No More Learning

3 What degree of knowledge and ignorance must be blended to make possible the individual practical decision based on trust is what characterizes eras, realms of interest, individuals. That objectification of culture defini- tively distinguished the quantities of knowledge and lack of knowledge required for trust. The modern merchant who enters into business with another, the scholar who undertakes research together with another, the leader of a political party who comes to an agreement with the leader of another party over election issues or matters of legislation--all these know, apart from exceptions and imperfections, exactly what is necessary to know about their partner for forming the relationship. The traditions and institutions, the power of public opinion, and the shifting of opinion that inescapably prejudices individuals have become so firm and reliable that one needs to know only certain external traits about
3 Admittedly there is another type of trust that, since it stands beyond knowledge and ignorance, affects the present context only indirectly: that which one calls the faith of a person in another and which belongs to the category of religious faith. Just as one never believed in God on the basis of the 'proofs for the existence of God'--these proofs are in fact only the additional justification or intellectual reflection entirely of a disposition of the heart--so one 'believes' in a person without this belief being justified by proofs of the worthiness of the person, indeed, often in spite of proofs for the opposite of worthiness. This trust, this inner unconditionality vis-a`-vis a person is imparted neither by experiences nor by hypotheses but by a primary disposition of the soul with regard to the other. In completely pure form, detached from any empirical consideration, this condition of faith probably appears only inside religion; regarding people, it will likely always require a stimulus or a confirmation by the knowledge treated above or an expectation; while on the other hand certainly also in those social forms of trust, even as they appear exactly and intellectually justified, there may be a supplement of that intuitive, indeed, mystical 'faith' of person in person. Perhaps even that hereby identified is a basic category of human behavior, going back to the metaphysical meaning of our relationships and only empirically, randomly, fragmentarily actualized by the conscious, singular foundations of trust.
? 316 chapter five
? another in order to have the trust needed for acting in concert. The foundation of personal qualities by which a modification of the behavior inside the relationship could come about is in principle no longer of concern; the motivation and regulation of this behavior has been so objectified that trust no longer requires actual personal knowledge. In more primitive, less differentiated circumstances one knew very much more about one's partner--in a personal sense--and very much less with regard to purely factual reliability. Both belong together: in order to generate the necessary trust in light of the lack with regard to the latter, a much higher level of knowledge was needed in the former. That purely general knowledge of one, involving only the facts about the person, at the boundary of which what is personally unique can remain private, must be supplemented emphatically then by the knowl- edge of the personal as soon as the association for a purpose possesses an essential significance for the total existence of the participants. The businessperson who sells grain or petroleum to another needs to know only whether that person is good for the amount; but as soon as one takes the other on as an associate, one must not only know the financial condition and certain rather general qualities of the person, but must know the latter extensively as a personality, that person's respectability, sociability, whether of a venturesome or cautious temperament; and on such knowledge--reciprocally--rests not only the establishment of the relationship but its whole continuation, the daily joint activities, the division of functions among the partners. The privacy of the personal- ity is now more socially limited; with the extent to which the common interest is now carried by personal qualities, the personality is no longer allowed such a wide-ranging being-for-itself.
Beyond the associations formed for a purpose, but also beyond the relationships rooted in the whole personality, there is the relationship socially most characteristic in the higher levels of culture that they refer to now as merely the 'acquaintance. ' That one 'knows' mutually does not at all mean in this sense that one knows mutually, i. e. that one had an insight into the actual individuality of the personality, but only that each, as it were, had taken notice of the existence of the other. Characteristically for the idea of acquaintance the 'introduction' by name is enough: the knowledge of the 'that,' not the 'what' of the per- sonality, defines 'acquaintance. ' When one declares oneself acquainted with a certain person, indeed even to be well acquainted, one is thus indicating very clearly the lack of an actually intimate relationship; one knows under this rubric only what of another is external: either in the
the secret and the secret society 317
? purely socially representative sense or in that we know just what the other shows us; the degree of knowledge that 'being well acquainted with another' includes, as it were, not the 'in-oneself ' of the other, not that which is in the inner layer, but only that which is essentially turned to the other and to the world. Therefore, the circle of acquaintances in this social sense is the actual location of 'discretion. ' This is because this circle certainly not only exists in the respect for the privacy of the other, for one's immediate desire to hide this or that from us, but for sure in that one steers clear of the knowledge of everything that the other does not positively reveal. Thus it is in principle not a matter here of something definite that one is not permitted to know, but of the entirely general reserve exercised toward the whole personality, and of a special form of the typical antithesis of imperatives: what is not forbidden is allowed, and what is not allowed is forbidden. So the relationships of people part ways at the question regarding the knowledge of each other: what is not hidden it is permitted to know, and what is not revealed it is also not permitted to know. The latter decision corresponds to the feeling, effective also elsewhere, that around every person there is an ideal sphere, in various directions and for various persons certainly largely unequal, which one cannot penetrate without destroying the value of the personality of the individual. Honor sets such a field in place around the person; linguistic usage speaks of an offense to honor very precisely as 'getting too close'; the radius of that sphere identifies, as it were, the distance whose violation by a personal stranger offends one's honor. Another sphere of the same form corresponds to what one refers to as the 'importance' of a personality. Before the 'important' person there exists an inner compulsion to maintain distance, which does not immediately disappear even in the intimate relationship with someone and which is not present only for those who have no feel for importance. For this reason that sphere of distance does not exist for the 'chamber servant' because there are no 'heroes' for such, which is due, however, not to the heroes but to the chamber servant. For that reason, too, all intrusiveness is bound up with a conspicuous lack of feeling for the differences of the importance of people; whoever is intrusive with respect to an important personage does not--as it could appear superficially--esteem that person highly or overly highly but, on the contrary, reveals thereby just the lack of actual respect. As the painter often emphatically renders the importance of a form in a multi-figured picture by arranging the others at a considerable distance around it, so also the sociological parallel of importance is the distance that keeps
318 chapter five
? others outside a personality's specific sphere filled with that person's power, purposes, greatness. For such a person, although a somewhat differently emphasized periphery surrounds the person, occupied with personal affairs and activities, penetrating it by paying attention amounts to an injury to that one's personality. Just as material property is more- or-less an extension of the Ego--property is simply what is subject to the will of the possessor just as, in only graduated differentiation, is the body, which is our first 'possession'--and just as therefore every intru- sion into vested property rights is felt as a violation of the personality, so there is a private property of the mind whose violation causes an injury of the Ego in the very center of the self. Discretion is nothing other than the sense of correctness with reference to the sphere of the contents of life not to be shared. Of course it is rather variously expanded in its circumstances according to various personalities, just as also that of marriage and of property each has a radius quite different for persons 'nearby' than for strangers and the indifferent. With the above mentioned more narrowly conceived social relationships, identi- fied most simply as 'acquaintances,' it is a matter first of all of a quite typical boundary, beyond which there are perhaps no guarded secrets, but about which the other conventionally goes into with discretion, not with questions or other invasions.
