Following the law of separation of the old Herbert Spencer, the selection of heterogeneous talents and vocations was bound to take place of its own accord. In fact, at the end of a century there was already underground in course of development and continuous excavation a city of painters, a city of sculptors, a city of musicians, of poets, of geometricians, of physicists, of chemists, even of naturalists, of psychologists, of scientific or aesthetic specialists of every kind, except, strictly speaking, in philosophy. For we were obliged after several attempts to give up the idea of founding or maintaining a city of philosophers, notably owing to the incessant trouble caused by the tribe of sociologists who are the most unsociable of mankind.

Gabriel Tarde, Underground Man