About the Work
Vilfredo Pareto’s Trattato di Sociologia Generale is a large-scale treatise in general sociology, published in Italian by G. Barbèra and dedicated to Jane Régis, to whose affectionate care the author credits his ability to complete the planned work. The book sets out to study human society in general—the residue of subject matter left over once law, history, political economy, and the history of religions have claimed their own domains—and it announces from its opening pages that it intends to remain exclusively within the experimental field. Its guiding restriction is stated at the outset: every proposition is to be understood “within the limits of time, space, and experience known to us.” The work is presented as essentially contingent, as continuous becoming, as proceeding by successive approximations, and as making no claim to the certain, the necessary, or the absolute.
“Ogni giorno vediamo nascere vocaboli e locuzioni che hanno per origine associazioni di idee spesso interamente fortuite.”
The treatise is built around a distinction that governs everything else in it: the difference between logico-experimental and non-logico-experimental modes of thought and action. Pareto classifies propositions and theories, separates the relatively constant element in human conduct from the highly variable explanations men give of it, and then traces how those explanations—theologies, cosmogonies, metaphysics, moral and juridical doctrines—operate in society. The book is not a narrative but an analytical architecture: definitions, classifications, historical examples drawn from Roman religion, witchcraft trials, Greek philosophy, natural-law theory, and modern science, all marshalled to demonstrate a single methodological program. Its style is that of a scientist writing a manual of method as much as a treatise on society, and it repeatedly insists that names matter less than things.
Context
The treatise belongs to a period when sociology was still fighting for recognition as an autonomous experimental science rather than a branch of philosophy of history. Pareto notes that sociology has almost always been expounded dogmatically: Comte’s “positive” philosophy is as dogmatic as Bossuet’s Discours sur l’histoire universelle—different religions, but religions still—and the same is true of Spencer, De Greef, Letourneau, and countless others. He observes that there is an abundance of “humanitarian” sociologies, no lack of metaphysical ones (including all “positivist” and humanitarian ones), and a small number of Christian, Catholic, and similar ones. Against this landscape he asks leave to expound one that is exclusively experimental, like chemistry and physics.
The intellectual context is also one of polemic. Pareto responds to critics such as Professor Charles Gides, who reviewed his work and compared the present state of pure economics to astronomy after Newton’s Principia—a comparison, Pareto insists, to an abstract science, not a concrete one, and one that attributes to him opinions he never held and has often combated. He situates his own enterprise in relation to the sciences that have already made the transition he wants for sociology: celestial mechanics was constituted with the hypothesis of universal attraction, and even if attraction were later doubted, its results would remain, needing only retouches and additions. Chemistry was learned in laboratories, not through philosophical meditations, not even Hegelian ones. The treatise is thus written at a moment when the physical sciences had decisively separated themselves from metaphysical explanation, and it asks why the social sciences have not.
Structure of the Book
The work opens with a chapter of preliminaries that declares the norms the author intends to follow, distinguishes logico-experimental from non-logico-experimental sciences, and states that the experimental field is absolutely distinct and disjoined from the non-experimental. This chapter also addresses the language of the sciences and of common speech, declaring terms and treating definitions as simple labels—defined names, Pareto says, could be replaced by letters of the alphabet.
From there the treatise turns to non-logical actions: their definition and classification, their presence in animals and in men, their role in the formation of human language, theology, and cult, and the differing intensity among peoples—Roman, Athenian, English, French—of the forces holding non-logical inclinations together versus those pushing innovation. A chapter follows on non-logical actions in the history of doctrines, showing that men of genius studying human societies did notice such actions, often implicitly, often under other names, without theory, and often only in particular cases. The next chapter examines theories that transcend experience, inquiring whether common names such as religion, diritto, morale, natural law, right reason, the just, and the honest correspond to precise things. A further chapter treats pseudo-scientific theories, tracing from a known theory back to its originating facts and summarizing the inductive result: in non-logico-experimental theories there is a little-variable part and a very variable part, the first being the principle existing in man’s mind, the second the explanations given of it.
The central analytical apparatus of the book is the theory of residues and derivations. The chapter on residues, Pareto notes, should stand at the work’s beginning if one were following the deductive way; it separates the relatively constant element (residues, corresponding to instincts) from the variable element (derivations), and classifies residues into six classes spread across three chapters. The second volume opens with the derivations—the explanations, amplifications, and logical dressings men give to their conduct—classified into four classes. A chapter on the properties of residues and derivations then asks two questions: how do residues and derivations operate, and what relation has this work to social utility? It examines the distribution and changes of residues in a society, the wave-form of the phenomenon, the relation between residues and life conditions, the reciprocal action of residues and derivations, the action of residues on residues, the action of derivations on residues, and the role of social classes. The treatise closes with an index of names and works, a bibliographic apparatus cataloguing the classical, patristic, and modern sources cited throughout—from Cato and Cicero through Machiavelli, Marx, and Spencer to the periodicals of the author’s own day.
Inside the Book
The Book’s Opening: Dedication and Plan
The Trattato di Sociologia Generale opens with its publication notice and a dedication to Signora Jane Régis, to whose affectionate care the author owes his ability to complete the planned work. The chapter index then lays out the architecture of the whole enterprise. The first chapter, “Preliminari,” declares the norms the author will follow, distinguishing logico-experimental from non-logico-experimental sciences and insisting that the experimental field is absolutely distinct from the non-experimental. The work intends to remain exclusively within the experimental field, and every proposition is to be understood with the restriction “within the limits of time, space, and experience known to us.” The study is contingent, in continuous becoming, proceeding by successive approximations, aiming not at the certain, necessary, or absolute. Language itself must be disciplined: definitions are simple labels, and defined names could be replaced by letters of the alphabet.
Non-Logical Actions and the History of Doctrines
The second chapter defines and classifies logical and non-logical actions, noting that non-logical actions sometimes achieve an end optimally that could have been reached logically. It traces non-logical actions in animals and men, in the formation of language, in theology and cult, and examines the differing intensity among peoples—Roman, Athenian, English, French—of the forces holding non-logical inclinations together versus those pushing innovation. Here appears the occult power words seem to have over things, and the crucial distinction between a quasi-constant and a highly variable part in non-logical manifestations, such as storms provoked or averted. Interpretations adapt to people’s non-logical inclinations, evolution is multiple, and the first hint emerges of the necessity to entirely disjoin a doctrine’s logico-experimental truth from its social utility. The third chapter asks why men of genius studying human societies failed to notice non-logical actions, showing they did notice them—often implicitly, under other names, without theory, often only particular cases. It surveys various authors, the imperfection of common language, men’s inclination to veil non-logical actions in logical dress, and how practical men consider them.
