Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/329

 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIOLOGY 315

tial content and according to formations which exist only in and upon this content. The Hke is the case with the facts of sociaHza- tion. That people influence one another, that the one does or suffers something, manifests a being or a becoming, because others are there and express themselves, act, or feel — all that is of course psychical phenomena, and the historical occurrence of each several case of it is to be understood only through psycho- logical repetition, through the plausibility of psychological series, through the interpretation of the externally observable by means of psychological categories. But a peculiar scientific purpose may leave this psychic occurrence as such quite out of sight, and it may give its attention to the contents of the same as they set themselves in order under the concept of socialization. Suppose, for example, it is made out that the relation of a stronger to a weaker person, which has the form of primus inter pares, tends to become a possession of absolute power and gradually to eliminate the elements of equality. Although in historical reality this is a psychical occurrence, from the sociological viewpoint we are now interested only in the questions. How do the various stadia of the super- and sub-ordination in this case follow one another? To what degree is a super-ordination in a given rela- tionship compatible with equality in other particulars ? Beginning with what degree of superiority does the super-ordination wholly destroy the equality? Does the question of combination, the possibility of co-operation, press more urgently in the earlier or the later stages of such development? Or, it is discovered that enmities are most bitter when they arise on the basis of a previous or still somehow appreciable community and coherence, as feuds between blood relatives have been called the hottest hatreds. As an occurrence, this can be made intelligible or even described only psychologically; but considered as a sociological formation, the course of events in the consciousness of each of two individuals is not of interest in itself, but rather the synopsis of the two under the category of union and disunion — how far the relation between two individuals or parties may include hostility and attachment, and still give to the whole relation the shading of the latter, and when will it take on the coloring of the former; what sorts of