Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/54

 42 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

a miracle which goes back to foundations beyond the conscious ego, in circumstances not rationalistically explicable. This very fact expresses itself in the distinction between this unity and its individual elements. That each of these is sensible of the relation as something which leads a peculiar life, with pecu- liar energies, is merely a statement of its incommensurability with that which we are accustomed to represent as the personal and of-itself-conceivable ego. This is furthermore promoted by the superindividuality of the marriage forms in the spirit of their historical tradition. Immeasurably different as the character and worth of the forms of marriage may be indeed, one would be rash to say-whether they are more or less different than sepa- rate individuals yet in the last analysis no pair has invented the form of marriage for itself, but this form-prevailed within each culture area as a relatively fixed one, safe from arbitrari- ness, and untouched in its formal nature by individual shadings and vicissitudes. This projection of traditional elements into the matrimonial relationship, which puts it in significant con- trast with the individual freedom that is possible, for instance, in molding the friendly relationship, and which permits only acceptance or rejection, but no modification, obviously favors the feeling of an objective constitution and superpersonal unity in marriage ; although each of the two partners has only the single other in juxtaposition with himself, yet he feels himself at least partially so situated as one feels only when in correla- tion with a collectivity i. e., as the mere bearer of a super- individual structure, which in its essence and its norms is independent of himself, although, to be sure, he is an organic member of it. Something sociologically similar might be pointed out, furthermore, in the duality of partners in a business. Although the formation and operation of the partnership rest, perhaps, exclusively upon the co-operation of these two person- alities, yet the subject-matter of this co-operation, the business or the firm, is an objective structure, toward which each of its com- ponents has rights and duties in many respects not otherwise than any third party. Yet this has a sociological meaning dif- ferent from that in the case of marriage ; for the business is some-