86 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL

the less in principle be followed by many individuals. On
the other hand, however, notwithstanding this general
character of a vocation, the individual enters into it on
the ground of what he feels as a personal calling. A vocation
 therefore requires a harmony between the structure
and the life-process of society on the one side and the individual
 impulses and qualities on the other side. Upon
such a general presupposition rests in the last instance the
idea that there is a position and a function within society
for every personality and that he should search until he
finds it.
The empirical society becomes possible only if this condition
 which culminates in the vocational concept is fulfilled.
 Socialization means that the individual elements
have become a unity, that they mutually influence one another,
 and that there is a reciprocal significance of the elements
 for the totality and of the totality for the elements.
Socialization results from processes in the individual consciousness,
 and these processes can therefore be processes
of socialization only if the condition outlined above is fulfilled.
 This causal interdependence which connects every
social element with the existence of every other element,
and in that way weaves the external tissue, becomes a teleological
 one when regarded from the side of the individual
bearers, who view themselves as self-sufficient, self-determining
 egos creating these relations.
That this phenomenal totality adapts itself to the purposes
 of individuals who approach it from outside, that it
offers them a position in which their individual singularity,
which is internally determined, comes to play an inevitable
part in the life of the whole, is one of the fundamental categories
 which give the individual consciousness the form
which makes it a social element.!

1 Soz., Dp. 45.