f theories, those which systematically make
abstraction of all political tendencies in order to study the social
reality in itself, traces of Darwinism are readily to be found.

Let us take for example Durkheim's theory of Division of Labour.[258]
The conclusions he derives from it are that whenever professional
specialisation causes multiplication of distinct branches of activity,
we get organic solidarity--implying differences--substituted for
mechanical solidarity, based upon likenesses. The umbilical cord, as
Marx said, which connects the individual consciousness with the
collective consciousness is cut. The personality becomes more and more
emancipated. But on what does this phenomenon, so big with
consequences, itself depend? The author goes to social morphology for
the answer: it is, he says, the growing density of population which
brings with it this increasing differentiation of activities. But,
again, why? Because the greater density, in thrusting men up against
each other, augments the intensity of their competition for the means
of existence; and for the problems which society thus has to face
differentiation of functions presents itself as the gentlest solution.

Here one sees that the writer borrows directly from Darwin.
Competition is at its maximum between similars, Darwin had declared;
different species, not laying claim to the same food, could more
easily coexist. Here lay the explanation of the fact that upon the
same oak hundreds of different insects might be found. Other things
being equal, the same applies to society. He who finds some unadopted
specialty possesses a means of his own for getting a living. It is by
this division of their manifold tasks that men contrive not to crush
each other. Here we obviously have a Darwinian law serving as
intermediary in the explanation of that progress of division of labour
which itself explains so much in the social evolution.

And we might take another example, at the other end of the series of
sociological systems. G. Tarde is a sociologist with the most
pronounced anti-naturalistic views. He has attempted to show that all
application of the laws of natural science to society is misleading.
In his _Opposition Universelle_ he has directly combatted all forms of
sociological Darwinism. According to him the idea that the evolution
of society can be traced on the same plan as the evolution of species
is chimerical. Social evolution is at the mercy of all kind