Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/189

 common level and does not at all enter into that “mass,” i.e., into that which is really ruled by the single person. Hence it is also that frequently in very despotically ruled groups individuality may develop itself very freely, in those aspects particularly which are not in participation with the mass. Thus began the development of modern individuality in the despotisms of the Italian Renaissance. Here, as in other similar cases (for example, under Napoleon I and III), it was for the direct interest of the despots to allow the largest freedom to all those aspects of personality which were not identified with the regulated mass, i.e., to those aspects most apart from politics. Thus subordination was more tolerable. It is one of the highest tasks of administrative art to distinguish properly between those characteristics of men with respect to which they may be included in a leveled mass, and those other characteristics which may be left to free individual development. For this distinction there is needed the most accurate knowledge of what is common to the mass, and what consequently is the material for the establishment of a common level, upon which the subjects may stand at a constantly equal height, while that in which the individuals composing the mass cannot be unified must be left outside the circuit of superiority and subordination. This is a formal sociological demand and arrangement which is by no means valid in political autocracies alone, but in every possible autocracy as well. It is therefore in this more exact sense that the leveling must be understood which corresponds with the superiority of a single person.

In the second place the group may assume the form of a pyramid. In this case the subordinates stand over against the superior not in an equalized mass, but in very nicely graded strata of power. These strata grow constantly smaller in extent but greater in significance. They lead up from the inferior mass to the head, the single ruler.

This form of the group may come into existence in two ways. It may emerge from the autocratic supremacy of an individual. The latter often loses the substance of his power, and allows it