Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/53

 The real occasion for such change of an aristocracy, however, will be that such absolute justification of the regulating system scarcely ever exists. The lordship of the few over the many is likely to rest rather on a totally different basis, and not on the ideal appropriateness of this relation. Under these circumstances the ruling class will have the utmost interest in affording the least occasion for movements toward disturbance and innovation, for every movement of that sort would stimulate the rightful or supposed claims of the ruled. There is danger in this case that not the persons merely, but the whole constitution, might be changed, and this is the decisive period for our course of thought. The very fact that violent changes in the personnel of the ruling class have often been brought about with the assistance of the masses calls attention to the possibility, which has not seldom become a reality, that on such an occasion the whole aristocratic principle may be overturned. Because of this connection the aristocratic form of constitution will maintain itself best through the utmost immobility of its status. This by no means holds good for political purposes alone. It is true also for ecclesiastical, family, and social groupings into which the aristocratic form may enter. In general, so soon as this form has once established itself, a severe conservatism will be most favorable, not merely for the momentary personal standing of the regulating system, but also for its preservation in form and principle.

This often appears clearly enough in the history of reformatory movements in aristocratic constitutions. That adaptation to newly emerging social forces or ideals, such as takes place through diminution of exploitation and subjection, through legal definition of rights in place of arbitrary interpretation, through increase of the rights and of the shares of goods assigned to the lower classes—such adaptation is not wont, so far as it is a voluntary concession, to find its ultimate purpose in that which is changed by the concession, but rather in that which may be preserved by means of such concession. The limitation of the aristocratic prerogative is only the conditio sine qua non of saving the aristocratic regime at all. If the movement is allowed to go