Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/416

 to gain the technical advantage of superiority and subordination while avoiding its personal disadvantages. Simultaneous superordination and subordination is one of the most decisive forms of reciprocity, and, if properly disposed throughout the various departments of activity, may, by virtue of this very intimate reciprocity which it signifies, constitute a most powerful bond between individuals. The matrimonial relation owes its external and internal stability (Festigkeit), at least in part, to the fact that it encompasses a great number of departments of interest, with reference to many of which the one party is superior, while with respect to many others the other party is foremost. There arises from this fact a growing together (Ineinanderwachsen), a oneness, and at the same time such essential vitality of the relation as is hardly to be attained in the case of other sociological forms. What we call “equality of right” between husband and wife in marriage will doubtless turn out to be such an alternating superordination and subordination. At least this would be a much more organic and centripetal relation than would result from a mechanical equality in the immediate sense of the word.

This form of relationship constituted also one of the firmest bonds for the army of Cromwell. The same soldier who in military relations rendered blind obedience to his superior in rank frequently made himself in the conventicle a preacher of morals to this same superior. A corporal might conduct the devotions in which his captain participated on the same level with the privates. The army which followed its leader without reserve, when once a political purpose had been accepted, nevertheless previously came to political determinations of its own, to which the leaders had to subordinate themselves. Through this interchangeableness of superiority and inferiority the Puritan army, so long as it held together, derived extraordinary stability.

It must be observed further that this advantageous consequence of the form of association under discussion depends upon provision that the sphere within which the one social element is superior is very accurately and unequivocally delimited from those spheres in which the other is superior. Whenever this is