19 - The normal state

Summary

Until Broussais, the pathological state obeyed laws completely different from those governing the normal state, so that observation of one could decide nothing for the other. Broussais established that the phenomena of disease are of essentially the same kind as those of health, from which they differed only in intensity.

The collective organism, because of its greater degree of complexity, is liable to problems more serious, varied and frequent than those of the individual organism. I do not hesitate to state that Broussais's principle must be extended in that direction, and I have often applied it there to confirm or perfect sociological laws. But those who would apply the analysis of Revolutions to the Positive study of Society must pass through the logical training given by the simpler phenomena of Biology.

Normality is like determinism, both timeless and dated, an idea that in some sense has been with us always, but which can in a moment adopt a completely new form of life. As a word, ‘determinism’ came into use in the 1780s, and assumed its present most common meaning in the 1850s. As a word, ‘normal’ is much older, but it acquired its present most common meaning only in the 1820s. Now although the two words are conspirators in the taming of chance, they enter in very different ways. The normal was one of a pair. Its opposite was the pathological and for a short time its domain was chiefly medical. Then it moved into the sphere of — almost everything.