The question, where does this boundary lie, is even in principle not at all to be answered simply but leads down into the most subtle texture of social formation. The right to that realm of mental life cannot be affirmed precisely as private property in an absolute sense any more than that of the material realm. We know that inside higher culture the latter--with regard to the three essential aspects of acquisition, security, productiveness--rests never merely on the powers of the individual but requires as well the circumstances and powers of the social milieu, and that therefore its limitation--be it through the prohibitions concerning acquisition, be it through taxation--is from the start the right of the whole; but this right is still more deeply grounded than on the principle of achievement and anti-achievement between society and individual, namely rather on the much more elementary principle that the part must allow as much limitation of one's being- and having-for-oneself to fall to itself as the preservation and the purposes of the whole require. And this applies as well to the inner sphere of the person. This is because in the interest of exchange and of social solidarity, one must know certain things about the other, and this other does not have the right from the moral standpoint to offer resistance against it and to require discretion
the secret and the secret society 319
? from the former, i. e. an undisturbed possession of one's own being and consciousness as well, where the discretion would damage the social interests. The businessperson who contracts long-term obligations with another, the master who engages a domestic servant but also the latter before placing oneself into the relationship of service, the superior in promoting a subordinate, the housewife who accepts a new personality into her social circle--all these must be authorized to learn or deduce from the past and present of the person in question, everything about temperament and moral character on which the action or refusal to act concerning the person may be reasonably based. These are rather crude cases in which the duty of discretion, to abstain from know- ing about all that the other does not freely reveal to us, must retreat before practical realities. But in more refined and less clear forms, in fragmentary statements and things unexpressed, the whole interactive dynamic of human beings rests on each knowing something more of the other than the other willingly reveals, and frequently one would not wish the discovery of that by the other if the one knew of it. While this can be considered an indiscretion in an individual sense, in a social one, however, it is necessary as a condition for the closeness and vitality existing in social interaction--and it is extraordinarily difficult to point to the limit of the right to this breach of private mental property. In general, human beings grant themselves the right to know everything that they can fathom purely through psychological observation and reflection without turning to patently illegal means. Actually, though, the indiscretion exercised in this manner can be just as brutally and morally objectionable as listening at closed doors and glancing at other people's letters. To those who are especially psychologically sensitive, people betray their most secret thoughts and characteristics countless times, though not only but often precisely because they are anxiously straining to guard them. The greedy, spying gathering of every indiscreet word, the penetrating reflection--what this intonation probably would mean, what those expressions allow one to conclude, what the blushing at the mention of a certain name perhaps betrayed--all this does not overstep the boundary of outward discretion; it is entirely the work of one's own intellect and for that reason an apparently undisputed right of the subject; and this often occurs completely involuntarily, so much more than the misuse of psychological superiority--we cannot at all often put a stop to our interpretations of the other, to the construals of another's inner life. As much as the decent person will forbid to the self the pondering over the secrecy of another, that exploitation of the
320 chapter five
? other's imprudence and defenselessness, there takes place a process of knowledge of this realm often so automatically, its results standing before us often so suddenly and conspicuously, that good will can do nothing at all to counter it. Where the undoubtedly disallowed can be unavoidable, however, the demarcation between allowed and disallowed is all the more unclear. How far discretion has to abstain also from the mental encroachment 'of everything that is existing,' how far the interests of the human enterprise of communication, the relying-on-one-another of the members of the same group limit this duty of discretion--that is a question to whose answer neither moral tact nor the overview of the objective relationships and their demands alone suffice, since in fact both must operate completely together. The subtle and complicated nature of this question offers the individual to a much higher degree no general norm for prejudicing the decision than would be necessary for a question of private property in a material sense.
