Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/828

 THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT. 1 III.

IF an evolution occurs in the form of incessant rhythmical reaction of two periods, the one equally legitimate with the other, and attaining its proper meaning only in relationship and antithesis with the other, the image that we present to ourselves of such a procedure seldom reproduces its objective equilibrium and the persistent level upon which the one element always relieves the other. Almost inevitably, however, on the other hand, we give to the reaction between them a kind of teleologi- cal accent, so that the one element always counts as the point of departure, the essential premise out of which the other develops, while the transition in the opposite direction appears to be a retrogression. Assuming, for example, that the world-process is a perpetual reaction between qualitative homogeneity of com- bined masses of matter, and differentiated heterogeneity of the same matter; supposing also that we are convinced that one of these conditions always proceeds from the other, and then again the derived condition passes into another form of the primary condition ; nevertheless, as our thought-categories always func- tion, we still regard the condition of homogeneity as first, that is, our demand for explanation requires much more the derivation of manifoldness from unity than the reverse, although it would perhaps be much more correct to assume neither of the two as the first, but to posit an unending rhythm, in which we can make no halt at any calculable stage, but must rather assume the stage as one derived from an earlier condition. The same thing is true of the principles of rest and motion. Although, in the whole of nature as well as in its particular details, the two con- stantly relieve each other, yet we are in the habit of assuming that the condition of rest is original, or at least a definitive con- dition which, so to speak, calls for no derivation. Accordingly,

1 Translated by A. W. SMALL.

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