Georg Simmel

“ The aristocracy has no such tendency, because every division of labor brings with it gradation of rank, and this is repugnant to the class consciousness and inimical to its unity. The peasant class does not have it, because it is not required or permitted by its technique. It is peculiar, however, that variability and division of labor, much as they essentially and in their personal agents depend on each other, with respect to the self-maintenance of the group, often work in direct opposition to each other. ”

“ Social unity is the abiding form, or element, or whatever we may call it, which asserts itself as the substantial in all changes of its peculiar, special shape, its content, its relations to the social interests and destinies ”

“ When, for instance, the preservation of a group is very closely bound up with maintenance of a particular stratum in its existence and peculiarities—for example, the highest, the broadest, or the middle stratum—the first two cases demand more rigidity of the social-life form, the last more elasticity. Aristocracies are in general conservative. If they are in reality what the name asserts, they are the most adequate expression of the actual inequality between men. ”

“ The struggle against a power standing outside the group brings the unity of the group and the necessity of maintaining it unshaken to most lively consciousness. It is a fact of the greatest social significance, one of the few which are true almost without exception of group formations of every sort, that common antagonism against a third party under all circumstances tends to consolidate the combining group, and with much greater certainty than community in friendly relationships toward a third party. ”

“ Of the individual we know that varying stimulations are necessary for maintenance. The force and unity of his existence are not preserved by unbroken mechanical sameness of external and internal condition and action. On the contrary, the individual is likewise naturally adapted to preservation of his unity in change, not merely of what he does and endures, but also in change within each of these factors of his experience. It is consequently not impossible that the bond which holds the group together needs varying stimulation in order to remain in consciousness and force. ”

“ Given then this most favorable case of an aristocracy, the whole aristocratic class is bound to punctilious insistence upon the conditions which are essential to its preservation; for every experimental disturbance might threaten that fine and rare proportion between qualification and position, either in reality or in the feelings of the persons concerned, and thus might furnish an impulse for radical transformation. The real occasion for such change of an aristocracy, however, will be that such absolute justification of the regulating system scarcely ever exists. ”

“ The precisely contrary picture, namely, the most extreme ductility and exchangeability of the sociological forms as a condition of self-preservation, is shown for example by groups that maintain their existence within larger groups either by tolerance or it may be purely par nefas. Only by means of the most complete elasticity can such a society combine firmness of coherence with the constant necessity of defense or with the necessity of rapid shifting from defense to offense. Such a group must be able, so to speak, to crawl into every hole. ”

“ Little as the truth, in and of itself, in the isolated case, possesses an advantage, or a mystic power of prevalence, over error, yet its ultimate victory is probable for the reason that truth is only one, while errors about the same subject are countless. ”

“ For, although antagonism, in general, never entirely and universally dies out, yet it accords with its nature to build only a spatially and temporally limited section between the operations of the forces that make for coherence and unified harmony. In its peculiar nature, antagonism presents one of those contrast-stimuli, evidently demanded by the innermost needs of the unifying social bond, because there, as elsewhere, the permanent can emerge and come to conscious force only as a function of the changeable. ”

“ In the same way it may be shown, in the opposite direction, that a group with very many positions, built the one above another in close gradation, must have the character of decided fluidity and variability, if the greatest perplexities and disturbances are to be avoided. When a great multiplicity of situations is possible, it is from the outset less probable that each will at once fall into the right position than in the case of a fixed social system which assigns each a place within the great group comprehending many forms of action. ”

“ In case the mass is not roused by direct physical excitement and in consequence of stimulations and suggestions from opposite sides, nervous vacillation begins in place of firm direction, thus putting the mass at the mercy of every actual impulse; in case its deep and permanent character operates rather, the mass follows the law of inertia. It does not change its condition from rest or movement by its own initiative, but only as a result of the coöperation of new positive forces. ”

“ Aversions and antagonism between group elements may bring the actual unity of the whole, existing in spite of them, to keener effectiveness. Since these oppositions shorten the social binding cords, they tighten them at the same time and thus make them more perceptible. This is also the way to snap them, to be sure. But before that occurs, these counter-movements, which are possible only on the basis of fundamental coherence and closeness of relationship, will have brought these oppositions into more and more energetic functioning. ”

“ This double rôle of opposition as related to social self-preservation—with reference to external and to internal relations, as antithesis between the whole group and an external power, and as antithesis between the elements of the group among themselves—is reproduced as genuine sociological life form in the narrower relationships between individual people. These also plainly need the stimulus of difference in order to retain and protect their unity. ”

“ In the latter case the problem of the group is to adjust its varying individual members to satisfaction of the diverse coexisting demands. The whole diversity and gradation in callings and positions to which we have referred is evidently possible only through division of labor. Consequently this division of labor, like its counterpart, variability of social life form, is a characteristic of the middle class and of its predominance. Neither the aristocracy nor the class of free peasant citizens tends to any large degree of division of labor. ”

