theless, the private and personal opinion of an individual who
participates in making public opinion is influenced by the opinions of
those around him, and by public opinion. In this sense every opinion is
public opinion.

Public opinion, in respect to the manner in which it is formed and the
manner in which it exists--that is to say relatively independent of the
individuals who co-operate to form it--has the characteristics of
collective representation in general. Collective representations are
objective, in just the sense that public opinion is objective, and they
impose themselves upon the individual as public opinion does, as
relatively but not wholly external forces--stabilizing, standardizing,
conventionalizing, as well as stimulating, extending, and generalizing
individual representations, percepts.

The collective representations are exterior to the individual
consciousness because they are not derived from the individuals
taken in isolation but from their convergence and union
(concours).... Doubtless, in the elaboration of the common
result, each (individual) bears his due share; but the private
sentiments do not become social except by combining under the
action of the forces _sui generis_ which association develops.
As a result of these combinations, and of the mutual
alterations which result therefrom, they (the private
sentiments) become something else (_autre chose_). A chemical
synthesis results, which concentrates, unifies, the elements
synthetized, and by that very process transforms them.... The
resultant derived therefrom extends then beyond (_deborde_) the
individual mind as the whole is greater than the part. To know
really what it is, one must take the aggregate in its totality.
It is this that thinks, that feels, that wills, although it may
not be able to will, feel, or act save by the intermediation of
individual consciousnesses.[41]

This, then, after nearly a century of criticism, is what remains of
Comte's conception of the social organism. If society is, as the
realists insist, anything more than a collection of like-minded
individuals, it is so because of the existence (1) of a social process
and (2) of a body of tradition and opinion--the products of this
process--which has a relatively objective character and imposes itself
upon the individual as a form of control, social control. This process
an