Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/311

 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIOLOGY 297

life is filled, these motivations which impel it, are not social in their nature. Neither hunger nor love, neither labor nor religi- osity, neither the technique nor the functions and results of intel- ligence, as they are given immediately and in their strict sense, signify socialization. On the contrary, they constitute it only when they shape the isolated side-by-sideness of the individuals into definite forms of with-and-for-one-another, which belong under the general concept reciprocity. Socialization is thus the form, actualizing itself in countless various types, in which the individuals, on the basis of those interests — sensuous or ideal, momentary or permanent, conscious or unconscious, casually driving or purposefully leading — grow together into a unity, and within which these interests come to realization.

In every given social situation, content and societary form constitute a unified reality. A social form can no more attain existence detached from all content, than a spatial form can exist without a material of which it is the form. These are rather the actually inseparable elements of every social being and occur- rence — an interest, purpose, motive, and a form or manner of the reciprocity between the individuals through which, or in the shape of which, that content attains social reality.

That which constitutes "society" in every hitherto current sense of the term is evidently the thus indicated types of recipro- cal influencing.^ Any collection of human beings whatsoever becomes "society," not by virtue of the fact that in each of the number there is a life-content which actuates the individual as such, but only when the vitality of these contents attains the form of reciprocal influencing. Only when an influence is exerted, whether immediately or through a third party, from one upon another, has a society come into existence in place of a mere spatial juxtaposition, or temporal contemporaneousness or succes- sion of individuals. If, therefore, there is to be a science, the object of which is to be "society" and nothing else, it can investi- gate only these reciprocal influences, these kinds and forms of

to the statical term "society," instead of finding it more profitable to put the emphasis on the process-concept "association."
 * I am surprised that Simmel finds it worth while to pay so much attention