Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/189

 NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP 1 77

to him, the situation does not bring to him the complete advan- tage. Thus, in one of the most frequent cases of the second type, namely, the competition of two persons of the same sex for the favor of the same person of the opposite sex. In this case the decision of the latter does not in general depend in the same sense upon the will of the latter as that of a purchaser between competing vendors, or that of a prince dispensing favors between competing solicitors. It is rather given through existing feelings, which are not determinable by will, and to that extent do not permit the decision to depend on completely free choice. For that reason we are not here speaking of proposals, the significance of which is merely the guidance of choice, and, although the situation of the tertius gaudens is completely given, its specific utilization is on the whole forbidden. The most com- prehensive illustration of the tertius gaudens is the purchasing public under a regime of free competition. The struggle of the producers for purchasers gives to the latter almost complete independence of the individual source of supply, although the purchaser is completely dependent upon the aggregate of sellers, and therefore a coalition among them would at once reverse the relationship. The former situation of independence permits the purchaser to make his purchases conditional upon satisfaction of his demands as to quality and price of the goods. His status thus has, moreover, the special advantage that the producers must even seek to anticipate these conditions, to guess the unspoken or unconscious wishes of the consumer, to sug- gest to him conditions that are not present, or to accustom him to desirable conditions. From the first-mentioned case of the woman between two admirers, in which, because the decision depends upon their personality, and not upon their actions, she does not set conditions, and therefore does not exploit the situa- tion, a continuous series of phenomena leads up to the case of modern commerce, from which the element of personal charac- teristic is completely eliminated, and in which the advantage of the party selecting extends so far that the competing parties even relieve him of the trouble of advancing the conditions to their maximum. This last is the utmost which the situation of tertius gaudens can accomplish for the latter.