Theories Beyond Experience and Pseudo-Scientific Theories
The fourth chapter inquires whether common names—religion, diritto, morale—correspond to precise things, examining “religione,” “diritto naturale,” “diritto delle genti,” “retta ragione,” “giusto,” “onesto,” along with type-doctrines and deviations, the materials of theories and their connections, how sociology uses facts, the unknown explained by the known, and the probability of conclusions. The fifth chapter moves from a known theory back to its originating facts, isolating the category where abstract entities explicitly receive an origin outside experience. Its inductive summary is decisive: in non-logico-experimental theories there is a little-variable part and a very variable part—the first the principle existing in man’s mind, the second the explanations given of it. Premises are often partially implicit and form a very important part of reasoning, and doctrines have been drawn from arbitrary principles.
Residues and Derivations
The sixth chapter, on residues, should stand at the work’s beginning if one followed the deductive way. It compares the little-variable and variable parts in logico-experimental and non-logico-experimental sciences, noting that the constant part corresponds to certain instincts but does not include all; interests must be added to determine social forms. Theories have an objective and a subjective aspect, and a method is needed to separate the constant from the variable. Arbitrary names are given: the constant part is called residui, the variable derivazioni, and the theories themselves derivate. Residues, corresponding to instincts, lack precision, and the analogy with philology is apt since language is a social phenomenon. The classification of residues follows: Classes I and II in the sixth chapter, Classes III and IV in the seventh, Classes V and VI in the eighth.
Derivations, Their Properties, and the Index of Names
The ninth chapter, opening Volume II, argues that men are persuaded mainly by sentiments—residues—and examines how derivations are amplified. Derivations are material used in research by both non-logico-experimental and logico-experimental sciences, but the former suppose derivations have power to operate directly on social constitution, while the latter count them only as manifestations of operating forces. Several authors recognize the part assigned to sentiment; there is a logic of sentiments, and demonstration is often not the reason derivations are accepted. The classification of derivations, Classes I, II, III, follows, with Class IV in the tenth chapter. The eleventh chapter poses two problems: how residues and derivations operate, and what relation the work has to social utility. Vulgar reasoning holds that derivations cause human actions and sometimes sentiments, whereas generally derivations are effects of sentiments and actions. Residues relate to concrete beings; their distribution and changes in society, the little variability of residue classes against the greater variability of genera, the wave-form of the phenomenon, the relation between residues and life conditions, the reciprocal action of residues and derivations, the action of residues on residues, the action of derivations on residues, and social classes—all are set out. The volume closes with the index of names and works, a bibliographic apparatus cataloguing classical, patristic, and modern authors from Cato and Chrysostom through Machiavelli, Marx, Newton, and Pareto’s own writings, alongside the periodicals cited.
The Interdependence of Beliefs and Actions
The maxim that people act as they do simply because they do so contains more truth than error, though it is too absolute. Beliefs and actions are not independent; they are like two branches of the same tree, and their dependence will be developed fully later. Ancient Roman religion, before the Greek gods arrived, had no theology—it reduced to a cult, yet that cult reacted strongly on the actions of the Roman people. The direct relation between cult and action, when it existed, is manifestly absurd to moderns, but the relation between cult and psychic state could be reasonable and useful. Theology generally influences action even more weakly than it influences psychic state, so it is a grave error to judge a religion’s social value by the logical worth of its theology alone. These considerations extend to every sort of theory: free trade, for instance, is a theory whose direct relation to concrete adoption is generally very weak. Acting on the theory to modify practice yields only insignificant results, whereas a modification of the underlying psychic state can reverberate on both theory and practice. A superficial observer may believe practice changed because theory changed, but deeper study shows both depend on a common cause.
Reasonings Must Become Sentiments
Theoretical discussions are therefore not very useful directly for modifying practice; indirectly they can be useful for modifying the psychic state, but to achieve this one must resort to sentiments far more than to logic. Reasonings, to act on men, must transform themselves into sentiments. In England, the long practice of free trade reacted on interests and reinforced the psychic state opposing protectionism—not the theory of free trade. Other facts, such as the growing needs of the treasury, modify the psychic state and may lead to changing practice and imposing protectionism, with theories favorable to the new state of things developing alongside. Theory has logical consequences, but not all are found in practice; this could not happen if practice were the direct consequence of theory. Since both are simply consequences of a psychic state, nothing requires perfect logical correspondence between them. We shall always be on the wrong track when we imagine we can deduce practice from theory by establishing such a correspondence.
The Difficulty of Working Back to Psychic States
We do not know the psychic state directly, only its manifestations, and we must work back from these. Difficulties increase because, while actions are susceptible of exact observation, theories are almost always expressed uncertainly and without precision. A similar but distinct case is that of theories constructed by scientists. When reasoning is not coldly scientific, theory is modified by the psychic state of the scientists who construct it. If they belong to the collectivity that performed the acts, their psychic state has something in common with that collectivity, and the psychic state operates on theory. If they theorize about acts performed by collectivities completely different from their own, their psychic state is not identical and may differ entirely, so the original psychic state operates little or not at all. If we neglect this operation, we find ourselves in the case of purely theoretical interpretations. When theory is a rigorous, precise principle united to action by logical reasoning without equivocation, we have scientific interpretations. But the category contains others: theory can be an uncertain principle, lacking precision and experimental sense, united to action by reasonings without logical consistency, proceeding by analogy, resorting to sentiment, losing themselves in nebulous divagations.
