PREREQUISITES OF SOCIALIZATION 85 
condition of harmony between the individual and the so- 
cial whole. Society as an objective structure viewed in 
abstraction from its individual bearers is a system of con- 
tents and functions. What holds good for a bureaucracy 
viewed as a system of correlated functions must hold good 
to a certain extent for the social system. Each individual 
entering a bureaucracy will have an assigned place await- 
ing him. But this place must none the less be in harmony 
with his individual energies. In the social system the posi- 
tions and functions are not consciously planned and as- 
signed, but they are created and found through and by the 
individual activities and experiments. The phenomenolog- 
ical structure of society appears, notwithstanding this dif- 
ference, as a system of functions in which each element 
has a specific individual place. The life of society runs its 
course, not psychologically but phenomenologically, as if 
the position of each individual within it had been prede- 
termined. The individual can therefore lead a social life 
only in so far as the position ideally belonging to him, that 
is, harmonizing with his individual tendencies. is actually 
available. 
If this condition were unrestrictedly fulfilled, the actual 
society would be a perfect society, not in an ethical or 
eudemonistic sense, but in the sense of conceptual perfec- 
tion. The group would be, not a perfect society, but a per- 
fect society, perfectly socialized. In so far as the individual 
does not find the fulfilment of this prerequisite of his social 
existence, the socialization is incomplete. Complete social- 
ization implies a thoroughgoing correlation between the 
individual and the surrounding circles, the full integration 
of his individual singularity with the life of the whole. 
This is most clearly evident in the case of a vocation. 
On the one hand, society creates within itself a vocation 
which, although differing from other vocations, can none