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GENERAL INTRODUCTION
It is the same with religion. From contents which are
also perceived and conceived on the planes of science
and metaphysics, the religious function creates a new
world by means of special emotional attitudes and special
syntheses. It transforms these contents through special
evaluations and constructs a new world-picture with dimensions
 and perspective different from the empirical,
the philosophic, or the artistic form. That world is a law
unto itself; it has an immanent logic and a value and significance
 entirely independent of its correspondence to objective
 actuality.
And science, philosophy, art, and religion are not the
only fundamental categories, not the only independent
forms in which the human mind shapes the contents of
reality. The world of values and the world of norms (Sollen)
are also specific pictures of the universe which result from
special ways of dealing with its contents. They are fundamental
 in the sense that they cannot be derived from each
other or from simpler elements.?
In this distinction between the different fields of mental
 activity and, within these fields, between the form and
the content, Simmel’s relativism reaches its widest scope.
But the functional, dynamic character of his relativism
enables him to reach, through and beyond these forms, a
final unity in life itself. With the same relativistic dialectic
 with which he has first dissected the universe, he
now co-ordinates those discrete worlds into a final synthesis
 which, although it can be formulated only in terms of
two opposing relativities, is yet more than either because
it embraces and transcends both.
1 Religion, pp. 8-18.
2 Phil. des Geldes, pp. 1-7; Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, pp. 1-12, 30-32:
 Hoptprobl. der Phil., p. 16.