CHAPTER IV

THE SPATIAL RELATIONS OF
SOCIAL FORMS
TaE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIALIZATIONS!

PACE as such is in the last analysis a subjective men-S
 tal category, a form of co-ordinating discrete sense
impressions in unitary perceptions. It is a synthesis
which results from a specific psychological function and
which, as such, has no immediate sociological significance.
What appears as objective space is, as such. merely an irrelevant
 form.
But what is in reality a mere formal condition without
which certain occurrences cannot take place has often been
taken for an efficient cause. Certain interpretations of
history have laid much stress on the spatial factor and
have regarded the size of states, the dispersion or concentration
 of peoples, the mobility or stability of the masses,
as if these factors were efficient causes emanating from space
instead of mere expressions in spatial form of the actual
forces and processes. What makes a state big is not the
number of square miles of its area, but the forces and resources
 of its people. What creates the characteristic phenomena
 of neighborliness or strangeness is not the spatial
proximity or the spatial distance. but a specific psychological
 content.
Notwithstanding this fact, the spatial forms of objects
and occurrences are often of great importance, not as
causes. but as effects that throw licht on the character of

L Adapted from Soz., chap. ix, pp. 614-708.

1 A