THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY
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true. The phenomena of social repulsion are worth tabulation as such, whatever may prove to be their relation to other phenomena.
In every human association, from the monogamous family to international concerts, individuals and groups move centrifu- gally with reference to each other. The desires of which one individual is conscious set bounds to the conduct of others. Convergence is simultaneous with divergence, cooperation with competition, confidence with distrust, sympathy with antipathy, fidelity with treachery, allegiance with rebellion, loyalty with treason. So prominent is this phase of association that Tarde, for instance, has been forced to abandon the original form of his thesis in explanation of social facts. Instead of relying upon " imitation " as the sole and sufficient clue to social truth, he has reluctantly admitted the fact of "opposition " to equal consid- eration. 1 The family is not wholly a sympathetic synthesis of father and mother, parents and children, brothers and sisters ; it is at the same time an unsympathethic antithesis of contrasted units. The clan is no more a closed circle against other clans than it is an arena of collisions between its members. The camp is one vast weapon against the enemy ; at the same time it is a chaos of counter-ambitions and jealousies and conflicts and intrigues. The industrial community is a peaceful association of men disposed to live and let live ; at the same time it is a collection of men keen to discover each other's weakness, alert to detect each other's selfishness, and intent upon defeating each other's aggression. The religious fellowship is a communion of spirit, to the limit of common belief ; then it is a more or less intolerant and violent disunion at the points of inevitable vari- ance of belief. The nation is an association in which the greatest good of the greatest number may be the alleged prin- ciple of cohesion ; but the illusions of individual and group ego- tism incessantly confuse judgments of this greatest good, and the nation is always a thinly disguised anarchy of supposed interests asserting themselves in costly ignorance of fit policies of accommodation. The facts and laws of social repulsion
1 Vid. Social Laws, chap. 2.
