toward universality it decreases in intensity. In the personal series they vary concomitantly, while in the social series they vary inversely. The logical motives of this formulation are clear; for if such a qualitative principle rules in the individual series, the postulates of 'increase of value' and 'equivalence of value' which from the external point of view appear illusory, would be immediately grounded. The principle of equivalence would then be concerned merely with the establishment of equivalences between these two aspects of the affective-volitional processes; and, since increase of the energy of valuation depends upon this equivalence or equilibrium, the contradiction which from the objective point of view arises between the principle of increase and equivalence, as in the relation of justice to benevolence, would disappear. To quote Guyau, (the italics mine): "Dans nos études sur la morale nous avons cherché un principe de realité et d'ideal tout ensemble capable de se faire à lui même sa loi et de se développer sans cesse la vie la plus intense et la plus expansive à la fois, par consequent la plus féconde pour elle même et pour autri, la plus sociale et la plus individuelle."[1]
Now, while this consensus omnium, this unanimity of the philosophers of idealistic tendencies is significant in itself, the ultimate basis for this contrast in the laws of the two series must be sought in a careful analysis of the moments out of which the value-function arises in the two spheres. This difference is to be found, I think, in the different role which the negative factor plays in the two cases. It will be remembered that Bradley, in his Ethical Studies, laid great stress upon this difference. Strictly speaking, the negative factor in social valuation is non-moral; for in the social series we abstract from all collision of the good and bad, and it is only in the opposition of volitional tendencies in the same personality that ethical meaning and value appears. This difference, which Bradley from a metaphysical point of view finds of such importance, Tarde, from the sociological standpoint, has developed in more detail. The difference between internal and external oppositions lies in the fact that, while in the external oppositions of social forces—out of the variation of which social values arise,
- ↑ L'art au point de vue sociologique, p. 75.
