Secret societies protect their core through graduated internal transition, not radical exclusion.

Evidence

“Precisely because the lower grades of the society constitute a mediating transition to the actual center of the secret, they bring about the gradual compression of the sphere of repulsion around the same, which affords more secure protection than the abruptness of a radical standing wholly without or wholly within could secure” (ibid. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2680

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Simmel’s mechanism by which secret societies compress the sphere of repulsion through lower grades as a mediating transition.