THE PERSISTENCE OF SOCIAL GROUPS. III.[1]
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. It must be able, according to circumstances, to expand or to contract. Like a fluid body it must be able to take on any form that offers itself. Thus bands of rogues and conspirators must acquire capacity to divide instantly and to act in separate groups; to follow without restriction now this and now that leader; whether in direct or indirect contact, to preserve the same group spirit; after each disruption to reorganize themselves at once in any form that is possible at the moment, etc. They arrive in this way at that power of self-maintenance in consequence of which the Gipsies are wont to say of themselves: “It would be useless to hang us, for we never die.” Similar assertions have been made about the Jews. The force of their social coherence, the sense of solidarity which is practically so influential among them, the actual, although often relaxed, exclusiveness toward all but Jews—this sociological bond, it is said, may have lost some of its confessional coloring since the emancipation, but it has only exchanged it for the capitalistic. For that very reason, it is said, “the invisible organization of the Jews is unconquerable, for so soon as hatred of Judaism robs it first of the power of the press, then of the power of capital, finally of equal civic rights, the Jewish societary unit does not forthwith disappear. It is only robbed of its socio-political organization. It is once more con-
- ↑ Translated by Albion W. Small.
