86 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL 
the less in principle be followed by many individuals. On 
the other hand, however, notwithstanding this general 
character of a vocation, the individual enters into it on 
the ground of what he feels as a personal calling. A voca- 
tion therefore requires a harmony between the structure 
and the life-process of society on the one side and the in- 
dividual impulses and qualities on the other side. Upon 
such a general presupposition rests in the last instance the 
idea that there is a position and a function within society 
for every personality and that he should search until he 
finds it. 
The empirical society becomes possible only if this con- 
dition which culminates in the vocational concept is ful- 
filled. Socialization means that the individual elements 
have become a unity, that they mutually influence one an- 
other, and that there is a reciprocal significance of the ele- 
ments for the totality and of the totality for the elements. 
Socialization results from processes in the individual con- 
sciousness, and these processes can therefore be processes 
of socialization only if the condition outlined above is ful- 
filled. This causal interdependence which connects every 
social element with the existence of every other element, 
and in that way weaves the external tissue, becomes a tele- 
ological one when regarded from the side of the individual 
bearers, who view themselves as self-sufficient, self-deter- 
mining egos creating these relations. 
That this phenomenal totality adapts itself to the pur- 
poses of individuals who approach it from outside, that it 
offers them a position in which their individual singularity, 
which is internally determined, comes to play an inevitable 
part in the life of the whole, is one of the fundamental cate- 
gories which give the individual consciousness the form 
which makes it a social element.! 
1 Soz., Dp. 45.