No More Learning

The appeal and emphasis that it shares with its individual wearer therefore draws sustenance from this supra-individual ground; its aesthetic value, which here is indeed also a value 'for others,' becomes through authenticity the symbol of universal estimation and membership in the overall social value system.
In medieval France there was once a decree according to which the wear- ing of gold jewelry was forbidden to all persons below a certain rank. Most unmistakably herein resides the combination that carries the entire essence of jewelry: that with jewelry the sociological and aesthetic emphasis of the personality will come together as in a focal point, the being-for-itself and being-for-others reciprocally cause and effect. Then the aesthetic display, the right to attract and please, need go only so far here as is circumscribed by the socially meaningful sphere of the individual, and also thereby it adds the social to the appeal that adornment gains for its wholly individual manifesta- tion, as well as being a representative of one's group and 'adorned' with all that that means. On the same rays going out from the individual, as it were, that effect, that expansion of one's sphere of impression, the meaning of
12 'Dignified hardware': Simmel uses the French word for hardware, quincaillerie-- ed.
? 336 chapter five
? one's rank, symbolized by this jewelry, is carried to the individual, the jewelry here appearing as the means to transform the social power or position into a perceptibly personal prominence.
Finally the centripetal and centrifugal tendencies in adornment draw together into a still different formation when it is reported that the private property of the women among indigenous peoples, in general originating later than that of the men, refers primarily and often exclusively to jewelry. If the personal property of the men tends to begin with that of weapons, then this reveals the active, more aggressive nature of the man, who expands the sphere of his personality without regard to the will of others. For the more passive female nature this effect--in all superficial difference formally the same--is more dependent on the good will of others. Every possession is an extension of the personality; my property is that which obeys my will, i. e. wherein my 'I' is expressed and outwardly realized; first of all and most completely this occurs with regard to our body, and for that reason it is our first and most unconditional posses- sion. With the decorated body we possess more; we are so to speak master over something wider and nobler when we have the decorated body at our disposal. So it is deeply meaningful when adornment becomes above all the special property, because it produces that amplified 'I,' that expanded sphere around us that we fill with our personality and that consists of the favor and the attention of our environment--the environment which more casually ignores the unadorned and therefore, as it were, the more unexpanded appearance not included in its periphery. That in those ancient indigenous circumstances what becomes the most excellent property for a woman is precisely that which has meaning for others and can, only with recognition from those others, help her acquire an enhancement of the value and importance of her 'I,' rebounding back to the wearer--this reveals thus once again the fundamental principle of adornment. For the grand strivings of the soul, playing with and against one another, and of society--the enhancement thereby of the 'I,' in that one is there for others, as well as of existence, in that one accentuates and extends oneself for others--adornment created its own unique synthesis in the form of the aesthetic; while this form, in and of itself, transcends the contrasting efforts of individual humans, they find in it not only a peaceful co-existence but that reciprocal creating that develops as the idea and the promise of their deeper metaphysical unity beyond the clash of their appearances.
While the secret is a social condition that characterizes the recipro- cal relationship of group elements, or rather, forms together with other forms of relationship the relational totality--it can moreover be extended to a group as a whole through the creation of 'secret societ- ies. ' So long as the being, doing, and having of an individual exists as a secret, its general social meaning is isolation, opposition, egoistic individualization. Here the sociological meaning of the secret is one more external: as a relationship of the person who possesses the secret
? the secret and the secret society 337
? to the person who does not possess it. However, as soon as a group as such assumes secrecy as its form of existence, its social meaning becomes a more internal one: it then conditions the interrelationships of those who possess the secret in common. But since that relationship of exclusion towards the uninitiated with its peculiar nuances is here also a reality, it confronts the sociology of the secret society then with the complicated problem of grasping the immanent forms of a group that are determined by secretive activity towards other elements. I will not begin this discussion with a systematic classification of secret societies, which would have only an extrinsic historical interest; their essential categories will reveal themselves without that.
The first internal relation of the secret society that is essential is the mutual trust among its elements. And this is required of it to a particular degree because the purpose of the secret-holding is above all protection. Of all the measures for protection certainly the most radical is to make oneself invisible. Here the secret society is distinguished in principle from the individual who seeks the protection of the secret. This is possible actually only for individual undertakings or circumstances; on the whole it may be possible to hide oneself at times, to absent oneself spatially, but one's existence can, apart from completely abstruse combinations, be no secret. In contrast, this is altogether possible for a social entity: its elements can operate with the most frequent interaction, but that they form a society, a conspiracy or a criminal gang, a religious con- venticle or an alliance for sexual extravagance--this can, in its essence and permanence, be a secret. Certainly distinguished from this type, in which the individuals are indeed not hidden but their alliance is, are the associations in which this formation is indeed openly known, but the membership or the purpose or the special arrangements of the association are secret, as it is with many secret associations of indigenous peoples or with the Freemasons. The latter types are obviously not granted the same unqualified protection by the form of the secret as the former, because that which is known of them always offers a point of attack for further inquiry. In contrast these relatively secret societies often have the advantage of a certain maneuverability; because from the very beginning they are prepared for a measure of openness, they can come to terms even with additional exposure sooner than those who are actually secret as societies; these are destroyed very frequently by their first being discovered because their secrecy tends to be governed by the radical alternative of all or nothing. It is the weakness of the secret society that secrets do not remain permanently safeguarded--so one can
338 chapter five
? rightly say, a secret that two know is no longer a secret. Therefore, the protection that they give is by their very nature certainly an absolute one but only temporary, and for contents of a positive social value their being carried by secret societies is actually a state of transition that they no longer require after achieving a certain level of strength. Secrecy, in the end, is equal only to the protection that one gains by holding back intrusions, and thus clears the way practically for something else: namely for that with the strength that is a match for the intrusions. The secret society is under these circumstances the appropriate social form for matters that are still, as it were, in infancy, in the vulnerability of early periods of development. The young discovery, religion, morality, party is often still weak and needful of protection, and for that reason it hides. Therefore, there are times in which new life contents, working their way up under the resistance of existing powers, are just made for the development of secret societies, as, for example, the eighteenth century demonstrates. So there were at that time, to name just one example, the elements of the liberal party already in Germany, but their emergence in an established political form yet hindered by the governmental circumstances. Thus the secret association was then the form in which the cells remain protected and could grow, as was done most notably for those of the Order of the Illuminati. 13 The same kind of protection that secrecy offers the rising development also serves the declining. Social endeavors and forces being driven out by newly ris- ing ones display the flight into secrecy that represents, so to speak, a transitional stage between being and nonbeing. When with the end of the Middle Ages the suppression of the German communal associations by the strengthening central powers began, there unfolded in them an extensive secret life: in surreptitious meetings and agreements, in the secret practice of law and force--just as animals seek out the protection of the hiding-place when they go off to die. This double function of the secret association, as a form of protection as well as an in-between station for both emerging and for declining powers, is perhaps most evident in religious developments. As long as the Christian communities were persecuted by the state, they often had to hide their meetings, their worship, their whole existence in secrecy; but as soon as Christianity
13 It is impossible to preserve Simmel's play on words in this sentence, in that 'association' and 'cells' translate German that is nearly literally 'bunch' or 'bundle' and 'buds,' respectively--ed.
