The first internal relation that is essential to a secret society is the reciprocal confidence of its members.

Thus, the technique of metropolitan life is unimaginable without the most punctual integration of all activities and mutual relations into a stable and impersonal time schedule.

For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction.

In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify; but which he must accept upon faith and belief.

Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.

Secrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.

Fashion is the playing area for individuals that lack interior autonomy and need more support points, but who nonetheless feel the need to stand out, to be paid attention to and be considered apart from the rest Fashion elevates the insignificant by making it in the representative of a totality, the particular incarnation of a common spirit. Its function is to make possible the kind of social obedience which is at the same time individual differentiation It is the mixing of submission and the feeling of domination that is in action here.