No More Learning

The lack of objectivity that so often hinders unity in the action of the collective is not always the result of a mere lack of know how, but often also of the very far-reaching sociological fact that the factions that split the group in some important area carry this division even into decisions that would not be a factional matter at all according to objectively tangible criteria. The formal reality of the division competes with objective insight as basis for decision. Among the daily and countless examples of this is a particularly consequential type, which the splitting of a group into centralist and particularistic tendencies brings with it. For there are, perhaps, few issues for which an importance would not be gained for those tendencies, quite beyond their inherent meaning and the objec- tive basis of reacting to them. In certain controversies about poverty, perhaps, this appears all the more blatantly as partisan politics should be removed from this area because of its social-ethical character. At the beginning of the new German Empire, however, it was dealt with as a matter of whether a highest authority for poverty should settle only inter-territorial disputes or also the cases inside each of the individual states--the objective usefulness of one or the other regulation did not come into the discussion so much as rather stating the stand of the parties on particularism or unity. And objective usefulness did not even remain the decisive factor, as a 'yes' or 'no'; the party acted on its conviction in principle wholly apart from any objective justification. But the party must still consider how this 'for' or 'against' relates to the growth of its power in the immediate situation, how this or that will affect a personality important in the party, etc. The latter, by which every inner linkage between the stand of the party and its actual activity is preserved, is, as it were, an irrelevance of the second order; it still
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rises in this way to one of the third order: the form of the party often generally makes the decision result no more out of a practical motive than out of an irrelevant motive, but in a question that does not affect the party problem as such the decision is 'yes' only because the oppo- nent decided for 'no,' and vice-versa. The line that divides the parties over a vital issue is drawn through all other issues possible, from the most general to the most specific in character, and indeed only because one may no longer be pulling in the same direction as the opponent on the main issue at all, and the bare fact that the opponent decided for one side of any one divide was already enough for oneself to seize upon the opposite side. Thus the Social Democrats in Germany voted against pro-labor rules simply because they were favored by the other party or by the government. Partisan polarization becomes, as it were, an a priori of praxis of that kind that every problem surfacing at all immediately divides into 'for' or 'against' along the existing party lines so that the divide, once it has taken place, grows into a formal necessity of remaining divided. I will mention only two examples for the different kinds. As the matter of spontaneous generation emerged in nineteenth century France, the Conservatives were passionately interested in its refutation and the Liberals for its affirmation. Similarly the different directions of literature correspond to the issue of popular aesthetic education in different places, among other things. And even if some remote relationship of the individual decision to the whole world view of a party were to be found, the level of the passion and intransigence for each individual would be given only because the other party simply represents the other position; and if a coincidence had committed the one party to a degree for the opposite position, the other one would have taken the corresponding reverse one, even if it were actually unsympathetic toward it. And now the other kind: As the German Liberal Party split into two groups in the Reichstag on May 6, 1893, because of the military bill, the state parliamentary factions remained together until July. In the October state parliamentary elections, the same people who had worked together up to then suddenly acted as opponents. In the newly opened parliament a difference of opinion was maintained by no side in any question to be determined by the parliament; but the separation nevertheless continued to be maintained. The pointlessness of such factional forms is especially manifest, but also especially often, when the contrasts within a small group appear due to circles based on personal interests and are then replicated in the largest group's issues over which admittedly the same people decide,
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but would make decisions from completely different points of view. In German agricultural districts, it was thus frequently observed that the farmers and the workers voted in parliamentary elections differently than the large landholder only because the latter is opposed to their preferences in local communal issues.
In addition to all that, what sets parties sharply against each other comes in and takes effect everywhere that a larger mass of people-- which is precisely not seized by a momentary impulse--must resort to the rules. For inevitably factions will be formed in it whose power is not overcome by objective facts and is revealed at least in delaying tactics and annoyances, exaggerations and obfuscations. This power of the party as a pure form that appears in a continuous progression through the most heterogeneous areas of interest is one of the greatest obstacles to unity, indeed to realizing the actions of a group action at all. The transfer to special apparatus of group issues that are too prominent should remedy the disruption and obstruction. While these issues are constructed from the outset from the point of view of an objectively defined purpose, this is immediately further removed psychologically from the other interests and opinions of people. These groups as such simply exists only ad hoc, and it frees in the consciousness of the indi- vidual the hoc; the objective very sharply from all matters, from what is irrelevant, makes it more difficult for the amalgamations, either deliber- ate or nai? ve, to come with objectively irrelevant provisions. The activity of the apparatus thereby becomes much more unified, vigorous, and purposeful; the group achieves self-preservation to the extent that the waste of energy ceases, that lies in those intermixtures and the mutual paralysis of energies following from them and that is unavoidable in the immediate undifferentiated management of group issues throughout the group. Obviously this advantage is not without a downside. Admit- tedly, it is likely that officials, acting so to speak not on their own but on the basis of the idea of the group, will act out of duty, but also that they will act only out of duty. With the same objectivity that controls their undertaking and decisions, they will also limit the amount of their expenditure of energy and their subjective personhood, as they must not allow these to influence their actions in official matters nor use their reserve of energy more widely since it is objectively standardized. And the more thoughtful aspects of the personality also become more valuable; the warm-heartedness, the unconditional devotedness, and the gener- osity in not distinguishing between one's own interests and those of strangers will be turned off by the objectification of the apparatus. As
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objectivity is everywhere the correlate of the division of labor, so what is praised as the objectivity of the official as such is simply the result of the differentiation with which officialdom grew up around objectively specialized purposive view points freed from the amalgamation, and therefore the divisions, of collective life.
3. If these advantages that are produced by the construction of an apparatus for the action of the total group for its own self-preservation, the, as it were, tempo and rhythm of the group-sustaining processes, they are thus extended further onto their qualitative features. Now here at first that psychological pattern is decisive, which has already become so often important for us: The collective action of the crowd will always stand, in an intellectual sense, at a relatively low level; for the point on which a great number of individuals unites must lie very close to the level of the one that stands lowest among them; and, moreover, since every high standing one can climb downward but not every low standing one can climb up, the latter and not the former determines the point at which both can meet: what is common to all can only be the possession of the one that possesses the least. This rule, which is of the highest importance for all collective behavior--from a street mob to scholarly associations--of course possesses no mechanically uniform validity. The level of the persons of high standing is not simply a more of the same qualities of which the low standing one has less, so that under all circumstances the former would possess what the latter possesses, but the latter does not possess what the former possesses. Rather, the superior person is distinguished in kind so much from the subordinate one in some respects that the former cannot at all negotiate on this point, either in reality or understanding: If the valet does not under- stand the hero, so also the hero does not understand the valet. Only the metaphorical spatial expression of high and low standing permits a belief in a purely quantitative difference, so that the higher person would need only to subtract the surplus in order to be on a par with the lower person. Also at the same time with the existence of so general a difference, which cannot pass into a unity through the suppression and paralysis of a quantitative majority, no really collective action can occur. It is possible here to go through something of that externally with another, but that happens only with energies or portions of the personality that are not those of the real personality. If a majority should actually act in unison, it will only happen along those lines that makes a descent from a higher level to a lower level possible. Thus it is already to err on the side of optimism for one to describe such a social level
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as the 'average'; the character of a group action must gravitate toward not the average and not toward the midpoint between the highest and lowest elements, but toward the lowest. This is an experience affirmed at all times--from Solon on, who said of the Athenians, individually each one would be a sly fox but in the Pnyx41 they are a herd of sheep, to Frederick the Great, who declared his generals to be the most rea- sonable of people if he spoke with each of them alone, but were sheep heads when gathered into a council of war; then Schiller summarized this in the epigram: passably clever and intelligent people in corpore42 turn into one fool. That is not only the result of that fatal leveling downward to what the cooperation of a crowd causes. There is also the fact that the leadership will shut off the most spirited, radical, most vocal members in an assembled crowed, but not the most intellectually important, who often lack passionate subjectivity and the suggestive power to make them go along. "Now because the intelligent withdraw and are silent," says Dio Chrysostom43 to the Alexandrians, "the eternal strife, the unbridled talk, and suspicions arise among you. " Where it is a matter of excitement and expression of emotions, this norm does not apply since a certain collective nervousness is produced in a crowd that is gathered together--a being swept away with emotion, a reciprocally produced stimulation--so that a temporary elevation of individuals over the average intensity of their feelings may occur. Thus when Karl Maria von Weber44 said of the general public, "The individual is a donkey and the whole is still the voice of God"--so is this the experience of a musician who appeals to the sentiment of the crowd, not to its intel- lectuality. Rather it remains set at that below average level at which the highest and lowest can meet and which is empirically open to a considerable elevation probably in the area of emotion and impulses of desire, but not at that of the intellect. Now while the preservation of the group on the one hand rests on the immediate relationships of one individual to another and in these every person rests on the col- lectivity, everyone overall develops one's own intellect, this is absolutely not the case in those matters, on the other hand, where the group has
41 Meeting place of the Athenian assembly--ed.
42 Latin: as a body--ed.
43 Greek philosopher, circa 40 to circa 120 C. E. , known to have dressed in rags and
performed manual labor, and as one who spoke truth to power.
