To get it, the reader should remember that the big is never more than the simplification of oneelement of the small:

Macro features are so provisional and have so little ability to rule over the occurrences that they only manage to serve as an occasionfor more differences to be generated!

he first difficulty is to grasp how the big manages not to emerge out of the small but to foreground some of its features

The big, the whole, the great, is not superior to the monads, it is only a simpler, more standardised, version of one of the monad’s goal which has succeeded in making part of its view shared by the others.

it is because he is a reductionist —even of a strange sort—that he does not respect any border between nature and society, and because he does not stop at the border between physics, biology and sociology that he does not believe in explaining the lower levels by the higher levels.

In the same way as Tarde refuses to take society as a higher, more complex, order than the individual monad, he refuses to take the individual human agent as the real stuff out of which society is made:

ut, here again, Tarde offers a very odd type of reductionism since the smallest entities are always richer in difference and complexity than their aggregates or that the superficial appearances that we observe from far away. For a reason we will understand later, the small is always also the most complex:

Finally, monads lead to a thoroughly reductionist version of metaphysics since the small always holds the key to the understanding of the big

monads are not material entity only since they are possessedby faith and desire —the verb ‘possess’, as we shall see at the end, takes a great importance in Tarde.

Instead of establishing sociology on a complete rupture with philosophy, ontology and metaphysics, as Durkheim will be so proud of doing, Tarde goes straight at them and reclaims as his duty to connect social theory with bold assumptions about the furniture of the world itself.

In the same essay in which he classifies one white raceas inherently savage, Carlyle also acknowledges the difficulty of distin-guishing between savage and civilized whites—that is, between thewhite Irish and the white English.

Andsavages, here as in the “Occasional Discourse” essay, require enslave-ment:

Carlyle’sdescriptions of both the Irish and the African West Indians make itclear that the incorporation of either race into a British destiny isunlikely to be complete. Both the Irish and the Africans are bestializedin Carlyle’s writing—they are therefore far more likely to be relegatedto a state of “primordial fixity” (Bhabha 98), incapable of progress, thanto claim full membership in an empir

The Celt ofConnemara,” Carlyle writes, “are white and not black, but it is not thecolour of the skin that determines the savagery of a man

arlyle was wellaware of the tenets of Anglo-Saxonism, having helped to develop andpropagate them himself. In his essay “The Repeal of the Union,” forexample, his argument against Irish independence rests largely on theconviction that Celts are racially inferior to Anglo-Saxons.

eminiscences narrates Carlyle’s exposure to thedehumanizing effects of the Irish famine

The first of these is supply-and-demand capi-talism, to which Carlyle gives a twist, arguing that free-marketeconomics will not result in progress at all. Importing more slaves tomeet the demand for labor in the West Indies will create not a func-tional, stabilized market, but rather a “Black Ireland,” in which unem-ployed African West Indians starve as did the famine Irish. As analternative to this nightmare scenario, Carlyle offers imperialistprogressivism: the advance of the West Indies from “waste fertility” tosocial and economic significance can only be secured, he suggests, byincorporating the islands into a British national destiny through whitemastery over African workers (26). Yet here too there is a twis

The essay addressesthe shortage of African labor in the West Indies following the abolitionof British slavery there in 1833, arguing that British imperialism servesthe greater good of humankind, and would do so even if slavery werenecessary to preserve it

His extensive notes on his Irishjourney were not published until after his death.

a series of essays Carlyle published in the Examiner and theSpectator between March 1848 and April 1849.5 Carlyle had begunresearch for a book on Ireland and was widely expected to write one

His month-long tour, begin-ning in Dublin, ending in Londonderry, and circling clockwise aroundthe island in between, exposed him to scenes of extreme poverty andstarvation but also gave him cause for hope. He toured ruins and anexperimental farm, and his letters juxtapose descriptions of Irishbeggars and Irish hospitality.

In 1849he even submitted an essay to Duffy, instructing him to “do as you like”with it, “only don’t...speak of my mortal name in connection with it”(Conversations 146). Duffy printed the piece anonymously in the Nation,whereafter its author was immediately recognized(Conversations 146).The essay, “Trees of Liberty,” appeared in December 1849—the samemonth that saw the publication of “Occasional Discourse on the NegroQuestion”—and suggested that patriotic Irishmen would be better offplanting trees for their country than dying for it

Carlyle developed a particularly longstanding relationship withDuffy, who chronicled their interactions in his 1892 Conversations withCarlyle.They exchanged not only personal regards but also professionalwork. Duffy—astonishingly—served as a proofreader for Carlyle’s hero-worshipping work on Oliver Cromwell, ensuring the accuracy of itsIrish place names (Conversations 13).

After their personal acquaintance commenced, Carlyle met with YoungIreland members during both of his journeys to Ireland—a brief one in1846, and a more lengthy tour in 1849—and corresponded with severalof them.

Young Ireland writers were preoccupied withblack oppression, given that repeal was usually figured as a conflictbetween two white racial groups—a battle between Saxons and Celts.

nd in the movement’s writing, as in Carlyle’s, this resistance toneutralized nationalism is often organized around the issue of race

hared Carlyle’s skepticism about theories of progress thatpositioned Ireland backward in time relative to a norm of nationaldevelopment defined by Britai

Carlyle emphasized race in his writing on famineIreland partly to resist progressive narratives depicting that country’splight as a developmental stage to be suffered through rather thanrepaired. Carlyle’s resistance to such a teleology is clear in one of hismost overtly racist essays, “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Ques-tion” (1849), published just months after he toured Ireland with Duffy.

Carlyle’s infamous positions on race are frequently cited incontemporary discussions of Victorian racial ideology, in part becausethey are some of the most influential and offensively expressed posi-tions on the issue available.

But Carlyle and his guests also disagreed on the fundamentalpolitical issue: the goal of Young Ireland was the repeal of the 1800 Act ofUnion between Britain and Ireland, a goal Carlyle opposed.

arlyle’s writing on Ireland, however, empha-sized the country’s religious and—especially—its Celtic racial characteras key both to its troubles and to its destiny