homogeneous passing into the heterogeneous, or more exactly, for we may thus express his complete formula, we see emerging from confused, chaotic homogeneity, where nothing is distinct, coördinated heterogeneity, where each element has its proper function in relation and in harmony with the functions of the related elements. An economic law has thus become one of the fundamental principles of general sociology.
But even where economic science has not yet gone so far as to establish laws, where it must at present be content with determining facts, these data, such as they are, have none the less great utility for sociology. Economic facts are, in a word, the foundation of the other social facts. The truth of this is easily perceived. In the individual it is nutrition that makes possible reproduction and thought. In society it is the same. Genetic facts, facts psychical in all their forms,—moral, religious, esthetic, scientific, even political and juridical—exist only by virtue of force which issues from the utilization of wealth. Hence the economic regime of a society impresses itself upon all the remainder of its constitution—upon its genetic constitution, as in the case of the institutional bond between wealth and birth; upon its intellectual constitution, according to the mode of life of a people, whether nomadic or settled, militant or peaceful, predatory or pastoral or agricultural; upon its juridical constitution, it is needless to say that the laws relating to property and its partition, to contracts, to successions, reflect the necessities of existence among the nations for which they were made; finally, upon its political constitution, for these same conditions have much to do with the governmental type adopted, whether monarchy, aristocracy or democracy. In a word these economic facts mark with their impress all other social facts. It is consequently essential to the sociologist that he shall understand these economic facts to begin with, since he cannot otherwise understand any of the other facts which he has to study. And if even the economist can furnish these facts only in the crude state, that is without having succeeded in determining their laws, they are still valuable for the sociologist, for in observing the reactions of the