44 Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826), German composer, pianist, and conduc-
tor--ed.
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to act with unity. One can call the former the molecular movements of the group, the latter the molar; in the former a substitution of the individual in principle is neither possible nor necessary; in the latter both are the case. The experience of the large English labor unions--to take one example from countless ones--has shown that mass gatherings often embraced the most foolish and pernicious decisions (hence the 'aggregate meetings' were called the 'aggravated meetings'), and most of them were undone at the pleasure of the assemblies of delegates. Where a larger group itself conducts its affairs directly, necessity requires that everyone to some degree embrace and approve the measure, and embrace and approve the norm of trivial matters firmly; only if it is turned over to an organization consisting of relatively few people can the special talent for its business be of advantage. Talent and know how, as they are always characteristic of a few among the many, must in the best of cases struggle every time for influence within the group gathered to make decisions, while the few indisputably possess it at least in principle in the specialized apparatus. 45
45 Undoubtedly contradictory phenomena also appear: inside the civil service petty jealousy often maintains more influence than the talent that deserves it, while on the other hand the large crowd may follow a gifted individual readily and without regard to their own judgment. For an abstracting science such as sociology, it is unavoidable that the typical individual associations that it depicts cannot exhaust the fullness and complexity of historical reality. Then the association that it asserts would still be valid and effective thusly: The concrete happening will still always include a series of other forces outside it that can hide their effect in the ultimately visible effect of the whole. Certain law-like relationships of movements that are never represented in the empirically given world with pure consistency also form in part the substance of physics, which in the empirically given world never represent themselves in their pure consequence, in which mathematical calculation or the experiment in the laboratory reveals them. Thus the established relationships of forces are no less real and effective in all the cases in which the scientifically established conditions respectively find for themselves their original components; but their course does not show the purity of the scientific schemas because in addition to them a series of other forces and conditions is always still having an effect on the same substance; the portion of it may be hidden from immediate observation in the results of this or that which actually comprise the actual events, only an imperceptible and inextricable part may contribute to the total effect. This shortcoming, which every typically law-like knowledge of a relationship in reality manifests, obviously reaches a climax in the cultural sciences, since in their realms not only are the factors of individual events interwoven into a complexity that hardly lends itself to being untangled, but also the fate of the individual which might be analyzed escapes being ascertained through mathematics or experimentation. Every connection between cause and effect that one may look at as normal in historical occurrences or psychological likelihood will, in many cases in which its conditions obtain, still not appear to take place. This need not make the correctness of its certainty erroneous, but only proves that still other forces beside that one, perhaps set in the opposite
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Therein resides the superiority of parliamentarianism over the plebi- scite. It has been noted that direct referenda seldom show a majority for original and bold measures, that rather the majority is usually on the side of timidity, convenience, and triviality. The individual repre- sentative whom the mass elects still possesses personal qualities other than those that are in the mind of the voting mass, especially in the era of purely party elections. Representatives add something that exists beyond what really got them elected. One of the best experts on the English Parliament says of it: It is held as a matter of honor for Mem- bers of Parliament not to express the wishes of their constituency if they cannot reconcile them with their own convictions. Thus personal talents and intellectual nuance, as are found only in individual subjects, can gain considerable influence in Parliament and even serve its being preserved from the division into parties that endanger the unity of the group so often. Admittedly the effectiveness of personal principles in Parliament suffers from a new leveling: first because the Parliament, to which the individual speaks, is itself a relatively large body that includes extremely different parties and individuals so that the points of common and mutual understandings can only reside rather low on the intellectual scale. (For example the Parliamentary minutes report mentally trifling jokes: Merry-making! ) Secondly, since the individuals belong to a party that as such remains not on an individual but on a social level and level their parliamentary activity at its source; there- fore, all parliamentary and parliament-like delegations are reduced in value as soon as they have imperative mandates and are mere means of delivery for mechanically collecting the 'voices' of the 'mass' into one place. Thirdly, because a Member of Parliament speaks indirectly, though intentionally directed to the whole country. How much this exactly determines the inner character of the statements is seen from the fact that the speeches in Parliament in seventeenth century England were already somewhat rather clearly and consciously directed to the nation as a whole--although no publication of the debates was think- able at the time. But the necessity of directing it to a mass not only spoils the 'character,' as Bismarck has said about politics and how it reveals the moral instability of actors in a theater despite all the skillful
direction, were at work on the individuals in question, which had preponderance in the total visible effect.
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corrections, but it also ties down endlessly the often unbounded finesse and particularity of intellectual discourse. The representatives of the mass as such seem to have something of the mental instability of the crowd itself--wherein a certain desire for power, irresponsibility, imbalance between the importance of the person and that of the ideas and interests that one represents, and finally something of the very illogical but psychologically still understandable cooperation: namely, precisely the consciousness of standing in the center of public atten- tion. Without evading motives of this kind, one could not comprehend the street-kid-like scenes that are rather common in many parliaments and rather uncommon in very few. Cardinal Retz already notes in his memoirs, where he describes the Parisian Parliament at the time of the Fronde,46 that such bodies, though they very often include persons of high standing and education, behave like the rabble in their discus- sions in assembly.
Since these departures from the intellectual advantage of the forma- tion of the apparatus are only associated with parliamentarianism, they are not encountered in other kinds of that formation. Indeed, as the development of parliamentarianism shows, even these disadvantages form at higher levels precisely a proof for the necessity of construct- ing the apparatus. In England the impossibility of governing with so numerous, heterogeneous, unstable, and yet at the same time barely movable a body as the House of Commons was, led to the formation of ministries at the end of the seventeenth century. The English ministry is actually an organ of the Parliament that behaves in relationship to it somewhat as the Parliament itself behaves in relationship to the whole country. While it is formed by the leading members of the Parliament and represents the current majority in it, it unites the collective stances of the largest group--which it, as it were, represents in a sublimated form--with the advantages of individual talents, as they can take effect only through leadership on the part of individual personages within a committee of so few, as is the case in a ministry. The English ministry is an ingenious means to compensate, by means of a further concentration
46 The Fronde was a rebellion, 1648-1653, during the minority of King Louis XIV, by French nobles against the centralization of government power in the hands of the crown, a policy begun by King Louis XIII and his minister Cardinal Richelieu and continued by the regent Anne of Austria and her minister Cardinal Mazarin (Mazarini). Cardinal Retz was the 17th century archbishop of Paris--ed.
