most precious documents for his social
studies. Later he was elected to the chair of modern philosophy at the
College of France, then he was elected member of the Academy of moral
and political sciences in the philosophical section. He died in 1904.

Tarde wrote a great deal. His flexibility of spirit and style add charm
to his work on technical subjects. In criminology his principal works
are: "The Philosophy of Punishment", "The Professional Criminal",
"Comparative Criminality" (1898);--then come the political works, such
as "The Transformation of Power" (1899). His "Transformation of Law"
dates from 1894. His study in social psychology entitled "Opinion and
the Masses" appeared in 1901. His most celebrated work is perhaps "The
Laws of Imitation" (1900) which was preceded by his "Social Logic"
(1898) and his "Universal Opposition" (1897).

According to Tarde the social phenomena proceed from individual
inventions which in their turn are the offspring of imitation: the
latter is for Tarde a capital factor in social life. Original ideas or
inventions germinate ceaselessly in the social _milieu_, but only some,
either by their superior adaptability or through the peculiar authority
of their inventor, are accepted by the public as a whole. Sociology is
thus reduced to a Psychology of the _processus_ of invention and
imitations. This explains why the great effort of Tarde has been to
discover the "Laws of Invention". Thereby he has given in sociology a
preponderating place to the individual, and the accidental, and has thus
separated himself from the most general tendencies of thought in our
times which are those of Comte.

The style of Tarde is abstract but supple. This fragment of future
History forms a kind of exception to his general work which is very
abstract. Tarde reveals himself in it one of the masters of literary
French. The style is picturesque, intense, broad, even periodic, novel
in respect to the thought, and entirely classical in its purity.

Joseph Manchon.

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