Legends and the Kernel of Fact
Legends about rain-making likely contain a real kernel of fact that is then amplified, commented on, and explained, growing like a small seed into a large crop of fantastic inventions. An example is cited of a father leading a girl to a torrent; she throws a coin into the water in her master’s name, and a thunderstorm follows. Martino Del Rio gives a long list of authoritative authors who believe sorcerers can stir up hail and storms; with the authority of Sacred Scripture and examples testified by trustworthy persons, this should remove all stubborn disbelief. The Godelmann teaches various ways witches, instructed by the devil, can incite hail: throwing stones westward, tossing torrent sand into the air, dipping a broom in water and sprinkling toward heaven, moving water in a hole with a finger, boiling pig bristles in a pot, or placing beams across a riverbank. They believe hail comes through their action, though it comes through the devil with God’s permission. The Wier denies witches any power but not diabolical work done with God’s permission—an interpretation aimed at saving the unfortunate women from the stake. Few went as far as Tartarotti, who attributes sorcery’s successes to natural forces, leaving the devil only foreknowledge. Wier invokes Sacred Scripture and prudently flatters the Holy Inquisition of Rome, praising its moderation.
The Persecution of Heresy, Then and Now
Today one may say what one wishes about witches but not about carnal sin; governments once persecuted those who freely discussed the Bible, and now persecute those who freely discuss the sexual act. Lucretius could write freely about both the religion of the gods and sexual matters. Then and now, the heretic is treated as a malefactor. Reading Bodin against Wier resembles reading Bérenger and his followers against those who have not narrowed their minds. Interpretations had to adapt to popular prejudices, including in laws and criminal procedures. In many witchcraft trials, public voice indicates the sorcerers, public fury pursues them, forcing public authority to intervene. In 1540, in the barony of Viry, Margherita Moral complained to the castellan that certain women had beaten her, calling her a witch. The castellan proceeded against the denounced women, heard witnesses, and learned Margherita was accused of causing the death of several children. She thus became accused rather than accuser; the accusation extended to her husband. Under torture they confessed the devil’s intervention, as they would have confessed to poisoning or anything desired. They were condemned to the stake and burned.
Interpretations as Handmaidens, Not Masters
Interpretations play a very accessory part here. The principal part belongs to the concept that death can be given mysteriously, operating mainly on popular minds. Judges accept it too, but without the prejudice of learning truth through torture, the trial’s outcome is unknowable. Public opinion pressed on the judges; without its intervention they would not have moved. Similarly, our governments moved against sexual heresy only after long solicitation by the bad breed gathering in moral societies and anti-pornography congresses; legislators and judges often yield reluctantly, tempering the hysterical furors of the virtuosi. Until the eighteenth century, witches continued to be condemned, and governments, like the Church, seconded popular prejudice, thereby strengthening it but certainly not authoring it. Far from imposing belief in these non-logical actions, the Church instead suffered it, seeking logical interpretations; only later did it fully accept it with these interpretations as corrective. An author not suspect of partiality toward the Catholic Church states that until the thirteenth century the Church paid little attention to magic; when the Inquisition was organized, this category of crimes remained long outside its jurisdiction. In 1248 the Council of Valence ordered magicians delivered to bishops. In 1310 the Council of Trèves ordered parish priests to prohibit culpable practices but fixed no penalty beyond refusal of sacraments, excommunication, and other penalties. This was an almost inexplicable mildness. In 1279 at Ruffach in Alsace, a Dominican was accused of baptizing a wax figure; peasants dragged her through a swamp and would have burned her alive had monks not rescued her.
Burlamarqui and the Definitions of Natural Law
Pareto opens with Burlamarqui, who claims to follow the experimental method and complains that people speak endlessly of the useful, the just, the honest, the beautiful, and the fitting without ever defining them precisely. Pareto applauds ironically, then tests the definitions. A useful action, Burlamarqui says, tends by itself to the conservation and perfection of man—but of which man? A deft thief’s skill conserves and perfects the thief, not man in general, and the author never shows why what serves the general man serves the particular one addressed. The honest is what conforms to right reason (how is right reason told from unreason?), to the dignity of our nature (a new entity), and to the approbation of men—though warlike peoples approve the killer of the most enemies and anthropophagi the eater of the most. Order is the disposition of things toward an end; fitness is a conformity by which one thing conserves another—advantageous, Pareto asks, for whom? A traceless poison suits the poisoner’s purposes perfectly. One cannot reason about fitness in general, only about fitness for someone. Burlamarqui reasons as if these entities existed independently, and after much circling lands on “Madam Reason,” long since given as the origin of natural law.
Vattel, Selden, and the Character of Such Definitions
Vattel abandons right reason for a certain “happiness,” even more unknown. Natural law becomes the science of nature’s laws—confusing it with chemistry and astronomy—then the laws nature imposes on men, whose first principle is the incontestable axiom that every intelligent being’s great end is happiness. But whose happiness? The destroyer of cities and the thief have their own, distinct from their victims’. Blame and insults do not help, and jailing or burning a man is not a logico-experimental demonstration. Pareto lists the marks of all such definitions: indeterminate terms arousing sentiment but matching nothing precise; defining the unknown by the unknown; mixing definitions with theorems that prove nothing; and aiming above all to move sentiments toward a pre-fixed end. Selden notes four alleged origins of natural law—animal nature, the consensus of nations, right reason, and the natural reason of the ancestors, meaning the authority of the gods—and accepts only the last, restricted to the Hebrews and their God. The Talmud and Bartenora add curious particulars on how the Law could reach all nations, leaving them no excuse of ignorance. Looked at formally, Pareto says, these disquisitions are an accumulation of foolishness; but neglecting form, they cover powerful sentiments that shape social constitution and deserve direct study.
La Place, Force, and Reasoning on Words
Turning to theories that transcend experience, Pareto faults La Place for giving objective form to what is subjective: had he written “it does not seem to me that there is any reason” rather than “there is no reason,” the fallacy would show. La Place might reply that things appear so to all men—another great source of error, since most have never thought of the matter, and unanimous consent cannot convert the subjective into the objective. The proposition that a point contains no reason to move one way rather than another amounts to saying it is at rest when it is at rest. Defining force as the cause of motion defines an unknown by an unknown—”force is force”—and modern mechanics has expelled such reasoning; Poisson, Saint-Venant, and Picard show force defined successively in different ways, with no a priori link between dynamic and static evaluations. Natural, violent, and voluntary motions filled ancient philosophy; Plato’s Laws and even Aristotle indulged such lucubrations, and Cicero has Balbus prove the stars move voluntarily. When error becomes manifest, instead of abandoning the faulty reasoning, one obstinately adapts it to experience—as metaphysicians, learning that planets move in ellipses, arrange their deductions to reach the result experience gives.