This pre-form or this supplement concerning the secret, in which not the behavior of the secret-holder but that of another is in question, in which with the blending of mutual knowledge or ignorance the accent lies more on the measure of knowledge than ignorance--over against this we come to a completely new turn: in those very relationships which center, not as those until now firmly circumscribed, and if even only by the fact of their pure 'superficiality,' around materially fixed interests but those, at least according to their conception, building on the whole breadth of the personality. Here the main types are friend- ship and marriage. Insofar as the ideal of friendship from antiquity has been appropriated and, in a curious way further developed precisely in the romantic sense, there is the by-product of absolute psychological intimacy, that material property is also supposed to be common among friends. This entry of the whole undivided 'I' into the relationship may thus be more plausible in friendship than in love, since it lacks the one- sided intensification based on one element that love experiences in its sensuality. Indeed, it occurs thereby that in the whole scope of possible reasons for association one takes, as it were, the Te^te, a certain organizing of the same, as it is bestowed on a group through the leadership. 4 A very strong relational element often paves the way along which the others follow without this latent casualty; and undeniably with most people sexual love opens widest the gates of the whole personality; indeed,
4 Te^te, French for 'head'; in this case, probably 'lead'--ed.
? the secret and the secret society 321
? with not a few love is the only form in which they can give their whole 'I,' just as with artists the form of their respective art offers the only possibility to proffer their whole inner being. Especially frequently this is to be observed with women--certainly also 'Christian love,' intended entirely differently, is supposed to accomplish the same correspond- ingly--in that they not only, because they love, sacrifice their whole being without reservation, but that this whole being is, as it were, dis- solved chemically in the love and flows only and entirely in its coloring, form, temperature onto the other. On the other hand, however, where the feeling of love is not expansive enough, the remaining contents of the soul not adaptive enough, the predominance of the erotic bonds that remain can, as I indicated, suppress practical-moral as well as the spiritual connections, the self-exposure of the reservoirs of the person- ality lying beyond the erotic. Friendship, which lacks this intensity but also this frequent disproportionate dedication, may more readily bind the whole person with the whole person, may more readily loosen the reserve of the soul, to be sure, not so passionately, but in wider scope and in the longer run. Such complete familiarity meanwhile would have to become more difficult with the ever increasing differentiation of people. Perhaps the modern person has too much to hide in order to have a friendship in the ancient sense; perhaps personalities are also, apart from very young years, too uniquely individualized in order to enable the complete mutuality of relationship, of the mere entry into relationship, to which indeed ever so much mental divination and pro- ductive fantasy belong on the part of the other. It seems that, therefore, modern sensitivity tends more towards differentiated friendships, i. e. to such that have their realm associated typically with only one pertinent aspect of the personalities and in which the rest plays no role. With that a wholly different kind of friendship emerges that is of greatest importance for our problem: the degree of intrusion or reserve inside the friendship relationship. These differentiated friendships that associ- ate us with one person by the aspect of disposition, with another by that of shared intellectual interest, with a third for the sake of religious impulses, with a fourth through common experiences--these represent a completely unique synthesis with regard to the issue of discretion, of self-revelation, and self-censorship; they do not require that the friends look into the realms of interest and feeling that are simply not a part of the relationship, and to refer to them would make the boundary of the mutual self-understanding emotionally painful. But the relationship, in this way limited and enveloped in discretion, can nevertheless come
322 chapter five
? from the center of the whole personality, saturated from its ultimate root sap, so much so that it pours forth into a section of its periphery; it leads, with its notion, into this same depth of feeling and to the same willing sacrifice as undifferentiated epochs and persons bind them simply with a commonality of the whole periphery of life, for which reserve and discretion are no problem.
Much more difficult is the degree of self-revelation and self-reserve in marriage, with their complements--intrusion and discretion. It pertains here to the wholly general problem area, most difficult for the sociology of the intimate relationship: whether the maximum of common values is thereby achieved in the personalities giving up their being-for-self entirely to one another or, on the contrary, by holding back--whether they do not somehow belong to one another qualitatively more when they belong to each other quantitatively less. This question of degree can of course be answered only along with the other: how then, inside the totality of the communicability of the person, is the boundary to be drawn at which the restraint and the respect for the other would possibly begin. The preference of modern marriage--which makes both questions of course answerable only on a case-by-case basis--is that this boundary is not set in place from the start, as is the case in other and earlier cultures. In the latter particularly, marriage is in principle generally not erotic but only a socio-economic institution; satisfaction of the desires of love is thereby tied to it only accidentally; it is contracted, with exceptions of course, not on the basis of individual attraction but for reasons of family alliances, of work relationships, of offspring. It was in this sense brought to its uttermost clear differentiation by the Greeks; according to Demosthenes: "We have hetaerae for pleasure and concubines for daily needs, wives, however, for providing us legitimate children and for tending to the interior of the household. "5 Obviously with such a mechanical relationship, functioning outside the psychologi- cal center--as is shown, by the way, with certain qualifications, in the history and observation of marriage at every step--on the one hand, neither the need nor the possibility of intimate mutual self-revelation will exist; but on the other hand some reserves of sensitivity and purity will also fall away that are still precisely the flower of a completely spiri- tualized, entirely personal close relationship in spite of their apparent negativity. The same tendency to exclude certain aspects of life from
5 Attributed to him in an oration, Against Neaera--ed.
? the secret and the secret society 323
? the mutuality of marriage a priori and by supra-individual statute lies in the multiplicity of marital forms within a circle of people, among whom those concluding a marriage have to make a prior decision, and who distinguish the economic, religious, and familial interests in the marriage in manifold ways: thus it is with indigenous peoples, with the Hindus, and with the Romans. 6 Now nobody will fail to recognize that in modern life also marriage is probably entered into mainly from conventional or material motives. Nevertheless, as it is often realized, the social notion of the modern marriage is the common possession of all of life's contents insofar as they determine directly and through their effects the value and the destiny of the personality. And the precedence of this ideal claim is not at all without effect; it has provided room and stimulation often enough for developing an originally very incomplete commonality into an ever more encompassing one. But while the very indeterminacy of this process supports happiness and inner vitality for the relationship, its reversal tends to foster heavy disappointments: namely when absolute unity is anticipated from the start, desire as well as offering know no kind of restraint, even not that which yet remains for all finer and deeper natures ever in the dark recesses of the soul when it intends to pour itself out entirely in the presence of the other.
