But, no matter how intimate, how harmonious a social group is, never do we see emerging ex abrupto, in the midst of its astonished associates, a collective self, which would be real and not only metaphoric, a sort of marvelous result, of which the associates would be the mere conditions. To be sure, there is always an associate that represents and personifies the group in its entirety, or else a small number of associates (the ministers in a State) who, each under a particular aspect, individualize in themselves the group in its entirety. But this leader, or those leaders, are always also members of that group, born from their own fathers and mothers and not born collectively from their subjects or their constituency. — Gabriel Tarde