268 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL
Science is pre-eminently practical. In the last instance,
it is directed toward the external world. Its aim is to find
that knowledge which will lead actions built on it to give
desired results. Its purpose is to discover the means
which will make it possible to obtain that which is not yet
out of that which is. For that reason it has to aim at the
general timeless law, because only on that type of knowl-
edge can adequate action be built. From the point of view
of science, the self-sufficient historical investigation, aim-
ing at the discovery of the successive stages of development
or at the discovery of the historical law, is a blind alley
which leads nowhere. Or rather it leads to the present, to
what is, but no farther. It leads to a fatalism in some form
or other, whether optimistic or pessimistic, which is essen-
tially contradictory to the scientific spirit.
This overemphasis on the historical dimension has been
due largely to the fact that the interest in the social sci-
ences was mainly philosophical and theoretical rather than
practical. The specific philosophic concept which has done
more than any other to retard the advancement of the so-
cial sciences is the concept of progress. This somewhat
mystical concept is largely responsible for the emphasis on
the historical dimension. Under the assumed name of
evolution it tried to pass as a scientific concept, but the no-
tion of social evolution has usually been more metaphysical
than scientific. In this latter form it has acted as a tremen-
dous stimulus to the investigation of social history, but it
has not led to much practical information for the solution
of social problems. The social scientists displayed a reli-
gious zeal in their endeavor to picture the historical develop-
ment of social institutions, but paid very little considera-
tion to the question of where it was going to lead them.
The result was that the tracing of that evolution became
an end in itself. The historical dimension in the social sci-
