PART IV SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE THE SOCIOLOGY OF SPACE It is one of the most frequent abberations of the human causal impulse to take formal conditions, without which certain events cannot occur, for positive, productive results of those same things. The typical example is the power of time - a figure of speech that countless times deceives us into not searching for the real reasons for moderations or coldness of convictions, or for psychological healing processes or for ingrained habits. The same may hold true in many cases for the significance of space. If an aesthetic theory declares that an essential task of plastic art is to make space palpable to us, then it fails to acknowledge that our interest only applies to the particular forms of things, but not to space or spatiality in general - the latter constituting only the conditio sine qua non of forms, but neither their distinctive essence nor their causative factor. If an interpretation of history emphasizes the spatial factor to such an extent that it conceives of the largeness or smallness of kingdoms, the concentration or dispersal of the population, the mobility or stability of the masses and the like as the forces of our entire historical life, radiating out from space, as it were, then here too the necessary spatial involvement of all these constellations also runs the danger of being confused with their positively effective causes. Of course, kingdoms cannot have some size or other, of course people cannot be close to or distant from each other, without space donating some of its form, no more than those events ascribed to the power of time can occur outside of time. But the contents of these forms only experience through other contents the distinctive nature of their fates. Space always remains the actually ineffectual form, in whose modifications real energies are manifested, but only in the way that language expresses thought processes, which occur in words but not through words. A geographical radius of so many square miles does not constitute a great kingdom; but rather this is accomplished by psychological forces from a central point which hold the inhabitants of such a region together politically. It is not the form of spatial proximity or distance that creates the special 138 SIMMEL ON CULTURE SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 139 this might seem. Rather, these too are facts caused purely by psychological contents, the course of which has no different relationship to its spatial form that does a battle or a telephone call to its own - no matter how indubitably these events can also only be realized under quite definite spatial conditions. The requirement of specific psychological functions for individual historical spatial formations reflects the fact that space in general is only an activity of the mind, only the human way of connecting sensory impulses that are unrelated in themselves into uniform interpretations. Despite this state of affairs, the emphasis on the spatial meanings of things and processes is not unjustified. For these actually often take such a course that the formal or negative condition of their spatiality stands out especially for reflection, and that in it we possess the clearest documentation of the real forces. Even though a chemical process or a chess game are ultimately just as connected to spatial determinations as are a military expedition or the sales of agricultural products, equally the perspective adopted by cognitive interest is so different methodologically in one group from the other that, in the first case, questions of the conditions and determinations of space and place are quite external, while in the second case they are expressly included. Kant defines space at one point as the possibility of being together; sociation has brought about quite different possibilities of being together - in the intellectual sense - among the different types of interactions of individuals; but many of these are realized in such a way that the spatial form in which this happens, as it does for all of them, justifies special emphasis. Thus, in the interest of ascertaining the forms of sociation, we enquire into the significance that the spatial conditions of a sociation possess sociologically for their other determinants and developments. First of all there are several fundamental qualities of the spatial form upon which the structuring of communal life relies. A. Among these fundamental qualities is that which one could term the exclusivity of space. Just as there is only a single general space, of which all individual spaces are parts, so every portion of space possesses a kind of uniqueness, for which there is almost no analogy. To conceive of a definitely localized portion of space in the plural is a complete absurdity, and it is precisely this which makes it possible for a multitude of completely identical copies of other objects to exist simultaneously. For only because each occupies a different portion of space, which will never coincide with any other portion, are there several of these objects, although their nature is absolutely uniform. This uniqueness of space communicates itself to objects, so long as they can be conceived of merely as occupying space, and this becomes particularly important in practice for those whose spatial significance we tend to emphasize and put to spatial use. This applies especially to land, which is the condition for fulfilling and fructifying the three-dimensional quality of space for our purposes. To the extent to which a social formation is amalgamated with or is, as it were, united with exclusivity that is not similarly attainable in other ways. According to their entire sociological form, certain types of association can only be realized in such a way that there is no room for a second one within the spatial area that one of its formations occupies, fn contrast, with others, a certain number -all identical sociologically - can fulfil the same expanse because, as it were, they are mutually permeable. Since they possess no inner relationship to space they cannot become involved in spatial collisions. The only example that completely coincides with the first type of association is the state. It has been said of it that it is not one association among many, but rather that one which dominates all others, and is therefore of a unique character. This notion, whose correctness for the overall character of the state is not at issue here, is true in any case with respect to the spatial character of the state. The type of association between individuals which the state creates, or which creates it, is so much connected to the territory that the concept of a second state on the same territory cannot be sustained at all. To some extent, the municipality possesses the same character: within the boundaries of a city only this city can exist, and if there are two cities within those same borders, then they are not two cities on the same land, but rather two previously united cities which are now separated territories. This exclusivity, however, is not so absolute as is the case with the state. The sphere of significance and influence of a city - within a state - does not end at its geographical borders, but rather extends more or less noticeably over the entire country in intellectual, economic, and political waves in so far as the general state administration causes the forces and interests of each part to grow together with those of the whole. Viewed from this perspective, the community loses its excluding character and expands functionally over the entire state so that the latter becomes the general field of action, as it were, for the spiritual extensions of all the individual communities. In that each extends across its immediate boundaries, each community confronts all the others which have an effect on the entire area, so that no single community is the only one within it, and each has another region located around the exclusivity of its own territory where it is also not alone. Within the individual city, this local form of group life can also repeat itself. When Episcopal cities developed out of German border towns, the free community was never the proprietor of the entire communal territory; rather, a bishop existed alongside the city, with a dominant group of dependent people behind him, which he ruled according to his own law. Additionally, there existed a royal feudal court in most cities, with its own specially administered court community, and finally, independent monastic orders and Jewish communities which lived according to their own laws. In earlier times, therefore, there existed communities within the city, but no genuine, municipal community. Inevitably, however, diverse reciprocal effects developed out of the spatial contact, which found expression first in the communal town 140 SiMMEL ON CULTURE all inhabitants were provided with a common protective law above their particular personal rights: that is, the legal sphere of each district stretched beyond its boundaries, within which each community was the only one, extended in a uniform way for everyone into aft all-encompassing total area, and thereby the local exclusivity lost its effective nature with this expansion. This type constitutes the transition to the further stage of the spatial relationships of groups which possess no claim to exclusivity because they: are not limited to a particular dimension. In this way, a large number of guilds of an identical sociological structure were able to coexist within the territory of a city. Each of these was the guild for the entire city; they shared the given expanse not in a quantitative way, but functionally; they