a totally different result, and although without materially practical relationship to the subdivision into the ten individuals, appears to me to have been derived psychologically from the latter. As the Jews returned from the second exile, 42,360 Jews with their slaves, they were so subdivided that a tenth, selected by lot, took up their abode in Jerusalem, the remaining nine-tenths in the country. These were too few for the capital, wherefore there was immediately a taking of thought about the increase of the population of Jerusalem. The power of the decimal principle, as a basis of social division, seems thus to have operated blindly against the demands of practice.

The hundred, derived from the decimal principle, is primarily and essentially also a means of subdivision, and historically indeed the most important. I have already observed that it immediately became the conceptual substitute for subdivision in general, so that its name remained attached to the subgroup even when the latter contained considerably more or fewer members. The Hundreds appeared-most decisively perhaps in the important rôle that they play in the government of AngloSaxon England—at the same time as the idea of the subordinate group in general, whose inner meaning their incomplete realization does not alter. It is, in this instance, very notable that the Hundreds in ancient Peru still voluntarily paid their tribute to the Incas, with the exertion of all their powers, after they were reduced to a fourth of their typical number. In this case the fundamental sociological fact is that these territorial associations were regarded as unities beyond their members. Since, however, the liability to taxation, as it appears, rested not on the society, as such, but upon its hundred participants, the assumption of this obligation by the remaining twenty-five shows the more distinctly that the hundred was regarded as a unity of absolute and essential solidarity. The strong centripetality which thus rules this structure enforces the suggestion that its significance is to be found, not merely in its utility as a principle of division, which is at best something external to it, and with which it serves the larger circumscribing group. Apart from this, therefore, it is found, in fact, that the number of one

hundred members, purely as such, lends to the group a special significance and dignity. The nobility in Locri Epizephyrii traced its origin back to noble-women of the so-called "hundred houses" that had shared in the founding of the colony. In the same way, tradition has it that the original settlements by which Rome was founded comprised a hundred Latin gentes, a hundred Sabellic, and a hundred composed of various elements. The complete number of one hundred members evidently lends the group a certain style, the precisely and accurately limited outline, in contrast with which every somewhat smaller or larger number appears, to a certain extent, vague and less complete in itself. The hundred has an essential unity and system which made it especially available for every genealogical mythology, a species of symmetry and of rational necessity, while all other numbers of group-elements seemed to be accidental, not in like manner cohering of inner necessity, not equally unchangeable in their proper essential structure. The peculiarly adequate relation to our intellectual categories, the easy visibility of the number one hundred, which makes it so available as a principle of subdivision, thus appears as a reflex of an objective peculiarity of the group, which accrues to the latter from this numerical precision.

This just-mentioned qualification is completely separate from those previously treated. In the case of the dyad and triad combinations, the number determined the proper inner life of the group, but it does this still not as quantity; the group displays all those phenomena, not because it, as a whole, has this size, but the essential thing is definite relationships of each individual element, on account of reaction with one or with two other elements. Quite different was the case with all survivals of the number of the fingers. Here the ground of the synthesis lay in the more convenient visibility, organization, docility; in short, properly not in the group itself, but in the agent that had theoretically or practically to deal with it. A third significance of the number of members is connected finally with the fact that the group objectively and as a whole—that is, without distinction of the individual positions of the elements - betrays

