Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/711

 or with the requirements of cases containing specific complications. Through the logical cohesion of its structure and the dignity of its administrators, the law attains not only an independence which is actual, and for its purpose necessary to a very great extent, but it derives from within itself—by a circulus vitiosus, to be sure—a claim to unlimited and irresponsible independence. Since now the concrete circumstances of the group sometimes demand other conditions for its maintenance, situations occur which have been expressed in the words fiat justitia pereat mundus, and summum jus summa injuria. The attempt is made to give the law that flexibility and adaptability which are appropriate to its character as an organ, by leaving to the judge a certain scope in the application and interpretation of statutes. On the borders of this territory within judicial discretion occur those cases of collision between the persistence of the law and that of the group which may here serve as illustrations of the fact. The group must allow its organs to acquire a certain staunchness and independence, or they could not promote the maintenance of the group. Precisely this necessary stability of the organ may efface its organic character. The autonomy and rigidity of the organ that acts as though it were an independent whole may turn into an injury of group unity.

In the case of bureaucracy, as in that of legal formalism, this conversion of an organ into a self-governing totality is the more dangerous because it takes the appearance and offers the pretext of being always for the sake of the whole. The attitude of the army sometimes fulfills this sociological form. This organ of group maintenance must, for technical reasons, be itself, so far as possible, an organism. To develop its professional qualities, particularly its close inner coherence, there is need of sharp distinction between it and other social classes. Hence the utility of various means, from the special code of honor among the officers to the distinctive uniform. Much as this promotion of the military order to independence serves the interests of the whole, it may assume such absoluteness and rigidity as to set the army apart from the group as a state within the state. This