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of the differentiated apparatus, for those deficiencies with which the lat- ter duplicates the inadequacy of the action of the whole group, for the avoidance of which it was created. The English labor unions preserved the advantages of the parliamentary form in another way through its disadvantages. They could not properly manage themselves just with their assembly of delegates, their 'Parliament,' but with salaried officials they believed to have brought under their jurisdiction a bureaucracy that was difficult to control. The large labor unions helped themselves by employing such officials for the districts in addition to the officials of the whole union, and sent them to the parliament that had control over the latter. Through their close connection with their respective constituencies, the district officials had different interests and duties quite different from those of the officials of the federation, which kept them from forming a unified bureaucracy together with these officials. The two positions, as representative of a district and as the employed official of the latter, form mutual counterbalances, and the function that the ministry exercises in the regional parliaments is shared by virtue of this provision by the parliament itself--a sociological formation that was anticipated in the primitive kind of 'Council' of the German cities as it originated everywhere in the twelfth century. Thus its nature signi- fies that it presents an advance from an either purely representing or purely governing officialdom to one that represents and governs at one and the same time. While the council governed, it nevertheless did so as an apparatus, not as master--which was symbolized by it swearing allegiance to the city. And here an attempt appears with a technique completely different from that which determines the relationship of the English ministry to the Parliament, and yet with a teleology, similar in form, of uniting the advantages of a smaller group with those of a larger one with regard to practical governance. Around the year 1400, the Frankfurt council consisted of 63 members for a time, of whom however actually only a third always conducted business, in fact in regular one-year rotation; but in important cases the portion that held office was authorized to consult one or both of the other thirds. Thereby such advantages as the following were gained, which were tied to a having a large number of council members. The trust of the citizenry, the representation of varied interests, and the mutual control that works against economic cliques and at the same time those that are wedded precisely to a numerical reduction of the apparatus, a tighter centralization, an ease of communication, and a less expen- sive administration. The proof for the formation of an apparatus that
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grows above and beyond the parliaments is no less to be drawn from the opposite. The immense waste of time and resources with which the state machine in North America moves itself forward, writes one of its best scholars, is due to the fact that the public opinion influences everything, but none has the kind of leading power against it, as are the ministries in Europe. Neither in congress nor in the legislature of each state do government officials sit with ministerial authority, whose particular duty and task in life would be to take the initiative for fields yet to be taken up, to coordinate the conduct of business through lead- ing ideas, to take responsibility for the maintenance and progress of the whole--in short, accomplishing what only individuals as such could accomplish and what, as this example shows, can hardly be replaced with the collective action of the members of the principal group--here under the form of 'public opinion. '
Excursus on Social Psychology
This consideration of the results that derive from the alliance of particular group members with the leading apparatuses is so essentially of a psychological kind that to a considerable extent sociology seems to become another name for social psychology. Since I sought to establish the epistemological difference between sociology and psychology in Chapter 1,47 beyond this boundary setting, a closer positive determination of the particular psychology that is termed 'social' is now necessary. For if one does not really want to assign individual psychol- ogy to the place of sociology, social psychology is still termed a problem area independent of sociology and therefore it being confused with sociology could become a danger for the latter. So that the methodical separation of sociology from psychology generally accomplished above--despite all the dependence of sociology on psychology--would be valid also with regard to social psychology, proof is needed to show that the latter possesses no fundamental uniqueness concerning what is individual. I am building this proof here from the basis emphasized above, even though it would have its place anywhere else in this book. Admittedly the fact that mental processes occur only in individuals and nowhere else does not yet sufficiently negate the theory according to which the psychology of 'society' (of crowds, groups, nationalities, times) along with the psychology of individuals has as an equally valid structure, but one that is heterogeneous in nature and bearing. Rather, from the particular structure of the phenomena, to which this opinion refers, it must be made comprehensible how the notion of social psychology could result, despite the evident limitation of mental life to the individual bearer.
47 Pp. 21ff. (in the German text--ed).
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The development of language as well as of the state, of law as well as of religion, custom as well as general forms of culture generally point far beyond every individual mind; individuals can indeed share in such mental contents, without however the changing quantity of these participants alter- ing the meaning or necessity of those structures. But because they in their collectivity must still have a producer and bearer, which no individual can be, it appears that the only subject that remains is the society, the unity out of, and above, the individuals. Here social psychology could think it would find its special area of interest: products of an undisputedly mental nature, exist- ing in society and yet not dependent on individuals as such; so that if they are not fallen from heaven, only the society, the mental subject beyond the individual, is to be seen as its creator and bearer. This is the point of view from which one has spoken of a mind of the people, a consciousness of the society, a spirit of the times, and productive forces. We raise this mysticism, which places the mental processes outside the mind, which are always indi- vidual, while we distinguish the concrete mental processes in which law and custom, speech and culture, religion and life forms exist and are real, from the ideal contents of the same that are imagined for them. It can be said of the vocabulary and the connecting forms of language, as they can be found in dictionaries and grammar books, the legal norms set down in law codes, and the dogmatic content of religion, that they are valid--though not in the supra-historical sense, in which the natural law and the norms of logic are 'valid'--that they possess an inner dignity that is independent of the individual cases of their application by individuals. But this validity of their content is no mental existence that would need an empirical vehicle, even reserving the just mentioned distinction, as little as the Pythagorean theory needs anything similar. This intellectual nature is also certain and does not lie in the physi- cally existing triangle because it expresses a relationship of its sides that we find to none of the same in their existence for themselves. On the other hand this incorporeality of the Pythagorean theorem ist also not the same, however, as its coming into thinking through an individual mind; for it remains valid, completely independently of whether or not it is imagined by one at all, just as language, legal norms, the moral imperatives, and the cultural forms that exist according to their content and meaning, independently of their fulfillment or non-fulfillment, frequency or rarity, with which they appear in the empirical consciousness. Here there is a special category that is admittedly only realized historically, but in the totality and unity of its content in which it appears to require a supra-individual creator and protector, not historically, but only existing ideally--while the psychological reality only creates fragments of it and carries it further or imagines that content as pure concepts. The empirical origin of the individual parts and forms of speech, as well as their practical application in each individual case, the effectiveness of law as a psychological factor in the merchant, in the criminal, or in the judge; how much and what kind of cultural content is passed on by one individual to another and is further developed in each--these are thoroughly problems for the individual psychology, which is admittedly only very incompletely developed for them. But in their disconnection from the process of the individual realization, speech,
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law, general cultural structures, etc. are not perhaps products of the subject, a social soul, since the alternative is faulty: i. e. , if the spiritual does not dwell in individual spirits, it must certainly dwell in a social spirit. Rather there is a third: the objective spiritual content, which is nothing more of a psychological content than is the logical meaning of a judgment something psychological, although it can achieve a conscious reality only within and by virtue of the mental dynamic.
But now the lack of an insight into every mental production and reproduc- tion, which foreseeably cannot be removed, allows these individual psychologi- cal actions to flow together into an undifferentiated mass, into the unity of a mental subject that offers itself seductively close to its bearer, a structure so obscure in its origin. In reality, its origin is individual-psychological, but not more unified, but needs a majority of mental unities that act on one another; conversely, insofar as they are considered a unity, they have no origin at all but are an ideal content, in the same way that the Pythagorean theory has no origin in terms of its content. Thus in contrast to them as unities, in abstraction from their accidental and partial reality in the individual mind, the question about a psychic bearer is posed altogether incorrectly and applies again only when they subsequently become concepts in individual minds, as when we speak of them now.
Now the motive that seems to force a special social psychic reality beyond the individual ones not only affects where objective spiritual structures pres- ent themselves as an ideal common possession but also where an immediate, sensual action of a crowd draws in the behavior patterns of individuals and molds them into a specific phenomenon not analyzable into these individual acts. This motive is the result of behavior--though not the behavior itself-- appearing as something uniform. If a crowd destroys a house, pronounces a judgment, or breaks out into shouting, the actions of the individual subjects are summarized into an event that we describe as one, as the realization of an idea. And this is where the great confusion enters in: The unitary external result of many subjective mental processes is interpreted as the result of a unitary mental process--i. e. of a process in the collective mind. The unifor- mity of the resultant phenomenon is mirrored in the presupposed unity of its psychological result! The deception in this conclusion, however, on which the whole of collective psychology rests in its general distinction from individual psychology, is obvious: the unity of the collective behavior, which relies only on the side of the visible results, will worm its way into the side of the inner cause, the subjective bearer.