? the secret and the secret society 339
? had become a state religion, there remained for the adherents of the persecuted, dying paganism simply the same concealment of their cultic societies to which they had formerly forced the now dominant religion. Quite generally the secret society appears everywhere as a correlate of despotism and police restriction, as protection as well as defense and offense against the coercive pressure of central powers; and certainly in no way only the political but likewise inside the church as well as school classes and families.
Corresponding to this protective character as an external quality of the secret society, as noted, is an internal one, the mutual trust of the participants; and certainly here a rather specific trust: the talent of being able to keep quiet. Depending on their content, associations may be based on various kinds of presumptions of trust: on the trust in business-like efficiency or in religious conviction, in courage or love, in respectable attitude or--in criminal societies--in the radical break with moral velleities. But as soon as the society becomes a secret one, added to the trust determined by the particular purposes of the organi- zation is a formal trust in concealment--obviously a faith in personality that has a more sociologically abstract character than any other since every possible common issue can be placed under it. It happens then, exceptions aside, that no other trust requires such an uninterrupted subjective renewal, because where it is a matter of faith in attachment or energy, in morality or intelligence, in a sense of decency or tact, the facts that establish the degree of trust once and for all and that bring the probability of disappointment to a minimum will more likely be at hand. The chance of giving away a secret, however, is dependent on the carelessness of a moment, the mellowness or the excitement of a mood, the possibly unconscious nuance of an emphasis. Maintaining secrecy is something so labile, the temptations of betrayal so varied, that in many cases such an endless course leads from secrecy to indiscretion because the unconditional trust in the former includes an incomparable preponderance of subjective factors. For this reason secret societ- ies--whose rudimentary forms begin with any secret shared by two and whose spread to all places and times is a rather huge, yet hardly ever also merely quantitatively valued reality--produce a most highly effective schooling in the morality of a bond among people. For in the trust of one person in another there also lies as high a moral value as in complying with a trust, maybe indeed a still freer and more service- able trust, because a trust that is maintained by us contains an almost coercive precedent, and to deceive requires for sure a rather deliberate
340 chapter five
? wickedness. In contrast, one 'places' trust; it cannot be required to the same degree as one would conform to it once given. 14
In the meantime, of course, secret societies search for the means to encourage psychologically a concealment that is not directly enforceable. The oath and threat of punishment are foremost here and need no discussion. More interesting is the more frequently encountered method of systematically teaching novices to be altogether silent from the outset. In view of the difficulties indicated above of actually guarding one's tongue absolutely, that is, in view of the effortlessly engaging link that exists at the less developed stages between thought and expression--with children and indigenous peoples thought and speech are almost one--it must first of all be required of those learning to keep silent before the suppression of definitively specific matters can be expected. 15 So we hear of a secret organization on Ceram in the Moluccan Islands, in which not only is silence imposed on the young man seeking admission, which he goes through upon entrance, but he is not permitted to speak a word with anybody at all for weeks, even in his family. Here for sure not only that instructional factor of the continuous silence operates, but it falls in with the mental lack of differentiation of this stage (in a period where something definite is supposed to be concealed) to for- bid speaking at all and with the radicalism with which less developed peoples readily seize upon the death penalty (whereas later a partial punishment is established for a partial transgression); or just as they are inclined to surrender an entirely disproportionate part of their property
14 'Places' translates schenkt--literally 'gives' in the sense of giving a present--ed.
15 If human interaction is conditioned by the ability to speak, it is shaped by the
ability to keep silent--which admittedly appears only here and there. Where all ideas, feelings, and impulses bubble forth uninhibited as speech, a chaotic disorder is cre- ated rather than some kind of organic co-ordination. This capacity for concealment necessary for the formation of an orderly interaction is seldom made clear since it is self-evident to us--although it doubtless has a historical development that begins with the chatter of the child and the earliest human, for whom its introduction first acquires even for them some reality and self-protection and, corresponding to that, the cum- bersome codes of silence mentioned in the text; and this historical development leads to the urbanity of the culture of the more developed society, for which the feeling of security is among its greatest possessions: where one must speak and where one must be silent so that, e. g. , in a society the innkeeper has to hold back while the guests are carrying on a conversation among themselves, but then, paradoxically, must immediately intrude when a gap presents itself. An intermediate phenomenon, for example, may be offered by the medieval guilds, which by statute punished everyone who interrupted the alderman in his speech. [In this footnote, 'of the. . . earliest human' translates des Negers (literally 'of the. . . Negro'), presumably a reference to the idea that human life originated in Africa, but which we have not translated literally for obvious reasons--ed. ]
? the secret and the secret society 341
? for something momentarily appealing. It is the specific 'ineptitude' that expresses itself in all this, because its essence, however, consists prob- ably in the inability to undertake for a definitely limited purposeful movement the likewise definitely localized nerve activation: the inept person moves the whole arm where only two fingers would be needed for one's purpose, the whole body where a precisely distinct arm move- ment would be indicated. At that point, then, it is the predominance of the psychological association that, as it increases hugely the danger of giving secrets away, also thus allows the prohibition to go beyond its singular, purposefully determined content and instead take over entirely the function that poses it. If, in contrast, the secret society of the Pythagoreans prescribed for the novices a silence of several years, the intention even here probably goes beyond the mere pedagogy for the concealment of the secrets of the league, but now not on account of that ineptitude, but precisely because they would expand the distinct purpose in its own course: not only for concealing particular matters, but that the adept should learn in general how to control oneself. The league went for a strict self-discipline and stylized purity of life, and whoever was able to tolerate being silent for years was probably also up to resisting temptations other than those of talkativeness.
Another method of placing secrecy on an objective basis was employed by the secret league of the Gallic Druids. The content of their secrets lay mainly in sacred songs that had to be memorized by every Druid. This was so arranged, however--especially through the probable prohibition against transcribing the songs--that it took an extraordinarily long time, up to twenty years. Through this long period of learning, before there is something at all essential to betray, a gradual habituation to concealment takes place; the attraction of revealing a secret does not fall, as it were, all of a sudden upon the undisciplined spirit who can in this way slowly adjust to resisting it. In many far-reaching contexts of social structure, however, that other condition remains: that the songs are not permitted to be written down. That is more than a safeguard against the disclosure of secrets. The reliance on instruction from person to person and the fount of critical information flowing exclusively in the league and not in an objective document--this ties the individual participant incomparably close to the community, provides the abiding sensation that, loosed from this substance, one would lose one's own being and it would never be found again. Perhaps it has not yet been adequately noted how very much in the more developed culture the objectification of the mind influences
342 chapter five
? the individual's acquisition of independence. So long as the immediate tradition, individual instruction, above all also the setting of norms by personal authorities, still determine the mental life of the individual, one is located solidly in the surrounding, vital group; it alone gives one the possibility of a fulfilled and spiritual existence; the direction of all channels through which the contents of one's life flow perceptively runs at every moment only between oneself and one's social milieu. As soon, however, as the division of labor16 has realized its investment in the form of written law, in visible works and enduring examples, that immediate organic current of sap between the actual group and its individual member is interrupted; instead of the life process of the latter being bound continually and concurrently to the former, one can support oneself now from sources independent of any objective personal presence. It is relatively irrelevant that this now readily available reserve originated in the processes of the collective consciousness; not only are the generations left far behind who are not at all bound by this current sense of individuality, their actions crystallized in that reserve, but above all it is the form of objectivity of this reserve, its being detached from the subjective personality, whereby an extra-social source of nourishment is opened for the individual; and one's spiritual substance, by degree and type, becomes much more notable by one's ability to appropriate than by the independent measuring out of performance. The particular closeness of the bond inside the secret society, which is left for later discussion and which possesses its, so to speak, categorical emotion in the specific 'trust,' therefore advantageously permits the avoidance of writing the matters down where the handing down of mental contents forms its pivotal point.
