The Project Gutenberg EBook of Underground Man, by Gabriel Tarde

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Title: Underground Man

Author: Gabriel Tarde

Translator: Cloudesley Brereton

Release Date: August 27, 2010 [EBook #33549]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDERGROUND MAN ***

Produced by Christine Bell and Marc D'Hooghe at
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UNDERGROUND MAN

By

GABRIEL TARDE

(1843-1904)

MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE
PROFESSOR AT THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE

TRANSLATED BY CLOUDESLEY BRERETON
M.A., L. ES L.

WITH A PREFACE BY H.G. WELLS

LONDON

DUCKWORTH & CO.

1905

The whole of Tarde is in this little book.

He has put into it along with a charming fancy his genialness and depth
of spirit, his ideas on the influence of art and the importance of love,
in an exceptional social milieu.

This agreeable day-dream is vigorously thought out. On reading it we
fancy we are again seeing and hearing Tarde. In order to indulge in a
repetition of the illusion, a pious friendship has desired to clothe
this fascinating work in an appropriate dress.

A.L.

CONTENTS

DEDICATION
PREFACE By H.G. WELLS
INTRODUCTORY
I. PROSPERITY
II. THE CATASTROPHE
III. THE STRUGGLE
IV. SAVED
V. REGENERATION
VI. LOVE
VII. THE AESTHETIC LIFE
NOTE ON TARDE By JOSEPH MANCHON

PREFACE

It reflects not at all on Mr Cloudesley Brereton's admirable work of
translation to remark how subtly the spirit of such work as this of M.
Tarde's changes in such a process. There are certain things peculiar, I
suppose, to every language in the world, certain distinctive
possibilities in each. To French far more than to English, belong the
intellectual liveliness, the cheerful, ironical note, the professorial
playfulness of this present work. English is a less nimble, more various
and moodier tongue, not only in the sound and form of its sentences but
in its forms of thought. It clots and coagulates, it proliferates and
darkens, one jests in it with difficulty and great danger to a sober
reputation, and one attempts in vain to figure Professor Giddings and Mr
Benjam