Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/208

 196 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

gies are the operative principle. Where a maximum number is fixed, mistrust toward the plurality, which does not operate toward its separate components, is, on the contrary, the effective principle.

Whether a prohibition is attached to a maximum or permis- sion to a minimum, the legislators will not have been in any doubt that the result which they fear or wish occurs only quite irregularly, and in a merely average constancy in connection with the fixed limits, but the arbitrariness of the determination is in this case quite as unavoidable and justifiable as in the deter- mination of a period of life after which persons assume the rights and duties of their majority. Without any question, subjective capacity for this responsibility occurs in the case of many earlier and in others later, in the case of ?wne at one stroke in the pre- cise minute fixed by law, but praxis can obtain the fixed stand- ards which it needs only by means of dividing the series, which in itself is continuous, for the purposes of the law at a given point into two divisions, the quite distinct methods of treating which can find no precise justification in the objective character- istics of the two. Hence it is so extremely instructive that in all definitions from which the above examples are selected, the special quality of the persons affected by the definition does not at all come into consideration, although it necessarily determines each individual case. It is, however, nothing tangible, and as the tangible element there remains, therefore, only the number. It is essential to demonstrate the universally prevailing profound feeling that the number would be the decisive factor if the indi- vidual differences did not counteract their working; that, how- ever, for precisely this reason these effects are securely contained in the ultimate total phenomena.

PROFESSOR DR. GEORG SIMMEL. UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN.