18 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL
The different metaphysical systems are contradictory
in content and relative in value, but metaphysics as funetion
 has a value and significance independent of and beyond
 any contradictions in material content. The different
 exact sciences treat only a relatively small aspect of
the actuality, but science as function has a value which lies
beyond the fragmentary character of its special fields. The
different types of art seem unrelated and mutually exclusive,
 but art as function has a meaning which lies beyond
all discrepancies in style and technique. The different
religions may be fundamentally diverse, but religion as
function has a value beyond all the contradictions in
dogma.
As function these forms of the mind have a fixity and
universality in relation to their contents, but in relation
to each other they have only a relative value. No single
field of mental activity takes a position of superiority in
relation to any other field. Neither religion, nor metaphysics,
 nor science, nor art is the one and absolute form
to which the others must eventually be converted. They
are autonomous worlds in which the totality of existence
is expressed in a fully adequate language.
What is universal in relation to each of these worlds,
because it co-ordinates and transcends all of them, is life
itself. Life on the intellectual plane, as mind, is the creator
 of these worlds. They are adaptational products, instruments
 of adaptation, produced in the contact of life’s
processes with an environment. Mind lives in these forms
and categories, is these forms and categories, just as the
vital force lives in the forms and structures of individual
organisms. But, although the product of life’s processes,
they cannot be defined in terms of processes alone. They
are objective systems possessing an independent existence
and confronting life’s processes as external structures.