Hegel’s Nature Philosophy and Its Discrediting
Pareto quotes Hegel at length: the curve as the line where all is equal, the ellipse as the essential form of planetary revolution, Kepler’s third law derived from time’s formal identity (the square) and space’s dimension of the notion (the cube)—”Really? Who would ever have thought it!” Hegel on the diamond as the first-born of light and weight, on metal’s opacity from concentrated individual identity, collapses when Pareto notes aluminium’s low density should make it more transparent than diamond. Metaphysicians are never dismayed by such discrepancies and always reconcile yes and no; discredited in physical science, they still dominate literature usurping the name of social science. Fouillée’s rhetoric—mechanics realizing itself, geometry rendering itself visible—echoes the same habit, as does a Chinese encyclopedia’s explanation of tides worthy of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature.
Verification, Ghosts, and the Freedom to Contradict
Direct verification, Pareto argues, is the strongest means of increasing a theory’s probability, which explains the enormous probability of chemistry, physics, and astronomy. Ghosts illustrate the converse: countless claimed sightings would make them highly probable if probability grew with the number of observations, yet no one now believes in them. A fact’s reality does not depend on its “explanation.” Two reasons make ghosts unbelievable: direct experience fails very often—wireless telegraphy can be tested by anyone, but ghost-seeing depends on mental disposition; thaumaturgy says “out with the unbelievers,” science says “bring on the unbelievers”—and no category of experimental facts can be assimilated to apparitions. Against Newman’s accumulation of small probabilities, Pareto sets the powerful motive of possible verification: an Englishman’s belief that England is an island rests not on cumulated probabilities but on the fact that proving otherwise would bring fame and fortune, and no one ever has. Historical and religious traditions lack this, as the shifting verdicts on Roman history and the false Athenian beliefs about Hipparchus show. Hence a theory can be judged true only if it can be freely opposed; every restriction on contradicting it creates doubt. Freedom of expression always favors objective truth, though not necessarily good social order—a question left open. Imposing a doctrine directly or imposing premises from which it follows amounts to the same, whether Catholicism, Protestantism, or liberal Protestantism’s residual ideal; there is no scientific freedom where anything, even Euclidean geometry, cannot be doubted.
Neo-Christianity and the Two Kinds of Proof
Neo-Christianity now sets aside extrinsic elements for intrinsic ones, improving its logical position—until it returns to the experimental field by dictating norms for social life. Every proof reduces to agreement with the preacher’s sentiments, and its success comes only from agreement with democratic sentiments. Such doctrines believe they give experience large scope but merely pass from one genus to another: authority is abandoned because it clashes too much with experience, and inner consent adopted because its clash appears less deep, though it is no less real. Piepenbring, acknowledging biblical errors, still wants a divine part distinguished only by inner consent, locating inspiration in God’s spirit acting on hearts rather than the dead letter. Both his facts may be certain, but the proofs differ: biblical errors are objectively verifiable by all, while the prophets’ superior light is subjective, valid only for those sharing his sentiments—and many do not. Hence the error of deeming such doctrines more scientific than Catholicism; they are different ways of resorting to what is presumed but is not science. Some twist historical reality while asking its help; others disown its value while respecting it by not daring to alter it.
Etymology and the Illusion of Origins
Pareto opens with a warning about reading social theories out of words. The etymology of servus, long derived from servare and used to justify slavery as a merciful institution, turns out to be worthless once servile is traced to “guardian of the house” — and with it the elegant theory collapses. He notes ironically that anyone building a doctrine on such roots should hurry, since the etymology may shift again. The Italian term Crumiri, applied to strike-breakers, shows the same trap: it looks ancient and suggestive, but its real origin lies in a Tunisian tribe whose supposed depredations served as a French pretext for invading Tunisia, the name then attaching itself to the unpleasant feelings of betrayed workers. Words and locutions are born from fortuitous associations of ideas, so the inverse operation — assigning properties to things because of their names — has played a notable part in mythology, where events are invented to fit names. Myths, by contrast, are badly interpreted experiences and false deductions from real facts, appealing to experience in longer, subtler ways.
Animism and the Doubts of Origins
The theory of animism belongs to this genus. In its precise form it holds that primitive peoples believe humans, animals, plants, and even inanimate objects possess souls, and that religion develops from logical deductions of this belief; in its looser form, the child and the savage project their own will onto the world. Pareto refuses to settle the chronological problem of origins — documents are lacking, and the work becomes imagination — seeking only to decompose complex phenomena into simpler ones. Deductions are then added to give these non-logical actions a logical tint, or lengthened by assigning the will to an entity called soul. Tylor’s claim that animism is the essence of spiritualism and rises continuously from the lowest tribes to modern civilization strikes Pareto as surprising: it presumes those tribes already possess abstractions like “being” and “spiritual,” and that travelers translated them precisely — a doubt that persists even for well-known languages. Phenomena among our own children, who talk to dogs and dolls before possessing such concepts, cannot be classed as animism; a hunter addressing his dog would be astonished to hear he speaks to a spiritual being. These are non-logical actions, expressions of inclination, not fruits of deduction — as when a Turin crowd whistled at a comet that failed to appear, without imagining it had a soul.
Vestals, Chastity, and the Logic of Sacrifice
The argument turns to the conditions imposed on a Vestal: neither younger than six nor older than ten, both parents living, no speech defect, no impaired hearing, no bodily blemish, never emancipated by her father, no slave parentage, no sordid business. Catholic priesthood parallels this — chastity, no notable defects, exclusion of bigamists, widowers, those who married widows or prostitutes, the self-mutilated, usurers, actors, the insane — with the rule of a single virgin wife matching that of the archon-king in Athens. The cause of such facts lies not in the variety of logical explanations but in sentiments from which both facts and explanations arise. The identical punishment of Vestals at Rome and Virgins of the Sun in Peru — buried alive for breaking chastity — is explained by Réville: the guilty woman became odious to the gods of day and light, devoted only to the subterranean gods of darkness. Romans had other motives, chiefly averting disasters: Dionysius reports they feared the extinguishing of the fire more than any other calamity. Legends recount Opimia buried alive around 481 BC after prodigies, and Urbinia, denounced by a slave during a plague, buried alive with her lovers killed, after which the pestilence ceased. After Cannae, two Vestals were convicted — one buried alive near the Porta Collina, the other taking her own life, their lovers beaten to death — and when terror persisted, the Sibylline books prescribed burying alive a Gaulish man and woman and a Greek man and woman in the Forum Boarium. These sacrifices, like those of the Vestals, manifest the instinct of self-preservation demanding extreme remedies for extreme evils. The Vestal was buried in a small cell with scant provisions — bread, water, milk, oil — a death also mentioned in Sophocles.
