52 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL 
logical significance of a judgment something psychological, 
although only within and through a psychological process 
can it obtain reality in consciousness. As unities, there- 
fore, they are conceptual unities, and, as such, they may be 
content for the individual consciousness, but they have no 
actual historical origin as unities. The psychological ac- 
tuality creates only parts of them or carries them on or 
thinks of these contents as concepts. There is a psycholog- 
ical bearer of the totality only when they are conceived as 
content in the individual mind. The empirical origin of the 
single elements and forms of language and their practical 
application in individual cases is a problem of individual 
psychology. In this same field belongs the problem of the 
transmission of cultural elements or the effectiveness of 
law as a psychological element in the merchant, the crimi- 
nal, and the judge. 
In actuality, therefore, the origin is of an individual 
psychological nature, not of a superindividual psycholog- 
ical nature. But there is not merely a single origin. The 
formation and development result from the contributions 
of a plurality of individual minds interacting with one an- 
other. As entities they have no origin at all. but are merely 
a conceptual content. 
Another similar suggestion about the existence of a 
superindividual mind arises from the fact that, in case of 
collective activity, not only the activity itself but also the 
result appears as a unity. When a crowd destroys a 
house or passes judgment, the sum of the individual ac- 
tions appears as a single unitary occurrence, as the realiza- 
tion of a single concept. The unitary external occurrence 
resulting from manifold subjective mental occurrences is 
conceived as the result of a single mental process, that of 
the collective mind. The unity of the objective appearance 
is reflected in the assumed unity of its psychic cause, but