Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

tribute in general-just as the term "hundred came to have the meaning of subdivision in general. That the quantitative relation, which is quite as much the essence of a tax as of the social division, has obtained dominance psychologically over its peculiarity of content, appears most decisively in the circumstance that the original numerical limitation crystallizes into a designation of all modifications of the relation.

3. The numerical definiteness as form of organization assumes within the social development a typical function. The numerical method of division appears historically as a substitute for the class principle. It appears that in many places the groups consisted at first of subgroups held together by ties of blood, each of which constituted a unity in economic, penal, political, and other respects. That this internally very well-grounded organization was displaced by the melting together of ten or a hundred men for corresponding undertakings in common, must at first appear as a miraculous externalization, a schematization utterly lacking in essential life. We should look in vain in the immanent cohesive principles of this group for a justification of a change from the form with organic roots to this mechanical and formalistic order. The ground for it is rather to be found only in the whole which is composed of such subdivisions, and which makes demands that are independent in contrast with the life-principles of its parts. In the degree in which the whole as a unity is richer in content and more energetic, do the parts lose, at least at the outset and below the highest stage of development, their peculiar significance. They surrender the sense which they possess in and for themselves to the whole, and they are now the more useful the less a self-sufficient idea lives in each of them, and the more they as characterless parts receive back a position and significance only through their contribution to the whole. This is a universal tendency of social development, which makes itself manifest in the case of the modern soldier as contrasted with the knight of the Middle Ages, the factory laborer contrasted with the hand-worker, and every member of the present national and international organization as contrasted with the more or less autonomous domestic and natural

On

industry. With a certain complexity and centripetality of the whole, it permits none of its elements any longer to bring a thought to expression, so to speak, but this member acquires an external and merely mechanical character-that of a mere means, which must be as much as possible colorless and schematic in order to be in the highest degree yielding and constructive with reference to the purpose of the whole. In the case of certain highly perfected types of development this is not the case. There are certain social structures which precisely with the largest size and most complete organization permit to individual elements the greatest freedom to live out their individuality according to special norms and in the most peculiar form. the other hand, there are social structures which reach the highest total energy only under the condition of the most intensified and differentiated peculiar life of their elements. The transition from the clan to the Hundred, however, seems to mark that middle stadium in which absence of special spirit and character in the members denotes an advance for the whole; for only under such organization were they, in the given circumstances, easily surveyed, responsive to guidance according to simple norms, and without that opposition against the central power which, with strong internal cohesion of each subordinate group, too easily appears.

[ocr errors]

Where the constitution or action of the group is numerically determined from the old Hundred to the modern dominance of majorities-there is in evidence an ascendency over the individuality. It is a point at which the profound internal discrepancy between the democratic and the liberal-individualistic social ideas comes very clearly into view. That a "round number" is produced out of personalities, and that with this artificial creation operations are carried on without any regard to the peculiarities of the individuals included within it; that the votes are counted, not weighed; that arrangements, precepts, and prohibitions are simply conditioned upon the existence of a definite number of persons — that is, either despotically or democratically; in either case, however, a degradation of the real and total content of the separate personality to the formal fact that it is simply

one; inasmuch as the personality takes a place in an organization determined by number alone, its character as a member of the group has assumed complete mastery over its individually differentiated character. Whether the division into numerically equal subgroups is rough and in practice continually modified, as in the Hundreds of the Germans, the Peruvians, the Chinese; or so refined, purposeful, and exact as in a modern army, in either case it betrays most clearly and pitilessly the existence for its own sake of the law of formation for the group, in one case as a newly emerging tendency which is in perpetual conflict and compromise with other tendencies, in another case an absolutely thoroughgoing application. That which is superindividual in the grouping, the complete assertion of the independence of its form, in contrast with every content of the individual life, exists nowhere in more absolute and emphatic shape than in the reduction of the organizing principles to purely arithmetical relationships; and the degree of approach to this, as it in various ways appears in the most diverse groups, is at the same time the degree in which the group-idea, in its most abstract form, has absorbed the individuality of its factors.

