Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/704

, is one of the weightiest obstacles to the unification of a group, and even to the performance of any group action at all. This production of the line of hostility occurs also not merely where it separates whole divisions of groups. It appears as well in the relations of individuals with each other. The mere fact that A votes for the measure m is often enough to make his enemy vote against it. The factionalism and obstruction that follow should promote the tranference of group business to special organs. Since these are constituted with sole reference to the definite purpose in view, the latter is set farther apart psychologically from the other interests and opinions of the person to whom the purpose is intrusted. This purpose, therefore, receives on behalf of the members of the group an emphasis which would be lessened or lost if it were naïvely jumbled together with essentially unrelated tendencies. When social action is thus freed from the oppositions, entanglements, and centrifugal movements which spring from the association of special issues with other personal and party positions, this action becomes much more unified, animated, and purposeful (zielbewusster). The power of persistence in the group gains in the ratio in which that waste of energy ceases, which is involved in the above noted confusions and consequent paralyzing of forces, and which is unavoidable in the neglect of group tasks that is sure to exist if the group as a group tries to do its needed work.

3. While these advantages of social organs over the group as a whole in promoting the persistence of the group thus fall in with the tempo and rhythm of the powers or process that preserve the group, they extend furthermore to certain qualitative conditions. In the first place, it is decisive that the total action of the group will always be on a relatively low intellectual level. This is due to the fact that the particular point about which a large number of individuals agree must always be close to the level occupied by that one of them who stands lowest. This is evident from the fact that those who stand higher can descend, but not everyone on a lower intellectual level can ascend. The