CHAPTER IV THE SPATIAL RELATIONS OF SOCIAL FORMS TaE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIALIZATIONS! PACE as such is in the last analysis a subjective men- S tal category, a form of co-ordinating discrete sense impressions in unitary perceptions. It is a synthesis which results from a specific psychological function and which, as such, has no immediate sociological significance. What appears as objective space is, as such. merely an irrel- evant form. But what is in reality a mere formal condition without which certain occurrences cannot take place has often been taken for an efficient cause. Certain interpretations of history have laid much stress on the spatial factor and have regarded the size of states, the dispersion or concen- tration of peoples, the mobility or stability of the masses, as if these factors were efficient causes emanating from space instead of mere expressions in spatial form of the actual forces and processes. What makes a state big is not the number of square miles of its area, but the forces and re- sources of its people. What creates the characteristic phe- nomena of neighborliness or strangeness is not the spatial proximity or the spatial distance. but a specific psychologi- cal content. Notwithstanding this fact, the spatial forms of objects and occurrences are often of great importance, not as causes. but as effects that throw licht on the character of L Adapted from Soz., chap. ix, pp. 614-708. 1 A