xiv THE LIFE OF GEORG SIMMEL

much that was specifically his own, to be a mere follower.
He was original in the sense that he combined in his own
characteristic way elements which were borrowed from
the most divergent sources. Yet his college studies as a
whole had a profound influence on his thought and greatly
strengthened his natural inclinations. A great deal of
purely historical study reinforced his predisposition to a
historical point of view. And his work with Bastian, Lazarus,
 and Zeller, all of whom had a historical approach
toward their subject, fortified this tendency still more.
The general character of his university studies may then
perhaps be a partial explanation of his characteristic philosophy,
 which has a genetic, functional relativism as its
main theme. It may perhaps partly account for a viewpoint
 from which all existence is seen as a phase in a process
 of becoming and all phenomena in relation to an ever
changing environment, as functions of numerous variables.
His philosophy is the philosophy of a man who sees the
present as the product of the past. It is the philosophical
expression of a historical point of view. For that reason it
approaches in one important aspect the philosophy of
Hegel. It is genetic and dialectic, but while for Hegel the
absolute was the self-unfolding Idea, for Simmel the absolute
 was Life itself.
Apart from his immediate teachers, the other formative
 influences were Kant, Cohen, Goethe, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Hegel, and Heracleitus. To Cohen’s interpretation
 of Kant he owed a great deal, even if he did not fully
accept it. Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, and the
whole of the anti-intellectualistic movement of the nineteenth
 century, strongly affected his thinking. Heracleitus,
 for whom he had the most profound admiration, undoubtedly
 had a great influence on the formulation of his
relativism, and there is too much similarity in Simmel’s