Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/502

 form a more complete notion of the separateness which orders of this sort wish to emphasize, than in the concealment, by disguise or otherwise, of those who have the desire and the right thus to abstract themselves. That is the rudest and externally most radical mode of concealment; viz., covering up not merely the special act of the person, but at once the whole person obscures himself; the order does not do anything that is secret, but the totality of persons comprising it makes itself into a secret. This form of the secret society corresponds completely with the primitive intellectual plane in which the whole agent throws himself entire into each specific activity; that is, in which the activity is not yet sufficiently objectified to give it a character which less than the whole man can share. Hence it is equally explicable that so soon as the disguise-secret is broken through, the whole separation becomes ineffective, and the order, with its devices and its manifestations, loses at once its inner meaning.

In the case in question the separation has the force of an expression of value. There is separation from others because there is unwillingness to give oneself a character common with that of others, because there is desire to signalize one’s own superiority as compared with these others. Everywhere this motive leads to the formation of groups which are obviously in sharp contrast with those formed in pursuit of material (sachlich) purposes. As a consequence of the fact that those who want to distinguish themselves enter into combination, there results an aristocracy which strengthens and, so to speak, expands the self-consciousness of the individuals through the weight of their sum. That exclusiveness and formation of groups are thus bound together by the aristocracy-building motive gives to the former in many cases from the outset the stamp of the “special” in the sense of value. We may observe, even in school classes, how small, closely attached groups of comrades, through the mere formal fact that they form a special group, come to consider themselves an elite, compared with the rest who are unorganized: while the latter, by their enmity and jealousy, involuntarily recognize that higher value. In these cases secrecy and pretense of secrecy (Geheimnistnerei) are means of building higher the wall