It is, in fact, impossible in principle that, in the scale of super-subordination, personal qualification and social position correspond to one another throughout and without remainder—no matter which organization might be proposed for attaining such a correspondence. The reason is that there are always more people qualified for superordinate positions than there are such positions. Among the ordinary workers in a factory, there certainly are very many who could equally well be foremen or entrepreneurs; among common soldiers, many who are fully capable of being officers; among the millions of subjects of a prince, doubtless many who would be equally good or better princes. Rule “by the grace of God” gives expression to the fact that not any subjective quality, but a super-human criterion, decides who shall rule.

XREF: Connects to meritocracy critiques and the Peter Principle — qualified but structurally limited mobility.

XREF: Relates to Weber's broader theory of authority, legitimacy, and stratification — connects to discussions of social mobility and structural limits on meritocracy. QUESTION: If qualification never maps onto position, what legitimizes actual rulers? The passage gestures toward transcendent/ideological justifications worth pursuing.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 771