68 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL 
tal understanding of phenomena cannot hope to develop 
the artistic form out of the preceding form alone. Social 
relations, religion, intellectual levels, individual predilec- 
tions would all have to be taken into consideration. It is 
the same way with the historical development of economic 
life. The phenomena observed in sequence may be purely 
economic, but the energies and factors which bring about 
the change from one form of production to the next are by 
no means purely economic. Personal, ethical, cultural, and 
physical factors all contribute in shaping the succeeding 
stage. The so-called materialistic interpretation of history 
is but an exaggerated form of this tendency to view eco- 
nomic situations as a unilateral causal series. Not only is 
the fact ignored that each succeeding economic occurrence 
is influenced by innumerable non-economic factors, but 
the self-sufficiency of the economic series and its freedom 
from the others is now conceived as a mastery over the 
others. The totality of historical development is now 
traced back to this series as its cause.! 
The approach and approximation to exact knowledge 
of the actual factors and forces by means of the prelimi- 
nary formulations in terms of historical laws has therefore 
an internal boundary. A further differentiation finally, dis- 
solves the concept of historical law and leaves nothing but 
the investigation of the historical fact and the timeless 
law. By the time the historical inquiry has become exact, 
its task is merely to determine the content of the historical 
actuality, which is the starting-point of all knowledge and 
without which no knowledge is possible. 
The difference between the exact historical and the 
exact scientific inquiry lies in the fact that the first is in- 
terested in the individual occurrence and the latter in the 
law. Both are needed. because the knowledge of a timeless 
\ Probl. der Gesch., pp. 94-101.