particular phenomena, different from individual human facts.
Should we attribute common characteristics whose cause escapes
us to a
Volksgeist
or·
Sozialpsyche
distinct from individuals?'
DURKHEIM:
That question does not seem to me to come into the
one with which we are dealing. Doubtless Seignobos appears to
believe that the collective consciousness has been dreamed up as a
way of explaining the unconscious in history. That is inexact.
Firstly, one can admit that the unconscious exists, and yet deny
any collective consciousness; the unconscious can be. entirely
individual. Then, if there is a collective consciousness, it must
include conscious facts and account for them, as well as uncon
scious facts. For, after all, since it is. a consciousness (provided we
suppose it exists), it must indeed be conscious in some respects.
Debate on Explanation in History and Sociology (1908)
221
SElGNOBOS:
How then? I would indeed like to know where is
located the place where the collectivity thinks consciously.
DURKHEIM :
I have no need to tackle here the question of the
collective consciousness, which goes far beyond the subject with
which we are dealing. All I would say is that, if we admit the
existence of a collective consciousness, we have not dreamed it up
with the aim of explaining the unconscious. We thought we had
discovered certain characteristic phenomena absolutely different
from phenomena of individual psychology and it is by this route
that we have been led to the hypothesis that you are attacking here
- I hardly know why.
LALANDE:
Yet it does seem that the two questions are linked: the
solution of the first can depend on the solution to the second. If it
.is true that there exists a collective social spirit, does that not rule,
out the method which consists in seeking the explanation of
historical facts in the motives of the participants and in the
consciousness they have of them? The only legitimate method
would then be, as Durkheim thinks, to site onself at an objective
viewpoint, to compare series and arrive at laws by discovering that
events repeat 'themselves.
.
DURKHEIM:
I have not come here to expound my own method but
to discuss the one Seignobos is proposing to us. But I would like to
know for what reason he denies us the right to establish compari
sons between historical fa�ts.
SElGNOBOS:
In the positive sciences the elements are analogous and
are precisely known, they are homogeneous and exact, so that one
can then compare series of phenomena (well defined chemical
substances). In history, on the other hand, what we are comparing
are quite simply things that are called or have been called the
same, and such an identity of designation may be a purely verbal
one. That
is
why I say that psychological phenomena are not
comparable to one another. On the contrary, when by chance we
are dealing with physical or physiological phenomena, comparison
becomes possible. Thus the family can doubtless be studied more
easily than other phenomena.
DURKHEIM:
I must confess that I experience astonishment when I
hear enunciated as self-evident a proposition which seems to me to
222
Writings of Durkheim on Sociology and its Method
be contradicted by all that I know about it. The starting point of
domestic evolution · is in no way physical. The greater part of
family phenomena, as they have come down to us, do not seem to
flow from the act of procreation. Procreation is not the central and
constituting act for the family. The family is often a grouping of
people who are not even united by the ties of blood (the element
of blood relationship is often very small).
SEIGNOBOS:
But that is precisely why we no longer call such a
grouping a family. Historically a family is made up of elements'
related by blood.
.
BtoCHE:
But take the'Y€V071in Greece. It has not been at all proved
that it was made up of elements related by blood, nor that it owed
its origins to consanguinuity.
.
.
LACOMBE:
The essential fact which classes you as a member of the
family is the fact of
co-operation.
When the son leaves the father,
when he no longer co-operates with him, he is no longer in the
family, he even loses his right to inherit. On the contrary, he who
has been received and allowed to co-operate, by this very fact
enters the family. So, in the Middle Ages, when a man with no
blood relationship shared hearth and board, he became a co
inheritor.
SEIGNOBOS :
This discussion shows, better than I would have been
able to do, the entire difficulty we have in agreeing in history, even
about the most common and apparently the most clear ideas. For,
after all, who can prove to me that the Greek 'YevD11 can be
assimilated to the family in the sense that we understand the word?
BtoCH:
You say that it is not proved. But, if the Greek'YeP017 is not
the family in the present meaning of the word, one can at least
allow that it takes the place of it and that it has been conceived of
in imitation of the family.
DURKHEIM:
Or conversely, that the limited family of today has
been conceived of in imitation of the 'YeP017'
BLOCH :
I am really frightened at the scepticism of Seignobos. If one .
listens to him, what would remain of history? Almost nothing.
But, from another viewpoint, I think, contrary to Durkheim, that
. there is a profound distinction to be drawn between the methods
capable of being used in history and those of the other sciences.
Debate on Explanation in History and Sociology (1908) 223
We must study historical phenomena as they have been given to us
once and for all, for, whatever we may do, we shall never succeed
in repeating them. Hence the difficulty that we have in history, in
formulating laws, and the impossibility of admitting, as does
Durkheim, that causes are identifiable with laws. That is true in
the other sciences but here, as repetition is impossible, since we
cannot isolate what is essential from what is peripheral, things are
different.
We shall perhaps be able to enunciate laws, so long as they
concern very simple and crud.e historical facts (such as, for
example, the facts of human geography) but we must abandon the
attempt as soon as we touch upon so various and complex
psychological facts.
DURKHEIM :
Then we must also give up formulating causal rela
tionships.
BOUGL�:
Like Durkheim, I think that every causal explanation, in
order really to be an explanation, cannot fail to refer to laws.
It is true that historians very often believe that they are
explaining certain phenomena by the causes alone, having left laws
out of account. This merely means that they leave obscure and
without spelling them out the laws on which their assertions rely.
