SUMMARY HE two chapters of this book give a brief synopsis of Simmel’s social metaphysics as given in his Phi- losophy of Money. They illustrate the function of a social metaphysics as contrasted with the function of an empirical social science and with the philosophic inquiry into the presuppositions of the social sciences. They also illustrate what his conception of metaphysics and his em- phasis on function and thought form rather than on dogma and system lead to in practical application. They do not lead to a well-rounded, systematic social philosophy. But that, according to Simmel, is their strength, not their weak- ness. Absolute and abstract philosophic systems are too far removed and remain too far distant from the single appear- ances of practical life to be capable of lifting them out of their isolation and relating them to all other appearances of life. They fulfil their function of seeing life whole and the manifoldness of the cosmos as a unitary totality only at the cost of neglecting large numbers of single phenom- ena. Simmel’s functional relativism and subtle dialectic give the metaphysical thought form a sufficient mobility and flexibility to enable it to relate even the most fleeting historical appearance on the surface of life to the most fun- damental aspects of existence. The total inquiry pursued in this third book is a meta- physical inquiry. The unity of the single inquiries lies, therefore, not in the relation between their propositions or in their contribution to a special field of knowledge, but in the unitary thought movement which aimed through rf