did not collide with each other in space because, as sociological formations, they were not determined spatially even though they were determined locally. According to their content, they possessed the exclusivity of filling a spatial expanse, in so far as there was only one guild in the city for a given trade, and no space for a second one. But according to their form, countless formations of this type could fill up the same space without contradiction. The most extreme pole of this series is exemplified by the church, at least if, like the Catholic Church, it raises the claim to universality and freedom from any local barrier. Nonetheless, several religions of this type, for instance, could be found together in the same city. The Catholic congregation would be the 'city's Catholic congregation' - that is, assuming a definite organization and local relationship to the city as a unit - no less than would be the congregation of any other religion. The principle of the church is non-spatial, and therefore, although it extends over every space, it does not exclude a similarly formed structure from any space. Within the spatial realm, there is a counterpart to the contrast of the external and the timeless within the temporal realm. The latter is, by its very nature, untouched by the question of now or earlier or later and is thus of course accessible to, or present in, any moment of time. The former is precisely a concept of time, specifically, that of an endless and uninterrupted time. The corresponding distinction in the spatial realm, for which we have no simple expressions, is constituted on the one hand by the supra-spatial structures which, on the basis of their inner meaning, have no relationship to space and therefore an equal relationship to all points of space. On the other hand, there are those which enjoy this equal relationship not as an equal indifference, and therefore a mere possibility, but as a real and fundamental solidarity with space everywhere. The purest type of the first category is evidently the church, and that of the second is the state. Many intermediate phenomena interpose themselves between the two poles, some of which I have indicated. In this way, a special light is shed on the formal nature of a variety of social constructs by virtue of their position on the scale, which runs from complete territorial determinacy and includes the attendant possibility of a constellation of many similar entities over the SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 141 multiplicity displayed by the relationship of the group to its territory is, therefore, often the root and the symbol of its structure. B. A further quality of space, which has a fundamental effect on social interactions, lies in the fact that for our practical use space is divided into pieces which are considered units and are framed by boundaries - both as a cause and an effect of the division. It may be that the configurations of the earth's surface appear to prescribe for us the framework we inscribe in the boundlessness of space, or that purely imaginary lines separate pieces of ground of a similar type like a watershed, where each particle gravitates to one centre on this side and a different one on the other. We always conceive of the space which a social group fills up in some sense as a unit that expresses and supports the unity of that group, just as much as it is carried and supported by it. The frame of a structure, its self-contained boundary, has a very similar significance for the social group as for a work of art. It performs two functions for the latter, which are really only two sides of a single function: closing the work of art off against the surrounding world and holding it together. The frame proclaims that a world is located inside of it which is subject only to its own laws, not drawn into the determinations and changes of the surrounding world. In so far as it symbolizes the self-contented unity of the work of art, the frame at the same time strengthens its reality and its impression. Similarly, a society is characterized as inwardly homogeneous because its sphere of existence is enclosed in acutely conscious boundaries; and conversely, the reciprocal unity and functional relationship of every element to every other one gains its spatial expression in the enclosing boundary. There is perhaps nothing that demonstrates the power of state cohesion so much as the fact that this sociological centripetality, this ultimately psychological coherence of individual persons, grows into an image - as if experienced in our senses - of a solid surrounding boundary line. People seldom appreciate how marvellously the extensity of space accommodates the intensity of sociological relationships here, how the continuity of space, precisely because it nowhere contains an absolute objective border, therefore permits us to lay down anywhere such a boundary subjectively. With respect to nature, however, this demarcation is arbitrary, even in the case of an island location, because in principle one can even 'take possession' of the sea. Once it has been laid down, the physical border's existing absolute precision illustrates particularly well the formative power of the social context and its inwardly motivated necessity in this very lack of prejudice by natural space. This is why consciousness of boundedness is not at its most precise with so-called natural boundaries (mountains, rivers, oceans or deserts) but rather with merely political boundaries which only place a geometrical line between two neighbours. And this is so, in the latter case, since shifts, expansions, contractions or fusions are much easier, because at its end the 142 SIMMEL ON CULTURE SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 143 produce not only passive resistance, but also very active repulsions. Every boundary of this type signifies both a defensive and an offensive stance, on more correctly.perhaps, it is the spatial expression of that uniform relation-ship between two neighbours for which we have no completely uniform expression, and which we could term the state of indifference between Ihe defensive and the offensive - a tension where both reside latently, regardless of whether they will develop or not. This is obviously not to deny that the setting of a boundary, which is in any case psychological, would find an alleviation and emphasis in those natural border areas. Indeed, through the structuring of its surface, space often receives divisions which colour the relationships of the inhabitants to each other and to third parties in a unique fashion. The best known example is furnished by mountain-dwellers, with their peculiar unity of love for freedom and conservatism, of obstinacy in their behaviour towards one another, along with passionate attachment to the soil, which nonetheless creates a very strong bond between them. Conservatism in the mountain valleys is very easily explained by the difficulty of interaction with the outer world and the resultant lack of stimuli for change. Where the mountainous geography does not exercise this prohibitive effect, as in some Greek landscapes, the conservative tendency does not prevail at all. It has only negative causes, in contrast to other geographical determinacies with the same result. The Nile, for instance, offers those living alongside it, on the one hand, an extraordinary uniformity of what it provides and of the activity required for exploiting it. On the other hand, the fertility of its valley is so great that, once it has settled there, the population has no cause for restless movements. These very positive reasons impress a uniformity of ever-recurring life elements upon the region; they bind it as if to the regularity of a machine, and have often forced a conservative rigidity on the Nile Valley for centuries, such as could never have been achieved on the Aegean coast for geographical reasons alone. The concept of a boundary is extremely important in all relationships of human beings to one another, even though its significance is not always a sociological one. For it often only indicates that the sphere of a personality has found a limit according to power or intelligence, or the ability of endurance or enjoyment. This does not mean, however, that the sphere of someone else begins at this limit and determines the boundary of the first person with its own. The latter, the sociological boundary, signifies quite special interaction. Each of the two elements affects the other by setting the boundary for it, but the substance of this interaction is the determination not to want or be able to exert an effect beyond this boundary. If this general concept of mutual limitation is derived from the spatial boundary, in a deeper sense the latter is still only the crystallization or spatial expression of the psychological limitation processes which alone are real. It is neither countries nor plots of land, neither urban districts nor rural districts which bound one another; rather, it is their inhabitants or propri- of the spheres of two personalities or personality complexes gains an inner unity for itself, a mutual referencing of its elements, a dynamic relationship to its centre. And it is precisely this which produces what is symbolized in the spatial boundary, the supplementation of one's own positive sense of power and justice within one's own sphere by the consciousness that such power and justice do not extend into the other sphere. The boundary is not a spatial fact with sociological consequences, but a sociological fact that forms itself spatially. The idealist principle that space is our conception, or more precisely, that it comes into being through our synthetic