se. The power of the superior orders disintegrates,
either because it is essentially incoherent and does not know how to
attain the above-emphasized proportion between subordination and
individual freedom; or because the persons comprising the administration
are too indolent or too ignorant of governmental technique to preserve
supreme power. For the power which is exercised over a large circle is
never a constant possession. It must be constantly acquired and defended
anew if anything more than its shadow and name is to remain.

The other way in which a scale of power is constructed up to a supreme
head is the reverse of that just described. Starting with a relative
equality of the social elements, certain elements gain greater
significance; within the circle of influence thus constituted certain
especially powerful individuals differentiate themselves until this
development accommodates itself to one or to a few heads. The pyramid of
superiority and inferiority is built in this case from below upward,
while in the former case the development was from above downward. This
second form of development is often found in economic relationships,
where at first there exists a certain equality between the persons
carrying on the work of a certain industrial society. Presently some of
the number acquire wealth; others become poor; others fall into
intermediate conditions which are as dependent upon an aristocracy of
property as the lower orders are upon the middle strata; this
aristocracy rises in manifold gradations to the magnates, of whom
sometimes a single individual is appropriately designated as the "king"
of a branch of industry. By a sort of combination of the two ways in
which graded superiority and inferiority of the group come into being
the feudalism of the Middle Ages arose. So long as the full
citizen--either Greek, Roman, or Teutonic--knew no subordination under
an individual, there existed for him on the one hand complete equality
with those of his own order, but on the other hand rigid exclusiveness
toward those of lower orders. Feudalism remodeled this characteristic
social form into the equally characteristic arrangement which filled the
gap between freedom and bondage with a scale of classes.

A peculiar form of subordination to a number of individuals is
determination by vote of a majority. The presumption of majority rule is
that there is a collection of elements originally possessing equal
rights. In the