272 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL
is not new, although his definition is original. The general
tendency during the last twenty years has been in the same
direction. But he has realized better than anybody else
the implications of the new orientation and the necessity
for a complete methodology. His theory of association
is a science of association, not a philosophy of society, as
it is for some American sociologists who define their in-
quiries in the same terms. The significance of a study of the
forms of socialization may not be immediately apparent.
When it is realized that the investigation aims at an under-
standing of the processes of socialization, its importance
becomes evident. Not only is a knowledge of those pro-
cesses necessary for an understanding of all social contents,
but it is the only knowledge which will lead to a fundamen-
tal understanding of the social life itself.
The advantage of his conception of sociology is not only
that it leads to investigation of processes which shape all
kinds of content, but also that it includes in one study the
investigation of instinctive and voluntary groupings, of
communities and associations, of contract and coercion,
in a word, of all forms of interaction. It would seem, then,
that his conception of the science suggests a practically
unlimited possibility of work. He has none the less been
criticized for limiting the investigation to the study of the
social forms. But this limitation is the result of the fact
that he conceives of sociology as a science, and therefore
as a limited science. Sociology has been taken down from
the elevated position where it was enthroned as the syn-
thesis of all sciences. But it has apparently not quite lost
its former grandeur for a great many of its admirers who
still like to think of it as at least a synthesis of the social
sciences. It can maintain that position just as long as it
is content to be a social philosophy. To become a science,
it has to renounce all pretense of being the apotheosis of