But a final motive that shows itself for many of the connections examined here as an indispensable part still appears of course to make a social psychol- ogy indispensable as a counterpart of individual psychology: the qualitative differentiation in feelings, actions, and ideas of the individuals situated in a crowd from the mental processes, which are not enacted within a crowd but in individual beings that are beings for themselves. Many times a commis- sion comes to different conclusions than those the individual members would have reached on their own; individuals, surrounded by a crowd, are drawn into activities that would otherwise have remained quite strange to them; a
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crowd lets itself offer activities and expectations that individuals would not permit to emanate from themselves if it were up to them alone; should the above-mentioned collective stupidity result from such crowds, they are what 'seem to the individual fairly clever and intelligent. ' Here a new unity of their own thus seems to arise among the individuals that acts and reacts in a manner that is qualitatively different from them. When looked at closely, it is a matter in such cases of the conduct of individuals who are influenced by others who surround them; thereby nervous, intellectual, suggestive, and moral transformations of their mental constitution take place in contrast to other situations in which such influences do not exist. Now if these influences that are mutually encroaching internally modify all members of the group in the same way, their collective action will nevertheless look different from the action of each individual, if the latter were in another, isolated situation. Thus, what is psychological in action nevertheless remains no less individually psychologi- cal; the collective action consists no less of purely individual contributions. If one wants to find a qualitative difference here that would actually go beyond the individual, one would compare two things standing under wholly different conditions: the behavior of the individual not influenced by others with that influenced by others--two things whose difference located totally in the indi- vidual soul, along with every other difference of mood and mode of conduct; this difference in no way forces one side of the comparison to localize in a new supra-individual psychological entity. Thus this legitimately remains as a social psychological problem: which modification does the mental process of an individual undergo if the individual goes through the social environment under certain influences? However, this is a part of the general psychological task that is a matter of an individual psychological one--which is to say the same thing. Social psychology as a subdivision of it is somewhat coordinated with physiological psychology, which investigates the determination of mental processes through their connection with the body, just as it investigates their determination through their connection with other souls.
This fact of the mental influence through what is socially constituted--which is the singular object of social psychology, but admittedly one of immeasurably broad expanse--lends a certain claim to this idea of a type of question to which it has no right in and for itself; I call it, in terms of the most important facts, the statistical on the one hand and the ethnological on the other. Where within a group a psychological phenomenon is regularly repeated in a fraction of the whole, or something else, such as a specific characteristic, is found in the whole group or at least in its majority or on the average, one tends to speak of social psychological or even sociological phenomena. This is not without further justification, however. If in a certain era N suicides are found among M fatalities every year, this statement, as true as it may be, is still only pos- sible by means of an overview by the observer. Admittedly social conditions can determine or co-determine the causality of individual deeds, but they do not have to; it can rather be a purely personal, inner deed. Moreover, the on-going spiritual characteristics of a group--be it national, related to status, or some other kind--can be purely parallel phenomena that perhaps go back to the commonality of descent, but are not worked out through the social life
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as such. These cited descriptions of such phenomena are based on confusing being next to each other with being together. They would only be sociologi- cal when they could be viewed as a mutual relationship of subjects--which naturally does not involve morphologically similar contents on both sides--and they would only be social psychological to the extent that their occurrence in one individual would be caused by other individuals. But this need not be obvious at first; if the phenomenon in question were only found in a single individual, one would call it neither sociological nor social psychological, though it would have exactly the same cause in this case, as in the other one, where besides that in the same group hundreds and thousands appear in the same form and efficacy. The mere multiplication of one phenomenon that can be established only in individuals does not yet make them sociological or social psychological! --although this confusion of a high numerical equivalence with a dynamic-functional involvement is a constantly influential way of thinking.
One can name ethnological phenomena an analogous type: when the inability to recognize the series of individual events in their detail or the lack of interest in this detail allows copying only an average, copying a quite general determination of the psychic states or processes in a group. This is also the case, for example, if one wants to know how 'the Greeks' behaved in the battle of Marathon. Admittedly it is not intended here--even if it would be possible--to explain the mental process in each individual Greek fighter psychologically. But a quite special conceptual structure is created: the average Greek, the Greek type, the quintessential 'Greek'--obviously an ideal construc- tion arises from what is required for knowing and without a claim of finding an exact counterpart in any one of the actual Greek individuals. Nevertheless the actual meaning of this conceptual category is not social because its point lies in no interaction, no practical involvement and functional unity of many persons; but actually 'the Greek,' even if unable to be named more uniquely, should be described by the mood and the manner of behavior of the mere sum of the warriors and projects an ideal average phenomenon that is as much an individual as the general concept of the Greeks existing in speech is simply one alone whose embodiment is this typical 'Greek. '
What becomes important in all these cases where it is a matter of a sum of individuals as such, where the social facts become important only as moments in the determination of the individual, not different from physiological or religious facts--what must nevertheless be valid in these as social psychological rests on the conclusion that the similarity of many individuals by which they permit an attaining of a type, an average, a picture uniform in some way, cannot come about without their influencing one another. The object of the research always remains the psychological individual; the group as a whole cannot also have a 'soul' for these research categories. But the homogeneity of many individuals, as these categories presuppose it, normally originates from the individuals' interactions; with its results of assimilation, of identical influence, and of setting uniform purposes, it also belongs to social psychol- ogy--which is revealed here also not as a counterpart adjoining individual psychology, but as a part of it.
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The aforementioned factors combine to expose a society lacking the formation of an apparatus to the loosening and destructive powers that every social structure produces within itself. It is crucial, among other things, that the personalities that work in an antisocial and destructive way, especially against a certain existing social form, to be normally dedicated completely to this struggle, even if it is an indirect one. Equally whole personalities must oppose their whole personality that they put into play for the defense of the existing order. The col- lectivity of human beings actually develops specific powers that cannot be made up for by the summation of the partial strengths of many individuals. Thus the social self-preservation now above all also needs the formation of the apparatus against strong individual powers that do not actually work destructively and as a socially negative force, but strive to subjugate the group. The fact that the Evangelical Church did not resist the princes and was infinitely much less able than the Catholic Church to maintain its supremacy as a sociological struc- ture seems to me to reside for the most part in the fact that it could not cultivate the supra-individual objective spirit consistently with its wholly individualistic principle constructed on the personal faith of the individual, a spirit that the Catholic Church allowed to become clear and effective in its organs: not only in the tightly structured hierarchy, whose personal head was able to face the principality with a formally equal defiance, but in monasticism, which bound the strictness of its ecclesiastical cohesion and teleology in a remarkably clever way with the great variety of its relationships with the lay world: as an example of sacred-ideal, as preacher, as confessor, as beggar. A band of mendi- cants was an organ of the Church that a prince could ill combat and to which the Evangelical Church for its part established nothing nearly as effective. Such failure to develop an apparatus turned into an undoing of the whole old-German cooperative constitution in this case, where I began this whole discussion. Thus it was no match to those strong rulers as they emerged during and after the Middle Ages in the local and central principalities. It perished because it lacked what only an organ of a society carried by individual powers could secure: swiftness of decision, unconditional summoning of all powers, and the highest intellectuality that is always developed only by individuals, whether their motive is the will to power or a feeling of responsibility. It would have required an 'official' (in the widest sense) whose sociological nature it is to represent the 'social level' in the form of individual intellectuality and activity, or to shape up to it.