Excursus on Written Communication
Several remarks about the sociology of the letter are in order here because the letter obviously also offers a wholly unique constellation within the category of secret- keeping. First the written work has an essence contrasting all secrecy. Before the general use of writing any legal transaction, however simple, had to be concluded before witnesses. The written form replaces this when it includes admittedly only a potential but unlimited 'public' for that purpose; it means that not only the witnesses but anyone in general can know that the business has been concluded. The characteristic form is available to our consciousness;
16 Gattungsarbeit--ed.
? the secret and the secret society 343
? this availability can be identified simply as 'objective spirit': Natural laws and moral imperatives, ideas and artistic creations, which are, as it were, available to anyone who can and wants to have recourse to them, are in their timeless validity independent of whether, when, or by whom this recourse occurs. Truth, which as a mental construct is an altogether different thing from its transiently real object, remains true whether it is known and acknowledged or not; the moral and legal law is valid whether or not it is observed. Writing is a symbol or sensual vehicle of this immensely significant category. The mental content, once written down, has thereby received an objective form, in principle a timelessness of its being-there, of an unlimitedness--one after another as well as side-by-side--of reproduction available to subjective consciousness without, however, because it is fixed, its meaning and validity becoming dependent on the apprehension or exclusion of these mental realiza- tions by individuals. Thus something written possesses an objective existence that relinquishes any guarantee of remaining secret. But this lack of security from any given cognizance allows the indiscretion in the letter to be experi- enced perhaps as something rather emphatically ignoble, so that for those of finer sensibility it is precisely the worthlessness of the letter when it comes to being a protection for maintaining secrecy. In that the letter so directly links the objective revocation of all security of the secret to the subjective increase of this security, the characteristic antitheses that actually carry the letter as a sociological phenomenon converge. The form of epistolary expression means an objectification of its contents, which forms here a particular synthesis, on the one hand, of being intended for a single individual, on the other, its cor- relate, the personality and subjectivity that the letter writer submits--in contrast to the one who writes for publication. And precisely in the latter respect the letter as a form of interaction is something wholly unique. In an immediate presence every participant in interaction gives the other more than the mere contents of one's words; one thereby sees one's counterpart and plunges into the sphere of a state of mind that is not at all expressible in words, feels the thousand nuances in the emphasis and in the rhythm of its expression; the logic or the desired content of one's words undergoes a reach and modifica- tion for which the letter offers at the outside only sketchy analogies; and even these will generally arise only from memories of personal interaction. It is the advantage and disadvantage of the letter in principle to give the pure factual content of our momentary mental life and to silence that which we cannot or do not want to say. And so characteristically the letter, if not distinguished for example from a treatise simply by its not being published, is something immediate, simply personal, and for sure in no way only when it is a matter of lyrical outpourings but even if it is thoroughly concrete information. This objectifying of the subjective, this stripping of the latter from all that one just does not want to reveal of the matter and of oneself, is possible only in times of highly developed culture where one has adequate command of the psy- chological technique of bestowing a permanent form on momentary attitudes and thoughts that, though only momentary, are thought and conceived of as corresponding to the actual demand and situation. Where an inner production has the character of 'performance,' this durable form is completely adequate;
344 chapter five
? in the letter, however, there is a contradiction between the character of the contents and that of the form, which producing, sustaining, and exploiting it requiress a controlling objectivity and differentiation.
This synthesis finds its additional analogy in the blending of precision and ambiguity that is characteristic of written expression, most of all, the letter. These generally apply to the expressions from person to person, a sociologi- cal category of the first rank, a general area in which the discussions of this chapter obviously belong. It is not a matter here, however, of simply the more or less that the one submits from the self for the other to know but that the given is more or less clear for the recipient and that a relative plurality of possible meanings corresponds to a lack of clarity, as a trade-off. Surely there is no other more enduring relationship among people in which the chang- ing degree of clarity and the interpretability of expressions do not play a thoroughly essential role, albeit most consciously realized only in its practical results. The written expression appears first of all as the more secure, as the only one from which "no iota may be taken. "17 However, this prerogative of the written text is merely a consequence of an absence: missing from it are the accompanying phenomena of the sound and the emphases of the voice, gesture and countenance, which for the spoken word are likewise a source of lack of clarity as well as clarity. Actually, however, the recipient tends not to be satisfied with the purely logical sense of a word, which the letter definitely delivers with less ambiguity than speech; indeed countless times one can be not at all satisfied because, in order even to simply grasp the logical mean- ing it requires more than the logical meaning. For that reason the letter is, in spite of or, better, because of its clarity, much more than speech, the locus of 'interpretations' and therefore of misunderstandings.
Corresponding to the cultural level at which a relationship or a recurring relationship dependent on written communication is at all possible, their quali- tative characteristics are also separated here from one another in a sharper differentiation: what in human expressions is in their essence clear is in the letter clearer than in speech; that which in the expressions is in principle ambigu- ous is on the other hand more ambiguous in the letter than in speech. If one expresses this in the categories of freedom and constraint that the expression possesses for the recipient, then one's understanding in relation to its logi- cal core is more constrained by the letter, but freer in relation to its deeper and personal meaning than with speech. One can say that speech reveals its secret through everything surrounding it that is visible but not audible as well as the imponderables of even the speaker; the letter, however, conceals that. The letter is thus clearer where it is not a matter of a secret of the other, but unclear and ambiguous where it is. Under the secret of the other I understand the other's logically inexpressible attitudes and qualities of being, which we nevertheless draw on countless times in order to understand the real meaning of even entirely concrete statements. In speech, these interpretive aids are so
17 A quotation from Goethe's Faust: "kein Iota rauben la? ss"--ed.
? the secret and the secret society 345
? merged with the conceptual content that a complete unity of comprehension results; perhaps this is the most decisive case of the general fact that human beings are in general unable to distinguish between what they really see, hear, experience and what their interpretations create out of that through adding-on, subtracting, reshaping. It belongs to the mental results of written interaction that it differentiates out from this nai? ve unity of its elements and thereby illustrates the multiplicity of those theoretically separate factors that constitute our so apparently simple mutual 'understanding. '
With these questions of the technique of maintaining secrecy it is not to be forgotten that in no way is the secret only a means under whose protection the material purposes of the community are supposed to be furthered, but that on the contrary the formation of community for its part in many ways should serve to ensure that certain matters remain secret. This occurs in the particular type of secret societies whose substance is an esoteric doctrine, a theoretical, mystical, religious knowledge. Here the secret is a sociological end in itself; it is a matter of the knowledge that is not meant for the many; those in the know form a community in order to mutually guarantee the maintenance of secrecy. Were those in the know merely a sum of disconnected personalities, the secret would soon be lost; the collectivization, how- ever, offers each of the individuals a psychological support to protect them before the temptations of revealing secrets. While the secret, as I have emphasized, functions to isolate and individualize, collectiviza- tion is then a counterweight to it. All kinds of collectivization shuffle the need for individualization and for collectivization back and forth within their forms or even their contents, as though the need of an enduring mixed relationship would be met by qualitatively ever chang- ing dimensions: thus the secret society counterbalances the factor of isolation, which is characteristic of every secret, through the fact that it is indeed a society.
