PREREQUISITES OF SOCIALIZATION 85

condition of harmony between the individual and the social
 whole. Society as an objective structure viewed in
abstraction from its individual bearers is a system of contents
 and functions. What holds good for a bureaucracy
viewed as a system of correlated functions must hold good
to a certain extent for the social system. Each individual
entering a bureaucracy will have an assigned place awaiting
 him. But this place must none the less be in harmony
with his individual energies. In the social system the positions
 and functions are not consciously planned and assigned,
 but they are created and found through and by the
individual activities and experiments. The phenomenological
 structure of society appears, notwithstanding this difference,
 as a system of functions in which each element
has a specific individual place. The life of society runs its
course, not psychologically but phenomenologically, as if
the position of each individual within it had been predetermined.
 The individual can therefore lead a social life
only in so far as the position ideally belonging to him, that
is, harmonizing with his individual tendencies. is actually
available.
If this condition were unrestrictedly fulfilled, the actual
society would be a perfect society, not in an ethical or
eudemonistic sense, but in the sense of conceptual perfection.
 The group would be, not a perfect society, but a perfect
 society, perfectly socialized. In so far as the individual
does not find the fulfilment of this prerequisite of his social
existence, the socialization is incomplete. Complete socialization
 implies a thoroughgoing correlation between the
individual and the surrounding circles, the full integration
of his individual singularity with the life of the whole.
This is most clearly evident in the case of a vocation.
On the one hand, society creates within itself a vocation
which, although differing from other vocations, can none