lives, while the other is made up of momentary impulses and isolated irritations. The latter would still oftener conquer the former if the inconsistencies and perversities in its variations were not broken up by objective regularities, through which the abiding undercurrent repeatedly recovers its power. Since now the objective and ideal constraint must, as a rule, be borne by superordinated persons, so in the most complicated relations, those of the family, of the class (ständischen), of politics, of the church, of social intercourse in the restricted sense (geselligen)—personal superordination seems to be the necessary form of coherence of the elements. Here also adaptation of the superordinated or subordinated position to the individual qualification is not a necessary element. It is only the universally human qualification which, in the sociological form of organized constraint, finds its adequate expression.
More than this, such correspondence of personal qualifications and social position in the series of superordinations and subordinations is in general and on principle impossible, no matter what sort of organization may be proposed for this purpose. With this perception we encounter the last and most radical complication which connects itself with the problem of the correspondence of these factors. It consists in the fact that there are always more persons qualified for superior positions than there are positions of that order. Of the millions subject to a prince there are surely a great number who would be equally good and perhaps better princes. Of the workmen in a factory there are many who would be equally good managers or at least foremen. Among the common soldiers of an army are many who possess full, though perhaps latent, qualifications to be officers. This unquestioned fact is not done away with by the contrasted fact that there are also many people in superior positions who do not possess sufficient qualifications for the same. In the first place such an occurrence is very conspicuous. Incapacity in a position from which others must be led is less easily concealed than other incapacities. It consequently seems to occur with special frequency, precisely because so many others