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This purposive remoteness of the apparatus of the group from its immediate action goes so far that among officials whose functions bear the character of immediate responsibility, flexibility, and summary deci- sion, an election by the community is not even announced, but only the appointment by the government. The particular objectivity needed here is lacking in the immediate collectivity; it is always the party, and thus the sum of subjective convictions, that also decides about the method according to which they elect. As in fourteenth century England the judicial proceedings conducted before and through the community were always presented as inappropriate for carrying out the expanded range of police responsibilities, and the necessity of individual officers became unmistakable, who were then gradually formed into 'justices of the peace'--until the estates wanted to claim the selection of them entirely for themselves. They were always rejected, however, and rightly so as the result demonstrated. Exactly since the beginning of the parliamentary government it was inviolably held that all the judiciary should emerge from nomination alone, never from election; thus was the English crown already also paying the highest judges itself, and once when Parliament for its part offered to pay the salaries, the crown had rejected the proposal. By the government naming the official, its organizational character is raised, as it were, to the second power--cor- responding to the general cultural development where people's goals are reached through an ever more elaborate structure of means, through which ever more frequent addition of means to means is achieved, but despite this apparent detour still more surely and in a wider range than through the immediacy of the primitive procedure. 48
On the other hand the self-preservation of the group is dependent now on the apparatus being so differentiated out that it retains no absolute independence. Rather the idea must always remain (albeit in no way always consciously) that here it is still only a matter of the interactions in the group itself, that these remain in the end the basis whose latent energies, developments, and goals contain only a different practical form in that apparatus, a growth and enrichment through the specific accomplishments of individuality. The apparatus should not forget that its independence should only serve its dependence, that its character as an end in itself is only a means.
Thus it can even happen that the organizational function is fully practiced in many respects when
48 Addition of means to means: literally insertion of means for means--ed.
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it does not fill up the entire existence of the functionary but holds good as a kind of a secondary office. The earliest bishops were laymen who occupied their position in the community as an honorary office. For precisely that reason they were able to live their lives in office in a purer and unworldly manner than later when it became a more dif- ferentiated independent calling. Then because it became inevitable that the forms of vocational officialdom that worldliness had cultivated now also found application to the spiritual; economic interests, hierarchical structures, thirst for power, and relationships to external powers had to build on to the purely religious function. To the extent that the function confers on the secondary office a clear objectivity of function, precisely the form of the principal vocation can bring with it an openly objective sociological and material consequence. Thus the dilettante is often devoted to art more purely and selflessly than the professional who must also live off of it; thus the love of two lovers is often of a more purely erotic character than that of a married couple. This is of course an exceptional formation that should only lead into the argu- ment that autonomy and liberation of an organ from dependence on the whole life of the group can occasionally change its preserving effect into a destructive one. I introduce two kinds of reasons for this. First: If the apparatus attains too strong of a life of its own and its emphasis no longer resides in what it does for the group but on what it is for itself, its own self-preservation can come into conflict with that of the group itself. A mostly harmless but thus precisely very clear represen- tative case of this kind is bureaucracy. The nature of the bureau, a formal organization for executing a more extensive administration, forms a pattern in itself that very often collides with the variable needs of practical social life, and indeed, on the one hand, because the spe- cialized work of the bureau is not equipped for very individual and complicated cases that nevertheless must be dealt with within it, and on the other hand, because the only speed at which the bureaucratic machinery can work often stands in screaming contradiction with the urgency of the individual case. Now if a structure only functioning with such unbeneficial consequences forgets its role as a mere auxiliary organ and makes itself the goal of its existence, so must the difference between its life form and that of the whole group sharpen to directly harm the former. The self-preservations of both are no longer compatible with one another. From this perspective one could compare the bureaucratic pattern with the logical one that relates to the recognition of the real-
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ity on the whole as the former does to public administration: a form and an instrument indispensable in the organic connection with the substance that it is called to shape, but in which its whole meaning and goal also lie. Meanwhile if logic opens up as an independent realization and presumes to construct for itself a self-contained knowledge without regard to the actual substance whose mere form it is, it constructs a world for itself that tends to stand in considerable opposition to the real world. The logical forms in their abstraction in relation to a par- ticular science are a mere organ of the complete knowledge of things; as soon as it strives for a complete self-sufficiency instead of this role and is taken as the conclusion rather than a means of knowledge, so it is for the preservation, hampering the development and the unity of the of knowledge, as it can occasionally become the bureaucratic pat- tern with regard to the totality of the group interests. Thus it is said of collegiality and the 'provincial system' that it would admittedly be less consistent, knowledgeable, and discreet than the bureaucratic depart- ment system, but milder and more thoughtful, and more inclined to allow the person of those affected to be respected and to allow for an exception to the unrelenting rule when that is called for. In these sys- tems the simply abstract state function has not yet become as objective and autocratic as in bureaucracy. Indeed even law does not always escape from this social configuration. From the outset it is nothing other than the very form of the mutual relationships of the group members that was presented as most necessary for the continuance of the group; it alone is not enough for guaranteeing this continuance or even prog- ress of society, but it is the minimum that must be protected as the basis of every group's existence. Here the formation of the apparatus is twofold: 'Law' differentiates itself out from the factually required and, most of all, actually practiced behaviors, as the abstracted form and norm of these behaviors, logically connected, and complements them so that it now stands as authoritative against the actual behavior. But this ideal apparatus, serving the self-preservation of the group, now still needs resistance from a concrete organ for its effectiveness; technical grounds cancel that original unity in which either the pater familias or the assembled group administered justice, and they require a special profession for securing the maintenance of those norms in the interac- tion of group members. Now both that abstraction from group relation- ships into a logically closed system of laws and the embodiment of their content in a judiciary is so useful and indispensable that both bring
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with them so inevitably the danger that precisely the firmness that is so necessary and the inner consistency of these formations may occa- sionally enter into opposition to the real progressive or individually complex circumstances and requirements of the group. Through the logical cohesion of its structure and the dignity of its administrative apparatus, law achieves not only an actual autonomy and, through its aim in a wide range, a necessary one, but it creates from itself--admit- tedly through a vicious circle--the right to an unconditional and unquestionable self-preservation. While the concrete situation of the group now occasionally requires other conditions for its self-preserva- tion, situations arise that are expressed by the words: fiat justitia, pereat mundus and summum jus summa injuria. 49 Admittedly one seeks to attain the flexibility and pliancy that law should have by virtue of its being a mere apparatus, through the latitude that the judge is allowed in the application and interpretation of the law. Those cases of the collision between the self-preservation of law and that of the group lie at the limits of this latitude, which should only serve here as an example of the fact that precisely the solidity and autonomy that the group must want to concede to its apparatus for its own preservation can obscure the very character of the apparatus, and of the fact that the autonomy and inflexibility of the apparatus that acts for the whole can turn into a danger to the whole group. This evolution of an organ into an auto- cratic totality through bureaucracy as well as through the formalism of the law is all the more dangerous in that it has the appearance and pretense of happening for the sake of the whole. That is a tragedy of every social development that is more advanced: the group must want for the sake of its own collectively egoistic purposes to equip the appa- ratus with the independence that often works against these purposes. Sometimes the position of the military can also bring about this socio- logical form, since, as an apparatus in the division of labor for the self-preservation of the group, it must on technical grounds be an organism itself as much as possible; the cultivating of its occupational qualities, especially its tight inner cohesion, requires a vigorous closure against the other strata--beginning with the idea of the special nobil- ity of the officer corps including the distinctiveness of its attire. As much as this independence of the military lies in a specific uniformity of life
49 Latin: "Let there be justice, the world be damned," and, "Highest law, highest injury"--ed.
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in the interests of the whole, it can nevertheless assume an absoluteness and rigidity that sets the military apart from the solidarity of the group as a state within the state and thus destroys the bond with the root from which alone its power and legitimacy can ultimately come to it. The modern citizen army seeks to confront this danger, and it represents a happy mean in the temporary duty of service of the whole people to bind the independence of the military to its organizational character.