activity with which we give form to sensory material, is specified here in such a way that the formation of space which we call a boundary is a sociological function. Of course, once it has become a spatial and sensory object that we inscribe into nature independently of its sociological and practical sense, then this produces strong repercussions on the consciousness of the relationship of the parties. Whereas this line only marks the diversity in the two relationships, that of the elements of a sphere among each other and that among those elements and the elements of another sphere, it becomes a living energy that forces the former together and will not allow them to escape their unity and pushes between them both like a physical force that emits outward repulsions in all directions. Perhaps in the majority of all relationships between individuals as well as between groups, the concept of the boundary becomes in some way important. Everywhere, where the interests of two elements are directed at the same object, the possibility of their coexistence depends on a border line separating their spheres within the object-whether this be a legal line ending the dispute or a power boundary perhaps starting it. I recall only one case of immeasurable importance for all human social existence. All close coexistence continually depends on each person knowing more about the other through psychological hypotheses than the other person directly and consciously indicates. For if we had to rely only on what was revealed in this way, then we would only confront a few fortuitous and unconnected fragments of a mind rather than a unified person whom we can understand and upon whom we can count. Therefore we must supplement the existing fragments with conclusions, interpretations, and interpolations until a person emerges who is sufficiently complete for our inner and practical everyday needs. This indubitably social right to pry into another person whether they desire it or not contrasts with that person's private right to their own psychological being, their right to discretion. For discretion not only means that one does not open other people's letters or listen at their doors, but also that one refrains from that pondering and conjecturing with which one could penetrate into someone's intimacies and unexposed secrets against their will. But where does the boundary lie between the permitted, and indeed necessary, reconstruction of another mind and this psychological indiscretion? And this precarious objective boundary in fact only signifies the boundary between the two personality spheres; it means that the 144 SIMMEL ON CULTURE SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 145 degree, and that beyond that boundary, the domain of the other inviolably commences and that other person alone can decide on revealing it. It is obvious that the .infinitely varied tracing of this line interacts in the most intimate way with the entire structure of social life. In primitive, undifferentiated times, the right to these psychological extensions of the boundary was probably greater, but interest in such extensions was perhaps less than in periods with more individualized human beings and more complex relationships. This boundary is also fixed differently in commercial transactions than in the relationship of parents and children, and is different among diplomats than among wartime comrades. This insignificant and yet extremely important problem for the deeper analysis of social existence clearly shows how much boundary determinations of this type express the totality of interactive relationships between individuals, and indicates what an indefinable multiplicity of delimitations, and especially what a continual flux and shifting, dominates them. That is precisely why I have touched here upon this matter, which is actually quite remote from the problem of space, in order to illustrate the incomparable firmness and clarity which the social processes of demarcation receive from being spatialized. Every boundary is a psychological, more precisely, a sociological event; but through its investment in a line in space, the relationship of reciprocity attains a clarity and security in both its positive and negative sides - indeed often a certain rigidity - that tends to be denied the boundary so long as the meeting and separating of forces and rights has not yet been projected into a sensory formation, and thus as it were always remains in a status nascens. Thus, if we are concerned here essentially with the interactions that result between the inside and the outside of the boundary, then those produced among the elements inside itself by the boundary as a border also deserve at least one example. The essential thing here is the breadth or narrowness of the boundary - although it is by no means the only essential thing; for also the form produced in the group by the border, its uniform or varied cohesive energy, is of unquestioned importance for the inner structure of the group. The same can be said of the issue of whether the boundary is produced everywhere by the same element (as is the case with islands, with small states in the position of San Marino or with the Indian tributary states) or from a number of related elements - even though these issues can only be alluded to here. The breadth or narrowness of the border is by no means proportional to the size of the group. It depends instead on the tensions that develop within the group. If these find sufficient freedom of movement such that they do not collide with the boundaries, then the framework is wide, even if a relatively large number of people are grouped together inside it, as is often the constellation of Oriental kingdoms. Even for a relatively small population, on the other hand, the framework is narrow if it seems to be a constriction, which certain energies that cannot be displayed internally seek to escape The effect of this latter constellation on social form was unmistakably experienced by Venice, for example. The narrow restriction of its territory, which could not be directly overcome, oriented it much more towards dynamic expansion into the larger relationships of the world than to a territorial expansion of its power, which would have offered few opportunities in such a geographical position. A policy of this type - looking far out into the world and extending beyond what is immediately available - places considerable intellectual demands, which cannot be realized by the broad masses. Therefore, direct democracy was out of the question for Venice. By virtue of its spatial living conditions, it was compelled to breed an aristocracy that ruled the masses, just as, it was said, officers on a ship rule the crew. The fact of a spatial framework for a group is by no means limited formally and sociologically to its political boundary. The framework's narrowness or breadth produces its formative consequences with the corresponding modifications whenever a number of people band together socially. The often emphasized character of an assembled crowd - its impulsiveness, its enthusiasm, its susceptibility to manipulation - is certainly connected to some degree with the fact that the crowd is in the open, or at least in a very large space, compared with the spaces that its members normally occupy. The greater breathing space gives people a feeling of freedom of movement, of an ability to venture out into the unknown, of an indefinite ability to set broader goals - which would be decidedly more difficult to achieve in enclosed rooms. The fact that such rooms are indeed often relatively too narrow, that is, they are overcrowded, can only strengthen this psychological effect, namely the growth of individual psychological momentum beyond its usual limits: for it must raise that collective feeling which fuses the individual into a unity transcending his or her individuality, sweeping the individual along like a flood past their personal directives and responsibilities. The suggestive and stimulative effects of a great mass of people and their overall psychological manifestations, in whose form the individual no longer recognizes his or her own contribution, increase in proportion to the crowdedness and. more significantly, the size of the space that the crowd occupies. A locality that offers the individual a breathing space of an unaccustomed size through a dense crowd, necessarily favours that feeling of an expansion extending into the unknown and that heightening of powers which is so easily instilled in large masses, and which occurs only occasionally among exceptional individuals in the narrow, easily surveyed confines of an ordinary room. This indefiniteness of the spatial frame so vividly supports the typical collective stimuli, just as in genera! the indistinctness and breadth of boundaries, even in the non-spatial sense, have a stimulating, seductive effect. It is this very thing which makes gatherings in the dark so dangerous, so much so that the medieval city police often attempted to prevent them by cordoning off streets with chains and the like. The darkness gives the meeting a quite special frame, which brings the significance of the narrow and the 146 SIMMEL ON CULTURE environment, with an impenetrable black wall rearing up behind it, the individual feels closely pressed together with the most immediate surroundings; the delimitation against space outside the visible surroundings has reached its limiting case: this space seems simply to have disappeared. On the other hand, this very fact also causes the actually existing boundaries to disappear; fantasy expands the darkness into exaggerated possibilities; one feels surrounded by a fantastically indefinite