This image of general society finds a small-scale analogy (infinitely simplified and stylized) in bureaucracy. A bureaucracy consists of a certain order of positions, of a predetermined system of functions. It exists as an ideal structure, irrespective of the particular occupants of these positions. Every new entrant finds within it a clearly defined place which has waited for him, so to speak, and to which his individual talents must be suited.

XREF: Connects to Weber's ideal-type bureaucracy and sociological accounts of organizational rationality.

XREF: Connects to Weber's theory of bureaucracy and rational-legal authority, where positions outlast and transcend their individual holders. Builds on: "True sciences require a circumscribed, precisely defined subject matter."

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 189