NUMBER AS DETERMINING FORM OF GROUP 1 87
ground in something more than the collision of material inter- ests. Only when some occasion for enmity is general, some antagonism which has its active occasion to find, exists in the soul, is it so easy to substitute a quite different opponent from the one against whom enmity would have a meaning and pur- pose. Divide et impera demands of its artist, that he shall evoke that general condition of excitement and pugnacity in which the smuggling in of an opponent not at all properly indicated can succeed, by means of nagging, slander, flattery, rousing of expectation, etc. Accordingly, the form of the struggle may be entirely separated from its content and its reasonableness. The third party, against whom the enmity of the two others should properly be directed, may, at the same time, make himself invisible between them, so that the clamor of the two does not follow against him, but against each other reciprocally.
In case, finally, the purpose of the third does not reside in an object, but in the immediate control of the two other ele- ments, two sociological points of view are essential.
(i) Certain elements are so formed that they can be suc- cessfully opposed only by similar elements. The will to subju- gate them finds no proper point of attack in themselves, so that the only thing remaining is, as it were, to divide them against themselves, and to maintain between the divisions a struggle which they now can carry on with homogeneous weapons, until they are sufficiently weakened, and so may fall a prey to the third party. It has been said that England could gain India only by means of India, as Xerxes earlier understood that Greece could best be conquered by means of the Greeks. Precisely those who by likeness of interests are brought together best know reciprocally each other's weaknesses and their vulnerable points, so that the principle of similia similibus the annihilation of a condition by producing a similar condition may here be produced in the widest degree. Although reciprocity and unifi- cation may best be obtained with a certain degree of qualitative variation, because reinforcement, consolidation, organically differentiated life can thus result, reciprocal disturbance seems to succeed best in case of qualitative likeness, apart, of course,
