Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/705

 THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT 68 1

concession on the part of the government, provided it is only par- tial, threatens that uniformity in the opposition of all the mem- bers, and therewith that unity of coherence, upon which a struggling minority must uncompromisingly insist. Accordingly, the unity of groups so frequently disappears if they have no h more enemies. This has often been pointed out from various directions in the case of Protestantism. Just because the pro- test was essential to Protestantism, the moment the opponent against whom it protested passed out of the range of active struggle, it lost its energy or its inner unity ; this latter in such a degree, indeed, that in such circumstances Protestantism repeated the conflict with the enemy in its own camp, and divided itself into a liberal and an orthodox party. The same thing has occurred in the party history of the United States. More than once the complete inferiority of one of the great par- ties has had as a consequence the dissolution of the other in minor groups with party antipathies of their own. Moreover, it is by no means promotive of the unity of Protestantism that it has really no heretics. On the other hand, the consciousness of unity in the Catholic church is decidedly strengthened by the fact of heresy and by its hostile attitude toward the same. The various elements of the church have always been able to orient themselves by the implacability of the antithesis with heresy, and in spite of many a centrifugal interest they have been by this fact able to preserve consciousness of unity. Hence the complete victory of a group over its enemies is not always fortu- h. nate in the sociological sense, for the consequence may be a decline of the energy which guarantees the coherence of the group, and, on the other hand, proportional activity of the dis- integrating forces that are always at work. The fall of the Romano-Latin empire in the fifth century has been explained by the fact that the common enemies were all subdued. Perhaps its basis namely, protection on the one side, and devotion on the other had for a period been no longer of a natural sort; but this came to light only after there was no longer any common enemy to offset the essential contradictions in the structure. Indeed, it may be actual political sagacity within many a group