CONCLUSION 
HIS study is an effort to give in a comprehensive and 
yet reasonably detailed form a synopsis of Simmel’s 
social theory and the essentials of his formal sociol- 
ogy! An appreciation of his general philosophy would 
hardly be in place here, and the reader is therefore referred 
to the more competent scholars who have given a valua- 
tion of that aspect of his work.! 
In the light of Simmel’s own viewpoint that a complete 
understanding involves both a general and a historical 
understanding, this study is one-sided./ It has aimed only 
at what might be called the general aspect of the factual 
understanding, and has dealt only with Simmel’s work in 
and for itself. It is impossible within the scope of this study 
to trace the historical origins of his ideas, and we must 
therefore waive detailed questions regarding his indebted- 
ness to his predecessors. But before we can summarize 
in a few words the significance of his specific contribution, 
we must briefly indicate the position of his sociology in the 
general development of the subject. 
The foundations of nineteenth-century sociology were 
laid by Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. Spencer is 
usually referred to as the founder of the organic school, al- 
though with very little historical discrimination, and Comte 
as nothing less than the father of sociology. From Comte 
the nineteenth century inherited in a simple, easily as- 
similable synthetic form the whole range of philosophic 
tA. Mamelet, Le relativisme philosophique chez Georg Simmel; Siegfried 
Kracauer, “Georg Simmel,” Logos, IX (1920), 307-38; Hermann Smalenbach, 
“Simmel,” Sozialistische Monatshefte, XXV (1918), 283-88; Max Frischeisen- 
Kohler, “Georg Simmel,” in Kantstudien, No. 24. 
D Bry