Legal Fictions and the Stability of Law
In Roman legislation, fiction was a procedural term: a false assertion by the plaintiff that the defendant could not rebut, such as claiming Roman citizenship to grant jurisdiction, closely resembling the assertions by which the courts of the Queen and Exchequer usurped jurisdiction from common-law courts. Pareto now uses “legal fiction” for any assertion hiding that the rule of law has been altered while its letter remains, changing its consequences. This achieved a momentous goal — giving stability to the principles of law and enabling the constitution of the body of doctrines — probably a principal reason Roman law became so superior to Athenian law. Similar constructions exist elsewhere: Sumner Maine corrected the error that England, with only customary law, had only one kind of law, noting analogies between case law and the responsa prudentum. Concrete legal entities are constituted by parts (a) and (b), while descriptive law (c) makes them known, as mineralogy makes rocks known. Roguin’s La règle de droit treats (b) as an absolutely neutral study, free of appreciation, analyzing existing or imaginable rules to extract constant elements; his Traité de droit comparé treats (c), insisting on distinguishing constatations from appréciations. Civil law is easiest because it least stirs sentiments; criminal law theories are far less perfect, and in morality and religion sentiments dominate, leaving formless accumulations of metaphysical prejudices. The Italian school of positive law could become scientific if it discarded democratic faith and the mania for immediate applications. Theology has a good part (b) in St. Thomas but a part (a) transcending experience; ethics starts from non-experimental principles and loses nearly all logical value when separated from theology.
Residues and the Neglect of Non-Logical Actions
Chapter VI opens by noting that deductively it should stand at the work’s beginning; Pareto preferred starting inductively so the reader follows the beaten path. Dividing concrete phenomena into logical and non-logical actions, Chapter II effected this separation; Chapter III showed that almost all authors glimpsed non-logical actions, so a theory is now made from scattered elements. Yet these authors explicitly exalt logical actions as alone worthy of account, and we must decide whether to deviate from them.
Rare Events, Omens, and Divine Origins
The instinct leading one to believe rare things unite with other rare things — or with what is greatly desired — maintains faith in such unions, since rarity prevents the tests that would demonstrate their vanity; yet contrary experiences, even frequent ones, often do not move one from the faith, as with the horn worn against the evil eye in southern Italy. Rarity may be intrinsic or extrinsic, and many talismans and relics belong to the latter. Omens often give residues of this kind, sometimes invented after the fact, sometimes stated beforehand and then verified, drawing strength from belief in the efficacy of combinations.
Number Mysticism and the Perfections of Ten
Pythagorean speculation on numbers opens this stretch of the chapter. Philolaus praises the decade as perfect and creative, the principle and guide of divine, celestial, and human life, without which all is endless, uncertain, and dark. Hierocles asks how four can be a god and answers that the decade is the interval separating numbers: counting past ten returns to one, two, three, and so on to twenty, thirty, a hundred, endlessly. Pareto glosses this as simply meaning that ten is the base of Greek numeration. Four is “the virtue of the decade” because 1+2+3+4=10; it exceeds unity by three and is exceeded by seven by three. Seven is “without mother and virgin” — prime, with no multiple between one and ten — second in dignity only to unity. The Pythagoreans held the universe determined by three (beginning, middle, end); three-animal sacrifices were called “perfect,” like the Roman suovetaurilia. Virgil says the gods delight in odd number, and 333,333⅓ appears in Roman public vows.
Comte, Philo, and Augustine
Auguste Comte plagiarizes the Pythagoreans, assigning number-divination to fetishism and speaking of the “philosophical or religious properties of numbers,” claiming animals’ numeration ceases beyond three, and that one represents all systematization, two distinguishes combination, three defines progression. Pareto calls this positivist metaphysics identical to metaphysics without the epithet, childish, and circular. Comte excludes four, divine for the Pythagoreans, and then imposes seven as the base of numeration — an example of reasoning by accord of sentiments. Philo Judaeus reproduces the same divagations: the world completed in six days, the seventh honored as holy, six praised as the first number equal to the sum of its factors. Saint Augustine doubts whether the six days of Genesis are literal but not six’s perfection: “we call this number six perfect because it is the sum of its parts.” Pareto contrasts logico-experimental definitions, where mathematicians label such numbers “perfect” arbitrarily, with reasoning by accord of sentiments, which turns the definition into a theorem.
The Five Aims of the Study
Though these fantasies seem absurd objectively, subjectively they correspond to widespread, powerful sentiments and cannot be neglected in studying social forms. Pareto sets out five aims: a new example of residue and derivations; an example of reasoning by accord of sentiments, comparable to natural right and solidarity; the difference between logico-experimental definitions and metaphysical, theological, or sentimental assertions; the contrast between the precision of science and the indeterminacy of metaphysics; and an example of non-logical actions with no social utility.
The Need to Unite Residues
Class (I-8) is the need to unite residues. Man feels the need to join residues in his mind — a synthetic inclination — while analysis is scientific and few are capable of it. People cannot separate “Is A B?” from “Is it useful that A be B?” Man repugns separating faith from experience; Christians, Muslims, ancient Greeks, and certain socialists illustrate this, while the Epicureans are a rare exception. This need explains indeterminate terms like “good” and “goodness,” and why intellectuals combine the good, beautiful, true, human, altruism, and solidarity. Scientific works disjoin residues that literary works conjoin; literary pseudo-logic persuades the majority better, which is why political economy remains largely literary.
The Need of Logical Developments
Class (I-ε) is the need of logical developments, satisfied by rigorous logic or pseudo-logic alike; theology, metaphysics, and cosmogony attest its power. Those proclaiming the “failure of Science” were right that science cannot satisfy the infinite need for pseudo-logical developments. This need created imaginary causes but also found real ones; science, theology, and metaphysics share a starting point. From it derives the need to cover non-logical actions with logical varnish, and the derivations treated in later chapters.
