The immortality of the group depends
upon the fact that the change is sufficiently slow and gradual.

The fact referred to by the phrase "immortality of the group" is of the
greatest importance. The preservation of the identical selfhood of the
group through a practically unlimited period gives to the group a
significance which, _ceteris paribus_, is far superior to that of the
individual. The life of the individual, with its purposes, its
valuations, its force, is destined to terminate within a limited time,
and to a certain extent each individual must start at the beginning.
Since the life of the group has no such a priori fixed time limit, and
its forms are really arranged as though they were to last forever, the
group accomplishes a summation of the achievements, powers, experiences,
through which it makes itself far superior to the fragmentary individual
lives. Since the early Middle Ages this has been the source of the power
of municipal corporations in England. Each had from the beginning the
right, as Stubbs expresses it, "of perpetuating its existence by filling
up vacancies as they occur." The ancient privileges were given expressly
only to the burghers and their heirs. As a matter of fact, they were
exercised as a right to add new members so that, whatever fate befell
the members and their physical descendants, the corporation, as such,
was held intact. This had to be paid for, to be sure, by the
disappearance of the individual importance of the units behind their
role as vehicles of the maintenance of the group, for the group security
must suffer, the closer it is bound up with the perishable individuality
of the units. On the other hand, the more anonymous and unpersonal the
unit is, the more fit is he to step into the place of another, and so to
insure to the group uninterrupted self-maintenance. This was the
enormous advantage through which during the Wars of the Roses the
Commons repulsed the previously superior power of the upper house. A
battle that destroyed half the nobility of the country took also from
the House of Lords one-half its force, because this is attached to the
personalities. The House of Commons is in principle assured against such
weakening. That estate at last got predominance which, through the
equalizing of its members, demonstrated the most persistent power of
group existence. This circumstance gives every group an advantage in
competition with an individual.

d) _Continuity throu