38 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL 
parts, into a unique historical sequence; or they may com- 
bine different parts into groupings of elements which con- 
tain a timeless correlation. 
Sociology as a special science might find its subject- 
matter in a similar fashion by drawing a new line through 
facts which, as such, are quite well known. It would need 
only the unifying concept which should co-ordinate into 
a new synthesis the similar aspects lying along that line. 
The new concept would therefore have to subject the socio- 
historical data to an abstraction and a co-ordination which 
should enable the recognition of the fact that certain pe- 
culiarities already observed in other relations can be 
grouped together. That new grouping will then be the 
subject-matter of the new science. The concept of society 
as the external aggregate of social phenomena cannot ful- 
fil that function. For that purpose it becomes necessary to 
distinguish between the content and the form of society and to 
use the latter as the unifying viewpoint. This concept of 
society as form, or rather of the form of the socialization, 
makes possible the formation and the delimitation of the 
new science and is therefore the category of cognition and 
the central concept of sociology.! 
Society in the wider and larger sense consists of both 
form and content. But if the subject-matter of sociology 
is to be society and nothing else, it can investigate only the 
processes of association, the kinds and the forms of sociali- 
zation. Everything else found within society and realized 
by means of it and within its framework is not socialization 
itself, but merely content. A special science of society as 
such can be founded only when these two elements, insep- 
arably united in actuality, are separated in scientific ab- 
straction. The socio-historical actuality can be really pro- 
jected on the plane of the purely social only if the forms of 
t Soz., pp. 4-7; Grundfr. der Soz., pp. 22-33.