116 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL 
People unite to contest, and the contest takes place accord- 
ing to rules and regulations acknowledged by both and 
defining the form of the interrelation. These norms create 
the technique without which the contest would be impos- 
sible. A contest implies a form of association, and the 
norms for this association are usually much more strict 
and impersonal, and are lived up to with a finer sense of 
honor, than are the norms of co-operative associations. 
The Legal Contest 
The intimate correlation between the opposition and 
union which is the essence of conflict finds its clearest man- 
ifestation in the contest game. It illustrates how the one 
realizes its full sociological significance and efficacy only in 
and through the other. A similar sociological form, al- 
though not in such purity, joins the two parties of a legal 
contest. There is in this case an object of contest, but the 
form of the contest is purely impersonal and factual. The 
respective claims are asserted with relentless objectivity 
and pushed with employment of all available means, with- 
out being diverted or modified by personal reactions or ex- 
traneous considerations. Nothing enters into the contest 
which does not properly belong in the conflict and which 
does not serve the ends of the conflict. In other battles, in- 
cluding the most savage struggles, there is always the pos- 
sibility of the intermixture of subjective elements or of the 
intervention of a third or of a freak of nature. From the 
legal battle all that is excluded. It is to be fought to the 
bitter end without any interference on the part of what is 
not immediately pertinent to the main contention; and it 
is this impersonal character which makes it so severe, 
sharp. and merciless. 
On the other hand, the whole contest presupposes and 
implies a narrow unity between the parties. Their contest