Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/848

 That took place under Feodor in 1593. When the peasant was once bound to the soil he gradually lost the elements of freedom that he had formerly possessed. The forced immobility of the peasant became here, as in all the rest of Europe, the leverage by which the landlord degraded him lower and lower. That at first merely provisional device at last turned the peasant into a mere chattel of the estate. Thus the impulse of self-preservation in the group produces, not alone in case of existing contrasts, a tendency to stability of life forms; but, in case this impulse directly calls these contrasts into existence, growing social differences attach themselves to the impulse, and thus afford evidence of the essential relationship here asserted.

A further instance in which the self-preservation of the group makes for all possible stability and rigidity of its forms is evident in the case of outlived structures which have no longer an inherent right of existence, and whose elements really belong in other relations and social formations. Starting with the end of the Middle Ages, for example, the German community-associations suffered reduction of their effectiveness and of their rights through the growth of centralized administrations. Instead of retaining the vital power of cohesion which they had possessed by virtue of the importance of their former social role, there remained to them only the mask and externalities of those former possessions. In this plight the final means of self-preservation was very rigid exclusiveness, an unqualified prevention of the entrance of new associates. Every quantitative extension of a group requires certain qualitative modifications and adaptations. An obsolete structure cannot go through these changes without collapse. The social form is in very close dependence upon the numerical definiteness of its elements. That structure of a society which is appropriate for a given number of members is no longer appropriate when a certain increase has occurred. The process of transformation into the new form demanded force, the assimilation and disposition of the new elements consume force. Structures which have lost their essential meaning have no strength left for this task. They