and unlimited space. Relieving the fearfulness and insecurity that are a natural part of darkness through that tight crowding and mutual dependence of a multitude gives rise to the feared excitement and incalculability of a large gathering in the dark, as a quite unique elevation and combination of the enclosing and expanding aspects of spatial limitation. C. The third significance of space for social formations lies in its capacity of fixing their contents. Whether a group or certain of its individual elements or essential objects of its interest are completely fixed or remain spatially indeterminate must obviously affect their structure; and how much the differences in the states of mind of nomadic and settled groups are determined by this fact has been explained so frequently that it need only be alluded to here. This is by no means a schematic extension of the principle of fixed determinacy: being valid in the spatial realm, it would now manifest itself in the objective elements of life as stabilization and a firm order. In fact, this immediately comprehensible connection does not even apply universally; in very consolidated conditions which are immune to uprooting from outside, people will be able to do without some of the regulations and legal controls that are urgently required in cases of general insecurity and uneasy conditions, which are more susceptible to fragmentation. A more special sociological significance of fixing in space can be designated by the symbolic expression 'pivot-point'. The spatial immovability of an object of interest creates certain forms of relationships that group around it. Now every immobile asset, around which negotiations or economic transactions of any kind occur, is indeed this kind of stable pivot-point for unstable conditions and interactions. Yet, at least nowadays, the spatial immovability of the object does not determine these conditions in a particularly characteristic sociological manner. A not uninteresting variation of this may be observed in that relationship of economic individuals which is manifested in the mortgage. The reason why mortgages tend to be connected almost exclusively to immovable assets is a combination of the stationary character and the indestructibility of these assets, which can be considered as the correlate of the exclusivity that was previously discussed. In return for the uniqueness to which every part of our space is limited, one could say, it gains that immortality by reason of which land is so well suited to mortgage lending. For only in this way is it possible that the mortgaged object can remain in the hands of the debtor and yet be completely secure for the creditor: it can neither be carried away nor con- SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 147 Now, however, the principle of insurance has made those objects that are totally lacking in any fixed position in space eligible for mortgage lending -namely, ships. For what is of particular interest to the mortgage with respect to spatial immobility - the suitability for public registration - is easily attainable in another way with ships. Here, as in many other cases, substantive determination has actually been revealed to be functional determinacy. The fixed character, which favoured mortgaging as a rigid quality of landed property, actually achieves this in reality, at least in part, through the publicity to which it exposes people, but which is also attainable by other means. Thus the pivotal point or fulcrum of economic interaction is here overwhelmingly a spatially fixed value, but not because of its immobility, but because of certain functions attached to it. Yet the situation was different in the Middle Ages, which in genera! demanded a quite different mixture of stability and mobility of the elements of life. In medieval trade and communication we find countless 'relationships' that completely escape our notions of economic or private legal action, and yet were made the objects of such action. Ruling power over territories and judicial authority within them, church patronage, and the authority to raise taxes, highways and minting privileges: all these were sold or borrowed, given as pledges or given away. By making such unstable objects, that existed only in mere interactions between people, once more the object of economic interactions would have led to even more unstable and precarious conditions if all these rights and relationships had not had the distinctive feature of being immovably fixed at the place where they were exercised. This was the stabilizing factor which gave so much solidity to their purely dynamic and relativistic nature that it was possible to group additional economic interactions around them. Their spatial determinacy was not like that of a substantive object, which one would always find at the same place, but akin to the abstract stability of a pivotal point, which keeps a system of elements in a specific distance, interaction and interdependence. The significance of fixed spatiality as a pivotal point for social relationships emerges whenever the contact or union of otherwise independent elements can only occur at one particular place. I shall deal with some examples of this phenomenon, which actually represents an interaction between internal and spatial sociological determination. For churches, it is an extraordinarily astute policy to set up a chapel and pastoral centre within their Diaspora wherever even the smallest number of its congregation live in a district. This fixed point in space becomes a pivotal point for the relationships and the cohesion of the faithful, so that communal, rather than isolated, religious forces are developed. And, in addition, the forces emanating from such a visible centre also awaken a consciousness of belonging among members of the denomination, whose religious consciousness has long lain dormant in their isolation. In this respect, the Catholic Church is far superior to Protestant ones. It does not wait in the Diaspora for an actual congregation of people to undertake the spatial constitution, but 148 SIMMEL ON CULTURE SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 149 localization has become the crystallization for an inwardly and numerically growing congregational life. Cities serve everywhere as focal points of transactions for their immediate and wider surroundings, that is, each brings into being within itself innu^ merable focal points for continuing and changing trade activities. Trade expands cities all the more, the more dynamic it is, thus revealing the whole difference between its liveliness and the restless mobility of primitive groups. The typical contrast between forms of social dynamism is whether they merely signify a striving beyond that which exists socially and objectively, like the cycle of alternating pastures of pastoral peoples, or, on the other hand, whether they move around fixed points. Only in the latter case are they actually formed and only there do they gain a crystallization point for the commencement of lasting values, even if these only exist in the persisting form of relations and movements. This contrast in its forms of mobility dominates external and internal life in so many ways that its spatial realization appears to be only a special case. Whether intellectual and social relationships possess a solid centre, around which interests and contrasts circulate, or whether they simply follow She linear form of time; whether two political parties share a solid centre, be it the continuous uniformity of their tendencies or a continuous opposition, or whether their relationship develops without prejudice from one issue to another; whether a strong one-sidedly nuanced sense of life predominates in the individual person - of an aesthetic nature perhaps - which ties together, harmonizes and contains all the various interests, religious and theoretical, social and erotic in a single sphere, or whether the person's interests are only displayed in relation to their own strength without such a continual reflection and evaluative standard - all these things obviously condition the greatest differences in patterns of life and determine the real course of our life through their constant struggles and combinations. But all these are only individual elaborations of the same general contrast to which the sociological pivot-point belongs in the spatial realm. The real significance of trade and communication (Verkehr) first emerges from their actual formation of the city. For, in contrast to the simple striving into the unlimited, their significance lies in the fact that movement encounters a second equivalent power, which need not be hostile, as it always was before developed trade and communication. Now communication no longer means mutual friction, but a mutual supplementation and thereby a self-enlargement of the forces which the spatial base requires and therefore produces. Furthermore, 1 wish to draw attention here to the rendezvous as a specifically sociological form, whose spatial determinacy is characterized linguistically through the ambiguity of the word: it signifies both the encounter and its location. The sociological essence of the rendezvous lies in the tension between the punctuality and fleeting quality of the relationship, on the one hand, and its temporal and spatial determinacy on the other. The rendezvous - and not merely its erotic or illegitimate forms - is trait of uniqueness and acuteness springing from the particular occasion. Further, because it separates itself out like an island from the continuous course of life's contents, the rendezvous achieves a special hold on consciousness, precisely on the formal elements of its time and