Because for the sake of preserving the group, their organs, as inde- pendent to some degree, must confront it and must be set at a remove from the breadth of its immediate life, but this independence even for the sake of its own preservation needs very definite limits--this is obviously expressed in the problems of the term of office. 50 Even if the office is 'eternal' in principle as an expression and consequence of the eternal nature of the group with which it is bound as a vital organ, so is the independence of its real exercise still modified by how long the individual occupant administers it. The excursus on the inheritance of office shows the extreme in terms of longevity because heredity is as it were the continuation of the individual function beyond the lifespan of the individual. Admittedly at the same time an opposition emerges in the results: the inheritance of office at one time gave it its indepen- dence, with which it became like an autonomous force within the state, and at another time it allowed it to sink into insignificance and empty formality. Now the length of the personal term of office works in the very same dualism. The office of the sheriff was of great importance in the English Middle Ages; it lost that when Edward III in 1338 decreed that no sheriff should remain in office longer than one year. Conversely: the 'Sendgrafen' (legate counts) who were a very important apparatus of the central power under Charlemagne for the general control over the provinces, were normally nominated for only a year; meanwhile they
50 This relationship mentioned here and previously belongs for the most part to a future discussion of a remaining sphere of tasks: what role the purely temporary regulations play for the constituting and the life of social forms. How the change in relationships, from the most intimate to the most official, behave as a function of their duration without outside moments influencing them; how a relationship obtains a form and coloration beforehand through it being based on a limited or long dura- tion of time; how the effect of the limitation itself is modified completely according to whether the end of the relationship, of the institution, the employment etc. is set one point in time in advance or whether this is uncertain, and depends on 'notice,' on a waning of unifying impulses, or a change of external circumstances--all of which must be investigated in the individual case. There is a note about this in the chapter on space [Ch. 9--ed. ].
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lost their importance and the whole institution declined while later the nominations occurred for an indefinite term. The assumption is sug- gested that with respect to the longevity of an office the long term would then appropriately lead to its independence and thereby to a steady importance, if it includes an environment more regularly in a system- atic and continuous endeavor to filling functions and thereby requires a routine that the frequently changing incumbents cannot acquire. On the other hand where an office takes up always new and unanticipated tasks, where quick decision and agile adaptation occur in ever changing situations and demands, there a frequent, so to speak, infusion of new blood will be suitable because the new officials will always approach them with fresh interest and the danger of this becoming a routine for them will not come about. Developing a considerable independence in such offices here through frequent changes of incumbents will not cause any injury to the group as in many cases the frequent rotation of placements in very independent and irresponsive offices has served as a counterbalance and protection of the community against their selfish abuse of them. This motive in the filling of offices works in a unique way in the United States, indeed by virtue of the democratic ethos that would like to hold the leading positions as close as possible to the primary group life, the sum of individual subjects. While the offices are filled with the supporters of the particular president, in general a large number of candidates gradually come to hold offices. Secondly and more importantly, however, this prevents the formation of a closed bureaucracy that could become a mistress rather than a maidservant of the public. Long traditions of that, with their knowledge and practices, prevent anyone from being readily able to assume any position, and this is contrary not only to the democratic spirit that allows the Americans to really believe in their suitability for every function but it encour- ages what is wholly unbearable for him: that the officials would seem to be of a higher nature, that their life is lifted above the great masses through an otherwise unattainable dedication. This group believed--at least until recently--they were only able to obtain this special form if their apparatus remained permanently weak, in continual exchanges with the masses, avoiding the independence of the office as much as possible. But now it is peculiar that this socially-oriented condition has precisely an extreme egoism of the officials for a basis. The winning party shares in the offices under the slogan: "To the victor go the spoils! " It considers the office a property, a personal advantage, and it does not
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even conceal at all through the pretense of having sought it for the sake of the matter itself or of service to the society. And it is precisely that that should uphold the officers as servants of the public and prevent the formation of an autonomous bureaucracy. The service of the cause or of the enduring and objective interest of the collectivity requires a governing position above the individuals of the group because with it the apparatus outgrows the supra-personal unity of the collectivity. The principled democrat, however, does not want to be governed, even at the price of being served by that; the democrat does not acknowledge that the saying, "I am their leader, so I must serve them"--can just as well be reversed: "I want to serve them, so I must lead them. " The pure objectivity of its meaning and leadership, which causes a certain height and culmination, is hindered by that egoistic subjectivism of the attitude about the exercise of office, but it includes, however, the danger of a bureaucratic, arrogant severing of the apparatus from the immediate liveliness of the group. And depending on how threatening the danger for the structure of the group is, it will hinder or favor the expansion of the offices into the character of being its own purpose.
Second: The possibility of an antagonism between the whole and the part, the group and its apparatus, should not only hold the indepen- dence of the latter within a certain limit, but it is also useful so that the differentiated function could revert back to the collectivity if necessary. The development of society has the peculiarity that its self-preserva- tion can require the temporary dismantling of an already differentiated apparatus. This is not to make a close analogy with the atrophy of those animal organs that appears from the change of life environments, for example like the seeing-apparatus of animals that live continuously in dark caves becoming a mere rudiment. Since the function itself becomes superfluous in these cases and this is the reason for which the organs serving that function gradually wither away, in contrast, with social developments the function is indispensable and therefore must, where an inadequacy of the apparatus appears, revert back to the interactions among the primary members of the group, as the apparatus originated in the first place as the bearer of their division of labor. The structure of the group from the outset is in some cases based on such an alter- nation between the immediate function and that mediated through an apparatus. As with publicly-held corporations whose technical direction is admittedly the responsibility of the management while the general assembly is nevertheless empowered to remove the management or set
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certain guidelines for it, the general assembly has neither disposition nor the competence for this. Here belongs, above all, the power of the parliament over the governing apparatus in lands governed in a purely parliamentary manner. The English government draws its power again and again from the grassroots of the people, which is distilled, as it were, in the parliament. The government naturally has this competence in various shadowy ways for the continuous self-preservation of the group since the purely objective and consistent treatment of businesses is endangered by the interventions of the parliament and especially by its review of them. In England this is moderated by the general conservatism and by a fine differentiation between the officials and administrative branches that are subject to the immediate competence of the parliament and those that require a relative independence and continuity. Smaller associations that allow their business to be conducted through a board or executive committee tend to be organized in such a way that these apparatus return their authority to the whole group, willingly or unwillingly, as soon as they are no longer up to the burden or responsibility of their functions. Every revolution, in which a political group dethrones its government and binds legislation and administra- tion back to the immediate initiative of its members, belongs to this kind of sociological formation. Admittedly it readily happens now that such a restructuring of the apparatus is not possible in all groups. In very large groups or groups living in very complicated situations the assumption of administration by the group itself is simply impossible. The formation of organs became irrevocable and their malleability, their vital association with the members, can appear most of all in the members replacing the persons who comprise the apparatus in a given moment with more suitable persons. At any rate, the diverting back of group power from the apparatus to its original source, even if only as a transitional stage to a renewed constructing of an apparatus, still comes about in cases of a rather higher social formation. The Epis- copal Church in North America suffered greatly up to the end of the eighteenth century from having no bishop because the English mother church that alone could have consecrated one refused to do that for political reasons. Therefore, the communities decided to help them- selves in their greatest need and in the face of a danger of complete disintegration. In 1784 they sent delegations--lay and clergy--who assembled and constituted themselves as the supreme church unity, as the central apparatus, and for the provision of the church management. A historical specialist on this era portrays it this way:
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Never had so strange a sight been seen before in Christendom, as this necessity of various members knitting themselves together into one. In all other cases the unity of the common episcopate had held such limbs together: every member had visibly belonged to the community of which the presiding bishop was the head. 51
The inner solidarity of the faithful--which up to then lay in the appa- ratus of the episcopacy and became, as it were, a substance lying out- side them--now appeared again in its original nature. Now the power was returned to the immediate interaction of the members which was projecting that power from within themselves and which had worked on them from outside. This case is therefore particularly interesting because the function of keeping the church members together came to the bishop through consecration, i. e. from a source from above, one seemingly independent of the sociological function--and now was nevertheless replaced purely sociologically, through which the source of that power was unequivocally made visible. The fact that the communi- ties knew how, after so long lasting and so effective a differentiation of their sociological forces on an apparatus, to replace it again with the immediacy of the community, was an indication of the extraordinary health of its socio-religious life. Very many communities of a most dif- ferent kind have gone under when the relationship between the social powers of their members and the apparatus that arose from it was no longer malleable enough to be able to return to the members the functions that are necessary for their social self-preservation, in cases of omission or inefficiency on the part of the apparatus.