Secrecy and individualistic peculiarity are such decisive correlates that collectivization can play two entirely opposite roles for each. It can at one time, as just emphasized, be pursued alongside the existing secret, in part to balance its isolating consequence, to satisfy, inside the secrecy, the impulse for social belonging that it cuts off outwardly. On the other hand, however, secrecy essentially weakens in importance wherever peculiarity is abhorred for substantive reasons as a matter of principle. Freemasonry emphasizes that it desires to be the most universal society, 'the fraternity of fraternities,' the only one that rejects
? 346 chapter five
? any specific purpose and with it every particularistic nature and wants exclusively to make all good people collectively its concern. And hand in hand with this ever more decisively developing tendency, the shared validation of the secret character for the lodges is increasingly reduced to merely formal outward appearances. That secrecy is encouraged at one time through collectivization, undone another time, is thus no contradic- tion at all; there are simply various forms in which its association with individualization is expressed--in somewhat the way the connection of weakness with fear is demonstrated, in that the weak person seeks collectivization for self-protection, as well as avoiding collectivization if greater dangers are feared inside it than in isolation.
Touched on to some degree above, the initiation of the member belongs then to the realm of a very far-reaching sociological form, within which secret societies are themselves marked in a particular manner: it is the principle of hierarchy, of the step-like structuring of the elements of a society. The detail and systemization with which the precisely secret societies effect their division of labor and ranking of their members is associated with a feature to be commented on subsequently: with the strong consciousness of their life that replaces the organic instinctive powers by a constantly regulating will and replaces the growth from within by a designing purposefulness. This rational- isticism of its structure cannot be more clearly expressed than in its carefully considered, intelligible architectonics. Hence, e. g. , the structure of the earlier mentioned secret Czech society of the Omladina which is modeled after a group of the Carbonari and in 1893 became known through a legal proceeding. The leadership of the Omladina falls into 'thumb' and 'fingers. ' In a private meeting the 'thumb' is chosen by those present; this one chooses four 'fingers'; the fingers choose then again a thumb, and this second thumb is introduced to the first thumb. The second thumb chooses again four fingers and these again a thumb, and so the articulation advances farther; the first thumb knows all the thumbs, but the rest of the thumbs do not know one another. Of the fingers only those four know one another who are subordinate to a common thumb. All the activities of the Omladina are directed by the first thumb, the 'dictator. ' This one informs the rest of the thumbs of all intended undertakings; the thumbs distribute the orders then to the fingers subordinate to them, and the fingers in turn to the Omladina members assigned to them.
The secret society having to be constructed from the bottom up by deliberation and conscious will obviously offers one free play for the
the secret and the secret society 347
? idiosyncratic desire that comes with voluntarily arranging such a con- struction, a plan of determining such schemata. All systemization--of science, of lifestyle, of society--contains a test of power; it subjects a matter, which is outside thought, to a form that thought had moulded. And if this is true of all attempts to organize a group on a principle, then it culminates in the secret society, which does not develop but is constructed, which has to reckon with an ever smaller quantum of pre- formed parts than any kind of despotic or socialist systemization. To the making of plans and the impulse to build, which are already in them- selves a will to power, there is joined the particular inducement in the advancement of a schema of positions and their relationships of rank to make determinative use of a wide, future, and ideally submissive circle of human beings. Very notably this desire is sometimes detached from that purposefulness and goes off in completely fantastic constructions of hierarchy. Hence, e. g. , the 'high degrees' of degenerated Freemasonry; as characteristic, I cite simply several things from the organization of the 'Order of African Architects,' which arose after the middle of the eighteenth century in Germany and France and which, even after being constructed along the principles of Freemasonry, the Freemasons wanted to eradicate. Only fifteen officials were responsible for the administration of the very small society: Summus Magister, Summi Magistri locum tenens, Prior, Subprior, Magister, etc. 18 The ranks of the association were seven: Scottish apprentice, Scottish brother, Scottish master, Scottish knight, the Eques regii, Eques de secta consueta, Eques silentii regii, etc. 19
The formation of ritual within secret societies encounters the same conditions of development as does hierarchy; even here their own lack of being prejudiced by historical organization, their construction on an autonomous basis, brings about an extraordinary freedom and abun- dance of formation. There is perhaps no outward feature that would characterize the secret society so decisively and in typical contrast to the open society than the valuing of customs, formulae, rites, and their uniquely preponderant and antithetical relationship to the substantive purposes of the society. These are sometimes less anxiously guarded than the secrecy of the ritual. Advanced Freemasonry emphasizes expressly, it is no secret association, it would have no cause to hide
18 Latin: Highest Teacher, substitute for Highest Teacher, Prior, Subprior, Teacher, etc. --ed.
19 Latin: Royal Knight, Knight of the Regular Party, Silent Royal Knight, etc. --ed.
? 348 chapter five
? membership in it, its intentions, and its activities; the vow of secrecy refers exclusively to the forms of Masonic ritual. Quite characteristically the student order of the Amicists at the end of the eighteenth century decrees in ? 1 of its statutes:
It is the most sacred duty of every member to maintain the deepest silence about such matters that pertain to the well-being of the order. To this belong: Symbols of the order and signs of recognition, brothers' names, ceremonies, etc.
Only later in the same statute is the purpose and nature of the order revealed and set forth in detail! In a less voluminous book that describes the constitution and the nature of the Carbonari, the enumeration of the formulae and customs for the reception of new members and meetings fills seventy-five pages! It is not necessary to give further examples; the role of ritual in secret societies is well enough known, from the religious-mystical groups of antiquity on the one hand to the Rosicrucians of the eighteenth century on the other, to the most insane criminal gangs. The social motivations of these associations are perhaps as follows.
The conspicuous thing in the treatment of ritual in secret societies is not only the stringency with which it is observed but above all the anxiousness with which it is kept as a secret--as if its disclosure would be just as destructive as that of the purposes and actions, or perhaps of the existence of the society at all. The purpose behind this is probably that only then through this inclusion of a whole complex of outward forms in the secretiveness does the entire scope of action and inter- est of the secret society become a completed unity.