4. Finally, in the following respect important sociological consequences attach themselves to numerical definiteness, although the effective quantities of the elements may be, according to the circumstances, quite varied. "Society," in the modern polite sense, furnishes a typical case. How many

persons must be invited in order that a "society" may exist ?* The qualitative relationships between host and guests manifestly do not decide the question. The invitation of two or three persons, who have a completely formal and essentially unrelated attitude toward us, does not bring a "society" into existence. On the other hand, the opposite is the case if we call together, say, the fifteen persons of our most intimate acquaintance. The number remains ever the decisive factor, although its size is naturally dependent, in special cases, upon the type and the

'[With our somewhat generous vocabulary of specific terms for social functions of all degrees we lack a generic term for the concept "assemblage involving formality." We venture to press the symbol "society" into service. The author's meaning is plain from the context.-TR.]

closeness of the relations between the elements. The three circumstances namely, the relationships of the host to each of the guests for himself, that of the guests to each other, the manner in which each participant subjectively reacts with all these relationships-these constitute the basis upon which now the number of participants determines whether a "society," or a mere existence together of a friendly or of a materially utilitarian sort, is present. In this case, consequently, a numerical modification always produces a very surely perceived transformation into a quite special sociological category, however imperfectly the degree of this modification may be determined by our available psychological means. At least, however, the qualitatively sociological consequences of the quantitative occasions are in a certain measure describable.

In the first place, the "society" demands a quite specific external apparatus. If one invites from a circle of acquaintances of, say, thirty persons only one or two, he need "put himself to no trouble." If, however, he invites the whole thirty at once, there at once emerge quite new requirements in respect to food, drink, toilet, forms of behavior, and extraordinarily enhanced expenditure on the side of the sensibly stimulating and enjoyable. This is a very clear example of how considerably the mere mass-construction depresses the level of the personality. In a meeting of a very few, such a reciprocal adaptation is possible. The things in common, which constitute the content of their sociability, may include so comprehensive or so eminent portions of their individuality that the meeting bears the character of intellectuality, of differentiated and highly developed psychic energy. The greater the number of persons who come together, however, the smaller will be the probability that they can coincide in those more worthy and intimate sides of their nature, and, accordingly, the point must be sought lower down which is common to their impulses and interests.' In the

'Complaint about banality in the intercourse of general society betrays, consequently, complete sociological unintelligence. The relative depression of the level upon which a company of large numbers actually finds itself is, in principle, unavoidable. For all higher and finer cultures are of an individual sort, and consequently do not adapt themselves to the contents of the general mind. They may, to be sure,

same degree, however, in which the quantity of the elements affords to the higher, more individual psychic factors no more room, the effort must be made to atone for this lack of the former sort of charm by enhancement of the external and the sensible. Between multiplicity of persons meeting together for festive purposes, and the luxury, the mere sensuous satisfaction of their meeting, there has always been the closest connection. At the end of the Middle Ages, for example, luxury at weddings increased so much, merely in the matter of the number of attendants who accompanied the bridal pair to the baths taken on these occasions, that the authorities often precisely ordained, in their sumptuary laws, what might be the maximum number of persons constituting this escort. If eating and drinking have always been the combining agencies of great companies, for which otherwise a unifying interest and consensus would have been difficult to reach, so must now a "society," purely on account of its quantitative factor, which excludes community and reciprocity of the finer and more spiritual concords, the more strongly emphasize these pleasures which are sensual, and on that account with greater certainty to be shared in by all.

A further characteristic of the "society," on the ground of its numerical difference, in contrast with the congregation of a few, consists in the fact that a complete unification of tone, which in the latter case is possible, neither can nor should be possible in the former; that, on the other hand, for a further difference, the construction of partial groups is easily possible. The life-principle of a friendly coexistence of a few persons abruptly opposes division into two separate mental attitudes, and even separate conversations. The "society" is at that moment present in which, instead of its absolutely single center, a duality emerges on the one hand, a general, but only quite loose, centrality, which in essence is only externally and even spatially founded, whence, therefore, societies of like social operate in the direction of socialization, if a unity is to be attained through division of labor -something which, however, is evidently only in a slight degree possible within a "society." It is, therefore, sociologically, a perfectly correct instinct which causes us to regard the thrusting into prominence of the personal individuality in a "society," even if the personality be in itself significant and pleasing, as tactlessness.

« PreviousContinue »