place. Because it is more vivid to the senses, place generally exhibits a greater associative effect for recollection than time. And hence, especially when one is concerned with unique and emotion-laden interactions, it is precisely the place which tends to be indissolubly linked to recollection, and thus, since this tends to occur mutually, the place remains the focal point around which remembrance weaves individuals into the web of interactions that have now become idealized. This sociological significance of the fixed point in space already anticipates a further significant dimension, which one could designate as the individualization of place. It seems to be an indifferent, superficial fact that houses in towns were generally known by proper names in the Middle Ages and frequently even as late as the nineteenth century. Only fifty years ago, the residents of the Faubourg St. Antoine in Paris were always said to have referred to their buildings by their names (Au mi de Siam, Etoile d'or, and so on), despite street numbers already being in existence. Nevertheless, the difference between the individual name and the mere number of a house expresses a difference in the relationship of its owners and residents to it, and thus to their surroundings. The definiteness and indefiniteness of the act of designation intermingle here to a quite remarkable extent. The house that is called by its own name must give its inhabitants a feeling of spatial individuality, of belonging to a qualitatively fixed point in space. Through the name associated with it, the house forms a much more autonomous, individually nuanced existence; to our sensibility, it has a higher type of uniqueness than when designated by numbers, which are repeated in the same way in every street with only quantitative differences between them. In contrast to the thronging and levelling of social and especially urban interaction, this type of naming documents an unmistakability and personality of existence with respect to its spatial dimension. Of course, it is paid for by an indeterminacy and a lack of objective permanency in comparison with current conditions. Therefore it must disappear once interaction exceeds a certain breadth and rapidity. The named house cannot be immediately located; its position cannot be constructed objectively, as is the case with current geographical designation. For all their indifference and abstractness, numbers do after all represent as ordering numbers a definite place in space, which the proper name of the locality does not. The most extreme stage is, on the one side the designation of hotel guests according to their room number, and, on the other, the fact that even the streets are no longer named, but numbered consecutively, as in some parts of New York. This contrast in ways of naming things reveals a complete antagonism in the sociological position of the individual within the spatial sphere. The individualistic person, with their qualitative determinacy and the unmistak- 150 SIMMEL ON CULTURE SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 151 that is valid for everyone, in which they would have a calculable position according to a consistent principle. Conversely, where the organization of the whole regulates the achievement of the individual according to an end not located within him or herself, then their position must be fixed according to an external system. It is not an inner or ideal norm but rather the relationship to the totality that secures this position, which is therefore most suitably determined by a numerical arrangement. The automatic readiness to serve on the part of the waiter or the coach driver, whose lack of individuality stands out precisely in the fact that its substance is ultimately not as mechanically uniform as that of the machine worker, is quite aptly emphasized by his being given a number rather than any more personal expression. It is this sociological distinction which the differing designations of houses represents in the relations of urban elements as projected onto space. If, therefore, the individuality of the elements of the spatial relation cannot be united in the same symbol with the relationship to a broad and varied circle, then one can still perhaps establish a sociological scale to this same standard, conceived quite formally. This means that the individuality, the character of personal uniqueness, as it were, which the location of certain people or groups possesses, hinders or favours in the broadest combinations, the establishment of far-reaching relationships to a variety of other elements. The most perfect unity of both determinations has been attained by the Catholic Church through its seat in Rome. On the one hand, Rome is the absolutely unique, the most incomparable historical-geographical creation and, by virtue of the fact that 'all roads lead to Rome', its position is fixed as if by a system of countless coordinates. Yet, on the other hand, it has completely lost the limitation of localization at one point by virtue of the enormous extent and substance of its past, and of the fact that it appears as a geometrical site for all the changes and contrasts in history, whose traces and significance have grown together in it, or into it, both spiritually and visibly. Precisely because it possesses Rome, the Church has a permanent spatial home with all the advantages of constant accessibility, of sensory and manifest continuity, of a secure centralization of its activities and its own institutions. But it does not need to pay for these with all the other difficulties and biases of the localization of power at a single point, because Rome is - as it were - not a single place at all. Through the breadth of the fates and significance invested within it, its psychological and sociological effects extend far beyond its fixed location, while at the same time it offers the Church the certainty of just such a permanency. In order to support the goals of the Church in its relationship of domination to the faithful, Rome possesses the most extreme individuality and uniqueness that was ever possessed by a single place and, at the same time, it enjoys superiority over all the limitation and contingency of an individually fixed existence. As such, great organizations require a spatial centre, for they cannot exist vvithout a permanent place of residence, both so that he can always have his subordinates at hand and so that they know where to find him. Yet where this remarkable unity of localization and supra-spatiality - as in Rome - is not present, it must always be paid for by certain sacrifices. The Franciscans were originally completely homeless creatures; their individualistic freedom from all earthly bonds, their poverty and their preaching mission all necessitated this. But as soon as the widespread monastic order began to require 'ministers', the latter required a permanent place of residence for the reasons just touched upon, and therefore the brothers could no longer manage without a fixed location in monasteries. No matter how much this may have served their power in the technical sense, it nonetheless reduced that incomparable serenity, that inner security of the original brothers, of whom it was said that they had nothing, but possessed everything. By sharing the fixed nature of their place of residence with all other people, their way of life was trivialized and their freedom remained only very great, but no longer infinite, because now they were tied down at least to a single point in space. Finally, the localization of the Jewish faith in Jerusalem, comparable in some respects to that of Catholicism in Rome, had quite different effects. As long as the temple existed in Jerusalem, an invisible thread, as it were, ran out from it to each of the Jews scattered about in countless localities, with their diverse nationalities, languages, interests and even religious variations. The temple was the meeting point which mediated the partially real and partially spiritual contacts of all of Judaism. But it possesses a function through which the local individualization was strained more than in Rome and which eventually overloaded it: sacrifices could only be made in Jerusalem; Yahweh had no other sacrificial altar in any other place. Therefore, the destruction of the temple necessarily broke this bond. The specific power and distinctive nuance of the Yahweh cult, which had emerged as a result of that singular spatialization, then gave way to a more colourless deism. For this reason, the separation of Christianity occurred more easily and powerfully; the place of the centre in Jerusalem was taken by the autonomous synagogues; the effective cohesion of the Jews retreated more and more from the religious to the racial dimension. These were the consequences of that local concentration, which confronted the sociological bond with a rigid choice: here or nowhere. D. A fourth type of external circumstances, which translate themselves into the liveliness of sociological interactions, is offered by space through the sensory proximity or distance between people who stand in some relationship or other to one another. The first glance will convince us that two organizations that are held together by the very same interests, forces and convictions change their character according to whether their participants have spatial contact with each other, or are separated from one another. And this is not only true in the above sense of a difference in the 152 SIMMEL ON CULTURE physical proximity are added to the overall relationship. Rather, it is also true that the spatially based interactions can also fundamentally modify the primary relationship, even from a distance. An economic