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SUBMISSION
obedience prefer, however, subjection to a law executed by
an impersonal power to the subordination to an individ-
ual. This was not the case in ancient times. People could
then maintain their self-respect only if they were allowed
a certain amount of spontaneous participation, and they
preferred personal obedience to the subjection to a rigid
objective law. There is a great difference between viewing
laws as substitutes and makeshifts for an ideal personal
government and viewing personal government as provi-
sional to the government of law.
The one-sided relationship which is characteristic of
subordinations to impersonal principles excludes them as
such from the category of sociological forms. There is none
the less a sociological aspect to these subordinations in two
special instances. The first occurs if the ideal superior prin-
ciple can be interpreted as a psychological condensation of
an actual social power. The second occurs if this principle
establishes specific and characteristic relationships be-
tween those who are subject to it.
The former case is illustrated in the moral imperative.
The individual who has a moral consciousness feels himself
subject to decrees which have apparently not been issued
by any human power. He hears the voice of conscience on-
ly in himself, but it speaks with such force and precision
against his subjective egoism that it seems to come from an
authority outside of himself. One has attempted to solve
this apparent contradiction by assuming that the content
of morality has been derived from social decrees. The
species and the group seem to breed into the individual
those characteristics that are useful for the social self-pres-
ervation. They obtain a certain instinctive character and
appear in the individual as autonomous impulses next to
or in opposition to the properly personal impulses. This
explains the double character of the moral imperative. It
