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, The Sociology of Georg Simm…, loc. 128