86 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL the less in principle be followed by many individuals. On the other hand, however, notwithstanding this general character of a vocation, the individual enters into it on the ground of what he feels as a personal calling. A voca- tion therefore requires a harmony between the structure and the life-process of society on the one side and the in- dividual impulses and qualities on the other side. Upon such a general presupposition rests in the last instance the idea that there is a position and a function within society for every personality and that he should search until he finds it. The empirical society becomes possible only if this con- dition which culminates in the vocational concept is ful- filled. Socialization means that the individual elements have become a unity, that they mutually influence one an- other, and that there is a reciprocal significance of the ele- ments for the totality and of the totality for the elements. Socialization results from processes in the individual con- sciousness, and these processes can therefore be processes of socialization only if the condition outlined above is ful- filled. This causal interdependence which connects every social element with the existence of every other element, and in that way weaves the external tissue, becomes a tele- ological one when regarded from the side of the individual bearers, who view themselves as self-sufficient, self-deter- mining egos creating these relations. That this phenomenal totality adapts itself to the pur- poses of individuals who approach it from outside, that it offers them a position in which their individual singularity, which is internally determined, comes to play an inevitable part in the life of the whole, is one of the fundamental cate- gories which give the individual consciousness the form which makes it a social element.! 1 Soz., Dp. 45.