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 CONSERVATION

L777

tain themselves, even if merely as empty frames, only on
the basis of a rigid conservatism.
The opposite type of social self-preservation is characteristic
 of groups that live within larger groups, either
tolerated or opposed and suppressed. The self-preservation
 of these groups and the persistence of their social unity
require an extreme elasticity and variability of sociological
forms. Their offensive and defensive strength lies just in
the variety of forms under which they can operate. They
must be able to expand and contract at any moment and
avail themselves of any type of organization that circumstances
 permit.
Bands of brigands and conspirators can maintain their
social unity only if they can instantly subdivide into smaller
 groups, act separately under different leaders, and instantly
 reunite again for larger enterprises. Great flexibility
 of form is the indispensable condition of their persistence.
 The Jews in Central Europe have lived for centuries
 under conditions which have been similar from the
formal point of view to those of brigands and conspirators.
They have been small suppressed minorities within larger
social groups. They have maintained their social unity in
the face of these oppressions by a great variability of sociological
 form. Their social solidarity has been a religious
solidarity, an economic solidarity, or a political solidarity.
It has attached itself to each of these forms according to
circumstances and conditions. Here again the flexibility
of form has been the means of persistence and the strength
of their defensive and offensive against the larger group.
Apart from such cases as the existence of a smaller
group within a larger group. there is no immediate corre-*

 80z., pp. 574-80. For a more elaborate treatment of structures that have
outlived their social usefulness, see G. D. H. Cole, Social Theory, chapter xiii,
“The Atrophy of Institutions,” pp. 193-200.