In marriage as well as in marital-like free relationships the temptation is manifest from the beginning to open oneself fully to each other, to send the last of the soul's reservations on to those of the corporeal, to lose oneself fully in one another without reserve. This will, however, more than anything else, considerably threaten the future of the rela- tionship. Without danger, only those people can give of themselves completely who in general cannot give of themselves completely because the abundance of their souls rests in continually developing further, which means that every devotion immediately nurtures new treasures that have an inexhaustibility of properties latent in the soul, and these can therefore be revealed and given away only so much in any given moment, like a tree with this year's harvest bearing that of next year's. It is otherwise, however, with those who, with the upsurge of feeling, the unconditionality of devotion, subtract the revelation of the life of their souls from, as it were, the capital, whereby the revelatory source of ever new spiritual attainment, not at all separable from the 'I,' is not
6 The expression 'indigenous peoples' translates Naturvo? lker, literally 'nature peo- ples'--ed.
? 324 chapter five
? at all lacking. Then the chance is near that one will some day stand before oneself with empty hands, that the Dionysian blessedness of giving leaves behind an impoverishment that yet retroactively--unjustly, but for that reason no less bitterly--gives the lie even to the savored indulgences and their joy. We are simply so equipped that we not only, as mentioned above, need a certain proportion of truth and error as a basis of our love, but also of clarity and ambiguity in the pattern of our life's elements. What we see clearly short of the latter foundation thus shows us just the limit of its attraction and prohibits the fantasy from weaving into it its possibilities, for the loss of which no reality can compensate us, because that is merely self-activity that cannot be replaced in the long run by obtaining and enjoying. The other person is supposed to give us not only an additional gift, but also the possibil- ity of giving it, with hopes and idealizations, with hidden beauties and even unconscious attractions. The site, however, at which we deposit all this production, produced by us but for the other, is the ambiguous horizon of the other's personality, the intermediate realm in which faith displaces knowledge. It is certainly to be emphasized that it is not in any way a matter only of illusions and optimistic or amorous self- deception but simply that a part of the person closest to us must be offered to us in the form of ambiguity and opacity for their attraction to remain elevated for us; thereby the majority of people make up for the attractiveness that the minority possesses with the inexhaustibility of their inner life and growth. The mere fact of absolute knowledge, of full psychological exploration, disillusions us even without prior intoxication, benumbs the vitality of relationships, and allows their continuation to appear as something actually pointless. This is the danger of complete and, in a more than superficial sense, shameless devotion, toward which unlimited possibilities of intimate relationships tempt one, which indeed are easily felt as a kind of duty--especially where no absolute security of one's own feeling exists and the concern over not giving the other enough leads to giving the other too much. In this absence of mutual discretion, in the sense of giving and taking, many marriages clearly go aground, i. e. , fall into a dull, banal habitu- ation, into a matter of course that no longer has room for surprises. The fertile depth of relationships, which in the end senses and honors behind each something revealed yet another final one that also stimulates someone assuredly obsessed to conquer anew daily, is simply the wage of that sensitivity and self-control that still respects the inner privacy
the secret and the secret society 325
? even in the closest all-consuming relationship, that allows the right to inquire to be restricted by the right to privacy.
All these combinations are sociologically significant in that the secret of one is recognized in some measure by the other, in that the inten- tionally or unintentionally hidden is intentionally or unintentionally respected. The intent to conceal, however, takes on a wholly different intensity as soon as it is faced with the intent to uncover. Then that ten- dentious hide-and-seek and masquerade arises, that aggressive defense, as it were, against the third person, which one now actually identifies as a secret. The secret in this sense, the concealment of realities carried out by negative or positive means, is one of the greatest achievements of humanity; contrary to the childish condition in which every idea is immediately spoken, every undertaking is open for all to see, an immense expansion of life is achieved with the secret because its various contents cannot make an appearance at all with complete publicity. The secret offers the possibility of a, so to speak, second world next to the appar- ent one, and this is influenced by the former most strongly. Whether and how much secrecy is in it characterizes every relationship between two people or between two groups; for even where the other does not notice its existence, for that reason the activity of those concealing, and thus the whole relationship, is in any case modified. 7 The historical development of society is in many respects marked by earlier manifest matters moving into the protection of secrecy, and conversely earlier secret matters being able to dispense with this protection and revealing themselves--comparable to that other evolution of the spirit: the initially conscious activity sinks into the unconscious-mechanical exercise, and on the other hand the earlier unconscious-instinctive climbs into the light of consciousness. How this disperses to the various formations of private as well as public life; how that evolution leads to ever more purposeful situations, while at first the secret is often, ineptly and undifferentiat- edly, extended far too widely, conversely, for the many the advantage of concealment not recognized until late; how the magnitude of the secret
7 This concealment has in many cases a sociological consequence of an especially ethically paradoxical quality. So destructive is it namely for a relationship between two people when the one has committed an offense against the other, of which both are conscious, it can thus be advantageous for the relationship if only the guilty party knows about it, because that person is moved thereby to circumspection, tenderness, secret desire to make it good again, to indulgence and selflessness that with a completely good conscience would be far from one's mind.
