Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/705

 latter sort, therefore, and not the former, determine the level which may be occupied in common.

In cases of agitation and expression of feelings this rule does not hold, because in an actually assembled mass of people there develops a certain collective irritability, a rapture (Mitgerissen-werden) of emotion, a reciprocal stimulation, so that there may follow a momentary elevation of the individuals above the average intensity of their feelings. This in no wise prejudges the appropriateness or inappropriateness of these feelings, nor the wisdom or foolishness of their content. In this respect the sentiments of the mass will remain on that level below the average which is accessible to lower and higher alike. That level may be raised sometimes, as experience shows, in respect of feeling and willing, but not in respect of intelligence.

While now the persistence of the group rests, on the one side, upon the immediate relations of individuals to individuals, and in so far the individual may unfold all the powers of intellect with which he is endowed, this is not absolutely true in those matters in which the group has to act as a unity. We may call the former the molecular action of the group, the latter the molar action. In the former kind of action representation of the individual is, in principle, neither possible nor desirable. In the latter it is both possible and desirable. When a group of any considerable size conducts its affairs directly, the group is shut up to relatively trivial actions by the inexorable condition that each member must in some degree comprehend and approve each group measure. Only when the guidance of group action is intrusted to an organization consisting of relatively few persons can specific talent be enlisted for its direction. Within a group acting as an undifferentiated mass such endowment and special knowledge as only the few may possess must at best fight their way to influence in each particular case. Within a differentiated organ, on the other hand, such endowment and knowledge have, in principle at least, uncontested influence. To be sure, contrasted phenomena occur. Within an official bureau jealousy sometimes prevents talent from exerting its proper influence, while on the other hand the masses may sometimes easily follow a talented individual even when he leads contrary to their judgment. It is impossible for an abstract science like sociology to exhaust the whole abundance and complications of historical action when it exhibits the separate typical relationships. For, however correct may be the assertion of relationship, and however influential, the concrete occurrence will always contain a number of elements beside this, and in the final, visible, aggregate effect the influence of the typal form may be concealed. The science of physics is analogously made up in part of certain regular relationships of movements which never appear in the actual world just as they work out mathematically, or as they can be produced in the laboratory. Nevertheless, the demonstrated relations of force are real and operative in all those cases in which science has discovered their participation. Only their visible action is not entirely in accordance with the scientific schedule in which it is formulated, because beside them a number of other forces and conditions operate upon the same substance. In the resultant of both the former and the latter, which constitutes the actual event, the share of the formulated influence may be concealed from immediate observation. It may have contributed only an insensible and indistinguishable part. This indadequacy, which is exhibited by every sort of cognition through types, when compared with the concrete actuality, evidently reaches its culmination in the psychical sciences. In their territory not only the factors of the particular occurrence mix in almost inextricable complexity, but even the fate of a given element, that may be analyzed out of the confusion, is beyond determination by mathematics and experiment. No matter what correlation of cause and effect may be looked upon as the normal form by which to interpret historical events and psychological probabilities, there will be many cases in which the conditions of that type seem to be present, but the type itself does not emerge. This need not shake confidence in the correctness of the abstraction. It shows only that other, perhaps contrary, forces have worked upon the individuals in question, and that these latter have outweighed the former in the total or visible effect.