SUMMARY TO BOOK ONE 89 N £h material, and the product. But the machine as a pure mechanism, the pure mechanics of the machine, is nothing but the sum of the integrating functional relationships of the component parts. Simmel conceives of sociology as a special, limited, and empirical social science, and determines its relations to the other social sciences and to the philosophical inquiries into the phenomena of the socio-historical world. He gives due value to social metaphysics as a fully autonomous form of mental activity, but denounces its claims to encroach upon scientific inquiries. If the philosophic method is a neces- sary procedure to give a first orientation in the manifold- ness of the phenomena, it is a childhood procedure which is to be conquered, and until it is conquered, there is no social science. Only by following the method of science can the investigation produce results which have objective validity. 2 —~ F >»