Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/503

 of separation, and therein a reinforcement of the aristocratic nature of the group.

This significance of secret associations, as intensification of sociological exclusiveness in general, appears in a very striking way in political aristocracies. Among the requisites of aristocratic control secrecy has always had a place. It makes use of the psychological fact that the unknown as such appears terrible, powerful, and threatening. In the first place, it employs this fact in seeking to conceal the numerical insignificance of the governing class. In Sparta the number of warriors was kept so far as possible a secret, and in Venice the same purpose was in view in the ordinance prescribing simple black costumes for all the nobili. Conspicuous costumes should not be permitted to make evident to the people the petty number of the rulers. In that particular case the policy was carried to complete concealment of the inner circle of the highest rulers. The names of the three state inquisitors were known only to the Council of Ten who chose them. In some of the Swiss aristocracies one of the most important magistracies was frankly called “the secret officials” (die Heimlichen), and in Freiburg the aristocratic families were known as die heimlichen Geschlechter. On the other hand, the democratic principle is bound up with the principle of publicity, and, to the same end, the tendency toward general and fundamental laws. The latter relate to an unlimited number of subjects, and are thus in their nature public. Conversely, the employment of secrecy within the aristocratic regime is only the extreme exaggeration of that social exclusion and exemption for the sake of which aristocracies are wont to oppose general, fundamentally sanctioned laws.

In case the notion of the aristocratic passes over from the politics of a group to the disposition (Gesinnung) of an individual, the relationship of separation and secrecy attains to a plane that is, to outward appearance, completely changed. Perfect distinction (Vornehmheit) in both moral and mental respects, despises all concealment, because its inner security makes it indifferent to what others know or do not know about us, whether their estimate of us is true or false, high or low. From the standpoint of such superiority, secrecy is a concession to outsiders, a