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there would evidently have been no possibility of bringing together the special regulations of the parts into a higher whole.

Perhaps the connection between the enlargement of the circle and the negative character of its determinations shows itself most decisively in the following: The more generally, that is, for the greater circle, the norm is applicable, the less is its observance characterizing and significant for the individual; while the failure to observe it is usually accompanied by especially severe and notable consequences. This is particularly the case, in the first place, in the intellectual realm. The theoretical understanding, without which there could be no human society, rests upon a small number of generally recognized, although of course not abstractly conscious, norms which we designate as logical principles. They constitute the minimum of that which must be recognized by all who want to hold commerce with each other. Upon this basis rests the most fleeting consensus of individuals least acquainted with each other, as well as the daily association of the most intimate. Intellectual observance of these simplest norms, without which there could be no reckoning with experienced reality, is the most inexorable and most universal condition of all sociological life; for with all variety of the subjective and objective world-view, logic produces a certain common ground, departure from which must destroy all intellectual community in the broadest sense of the term. But logic, however, strictly speaking, neither means nor produces any positive possession whatever. It is only the norm against which we may not sin, while at the same time obedience to it does not afford any distinction, any specific good or quality. All attempts to win a specific cognition with the help of mere logic fail, and their sociological significance is consequently quite as negative as that of the criminal statute book. On the other hand, only failure to observe produces a special and classified situation, while remaining within the norm affords to the individual nothing else than the possibility of remaining, theoretically or practically, in the generality. To be sure, from thousandfold divergence of content, the intellectual nexus itself may fail, even with strict obser

vance of logic; but with disregard of logic it must fail-precisely as the moral-social community, even with the most exact avoidance of everything criminally forbidden, may go to pieces; while with disobedience of these norms it must go to pieces. The case is not different with the societary forms in the more restricted sense, so far as they are actually general in a community. Although their observance is distinctive for nobody, transgression of them is in the highest degree distinctive, for the most universal laws of a community are merely not to be transgressed, while the special norms which hold together restricted circles, in the degree of their specialization, lend to the individual a positive shading and difference. The disobedience of these latter norms may destroy such a circle, but the larger comprehending group, in which the elements of the smaller belong in addition, remains still intact, and does not dissolve until its elements transgress that minimum of norms the essence of which is, in the ratio of their generality, merely prohibitive. Upon this relationship rests also the great practical utility of the quite empty societary forms of courtesy. Upon the positive existence of respect and loyalty of which they testify to us we may not count, even from their most accurate observance; on the other hand, the slightest failure to observe them proves that those feelings are not present. The salute upon the street by no means demonstrates respect; the omission of the same, however, gives very decided evidence of the contrary. As symbols of positive subjective attitude, these forms completely fail to be of service. The negative, however, they advertise in a most useful way, since a quite easy negligence may radically and definitely determine the relation to a given person—and indeed in the degree in which the form of courtesy is quite universal and conventional, that is, a part of the essential nature of a relatively large circle.

This form-difference of the life-conditions which attaches itself to the social quantity-difference is, in the large, denoted also by the antithesis between custom and law. It appears as though in the case of the Aryan peoples the first attachments of the individual to a superindividual life-order proceeded from a quite general instinct or concept, which signified the categorical,

the appropriate, the should-be in general. The particular regulations in the realms of religion, morality, conventions, law, are not details in the sense that from them that concept could have proceeded as that which was common to them all, but they are the ramifications which rest undifferentiated in it. The concept is the original, not the later abstracted unity. In contrast now to the opinion in accordance with which morality, custom, and law have developed, so to speak, as pendants from that germ-condition, the germ seems to me rather to persist still in that which we call custom, and to represent the indifferencecondition which puts forth from itself from different sides the form of law and of morality. Custom as a form of sociological combination seems to me scarcely to be capable of positive definition, but it can properly be defined only through the antithesis to those two forms which develop themselves from it here also betraying its quite primary and general character. All three forms serve to assure the demeanor of the individual in accordance with the demands of social utility. Law has in statute and in its executive agencies the differentiated organs through which it can first precisely circumscribe its contents and, second, control them externally. Hence, however, it limits itself for utilitarian purposes to the quite essential conditions of the group-life. The free morality of the individual, on the other hand, possesses no other law than that which it gives itself autonomously from within, and no other executive than conscience. Hence its scope embraces, to be sure, in principle, the totality of action; it has, however, visibly, in its external practice, in every individual case, special accidental and varying boundaries.1

