Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/27

 NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP 15

the first instance of a negative sort. It is his original nature "to restrain from the evil," not, however, to incite to the good. He is only the " restrainer." The Hebrew God, who, in con- trast with separatistic polytheism, and quite unsocial monism, like that of India, brought into being or expressed a unification of the religio-social synthesis unknown to antiquity, gives his most sharply emphasized practical norms in the form, "Thou shalt not." In the German empire the positive relations of life which are subject to the civil law did not find their unifying form in the civil statute book until about thirty years after the founding of the empire. On the other hand, the penal statute book, with its prohibitive regulations, was brought together, and to that extent made the empire a unity, in 1872. That which especially fits prohibitions to generalize smaller circles into a larger one is the circumstances that the counterpart of the for- bidden is by no means always the forbidden, but often only the allowed. Thus, if in the circle A no a may occur, but ft, 7, B ; in B no ft, but a, 7, 8; in C no 7, but a, ft,, etc., the unified struc- ture may be formed from A, B, and C, upon the prohibition of a, ft, 7. The unity is only possible if in A ft and 7 are not forbid- den, but merely allowed, so that it also may be omitted. If, instead of that, ft and 7 are as positively forbidden as is a, and correspondingly in B and C, the consequence would be that no unit could be created which included all the positive group- limitations, because then there would always be oh the one side direct prescription of that which on the other side is directly forbidden. The same is the case in the following example : From ancient times the eating of a given species of animal was forbidden to every Egyptian, namely, that species which was sacred to his own village. The doctrine that holiness demands abstinence from all animal food arose then as the result of the amalgamation of a collection of local cults into a national religion, at the head of which stood a priesthood ruling as a unit. This unification could occur only through the synthesis or universalization of all those prohibitions ; for, if the eating of all animals, which was allowed in every village (that is, which also could be abstained from), had been positively commanded,