Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/17

 NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP 5

communities within a greater one which served them at once for supplying their external necessities, and also as an antithesis, in contrast with which they were conscious of their peculiar nature. Consequently, the extension of Christianity to the whole state has necessarily changed completely its sociological character not less than its psychical content.

Moreover, that an aristocratic body can have but a relatively narrow compass is given in its very idea. But, besides this trivial consequence of the dominance over masses, there appears to be here also a numerical limitation, which, although in large extent variable, is yet in kind absolute. I mean by this that not only does a definite proportion exist, which would always permit that with increasing number of the ruled the ruling aristocracy would likewise increase pro rata and beyond any limit ; but that there is an absolute limit beyond which the aristocratic group-form can no longer be maintained intact. This limit will be determined partly by external and partly by psychological conditions. An aristocratic group must be capable; of survey by the individual member ; each must be able to have a personal acquaintance with each ; relationships of blood and marriage must ramify through the whole body, and must be traceable. If, therefore, the historical aristocracies, from Sparta to Venice, have a tendency to the utmost possible numerical limitation, this is not merely the egoistic disinclination to par- tition of control, but it is the instinct that the conditions of the life of an aristocracy can be fulfilled only with a not merely relative, but also absolute, restriction of the number of its ele- ments. The unlimited right of primogeniture, which is of aris- tocratic nature, constitutes the means for such prevention of expansion ; under its presumption alone was the ancient Theban law possible, that the number of landed estates should not be increased, and also the Corinthian, that the number of families must always remain the same. It is, therefore, entirely charac- teristic that Plato once, when he spoke of the ruling 6\iyoi, des- ignated the same directly as the prj TroXXoi.

When an aristocratic body gives place to the democratic centrifugal tendencies, which constitute the unavoidable trend of