16 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL

The philosophic thought form may serve as a first orientation
 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 effective
 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 totality
 of existence. Science is a thought form which aims at
an understanding of the individual elements of the external
 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 possible
 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 deduced
 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 metaphysics
 and science a new world which is equivalent to both.