Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/414

 members. For so long in the future as prevision can reach, however, we may contest the possibility of a social constitution without superiority and inferiority, just as we may assert that the natural differences between human beings, which no common education can remove, will press for expression in external gradations of ranks, in differences of superordination and subordination. A tendency of culture is nevertheless thinkable which, in spite of the persistence of superordination and subordination, approximates in result to that which socialism and anarchism want to reach by doing away with social ranks. The way to this would be through such psychical development that the individual’s consciousness of life (Lebensgefühl) would become less dependent upon external activity and the position assigned to the individual within the same. It is quite conceivable that in the progress of civilization productive activity may become more and more technique, and may at last lose practically all its consequences for that which is essential and personal in man. As a matter of fact we find the approach to this separation as the sociological type of numerous phases of development. While personality and performance (Leistung) were in the beginning closely mingled, the division of labor and the production of commodities for the market, i.e., for wholly unknown and indifferent consumers, brings it about that personality tends to withdraw from industrial performance and to find recourse in itself. This tendency is promoted by advances in technique, in consequence of which productive activity is constantly acquiring a more mechanical and objective character. Evolution in many departments of industry, particularly in connection with the transition from hand labor to machine labor, has followed this scheme. It is accordingly thinkable that this isolation of labor, in contradistinction from the consciousness of life and personality (Lebens- und Persönlichkeitsgefuhl), might lead to making superordination and subordination merely a technicality in the organization of society By means of this differentiation, this converting of superiority and inferiority into a mere technicality, detached from