terpreted as the psychological
consolidation of a real social power; second, when the principle
establishes specific and characteristic relationships between those who
are subject to it in common. The former case appears chiefly in
connection with the moral imperatives. In the moral consciousness we
feel ourselves subject to a decree which does not appear to be issued by
any personal human power; we hear the voice of conscience only in
ourselves, although with a force and definiteness, in contrast with all
subjective egoism, which, as it seems, could have had its source only
from an authority outside the subject. As is well known, the attempt has
been made to resolve this contradiction by the assumption that we have
derived the content of morality from social decrees. Whatever is
serviceable to the species and to the group, whatever on that account is
demanded of the members for the self-preservation of the group, is
gradually bred into individuals as an instinct, so that it asserts
itself as a peculiar autonomous impression by the side of the properly
personal, and consequently often contradictory, impulses. Thus would be
explained the double character of the moral command. On the one side it
appears to us as an impersonal order to which we have simply to yield.
On the other side, however, no visible external power but only our own
most real and personal instinct enforces it upon us. Sociologically this
is of interest as an example of a wholly peculiar form of reaction
between the individual and his group. The social force is here
completely grown into the individual himself.

We now turn to the second sociological question raised by the case of
subordination to an impersonal ideal principle. How does this
subordination affect the reciprocal relation of the persons thus
subordinated in common? The development of the position of the _pater
familias_ among the Aryans exhibits this process clearly. The power of
the _pater familias_ was originally unlimited and entirely subjective;
that is, his momentary desire, his personal advantage, was permitted to
give the decision upon all regulations. But this arbitrary power
gradually became limited by a feeling of responsibility. The unity of
the domestic group, embodied in the _spiritus familiaris_, grew into the
ideal power, in relation to which the lord of the whole came to regard
himself as merely an obedient agent. Accordingly it follows that morals
and custom, instead of sub