SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION 181

social life of the individual during the latter part of the
Middle Ages. Originally the individual was bound up in
his village community. The feudal period created a new
basis for union, namely, subservience to the same lord.
But these two bonds of union were both of an external
character. They were determined by factors which lay
outside the will of the individual. Only with the rise of
free associations did the individual become a more or less
free and active participant in the social life. Motives for
association lying within the individual came to replace or
to co-operate with the external accidental factors which
up to that time had alone determined his place in the social
structure.
In modern times there exists a vast superstructure of
such social circles above the more natural and primary
groupings and intersecting the latter at different angles.
The family group is no longer an all-inclusive association
fully closed, independent, and self-sufficient, but it is intersected
 by the numerous associations to which the individual
 members belong. And these associations intersect not
only the family group, but all other primary groupings,
such as the local community and the nation.
These new social circles are of a very different kind
from the original primary groups. They are purposive
associations, associations for specific factual purposes.
The individuals do not co-operate in these associations
with the whole of their personality, as was characteristic
of medieval corporations. They do not become entirely
absorbed in these associations, but merely co-operate by
means of definite factual contributions conducive to the
specific factual purpose. This gives the new type of association
 a much more rational character than that of the
primary groupings. They may be associations based on
emotional interests, like religious sects, or on economic,