? 326 chapter five
? is modified in its consequences through the importance or indifference of its contents--all this as pure inquiry has allowed the meaning of the secret for the structure of human realities of interaction to shine forth. The multiply ethical negativity of secrecy need not mislead us about these things because the secret is a general sociological form that stands completely neutral over the value-relevance of its contents. It assimilates, on the one hand, the highest value: thus the keen shame of the noble soul that conceals precisely its best in order not to allow itself the reward of praise and gain; then after this one possesses, as it were, compensation but not the actual value itself. On the other hand, the secret is certainly not in league with the devil, but the devil is in a direct connection with the secret. This is because immorality is concealed for obvious reasons--even where its content meets with no social penalty, as with sexual indiscretions. The internally isolating effect of immorality as such, even apart from all primary social repulsions, is, next to the many ostensible linkages of the ethical and the social continua, a real and important effect; the secret is--among other things--also the social expression of moral wickedness; although the classical sentence, "No one would be so evil as to also desire to appear evil," contradicts the facts. 8 Since defiance and cynicism are not allowed to come to mask wickedness often enough, they can exploit it indeed for elevating the personality vis-a`-vis others, to the point that occasionally one becomes renowned for non-existing immoralities.
The use of the secret as a sociological technique--as a form of activ- ity without which certain goals are not at all achievable in light of our social surroundings--is readily seen. Not quite so obvious are the attrac- tions and values that it possesses beyond this significance as a means, the peculiar attraction of the formally secretive behavior, apart from its particular contents. First of all, the strongly emphasized exclusion of all outsiders bestows a correspondingly strongly emphasized feeling of ownership. For many natures, possession simply does not get its proper significance even by positively having, but requires the awareness that others have to do without it. It is evidently the susceptibility of our sense for difference that accounts for this. Moreover, since the reality of the exclusion of others from a possession will come especially when the value of the possession is great, psychologically the reverse suggests itself, that the many would have to be those denied something valuable. And
8 Quotation marks added--ed.
? the secret and the secret society 327
? thus the inner ownership of the most varied kind obtains a characteristic accent of value through the form of the secret, in which the substan- tive significance of the secreted facts often enough recedes entirely, in that others simply know nothing of it. Among children, a pride and self-pretension are often based on one being able to say to the other, "I know something you don't know"--in fact thus meant broadly that this is stated as a formal means of bragging and degrading of the other, even where it is completely untrue and no secret is held at all. From the least into the greatest relationships this jealousy of knowledge on account of facts hidden from others is manifest. English parliamentary negotiations were secret for a long time, and even under George III publicity in the press about them was subject to criminal prosecution, in fact expressly as an injury to parliamentary privileges. The secret gives the person an exceptional position; it functions as a purely social attraction, in principle independent of the content that it shelters, but of course to the degree that the latter increases, the exclusively possessed secret is meaningful and extensive. The converse also works, analogously to what was just mentioned. Every high-level personality and all high- level accomplishments hold something mysterious for average people. Certainly all human existence and action issue from undeciphered powers. However, inside an order of equality, qualitatively and with the same values, this does not yet make one a problem for the other, especially since a certain immediate understanding, not carried by the intellect, occurs in this equality. Essential dissimilarity, however, does not allow it to come to this, and the general mysteriousness becomes effective immediately in the form of the singular difference--somewhat like one, always living in the same landscape, may not come upon the problem of our being influenced by the milieu of the landscape, which intrudes, though, as soon as we change surroundings and the differ- ence in life-feeling makes us attentive to its provocative force. From the secret that overshadows all that is deep and important there develops the typical mistake: all secrecy is something essential and meaningful. The natural impulse to idealize and the natural timidity of people work to the same end concerning the unknown, to magnify it through fantasy and give it an emphasis that the revealed reality would not for the most part have acquired.
Now strangely enough, together with these attractions of the secret is joined its logical opposite: those of betrayal--which are obviously no less sociological in nature. The secret involves a tension that is resolved in the instant of its being revealed. This forms the reversal in
328 chapter five
? the development of the secret, collecting and culminating in it once again all the attractions--as the moment of squandering lets one enjoy with the greatest intensity the value of the object: the feeling of power, provided with the possession of money, is concentrated for the soul of the squanderer most completely and with the greatest of relish where one parts with that power. The secret is also sustained by the consciousness that there is the capacity for betrayal, and thereby the power of changing destiny and of surprises, of joys and destructions, albeit perhaps only at hand for self-destruction. Therefore, a possibil- ity and temptation of betrayal swirls around the secret, and with the external danger of being discovered is intertwined the internal one of self-discovery that the powerful attraction of the abyss resembles. The secret places a barrier between people but at the same time also the seductive appeal to break through by divulging or confessing--which the mental life of the secret accompanies as an overtone. Therefore, the sociological significance of the secret finds its practical measure, the mode of its realization, first of all in the ability or inclination of the subject to keep it to oneself, or in its resistance or weakness of tempta- tion towards betrayal. Out of the interplay of these two interests, to conceal and to divulge, flow nuances and destinies throughout the whole realm of human interactive relationships. If according to our earlier determination every relationship between people has its characteriza- tion in how much secrecy there is in it or around it, then its further development is determined in this sense in accord with the degree of mixture of retentive and declining energies--the former borne by the practical interest and the formal attraction of the secret as such, the latter by the inability to tolerate any longer the strain of keeping the secret and by the superiority which, residing in the secret in latent form, as it were, is fully actualized emotionally in the moment of disclo- sure, on the other hand, however, also often in the desire for confession that can contain that feeling of power in a more negative and perverse form than self-abasement and contrition.
