Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/184

 1 72 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

both parties. A still more difficult and often tragic situation occurs, however, when it is not such separated interest-prov- inces of the third party with which he is attached to each of the others, but when his whole personality is close to both. This case is most sharply defined when the object of struggle cannot be distinctly objectified, and the essential significance of the struggle is only an excuse or an accidental occasion for deeper personal incompatibilities. In such a case the third party, who is intimately united by love or duty, by destiny or habit, with each of the two in equal degrees, will be directly consumed by the conflict much more than if he placed himself upon one of the two sides. This is all the more the case since in these instances the equilibrium of his interests, which permits no one- sided decision, usually leads to no successful mediation, because reduction to a merely material antithesis is impossible. This is the type of very many family conflicts. Whereas the mediator who is nonpartisan through equal distance from the contestants can with relative ease do justice to both, he who is mediator by reason of equal nearness to both will find it very much more difficult, and will come personally into the most painful dualism of feeling. On that account, in case the mediator is chosen, under otherwise similar circumstances the equally uninterested will be preferred to the equally interested ; as, for example, Italian cities in the Middle Ages often got their judges from other cities in order to be sure of their freedom from prejudice with reference to internal party quarrels.

Herewith is the transition given to the second form of unifi- cation by means of the nonpartisan : that is, to arbitration. So long as the third party works as a real mediator, the ending of the conflict rests finally in the hands of the parties themselves. By choice of the arbitrator they have put this ultimate decision out of their own hands. They have at the same time projected their purpose of conciliation beyond themselves. It has become a person in the arbitrator, whereby it attains special distinctness and energy in contrast with the antagonistic forces. The volun- tary appeal to an arbitrator, to whom the parties subordinate themselves a priori, presupposes a greater subjective confidence