Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/691

 group maintenance. This character of the dead hand was supported further by the fact that the possessions of such corporations were chiefly real estate. In contrast with all movable property, especially with money, property in land has a stability, an indestructibility, a fixity which renders it the most appropriate content for the “dead hand” form of tenure. Moreover, the local definiteness and precision of this tenure bring it about that those who enjoy its benefits have in it the fixed point by means of which they can always keep their reckoning and, at the same time, either directly or indirectly in their interests, can unite without confusion. This significance which the continuance of landed property has for the maintenance of a social form has found expression in the hypothesis that landed possession on a large scale was one of the origins of hereditary monarchy. Superior riches secure, at all events, a leading position in a group. So long, however, as wealth consists only in herds, it is very insecure and may easily die out. Only when it has become immobile is there good chance that it may remain in the hands of one person or family. The stable character of landed property, even if only in the hands of the leader, is favorable to the stability of the constitutional form. It secures for the above discussed hereditary principle a basis that is at once adequate and of corresponding form.

Thus the “dead hand” was by no means merely a matter of material advantage. It was rather a subtle agency of preserving the form and substance of the group. This very fact, however, often entangles the group in a conflict of typical sociological significance, and for the reason that the group thus assisted in its self-preservation is only a portion of a larger civic society containing it. Almost all sorts of human association, whatever be their specific content and character, have to work to secure the coöperation in social unity of certain parts that persist in following a certain egoistic impulse. The form and tendency of these parts duplicate in miniature those of the group of which they are members, with which however they are often, for this very reason, in disagreement. The rôle appropriate to them as