Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/52

 in its original confessional coherence. This socio-political play has repeatedly occurred locally, and may be repeated universally.” Indeed, when we observe the versatility of the individual Jew, his wonderful facility in adjusting himself to the most manifold tasks, and in adapting his personality to the shifting conditions of life, we might characterize this as a reflection of the sociological group form in the form of the individual. Whether this assertion about the history of the Jews is correct in substance or not, its presumption is equally instructive for us, viz., that the self-preservation of a social unit may be directly realized through change of its form of manifestation, or of its material basis; that its power of persistence resides in this very capacity to undergo outward change.

Through their relations to further sociological concepts of more capital rank these two ways of social persistence come into especially characteristic antithesis. When, for instance, the preservation of a group is very closely bound up with maintenance of a particular stratum in its existence and peculiarities—for example, the highest, the broadest, or the middle stratum—the first two cases demand more rigidity of the social-life form, the last more elasticity. Aristocracies are in general conservative. If they are in reality what the name asserts, they are the most adequate expression of the actual inequality between men. In this case—with reference to which I do not here inquire whether the presumed condition is ever more than partially realized—the spur is lacking for revolutionary movements, viz., non-correspondence between the inherent qualifications of the people and their social situation. Such lack of correspondence is the point of departure both for the most important and heroic of human deeds and for the most senseless undertakings. Given then this most favorable case of an aristocracy, the whole aristocratic class is bound to punctilious insistence upon the conditions which are essential to its preservation; for every experimental disturbance might threaten that fine and rare proportion between qualification and position, either in reality or in the feelings of the persons concerned, and thus might furnish an impulse for radical transformation.