Sometimes, however, they formulate laws in spite of them
selves; they are thus caught in the act of being sociologists. Thus
recently, in a book by Bloch, I came across this general proposi
tion concerning the remnants of client peoples who survived in
. ancient Gaul: The regime of 'protection' 'is imposed and pre
dominates every time that ,the state shows itself to be unequal to its
task, namely incapable of ensuring the security of individuals,
either because it has not yet fully constituted itself or because it
has already begun to break up'. Examples of this kind could be
multiplied. They tend to prove that one cannot explain without
invoking laws.
BLOCH:
This is indeed an insuperable tendency which the historian
resists with difficulty, but it only shows that we should be more
prudent and hedge our assertions round with more reservations
than we do.
DURKHEIM:
In the end I believe I am in agreement with Bloch, on
condition that we distinguish between two things that are utterly
224
Writings of Durkheim on Sociology and its Method
different and which the historian of modern times does not
distinguish between sufficiently: (1) historical events, and
(2)
permanent social functions. So far as events are concerned, we are
presented with an indefinite mountain of facts,
in
whose midst the
mind
elm
only introduce with difficulty some scientific order. I
admire the historians who can live comfortably amid this pile of
disordered events.
.
But beyond the events, there are the functions, the institutions,
the ways,- fixed and organised, of thinking and acting. In that
domain comparisons become possible: instead of being over
whelmed by the extreme diversity of the given facts, one is soon
struck by the very limited number of types, by the kind of
impoverishment· manifest when the same function is studied in
different peoples or in different eras. Up to now I have only been
able to carry this out for types of family, but I have noted, through
the ages, a/very small number of distinct types. And a type of
family is solidly linked to the whole social organisation. Thus it
must be roughly the case for the other functions which, together
make up the collectivity. It is true that
I
have not been able to
study' every society and I have had to eliminate and leave many
facts out of account. But it is nevertheless striking how one can
co-ordinate and reduce to a few large but very simple forms the
family institutions of a great number of peoples. Their identity is
extremely remarkable and well shows up the possibility of a true
historical science. For other functions doubtless the task would be
more complex, but the difficulties do not appear to be insuperable.
In any case the historian has the right and the duty to undertake,
this work, instead of giving up in despair.
SEIGNOBOS:
Unfortunately there is a fundamental difficulty which
makes sucq attempts singularly hazardous: it is that we have no
method of constructing really precise categories that are compara
ble; we never know exactly what we are comparing. Such juxta
positions may be ingenious and suggestive, but there is nothing at
all scientific about them.
LACOMBE:
This is because you are too demanding or too ambi�ious,
you are always wanting to compare large masses of facts and
events with each other. We should begin by analysing and
comparing fragments. For instance, I propose to show the similar
repercussions caused in different times and place by the same type
of land cultivation.
Debate on Explanation in History and Sociology (1908) 225
SEIGNOBOS :
Clearly there are simpler phenomena, for· which a
fairly restricted number of combinations are possible (for exam
ple, family organisation). But if we take political life or languages,
here there is no longer anything save indeterminateness.
BOUGLE:
But in the study of languages they have succeeded
precisely in distinguishing laws and establishing meaningful rela
tionships.
SEIGNOBOS:
They have hardly discovered more than the laws of
phonetics, and even then because there was a physiological
underpinning which allowed the use of experimental methods, and
even graphical ones.
.
.
DURKHEIM :
On the contrary, many linguists believe that one might
with advantage introduce a sociological viewpoint into the study of
languages.
\
SEIGNOBOS:
But that can only bring obscurity into them. What can
we understand about the social mechanism of ancient collec
tivities? Very little, and then solely by means of analogies with our
society today.
DURKHEIM :
It seems to me on �e other hand that we understand
Australian (aboriginal) societies much better than our own.
SEIGNOBOS:
We don't mean the same thing by the word 'under
stand'. For my part, it seems that we understand much better
present-day societies than Australian ones. It is probably a ques
tion of imagination. I only regret that we do not succeed in
studying directly the question of the unconscious.
BOUGLE:
But you seem to persist in believing that the unconscious
can be assimilated to the unknown. Why do you refuse to apply to
unconscious motives the research procedures that you apply to
conscious motives? The bases of your research are the same, the
reasoning processes that you employ to induce the causes of
actions and events are as valid for unconscious causes as for the
others.
SEIGNOBOS:
That's not so. When unconscious motives are in
question I can find out nothing. I draw a blank.
BOUGLE:
If you'll pardon me, our personal experience reveals to us
equally well both unconscious and conscious motives. Does it not
226
Writings of Durkheim on Sociology and its Methods
teach us that many of our actions can only be explained by causes
which, at ·the moment. the action occurs, did not occur to our
consciousness at all? We are continally perceiving after the event
the motives·of an action which had escaped us. Thus we can just as
well discover in the past cases of unconscious motivation' as cases
of conscious motivation.
SEIGNOBOS :
Not so, because the experiences that you are talking
about are not set down in the documents which relate the events
and their apparent causes . .
BOUGLE:
But the unconscious causes are just as much - or just as
little - to be found in the documents as the conscious causes. In
both cases you don't just transcribe the document, you try to
understand and reconstruct the state of mind of its author. Take
Livy's history. I think that the unconscious motives which direct
him are to be read just as easily as the conscious and apparent
ones.
SEIGNOBOS:
I haven't much faith in the possibility of reconstituting
in this way the psychology of individuals or of groups.
LACOMBE:
What in the world then impels you to write history?
SEIGNOBOS:
To seek out relationships between series of facts and to
undeIStand the past according to the mo�el of the present day.
LACOMBE:
But behind the facts what we are always looking for is
Man; agreed, this is very difficult, but the purpose is always to
succeed in revealing the psychological mechanism of actions and
events.
SEIGNOBOS:
My purpose, very simply, is to explain, if that be
possible, by what chain of well-connected events we have arrived
at the present state. And in that exp�anation I am disposed to
attribute very great importance to the motives expressed by the
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