16 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL 
The philosophic thought form may serve as a first ori- 
entation in the manifoldness of the phenomenal world, but 
if it serves only as forerunner of and preliminary to science, 
it is to be succeeded by a further analysis which will bring 
recognition of the actual elements and the actually effec- 
tive forces. The goal of the inquiry is then science and not 
metaphysics. The aim is then a scientific picture of the 
world, not a metaphysical picture. Science also creates a 
picture of the world according to its own laws, with its 
own methods, and by its own technique; but these are 
different from those of metaphysics. Metaphysics is a 
thought form which aims at an inclusive view of the total- 
ity of existence. Science is a thought form which aims at 
an understanding of the individual elements of the exter- 
nal world in their primary interrelations and interactions. 
It aims to construct an objective world-picture that shall 
have the form of empirical actuality, that shall make pos- 
sible practical, purposeful activity. 
But the metaphysical truth and the so-called empirical 
actuality are not the only forms in which the mental life 
shapes the contents of the world. They can also be formed 
artistically and religiously. 
Art also is a category or a world which cannot be de- 
duced from any other category. Art also works with the 
elementary contents of reality, but it becomes art only by 
giving them forms which derive from its own artistic needs 
of perception and feeling. These forms are separate and 
distinct from the categories which shape the world of 
actuality, and even the space of a picture is different from 
the space which the world of actuality manifests. Art has 
its own logic, its own concept of truth, its own causality, 
and with these it builds out of the same contents as meta- 
physics and science a new world which is equivalent to both.