A Matter of Degree
and motivations of all men. In a small community, the prince or the councilman or the sheriff is under the constant surveillance of neighbors, and their opinion of his behavior is not without influence; either the desire to retain their good will or the fear of retribution bears on his official acts. He must live with them, just as a merchant must live with his customers, and social ostracism is too heavy a price to pay for indulging the passion for power which his position generates.
As the community grows this neighborly influence diminishes. Public affairs become too complex for the man preoccupied with the business of living, and his interest in them wanes in proportion; only when he is personally affected by political matters does he become concerned with them. Under the circumstances, the politician is more or less on his own.
A more impelling reason for the attenuation of social power is the splintering of its homogeneity as population grows; group interests replace the common interest and the politician finds himself under a variety of pressures. He is put in the way of acquiring power by the claims and ambitions of the various factions, each of which is willing to barter the common good for its own advantage. The logic of the situation compels him to lean toward those factions which because of their numerical or economic predominance are most promising for his purpose, the accumulation of power. Group pressures, rather than social sanctions, chart his course, and his problem is the selection of allies. Thus, when the king met with strong opposition from the feudal barons he made common cause, for the time being, with the proletariat of the cities, and in our "democratic" time it is standard political procedure for the aspirant to champion the cause of farmers as against the urban population, to court favor with wage 138