The secret society must seek to create a type of total life on its own terms; then around the content of its purpose, which it sharply emphasizes, it builds a formulaic system, like a body around the soul, and places both equally under the protection of secrecy because only then does it become a harmonious whole in which one part supports the other. That with this, the secretiveness of the externals is especially strongly emphasized is therefore necessary because it is not so self-evident here and not required by any immediate interest such as the substantive purpose of the association. This is no different than, for example, in the military and in the religious community. In both, the fact that formalism, the formulaic system, the fixing of conduct take in such a broad area is in general rather fully explained in that both claim the entire person, i. e. , that each of them projects the entire life onto a particular plane; each
the secret and the secret society 349
? allows a multiplicity of strengths and interests to merge together under a specific perspective into an enclosed unity. The secret society tends to strive just for this: among its essential features is that, even where it has a hold on the individual only according to partial interests, where it is inherently a purely purpose-driven association, it nevertheless lays claim to a greater extent to the whole person, unites personalities inside its total sphere with one another, and obligates them towards one another more than even the same substantive purpose would in an open society. While the symbolism of the rite stimulates a breadth of unstably limited feelings over all imaginable individual interests, the secret society interweaves these latter into a common claim on the individual. The special purpose of the secret society is expanded by the ritual form into a unity and totality that is closed, socially as well as subjectively. Furthermore, it happens that through such formalism as well as through hierarchy, the secret society develops into a kind of reverse image of the official world, against which it stands in contrast. It is the sociological norm emerging everywhere that structures that stand in opposition to and isolation from the larger ones surrounding them, nevertheless, repeat the forms of the latter in themselves. Only a structure that in some way can count as a totality is in a position to hold its elements tightly to itself; it borrows from that larger totality the type of organic enclosure by virtue of which its members are actu- ally circulated by a unifying life stream, a totality to whose forms its individuals were adapted and which can be defied best of all precisely through imitating it.
The same situation offers yet further in the secret society the follow- ing motive for the sociology of ritual. Every such society includes a measure of freedom that is actually not provided for in the structure of the whole surrounding group. Then should the secret society, such as the Vehme,20 desire to restore the inadequate juridical practice of the political sphere, or should it desire, like the conspiracy or criminal gang, to rebel against the law, or should it, like the mysteries, want to hold itself beyond the commands and prohibitions of the wider society--the withdrawal that characterizes the secret society always has the tone of freedom; with that withdrawal, it enters a region where the norms of the surrounding realm do not apply. The essence of the secret society
20 Vehme --secret tribunal in Westphalia, said to have been founded by Charlemagne-- ed.
? 350 chapter five
? as such is autonomy. But it is of such a type that approaches anarchy; stepping out of the bonding range of the society-at-large has as the consequence for the secret society a modest rootlessness, lacking a firm sense of vitality and normative supports. Now this deficit is what is helped by the certainty and detail of their ritual. It demonstrates even here how very much human beings require a definite balance between freedom and law, and where the determining measure of both does not come to them from one source, they try to supplement the given amount of one with a quantity of another obtained from some other source until that balance is reached. With ritual, the secret society vol- untarily takes on a formal constraint that its substantive detachment and being-for-itself need as a complement. It is notable that among the Freemasons it is precisely the Americans--who also enjoy the greatest political freedom--by whom the strongest uniformity in operations, the greatest regimentation of ritual is demanded in all the lodges; while in Germany--where the otherwise sufficiently strong degree of bondedness does not let it come so readily to a counter-demand in the sense of a limitation of freedom--a greater freedom of style is exercised in the operations of the individual lodge. The objectively, often completely meaningless, schematic constraint of ritual in the secret society is thus not at all a contradiction of its nearly anarchical freedom, its cutting loose from the norms of the sphere surrounding it, but on the contrary, how extensively secret societies are widespread is as a rule evidence of a lack of public freedom, of police-like regimentation, of political oppression, of a reaction of the demand for freedom--thus in reverse the internal ritual regimentation of these societies points to a measure of freedom and detachment for which the balance of human nature now demands that schematism as a normative counterpart.
These last considerations have already led to the methodological principle from which I want to analyze the still remaining traits of secret societies: how much they are generally expressed specifically as the typical traits of creating society through essentially quantitative changes. The reason for this kind of conceptualization of the secret society leads to a repeated observation of its position in the sociologi- cal complex of forms.
The secrecy pertinent to societies is a primary sociological fact, a definite type and color of association, a formal quality of relation- ship, determining the disposition of the group or its elements in direct or indirect interaction with other such factors. Regarded historically, however, the secret society is a secondary formation, i. e. , it originates
the secret and the secret society 351
? always only inside an already established society. Expressed differently: the secret society is in itself, even through its secrecy, characterized just as other societies--or even the secret society itself--by its domination and subordination or its purpose or its imitative character; but also its being able to develop as so characterized is possible only under the presumption of a society otherwise already constructed. It positions itself even as a narrower sphere inside of the wider one to which it is in opposition; this opposition, which would also be its purpose, is in any case intended in the sense of sealing off; even that secret society that desires only to offer fully selflessly a definite service to the totality and dissolve itself upon its fulfillment obviously maintains its temporary distinction from that totality as an unavoidable means to its purpose. Thus there is, of the many smaller groups that are encircled by larger ones, hardly one that would have to emphasize a formal self-sufficiency for itself as strongly through its sociological constellation. Its secrecy surrounds it like a border, beyond which there is then material or at least formal opposition, and which it therefore unites into itself for a complete unity. In the formations of every other kind of group the content of group life, the actions of the members in rights and duties, can so conform to their consciousness that the formal reality of constructing the society normally plays hardly a role therein; however, the secret society cannot at all allow its members to lose the clear and emphatic consciousness that just forms a society: compared with other ties, the ever palpable fervor needing oversight lends the form of association depending on it a significance predominant over against the content. Fully lacking in the secret society is the organic development, the instinctual character in accumulation, every dispassionate truism of belonging together and forming a unity. Through the conscious awareness of being a society, in its coming into existence and ongoingly accentu- ated in its life, the secret society is the opposite of all instinctive societies in which unity is more or less simply the expression of their rooted elements having coalesced: its social-psychological form is altogether that of the purpose-driven association. This constellation makes it understandable that the definiteness of the shape of the structure of the circle generally gains a specific intensification in the secret society, and that its essential sociological traits develop as a mere increase in quantity of rather universal relational types.
One of these traits has already been indicated: the character and solidarity of the circle through segregation from the social environment.
352 chapter five
? In this sense the often elaborate signs of recognition through which the individual member is legitimized as belonging to the society oper- ate--and they were certainly more necessary for precisely this purpose in times before the general spread of literacy than later--when their other sociological relevancies exceed that of mere legitimation. So long as initiation confirmations, notifications, descriptions were lacking, an association whose subdivisions were located in various locations would have no means at all for excluding someone unauthorized, for having their benefits and communications delivered only to the truly entitled, except through signs that would be revealed only to these latter, who were duty bound to keep them secret and through which they could be legitimated as a member in any given situation of association. The pur- pose of separation is very clearly represented precisely in the development that certain secret associations of indigenous peoples have undergone, especially in Africa and among the Indians. These associations are formed only by men and are pursued essentially with the intention of marking their segregation from women. The members appear, as soon as they go into action, in masks, and it is typically forbidden, with severe penalties, for women to go near them. Nevertheless, here and there women manage to get in on the secret that the frightful appearances are no ghosts but their husbands. Where this occurred, the associations often lost their entire meaning and came to be a harmless masquerade. The undifferentiated imagination of a member of a pre-literate culture21 cannot fully imagine the separation at all that one wishes to emphasize except as the one striving and authorized for it hiding oneself, making oneself invisible. That is the crudest and outwardly most radical type of concealment, in that not only a single action of the person but even the whole person is concealed: the association does not do something full of secrecy, but the totality of its bearer itself comes to be the secret. This form of the secret society is fully consistent with the pre-literate mental level in which the whole subject is yet fully absorbed in every particular activity, where this is not yet sufficiently objectified in order to allow it a character that the whole person does not identically share. Accordingly it is likewise understandable that as soon as the mask of secrecy is penetrated, the whole separation becomes invalid and the association loses its inner meaning along with its method and expression.
