Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/509

 THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT 49 l

practically more correct to say, however, that every historically actual unification contains, along with the factors that are uni- fying in the narrower sense, others which primarily make against unity.

As the individual achieves the unity of his personality not in such fashion that its contents invariably harmonize according to logical or material, religious or ethical, standards, but rather as contradiction and strife not merely precede that unity, but are operative in it at every moment of life ; so it is hardly to be expected that there should be any social unity in which the con- verging tendencies of the elements are not incessantly shot through with elements of divergence. A group which was entirely centripetal and harmonious that is, "unification" merely is not only impossible empirically, but it would also display no essential life-process and no stable structure. v^As the cosmos requires " Liebe und Hass," attraction and repul- sion, in order to have a form, society likewise requires some quantitative relation of harmony and disharmony, association and dissociation, liking and disliking, in order to attain to a definite formation. Moreover, these enmities are by no means mere sociological passivities, negative factors, in the sense that actual society comes into existence only through the working of the other and positive social forces, and this, too, only in so far as the negative forces are powerless to hinder the process. This ordinary conception is entirely superficial. Society, as it is given in fact, is the result of both categories of reactions, and in so far both act in a completely positive way. The misconception that the one factor tears down what the other builds up, and that what at last remains is the result of subtracting the one from the other (while in reality it is much rather to be regarded as the addition of one to the other), doubtless springs from the equivocal sense of the concept of unity. We describe as unity the agreement and the conjunction of social elements in contrast with their disjunctions, separations, disharmonies. We also use the term unity, however, for the total synthesis of the persons, energies, and forms in a group, in which the final wholeness is made up, not merely of those factors which are