THE PERSISTENCE OF SOCIAL GROUPS. II.[1]
In many cases the structure of the group is from the beginning adjusted to such alternation between functions immediately discharged by the group and those that are performed by an organ. Thus in stock companies, the technical management of which is committed to directors, while the stockholders in general meeting may either remove the directors or prescribe conditions which the latter may be either indisposed or incompetent to adopt for themselves. Small associations which are accustomed either to manage their affairs through a president or a committee are usually so arranged that these organs either voluntarily or involuntarily surrender their powers so soon as they cease to be equal to the burden or the responsibility of their functions. Every revolution which deposes a political government from power and gives back legislation and administration to the immediate initiative of the elements belongs in this sociological form. It follows as a matter of course that not every group can adapt itself to such reversion of type. In very large groups, or in those that live under very complicated conditions, the assumption of administrative functions by the group directly is a simple impossibility. The structure of organs is not to be recalled, and their flexibility and vital interdependence with the elements can at most show themselves in the ability of the elements to change the persons who at a given moment compose the organ, and replace them with more suitable persons. Nevertheless it is continually happening, even in cases of rather high sociological development, that the group power flows back from the organs to its original source, though this may be but a process of transition to the formation of new organs. The Episcopal church in the United States was at the disadvantage of being without a bishop until the end of the last century, because the mother
- ↑ Translated by Albion W. Small.
