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ticular activities is in no way essential to his contributions to sociology. Although in his theoretical discussion of the scope of sociology he insists on this conception, in his actual investiga- tion he ignores it. And he more nearly describes his own object of study in the following, from the same article :
A sentiment, a principle, an intention, at first individual, spreads and becomes more and more general, and in becoming general consolidates, opposes itself to the individuality of each one of those associated ; then, a subjective thing, it becomes by this opposition an objective thing, and takes on a material appearance, since it resists each one of us, though founded upon the mental habits of us all.*
Contrast this contention of Tarde with an assertion of Seig- nobos', 10 who has no concern about building up a science of soci- ology, and consequently no sensitiveness about social unity. He says that it is a matter of supreme difficulty to mark out a group having a distinct economic history of its own, because some processes of economic development will belong only to sections of the population to be studied, and others will be shared by people outside the group. If, then, as Seignobos declares, it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to distinguish a group that is the bearer of an economic evolution, how many times greater than the greatest is the difficulty of marking out a group that is the bearer of a complete social development ?
Seignobos further remarks that the same man may be Luxem- burger by nation, Frenchman by language, Roman Catholic by religion, and member of the German Zolherein economically. If these four trunk lines intersect in one man, how many lesser lines cross in him ? As soon as one tries to mark off a society that is the bearer of all the social influences which mold a single life, he will find that this society will contain only the single individual, with fragments of countless others, and not the whole of any other life. Or, to put the same fact otherwise, each one of us belongs to many different groups of association, but to no society that is coextensive with them all. Our social relations shade
Ibid., p. 460.
10 La methodc historique appliqute aux sciences societies, pp. 216 ff. According to Seignobos, the social sciences are economics, demography, and the history of social doctrines.
