250 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL
according to the law of evaluation which is condensed in
money.
The fact that money is symbolic for both fundamental
forms of expressing the actuality indicates their mutual
relation. The meaning of each of these forms is only relative.
 Each finds its logical and psychological possibility of
rendering the world intelligible only in the other. Only
because reality is in absolute mobility is there any sense in
placing opposite it an ideal system of valid timeless laws,
and only because the latter exists can the former, which
would otherwise remain an indefinable chaos, be grasped
and made intelligible. The general relativity of the world,
which seems at first to be manifest only in one aspect of
this opposition, in reality also embraces the other and
shows itself as ruler where at first it seemed only a party.
In the same way money builds above its meaning as a single
 economic value a higher meaning, namely, that of expressing
 abstract economic value as such; and it intertwines
 these two functions in an indissoluble correlation
in which neither is the first.
By symbolizing the factual relationships between objects,
 money as a historical structure creates a special bond
between that factual world and historical life. Money is
only the relativity of economic goods, which signifies their
value, condensed in a special structure. Therefore, the
more social life comes to be pervaded by the money economy,
 the more clearly and explicitly does the relativistic
character of existence come to be expressed in conscious
life. Just as the absolutistic viewpoint represented a phase
of intellectual development which was intimately correlated
 with specific practical, economic, and emotional
forms and constellations of cultural objects, so the relativistic
 viewpoint, which seems to express or rather to be
the present form of intellectual adaptation, is also inti-