Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/513

 THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT 495

the process has contained a multiplicity of distinguishable forms of relationship. It is once for all the nature of the human mind not to be bound to other minds by a single thread. Scientific analysis must busy itself with the elementary unities, and their specific combining energies, but in fact they do not work in iso- lation. On the other hand, however, there are many, apparently composite, relationships between individuals, which in reality are probably quite unitary structures, although we may not directly designate them as such. We make them, consequently, in accordance with all sorts of analogies, because of anterior motives or subsequent external consequences, into a concert of manifold psychic elements. The distance, for example, between two related individuals which distance gives character to their relation often appears to us as the product of an inclination which should properly have produced a much closer intimacy, and of a disinclination which must have thrust them much far- ther from each other. Since these two forces act as reciprocal limitation, the resultant is the degree of distance which we observe. This may, however, be an entire error. The relation- ship is destined from within to this particular degree of distance. It has, so to speak, from the beginning a certain temperature, which does not arise merely through the accommodation of an essentially warmer and an essentially cooler condition. The degree of superiority and suggestion which establishes itself between certain persons is often interpreted by us as though it were produced by the strength of the one party, which is crossed by a contemporary weakness on the other side. This strength and weakness may be present, but its duality frequently plays no part in the relationship as it actually exists ; but this relationship is determined by the total nature of the elements ; and only as a subsequent matter do we analyze its immediate character into these factors.

Erotic relationships furnish the most frequent examples. How often do they seem to us to be woven together out of love and respect, or even of contempt; out of love and conscious har- mony of natures, or again out of the consciousness of comple- menting each other through complete contrast of nature ; out of