cartel or a friendship, a stamp collectors' association or a religious community can do without personal contact permanently or for a period of time, but at the very moment when there is no distance to overcome, the possibility of innumerable quantitative and qualitative modifications of the cohesive bond immediately appears. But before entering into this aspect, let us note the principle that the difference in both types of connection is more relative than the sharp logical contrast between proximity and separation would lead one to suspect. The psychological effect of proximity can actually be replaced very closely by means of indirect communication and even more by fantasy. The opposing poles of human associations in the psychological sense - those that are purely objective and impersonal, and those completely dependent on the intensity of emotions - are precisely the ones which succeed most easily in this endeavour. The first group, such as certain economic or scientific transactions, can succeed because their elements can be completely expressed in logical forms and thus in written form. The same is true of the other category, such as religious and certain romantic associations, because the power of fantasy and the devotion of the feelings can overcome the conditions of time and space in a manner that quite often seems almost mystical. To the extent that these two extremes lose their purity, spatial proximity becomes more necessary: if those logically grounded relationships display gaps that can only be filled by imponderables that cannot be grasped by logic, or if the purely inward ones cannot do without a certain complement of sensual desires. Perhaps the totality of social interactions could be arranged on a scale from this viewpoint, according to what degree of spatial proximity or distance a sociation either demands or tolerates from given forms and contents. The manner in which one could combine the criteria for such a scale will be illustrated further in what follows. Under identical conditions with respect to emotions and interests, the spatial tension capacity of any sociation is dependent upon the amount of capacity for abstraction that is available. The more primitive is consciousness, the more incapable it is of conceiving the unity of what is spatially separated or the non-unity of that which is spatially proximate. At this point, the type of forces creating sociation goes back directly to the ultimate foundations of mental life, and specifically to the fact that the naive uniformity of the untrained imagination does not yet distinguish properly between the self and its surroundings. On the one hand, the ego still floats without any individualistic emphasis among the images of things and other people, as the lack of an ego in the child and the semi-communistic lack of differentiation of early social conditions demonstrate. On the other hand, at this level objects are not yet accorded any being-for-lhemselves: the naive egoism of the child and of the primitive person wishes to take immediately SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 153 into sensory proximity. It thus extends the dominion of the ego over things almost to the same degree as occurs theoretically through the subjectivism of thinking and the ignorance of objective laws. It therefore becomes obvious how decisive sensory proximity must be for the consciousness of belonging together in this psychological state. Since this proximity is not at issue as an objective spatial fact but rather as the psychological superstructure above that fact, it can occasionally be replaced even at this level, as already mentioned earlier, by other psychological constellations, for example by common membership of a totem group which, among the Australian Aborigines creates close relationships among individuals living widely separated, so that they spare each other during a war between their respective groups. In general, however, for primitive consciousness, only the external contacts support the internal ones - no matter how different in character they may be - and an undifferentiated imagination is actually unable to distinguish the two. In a similar way, even today in the backwardness of small town conditions the relationship to one's neighbours in a building plays a very different role than in the metropolis where, in the complexity and confusion of the external image of city life, one grows accustomed to continual abstractions, to indifference towards that which is spatially closest and to an intimate relationship to that which is spatially very far removed. During epochs in which abstraction capable of transcending space is demanded by objective conditions, but is hampered by psychological underdevelopment, sociological tensions accordingly arise with considerable consequences for the form of the relationship. For instance, the patronage of the Anglo-Saxon king over the Church has been justly attributed to the considerable remoteness from the See of Rome. At that time, personal presence was still considered too major a condition for the exercise of authority for such authority to be willingly turned over to such a distant agency. In passing, I would also like to take up a historical repercussion within this context. Where the intellectual superiority of a single part or the force of circumstances makes unavoidable a relationship over a distance which consciousness is not mature enough to overcome, then this must have contributed greatly to the training of abstraction, to the elasticity of the mind as it were. Sociological necessity had to generate its own individual psychological organ. Thus, in the Middle Ages, the relationship of Europe to Rome - where it did not fail because of spatial distance - became for that very reason the school for the ability to engage in abstraction, the ability to feel beyond the sensorily immediate. It became the triumph of the powers that were effective only because of their content over those that depended upon spatial presence. Accordingly, if relationships over a distance primarily presume a certain degree of intellectual development, so, conversely, the more sensory nature of local proximity is revealed in the fact that being on a friendly or hostile footing with close neighbours - in short, a decidedly positive footing - and 154 SIMMEL ON CULTURE ! proximity. The dominant intellectuality always implies a reduction of the i emotional extremes. By virtue of its objective content as well as its psycho- i logical function,,intellectuality places itself beyond the opposite extremes between which feeling and the will oscillate. Intellectuality is the principle of impartiality, so that neither individuals nor historical epochs of a decidedly intellectual nature tend to be distinguished by the one-sidedness or the ; intensity of love and hate. This correlation also applies to the individual relationships between people. Intellectuality, no matter how much it provides a basis for general understanding, also creates a certain distance between people through this very activity itself. Because it facilitates rapprochement and harmony between the most remote parties, it fosters a cool and often alienating objectivity between neighbours. If relationships to spatially distant people tend to display a certain calmness, reticence and lack of passion, then this appears to naive consciousness just as much an immediate consequence of distance as that same naive consciousness views the weakening of a throwing motion according to the amount of spatial distance passed through as a success of the mere spatial distance. In reality, the significance of the spatial interval is merely that it eliminates the stimulations, frictions, attractions and repulsions which sensory proximity calls forth, and thus produces a majority for the intellectual forces within the complex of sociating psychological forces. With respect to a spatially close person, with whom one has contact in the most mutually varied situations and moods without the possibility of caution or choice, there tend to be only decisive emotions, so that this proximity can be the basis both for the most effusive joy and the most unbearable constraint. It is a very old observation that residents of the same building can only stand on a friendly or a hostile footing. The exceptions to this rule confirm its foundation. On the one hand, in the case of a very high level of education or, on the other, in the modern metropolis, complete indifference and the exclusion of all emotional reactions can occur even between next door neighbours. In the first case, this happens because the t overwhelming intellectuality relegates emotional reactions, as it were, to the status of contact stimuli, and in the second because the incessant contacts with countless people produce the same effect through the dulling of the senses. Here the indifference to that which is spatially close is simply a protective device without which one would be mentally ground down and destroyed in the metropolis. Where excessively lively temperaments oppose this weakening consequence of metropolitan life, other protective devices have occasionally been sought. In Alexandria during the imperial period, two of the five quarters of the city were inhabited primarily by lews, through which segregation people sought to prevent conflicts between neighbours as much as possible by mutually uniform national origins. If, therefore, the peacemaker attempts above all things to spatially separate passionately conflicting parties, then this does SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 155 far apart. For in some personalities the fantasy which is effective at a distance releases an untrammelled