Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/180

 168 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

attempts to reconcile to each other the conflicting claims, and to eliminate whatever in them is irreconcilable. The conflicts between laborers and employers have produced both forms, especially in England. We find boards of conciliation in which the parties, under the presidency of a nonpartisan, put an end to quarrels by conferences. The mediator in this form brings about reconciliation, to be sure, only when, in the belief of both parties, the circumstances in themselves indicate the advantage of peace ; in a word, when the real situation in itself justifies peace. Apart from matter-of-course removal of misunderstand- ings, appeals to good intentions, etc., the way is prepared for progress of this belief among the parties, through the mediation of the nonpartisan, somewhat in the following manner : While the nonpartisan holds the claims and the arguments of the one party before the other, they lose the tone of that subjective passion which produces the like on the other side. Here appears, in a wholesome way, what is so often to be regretted ; namely, that the feeling which accompanies a psychic content within its first agent, within a second, to whom this content is transferred, is considerably weakened. For that reason rec- ommendations and testimonials which must first pass several intermediate persons are so often impotent, even if their objec- tive content comes with no real diminution to the person who is to give the final decision. In the transfer affective impondera- bilities are lost which not only insufficient actual reasons replace, but even sufficient ones supply with the impulse for realization. This fact, which is highly significant for the development of purely psychical influences, brings to pass, in the simple case of a third mediating social element, that the modulations of feeling which accompany the demand, because they are formulated from one unpartisan side and represented to the other, suddenly fall away from the material content, and thus the circle fatal to all conciliation is avoided, viz., that the intensity of the one provokes that of the other, and then the latter reacts to increase the violence of the first, and so on until there is no stopping-place. More than this, each party not merely hears more objective statement, but each must also