All these factors that determine the sociological role of the secret are of an individual nature; however, the degree to which the constructions and the complications of the personalities form secrets depends at the same time on the social structure on which its life stands. Now in this connection the deciding factor is that the secret is a factor of individu- alization of the first order, and certainly in the typical double role: that social relationships of more strongly personal differentiation permit and require it in great measure, and that conversely the secret carries and
the secret and the secret society 329
? increases such differentiation. In a small and narrowly enclosed circle the formation and preservation of secrets will indeed be technically difficult because everyone stands near the relationships of everyone else and because the frequency and intimacy of the contacts occasion too many temptations to disclosure. However, there is also no need for secrets to any substantial degree since this social formation tends to level its elements and work against those peculiarities of being, action, and possession whose preservation demands the form of the secret. That with the considerable expansion of the circle all this passes over into its opposite is obvious. Here as usual the relationships of the money economy reveal most clearly the specific characteristics of the large circle. Since the traffic in economic assets takes place continuously by means of money, an otherwise unachievable secrecy became possible with it. Three properties of the monetary form of assets become important here: its compressibility, which allows it to make someone into a rich person with a check that one lets slip unnoticed into that person's hand; its abstractness and featureless nature, by virtue of whose transactions, acquisition, and exchange of property can be hidden in a manner and made undetectable, as is impossible so long as assets can be possessed only as bulky unambiguously tangible objects; finally its long-range effect by means of which one can invest in the most remote and continuously changing assets and thereby keep it entirely from the eyes of the near- est associates. These possibilities for dissimulation, which are produced to the extent that monetary economic relationships expand and have to be exposed to dangers especially in economic activities with other people's money, have aroused the public for the fiscal management of corporations and states as a protective rule. This points to a closer regu- lation of the evolutionary formula touched on above: that all through the form of the secret an ongoing in- and outflow of content occurs, in that what was originally manifest becomes secret, originally hidden sheds its cover--so that one could come to the paradoxical idea that human affiliation would need a certain measure of secrecy under oth- erwise similar circumstances, that only its objects would change: while it would leave the one, it would grasp the other, and would acquire with this exchange an unchanged quantum. A somewhat more exact complement is detectable for this schema. It seems as though, with the increasing practicality of culture, the matters of generality have become ever more open, those of the individual ever more hidden. In less developed conditions the relationships of individual persons cannot, as already noted, be protected from mutual observation and meddling
330 chapter five
? to the degree that it can within the modern life-style, especially in the large city, which has produced an entirely new measure of reserve and discretion. In contrast, the bearers of the public interest in the politi- cal systems of earlier times took care to wrap themselves in a mystical authority, while in more seasoned and wider relationships there accrues to them, through the expansion of their area of domination, through the objectivity of their methods, through the distance from each indi- vidual person, the security and honor that allows them to tolerate the public exposure of their behavior. However, that secrecy in public matters manifests its inner contradiction in its immediately producing the counter-movements of betrayal on the one side and espionage on the other. Still in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the govern- ments were most fearfully concealing the magnitude of state debt, the tax rates, the military headcount--with the result that the diplomatic service in many cases had nothing better to do than to spy, intercept letters, bring persons who 'knew' something or other to the service personnel for a chat. 9 In the nineteenth century, however, publicity itself captures the affairs of state to such an extent that now governments officially publish the data, without the concealment of which until now no regime seemed possible. Thus politics, business administration, and courts lost their secrecy and inaccessibility to the same degree that the individual won the possibility of an ever more complete withdrawal, whereby modern life cultivated a method for the secluding of private affairs in the midst of a large urban collective density, just as earlier it was achievable only through spatial seclusion.
To what extent this development is to be viewed as an expedient one, however, depends on axioms of social values. Every democracy will view publicity as a condition desirable in itself, based on the fundamental notion that everyone should also know those events and circumstances that concern them--because this is the prerequisite they must have
9 This countermovement occurs also in the reverse direction. It was noticed in English court history that the actual court cabal, clandestine insinuations, the organizational intrigues do not yet come about with despotism, but first of all when the king has constitutional advisors, when the government is in this respect an openly accessible system. Only then would the king begin--and this would be especially noticeable after Edward II--to form, over against this somehow or other intrusive co-governing circle, an unofficial, more-or-less underground circle of advisors, which in itself could address the king and through its efforts would produce a chain of concealment and conspiracies.