exaggeration of feeling, by comparison with which the irritating consequences of sensory proximity, no matter how great they may be, seem somehow both limited and infinite. Alongside the obvious practical effects of spatial proximity and the sociologically highly important consciousness of having those effects available at all times - even if one has no desire to make use of them at the moment -the result of proximity for the form of sociation is composed of the significance of the individual senses with which individuals mutually perceive one another. This achievement of the senses for the connection of people with one another must be the topic of special investigations, which cannot be included here because of their very comprehensive foundations of a physiological and psychological nature. I shall list only a few aspects by way of example. If contact is such that individuals see each other constantly, but can only speak to each other relatively infrequently - like workers in a factory building, the students in a lecture or soldiers of a usually undivided battalion -then the consciousness of unity will have a more abstract character than when that contact also includes oral communication. In comparison to the optical image of a person or persons, which always shows only a relatively stable content that can only be varied within narrow limits, the ear transmits an infinite variety of the most divergent moods, emotions and thoughts - in short the entire polarity of subjective and objective life. Conversational proximity creates a much more individual relationship than does visual closeness, and not only because it supplements the latter, but also quite directly: only very few people have an accurate visual image even of their closest contacts, who they daily have before their very eyes, and few would be able to list confidently the colour of their eyes or the shape of their mouth from memory. By contrast, recollection of what has been said is infinitely richer and firmer, and it alone actually sets down the image of the personality as something truly unique and personal. Where only the sense of sight exploits proximity, more of a feeling of a general-conceptual and unspecific unity or of a mechanical concurrence will result, whereas the possibility of speaking and hearing will produce individual, animated, organic feelings of unity. Of much greater significance for the association or repulsion among human beings is the sense of smell, forming a scale here with the other two senses to the extent that it connects the most inarticulate, instinctive and exclusively emotional condition of these relationships to physical proximity. The sense of sight on its own provides lighter, more conscious and differentiated motifs of unification or its opposite. The sense of hearing really binds people together: only this sense is the lasting carrier of associations that have a history, whereas the former senses only allow the more or less undeveloped aspects of people to be touched. The sense of smell and, especially, its stimuli remain below the threshold of consciousness and 156 SIMMEL ON CULTURE and non-individual nuances of smell); and it is these to which we may probably ascribe a share in those elementary sympathies and antipathies, often beyond any co.mprehensibility, thai are formed unilaterally or mutually between persons. The sense of smell has a great influence at least on the sociological relationship of different races living in the same territory. The reception of Negroes into the higher social circles in American is excluded simply because of the odour of the Negro; the often instinctive aversion between Germans and Jews has been ascribed to the same factor. Personal contact between the educated class and the workers, often so vigorously advocated for modern social development, that rapprochement of the two social worlds 'of those who do not know how the other half lives', which is also recognized as an ethical ideal by the educated, fails simply because of the insuperability of the sensory impressions in this area. The average educated person would rather endure all sorts of deprivations than physical contact with the people to whom the aroma of 'the honest sweat of their brow' clings. In this way, physical proximity influences social formation quite considerably, at least in a negative sense, and probably more and more as culture increases, because that reduces the acuity of perception for all the senses, not least for the sense of smell, just as it increases the emphasis on pleasure and displeasure. One could characterize the sense of smell as the dissociating sense, since the gathering of many people never provides it with any attractions, as the same situation might do, at least under certain conditions, for the other senses. Already through this physical-psychological mediation, cultural refinement points towards individual isolation, at least in the colder countries, whereas the opportunity to arrange meetings essentially in the open, and hence without having to bring about that unpleasantness, must have influenced to a considerable degree all social interaction in the southern countries, although naturally in competition or collaboration with a hundred other causes. Alongside these psychological consequences of proximity or distance in the narrow sense tor social interactions, there are also those of a more logical or at least rational nature, which have nothing to do with the sensory, irrational immediacy just outlined. The changes, for example, which a relationship undergoes through the transition of its elements from distance to spatial proximity do not consist exclusively in a rising intensity of ties, but also in their weakening, in reserve or even in repulsion. As well as these direct antipathies that sensory proximity may provoke, what takes effect here is more or less the absence or disavowal of the idealizations in which - more or less abstractly conceived - we have clothed our fellow human beings. Here one sees the effects of the necessary emphasis upon an inner distance, the delimitation of the personal spheres, the repulsion of improper intimacy, in short, of all those dangers that are not at all an issue with spatial distance. A certain precaution and indirectness is at work SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 157 because a greater objectivity, an alleviation of personal conflicts, a lesser probability of haste and intensity tends to be a part of indirect relationships or with those at a distance. Among the most subtle sociological tasks of the art of living is that of preserving the values and affections that develop between people at a certain distance for a close relationship. One may involuntarily conclude that the warmth and inwardness of a relationship must increase in proportion to the degree of personal closeness. What could develop in this way under the best of conditions is anticipated from the beginning in the tone and intensity of interaction, only to feel then often enough that one has demanded too much of the mere form of a spatial relationship. We search I in vain, because the suddenness of the physical proximity has deceived us | about the slowness with which the psychological proximity develops to \ match it. In this way, setbacks and periods of coolness arise, which not only take back this illusionary 'too much' but also carry away the values of love or friendship or mutual interests that had been achieved previously. This j situation is one of the not uncommon confusions among people, which | probably could have been avoided from the outset by an instinctive sense of tact but, once they have come into being, can no longer be put right again ! by that alone, but only with the assistance of conscious closer attention and i reflection. > I wish to draw a second example from relationships that are far removed | from the intimacy of those just discussed, in order to pursue the sociological ! differences of spatial distances with regard to their calculable results. Where j a minority that is held together by common interests is found within a larger | group, it is generally quite decisive for the behaviour of the minority ; towards the totality as to whether it lives compactly together or dispersed ! in small units within the majority group. It cannot be generally determined which of these two forms is the more favourable for the power position of such a minority under otherwise equal circumstances. If the subgroup in question finds itself in a defensive posture vis-a-vis the majority, then the 1 extent of the minority's forces decides that question. If they are very j minimal, so that the only option is evasion, hiding or avoidance of devas- | tating attacks, then, as is immediately obvious, the greatest dispersal would ; be advisable. With considerably more forces, especially larger numbers of J people, for whom the chance of resisting an attack already exists, then, con- j versely, the greatest possible concentration will favour preservation. Just as : even schools of herring protect themselves through their compactness by j thus offering a smaller surface to attack and less free space for invading enemies, so living closely together similarly provides exposed minorities i with the greater probability of successful resistance, mutual assistance, and ! an effective consciousness of solidarity. The spatial distribution of the Jews has made use of both possibilities. In j so far as their Diaspora distributed them throughout the entire civilized I world, no persecution could affect all their sections, and if life was made 158 SIMMEL ON CULTURE others elsewhere for protection and support. On the other hand, because they generally lived in a ghetto