38 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL

parts, into a unique historical sequence; or they may combine
 different parts into groupings of elements which contain
 a timeless correlation.
Sociology as a special science might find its subjectmatter
 in a similar fashion by drawing a new line through
facts which, as such, are quite well known. It would need
only the unifying concept which should co-ordinate into
a new synthesis the similar aspects lying along that line.
The new concept would therefore have to subject the sociohistorical
 data to an abstraction and a co-ordination which
should enable the recognition of the fact that certain peculiarities
 already observed in other relations can be
grouped together. That new grouping will then be the
subject-matter of the new science. The concept of society
as the external aggregate of social phenomena cannot fulfil
 that function. For that purpose it becomes necessary to
distinguish between the content and the form of society and to
use the latter as the unifying viewpoint. This concept of
society as form, or rather of the form of the socialization,
makes possible the formation and the delimitation of the
new science and is therefore the category of cognition and
the central concept of sociology.!
Society in the wider and larger sense consists of both
form and content. But if the subject-matter of sociology
is to be society and nothing else, it can investigate only the
processes of association, the kinds and the forms of socialization.
 Everything else found within society and realized
by means of it and within its framework is not socialization
itself, but merely content. A special science of society as
such can be founded only when these two elements, inseparably
 united in actuality, are separated in scientific abstraction.
 The socio-historical actuality can be really projected
 on the plane of the purely social only if the forms of
t Soz., pp. 4-7; Grundfr. der Soz., pp. 22-33.