Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/23

 NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP II

pleteness, which is by no means always in point, confronts a group that is, the question whether all elements to which its principle extends are also actually included in it then the con- sequences of this completeness must be carefully distinguished from those consequences which follow from its size alone. To be sure, the group will also be larger if it is complete than if it is incomplete ; but not this association as a quantity, but the problem dependent immediately upon that, viz., whether with that quantity the group fills out therewith a prescribed scheme, may be so important for the group that, as in the case of labor coalitions, the disadvantages in cohesion and unity, following from mere increase of numbers, may stand in direct antagonism and counterpoise with the advantages of increasing completeness. In general we may, in a very essential degree, explain the structures which are peculiar to large communities, as such, from the fact that they produce with these structures a substitute for the personal and immediate cohesion which is peculiar to the smaller circles. In the case of the large group, the question is one of correlating centers which are channels and mediators of the reciprocal action of the elements, and which thus operate as independent bearers of the societary unity, after this is no longer produced by immediate relationship of person to person. For this purpose magistracies and representatives grow up, laws and symbols of the group-life, organizations and social generali- zations. At this point I have only to emphasize their connec- tion with the numerical point of view. They all occur purely and maturely, so far as the main point is concerned, only in large circles, i. e., as the abstract form of group-dependence, whose concrete form can no longer exist after a certain extension of the community has been reached. Their utility, ramifying into a thousand social qualities, rests in the last analysis upon numeri- cal presuppositions. The character of the superpersonal and objective with which such incorporations of the group-energies face the individual is derived directly from the multiplicity of the variously operative individual elements ; for only through their multiplicity is the individual element in them paralyzed, and from the same cause the universal mounts to such a distance