The evolution of differentiated organs is, so to speak, a substantial remedy for social self-preservation; with that the structure of society grows a new limb. Wholly different from that is the matter of treat- ing how the instinct for self-preservation affects the life of the group from a functional perspective. The question whether it happens in an undifferentiated unity or with separate organs is secondary for that; rather that is a matter of the entire general form or the rate at which the life processes of the group play out. Here we encounter two prin- cipal possibilities: The group can be maintained 1) by preserving its
51 Here Simmel uses the original English. The same quotation appears in Julia C. Emery, A Century of Endeavor 1821-1921 (Chicago: Hammond Press, 1921), appendix, attributing it to Samuel Wilberforce, History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America (London, J. Burns, 1844; New York: Stanford & Swords, 1949), though Emery does not give the title accurately--ed.
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form as much as possible through a stability and rigidity in it so that it counters mounting dangers with substantial resistance and protects the relationship of its members throughout all changes in the external circumstances; 2) by the greatest possible variability of its form, in that it responds to change in the external conditions with such a change within itself and maintains itself in the flux so that it can accommodate every demand of the circumstances. These two possibilities apparently go back to a very general behavior of things since it finds an analogy in all possible spheres, even the physical. A body is protected from destruction through pressure and shock either through rigidity and unalterable solidarity of its elements so that the attacking force makes no dent at all, or through flexibility and elasticity, which admittedly yield to every attack but immediately restores the previous form to the body after it is over. The self-preservation of the group also holds together either through stability or through flexibility whereby the unity of an entity is documented in both ways: we recognize its unity either as a result of its always seeming the same in the face of different stimuli and situations, or its behaving differently in the face of each circumstance, in a special way exactly matching it--like a calculation with two fac- tors always having to yield the same result with one changing and the other changing accordingly. Thus we say a person has got it all together when one, for example, manifests the aesthetic consideration and sensitivity toward all possible matters of life, but no less the one who behaves aesthetically where the object justifies it, but who has another kind of reaction where that is required by the object. Indeed this is perhaps the deeper consistency because manifold trials, whose manifold nature corresponds to the object, indicate an integrity of the subject that is all the more unshakable. So a person will appear to be consistent if a life situation of servitude has developed in that person a submissive behavior that one also manifests in all other activities not related to servitude; but it is no less 'consistent' if one, on the contrary, takes advantage of the underlings through brutality because of one's forced submission to superiors. And finally preservation and variation as sociological tendencies are only subtypes of something more generally human. And as such, these can, as pure forms of behavior, contain a meaning that binds together the most divergent content--as Augustus himself once praised Cato for the reason that everyone who did not want to have the existing condition of the state changed would be a good person and citizen. Now it is a matter of the closer determinations of these two methods of social self-preservation.
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Self-preservation through conservative activity seems to be indicated where the collectivity consists of very disparate elements with latent or manifest oppositions, so that generally every initiative, of whatever kind, becomes dangerous and the very measures of preservation and positive usefulness must be avoided as soon as they bring a movement with them. Thus a very complex and enduring state, such as the Austro- Hungarian Empire, needing to be held in a delicate balance, would generally be highly conservative since every movement could produce an irreparable disturbance of the balance. Generally this consequence is wholly associated with the form of heterogeneity of the constituent elements of a larger group, as soon as this difference does not lead to a harmonious mutual engagement and cooperation. Here the threat to the preservation of the social status quo resides in the fact that every initiative must elicit extremely different forms of response in the different social strata that are laden with completely opposing energies. The less the inner solidarity among the members of the group, the more prob- able it is that the oppositions will cause new incitements, new awaken- ings of consciousness, new occasions for decisions and developments to diverge further from one another. Then there are always countless ways in which people can become distant from one another, but often only a single way in which they can come close to one another. Change may still be useful in itself--its effect on the members will bring their whole heterogeneity into expression, indeed, to a heightened expres- sion in the same sense in which the mere prolongation of divergent lines allows their divergence to appear more clearly. 52 The avoidance of every innovation, every departure from the previous way, will thus be shown to be a strict and rigid conservatism in order to hold the group in its existing form.
52 The precise fact that the disruptions of a foreign war often serve to unite the diver- gent and threatened elements of the state together again in its balance, is an obviously real exception but one that confirms the rule. For war appeals to those energies that are nevertheless common to the opposed elements of the community and raises those that are vital and fundamental in nature so strongly into consciousness that the disturbance here annuls the presupposition for their harmfulness--the divergence of the elements. On the other hand, where it is not strong enough to overcome the oppositions existing in the group, war has the above-claimed effect: as often as it has given the last blow to the internally shattered statehood, it has let even the nonpolitical groups, split by inner oppositions, to stand before the alternative: either to forget their disputes against the other during the conflict or on the contrary to let them degenerate incurably.
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In addition, for this behavior to be purposeful only a very broad but not necessarily hostile divergence among the group members is necessary. Where social differences are very great and do not begin to intermesh in intermediate stages, each swift movement and disruption of the structure of the collectivity must become much more dangerous than where mediating layers exist; since evolution always first takes hold of only a part of the group exclusively or especially firmly at first, there will be a gradualism in its progress or widening in the latter case, while in the former the movement will suddenly be very much more forcefully taking hold of both the ones not disposed to that and those far away from it. The middle classes will serve as buffers or shock absorbers that take in, soften, and diffuse the unavoidable disruptions of the structure of the whole in rapid development. Hence, societies that have clearly developed middle classes show a liberal character. And on the contrary it is most necessary that social peace, stability, and a conservative character of group life be preserved at all costs were it is a matter of the preservation of a discontinuous structure characterized by sharp internal differences. Therefore we also actually observe that with immense and irreconcilable class contrasts, peace and a persistence of forms of social life prevail sooner than with existing convergence, exchange, and mixing between the extremes of the social ladder. In the latter case the continuation of the collectvity in the status quo ante joins much sooner with fragile circumstances, abrupt developments, and progressive tendencies. Aristocratic constitutions are thus the authentic seats of conservatism; what is of interest here about this connection of motives, which will be treated later, is this: aristocracies form the strongest social divides on the one hand--more than monarchy does in a principled manner, which often ends up precisely as a leveling down, and only where it joins with the aristocratic principle, which however has no inner necessity and often has no outer necessity at all, does it create sharp class distinctions; on the other hand those constitutions are intended from within for a quiet, form-maintaining effect, since they have to be prepared neither for the unpredictability of a change on the throne nor for the moods of a mass of people.
This linkage between stability of the social character and the width of the degree of social distance is made evident also in the reverse direction. Where the self-preservation of the group through stability is forced from without, there strong social differences sometimes form as a result. The development of rural serfdom in Russia shows this to some extent. There was always a strong nomadic impulse in Russia that
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the expansive nature of the country gladly accommodated. In order to secure the orderly development of the land it was thus necessary to deprive the farmers of their liberty; this happened under Theodore I in 1593. But now once the farmer was tied to the soil, he gradually lost the freedoms possessed until then. Here the forced immobility of the farmer became, as also many times in the rest of Europe, the means by which the landlord oppressed him more and more deeply. What was originally only a provisional rule finally made him a mere appendage of the property. Thus the group's instinct of self-preservation did not only create a tendency toward stability of the form of life with sharply existing oppositions; but where it directly evoked the latter it added growing social differences to it, proving that connection in principle.
