eings are not bound
to a definite mating season, but that children are begotten at any time.
It can never properly be asserted of a group, therefore, that at any
given moment a new generation begins. The departure of the older and the
entrance of the younger elements proceed so gradually and continuously
that the group seems as much like a unified self as an organic body in
spite of the change of its atoms.
If the change were instantaneous, it is doubtful if we should be
justified in calling the group "the same" after the critical moment as
before. The circumstance alone that the transition affected in a given
moment only a minimum of the total life of the group makes it possible
for the group to retain its selfhood through the change. We may express
this schematically as follows: If the totality of individuals or other
conditions of the life of the group be represented by a, b, c, d, e; in
a later moment by m, n, o, p, q; we may nevertheless speak of the
persistence of identical selfhood if the development takes the following
course: a, b, c, d, e--m, b, c, d, e--m, n, c, d, e--m, n, o, d, e--m,
n, o, p, e--m, n, o, p, q. In this case each stage is differentiated
from the contiguous stage by only one member, and at each moment it
shares the same chief elements with its neighboring moments.
c) _Continuity through membership in the group._--This continuity in
change of the individuals who are the vehicles of the group unity is
most immediately and thoroughly visible when it rests upon procreation.
The same form is found, however, in cases where this physical agency is
excluded, as, for example, within the Catholic clerus. Here the
continuity is secured by provision that enough persons always remain in
office to initiate the neophytes. This is an extremely important
sociological fact. It makes bureaucracies tenacious, and causes their
character and spirit to endure in spite of all shifting of individuals.
The physiological basis of self-maintenance here gives place to a
psychological one. To speak exactly, the preservation of group identity
in this case depends, of course, upon the amount of invariability in the
vehicles of this unity, but, at all events, the whole body of members
belonging in the group at any given moment only separate from the group
after they have been associated with their successors long enough to
assimilate the latter fully to themselves, i.e., to the spirit, the
form, the tendency of the group.
|