Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/29

 NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP 17

vance of logic; but with disregard of logic it must fail precisely as the moral-social community, even with the most exact avoid- ance of everything criminally forbidden, may go to pieces; while with disobedience of these norms it must go to pieces. The case is not different with the societary forms in the more restricted sense, so far as they are actually general in a community. Although their observance is distinctive for nobody, transgression of them is in the highest degree distinctive, for the most univer- sal laws of a community are merely not to be transgressed, while the special norms which hold together restricted circles, in the degree of their specialization, lend to the individual a positive shading and difference. The disobedience of these latter norms may destroy such a circle, but the larger comprehending group, in which the elements of the smaller belong in addition, remains still intact, and does not dissolve until its elements transgress that minimum of norms the essence of which is, in the ratio of their generality, merely prohibitive. Upon this relationship rests also the great practical utility of the quite empty societary forms of courtesy. Upon the positive existence of respect and loyalty of which they testify to us we may not count, even from their most accurate observance ; on the other hand, the slightest failure to observe them proves that those feelings are not present. The salute upon the street by no means demonstrates respect ; the omission of the same, however, gives very decided evidence of the contrary. As symbols of positive subjective attitude, these forms completely fail to be of service. The negative, how- ever, they advertise in a most useful way, since a quite easy negligence may radically and definitely determine the relation to a given person and indeed in the degree in which the form of courtesy is quite universal and conventional, that is, a part of the essential nature of a relatively large circle.

This form-difference of the life-conditions which attaches itself to the social quantity-difference is, in the large, denoted also by the antithesis between custom and law. It appears as though in the case of the Aryan peoples the first attachments of the individual to a superindividual life-order proceeded from a quite general instinct or concept, which signified the categorical,