Simmel took "his students down an oblique pit into the mine"; he was not a teacher, he was an "inciter." "Just about the time when . . . one felt he had reached a conclusion, he had a way of raising his right arm and, with three fingers of his hand, turning the imaginary object so as to exhibit still another facet." l A lecture by Simmel was creation-at-the-moment-of-delivery: the essence of Simmers spell seems to have been the spontaneous exemplification of the creative process.

Georg Simmel, 4 the youngest of seven children, was born in Berlin on March i, 1858. His father, a partner in a well-known chocolate factory, died when Georg was a boy. A friend of the family, the founder of an international music publishing house, was appointed his guardian. He left Simmel a considerable fortune which enabled him to lead the life of a scholar. Simmers mother was temperamental and domineering.

His few published aphorisms and posthumous fragments n suggest that one way in which he developed an essay was to begin with ideas occurring to him as themes that were jotted down for later elaboration and connec-

SEED: Useful writing-technique angle: starting from disposable fragments and connecting them later as a generative essay method.

"I don't kfiow which of these two shows man's vulgarity more: when he gets accustomed to ugliness or when he gets accustomed to beauty.

After all, in intellectual matters it is not too rare and, when it comes to the most general and the most profound problems, it is, as a matter of fact, the rule that (what by an unavoidable metaphor is called) the foundation is less secure than the superstructure erected upon it. And thus, scientific practice, too, especially when it works in new areas, cannot do without a certain measure of merely instinctive advance. Only later is it possible to become fully conscious of the motives and norms of that stage and to penetrate it conceptually. … Certainly, scientific work must never be satisfied solely by such vague, instinctual procedures. … Yet, one would condemn science to sterility if, before new tasks, one made a completely formulated methodology the condition of taking even the first step.

XREF: Connects to Karl Popper's and Thomas Kuhn's work on how science actually progresses versus how it is retrospectively rationalized.

Only the particular purpose of cognition determines whether reality, as it emerges or is experienced in its immediacy, is to be investigated in a personal or in a collective frame of reference. Both frames of reference, equally, are "standpoints." Their relation to one another is not that of reality to abstraction. Rather, since both are interpretations, though different ones, both are detached from "reality," which itself cannot be the immediate subject matter of science.

DEFINE: Clarifies that both personal and collective frames of reference are interpretative standpoints, not reality versus abstraction.

Hence, not only may the form in which the most divergent contents are realized be identical; but, inversely, the content, too, may persist, while its medium the interactions of the individuals adopts a variety of forms.

DEFINE: Distinguishes social form (pattern of interaction) from content (what passes through it), showing each can vary without the other.

The mass does not know the dualism of egoistic and altruistic impulses, a dualism that often renders the individual helpless and makes him embrace a vacuum. Law, the first and essential condition of the life of groups, large and small, has aptly been called the "ethical minimum."

DEFINE: Defines the 'ethical minimum' concept — law as the baseline morality required for group life, contrasted with the individual's psychological conflict between egoistic and altruistic drives.

Here, too, is the purely sociological among the various reasons for the phenomenon that the usurper, who wants to dominate a society that is stratified by estates, usually tries to gain support from the lowest classes. For, in order equally to rise above all, he must level all; and this he can achieve, not

Yet this whole process may occur sometimes, or even often, but it does not occur always. For in some individuals, the lower elements are so interfused with the higher ones that the tempting

For instance, originally all cognition appears to have been a means in the struggle for existence. Exact knowledge of the behavior of things is, in fact, of extraordinary utility for the maintenance and promotion of life. Yet cognition is no longer used in the service of this practical achievement: science has become a value in itself.

XREF: Connects to evolutionary psychology debates about whether cognition/curiosity is adaptive or runs beyond survival utility, echoing themes in Gould's spandrels and evolutionary mismatch literature.

Here lies whatever may justify the analogy between art and play. In both art and play, forms that were originally developed by the realities of life, have created spheres that preserve their autonomy in the face of these realities. It is from their origin, which keeps them permeated with life, that they draw their depth and strength. Where they are emptied of life, they become artifice and "empty play/' respectively.

