Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/61

, as though a certain changeability in the conditions and formations of the group protects it against too rigid combination of the essential unity of the group with a particular form of the unity. In case this close combination exists in a group, the occurrence of a change, in spite of the rigid form, threatens the very life principle of the group. Against this danger frequent change seems to act like a sort of inoculation. The bond between the most essential and the less vital relationships remains looser, and a disturbance of the latter opposes less danger to the preservation of the group in its essential unity.

We are easily inclined to regard peace, harmony of interests, concord, as the essence of social self-preservation; all antagonism, on the other hand, as destructive of the unity which it is the essential aim to preserve, and as the fruitless consumption of force which might be used for the positive up-building of the group organism. Yet it seems more correct to interpret a certain rhythm between peace and strife as the preservative life form. This interpretation may be applied equally in two directions. It is true both of struggle between the group as a whole and external foes, in alternation with peaceful epochs, and also of the strife of competitors, parties, opposing tendencies of every sort, by the side of the facts of community and of harmony. The one is an alternative between harmonious and discordant phenomena in a series, the latter in coexistence. The motive of both is in the last analysis one and the same. It realizes itself in different ways. The struggle against a power standing outside the group brings the unity of the group and the necessity of maintaining it unshaken to most lively consciousness. It is a fact of the greatest social significance, one of the few which are true almost without exception of group formations of every sort, that common antagonism against a third party under all circumstances tends to consolidate the combining group, and with much greater certainty than community in friendly relationships toward a third party. There is scarcely a group—domestic, ecclesiastic, economic, political, or whatever—that can dispense entirely with this cement. In the purest reciprocity there develops here the consciousness of existing unity and practical