Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/173

 NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP l6l

not less specific and significant when it serves to secure, rather than disturb, the total relationship. Thus it is asserted that the collegiate relationship of the two Roman consuls perhaps operated more effectively against monarchical ambitions than the system of the nine highest functionaries in Athens. It is the same tension of dualism which works, now destructively, now conservatively, according to the other circumstances of the total association. The essential thing here is that this total associa- tion receives a totally different sociological character so soon as the performance in question is the work either of a single person, on the one hand, or of more than two, on the other. In the same sense as the Roman consuls, controlling colleges are often composed of two members : the two kings of the Spartans, whose incessant frictions were expressly emphasized as the security of the state ; the two highest war chiefs of the Iro- quois ; the two civic heads of mediaeval Augsburg, where the movement for a unified mayoralty was threatened with severe penalties. The peculiar tensions between the dualistic elements of a relatively large structure maintain the functions concerned at the status quo ; while, in the instances cited, reduction to unity would easily produce an individual dominance; the extension to many, on the other hand, would easily establish an oligarchical clique.

In addition, now, to the type which presented the duality of the elements in general as so decisive that further numerical increase did not change it in a marked degree, I mention fur- thermore two very singular, but nevertheless, as sociological types, highly important facts. The political status of France in Europe was immediately modified most significantly when it entered into a close relationship with Russia. A third and fourth member of the alliance would produce no further essential varia- tion after the principal change had once occurred. The contents of human life vary to a considerable degree in accordance with whether the first step is the most difficult and decisive, and all later steps have in comparison with it secondary importance, or whether the first step in itself means nothing, but its continua- tions and advances realize the modifications toward which it