SUMMARY

r HE preceding chapters illustrate the skeleton structure
 of Simmel’s sociology. Apart from the topics
selected, his works contain a great many other essays
on specific social forms and general sociological problems.
The phenomena dealt with are, however, sufficiently representative
 to suggest a more or less unified picture of the
task of formal sociology.
[t will be evident that, although drawing its data from
the social life of all ages, its subject-matter is not the factual
 content of the social situation, but its purely formal
aspect. Its aim is to find correlations between determinative
 factors and sociological forms. Its purpose is not to
find correlations between determinative factors and social
conditions.
Sociology is concerned with kingship and the state as
forms of social organization, not as political institutions.
It deals with the competitive system and large-scale production
 as types of social structures, not as phases of economic
 development. It is interested in law and morality
in their formalistic aspect, as norms for specific relationships,
 not in their legal or ethical content.
The subject-matter of sociology is therefore not the social
 actuality as such. It rests upon an abstraction from
the actuality like that of any other science. In sociology
this abstraction results from a differentiation between the
form and the content of the social actuality. This mental
process of differentiation is its essential technique. As
long as this technique is not mastered, the correlation problems
 of the science will appear in the form of contingency
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