That is, with the stranger one has only certain more general qualities in common, whereas the relation with organically connected persons is based on the similarity of just those specific traits which differentiate them from the merely universal. … A similarity so widely shared could just as easily unite each person with every possible other. This, too, is evidently a way in which a relationship includes both nearness and remoteness simultaneously. To the extent to which the similarities assume a universal nature, the warmth of the connection based on them will acquire an element of coolness, a sense of the contingent nature of precisely this relation—the connecting forces have lost their specific, centripetal character.

DEFINE: Clarifies that the stranger relationship rests on broad general similarities rather than specific differentiating traits, which explains its simultaneous nearness and remoteness.

XREF: Connects to Georg Simmel's broader sociology of the stranger and how modern urban life dilutes intimate ties through abstraction.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 396