gh leadership._--On this account special
arrangements are necessary so soon as the life of the group is
intimately bound up with that of a leading, commanding individual. What
dangers to the integrity of the group are concealed in this sociological
form may be learned from the history of all interregnums--dangers which,
of course, increase in the same ratio in which the ruler actually forms
the central point of the functions through which the group preserves its
unity, or, more correctly, at each moment creates its unity anew.
Consequently a break between rulers may be a matter of indifference
where the prince only exercises a nominal sway--"reigns, but does not
govern"--while, on the other hand, we observe even in the swarm of bees
that anarchy results so soon as the queen is removed. Although it is
entirely false to explain this latter phenomenon by analogy of a human
ruler, since the queen bee gives no orders, yet the queen occupies the
middle point of the activity of the hive. By means of her antennae she
is in constant communication with the workers, and so all the signals
coursing through the hive pass through her. By virtue of this very fact
the hive feels itself a unity, and this unity dissolves with the
disappearance of the functional center.

e) _Continuity through the hereditary principle._--In political groups
the attempt is made to guard against all the dangers of personality,
particularly those of possible intervals between the important persons,
by the principle: "The king never dies." While in the early Middle Ages
the tradition prevailed that when the king dies his peace dies with him,
this newer principle contains provision for the self-preservation of the
group. It involves an extraordinarily significant sociological
conception, viz., the king is no longer king as a person, but the
reverse is the case, that is, his person is only the in itself
irrelevant vehicle of the abstract kingship, which is as unalterable as
the group itself, of which the kingship is the apex. The group reflects
its immortality upon the kingship, and the sovereign in return brings
that immortality to visible expression in his own person, and by so
doing reciprocally strengthens the vitality of the group. That mighty
factor of social coherence which consists of loyalty of sentiment toward
the reigning power might appear in very small groups in the relation of
fidelity toward the person of the ruler. For large groups the definition