'That law and morality thus alike spring pari passu from one variation of societary development appears in the teleological significance of the two, which, more than the first appearance betrays, connote each other. If the restricted leading of the individual, which includes a life regulated altogether by custom, gives place to the universal legal norm, which has a much wider distance from everything individual, yet in the social interest the therewith attained freedom may still not remain responsible to itself alone. Through the moral imperative the juristic demands are enlarged, and the gaps in the regulations of life are filled, which are produced by defect of universally regulating custom. Regulation is now at the same time transferred much higher above the individual and much deeper within him, for whatever personal and metaphysical

Through custom, then, a community assures to itself the appropriate conduct of its members, where the pressure of the law is inadequate, and the superindividual morality is not to be relied upon. Thus custom works today as complement of these two institutions, as it was the sole regulator of life at a time when these differentiated forms of norm existed either not at all or merely in the germ. Therewith is the sociological place of custom sufficiently indicated. It stands between the largest circle, as a member of which the individual is subordinate to the law, and absolute individuality, which is the sole bearer of free morality. Custom belongs, therefore, to the narrower circles, the intermediate structures between the individual and the greater community. Almost all custom is that of a rank or class; its manners of expression, such as external behavior, fashion, honor, control always only a subordinate division of the largest circle to which the law applies, and they have in the contiguous subdivisions a different content. Against failures to observe good customs reaction is produced on the part of the narrower circle of those who are in some way affected by it, or are witnesses of it, while a violation of the legal order calls out the reaction of the totality. Since custom has as its executive only public opinion, and certain reactions of individuals immediately attached to it, it is evident that a great circle, as such, is excluded from administering it. There is no need of expanding the observation values conscience and the autonomous morality may represent, their social value, which concerns us here alone, lies in their enormous prophylactic utility. Law and custom seize upon the activities of the will in their external manifestation and their realization; they operate, purely as such, in a compulsory way, at the utmost through fear. Morality, however, stands at the roots of the deed; it thus reconstructs the subjectivity of the agent until, of his own accord, he permits only the right action to proceed from himself, without needing the support of those relatively external forces. But society has no interest in the purely subjective moral perfecting of the agent. This is important to society only, and is only cultivated by society, in so far as it results in the utmost guarantee for the socially useful actions of precisely this agent. In the morality of the individual, society creates for itself an organ which is not only more fundamentally operative than law and custom, but which also spares society the different sorts of cost involved in these institutions. Hence the tendency of society to satisfy its demands as cheaply as possible results in appeals to "good conscience," through which the individual pays to himself the wages for his righteousness, which otherwise would probably have to be assured to him in some way through law or custom.

that the customs of trade, as such, permit or command something different from those of the aristocracy; those of a religious circle, again, something different from those of a literary body; etc. In this connection it is obvious that the content of custom consists of the special limitations which a narrower circle needs, which circle has at its disposal for the guarantee of the limitations neither the power of civic law nor entirely trustworthy autonomous moral impulses. What is common to these circles and the most primitive, with which for us social history begins, is nothing else than numerical paucity. The life-forms which earlier sufficed for the entire community-circle have, with the growth of the latter, withdrawn themselves to its subordinate divisions, for these contain now the possibilities of personal relationships, the approximate equality of level of the members, the common interests and ideals, in the presence of which one may confide social regulation to so precarious and ambiguous a species of norm as customary morality is. With increasing quantity of the elements, and of the therewith unavoidable independence of the same, these limitations disappear for the circle as a whole. The peculiar constraining power of custom becomes for the state too little, and for the individual too much. The former demands greater guarantees, the latter greater freedom; and only with those sides with which each element belongs to intermediate circles is it still socially controlled through custom.

To this correlation which attaches the difference of the social form of custom from that law, to the quantitative variation of the communities, there are obvious exceptions. The original popular unities of the Teutonic stocks, upon which the great realms, the Frankish, the English, the Swedish, raised themselves, were often able to protect themselves a long time against loss of the privilege of enacting their own laws. Such laws as they had were often made enactments of the state comparatively late; and, on the other hand, in modern international intercourse many customs prevail which have not yet received the force of law. Within the particular state many modes of action are established as law which in external relationships, that is, within the largest circle, must be consigned to the looser form of custom. The

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