Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/200

 188 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

from so great quantitative superiority in the energy of the one party that the terms of correlation are a matter of utter indiffer- ence. The whole category of enmities of which fraternal strife is the extreme derives its radically destructive character pre- cisely from the fact that experience and knowledge, just like the instincts which have their source in the same radical unity, place in the hands of each the most deadly weapon against this very opponent. That which constitutes the basis of the relationship of similars to each other namely, knowledge of the external situation, and ability to enter sympathetically into the subjective situation this is evidently quite as much the means of the deep- est wounds, which do not allow any opportunity for attack to escape, and it leads, since by its very nature it is reciprocal, to the most utter destruction. Consequently struggle of like against like, the division of the enemy into two qualitatively homoge- neous parties, is one of the most thorough realizations of divide et impera.

(2) Where it is not possible for the oppressor to have his purposes carried out so exclusively by his victims themselves, where he must himself enter into their struggle, the scheme is very simple. He simply supports the one until the other is a practically eliminated factor, whereupon the former is his easy prey. This support is most advantageously given to the one who of himself is the stronger. This policy may be carried out in the more negative form, that the more powerful, in a complex of elements which is to be suppressed, may merely be protected. Thus Rome, in its subjugation of Greece, placed upon itself, with respect to Athens and Sparta, the most obvious reserve. This behavior must necessarily produce grievance and envy on the one hand, arrogance and overconfidence on the other, a division which made the booty easy for the oppressor. The technique of a domineering will, namely, of two parties equally interested against the third, to protect the stronger until he has ruined the weaker, and then, with change of front, to proceed against the now isolated party and to subdue him this technique is not less in favor in case of the establishment of world-empires than in the case of brawls between street urchins, in the manipulation