“ That adaptation to newly emerging social forces or ideals, such as takes place through diminution of exploitation and subjection, through legal definition of rights in place of arbitrary interpretation, through increase of the rights and of the shares of goods assigned to the lower classes—such adaptation is not wont, so far as it is a voluntary concession, to find its ultimate purpose in that which is changed by the concession, but rather in that which may be preserved by means of such concession. ”

“ The lordship of the few over the many is likely to rest rather on a totally different basis, and not on the ideal appropriateness of this relation. Under these circumstances the ruling class will have the utmost interest in affording the least occasion for movements toward disturbance and innovation, for every movement of that sort would stimulate the rightful or supposed claims of the ruled. There is danger in this case that not the persons merely, but the whole constitution, might be changed, and this is the decisive period for our course of thought. ”

“ The character of fluctuation is impressed on this stratum, therefore, and the appropriateness of its attitude will, therefore, be in large measure an appropriateness of adaptations, variations, concessions, through which the inevitable movement of the whole may be at least so guided or opposed that the essential form and force of the group may remain throughout all change of conditions. We may designate the sociological form of a group which is characterized by the extension and prevalence of a middle class as that of continuity. ”

“ In all the cases considered thus far, the easy changeability of group life, its inclination to transfers of both formal and personal sorts, has been an adaptation to the necessities of life; a bending necessary to avoid breaking, whenever there is a lack of that substantial firmness which, in any event, would defeat every exertion of destructive force. ”

“ In view of the fact, however, that this point of view has not yet been used to differentiate a special province of research, it is first of all in order to train the vision to discern in the case of separate phenomena what is sociological and what belongs in the domain of other sciences, in order that sociology may at last stop plowing in already cultivated fields. ”

“ A case in point occurs, as may easily be understood, when a condition that is definite either in content or otherwise remains long unchanged, and there is danger that the condition disturbed presently by some outward circumstance may drag down the social unity itself in its fall. ”

“ This danger which threatens at every modification and compliance of an aristocratic constitution, viz., that the concession made for the sake of self-preservation may by sheer force of its own specific gravity lead to a complete overthrow, exhibits conservatism, at the start, and the form of defense which is invariably rigid and unyielding, as most favorable for the aristocratic social form. ”

“ Such constitutions may secure harmony between the dispositions and the station of individuals through the fact that the separate life spheres are relatively broad, and their demands and opportunities are extensive enough to offer appropriate places for the individuals, diverse as they may be from variations of heredity, education, and example. A class constitution, consequently, provides for a preëstablished harmony between the qualities or dispositions of the individual and his position in the social whole. ”

“ The continuity of stations with reference to repute, possessions, activity, culture, etc., rests not merely in the minuteness of the differences which are coördinated in an objective scale, but rather in the frequency of the change which leads one and the same person through a number of such situations, and thus produces at the same time perpetual and varying personal unions of objectively different situations. ”

“ Continuity exists only when single individuals circulate through higher and lower positions. Only thus is the separateness of strata changed over into an actually uninterrupted structure. In the fortune of the individuals the upper and the lower situation must first meet, in order that the sociological picture may show an actual mediation between the upper and the lower. Precisely this, and not a simple intermediate position, is secured by a middle class. It requires little reflection to discern that this closeness of gradation must characterize also the grades within the middle class. ”

“ Hence it is equally the case that movements which are carried on by great masses, and are left to themselves, move on consistently to their extreme, and on the other hand a once attained equilibrium of conditions is not easily abandoned, so far as the change depends on the mass. ”

“ The new element is rather that this third stratum itself has an upper and a lower boundary, that upon these boundaries an exchange with the other two strata is constantly taking place, and that through this continual fluctuation effacement of boundaries and continual transitions are produced.
An actual continuity of social life does not arise from the fact that individuals are built into positions one above another, with never so slight gradations. ”

“ The cultivator of the soil is a priori conservative. His occupation requires long terms, abiding arrangements, resolute persistency. The uncertainties of the weather, upon which his fortunes hang, incline him to a certain fatalism, which shows itself, with respect to external powers, rather in enduring than in evading. ”

“ Thus the geometrical description of a crystalline form is a problem the independence of which is absolutely unaffected by the fact that its realization in the case of a single body depends upon the chemical constitution of the same. ”

“ The very fact that violent changes in the personnel of the ruling class have often been brought about with the assistance of the masses calls attention to the possibility, which has not seldom become a reality, that on such an occasion the whole aristocratic principle may be overturned. ”

“ Just as religious conceptions are often, by long reciprocal relationship, closely interwoven with moral feelings, and by virtue of this association the removal of the feeling by enlightenment results in uprooting the ethical norms at the same time, so a formerly rich family often goes to pieces on losing its property, and likewise many a poor family when it suddenly becomes rich. ”

“ A band of settlers will be on the whole very pliable and variable. It will dispose itself now in centralized form, now in very free fashion, according as it is under pressure from without or has plenty of scope for action. It will confide leadership according to changing interests to frequently changing persons. ”