CONCLUSION

HIS study is an effort to give in a comprehensive and
yet reasonably detailed form a synopsis of Simmel’s
social theory and the essentials of his formal sociology!
 An appreciation of his general philosophy would
hardly be in place here, and the reader is therefore referred
to the more competent scholars who have given a valuation
 of that aspect of his work.!
In the light of Simmel’s own viewpoint that a complete
understanding involves both a general and a historical
understanding, this study is one-sided./ It has aimed only
at what might be called the general aspect of the factual
understanding, and has dealt only with Simmel’s work in
and for itself. It is impossible within the scope of this study
to trace the historical origins of his ideas, and we must
therefore waive detailed questions regarding his indebtedness
 to his predecessors. But before we can summarize
in a few words the significance of his specific contribution,
we must briefly indicate the position of his sociology in the
general development of the subject.
The foundations of nineteenth-century sociology were
laid by Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. Spencer is
usually referred to as the founder of the organic school, although
 with very little historical discrimination, and Comte
as nothing less than the father of sociology. From Comte
the nineteenth century inherited in a simple, easily assimilable
 synthetic form the whole range of philosophic

tA. Mamelet, Le relativisme philosophique chez Georg Simmel; Siegfried
Kracauer, “Georg Simmel,” Logos, IX (1920), 307-38; Hermann Smalenbach,
“Simmel,” Sozialistische Monatshefte, XXV (1918), 283-88; Max Frischeisen-Kohler,
 “Georg Simmel,” in Kantstudien, No. 24.

D Bry