Faith in the Efficacy of Combinations
Class (I-ζ) is faith in the efficacy of combinations. Belief that A is necessarily conjoined with B may come from experience, but necessity requires a non-experimental act of faith. The scientist invents guided by preconceptions, corrected by experience; the non-scientific man inverts this, moved mainly by faith in combinations, content with insufficient or ridiculous proofs. Such concepts dominate most minds, even scientists’, especially in social science. A rooster with hens produces chicks; a rooster crowing at midnight means someone dies — equally “certain” to the sentimental reasoner. The ignorant plays lotto numbers from dreams and consults somnambulists as he would a physician; old Cato gives magical remedies and agricultural operations with equal faith. Prejudices have diminished, but not disappeared.
Eumaeus and the Feudal Bond
From the Odyssey: Eumaeus, slave of Ulysses, says his master, if he returned, would give him what a loving master gives a servant who has worked well — a house, a field, and a wife. In the house and field lies the real element. Ulysses makes himself recognized, and Eumaeus fights at his master’s side against the suitors. Thus Eumaeus stands to Ulysses as a vassal to his feudal lord.
Relations with Places and Classes
Residues of relations with places often merge with the preceding class. Moderns speak of the “native place” — really where the family resides and infancy was spent. Among ancient Greco-Latin peoples, relations with places joined family, collectivity, and relations with the dead into one complex. Modern patriotism might seem territorial, but the territory’s name suggests a complex of feelings — of a race believed common, of language, religion, traditions, history. Patriotism cannot be precisely defined, just as religion, morality, justice, the good, and the beautiful cannot; these names recall clusters of sentiments with ill-defined forms, held together by the persistence of aggregates.
Social Classes and Caste
Living in a collectivity impresses on the mind certain concepts, ways of thinking, prejudices, and beliefs that persist and acquire a pseudo-objective existence. Corresponding residues often took the form of family-relation residues; social classes and nations were supposed to be descents each having a common author and their own gods. The caste form in India is singular, but the substance is very general, observed in all countries, often more intensely where equality is professed. The distance between an American millionaire and an American common man exceeds that between a German noble and a common man, approaching India’s castes, which is in turn surpassed by the distance separating the white man from the negro in the United States. In Europe, Marxist propaganda of “class struggle” created and strengthened corresponding residues among “proletarians,” while on the other side entrepreneurs’ need not to offend democratic sentiments diminished certain collective-relation residues in the upper classes. Several traits found in contemporary Israelites, attributed to their race, are instead manifestations of residues produced by long centuries of oppression: compare a Russian Jew to an English Jew. Different professions often manifest distinct types, showing different residues corresponding to their activity.
Sects and Their Morality
Associations called sects, constituted with strong exclusive sentiments, have well-known characteristics. Persistence of relations within the sect strengthens it and distances contrast with sentiments outside it. Thus sectarians lose the concepts other men generally hold of the relative value of things.
Purity, Pollution, and the Talmudic Reasoning
The examination of residues continues with the case of the United States, which in 1911 dissolved its commercial treaty with Russia over the exclusion of Israelites holding American passports—an exclusion reputed an offense to equality—while the United States itself rejected many Asiatic subjects of Russia from its own territory without any such offense being felt. The residues still to be examined, genera (V-7) and (V-5), share a common character: integrity having been somehow altered, the aim is to re-establish it if possible, or to obtain compensations for the alteration suffered. If restoration is achieved by operations pertaining to the subjects who suffered the alteration, we have genus (V-7), bipartite into (V-7 1) if the subjects are real and (V-7 2) if imaginary. If restoration is achieved by operations pertaining to whoever altered the integrity, we have genus (V-5), likewise bipartite into (V-5 1) if the agent of alteration is real and (V-5 2) if imaginary.
Genus (V-7) includes purifications, much used in ancient societies and still used among savage or barbarous peoples. Among civilized peoples they are little or not at all employed; but they furnish excellent examples of how residues operate and derivations germinate, hence their study is indirectly useful for understanding analogous phenomena. The matter is complex and requires distinctions: under the objective aspect, the subjects suffering alteration may be real or imaginary—abstractions like family and nation included in the latter—and may extend in space from the human being as nucleus outward to family, kinship, ethnic groups, tribe, city, nation, and all humankind, and in time to ancestors and descendants, as in original sin, metempsychosis, nirvana, and redemption. The alteration itself may be real or imaginary, material or of concepts, transmitted by contact, descent, or acts with real or imaginary effects. The means of alteration and restoration may likewise be real or imaginary; magical operations and many religious practices belong here. Those who consider all actions logical give first place to means, while those who know the great part of non-logical actions give first place to sentiments. Choice of means can matter for social utility: in epidemics the ancients purified with ample washings, medieval men with processions and penances, remaining in enormous filth; the first was useful, the second useless or harmful.
Real well-ascertained cases exist. A man may suffer material alterations of integrity, or in reputation, personally or as part of groups. Extension to family is effective with or without laws; hereditary diseases make children suffer for parents’ faults; peoples suffer for their governors’ errors. Modes of transmission are not only material; the word is powerful, and defamation may be worse than a wound. The passage from real to imaginary is often unnoticed and cannot be precisely fixed even with modern science. One might seek the origin of belief in imaginary cases in observation of real cases, but generally this cannot be admitted, since it would suppose that at the origin of human knowledge stands rigorously logico-experimental science, whereas all known facts show the opposite. In ancient precepts, remedies of real efficacy are mixed with those of imaginary efficacy; men did not begin with the former and extend to the latter, but knew them mixed together, and sometimes began from the latter. Real cases helped generate a general, indistinct belief embracing both real and imaginary cases, strengthened by observation of real cases, by supposed effects of imaginary cases, and by instincts of repugnance whose origin is unknown in the human race as in animal races. Derivations intervene largely to increase complexity.