The coquettish woman enormously enhances her attractiveness if she shows her consent as an almost immediate possibility but is ultimately not serious about it. Her behavior swings back and forth between "yes" and "no" without stopping at either. She playfully exhibits the pure and simple form of erotic decisions and manages to embody their polar opposites in a perfectly consistent behavior

Furthermore, since in all power relations an advantage once gained facilitates the gaining of additional advantages (the "accumulation of capital" is merely a specific instance of this general proposition), power inequality is bound to expand in quick progression, and the freedom of the privileged always and necessarily develops at the expense of the freedom of the op-

XREF: Echoes the Matthew effect, runaway feedback loops, and the author's 'accumulation of capital' framing — connects to winner-take-all dynamics in economics and sociology. QUESTION: How does this compounding dynamic interact with any countervailing mechanisms that prevent complete power monopolization?

It is questionable whether a socialist order could eventually do without such a priori super-subordination. Socialism postulates that any accidental chance be eliminated from the determination of positions to be occupied, and that individual qualification alone decide the attainment of positions. On the other hand, it also postulates that any talent develop "freely," that is, that it find the position commensurate with it. From this and from what has been pointed out before, it follows that in socialism there would be more superordinates than subordinates, more persons who command than execute commands.

QUESTION: Is this a defensible deduction or a contrarian provocation? The counting logic seems worth interrogating — it hinges on how one defines 'talent development' and position-matching.

The important point no longer was the fact that he was a free individual as such, but that he was this speciiic, iiicplaceahle, given individual.

The new individualism might be called qualitative, in con- trast with the quantitative individualism of the eighteenth cen- tury. Or it might be labeled the individualism of uniqueness [Einzigkeit] as against that of singleness [Einzelheit]. At any rate, Romanticism perhaps was the broadest channel through which it reached the consciousness of the nineteenth century. Goethe had created its artistic, and Schleiermacher its metaphysical basis: Romanticism supplied its sentimental, experiential foundation.

DEFINE: Introduces the distinction between qualitative/uniqueness individualism and quantitative/singleness individualism, a conceptual framework worth keeping.

The more specific the achievements (but also the needs) of the individuals, the more urgent becomes their reciprocal supplementation. In the same measure, the total organism which has grown out of the individuals engaged in the division of labor and which includes and mediates their interrelated effects and countereffects, shifts, so to speak, into a location high above them. The specificity of the individual thus requires a powerful political constitution which allocates his place to him, but in this fashion also becomes his master. It is for this reason that this individualism, which restricts freedom to a purely inward sense of the term, easily acquires an anti-liberal tendency.

XREF: Paradoxically echoes Adam Smith's division of labor thesis but reaches an anti-liberal conclusion; connects to classical liberalism's internal contradictions.

Among Aryan peoples, the earliest ties of the individual to a super-individual order of life seem to be rooted in a very general instinct or concept of the normative, the decent, the Ought in general. The Hindu dharma, the Greek themis, the Latin fas, all express this undifferentiated "normative as such/' The more special regulations, religious, moral, conventional, legal, are still enfolded in it, are not yet ramified and separated out: the general notion of the normative is their original unity, not a unity abstracted from them in retrospect. In contrast with the opinion according to which morality, custom, and law have developed as supplementations out of this germinal state, it seems to me that this germinal state is perpetuated in what we call custom.

DEFINE: Explains dharma, themis, fas as cognate expressions of an undifferentiated 'normative as such' — an original unity rather than a retrospective abstraction.

In individual morality, society creates an organ which is not only more deeply effective than law and custom, but which also saves society the expenditures and labors involved in these institutions. In its tendency to obtain its prerequisites as cheaply as possible, society also makes use of "good conscience."

For through his conscience the individual rewards himself for his good deeds; while if he had no conscience, society would probably have to guarantee him this reward somehow by means of law or custom.

Thus far we have discussed cases where different subdivisions are numerically equal. Numbers can also be used, however, to characterize a group, more particularly, a leading group of persons, within a larger totality. Thus, guild masters were often designated by their number: in Frankfort, the wool weavers' heads were called the "Six," and the bakers' the "Eight"; in medieval Barcelona, the senate was known as the "Hundred"; etc.