? the secret and the secret society 331
? to make decisions together; and all common knowledge also inher- ently includes the psychological goad of wanting to act in concert. It remains uncertain whether that conclusion is entirely valid. If over the individualistic interests there emerges an objective sovereign structure, combining certain features from them, then it can by virtue of its for- mal autonomy very probably be justified in having a secret function, without thereby denying its 'public openness' in the sense of protecting the material interests of all. Thus a logical connection consequent upon the greater value of the condition of public openness does not exist. Perhaps, however, the general schema of cultural differentiation mani- fests itself here: what is public becomes ever more public, the private ever more private. And for sure this historical development brings to expression the deeper, objective significance: the public, according to its essence, according to all its initial contents, becomes even outwardly, according to its sociological form, ever more public; and that which has a being-for-itself according to its inner meaning, the centripetal matters of the individual, even in their sociological position, acquire an ever more private character, an ever more distinctive possibility of remaining a secret.
What I pointed out before, that the secret also works as an orna- mental property and asset of the personality, contains within itself the contradiction that precisely that which is withheld and concealed from the consciousness of others gains emphasis in their consciousness, and the subject is supposed to appear to be especially noteworthy exactly through that which is being concealed from them. It demonstrates that the need for social display does not make use just of the inner most contradictory means, but in that even those against which it is indeed actually opposed in that case, while paying the price of that superior- ity, enter the picture--with a mixture of willingness and reluctance certainly--however, in practice it achieves the desired recognition. It makes sense then to demonstrate an analogous structure right at the apparent sociologically opposite pole of the secret, that of adornment and its social significance. It is the essence and the meaning of adorn- ment to direct the eyes of others to the adorned, and to that extent it is the antagonist of the secret, which for its part, however, also does not elude the personally accenting function. Adornment similarly operates in a way that it blends superiority over others with a dependence on them, and on the other hand blends the other's good will and envy in a way that requires a special portrayal as a sociological form of interaction.
332 chapter five
Excursus on Jewelry and Adornment10
Interwoven with the desire of the person to please associates are the opposite tendencies in the interplay of which the relationship between individuals gener- ally takes place: a goodness is in it, a desire to be a joy to the other, but also the other desire: that this joy and 'favor' would flow back as recognition and esteem, our personality be reckoned as an asset. And this need increases so far that it entirely contradicts that initial selflessness of the desire to please: even by this kindness one wants to distinguish oneself before others, wants to be the object of an attention that will not fall to the lot of others--to the point of being envied. Here the kindness becomes a means of the will to power; there arises thereby in some souls the strange contradiction that, with regard to those people over whom they stand with their being and activity, they nev- ertheless find it necessary to build up their self-esteem in their consciousness precisely in order to keep them subordinate.
Characteristic formations of these motives, the outwardness and the inward- ness of their forms weaving into one another, convey the meaning of adorn- ment. Thus this meaning is to give prominence to the personality, to highlight it as in some way an excellent one, but not through a direct expression of power, through something that compels the other from the outside, but only through the kindness that is aroused in one and for that reason still contains some kind of voluntary element. One adorns oneself for oneself and can do that only while one adorns oneself for others. It is one of the oddest sociologi- cal deductions that an act that serves exclusively to place emphasis on and increase the importance of its bearer nevertheless achieves its goal exclusively through the pleasing view it offers others exclusively as a type of thankfulness to these others. This is because even the envy for adornment means simply the desire of the envious to win the same recognition and admiration for oneself, and one's envy proves just how very much these values are tied to adornment for that person. Adornment is something absolutely egoistic insofar as it makes its bearer stand out, sustains and increases one's self-esteem at the cost of others (because the common adornment of all would no longer set off the individual), and at the same time something altruistic because its enjoyment is simply meant for these others--whereas even the possessor can enjoy it only in the moment before the mirror--and only with the reflection of this presentation attains value for the adornment. Just as everywhere in the formation of the aesthetic, the trends of life that reality strangely juxtaposed with one another or counterposed antagonistically against one another, are revealed as intimately related--so in the sociological patterns of interaction this human arena of the struggle of the being-for-oneself and being-for-others, the aesthetic structure of adornment denotes a point at which both of these crosscurrents are dependent on one another as means and end.
10 Schmuck, which Simmel uses in this heading and in the previous paragraph, means both 'jewelry' and 'adornment. ' We use either or both of the English terms as the context requires--ed.
? ? the secret and the secret society 333
? Adornment increases or enhances the impression of the personality, while it functions as its, as it were, radiation. For that reason gleaming metals and the precious stones have always been its substance and are 'adornment'11 in the narrower sense, similar to clothing and coiffure, which indeed also 'adorn. ' One can speak of a radioactivity of the person; there is around everyone, as it were, a larger or smaller sphere of radiating significance from each, in which everybody else who has anything to do with that person immerses--a sphere where the physical and psychological elements inextricably blend: the sensually noticeable influences that radiate out from a person to one's surroundings are in some manner the carriers of spiritual lightning flashes; and they function as the symbols of such even where they are in fact only external, where no kind of power of suggestion or importance of the personality streams through it. The radiations of adornment, the sensual attention that it provokes, create such an enhancement for the personality or even an intensification of its sphere that it is, as it were, greater when it is adorned. While adornment tends to be at the same time some kind of significant object of value, it is as a synthesis of the having and the being of a subject whereby it goes from being merely a possession to a sensual and emphatic distinction of the personality itself. This is not the case with usual clothing because it enters consciousness as individu- ally distinctive neither from the perspective of having nor from that of being; only when decorated clothing and the highest of valuables have concentrated their value and radiating significance as in one smallest point does the having of the personality turn into a visible quality of its being. And all this not in spite of adornment being something 'superfluous' but precisely because it is. The immediately necessary is more closely bound to the person; it surrounds one's being with a thinner periphery. The superfluous 'overflows,' i. e. it flows out further from one's starting point; and while it is then still attached to this point, around the area of the merely necessary it lays another more encircl- ing periphery that is in principle limitless. The superfluous conceptually has no quantity in itself; the freedom and magnificence of our being increase to the degree of superfluity that associates us with our having, because no given structure imposes on it any kind of limiting norm, such as that which neces- sity as such indicates.
