Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/526

 508 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

would not be possible. Indeed, the conduct of the war game is often so rigorous, so impersonal, and observed on both sides with such nice sense of honor, that unities of a corporate order can seldom in these respects compare with it.

The foregoing illustration exhibits the struggle principle and the unifying principle which bind antithetical elements into a unity with almost the clearness of abstract conceptions. It thus shows how each arrives at its complete sociological significance in co-operation with the other. The same form dominates, although not with the same distinctness and freedom from mix- ture of the elements, the struggle for legal victory. In this case, to be sure, an object of contention is present. Voluntary con- cession of this object might satisfactorily end the contention. This is not the case with struggle for struggle's sake. Moreover, what we are accustomed to call the joy and passion of conflict in the case of a legal process is probably, in most cases, something quite different, namely, the energetic sense of justice, the impos- sibility of tolerating an actual or supposed invasion of the sphere of right with which the ego feels a sense of solidarity. The whole obstinacy and uncompromising persistence with which parties in such struggles often maintain the controversy to their own hurt has, even in the case of the aggressive party, scarcely the character of an attack in the proper sense, but rather that of a defense in a deeper significance. The point at issue is the self- preservation of the personality which so identifies itself with its possessions and its rights that any invasion of them seems to be a destruction of the personality ; and the struggle to protect them at the risk of the whole existence is thoroughly consistent. This individualistic impulse, and not the sociological motive of strug- gle, will consequently characterize such cases. With respect to the form of the struggle itself, however, judicial conflict is, to be sure, of an absolute sort ; that is, the reciprocal claims are asserted with a relentless objectivity and with employment of all available means, without being diverted or modified by personal or other extraneous considerations. The judicial conflict is, therefore, absolute conflict, in so far as nothing enters the whole action which does not properly belong in the conflict and which