The number becomes independent even of its arithmetic content: all it indicates is that the relation of the members to the whole is numerical; the number, which has become stable, represents this relation. To consist of a hundred elements remains, as it were, the idea of the subdivision, while empirical conditions reflect this idea only imperfectly. It has been said of the Germanic Hundreds that they were supposed to express only an indeterminate number somewhere between the single individual and the whole society; and, in fact, this very clearly describes the sociological phenomenon discussed here. The life of the group requires some medium between the One and the All, an agent of certain functions that neither the individual nor the totality can carry out, and the group designated for this task is called after its numerical determination.

DEFINE: Explains how a number like a Hundred serves not as accurate arithmetic but as a symbolic medium for intermediate group structures between individual and society.

To each particular number of elements, according to the purpose and significance of their grouping, there corresponds a sociological form, organization, firmness, stability, relation of whole to parts, etc., which changes with each added or subtracted element, although the change may be immeasurably small and not ascertainable.

In probably each relation, there is a mixture of ingredients that its participants contribute to it alone and to no other, and of other ingredients that are not characteristic of it exclusively, but in the same or similar fashion are shared by its members with other persons as well. The peculiar color of intimacy exists if the ingredients of the first type, or more briefly, if the "internal" side of the relation, is felt to be essential

DEFINE: Introduces the 'internal side' of a relation as the mixture of ingredients exclusive to its participants, which constitutes intimacy.

The spouses share the indifferent "intimacies" of the day, the amiable and the unpleasant features of every hour, and the weaknesses that remain carefully hidden from all others. This easily causes them to place the accent and the substance of their relationship upon these wholly individual but objectively irrelevant matters. It leads them to consider what they share with others and what perhaps is the most important part of their personalities objective, intellectual, generally interesting, generous features as lying outside the marital relation; and thus they gradually eliminate it from their marriage.

Although a bridge connects two banks, it also makes the distance between them measurable; and where mediation is superfluous, it is worse than superfluous.

DEFINE: Explains a conceptual principle: even helpful instruments (like a bridge) carry hidden costs when they are unnecessary, since they render distances visible and measurable that need not be.

Actually, the reverse is true. Each of these types is profoundly un-individual and socially pre-determined; and being more minutely articulated, it is much narrower and tighter than is a very general and pervasive marriage form, whose more abstract character is bound to leave greater play to personal differentiation.

In fact, it is not difficult to understand that such a shift occurs, and for relatively slight reasons. Suppose a stimulus X corresponding to the mood a is exerted upon a mass of people who are present in the same place. In this mass there is a number of individuals, perhaps one only, whose temperament and natural passion tend toward a. This individual is vividly stimulated by X, which reinforces his own leanings. Understandably enough, this person takes leadership in the mass, which is in some measure already disposed toward a, and which follows the mood of the leader whose temperament exaggerates the stimulus.

It is sociologically very significant that isolated elements are unified by their common relation to a phenomenon which lies outside of them. This applies as much to the alliance between states for the purpose of defense against a common enemy as to the "invisible church" which unifies all faithful in their equal relation to the one God.

DEFINE: Simmel is articulating a principle of unification: shared relation to something external draws disparate elements into a coherent whole.

When the third element functions as a non-partisan, we have a different variety of mediation. The non-partisan either produces the concord of two colliding parties, whereby he withdraws after making the effort of creating direct contact between the unconnected or quarreling elements; or he functions as an arbiter who balances, as it were, their contradictory claims against one another and eliminates what is incompatible in them.

DEFINE: Distinguishes two distinct roles of the non-partisan mediator: facilitating direct contact versus arbitrating conflicting claims.

In the social sense, this disapproval is something very healthy: it is based on a much deeper instinct for the welfare of the whole than on mere suspicion of cowardice an attack which is frequently launched against impartiality, though often quite unjustifiably.

