TABDE, tuird, G B P. I EL ( 143-1904 ) . A French sociologist and criminologist: Born at the little town of Sarlat (Dordogne), he passed nearly twenty years there as magistrate and juge d'instrurtion. In ISSO he began to con tribute to the Recur Chilasophique. and gradu ally won his way to reputation, which was as cured after the publication of his Lois de l'imita lion in 1890. He later became professor of mod ern philosophy at the College de France in Paris. In a large number of books and articles. Tarde elaborated a complete and original theory of society. It is essentially a psychological theory. In Tarde's view, to study society is to study how the minds of men act, and how they influence one another. The essence of society, he held, is that one man should be so affected by another that the two should be brought to greater similarity of thought or action. Social life is a round of in vention and imitation; an 'invention' being a new thought or act of any kind whatever, and 'imitation' any thought or act of copying or making after a model. Imitation obeys certain laws which Tarde made it his business to in vestigate. Thus it is usually the inferior who copies the superior, the lower class the upper class; it is generally true that a new idea has prestige because of its novelty. though if it he taken up as a permanent institution it will also come to prestige through the tradition of age.
Circles of imitation spread from different inven tions as do the ripples around stones thrown on a pond; the circles interfere, oppose, or com bine. in complicated ways which Tarde sought to analyze. The essentials of his theory were presented in the Lois de l'imitation. and were much elaborated five years later in his Logique sociale, in which extensive illustrations were given from the whole range of social development. Along with his sociological theory, Tarde grad ually developed a philosophical system, best summarized in his Lois sociales (1898). His psychological point of view is carried over into his criminological work. La criminalite comparee (1880), his first book, emphasized the purely so cial influences upon crime, with much criticism of the anthropological school of Lombroso. La phi losophie perale (1390) is a more systematic presentation of his ideas. Tarde's other works include: Etudes penales et sociales (1892); Les transformations du droit (1993) ; Essais et me langes sociologiques (1895) ; L'opposition uni verselle (1897) ; Etudes de psychologie sociale (1898) ; Les transformations du pouvoir (1899) ; L'opinion et to faille (1901) ; Psychologie eco nomique (1902) ; in English translation, Social Laws (New York, 1898).