Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/183

 NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP 1 7!

this case the decisiveness with which the above emphasized separation of the material from the personal elements of the conflict is realized, is very noticeable. According to the pre- sumption, the nonpartisan attaches no sort of personal interest to the material content of the partisan position. In him they are weighed merely as in a purely impersonal intellect, without affecting any subjective stratum of his personality. For the persons or the combinations of persons, however, who are the parties to these which for him are purely theoretical conflicts, he must have a subjective interest, for he would otherwise not undertake the function of mediator. Here, therefore, a purely objective mechanism will at the same time be set in motion by a subjective impulse ; personal distance from the objective significance of the quarrel and interest in its subjective meaning must coexist in order to mark the status of the nonpartisan, and make him the more fitted for his function, the more dis- tinctly each is differentiated in itself, and the more as a unity the two can work precisely in this differentiation.

The position of the nonpartisan tends to more complicated formation when he owes his position to equal participation in the contradictory interests instead of to indifference to both. A mediatorial status upon this basis is often made possible when a personality belongs locally to another circle of interests from that which is immediately concerned with the material question. Thus, for example, in earlier times the bishops could often inter- vene between the secular lord of their diocese and the pope. In the same way the administrative functionary who is involved in the special interests of his district may be the most appropriate mediator when a collision occurs between these interests and the general interests of the state of which he is an official. Like- wise the degree of nonpartisanship and simultaneous interest which qualifies for mediation between two locally separated groups is often found in the case of persons who came from one of the groups and live in the other. The difficulty of such posi- tion of mediator usually consists in the fact that the equality of his interest for both parties, his essential equilibrium of interest, is not securely demonstrable, and is often enough suspected by