Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/205

 NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP 1 93

certain qualities only below or above a definite extent. This has been treated above quite generally in connection with the difference between large and small groups. The question now arises, however, whether traits of character in the total group are not derived from definite numbers of members, in which case, of course, the reactions between the individuals constitute the real and decisive event. The question merely assumes, how- ever, that not the members in their individuality, but their assemblage in a picture of the whole, now constitutes the object of inquiry. The facts which point to this significance of the group-quantity all belong in a single type, namely, the legal prescriptions as to the minimum or maximum membership of associations in order that, as such, they may lay claim to certain functions or rights, or may be liable to the performance of cer- tain obligations. The ground for this is close at hand. The special qualities which associations develop on the ground of their membership, and which justify the legal prescription with reference to them, would, to be sure, always be the same, attached to the same number, if there were no psychological differences between men, and the effect of a group followed its quantity as exactly as is the case with the dynamic action of a moved homogeneous mass of matter. The inevitable individual differences of the members, however, make all precise and antici- patory determinations completely elusive. They bring it to pass that the same degree of energy or thoughtlessness, of centraliza- ton or decentralization, of self-sufficiency or need of leadership, which once appears in a group of definite numbers, would a second time be discovered in a much smaller, and a third time only in a much larger group. The legal provisions, however, which must be related somehow to those qualities of associa- tions, cannot reckon technically with such paralysis and varia- tions on account of the accidental human material. They must rather name definite numbers of members held to be an average, to which they attach the rights and obligations of societies. The assumption must be at the basis that a certain common spirit, a certain temper, energy, tendency, emerges within a combined number of persons when, and only when, this number has