rks, rallies to the same battles
cries and is everywhere dominated, even in his most characteristically
individual behavior, by an instinctive and passionate desire to conform
to an external model and to the wishes of the herd, then we have an
explanation of everything characteristic of society--except the
variants, the nonconformists, the idealists, and the rebels. The herd
instinct may be an explanation of conformity but it does not explain
variation. Variation is an important fact in society as it is in nature
generally.

Homogeneity and like-mindedness are, as explanations of the social
behavior of men and animals, very closely related concepts. In "like
response to like stimulus," we may discern the beginning of "concerted
action" and this, it is urged, is the fundamental social fact. This is
the "like-mindedness" theory of society which has been given wide
popularity in the United States through the writings of Professor
Franklin Henry Giddings. He describes it as a "developed form of the
instinct theory, dating back to Aristotle's aphorism that man is a
political animal."

Any given stimulus may happen to be felt by more than one
organism, at the same or at different times. Two or more
organisms may respond to the same given stimulus simultaneously
or at different times. They may respond to the same given
stimulus in like or in unlike ways; in the same or in different
degrees; with like or with unlike promptitude; with equal or
with unequal persistence. I have attempted to show that in like
response to the same given stimulus we have the beginning, the
absolute origin, of all concerted activity--the inception of
every conceivable form of co-operation; while in unlike
response, and in unequal response, we have the beginning of all
those processes of individuation, of differentiation, of
competition, which in their endlessly varied relations to
combination, to co-operation, bring about the infinite
complexity of organized social life.[36]

Closely related, logically if not historically, to Giddings' conception
of "like-mindedness" is Gabriel Tarde's conception of "imitation." If
for Giddings "like response to like stimulus" is the fundamental social
fact, for Tarde "imitation" is the process through which alone society
exists. Society, said Tarde, exists in imitation. As a matter of fact,
Tarde's doctrine may be regarded as a corollary t