a supposed reduction of the critical

64. Ross (1908l i925), p..VII; find Clark (I969), pp. 656. Professor Brouwer pointed olit to llll'
that Ross visited Paris during the same years of the Dreyfus Affair.
65. House (I936), quoted by Lubek (1981), p. 38166. All quoted by Clark (1969), pp. 65-7.

67' Clark U969)

of Sociological Thought, p. 322.

.
..
(l ( )56/I077), p. xxvlll.
69. Strauss Ill Mlad
non ' ll l 'V till IPI i (I968) . P 344.

70 7.|la nalkl
NS
7| ",'_m|_ (mm I, H
68_ (josci-_ M(1,YIl'rS
-

7,

<

Al \ \Ili|llI)' lo

\-

1-

ll ll~n~ln"- (IW-I l, qllolrll hv ("link IIW-H. |\ Mi. ll

l'\ll

228

'1'/It (I'u cf] I/n /in/1/rt

distance between self and others within a group. lts explanatory

power
is greatest for physically assembled crowds proper (and the
behavior of
people otherwise anonymous). This theory, one could say,
is to a large
extent a contemporary offshoot of Le Bons ideas on hypnotic
suggestion. On the other hand, there is also the psychosociological
interactionist approach rst outlined by Park and by Blumer, and
later
elaborated by Tumer and Killian, Lang and Lang, and
others. lt
focuses on fonns of sociological change and the natural
history of
interaction pattems within a group. Its explanatory power
is greatest
for physically dispersed movements and currents and for public
opinion, attitude change, and mass communication research. This
theory,
by contrast, may be considered a contemporary offshoot
of Tardes
ids 011 imitIi0I1Both psychologist-historians of the Roman or Latin school
of collective behavior such as Moscovici, and sociologist-historians
of the Chicago approach such as Boef, have tended to neglect this
link. It is my
contention that it is highly signicant. The rst link in
the chain is
Parks German doctoral dissertation Masse und Publikum
(1904),
which did not become available to the English-speaking reader
until a
lifetime later, as The Crowd and the Public (1972). At that
time, most
readers were unaware that this was almost the same
title as Tardes
third essay identified in this chapter as a turning point in his
thought
on the subject. Even Ellsners introduction to the belated
translation
misses this point.73 Yet Parks dissertation is partly
an extension of
Tardes argument in that essay (alongside with elements
taken from
Simml and IhT Colltillnlal thiI1k@f$)The same even applies to parts of Park and Burgesss famous
Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Whereas Tarde had
emphasized
the action and the thought or the looks of others in his social
and
collective psychology, Park maintained that The mere
fact that
[people] are aware of one anothers presence sets up a lively
exchange
of inuences, and the behavior that ensues is both social and collective (p. 38). In this sense, he conrmed, crowds are similar to sects
and publics (ch. 11, introduction). Whereas Tarde
made collective
meditation one of the key processes, Park did the same with
all sorts
O_fSoqia1unreSt__ which resulted in a new collective denition
situation, he said. As a matter of fact, Parks entire Introduction of the
culmi~
nated in the contrast between social control and collective
behavior.
.
,
.
SO dld Blumf S Ih601'y, 3S f0Iml1latd In
thk. (.\( ( (UNI) Pill On LUHOL

Irur/i'_' .S'u(iu/ /I.\'_vt'/m/ugy

tive behavior in Irim~i'pIc.v of Sociology, edited by McClung l.ee

(1939). He did not cite Tarde, but his theory contained elements re
markably similar to Tardes. Like Tarde, he distinguished four (albeit
partly different) types of crowds: casual, conventionalized, acting, and
expressive (pp. 78-9). The same approach permeates the well-known
postwar handbooks of B1umers pupils Turner and Killian (Collt-<-riw
Behavior) and of Lang and Lang (Collective Dynamics), both quoted in
the introduction to this study. Like Tarde, they all focused on the
emergence of new pattems of interaction, and they extended their
arguments from crowd phenomena proper to social movements and
currents of opinion.
Even the attitude research and opinion research that Europe imported from America during the postwar years contains strong traces of
Tardean thought. The modem two- or three-factor theory of cognitive
and conative aspects of attitudes was preceded by Tardes distinction
between beliefs and desires. Cognitive dissonance theory was pre
ceded by his discussion of their possible interference (see Tarde I890,
pp. 28 ff.). The possibility of attitude scaling was discussed as early as
his rst article on the subject, which spoke of the measurability of
individual belief and desire (1880, in Tarde 1969, p. 203). Ten years
later he had even stated bluntly: Only a psychological statistic, re
porting on changes in the specic beliefs and desires of intlivitluzrl
people if this were at all possible would provide the deeper reasons
for the ordinary statistical gures.75
Modem theories of attitude change and communication effects were
preceded by Tardes emphasis on their mediation by informal commt1~
nication in conversation and correspondence. The personal in|lu<
ence and two-step ow theories were preceded by Tardes emphasis on hierarchy in imitation. According to Clark, he also came close
to outlining a program for content analysis (in Tarde 1969, p. 44). The
reedition of some of Tardes works beginning in the late 1960s, therefore, and the revival of interest for his thought in both France and
America, seems fully justied.76 And so does the characterization in
the mid-1970s edition of a leading encyclopedia, which called him
one of the most versatile social scientists of his time.77
74. Although they also fail to notice the signicance of the link. See Turner and Killian
Collective Behavior (1957, pp. 4-5; 1972, pp. l3l4); Lang and Lang, <'.11..~rm I)\1!Ir|II!l4 \

""" ""

75. (_)uole<| liv

7(,

73. Elsner's later introduction to the /\|llt.lIt"illI (t|llltlll_

I I

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