The man who runs his village may become more acutely aware that he does not run the county; and when he runs the county, that he does not run the province; and so on up the ladder. His appurtenances of power may be deferred to by those about him, yet his own soul may smart with the shackles of a larger slavery. Thus, Spranger is right in saying that, when one succeeds in penetrating the psychology of the search for power, it becomes comprehensible that he whose nature is bound up in the pursuit of authority is most keenly sensible to the limits of his own freedom, and consequently suffers so keenly from nothing else in life than his own subordination. Sensing this, the Stoics long ago contended that the essence of liberty is the self-sufficiency which makes no demands on others. Ascendancy involves dependence, a reciprocal relationship which has been exhaustively described by Simmel.[18] But there are some who combine easy success with indifference. These are no doubt recruited from among those who have natural suggestive power to certain groups--they possess the _charisma_ of Max Weber.[19] Allowing for these annotations, the nucleus of Spranger’s thinking may be repeated. The _homo politicus_ is characterized by the following relationship between desire, method, and success: desire to control the motives of others; methods varying from violence to wheedling; and success in securing communal recognition. Spranger’s subtle comments in elaborating this simple, central conception are among the most valuable in the literature of society. Starting from bold simplifications, he succeeds in formulating pictures which give richer meaning to the details of political life in all the institutional processes of culture. Of course the literature of political science is full of types which are described as Spranger has described the political man. Michels and Merriam have listed the qualities which they find in political leaders as a class. Conway has propounded his familiar trichotomy: crowd-compellers, crowd-exponents, and crowd-representatives. The possibility of defining types according to the reactionary, conservative, liberal, or radical nature of the opinions championed has often been discussed.[20]