Strangely enough, it is a particularly petty and mean attitude that befriends a third element for the sake of annoying a second: indifference to the moral autonomy of altruism cannot appear more sharply than in this exploitation of altruism. And it is doubly significant that the purpose of annoying one's adversary can be achieved by favoring either one's friend or one's enemy.

Thus the advantage accruing to the tertius derives from the fact that he has an equal, equally independent, and for this very reason decisive, relation to two others. The advantage, however, does not exclusively depend on the hostility of the two. A certain general differentiation, mutual strangeness, or qualitative dualism may be sufficient. This, in fact, is the basic formula of the type, and the hostility of the elements is merely a specific case of it, even if it is the most common.

XREF: Connects to sociological network theory of brokerage, where tertius gaudens advantages arise from structural position rather than content of relations.

In 1751, the government had to issue an explicit decree in regard to the breaking up of peasant holdings in Bohemia. The law was to the effect that if a holding was divided by the manorial lord, each of its parts could not be burdened with more than its portion, in correspondence with its size, of the socage that adhered

QUESTION: Why did the government intervene in 1751? What economic or social pressures prompted this decree about peasant holdings?

It was therefore proposed, as the only possible solution, that the trade unions should fix the standard wage for every particular work in consultation with the federated entrepreneurs, and then leave it up to the workers which category of laborers they wanted to employ for a job in question. The excluded category thus no longer has to fear any harm to its basic economic interest. This objectification of the matter of dispute deprives the entrepreneur of the advantage that he gains by lowering the wages and playing up the two parties against one another.

DEFINE: Explains 'objectification of the matter of dispute' — standardizing wages across job categories to neutralize wage-lowering through inter-party conflict.

The most expedient manner is to support the one who is the stronger to begin with. This may take on the more negative form that, within a complex of elements intended for suppression, the more powerful is merely spared.

The fingers are relatively independent of one another and have relative autonomy in their movements. But, on the other hand, they are inseparable (in France one says of two friends: "Ilssont unis comme deux doigts de la main") and receive their very sense only from their togetherness. They thus offer a highly pertinent model for social groups of individuals: the unity and peculiar co-efficacy among small subgroups of larger collectivities could not be symbolized more impressively.

The content and significance of certain personal relations consist in the fact that the exclusive function of one of the two elements is service for the other. But the perfect measure of this devotion of the first element often depends on the condition that the other element surrenders to the first, even though on a different level of the relationship.

In Hobbes, in fact, the ruler has no means of breaking the contract with his subjects because he has not made one; and the corollary to this is that the subject, even if he rebels against his ruler, does not thereby break a contract concluded with him, but only the contract he has entered with all other members of the society, to the effect of letting themselves be governed by this ruler.

DEFINE: Clarifies the structure of Hobbes's social contract: it is solely between subjects, with the ruler as an outside party, not a signatory.

For this reason, it is also legitimate to make the inverse inference: the nomination of an impartial arbitrator is always a sign that the conflicting parties recognize a certain reciprocal coordination. In voluntary English arbitration, worker and entrepreneur must subject themselves, by contract, to the decision of the arbitrator, who can be neither an entrepreneur nor a worker. Evidently, only the entrepreneurs' recognition of the workers' coordination could make them renounce the participation of entrepreneurs in the settlement of a conflict, and make them entrust it to an outsider.

XREF: Connects to coordination/collective action theory — the willingness to accept third-party arbitration reveals implicit acknowledgment of counterpart power.

It is obviously very important for the socializing significance which religion may have for large groups that God should be at a certain distance from the believers.

XREF: Relates to Durkheim's social functions of religion and the sociology of religious cohesion; also echoes Feuerbach's projection theory.

It is characteristic of this phenomenon that the state, although it can legally condemn the criminal, cannot pardon him; and even in republics, the right to pardon is usually reserved for exercise by particular individuals.

To be sure, this objectivity of collective behavior often merely implies something negative, namely, that certain norms to which the single individual ordinarily subjects himself, are suspended. Objectivity amounts to being a form that is designed to cover this suspension and to soothe the conscience.

