SOURCE: "The Sociology of Pareto," in Reason and Unreason in Society: Essays in Sociology and Social Philosophy, Harvard University Press, 1948, pp. 84-103.

In the following essay, which was first published in 1936, Ginsberg challenges the central points of Pareto's sociological theories.

Pareto's sociology falls naturally into two parts. The first is devoted to an analysis and classification of the elementary constituents of human nature as manifested in social life. The second is concerned with the interactions of these elementary traits and the changes which occur in their distribution in the different classes of society. The method followed is inductive and comparative, that is to say, it starts with empirical facts such as beliefs actually held in different societies, maxims of conduct accepted by them and the like, and it seeks to analyse out the constant and variable elements in these forms of behaviour and to discover the laws or...