rovided that one conceives it "in all
its rational extent, that is to say, that one applies the conception to
the ensemble of all our diverse operations whatsoever, instead of
limiting it, as we so often do, to the simple material usages."
Considered under this aspect, he says:

It immediately leads us to regard not only individuals and
classes but also, in many respects, the different peoples as
constantly participating, in their own characteristic ways and
in their own proper degree, in an immense and common work whose
inevitable development gradually unites the actual co-operators
in a series with their predecessors and at the same time in a
series with their successors. It is, then, the continuous
redivison of our diverse human labors which mainly constitutes
social solidarity and which becomes the elementary cause of the
extension and increasing complexity of the social organism.

If this hypothesis is demonstrated, division of labor plays a role much
more important than that which has ordinarily been attributed to it. It
is not to be regarded as a mere luxury, desirable perhaps, but not
indispensable to society; it is rather a condition of its very
existence. It is this, or at least it is mainly this, that assures the
solidarity of social groups; it determines the essential traits of their
constitution. It follows--even though we are not yet prepared to give a
final solution to the problem, we can nevertheless foresee from this
point--that, if such is really the function of the division of labor, it
may be expected to have a moral character, because the needs of order,
of harmony, of social solidarity generally, are what we understand by
moral needs.

Social life is derived from a double source: (a) from a similarity of
minds, and (b) from the division of labor. The individual is
socialized in the first case, because, not having his own individuality,
he is confused, along with his fellows, in the bosom of the same
collective type; in the second case, because, even though he possesses a
physiognomy and a temperament which distinguish him from others, he is
dependent upon these in the same measure in which he is distinguished
from them. Society results from this union.

Like-mindedness gives birth to judicial regulations which, under the
menace of measures of repression, impose upon everybody uniform beliefs
and practices. The more pronounced this like-mindednes