The psychological re-creation of suffering the essential vehicle of compassion and tenderness fails easily if the sufferer is not a namable or visible individual but only a totality, which has no subjective states of mind, so to speak. It has been noted that English communal life has been characterized, throughout its history, by extraordinary justice toward persons and by equally great injustice toward groups.

XREF: Connects to discussion of statistical vs. identifiable victims — the 'identifiable victim effect' in moral psychology and Steven Pinker's work on why large-scale suffering fails to move us.

The misuses of power, as, for instance, in American city administrations, would have hardly attained their enormous dimensions if the rulers were not corporations, and the ruled not collectivities. Characteristically, it is sometimes believed that these misuses can be reduced by greatly increasing the power of the mayor so that there would be somebody who could personally be held responsible.

QUESTION: Does concentrating power in a mayor actually reduce abuses, or merely relocalize them? Worth investigating the empirical record on strong-mayor systems.

Formally, the Roman Senate greatly depended upon the high state officials. But since these officials had only short terms of office, whereas the Senate kept its members permanently, the power of the Senate actually became much greater than could be inferred from its legal relation to the government executives.

Irish agrarian conditions give a very pure example of this. The English lord who owned an estate in Ireland but never visited his property, leased it to a head farmer who in turn rented it out to smaller farmers, etc., so that the poor peasant often had to lease his small piece of land from a fifth or sixth middleman. This accounted for the fact, first, that he had to pay six pounds for a field, of which sum the owner received only ten shillings. But furthermore, every rise of the farm-rent by a shilling, which the owner imposed upon the farmer with whom he negotiated directly, reached the peasant not as a rise by a shilling, but by the twelvefold amount.

XREF: Connects to the broader theory of rent extraction and intermediation in agrarian economies; amplification through intermediaries echoes ideas about how layers of bureaucracy or brokerage compound costs.

The transition to this fundamental sociological principle can be observed in the development of the English Lower House. From the beginning, its members were considered the representatives neither of a particular number of citizens nor of the whole people, but of certain local political groups, communities and counties, which had the right to participate in forming the parliament.

XREF: Connects to early constitutional history and the shift toward geographic representation in modern parliaments.

This idea is formulated in an explicit fashion by Rousseau, when he holds outvoting not to be any violation of the individual, for the reason that it can be provoked only by the dissenter's error: the dissenter took something, which actually was not the general will, to be the volonte generate. This idea of Rousseau is based on the conviction that, in the capacity of group member, one can want nothing else than the will of the group: and in regard to the will of the group, only the single individual, but not the majority, can be mistaken.

The best student of the federation of English trade unions says that their majority decisions are justifiable and practicable only insofar as the interests of the various confederates are homogeneous. As soon as differences of opinion between majority and minority result from real differences in interests, any compulsion produced by outvoting inevitably leads to a separation of the members. In other words, a vote makes sense only if the existing interests can fuse into a unity.

This type of domination usually involves a humiliatingly harsh and unconditional kind of subordination. For, inasmuch as a man is subordinate by virtue of belonging to a thing, he himself psychologically sinks to the category of mere thing. With the necessary reservations, one could say that where law regulates domination, the superordinate belongs in the sphere of objectivity; while, where a thing regulates it, the subordinate does.

DEFINE: Distinguishes two modes of domination: law-regulated (superordinate occupies objectivity) vs. thing-regulated (subordinate becomes object).

But this requirement no longer operates by means of its social impetus, as it were, but rather as if it had undergone a metapsychosis into a norm which must be satisfied for its own sake, not for my sake nor for yours.

DEFINE: The term 'metapsychosis' describes how a social demand becomes a self-contained norm detached from its original human purpose.

Here we encounter an extremely important form-type, namely, that the very commander subordinates himself to the law which he has made. The moment his will becomes law, it attains objective character, and thus separates itself from its subjective-personal origin. As soon as the ruler gives the law as law, he documents himself, to this extent, as the organ of an ideal necessity.

XREF: Connects to rule of law vs. rule by will, constitutional theory, and the distinction between individual authority and institutional objectivity.