This accentuation of the personality is actualized, however, directly by means of an impersonal feature. Everything that in any way 'adorns' the person is ordered in a scale according to how closely bound it is to the physical per- sonality. For primitive peoples the absolutely joined adornment is typically the tattoo. The opposite extreme is metal and stone jewelry, which is absolutely not individualistic and can be worn by anyone. Between these two, stands cloth- ing--though not so un-interchangeable and personal as the tattoo, but also not so un-individual and detachable as jewelry. However, it is precisely in its impersonality that its elegance lies. This enduringly self-contained, thoroughly un-individually demonstrative, solid unmodifiability of stone and metal now
11 This clauses makes sense only remembering, as mentioned, that in German, Schmuck is used for both 'adornment' and 'jewelry'--ed.
? 334 chapter five
? nevertheless being forced to serve the personality--is precisely what gives jew- elry its most subtle appeal. The authentically elegant eludes the amplification of the peculiarly individual; it always sets a sphere of a more general, more stylized, as it were, abstract nature around the person--which obviously does not prevent the refinements with which this generality of the personality is combined. That new clothes function especially elegantly lies in the fact that they are still 'stiffer,' i. e. , do not yet accommodate all the modifications of the individual body as unconditionally as clothes worn a longer time, which are already stretched and squeezed from the special movements of the wearer and thereby betray that person's special style more completely. This 'newness,' this unmodifiability by individuality is to the greatest degree characteristic of metal jewelry: it is forever new; it stands coolly untouchable beyond the singularity and beyond the destiny of its wearer, which cannot in any way be said of clothing. A long-worn piece of clothing is closely bound up with the body; it has an intimacy that clashes altogether with the essence of elegance. This is because elegance is something for 'others'; it is a social concept that draws its value receiving general recognition.
If adornment then is supposed to augment the individual by way of some- thing supra-individual, which seeks to reach all and is received and esteemed by all, then it must, beyond its mere material effect, have style. Style is forever a universal that brings the contents of personal life and creativity into a form shared with many and made accessible to many. In the actual artwork its style interests us all that much less, the greater that personal uniqueness and subjec- tive life are expressed in it; since it thereby appeals to the personal aspect also of the observer, the latter is alone in the world, so to speak, with the artwork. In contrast, for all that we call arts and crafts, which on account of their usefulness appeal to a wide range of people, we require a more general, more typical creation; in them is supposed to be expressed not only a soul presented in its uniqueness but a widespread, historical or social sensitivity and attitude that makes its subsumption into the life systems of a great many individuals possible. It is the greatest of errors to think that adornment has to be an indi- vidual work of art because it is supposed to always adorn an individual. Quite the contrary: because it is supposed to serve the individual, it need not itself be of individual essence, just as little as the furniture on which we sit or the eating utensil with which we fiddle need be individual works of art. Rather, all that occupies the wider sphere of life around the person--in contrast to the work of art which is not incorporated in a different life at all but is a self- sufficient world--must envelop the individual as in ever widening, concentric spheres, leading to or going out from the person. This dissolution of focus on individuality, this generalizing beyond being unique that now, however, car- ries what is individual as a basis or as a radiating circle or takes it up as in a wide-flowing stream--this is the essence of stylization; out of the instinct for it, adornment has been formed continually into a relatively rigid genre.
Beyond the formal stylizing of adornment is the material means of its social purpose, that glitter of jewelry by which its wearer appears as the center point of a radiating circle in which everyone nearby, every beholding
the secret and the secret society 335
? eye, is included. While the ray of the gemstone seems to radiate out to the other, as the beam of the view that directs the eye towards it, it carries the social significance of adornment--the being-for-the-other that returns to it as an expansion of the subject's sphere of significance. The radii of this circle mark on the one hand the distance that adornment generates between people: I have something that you do not; on the other hand, however, they allow the other not only to participate, but they shine precisely for the other, they exist overall only for the sake of the other. Through its material, jewelry is a distancing and an indulgence in one act. For that reason it is thus especially serviceable to vanity, which needs others in order to be able to disdain them. Herein lies the deep difference between vanity and arrogant pride: the latter, whose self-consciousness actually only rests in itself, tends to spurn 'adornment' in every sense. Entering here with the same tendency is the significance of the 'right' material. The appeal of the 'genuine,' in every respect, consists in its being more than its immediate appearance, which it shares with the forgery. So it is not, like the latter, something in isolation, but it has roots in a ground beyond its mere appearance, while the imitation is only that which one sees in it momentarily. Thus the 'genuine' person is the person on whom one can depend, even when out of one's sight. This more-than-appearance for jewelry is its value; because this is something not to be seen in it, which, in contrast to the skillful forgery, is added to its appearance. For this reason, then, this value always being realizable, is acknowledged by all, possesses a relative timelessness--jewelry is placed in a supra-situational, supra-personal context of value. Artificial jewelry, dignified hardware,12 is what it accomplishes for the wearer momentarily; genuine jewelry is about enduring value; it is rooted in the appraisals of the whole circle of society and branches out in it. 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.