SUMMARY TO BOOK ONE 89

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material, and the product. But the machine as a pure
mechanism, the pure mechanics of the machine, is nothing
but the sum of the integrating functional relationships of
the component parts.
Simmel conceives of sociology as a special, limited, and
empirical social science, and determines its relations to the
other social sciences and to the philosophical inquiries into
the phenomena of the socio-historical world. He gives due
value to social metaphysics as a fully autonomous form of
mental activity, but denounces its claims to encroach upon
scientific inquiries. If the philosophic method is a necessary
 procedure to give a first orientation in the manifoldness
 of the phenomena, it is a childhood procedure which
is to be conquered, and until it is conquered, there is no
social science. Only by following the method of science
can the investigation produce results which have objective
validity.

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