On the basis of very special combinations, however, there may also emerge the impression and the feeling that the whole group is superordinate. Thus, Spanish pride and contempt of labor stemmed from the fact that for a long time the Spaniards used the subjugated Moors as laborers. When they later destroyed the Moors (and expelled the Jews), they yet retained the air of superordinates, although there no longer were any corresponding subordinates.

We encounter here a peculiar sociological form-type: where characteristics of an element can originate only in the relation between this and another element, and can derive their content and significance only from this relation; yet these characteristics come to be essential qualities of the element and no longer depend on any interaction.

DEFINE: Simmel describes a distinctive sociological form-type where characteristics originating purely in relations between elements become reified as essential, intrinsic qualities of those elements, seemingly independent of the interaction that produced them.

Thus originated an empty ambition which eventually suggested a feeling of significance and prerogative, without any real superiority, to the victor in the Olympiads, to an insignificant community official, to the holder of a chair of honor or of a distinction (with perhaps a statue erected in his honor), or to the orator who had political influence, but was acclaimed with exultation only for his rhetoric, by a public of loiterers.

As the first step, the inferior wants to be the equal of the superior. But a myriad of experiences show that once he is his equal, this condition, which previously was the essential aim of his endeavor, is merely a starting point for a further effort; it is the first station on the unending road toward the most favored position. Wherever an attempt is made at effecting equalization, the individual's striving to surpass others comes to the fore in all possible forms on the newly reached stage.

The heads of the guilds knew that the essential point was this sociological form; and, that if they once conceded it, the further extension of its contents depended only on the power relations and economic conditions of the moment. … The general content of this freedom of the whole is the subjection of the individual.

XREF: Connects to Simmel's broader sociology of forms and the tension between individual autonomy and collective structures, relevant to his analysis of social formations reshaping individual subjectivity.

In reality, purely individual shortcomings of leading personalities are relatively rare. If one considers the senseless and uncontrollable accidents through which men obtain their positions in all fields, the fact that not a very much greater sum of incapabilities manifests itself in their occupancies would be an incomprehensible miracle, if one did not have to assume that the latent qualifications for the positions exist in very great diffusion.

XREF: Connects to the Peter Principle and selection discussions about why incompetent leaders don't accumulate despite random promotion.

This is the inner life of the individual with whom we interact. He may, intentionally either reveal the truth about himself to us, or deceive us by lie and concealment. No other object of knowledge can reveal or hide itself in the same way, because no other object modifies its behavior in view of the fact that it is recognized.

The other individual must give us not only gifts we may accept, but the possibility of our giving him hopes, idealizations, hidden beauties, attractions of which not even he is conscious. But the place where we deposit all this, which we produce, but produce for him, is the indistinct horizon of his personality, the interstitial realm, in which faith replaces knowledge. But it must be strongly emphasized that this is, by no means, only a matter of illusions and optimistic or amorous self-deceptions, but that portions even of the persons closest to us must be offered us in the form of indistinctness and unclarity, in order for their attractiveness to keep on the same high level.

For this reason, the secret is surrounded by the possibility and temptation of betrayal; and the external danger of being discovered is interwoven with the internal danger, which is like the fascination of an abyss, of giving oneself away. The secret puts a barrier between men but, at the same time, it creates the tempting challenge to break through it, by gossip or confession and this challenge accompanies its psychology like a constant overtone.

XREF: Connects to sociological/psychological theory of secrecy by Simmel — the dialectic of concealment and disclosure.

Adornment is the egoistic element as such: it singles out its wearer, whose self-feeling it embodies and increases at the cost of others (for, the same adornment of all would no longer adorn the individual). But, at the same time, adornment is altruistic: its pleasure is designed for the others, since its owner can enjoy it only insofar as he mirrors himself in them; he renders the adornment valuable only through the reflection of this gift of his.

DEFINE: Simmel frames adornment as a paradoxically dual phenomenon — egoistic in singling out the individual, altruistic in requiring the gaze of others to complete its value.

By virtue of their material, jewels signify, in one and the same act, an increase in distance and a favor. For this reason, they are of such particular service to vanity which needs others in order to despise them.

XREF: Connects to sociological analyses of luxury goods and Veblen's conspicuous consumption.

