SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION 195

have become so attenuated that he practically lives in isolation.
 But the formation of purposive associations creates
a compensation for this isolation which has resulted from
the ever growing extension of the community circle.
The degree of compactness or sociological density of
such associations can in a way be measured by the extent
to which they have developed a special group honor. The
existence of a family honor, a military honor, or a business
men’s honor is indicative of the fact that a strong consciousness
 of group unity has been developed. Only a
strong consciousness of group unity and a fairly close-knit
association can make the individual feel that the group as
a collective personality has a special honor and that any
dishonorable behavior on the part of one member involves
a loss of honor for all members. Only such groups can secure
 a socially desirable behavior on the part of their members
 without having recourse to methods of force and
external restraint.
The formation of such groups in our modern social
structure has led to an entire redistribution of freedom and
restraint. The small community in which the group as a
whole or its centralized authority regulated the life of the
individual in nearly all of its aspects has disappeared. In
the modern state the centralized authority limits its regulative
 function to what is the inevitable minimum necessary
 to protect the group as a whole. The individual has
become free and unrestricted in a wider and wider field.
This field does not remain a field of unrestricted individual
 activity, but it becomes occupied by new group formations
 and purposeful associations. But the interests of
the individual and his own free choice determine to which
of these he shall belong. The result is that they can dispense
 with methods of forceful external restraint for the
preservation of their group unity and rely on an honor