Purity Laws and the Extension of Impurity
The Talmudic law concerning the purity of Pagans illustrates how derivations are the variable part of the phenomenon while residues are the constant part. Jews never buried their dead on public roads and marked graves with a sign called tzijon; Pagans did not. Since Jews were everywhere surrounded by Pagans, they could not observe purity laws concerning Pagan dead whose tombs they could not recognize, and it came to be believed these tombs did not render impure. Pagans are deemed pure in certain cases chiefly because, in the nucleus of non-logical actions, these referred to members of the collectivity, i.e. the Jews; reasoning later extended them to strangers. But Jews also could not distinguish Pagans’ spittle—and here the Talmud gives a solution directly contrary to the first: if a Pagan woman is in the city, saliva is impure for the haberim, since she may be menstruating. Many similar problems exist with varying solutions, not always reducible to expediency for Israelites living among Pagans. A tradition developed that a Pagan’s tomb does not render impure, attached by Talmudic habit to a word of the Bible: Scripture says adam, a man, who dies renders impure; this word adam, it was said, applies only to Jews. Certain commentators misunderstood this passage, and enemies of Judaism incriminated it. They did not know the passage was found only after Jews had been habituated for centuries to no longer apply the purity law to Pagan tombs—like the passage of the Song of Songs forbidding Jews to revolt against Pagans, discovered only after the last revolution of Bar Kochba, when all insurrection had become impossible. Further problems abound: if in a city there is a fool, a foreigner, or a Cuthean woman, all spittle found in the city is impure; Maimonides explains gentiles are to be held as flux-ridden in all things, and the Cuthean woman is suspected of always menstruating. The blood of a foreign woman and of a leprous woman is clean according to the school of Shammai; Hillel’s school says it is like spittle and urine. Maimonides: gentiles in no way pollute according to the Law, but the Sages decreed they be held as flux-ridden in all things. All maculae coming from Bacam are clean, as unclean according to R. Jehuda, because they are proselytes and err; those from gentiles are clean. The semen-flux-ridden, the menstruating, the puerperal, and the leprous who dies, pollute if carried until the flesh decays; a gentile who dies is clean.
Explanations transcending experience aim to explain why prescriptions held in faith and imposing practices exist. They begin with simple affirmations of taboos, rising gradually to the most abstruse metaphysical and theological subtleties. In Leviticus there is a simple form: rules of purity and purification are given as coming from God; then the assertion is reinforced with exhortation; finally comes one of the more elaborate developments.
The Sexual Residue and Religious Asceticism
The sexual residue’s manifestations include a residue of asceticism, evident in taboos on meat, wine, and sex, accompanied by abstinences and mortifications; clearest among Christians, less so for other abstainers, barely visible in contemporary anti-alcoholics who claim to seek only public utility, though they are generally Unitarians, religious, moralists, and prudish, and likely carry an unnoticed ascetic residue. Accessory sentiments of asceticism include vainglory, envy of those who enjoy what one cannot have, and desire for a collectivity’s esteem and admiration. There is also the need to manifest one’s ascetic faith through external acts.
Main Arguments
The treatise’s central claim is that human conduct is overwhelmingly non-logical, and that the theories men construct about their conduct are themselves experimental facts to be studied rather than arguments to be assessed on their intrinsic merit. Pareto argues that in a given collectivity there circulate descriptive, prescriptive, and other propositions—”Youth is imprudent,” “Do not covet thy neighbor’s goods,” “Love thy neighbor as thyself”—which, joined by logical or pseudo-logical nexus, constitute theories, theologies, cosmogonies, and metaphysics. All these, considered from the outside, are experimental facts; in great part of them lies the image of social activity, and often only through them can we know the forces operating on society—the dispositions and inclinations of men.
From this follows the argument that beliefs and actions are not independent but are like two branches of the same tree. The maxim “he acts thus because he acts thus” contains more truth than error, though it is too absolute. The direct relation between a theory and the concrete adoption of a practice is generally very weak; acting on the theory to modify the practice yields only insignificant results, whereas a modification of the underlying psychic state can reverberate on both. Theory and practice will thus be seen to change together, and a superficial observer may believe the practice changed because the theory changed; deeper study shows that both depend on a common cause. Pareto illustrates this with free trade: in England the practice of free trade, continued for long years, reacted on interests and reinforced a psychic state opposing protectionism—and it was not the theory of free trade that did this. Reasonings, to act on men, must transform themselves into sentiments.
A second major argument concerns the interpretation of history. Pareto insists that from legend nothing historical can be drawn, but much can be learned about the psychic state of those who created or accepted it—and his study is founded on knowledge of such psychic states. Hence he will often cite facts without asking whether they are historical or legendary, since both serve equally, sometimes the legendary better. He argues that the logical interpretation of non-logical actions becomes itself a cause of further actions and must be considered for social equilibrium; for equilibrium it matters more what the vulgar hold to be virtue than what philosophers think. He also argues that the concept of non-logical actions is false of those who blame Catholic theology for witchcraft trials: such trials were as numerous among Protestants as Catholics, and belief in magic belongs to all times and peoples. Interpretations are handmaidens, not masters, of fact.
A third argument concerns method. Pareto holds that all sciences progressed when men discussed results rather than principles. He does not posit any dogma as premise; his principles are only an indication of the path he chooses, and whoever follows it does not renounce another. He compares this to a geometer telling the reader whether he expounds Euclid or Lobatschefsky—a mere notice, not a denial of others. He argues that scientific laws are nothing but experimental uniformities, subject always to the condition “within the limits of time and space known to us,” and that the syllogism about Socrates’ mortality must experimentally be restated as a statement of high probability. Those reasoning on “essences” can substitute certainty for probability; we, ignorant of essences, lose certainty. He further argues that affirming a miracle is impossible because it is circular reasoning: if a miracle could be proved, the constancy of natural laws would be destroyed, and the burden of proof falls on whoever asserts it.
Key Concepts
The most important concept in the treatise is the pair residues and derivations. Residues are the relatively constant element in non-logico-experimental theories—the principle existing in man’s mind, corresponding to certain instincts but not including all of them. They lack precision, and Pareto draws an analogy with philology, since language is a social phenomenon. Derivations are the variable element: the explanations, justifications, and logical dressings men give to their conduct. The two are distinguished by a method for separating the constant from the variable in any doctrine, and Pareto assigns them arbitrary names for convenience. Interests must be added to residues to determine social forms.
Closely related is the concept of the logico-experimental versus the non-logico-experimental. The experimental field is absolutely distinct and disjoined from the non-experimental; the work intends to remain exclusively in the former. In logico-experimental theories, one proceeds gradually from facts to abstractions, becoming more cautious as one moves from direct experience. In non-logico-experimental theories, one deliberately jumps far from direct experience, becoming more bold and certain the further one moves. People seek the “essence” of things, calling direct experience “empiricism” and holding it in low regard.
