THE CONCEPT OF SOCIETY 29 
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The essence of group unity, then, consists in the re- 
ciprocal relations of its elements, and a group or a society 
may be said to exist where individuals are in reciprocal 
relations. 
The reciprocity arises always from specific impulses 
or by virtue of specific purposes. Erotic, religious, or 
merely associative impulses, purposes of defense or of at- 
tack, of play or of gain, bring human beings into relation- 
ships in which they act for, with, and against one another. 
They bring them into situations and conditions in which 
they mutually influence one another. These mutual re- 
actions signify that out of the individual bearers of those 
impulses and purposes a unity, that is, a society, has come 
into existence.! 
That social unity is not the result merely of harmoni- 
ous tendencies and integrating forces, but the differen- 
tiating tendencies play also a positive role. Just as the 
cosmos needs love and hatred, attractive and repulsive 
forces, to obtain form, so also society needs a certain 
quantitative relation of harmony and disharmony, associ- 
ation and competition, friendship and jealousy, to obtain 
a definite structure. And these dissociations are by no 
means to be viewed merely as negative factors, so that the 
actual society results only from the positive social forces 
in so far as the former do not prevent it. It is a superficial 
way of thinking which concludes that the one factor tears 
down what the other builds up and that what at last re- 
mains is a subtraction. Society as it exists is the result of 
the two categories of interaction, which are both positive 
in their effect. 
The above-mentioned misconception is partly due to a 
false conclusion drawn from the observation of a simple 
opposition between two individuals. It by no means fol- 
1 Soz., D. 5.