Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/177

Rh a multiplicity of party structures, for tolerance, for intermediate parties, for a scale of graded changes. That epochs in which great masses are set in motion closely correspond with the dualism of parties, exclude indifferentism, and degrade the influence of mediating parties, is intelligible from the radicalism which we have observed as the character of mass movements. The simplicity of the ideas by which these are led demands a decisive yes or no. In the presence of the fundamental practical problems, there are, as a rule, only those two simple standpoints, while there may be innumerable that are mixed and thus mediating. In the same way, as a rule every energetic movement within a group, from the domestic group through the whole series of interest communities up to the political, will tend to promote stratification into a pure dualism. The accelerated tempo in the evolution of interests in the progress through stages of development, urges constantly toward more definitive decisions and separations. All mediations require time and leisure; quiet and stagnant epochs, in which the live questions are not stirred up, but are left covered by the regularity of the everyday interests, easily permit unobserved transitions to occur, and they give room for indifferent personalities which a more energetic tendency would necessarily drag into the antithesis of the principal parties. The typical difference of the sociological constellation remains thereby evidently always that of the two or of three chief parties. In the function of the third, namely, that of mediating between two extremes, several may share in graded degrees. This function is, so to speak, only a sort of extension or refinement in the technical equipment of the principle. This mediation itself, however, the decisive modification of the configuration from within, occurs only through the addition of the third party.

The rôle which the third party plays, and the configurations which result between three social elements, are herewith already indicated in large measure. The two presented both the first synthesis and unification and also the first separation and antithesis. The appearance of the third denotes transition, conciliation, abandonment of the absolute antithesis—sometimes, indeed,