Here separation has the sense of a value-expression: one separates oneself because one does not want to demean oneself with the char-
21 Natur menschen--ed.
? the secret and the secret society 353
? acter of the others since one wants to make one's own superiority felt over against them. Everywhere this motive leads to the formation of groups that are sharply distinguished from those obviously formed for practical purposes. In that those who want to stand out join together, an aristocracy originates that strengthens and, as it were, expands the position and the self-consciousness of the individual through the weight of their sum total. The fact that segregation and group formation are thus united by the aristocratizing motive produces in many instances from the very beginning the cachet of 'special,' in the sense of valu- ation: it is already noteworthy in school classes, comrades, uniting as intimate circles already by the merely formal fact of organizing a special group, viewing themselves as an elite over the unorganized others, and that these latter acknowledge such higher value involuntarily through their hostility and envy. In these instances secrecy and secretiveness are a superior maintenance of the wall against the outside and thereby a strengthening of the aristocratic character of groups.
This importance of the secret bond as an intensification of the socio- logical self-imposed segregation in general emerges strikingly in political aristocracies. Secrecy has belonged to the requisites of aristocratic rule from time immemorial. It exploits the psychological reality that the unknown as such appears ominous, powerful, and threatening, above all thereby seeking to hide the numerical insignificance of the ruling class. In Sparta the number of warriors was kept as secret as possible, and in Venice the same purpose was meant to be achieved by mandating a simple black uniform for all nobles: a conspicuous costume would not let the small number of rulers be so obvious to the people. This increased to the point of complete concealment of the circle of the highest rulers: the names of the three state inquisitors were not known to anyone except the Council of Ten, who chose them. In several Swiss aristocracies one of the most important offices was known forthrightly as the Hidden, and in Freiburg the aristocratic families became known as 'the hidden lineages. ' In contrast to that is that of the democratic view, bound up with publicity and, in the same vein, the tendency towards a common and constitutional law. This is because such tendencies are intended for an unlimited number of subjects and are therefore public by nature. Conversely the utilization of secrecy inside the aristocratic regime is only the most extreme intensification of that social segregation and exemption, on account of which aristocracy tends to work against a universal, fundamentally fixed legislation.
Where the concept of the aristocratic shifts from the politics of a group to the attitude of an individual, the relation of isolation and
354 chapter five
? secrecy acquires an apparently completely different level. Consummate nobility in a moral as well as in a spiritual sense disdains any conceal- ment because its inner certainty makes it indifferent towards what oth- ers know or do not know about us, whether they evaluate us as right or wrong, high or low; for it, secrecy is a concession to those on the outside, a behavioral dependence on regard for them. For this reason the 'mask,' which so many hold for the sign and the proof of one's aristocratic soul directed away from the masses, is precisely the proof of the importance the masses give it. The mask of the truly noble is in the many not understanding them indeed, not generally, so to speak, seeing them, even when they show themselves unveiled.
The separation from all those outside the circle, which, as a general sociological fact regarding form, serves secrecy as an intensifying tech- nique, acquires a specific color through the majority of ranks in which the initiation into the secret societies right up to their final mysteries tends to occur and which illuminated already earlier for us another sociological trait of the secret society. As a rule the solemn vow of secrecy is required of the novice for everything that the novice will learn even before the reception into only the first rank occurs. The absolute and formal separation that secrecy can achieve is effected with that. But then when the actual content or purpose of the society becomes available to the entrant at first little by little--be this the finished puri- fication and consecration of the soul through the initiations into the mysteries, be it the absolute dissolution of every moral boundary, as with the Assassins and other criminal societies--the separation is shaped differently in material respects: continually, relatively. The novice is in this manner still closer to the status of the non-participant; testing and education are required of one up until comprehension of the whole or center of the society. Through that, however, a protectiveness of that latter, an isolating in relation to the outside, is apparently achieved, that goes beyond what is won by the oath upon entry: care is taken--as was already occasionally demonstrated in the example of the Druids--that the one still unproven also has little to betray, while within the princi- pal secrecy that then surrounds the group as a whole the graduated secret-keeping creates as it were an elastic sphere of protection for its innermost and most essential matters.
The contrast between the exoteric and esoteric members, as is attributed to the Pythagoreans, is the most striking form of this pro- tective device. The sphere of those only partially initiated forms to a certain extent a buffer zone against those not initiated at all. Just as
the secret and the secret society 355
? it is everywhere the dual function of the 'middleperson' to connect and to separate, or rather, as that person plays only one role, which we identify, however, according to our categories of comprehension and according to the direction of our attention, now as binding, now as separating--so the unity here of the activities outwardly antithetical to one another is shown in the brightest light: precisely because the lower ranks of the society form a mediating passage to the actual core of the secrecy, they create the gradual consolidation of the sphere of repulsion around it that protects it more certainly than the coarseness of being radically entirely inside or entirely outside could do.
The sociological being-for-self presents itself in a practical turn as a group egoism: the group pursues its purposes with that lack of atten- tion towards the purposes of the structures outside itself, which with the individual is called simply egoism. Indeed, the group thereby tends to acquire a moral justification for the consciousness of the individual, in that the group's purposes in and for themselves take on a supra- individual objective character, that one often cannot name a single person who profited directly from the group-egoistic activity, indeed, that this activity often demands selflessness and sacrifice from its own representatives. Here, however, it is not a matter of ethical valuation but of the separation of the group from its environment that the group egoism effects or signifies. Now, however, with regard to a smaller circle that wishes to remain and develop inside a larger one, this will have a certain limit so long as it exists in plain sight. An open association, of course, may still contend as intensely against other units larger than itself or against the whole establishment of them--it will, however, always have to claim that the realization of its ultimate goals would work to the advantage of the whole, and the necessity of this extreme claim will in any case impose some kind of limit on the actual egoism of its action. With secret societies this necessity falls away, and there will be at least the possibility of that absolute animosity towards oth- ers or towards the whole that the open society cannot admit to and thus cannot also unconditionally exercise. Nothing so distinguishes the detached mood of the secret societies from their social surroundings, symbolized or even encouraged, as the omission of that hypocrisy or actual condescension that the open society by necessity puts into the teleology of the surrounding totality.
