ABSTRACT
The present crisis of freedom and order in Western society—and all that is implied in the problem of leadership—would be easier to resolve were it plainly the outcome of antagonistic forces of good and evil. Contemporary interest in the problem of leadership is closely related to inquiries into the nature of the social bond, to studies of group identification, social role, and other problems of interpersonal relations. In leadership there is something of the same combination of imagination and experience that goes into the creative process; Leadership indeed is one manifestation of the creative proclivity. Leadership—actual leadership—was so subtly and so delicately interwoven into the fabric of kinship, guild, class, and church that the conscious problem of leadership hardly existed. So far as the bulk of people were concerned leadership came not from distant political rulers but from the innumerable heads of families, villages, guilds, and parishes.
