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GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
21 
tundamental principle is its method. The functional relativism is systematically 
sarried through and pervades all fields. . 
Simmel’s philosophy is one of the latest expressions of that relativistic tend- 
ency which began with the romantic movement and became increasingly promi- 
nent during the latter part of the nineteenth century. It belongs to that general 
school of thought which has been classified by its opponents as psychologism and 
historicism. And, like the metaphysics of many of his contemporaries in the same 
group, such as Nietzsche, Dilthey, Troeltsch, and Bergson, it places the emphasis 
an life as the ultimate category. 
In how far his metaphysics is acceptable and satisfactory is largely a ques- 
tion of individual taste. To the type of mind which is content to live in an ex- 
perimental and essentially dynamic universe, his formulation will be acceptable. 
That type of mind will not be disturbed by the thought that the forms and norms 
of life are born out of the interplay of its processes with an environment. To the 
type of mind which needs a form and norm outside of life fixed for all eternity 
and by means of which life may be shaped and ordered, Simmel’s relativism will 
not be acceptable. Under the chaotic conditions of post-war Europe there is a 
tendency to return to systems of absolutism, and it may very well be that the 
extreme relativism of Simmel will close a period in European thought. If this is 
going to be the case, it will be due not so much to its fundamental inadequacy as 
to a failure to understand the implications of modern relativism. 
Simmel has been accused of dissolving all forms and categories, an accusa- 
tion which will seem hardly justified in the light of the foregoing analysis. Sim- 
mel’s philosophy is a theory of functions, and although he was not a mathema- 
tician, his thought is very similar to that underlying modern mathematics. To 
see a form or a category in its relation to life is not to dissolve it, but to see it as 
a function relative to a system of reference. A function of one or more variables 
is not something inferior to a constant because, as quantity, it is variable. That 
would be to misunderstand its essence, which is not quantity, but relationship. 
The essential characteristic of a function is not variability of quantity, but 
constancy of relationship. This constancy of relationship between variables has 
;herefore an element of absoluteness in relation to these variables. A function is 
‘tself a form. To see a category or a form as a function is therefore not to dis- 
solve them, but to see them in the only possible way in which an absolute can 
appear in a changing dynamic system. It is only in the form of a function that 
such an absolute can adequately be expressed. It is only through such a relativa- 
Hon that true universality can be reached. 
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