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.

Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simm…, loc. 6724