Durkheim: Division of Labour in Society

Everybody knows that we like what resembles us, those who think and feel as we do. But the opposite phenomenon is no less frequently encountered. Very often we happen to feel drawn to people who do not resemble us, precisely because they do not do so. These facts are seemingly so much at odds that in every age moralists have hesitated about the true nature of friendship and have traced it now to the one cause, now to the other. The Greeks had already posed the question. 'Friendship,' says Aristotle, 'gives rise to much argument. For some it consists in a certain resemblance, and those who resemble each other like each other; hence the provers, "like goes with like", and "birds of a feather flock together", and other similar sayings. But on the contrary, according to others, all those who resemble one another grate upon one antoher. Other explanations are sought at a higher level which are taken from a consideration of nature. Thus Euripides says that the parched earth is in love with the rain, and that the overcast sky heavy with rain pours down upon the earth in a fury of love. Heraclitus claims that one only accommodates to what one opposed, that the finest harmony is born from differences, and that discord is the law of all becoming.

What demonstrates these opposing doctrines is the fact that both forms of friendship exist in nature. Dissimilarity, just like resemblance, can be a cause of mutual attraction. However, not every kind of dissimilarity is sufficient to bring this about. We find no pleasure in meeting others whose nature is merely different from our own. Prodigals do not seek the company of the miserly, nor upright and frank characters that of the hypocritical and underhand. Kind and gentle spirits feel no attraction for those of harsh and evil disposition. Thus only differences of a certain kind incline us towards one another. These are those which, instead of mutually opposing and excluding one another, complement one another. Bain says, 'There is a kind of disparity that repels and a kind that attracts; a kind that tends to rivalry, and a kind that tends to friendship...if what the one has, the other has not, but desires, there is a basis of positive attraction.

Thus the theorist with a reasoning and subtle mind has often a very special sympathy for practical men who are direct and whose intuition is swift. The fearful are attracted to those who are decisive and resolute, the weak to the strong, and vice versa. However richly endowed we may be, we always lack something, and the best among us feel our own inadequacy. This is why we seek in our friends those qualities we lack, because in uniting with them we share in some way in their nature, feeling ourselves then less complete. In this way small groups of friends grow up in which each individual plays a role in keeping with his character, in which a veritable exchange of services occurs. The one protects, the other consoles; one advises, the other executes, and it is this distribution of function or, to use the common expression, this division of labour, that determines these relations of friendship.