Another case in which the self-preservation of the group will press toward the greatest possible stability and rigidity exists in outlived struc- tures that no longer have any inner reason to exist and whose members actually belong to other relationships and forms of social life. Since the end of the Middle Ages, the German leagues of communities were weakened in their rights by the strengthening of central powers, and instead of the vital cohesion that they had derived from the importance of their previous social roles, only the mask and its externality remained for them--since then the last remaining means for their self-preserva- tion was an extremely strict closure, the unconditional prohibition of the entry of additional communities. Every quantitative expansion of a group requires certain qualitative modifications and adaptations that an outdated structure can no longer undergo without breaking apart. An earlier chapter showed the social form in its narrow relationships of dependency on the numerical determination of its elements: the structure of the society that is the right one for a certain number of members is no longer the right one for an enlarged number. But the process of transforming it into a new structure requires the assimila- tion and working up of new members; it consumes energy. Structures that have lost their inner meaning no longer possess this energy for the task, but use all that they still have in order to protect the once exist- ing form against internal and external dangers. That strict exclusion of additional members--such as also later characterized the antiquated guild constitutions--thus immediately meant not only a stabilization of the group, which it tied to the existing members and their descendents, but it also meant the avoidance of the structural transformations that were necessary for every quantitative expansion of the group, and for which a structure that had become unsuitable no longer had the
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capability. The instinct of self-preservation will therefore lead such a group to measures of a rigid conservatism. Generally, structures inca- pable of competition will be inclined to this means of self-preservation. For to the extent that its form is fragile, passes through various stages, carries out new adaptations, the competitor is given an opportunity for dangerous attacks. The most vulnerable stage for societies, as for individuals, is that between two periods of adaptation. Whoever is in motion cannot be shielded on all sides at every moment, as can some- one who is in a motionless, stable position. A group that feels wary of its competitor will thus, for the sake of its self-preservation, avoid any instability and evolution in its form and live by the principle, quieta non movere. 53 This rigid self-insulation will be especially useful where competition does not yet exist in reality, but it is a matter of prevent- ing competition since one does not feel up to it. Here rigorous exclu- sionary rules alone will be able to maintain the state of affairs,54 since the existence of new relationships, the presentation of new points of connection to the outside of the group would attract a larger circle, in which a group would encounter a superior competitor. This social rule may be effective in a very subtle way in the following context: A paper currency that is not redeemable, in contrast to the one covered (by precious metals), has the characteristic of being valid only within the region of the government that issues it and is not exportable. This is claimed as its greatest advantage: it remains in the land, is always there ready for all undertakings, and it does not enter into the balance of precious metals with another nation, which causes an importation of foreign goods and outflow of money in a relative surplus of money and thereby an immediately subsequent increase in prices. Thus there is an inner bond of the circulation of money limited to its land of ori- gin and a self-preservation of its social form, while sealing it off from the wider competition of the world market. An economically strong land and one equal to that competition would not need this means, but it would certainly be clear that it would achieve a strengthening of its essential form of life precisely amidst instability, the vicissitudes, and development of an interdependence with all others. It should not be claimed, for example, that relatively small groups generally seek their preservation in the form of stability, and large ones in variability.
53 Latin: Be still, no moving! --ed.
54 Simmel uses the Latin, status--ed.
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There are generally not such simple and definitive relations between such broad structures and patterns of activity, since each one of them includes an abundance of different factors that enter into multitudinous combinations with one another. Precisely very large groups, of course, need stability for their institutions that smaller ones can replace with swift wholesale adaptations. A conscious effort of the English labor federations to shift the site of its headquarters from time to time from one affiliate union to another has made room at a later time to settling its administration in one specific place and with particular persons. The large group can tolerate this stability of its institutions because it still always provides room through its size for sufficient changes, variations, as well as for local and temporal adaptations. Indeed, one can say: the large group increases both in itself as it increases generalization and individualization in itself, while the smaller group either represents one or the other or both in an incomplete state of development.
The essentially individual-psychological motive that supports the preservation of a relationship under the form of stability is termed 'fidel- ity. ' The sociological importance of this encloses the specific matter of this chapter in so wide a circumference, and the immediate relevance here is so closely fused with the transition to what comes later, that I will move the discussion of it into a separate excursus, in which I also deal with the importance of gratitude for social structure, or rather as a sociological form in itself. Since, in an admittedly more particular type than fidelity, gratitude prevents the breaking off of a once intact relationship and works as an energy with which a relationship preserves its status quo in the face of unavoidable disturbances of a positive or negative kind.
Excursus on Fidelity and Gratitude
Fidelity belongs to those most universal patterns of action that can become significant for all interactions among people, which are most diverse not only materially but also sociologically. In domination and subordination as well as in equality, within a joint opposition against a third as well as within a shared friendship, in families as well as with respect to the state, in love as well as in relationship to an occupational group--in all these structures, seen purely in terms of their sociological configuration, fidelity and its opposite become important, as it were, as a sociological form of a second order, as the bearer of the existing and self-preserving kinds of relationship among members; in its universality it relates, as it were, to the sociological forms attained by it, as these behave toward the material contents and motives of social existence.
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Without the phenomenon that we call 'fidelity,' society would not be able to exist in the factually given manner for any time at all. The factors that support the preservation of society--individual interests of the members, suggestion, force, idealism, mechanical habit, sense of duty, love, inertia--would not be able to protect it from breaking up if all of them were not complemented by the factor of fidelity. Admittedly the quantity and importance of these fac- tors are not determinable in the individual case since fidelity, in its practical effect, always substitutes for another feeling, any trace of which whatever will hardly be wasted. That which is to be attributed to fidelity is intertwined with a collective result that resists quantitative analysis.
Because of the complementary character that befits fidelity (Treue), an expression 'faithful love' (treue Liebe), for example, is somewhat misleading. If love persists in a relationship between people, what need is there for fidelity? If the individuals are not bound together by fidelity at the very beginning but rather by the primary genuine disposition of the soul, why would fidelity still have to arrive after ten years as the guardian of the relationship, since, presumably, that is nevertheless just the same love even after ten years and must prove its binding strength entirely on its own, as in the first moment? If word usage would simply call enduring love 'faithful love' (treue Liebe), one need not, of course, object to that, since it is not a matter of words, but probably upon there being a mental--and social--condition that preserves the dura- tion of a relationship beyond its first occurrence and which outlives these forces with the same synthesizing effect, as it had on it, and which we can only call 'fidelity,' although this word still includes a totally different sort of meaning, i. e. , the perseverance of these forces. One could describe fidelity as the ability of the soul to persevere, which keeps it keeps to a course that has been taken, after the stimulus that led it to that course in the first instance has passed. It is to be understood from this that I am always speaking here only about fidelity of a purely psychological kind, about a disposition that stems from within, not about a purely external relation, as, for example, within the marriage the legal concept of fidelity means nothing positive at all but only the non-occurrence of infidelity.
It is a fact of the highest sociological importance that countless relation- ships remain unchanged in their social structure, even though the feeling or practical occasion that allowed them to originate in the first instance have disappeared. The otherwise indubitable truth--that it is easier to destroy than to build--does not simply hold for certain human relationships. Admit- tedly the coming into existence of a relationship requires a certain amount of conditions, positive and negative, the absence of any one of which hinders its coming about from the beginning. But once it has begun, it is still in no way always destroyed by the subsequent loss of that condition without which it would not have arisen in the first place. An erotic relationship, for example, originating on the basis of physical beauty, can very well survive the latter's diminishing and turning into ugliness. What has been said about states--that they can only be maintained by the same means by which they are estab- lished--is only a very partial truth and no less than a general principle of social relations. Rather, the sociological connection from which it always arises
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forms a self-preservation, a special stability of its form, independently of the original motives behind the connections. Without this ability of maintaining the social structure that was once constituted, society as a whole would collapse at every moment or be changed in an unimaginable way. The preservation of the form of unity is born psychologically by various forces--intellectual and practical, positive and negative. Fidelity is the underlying sentimental factor, or also the same thing in the form of feeling, its projection on the level of feeling. The feeling in question here--whose quality should be established only in its psychic reality, as much whether one accepts it as an adequate definition of the concept of fidelity or not--thus remains as defined. To those relationships that develop between individuals correspond a specific feeling, an interest, and an impulse that are relationship-oriented. Now, if the relationship continues further, there arises, in interaction with this ongoing stability, a special feeling or also this: those originally grounded mental conditions--many times, if not always--metamorphose themselves into a unique form that we call fidelity, into, as it were, a psychological reservoir or a form of collectvity or uniformity for the most diverse interests, emotions, and bonding motives; and over all the difference in their origin, they assume a certain similarity in the form of fidelity, which conceivably favors the lasting character of this feeling. Thus what is called true love, true devotion, etc.