Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/711

 THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT

687

world, is immeasurably removed from the faithful. He lacks entirely those traits which are attributed to the special divinities. On the other hand, for that very reason, he can unite the most heterogeneous peoples and personalities in an unprecedented religious community. Still further, the costume characterizes always distinct social strata as belonging together ; and it often appears to fulfil this social function best when it is an imported costume. To dress as they dress in Paris signifies a close and exclusive community with a certain social stratum in other lands. The prophet Zephaniah spoke already of the superior classes, which as such wore foreign garments. The very manifold mean- ings which the notion of "distance" covers have still many sorts of psychological relationship. An image the object of which is presented as in any way "distant" appears to work in a certain degree more impersonally, the individual reaction which follows from immediate vicinity and contact is thereby less intense, it bears a less immediately subjective character, and may conse- quently be the same for a greater number of individuals. Just as the general notion which comprehends a number of particu- lars is the more abstract, that is, the more widely distant from each of these separate particulars, the more numerous and the more unlike each other the latter are, so also a social point of unification appears to exercise specifically consolidating and comprehensive influences, if it is somewhat widely removed from the elements to be combined. This interval may be also both spatial and of other sorts. Such unifications in consequence of a danger which, however, has rather a chronic than an acute character, through a struggle that is not fought out, but always latent, will be most effective in cases where a permanent unifica- tion of elements that are in some way antithetical is in question. This was the situation in the case of the Achean League to which I have already referred. Accordingly, Montesquieu observed that "while peace and confidence make the glory and the secu- rity of the monarchy, a republic needs to be in fear of some- body." Obviously the basis for this assertion is an undefined consciousness of the before-mentioned constellation. The mon- archy as such takes care for the cohesion of elements in any