Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/24

 12 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

from the individual that it appears as something existing entirely by itself, not needing the individual, and possibly even antago- nistic to the individual somewhat as the concept, which, com- posed of singular and various phenomena of the common, is the higher above everyone of these details, the more it includes; so that precisely the universal ideas which rule the greatest circumference of particulars the abstractions with which meta- physics reckons attain a life apart, whose norms and develop- ments are often alien, or hostile, to those of the tangible particulars. The great group thus gains its unity as it expresses itself in its organs and in its law, in its political ideas and in its ideals only at the price of a wide distance of all those struc- tures from the individual, his views and needs, which find imme- diate activity and consideration in the social life of a small circle. From this relation there arises the typical difficulty of organizations in which a series of minor combinations are included within a larger one ; viz., the fact is that the situations can be readily seen, and treated with interest and care, only close at hand ; while, on the contrary, only from the distance which the central position holds can a just and regular relation of all the details to each other be established. This is a discrepancy which, for example, always emerges in the treatment of poverty, in the organization of labor, and in educational administration. The relationships of person to person, which constitute the life- principle of smaller circles, are not easily compatible with the distance and coolness of the objective-abstract norms without which the great group cannot exist.

The unity and the correlating form of the great group, as contrasted with its elements and their primary socializations, come into existence only through negations. Social actions and regulations evolve in many ways the character of negativity in the degree of their numerical inclusiveness. In the case of mass actions, the motives of individuals are often so different that their unification is possible in the degree in which their content is merely negative and destructive. The unrest which leads to great revolutions is always nursed from so many, and often directly opposing, sources that their focalization upon a positive