In spite of the actual quantitative demarcation of every real society, there is nevertheless a considerable range of them whose inner tendency is this: whoever is not excluded is included. Within certain political,
356 chapter five
? religious, status peripheries anyone who satisfies certain external condi- tions, usually not given by volition but inherent to one's existence, is viewed without further ado as 'belonging. ' Whoever, e. g. , is born in the territory of the state, that person is, where special circumstances do not make one an exception, a member of the often complicated entity of the state; the member of a specific social class is, of course, included in the social conventions and binding forms of it if that member does not become a voluntary or involuntary outsider;22 the extreme is seen in the claim of a church to include actually the whole human race, so that only historical happenstance, sinful obduracy, or a definite divine will would exclude anybody from this religious association, ideally appropriate even for them. Here then are two distinct ways that appar- ently signify a principal differentiation of the sociological meaning of societies, however much praxis may blend them or diminish their distinctness: over against the principle, that whoever is not expressly excluded is included, stands the other, that whoever is not expressly included is excluded. Secret societies constitute the latter type in its most categorical purity. The unconditional nature of their separation, consciously maintained with every step of their development, has as a consequence as well as a cause, that those not expressly included are thereby simply expressly excluded. The Freemasons could not better support their recent strongly emphasized assertion that they are not a true 'secret society' than by their concurrently expressed ideal of including all people and representing humanity as a whole.
Here as everywhere the increase in insularity from the outside cor- responds to an identical integration within because these are simply the two sides or outward manifestations of one and the same sociological activity. A purpose that induces people to enter into a secret association with others excludes from membership, more often than not, from the very beginning, such a predominant portion of its general social circle that potential and actual participants take on a value of scarcity. The individual simply cannot have a falling out with them because it could be so much more difficult to replace them with others than it can in a legitimate organization ceteris paribus. Consequently every discord inside the secret society brings the danger of betrayal with it; avoiding it in this case tends to join the self-preservation of the individual to that of the whole. Ultimately a range of occasions for conflict are removed
22 The term outsider is in English in the original--ed.
? the secret and the secret society 357
? through the detachment of the secret society from the surrounding social syntheses. Among all the ties of an individual, those through a secret socialization always assume a position of exemption which has, however, in contrast to the open interactions--familial and governmental, reli- gious and economic, social class and friendship, however varied be their content--a wholly different measure and type of levels of contact. At first the contrast with secret societies makes it clear that the demands of those lying in a plane, so to speak, cut across one another; and as they, as it were, lead to an open struggle of competition for the energy and the interest of the individual, so inside each single circle the individuals collide, because each person is claimed simultaneously for the interests of another circle elsewhere. These kinds of collisions are, in view of the sociological isolation of the secret society, very limited. Consistent with their purposes and their operation, competing interests from that dimension of open ties are left at the door. Surely because it tends to fill its dimension alone since an individual will hardly belong to several secret societies, every secret society exercises a kind of absolute domina- tion over its members, who do not come to conflict among themselves as readily as they do from the coordination of those others. The 'peace of the castle' that should actually prevail inside every organization is favored in secret societies by their singular and exceptional terms in a formally incomparable way. Indeed, it appears as though, yet wholly apart from this more realistic basis, even the mere form of secrecy as such keeps the participants freer from previous influences and distur- bances and thereby facilitates concord for them. An English politician had in the secrecy that surrounded the English cabinet the reason for its strength: anyone who had been active in public life would know that a small number of people would be all the more easily brought to agreement the more secret were the negotiations.
The particular measure of cohesion inside secret societies is in accord with the degree of centralization: they offer examples of an unconditional and blind obedience to the leadership, of course, just as it also admittedly occurs elsewhere, but is here especially remarkable in light of the frequently anarchic and law-contravening character of the society. The more criminal the purposes of the secret society are, the more unlimited the power of the leadership tends to be and the more fiercely it tends to be exercised. The Assassins in Arabia, the Chauffeurs (a particularly savage band of robbers from an organizational network in eighteenth-century France), the Gardunas in Spain (a criminal soci- ety that had connections to the Inquisition from the seventeenth to
358 chapter five
? the beginning of the nineteenth century)--all these, whose nature was lawlessness and rebellion, were under a leader whom they themselves played a part in installing and to whom they deferred uncritically and unconditionally. Moreover, not only is the correlation of the needs for freedom and for belonging operative, as is evident in the strictness of the ritual, and which here contains both extremes: the excess of freedom that such organizations possess against all otherwise valid norms had, for the sake of emotional equilibrium, to be balanced by a like excess of subservience and renunciation of one's own will. But quite possibly more essential was the necessity of centralization, which is the vital condition of the secret society; and most certainly when, as a criminal society, it lives off the surrounding circles, meddles in them with a wide variety of radiations and activities, and is severely threatened by betrayal as well as deflected interests as soon as the uncompromising adherence to a center does not prevail in it.
It is thus noted that the secret society is especially exposed to serious dangers if no strict unifying authority develops in it on some basis. The Waldensians were by nature definitely no secret society, but became such in the thirteenth century simply to keep themselves hidden because of external pressure. Thereby it became impossible for them to assemble regularly, and this in turn led to the loss of unity in their doctrine; it gave rise to a number of separately existing and developing branches that often stood in hostile opposition to one another. They lapsed into weakness because they lacked the necessary and complementary attri- bute of the secret association, continuously effective centralization. And that the significant power of the Freemason chapter is evidently not entirely relative to its extent and its means lies probably in the wide- ranging autonomy of its components, which possess neither a unified organization nor a central authority. While their common features extend only to principles and signs of recognition, they are such only for the identity and the relationship of person-to-person, and not for the centralization that holds the powers of the elements together and that is the correlate of the distinctiveness of the secret society.
It is nothing but an exaggeration of this formal theme that secret societies are often led by unknown superiors: the lower levels are not supposed to know whom they obey. This occurs, of course, above all for the protection of secrecy and increases intentionally, in Italy, to the point of forming a secret society at the beginning of the nine- teenth century, the Guelphic Knight, which worked for the liberation and unification of Italy: it had in its various positions accordingly a
the secret and the secret society 359
? supreme council of six persons who did not know one another, but communicated with each other only through a middle person known as 'the visible. ' However, this is in no way the only serviceable purpose of secret superiors. They signify rather the most extreme, abstract sub- limation of centralized dependence. The tension between the adherent and the leadership is at its highest when the latter moves out of sight; there remains simply the pure, so to speak, merciless, impersonally colorless reality of obedience, from which the one in command has disappeared as a subject. When obedience towards an impersonal authority, towards a mere office, towards the bearer of an objective law, already has the character of inflexible rigor, then this intensifies yet to an uncanny absoluteness when the commanding personality remains in principle hidden. For when, concurrently along with the visibility and recognition of the commander, the power of the personality is lacking from the relationship of command, indeed even the individual suggestion thereof, then removed from it are even the limitations, the merely relative and so to speak 'human' that adheres to the sensible, singular person; obedience in this case must be colored by the feeling of being subordinate to an unreachable power and one not at all defined by its boundaries, which one sees nowhere but can therefore suspect everywhere. The sociologically general cohesion of a group through the unity of the commanding authority has, in the secret society with an unknown superior, been transferred, as it were, to a focus imaginarius and has thereby won its purest, highest form.