The fundamental principle of adornment is once more revealed in the fact that, under primitive conditions, the most outstanding possession of women became that which, according to its very idea, exists only for others, and which can intensify the value and significance of its wearer only through the recognition that flows back to her from these others.

Under these conditions, the secret society is the suitable social form for contents which still (as it were) are in their infancy, subject to the vulnerability of early developmental stages. A new insight, a young religion, morality, or party, is often still weak and needs protection, and for this reason conceals itself.

XREF: Echoes sociological work on deviance, secrecy, and the sociology of knowledge—e.g., Simmel's own work on secrecy, and notions of subcultural incubation.

Thus it is reported of a secret order in the Moluccan Island of Ceram that the young man who seeks admittance, not only is enjoined to keep silent concerning everything he experiences on entering, but also is not permitted for weeks to say a word to anybody, not even to his family.

DEFINE: The word 'initiation' or the concept of ritual silence is being illustrated through this specific historical/cultural example.

In the first place, by trying to conceal the numerical insignificance of the ruling class, aristocracies exploit the psychological fact that the unknown itself appears to be fearsome, mighty, threatening. In Sparta, the number of war-

XREF: Plausibly connects to Arendt and other theorists on how concentrated power maintains authority through mystique and unreachability.

On the one hand, there is the principle of including everybody who is not explicitly excluded; and, on the other, there is the principle of excluding everybody who is not explicitly included. The second type is represented in greatest purity by the secret society.

DEFINE: Clarifies two opposing inclusion principles through the contrast of open versus secret groups.

Faithfulness might be called the inertia of the soul. It keeps the soul on the path on which it started, even after the original occasion that led it onto it no longer exists.

XREF: Parallels the physics concept of inertia applied metaphorically to moral life.

The natural emotional tie between mother and child should make her wish to keep it, but obviously does not always. Yet, if she can be swayed to do so even for a while, if only for external reasons, to secure the advantage of that temporary subsidy, this external relationship creates its own emotional underpinning.

XREF: Relates to the social construction of attachment and how behavior shapes emotion — connects to psychology of cognitive dissonance and self-perception theory.

One buys love with what one gives of spirit. One buys the charm of a person one wants to enjoy, and pays for it with one's superior power of suggestion or will, which the other either wishes to feel over himself or by which he allows himself to be

A service, a sacrifice, a benefit, once accepted, may engender an inner relation which can never be eliminated completely, because gratitude is perhaps the only feeling which, under all circumstances, can be morally demanded and rendered. … If by itself or in response to some external reality, our inner life has made it impossible for us to continue

DEFINE: This passage defines gratitude as a unique moral relation — the one feeling universally demandable and renderable, establishing an inner connection that cannot be fully dissolved.

The negative character of the bond that unifies the large group is revealed, above all, in its norms. It should be remembered that obligatory rules of every sort must be the simpler and the less voluminous (other things being equal), the larger the sphere of their application. There are much fewer rules of international courtesy, for instance, than there are courtesy rules which have to be observed within every smaller circle

The stranger is thus being discussed here, not in the sense often touched upon in the past, as the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather as the person who comes today and stays tomorrow. He is, so to speak, the potential wanderer: although he has not moved on, he has not quite overcome the freedom of coming and going.

Objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the objective individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given.

DEFINE: Offers an alternative definition of objectivity equating it with freedom from and non-commitment to preconceptions that could bias perception and judgment.

In the case of the person who is a stranger to the country, the city, the race, etc., however, this non-common element is once more nothing individual, but merely the strangeness of origin, which is or could be common to many strangers. For this reason, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness.

The money economy dominates the metropolis; it has displaced the last survivals of domestic production and the direct barter of goods; it minimizes, from day to day, the amount of work ordered by customers. The matter-of-fact attitude is obviously so intimately interrelated with the money economy, which is dominant in the metropolis, that nobody can say whether the intellectualistic mentality first promoted the money economy or whether the latter determined the former.

XREF: Connects to Simmel's broader thesis on the metropolitan mind and to later work on rationalization by Weber and the Frankfurt School.