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SOCIAL CONSERVATION 
167 
therefore, also on the fact that the change is sufficiently 
slow and gradual. 
This form of gradual change not only is operative in 
case of shifting membership, but functions in a similar 
manner with regard to the other elements of group unity. 
We still speak of “the same group” even when its political 
organization, its laws and customs, have altered consid- 
erably. This is possible because the alterations do not af- 
fect all the vital elements of the group life simultaneously, 
but only a minimum at a given moment.! 
Objectivation of the Group Unity in Symbols 
The group unity and its persistence may find objective 
expression in personal, material, and conceptual symbols. 
If the life of the group becomes intimately bound up with 
the existence of leadership, special arrangements are re- 
quired to secure the self-preservation. In national groups 
this finds expression in the principle that the king never 
dies. It involves the very significant sociological concep- 
tion that the king is no longer king as a person, but that 
his person is only the irrelevant vehicle of the abstract 
kingship. The group will then reflect its immortality in a 
hereditary kingship. 
This hereditary principle is purely formal in nature 
and may bring to the throne the most capable as well as 
the most incapable leader. This principle is possible only 
if within the group a relationship between ruler and ruled 
has become fixed and permanent, only if it does not de- 
pend any longer on subjective relationships, but has be- 
come a status. As long as this aspect of the group form is 
still uncertain, the supreme leader can hold the group to- 
gether only through definite personal qualities. But if this 
form has become established and secure, the personal ele- 
-Soz., pp. 501-4.