The sociological character corresponding to this centralized subordi- nation to individual elements of the secret society is that of de-individu- alization. Where the society does not have the interests of its individuals immediately in mind, but operates, as it were, based on itself, since it uses its members as means for purposes and actions located outside theirs--here the secret society demonstrates anew a heightened degree of the dissolution of the self, of the leveling of individuality, which social being already undergoes in general and as such, and with which the secret society counterbalances the above emphasized individualizing and differentiating character of the secrecy as such. This begins with the secret societies of indigenous peoples, the appearance and enactment of which occurs almost everywhere by the use of masks, so that an expert determines directly that where one finds masks with an indig- enous people, this would allow one to at least suspect the existence of secret societies. It is, of course, in the nature of the secret society that its members hide their membership. But while the person in question
360 chapter five
? indeed appears and operates and not only acts entirely unambiguously as a member of the secret society, and whose individuality with this membership is identical to any other known individuality, the disappear- ance of the personality as such behind one's role in the secret society is that which is most strongly emphasized. In the Irish conspiracy that was organized in the 1870s in America under the name Clan na Gael, the individual members were never identified with their names but only with numbers. Certainly this also occurred normally for the practical purpose of maintaining secrecy, but it demonstrates how very much it suppresses individuality. With people who count only as numbers, who perhaps--as it at least occurs in analogous cases--are hardly known to the other members by their personal names, the leadership will oper- ate much more thoughtlessly, much more indifferently toward their individual wishes and abilities than if the association were to include each of its members as personal beings. Functioning no less in this sense are the extensive role and the rigor of the ritual. This is because such activity always means that the objective formation has become dominant over the personal aspect of contribution and participation. The hierarchical order allows for the individual only as bearer of a predetermined role; it reserves for every participant an, as it were, styl- ized garment in which one's personal contours disappear.
It is only another name for this elimination of the distinctive personal- ity when secret societies cultivate a largely relative equality among their members; the despotic character of their constitutions is violated so little by this that its correlate is found in the leveling of the dominated also in all other possible types of despotic groups. Inside the secret society there exists frequently among the members a fraternal equality that stands in sharp and tendentious contrast to their differences in all their other life situations. Significantly this is pronouncedly evident on the one hand in secret societies of a religious or ethical character--which greatly accentuate the reality of fraternity--on the other hand in those of an illegal nature. Bismarck speaks in his memoirs of a widely networked pederast association in Berlin that he came to know as a young court official, and emphasizes "the leveling effect of the common workings of the forbidden throughout all strata. "23 This depersonalization in which the secret society unilaterally sharpens a typical relationship between
23 Presumably, Gedanken und Erinnerungen, the first two volumes of which were pub- lished in 1901--ed.
? the secret and the secret society 361
? an individual and society appears ultimately as the characteristic release from responsibility. Here, too, the mask is the most primitive phenom- enon. Most of the African secret societies are represented, as it were, by a man dressed as a forest spirit; this one commits any number of violations on those who encounter him by chance, up to robbery and murder. A responsibility for his foul deeds does not apply to him, and certainly evidently only because of his masking: that is the somewhat unhelpful form under which those societies let the personalities of their adherents disappear and without which these latter would undoubtedly be overtaken by revenge and punishment. But responsibility is simply so directly linked to the 'I'--also philosophically the issue of responsibility falls into the issue of the 'I'--that for this nai? ve awareness disguising the person removes all responsibility. Political refinement, however, is served no less by this connection. In the United States House of Representatives the actual decisions, which the full House almost always endorses, are taken in standing committees. Their negotiations, how- ever, are secret, and thus the most essential part of legislative activity is hidden from the public. Thereby the political responsibility of the individual representative appears for the most part to be extinguished since nobody can be held responsible for proceedings that are not subject to scrutiny. While the parts played by the individual person in the decisions remain hidden, they appear to be carried by a supra- individual authority; release from responsibility is here also the result or the symbol for that increased sociological de-individualization that corresponds to the secrecy of group action. For all boards, faculties, committees, trustees, etc. whose deliberations are secret, precisely the same thing holds: the individuals disappear as persons into the, so to speak, nameless circle of membership, and with them the responsibility, which belongs to such persons, cannot at all attach a tangible essence to their particular behaviors.
Ultimately this unilateral increase of general social characteristics is attested to by the danger from which the greater surrounding sphere believes itself, rightly or wrongly, threatened by the secret societies. Where strong centralization is striven for--especially with regard to the political--special unions of elements are abhorred purely as such, irrespective of their contents and purposes; as entities they comprise simply, as it were, competition for the principal center that wants to reserve for itself alone any combining into a form of unity. The con- cern of the central power before any 'special union' extends--which has already been repeatedly and importantly emphasized throughout
362 chapter five
? these explorations--throughout the history of the state. One charac- teristic type is indicated somewhat by the Swiss Convention of 1481, according to which no separate alliances were permitted between the ten confederated states; another one, the persecution of the journeymen associations by the despotism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- ries; a third, the tendency to deprive the communes of rights that the modern state frequently manifests. This danger of the separate associa- tion for the surrounding total society appears magnified when it comes to the secret society. Human beings seldom have a calm and rational attitude toward those known slightly or only vaguely. The recklessness that treats those unknown as non-existent and the fearful imagination that inflates them directly into enormous dangers and horrors tend to play roles in their behavior. Thus the secret society appears for sure as a dangerously secret one. As one cannot know for certain whether or not a special society will use its power, accumulated for legal purposes, sometime also for those undesired, and for that reason the principal distrust of the central powers arises towards subject groups, so there exists over against alliances that are in principle hidden all the more closely the suspicion that its secrecy hides dangers. The Orange Societies that were organized early in the nineteenth century in England for the suppression of Catholicism avoided all public discussion and worked only in secret through personal connections and correspondence. But precisely this secrecy allowed them to appear to be a public danger: it raised the suspicion "that men, who shrank from appealing to pub- lic opinion, meditated a resort to force. " So the secret organization definitely appears purely on the grounds of its secrecy as dangerously verging upon conspiracy against the existing powers. How much this is only an increase of the general political dubiousness of the special association is demonstrated well by such phenomena as the following: The oldest German guilds offered their members an effective legal protection and thereby substituted for the protection of the state for them; for that reason, on the one side, the Danish kings saw in them safeguards of the public order and favored them. On the other side, however, they appeared for exactly the same reason directly as competitors of the state; the Franconian statutes, therefore, condemned them, and surely because they identified them as conspiracies. The secret association is deemed so much an enemy of the central power that, now conversely, every politically abhorrent club is labeled as such!
Sociology
Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms
Volume 2
Studies in International Institutional Dynamics
Editors
Richard Higgott, Centre for the Study of Globalization and Regionalization, University of Warwick
Karl Kaiser, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
S. Neil MacFarlane, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
John Odell, School of International Relations, University of Southern California
Louis Pauly, Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto
VOLUME 1
Sociology
Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms Volume 2
By
Georg Simmel
Translated and edited by
Anthony J. Blasi Anton K. Jacobs Mathew Kanjirathinkal
With an introduction by
Horst J. Helle
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?