258 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL 
concepts by means of which previous periods had organ- 
ized their knowledge of society, together with the char- 
acteristic historical point of view of the romantic move- 
ment. It contained the time-worn analogy between society 
and the individual, the mixture of value and existential 
judgments known as the idea of progress together with the 
search for the law of that mixture, the interest in the his- 
torical dimension, the general rationalistic prejudice, and 
the interest in historical prediction. In other words, it con- 
tained all the basic presuppositions and fundamental cate- 
gories that were necessary to reduce all social study in- 
evitably to some form of social philosophy or philosophy 
of history. 
The history of social theory in the nineteenth century 
is the history of a gradual methodological clarification and 
of the slow liberation of the study from restricting pre- 
suppositions and confusing aims. Comte may have thought 
of himself as the herald of the positive stage, but in reality 
he left his scientific descendants an estate which was still 
largely incumbered with metaphysics. However, even if 
he was the father of modern sociology, he must have had a 
few paternal ancestors himself, and so there are a few 
others to blame for the rather doubtful heritage. But 
among descendants of patriarchal Aryans it is not consid- 
ered good form to criticize one’s paternal ancestors too 
severely, so instead of merely referring to Comte’s doubt- 
ful methodology, let us also admit that he has been the 
stimulus to a renewed study of social phenomena. 
Comte has been the starting-point for a great many 
different trends of social theory. With the help of a little 
imagination, the most divergent types of thought could be 
easily traced back to his works. They contain in embryo 
so many ideas that have later been developed into distinct 
theories that it is just as easy to view them as the begin-