GENERAL INTRODUCTION hles. ome eory c In and ning ruc- g, a vist, it in city sub- ‘cog- wth. non ‘gson alue. vorld +, he ould pose. on to f the 18 an ~Jasls reader mssen- Kultur, aorie,” oensée N-"T8. The truth for Simmel is relative, not absolutei':A single idea is true, is valid, only in relation to another idea, and a whole body of knowledge is true only jn’ definite relation to the external world. The peculiar tendency of our mind to accept the truth of a proposition only on the basis of a proof leads to an infinite regression, which means the impossibility of finding the final truth which shall sup- port the whole structure. If we do not want to accept dog- matically once and for all a proposition which shall need no further proof, we are forced to accept a reciprocity of proving between propositions as the basic form of cogni- tion (Erkennen). Although in case of a special deduction this process of circular reasoning can be shown to be faulty, it may none the less be valid for the totality of our theo- retic knowledge. Knowing (Erkennen) would then be a free-floating process in which the elements mutually de- termine each other’s place—just as the masses of matter determine each other’s place in space. Truth would then be a concept of relationship, like weight, and our picture of the world would float in space like the world itself. The necessity for proof either postpones the recognition of the truth till infinity, along a line of infinite regression, or it bends this line round to a circle. Then one proposition is true only in relation to another, this latter, however, in the last instance only in relation to the former. The totality of our theoretic knowledge would then be no more true than that the totality of matter is heavy. Only in the relation of the elements to each other do they have this quality, a quality which the whole cannot be said to possess. The totality can only possess this quality in relation to something outside of itself. In the same way the laws of geometry build themselves on each other ac- cording to an internal autonomy, while the axioms and methodological norms, according to which this building