MINISTERY OF EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS

Belarus State Economic University

REFERAT:

"Mechanical Solidarity through Likeness"

Minsk 2008

Тhe only common characteristic of all crimes is that they consist – except some apparent exceptions with which we shall deal later – in acts universally disapproved of by all members of society.

Сrime shocks sentiments which, for a given social system, are found in all healthy consciences.

It is not possible otherwise to determine the nature of these sentiments, to define them in terms of the function of their particular objects, for these objects have infinitely varied and can still very. Today, there are altruistic sentiments which present this character most markedly; but there was a time, not far distant from ours, when religious, domestic, and a thousand other traditional sentiments had exactly the same effects.

But we have not defined crime when we say that it consists in an offense to collective sentiments, for there are some among these which can be offended without there being a crime... The collective sentiments to which crime corresponds must, therefore, singularize themselves from others by some distinctive; property; they must have a certain average intensity. Not only are they engraved in all consciences, but they are strongly engraved.

They are not hesitant and superficial desires, but emotions and tendencies which are strongly ingrained in us. The proof of this is the extreme slowness with which penal law evolves. Not only is it modified more slowly than custom, but it is the part of positive most refractory to change. Observe, for example, what has been accomplished in legislation since the beginning of the nineteenth century in the different spheres of juridical life; the innovations in the matter of penal law are extremely rare and restricted compared to the multitude of new dispositions introduced into the civil law, commercial law, administrative law, and constitutional law.

It is not sufficient... that the sentiments be strong; they must be precise. In effect, each of them is relatively to a very definite practice. This practice can be simple or complex, positive or negative... but it is always determined. It is a question of doing or not doing this or that, of not killing, not wounding, of pronouncing such a formula, of going through such a rite, etc. On the contrary, sentiments such as filial love or charity are vague aspirations towards very general objects. So penal laws are remarkable for their neatness and precision, while purely moral rules are generally somewhat nebulous.

We are now in a position to come to a conclusion. The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society forms a determinate system which has its own life; one may call it the collective or common conscience. No doubt, it has not a specific organ as a substratum; it is, by definition, diffuse in every reach of society. Nevertheless, it has specific characteristics which make it a distinct reality. It is, in effect, independent of the particular conditions in which individuals are placed; they pass on and it remains. Moreover, it does not change with each generation, but, on the contrary, it connects successive generations with one another. It is thus an entirely different thing from particular consciences, although it can be realised only through them.

Organic Solidarity Due to the Division of Labour

Everybody knows that there is a social cohesion whose cause lies in a certain conformity of all particular consciences to a common type which is none other than the psychic type of society.

There are in us two consciences: one contains states which are personal to each of us and which characterise us, while the states which comprehend the other are common to all society. To simplify the exposition, we hold that the individual appears only in one society. In fact, we take part in several groups and there are several collective consciences in us; but this complication changes nothing with regard to the relation that we are now establishing.

This law definitely plays a role in society analogous to that played by the nervous system in the organism. The latter has as its task, in effect, the regulation of the different functions of the body in such a way as make them harmonise. It thus very naturally expresses the state of concentration at which the organism has arrived, in accordance with the division of physiological labour. Thus, on different levels of the animal scale, we can measure the degree of this concentration according to the development of the nervous system. Which is to say that we can equally measure the degree of concentration at which society has arrived in accordance with the division of social labour according to the development of cooperative law with restitutive sanctions. We can foresee the great services that this criterion will render us.

There are in each of us, as we have said, two consciences: one of which is common to our group in its entirety, which, consequently, is not ourselves, but society living and acting within us; the other, on the contrary, represents that in us which is personal and distinct, that which makes us an individual.

Solidarity which comes from likeness is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops our whole conscience and coincides in all points with it...

Аt the moment when this solidarity exercises its force, our personality vanishes... ............