The concept of non-logical actions is defined and classified in the early chapters. Non-logical actions sometimes achieve optimally an end that could be logical; they appear in animals and in men, in the formation of human language, in theology and cult. There is a quasi-constant and a highly variable part in non-logical manifestations—the example given is storms provoked or averted. Interpretations adapt to the people’s non-logical inclinations, and evolution is multiple. The first hint appears here of the necessity to entirely disjoin a doctrine’s logico-experimental truth from its social utility.
The concept of derivations is developed in the second volume, where Pareto argues that men are persuaded mainly by sentiments (residues), and that derivations are amplified accordingly. Derivations are material used in research by both non-logico-experimental and logico-experimental sciences, but the former suppose derivations have power to operate directly on social constitution, while the latter count them only as manifestations of operating forces. The demonstration of derivations is often not the reason they are accepted. The classification of derivations runs through four classes.
Other key concepts include the objective and subjective aspect of theories, the distinction between direct verification (experiment in the proper sense) and indirect verification, and the wave-form of the phenomenon of residues. Pareto also introduces the concept of social utility as distinct from logico-experimental truth, and the concept of social classes in relation to the distribution and changes of residues.
Themes
The deepest theme of the treatise is the gap between what men do and what they say they do—between the non-logical springs of conduct and the logical justifications erected over them. Pareto returns repeatedly to the image of two branches of the same tree: beliefs and actions are not independent, but their dependence is not the one men imagine. Theologies, cosmogonies, and metaphysical systems are not the causes of social conduct but its expressions; and the more absurd a theology becomes, the more it may act on the psychic state and thereby on conduct—but this case rarely occurs, and only when the psychic state has already changed do men notice absurdities that had previously escaped them.
A second theme is the continuity of human nature across time and culture. Belief in magic belongs to all times and peoples; the heretic is treated as a malefactor then and now; governments once persecuted those who freely discussed the Bible and now persecute those who freely discuss the sexual act. Pareto notes that Lucretius could write freely about both the religion of the gods and sexual matters, and that reading Bodin against Wier resembles reading Bérenger and his followers against those who have not narrowed their minds. The names of the “great enemy” change—Satan becomes feudalism—but the structure of interpretation remains.
A third theme is the social utility of error. Pareto insists that the logico-experimental truth of a doctrine must be entirely disjoined from its social utility. A religion may be absurd in its theology and yet operate powerfully on conduct; the direct relation between cult and conduct, when it exists, is manifestly absurd for us moderns, but the relation between cult and psychic state could in certain cases be very reasonable and useful. It is therefore a grave error to judge the social value of a religion by considering only the logical or reasonable value of its theology. This theme extends to every sort of theory: free trade, protectionism, and the doctrines that accompany them are all to be assessed by their operation on psychic states, not by their logical coherence.
A fourth theme is the difficulty of scientific knowledge of society. We do not know the psychic state directly, but only certain of its manifestations, and while actions are susceptible of exact observation, theories are almost always expressed in an uncertain manner and without the least precision. The intertwining of effects of various laws increases in biology, geology, and most of all in meteorology, and among these sciences are also the social sciences. Celestial mechanics has the fortune of studying the effects of a single law; sociology has no such fortune. The treatise is in large part an essay on how to work back from uncertain manifestations to the forces that produce them.
The Author’s Conclusions
Pareto concludes that the study of society must proceed by successive approximations, without dogmatic premises, and that its propositions are contingent—valid within the limits of time, space, and experience known to us. He concludes that the experimental field is absolutely distinct from the non-experimental, and that sociology must remain within it if it is to become a science. He concludes that non-logical actions are the principal subject matter of sociology, that they are to be studied through their manifestations in theories and conduct, and that the logico-experimental truth of a doctrine is entirely separate from its social utility.
He concludes that residues are the relatively constant element in human conduct, corresponding to instincts, and that derivations are the variable explanations men give of them. He concludes that men are persuaded mainly by sentiments, that reasonings must transform themselves into sentiments to act on men, and that the direct action of theories on conduct is generally very weak. He concludes that the logical interpretation of non-logical actions becomes itself a cause of further actions and must be considered for social equilibrium, and that for equilibrium it matters more what the vulgar hold to be virtue than what philosophers think.
He concludes that the history of doctrines shows men of genius did notice non-logical actions, often implicitly and under other names, and that the imperfection of common language has widened logical interpretations. He concludes that the search for “origins” of social phenomena often proceeds as ancient etymology did, supposing or inventing intermediate passages, and that such investigations, while outside experimental reality, were not useless because they helped open a breach in ethical and a priori theories. Now that this work is accomplished, they must give way to purely experimental theories. The treatise closes with its bibliographic apparatus, an index of names and works cataloguing the sources—classical, patristic, and modern—on which the argument has drawn, from Cato and Cicero through Machiavelli, Marx, and Spencer to the periodicals of the author’s own day.
Significance
The Trattato di Sociologia Generale stands as one of the founding attempts to constitute sociology as an experimental science on the model of chemistry and physics. Its distinction between residues and derivations, its classification of non-logical actions, and its insistence on separating logico-experimental truth from social utility have become part of the vocabulary of the social sciences. The treatise’s method—working back from uncertain manifestations to the psychic states that produce them, treating theories as experimental facts rather than arguments, and refusing dogmatic premises—represents a sustained effort to apply the lessons of the physical sciences to the study of society.
Its significance lies also in its polemical stance. Pareto writes against the dogmatic sociologies of his time, against the metaphysical habit of explaining the unknown by the unknown, and against the confusion of what is with what ought to be. He argues that all sciences progressed when men discussed results rather than principles, and he asks for sociology the same freedom that geometry has when it declares whether it expounds Euclid or Lobatschefsky. The treatise’s influence extends beyond sociology into political theory and the study of ideology, where its analysis of the gap between conduct and justification remains a point of departure. Its insistence that the social value of a doctrine is independent of its logical value, and that the vulgar’s interpretation generally matters more than the theorist’s for social equilibrium, gives it a permanent place in the study of how societies actually work—as distinct from how they say they work.
