Georg Simmel

“ They rather serve to exemplify the principle which alone, in my opinion, can found an independent science of sociology, viz., the abstraction of socialization, as a form of existence with and for others, from the concrete conditions, interests, emotions, which make up the content of that form. Neither hunger nor love, neither labor nor the religious sentiment, neither technique nor the contents of intelligence, are in and of themselves alone social in character; but the coexistence and reciprocal influence of human beings make them factors actual and effectual. ”

“ War really appeals to those energies which are common to the discordant elements of the community. These are vital and fundamental in their nature. War brings them so forcibly into consciousness that its disturbances actually nullify the differences. Thus the condition which, so far as our present thought is concerned, makes war dangerous disappears in the presence of war. In case the attack is not sharp enough to overcome the enmities present in the group, war produces the above asserted effects. How often has war given the last blow to a state system suffering from internal disruption! ”

“ The relations of human beings to each other are so complex, so ramified, and so compact that it would be a wholly hopeless task to resolve them into their elements, and we are consequently compelled to treat them as unities rather than as self-existing structures. It is, therefore, only a methodological device to speak of the essence and the development of the state, of law, of institutions, of fashion, etc., as if each of these were a unified entity. ”

“ The mere fact that the one party has taken sides upon any open question is sufficient to make the opposing party take the other side. This power of party, as a mere form which shows itself in unbroken continuance throughout the most heterogeneous kinds of interests, is one of the weightiest obstacles to the unification of a group, and even to the performance of any group action at all. ”

“ Consequently this division of labor, like its counterpart, variability of social life form, is a characteristic of the middle class and of its predominance. Neither the aristocracy nor the class of free peasant citizens tends to any large degree of division of labor. The aristocracy has no such tendency, because every division of labor brings with it gradation of rank, and this is repugnant to the class consciousness and inimical to its unity. The peasant class does not have it, because it is not required or permitted by its technique. ”

“ Every farsighted action of a large body must overcome the force of doubts, objections, antagonistic interests, and especially the indifference of individuals. The social organ that exists exclusively for this purpose, and which is composed of relatively few persons, is free from a large proportion of these obstructions. Such organs of the group promote its persistence, therefore, through an increased quickness and precision of social action, in contrast with which the movements of a whole group have an inflexible and dilatory character. ”

“ Accordingly honor is one of the most thorough means of maintaining the existence and specific significance of the group.
From such recourse of social self-preservation to individual persons, to a material substance, to an ideal conception, we pass now to the cases in which social persistence takes advantage of an organ composed of a number of persons. The objective principle in which unity manifests itself again exhibits societary character. Thus a religious community embodies its coherence and its life principle in its priesthood ”

“ When, for instance, the preservation of a group is very closely bound up with maintenance of a particular stratum in its existence and peculiarities—for example, the highest, the broadest, or the middle stratum—the first two cases demand more rigidity of the social-life form, the last more elasticity. Aristocracies are in general conservative. If they are in reality what the name asserts, they are the most adequate expression of the actual inequality between men. ”

“ It is most necessary to preserve at all hazards the social peace, stability, and conservative character of the group life in those instances in which the group structure is discontinuous and characterized by sharp internal differences. For that reason we notice, as a matter of fact, that in groups containing tremendous and irreconcilable class contrasts, peace and persistence of the forms of social life are more apt to prevail than in cases of approach and mediation and commingling between the extremes of the social scale. ”

“ The struggle against a power standing outside the group brings the unity of the group and the necessity of maintaining it unshaken to most lively consciousness. It is a fact of the greatest social significance, one of the few which are true almost without exception of group formations of every sort, that common antagonism against a third party under all circumstances tends to consolidate the combining group, and with much greater certainty than community in friendly relationships toward a third party. ”

“ Of the individual we know that varying stimulations are necessary for maintenance. The force and unity of his existence are not preserved by unbroken mechanical sameness of external and internal condition and action. On the contrary, the individual is likewise naturally adapted to preservation of his unity in change, not merely of what he does and endures, but also in change within each of these factors of his experience. It is consequently not impossible that the bond which holds the group together needs varying stimulation in order to remain in consciousness and force. ”

“ First, when the organ gains too vigorous independent life, and does not place the emphasis of its importance upon the worth of its service to the group, but upon its value to itself, the persistence of the organ may come into conflict with the persistence of the group. A relatively harmless case, but for that very reason one that quite clearly represents the type, is the bureaucracy. The bureaucratic body, a formal organization for exercising an extended administration, constitutes in itself a scheme which frequently clashes with the variable requirements of practical social life. ”

“ The most obvious way in which the persistence of the group depicts itself in the continuance of the ruler is in the heredity of the princely dignity. The physiological connection within the reigning family reflects the intricate connection within the group. The group perpetuates itself without intermission and as a matter of course from age to age. ”

“ In point of fact, most of the so-called sociological investigations belong within the field of one of these already existing sciences, for there is no content of life which would not be proper subject-matter of one or other of these. If, therefore, sociology is to have a peculiar and independent significance, its problems must consequently concern, not the contents of social life, but its form—the form which brings it to pass that all those contents which are treated by the special sciences are “societary.” ”

“ For society is surely not a structure so unitary that a single exhaustive definition is possible. Society consists rather of the sum of all the ways and means of combination that appear among its elements. ”

“ In its peculiar nature, antagonism presents one of those contrast-stimuli, evidently demanded by the innermost needs of the unifying social bond, because there, as elsewhere, the permanent can emerge and come to conscious force only as a function of the changeable. Social unity is the abiding form, or element, or whatever we may call it, which asserts itself as the substantial in all changes of its peculiar, special shape, its content, its relations to the social interests and destinies; and asserts itself the more, the livelier the change of these factors. ”

“ I see society rather wherever a number of human beings come into reciprocity and form a transient or permanent unity. In each such unification the phenomenon emerges which also determines the life of the individuals, viz., that at every moment destructive forces attack the life both from within and from without, and, if these alone operated, the unity would soon be resolved into its elements or transformed into other combinations. ”

“ Consequently, if the circulating power of currency is limited to the country of issue, the circulating medium becomes an inner bond of unity for that country, and a means by which it maintains its social form, since it shuts the country off from the great competition of the world’s markets. A country that is industrially strong and equal to any competitive enterprise would not need this means. It would rather be sure that it would increase the strength of its essential form in the variability of exchange, and in the developments of reciprocal dependence. ”

“ The significance of a material symbol for the persistence of a society is much heightened when the symbol, besides its suggestive use, is a real social possession in itself, that is, when the centralizing functions of the society depend upon it, or are facilitated by it, when the material interests of all the members of the group converge in this symbol. In this case it will be of peculiar importance for the maintenance of the group to secure this common possession against destruction, somewhat as is done in the case of the personal group center by the fiction that the king does not die. ”