Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/498

 world with which it places itself in antithesis. Here we have a case of the universally emerging sociological norm; viz., structures, which place themselves in opposition to and detachment from larger structures in which they are actually contained, nevertheless repeat in themselves the forms of the greater structures. Only a structure that in some way can count as a whole is in a situation to hold its elements firmly together. It borrows the sort of organic completeness, by virtue of which its members are actually the channels of a unifying life-stream, from that greater whole to which its individual members were already adapted, and to which it can most easily offer a parallel by means of this very imitation.

The same relation affords finally the following motive for the sociology of the ritual in secret societies. Every such society contains a measure of freedom, which is not really provided for in the structure of the surrounding society. Whether the secret society, like the Vehme, complements the inadequate judicature of the political area; or whether, as in the case of conspiracies or criminal bands, it is an uprising against the law of that area; or whether, as in the case of the “mysteries,” they hold themselves outside of the commands and prohibitions of the greater area—in either case the apartness (Heraussonderung) which characterizes the secret society has the tone of a freedom. In exercise of this freedom a territory is occupied to which the norms of the surrounding society do not apply. The nature of the secret society as such is autonomy. It is, however, of a sort which approaches anarchy. Withdrawal from the bonds of unity which procure general coherence very easily has as consequences for the secret society a condition of being without roots, an absence of firm touch with life (Lebensgefühl), and of restraining reservations. The fixedness and detail of the ritual serve in part to counterbalance this deficit. Here also is manifest how much men need a settled proportion between freedom and law; and, furthermore, in case the relative quantities of the two are not prescribed for him from a single source, how he attempts to reinforce the given quantum of the one by a quantum of the other derived from any source whatsoever, until such settled proportion is reached.