Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/510

 49 2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

unifying in the narrower sense, but also of those which are, in the narrower sense, dualistic. We associate a corresponding double meaning with disunity or opposition. Since the latter displays its nullifying or destructive sense between the individual elements, the conclusion is hastily drawn that it must work in the same man- ner upon the total relationship. In reality, however, it by no means follows that the factor which is something negative and diminutive in its action between individuals, considered in a given direction and separately, has the same working throughout the totality of its relationships. In this larger circle of rela- tionships the perspective may be quite different. That which was negative and dualistic may, after deduction of its destructive action in particular relationships, on the whole, play an entirely positive role. This visibly appears especially in those instances where the social structure is characterized by exactness and care- fully conserved purity of social divisions and gradations, For instance, the social system of India rests not only upon the 1 1 hierarchy of the castes, but also directly upon their reciprocal repulsion. Enmities not merely prevent gradual disappearance of the boundaries within the society and for this reason these enmities may be consciously promoted, as guarantee of the exist- ing social constitution but more than this the enmities are directly productive sociologically. They give classes and per- sonalities their position toward each other, which they would not have found if these objective causes of hostility had been present and effective in precisely the same way, but had not been accompanied by the feeling of enmity. It is by no means cer- tain that a secure and complete community life would always result if these energies should disappear which, looked at in detail, seem repulsive and destructive, just as a qualitatively unchanged and richer property results when unproductive ele- ments disappear; but there would ensue rather a condition as changed and often as unrealizable, as after the elimination of the forces of co-operation sympathy, assistance, harmony of interests.

This applies not only in the large to that sort of competition which merely as a formal relation of tension, and entirely apart