Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/32

 20 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

that the customs of trade, as such, permit or command something different from those of the aristocracy; those of a religious circle, again, something different from those of a literary body; etc. In this connection it is obvious that the content of custom consists of the special limitations which a narrower circle needs, which circle has at its disposal for the guarantee of the limitations neither the power of civic law nor entirely trustworthy autono- mous moral impulses. What is common to these circles and the most primitive, with which for us social history begins, is nothing else than numerical paucity. The life-forms which earlier sufficed for the entire community-circle have, with the growth of the latter, withdrawn themselves to its subordinate divisions, for these contain now the possibilities of personal relationships, the approximate equality of level of the members, the common interests and ideals, in the presence of which one may confide social regulation to so precarious and ambiguous a species of norm as customary morality is. With increasing quantity of the elements, and of the therewith unavoidable inde- pendence of the same, these limitations disappear for the circle as a whole. The peculiar constraining power of custom becomes for the state too little, and for the individual too much. The former demands greater guarantees, the latter greater freedom ; and only with those sides with which each element belongs to intermediate circles is it still socially controlled through custom. To this correlation which attaches the difference of the social form of custom from that law, to the quantitative variation of the communities, there are obvious exceptions. The original popular unities of the Teutonic stocks, upon which the great realms, the Prankish, the English, the Swedish, raised themselves, were often able to protect themselves a long time against loss of the privilege of enacting their own laws. Such laws as they had were often made enactments of the state comparatively late ; and, on the other hand, in modern international intercourse many customs prevail which have not yet received the force of law. Within the particular state many modes of action are established as law which in external relationships, that is, within the largest circle, must be consigned to the looser form of custom. The