28 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL 
The superindividual character of social structures and 
the objectivity and independence of social forces and or- 
ganizations are therefore only apparent. A further analy- 
sis resolves that appearance which seems to announce a 
new independent unity above the individuals into a reci- 
procity which plays between them. The latter view 
corresponds to the facts, the former is the result of a lim- 
ited analysis; the latter is the ideal of complete under- 
standing, the former the stage of understanding actually 
reached. 
In many cases this complete understanding cannot be 
reached. The relations of human beings are so complex, 
so ramified, and so compact that it is often a hopeless task 
to try to resolve them into the constituent elements. We 
are consequently compelled in certain instances to treat 
these reciprocal relationships as unities. But it remains a 
mere methodological device to speak of the essence and the 
development of the state, of law, and of institutions as if 
they were unified entities. It is a mere scientific interim to 
treat them as if they had an independent existence. 
This provisional convenience resembles the treatment 
of the life-process as though it were a proper entity instead 
of merely the synthesis of endlessly complicated reciproc- 
ities between the minutest parts of the organic body. In 
our knowledge of physical organisms we have succeeded in 
thinking beyond the idea of a vital power that seemed to 
hold sway over the separate organs and to compose a new 
entity in addition to them. We have in part at least sub- 
stituted the reciprocal activities of the organs. In like 
manner we must attempt in the social sciences to approach 
nearer and nearer to the individual operations which pro- 
duce the social structure, even if we have to stop short of 
complete analysis in many instances. 
 Soz.. pp. 495-06: “Persistence of Social Groups,” 4. J. S., III, 665-66.