ill grant an existence to the trader. For trade alone makes
possible unlimited combinations, in which intelligence finds ever wider
extensions and ever newer accessions, a thing rarely possible in the
case of the primitive producer with his lesser mobility and his
restriction to a circle of customers which could only very gradually be
increased. Trade can always absorb more men than primary production, and
it is therefore the most favorable province for the stranger, who
thrusts himself, so to speak, as a supernumerary into a group in which
all the economic positions are already possessed. History offers as the
classic illustration the European Jew. The stranger is by his very
nature no landowner--in saying which, land is taken not merely in a
physical sense but also in a metaphorical one of a permanent and a
substantial existence, which is fixed, if not in space, then at least in
an ideal position within the social order. The special sociological
characteristics of the stranger may now be presented.

a) _Mobility._--In the more intimate relations of man to man, the
stranger may disclose all possible attractions and significant
characters, but just as long as he is regarded as a stranger, he is in
so far no landowner. Now restriction to trade, and frequently to pure
finance, as if by a sublimation from the former, gives the stranger the
specific character of mobility. With this mobility, when it occurs
within a limited group, there occurs that synthesis of nearness and
remoteness which constitutes the formal position of the stranger; for
the merely mobile comes incidentally into contact with every single
element but is not bound up organically, through the established ties of
kinship, locality, or profession, with any single one.

b) _Objectivity._--Another expression for this relation lies in the
objectivity of the stranger. Because he is not rooted in the peculiar
attitudes and biased tendencies of the group, he stands apart from all
these with the peculiar attitude of the "objective," which does not
indicate simply a separation and disinterestedness but is a peculiar
composition of nearness and remoteness, concern and indifference. I call
attention to the domineering positions of the stranger to the group, as
whose archtype appeared that practice of Italian cities of calling their
judges from without, because no native was free from the prejudices of
family interests and factions.

c) _Confidant._--With the objecti