certain qualities only below or above a definite extent. This has been treated above quite generally in connection with the difference between large and small groups. The question now arises, however, whether traits of character in the total group are not derived from definite numbers of members, in which case, of course, the reactions between the individuals constitute the real and decisive event. The question merely assumes, however, that not the members in their individuality, but their assemblage in a picture of the whole, now constitutes the object of inquiry. The facts which point to this significance of the group-quantity all belong in a single type, namely, the legal prescriptions as to the minimum or maximum membership of associations in order that, as such, they may lay claim to certain functions or rights, or may be liable to the performance of certain obligations. The ground for this is close at hand. The special qualities which associations develop on the ground of their membership, and which justify the legal prescription with reference to them, would, to be sure, always be the same, attached to the same number, if there were no psychological differences between men, and the effect of a group followed its quantity as exactly as is the case with the dynamic action of a moved homogeneous mass of matter. The inevitable individual differences of the members, however, make all precise and anticipatory determinations completely elusive. They bring it to pass that the same degree of energy or thoughtlessness, of centralizaton or decentralization, of self-sufficiency or need of leadership, which once appears in a group of definite numbers, would a second time be discovered in a much smaller, and a third time only in a much larger group. The legal provisions, however, which must be related somehow to those qualities of associations, cannot reckon technically with such paralysis and variations on account of the accidental human material. They must rather name definite numbers of members held to be an average, to which they attach the rights and obligations of societies. The assumption must be at the basis that a certain common spirit, a certain temper, energy, tendency, emerges within a combined number of persons when, and only when, this number has

reached a definite height. According as this result is desired or deplored will a minimum number be demanded or only a maximum number permitted. I cite first certain illustrations of the latter. In the early Greek period there were legal provisions that the crews of ships should not number more than five, in order to prevent development of piracy. From fear of combination among apprentices, the Rhine cities determined in 1436 that not more than three apprentices should appear in the same costume. Political prohibitions are most frequent in this sense. Philip the Fair in 1305 prohibited all assemblies of more than five persons, regardless of the rank of the persons or the form of their meeting. Under the ancien régime twenty nobles might not assemble even for conference, without special concession from the king. Napoleon III. prohibited all unions of more than twenty persons that were not specially authorized. In England the conventicle act of Charles II. made all religious assemblages of more than five persons under one roof penal, and the English reaction at the beginning of the nineteenth century forbade all assemblages of more than fifty persons, that were not announced a long time in advance. In cases of siege it is frequently the case that more than three or four persons are forbidden to congregate upon the street, and recently the Berlin Kammergericht has decided that a Versammlung, in the sense of the law, i. e., which requires police notification, occurs when eight persons are present. In the purely economic realm the case is found, for example in the English law of 1708, which the influence of the Bank of England carried through, that legal associations for dealing in money should not include more than six participants. In such cases there must always be, on the side of the rulers, the conviction that only within groups of the given size is there to be found the courage or the rashness, the enterprise or the suggestibility, for certain transactions, the occurrence of which is not desired. This motive is most evident in the case of the laws in restraint of vice. When the number of persons present at a rout, of members of a procession, etc., is limited, it is because of the experience that in a larger mass the impulses that come through the senses easier gain the upper

hand, the effects of bad example are more rapid, and the feeling of individual responsibility is weakened. The reverse direction is taken, with similar basis, in the case of prescriptions which demand a minimum number of participants in order that a certain legal effect may occur. For instance, in England any economic association may achieve corporate right when it numbers at least seven members. In the same spirit, the law everywhere demands a definite number as a minimum, even though that number may be extremely variable, in the case of judges whose finding is to have legal force, so that, for example, in many places certain judicial colleges are simply called "the seven."

With respect to the former phenomenon it is assumed that only with this number of members are the sufficient guarantees and the adequate solidarity furnished, without which corporate rights are a danger for public economy. In the second example the prescribed minimum number seems necessary to secure protection against the mistakes and extreme views of the individuals in the number, and thus a collective opinion which shall be objectively correct. This demand for a minimum number emerges very prominently in the case of religious structures. The regular religious meetings of the Buddhistic monks of a given territory for the purpose of religious revival and a sort of confessional demanded the presence of at least four monks. This number formed, as it were, the synod, and each monk had, as member of the same, a somewhat different significance from that of an individual, which he was merely so long as only three were present. Likewise the Jews should number at least ten for purposes of prayer, and again, according to the constitution of North Carolina, which is credited to Locke, any church whatsoever or religious community might be formed when it consisted of at least seven members. The necessary concentration of force and stability of religious community-feeling is in these cases, therefore, expected only of a certain number of associates who reciprocally support and promote each other. In a word, in case the law prescribes a minimum number, confidence in the plurality and distrust against the isolated individual ener