20 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL

Later, when these independent structures have taken
form, the search for truth is for the sake of truth in science,
for the sake of beauty in art, and for the sake of God in
religion. An objective cultural world now exists whose
structure confronts life as a fixed station on its onward
march.!
Life as process, continuous and essentially dynamic,
creates the non-temporal forms, discrete and essentially
static. These forms, once created, confront life, obstruct
its free, unhampered flow, and try to shape it according to
their norms. Out of this tension life’s eternal dialectic is
born. The processes of life create forms and embody
themselves in structures. The forms of life, although the
product of its processes, yet limit and define them. But
life eternally transcends its self-created forms in order to
find embodiment in new and better forms. These successive
 discrete forms direct and modify the ceaseless flow of
life until, no longer capable of giving it adequate expression,
 they are superseded in turn by other forms. This is
the eternal dialectic inherent in life itself. For life is not
only a continuous process and, as such, relative in relation
to these forms and structures; it is also, as process, at the
same time creator of these forms and therefore more than
either. It is that which is more than continuity and form,
that which continually transcends itself and its creations.
Its unitary function is its self-transcendence. Life is the
final unitary synthesis which is the absolute of its own relativities.?


i Lebensanschauung, pp. 38-39, 50-56, 58-61.
2 For a more complete development of Simmel’s metaphysics of life, see his
Lebensanschauung (Vier metaphysische Kapitel).
In the above paragraphs Simmel’s relativistic philosophy has been briefly
sutlined. His philosophy is a method, not a system. Yet, even so, it is not
wholly unsystematic. It has a fundamental principle and a method, or rather its