or otherwise mostly densely located together in a particular place, they also enjoyed the defensive advantages and strength that solid, air-tight cohesion offered. Once the energies have reached the proportion from which they can proceed on to attacks, to gaining advantages and power, then the relationship is inverted. At this stage, a concentrated minority will be able to accomplish as much as one that cooperates from a number of different points. Thus, whereas the ghetto was a decided benefit and a strengthening factor for the Jews in that earlier stage of weaker forces that were generally dependent upon defence, it seems extraordinarily disadvantageous now that the strengths and energies of Judaism have grown, and their dispersal throughout the population has increased their collective power most effectively. This is one of the not too rare instances in which the absolute increase of a quantity directly reverses the relationships within it. If one no longer views the minority as the element that is variable with respect to its structure, but rather enquires of this given spatial dispersion or concentration as to the constitution of the surrounding totality, then the following necessary tendency will result. A small subgroup, if it is living together compactly within a surrounding group that is held together by a central power, will favour an individualizing form of government granting the autonomy of constituent parts. For where such a group cannot take care of its own interests, cannot live its life by its own norms, then it has no technical possibility at all of protecting itself from violation by the majority. A parliamentary regime, for instance, which consistently subjects the personal life of the constituent parts to mere majority decisions, will simply majori-tize such a minority. But if this minority lives dispersed, so that it is denied any possibility of independent development, direct power or autonomous institutions, then the autonomy of local parts of the whole will now be of value to it, since it will not attain a majority in any of them. Rather, considering its fragmented strength, it will be of a centralist frame of mind, because the consideration from which it can still hope to gain something can most readily be expected to come from a uniform, indeed even an absolutist, central authority. With such a diffuse structure, it will only achieve power through the individual outstanding personalities that it produces, and the best opportunities for this form of power also exist with a rule that is as personal and as powerful as possible. The local remoteness of the members points them towards a central authority; their compactness leads them away from it. The success of this spatial situation is quite different when it does not affect the section of a group but rather a whole group. A community, all of whose elements live dispersed, is not so likely to have centralist leanings, unless other factors are very influential. When the rural Swiss farming communities banded together into governmental polities in the Middle Ages, they essentially repeated the basic outlines of the city constitutions. The T I : SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 159 I i created, as was that of the city. Instead, the original assembly of the people J remained the most important agency for jurisprudence and the direction of >J all public affairs. A certain mistrust seems to be at work here, because the j permanent monitoring of the central authorities is impossible from a dis- ,( tance and because social interactions are less intensive than those of the f! compact urban population. For the latter, objective structures are necessary [ as fixed points in the ebbs and flows that urban life produces, both through J continual contacts as well as through the strong, but continuously graduated 1 social differentiations of its elements. These consequences of local con- 1 ditions will also approximate to a certain rigidity of centralization, even on j a democratic foundation of the city population. i A truly direct democracy, however, requires a spatially narrow limitation of its circle, as the classical document of the Federalist proclaims: 'The ,\^| thither that their last reserves of strength are spent; and if one remains in .....;|| the same milieu they have no time to gather new strength. An incapacity :|:| thus emerges to react to new sensations with the appropriate energy. This :%i§ constitutes that blase attitude which, in fact, every metropolitan child shows when compared with children of quieter and less changeable milieus. || This physiological source of the metropolitan blase attitude is joined by '^l another source which flows from the money economy. The essence of the ■ blase attitude consists in the blunting of discrimination. This does not mean that the objects are not perceived, as is the case with the half-wit, but rather ■;i|j3 that the meaning and differing values of things, and thereby the things them- : :|| selves, are experienced as insubstantial. They appear to the blase person in ::|| an evenly flat and gray tone; no one object deserves preference over any Offi other. This mood is the faithful subjective reflection of the completely internalized money economy. By being the equivalent to all the manifold things in one and the same way, money becomes the most frightful leveller. VHf For money expresses all qualitative differences of things in terms of 'how -ill much?' Money, with all its colourlessness and indifference, becomes the ril common denominator of all values; irreparably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability. All ;|| things float with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of ;i| money. All things lie on the same level and differ from one another only in :::::;| the size of the area which they cover. In the individual case this coloration, .,c;::| SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 179 unnoticeably minute. However, through the relations of the rich to the objects to be had for money, perhaps even through the total character which the mentality of the contemporary public everywhere imparts to these objects, the exclusively pecuniary evaluation of objects has become quite considerable. The large cities, the main seats of the money exchange, bring the purchasability of things to the fore much more impressively than do smaller localities. That is why cities are also the genuine locale of the blase attitude. In the blase attitude the concentration of men and things stimulate the nervous system of the individual to its highest achievement so that it attains its peak. Through the mere quantitative intensification of the same conditioning factors this achievement is transformed into its opposite and appears in the peculiar adjustment of the blase attitude. In this phenomenon the nerves find in the refusal to react to their stimulation the last possibility of accommodating to the contents and forms of metropolitan life. The self-preservation of certain personalities is bought at the price of devaluating the whole objective world, a devaluation which in the end unavoidably drags one's own personality down into a feeling of the same worthlessness. Whereas the subject of this form of existence has to come to terms with it entirely for himself, his self-preservation in the face of the large city demands from him a no less negative behaviour of a social nature. This mental attitude of metropolitans toward one another we may designate, from a formal point of view, as reserve. If so many inner reactions were responses to the continuous external contacts with innumerable people as are those in the small town, where one knows almost everybody one meets and where one has a positive relation to almost everyone, one would be completely atomized internally and come to an unimaginable psychic state. Partly this psychological fact, partly the right to distrust which men have in the face of the touch-and-go elements of metropolitan life, necessitates our reserve. As a result of this reserve we frequently do not even know by sight those who have been our neighbours for years. And it is this reserve which in the eyes of the small-town people makes us appear to be cold and heartless. Indeed, if I do not deceive myself, the inner aspect of this outer reserve is not only indifference but, more often than we are aware, it is a slight aversion, a mutual strangeness and repulsion, which will break into hatred and fight at the moment of a closer contact, however caused. The whole inner organization of such an extensive communicative life rests upon an extremely varied hierarchy of sympathies, indifferences, and aversions of the briefest as well as of the most permanent nature. The sphere of indifference in this hierarchy is not as large as might appear on the surface. Our psychic activity still responds to almost every impression of somebody else with a somewhat distinct feeling. The unconscious, fluid and changing character of this impression seems to result in a state of indifference. Actually this indifference would be just as unnatural as the diffusion of indiscriminate mutual suggestion would be unbearable. From both these typical dangers of the metropolis, indifference and indiscriminate suggestibility, 180 SIMMEL ON CULTURE SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 181 practical antagonism effect the distances and aversions without which this mode of life could not at all be led. The extent and the mixture of this style of life, the rhythm of its emergence and disappearance, the forms in which it is satisfied -J all these, with the unifying motives in the narrower sense, form the inseparable whole of the metropolitan style of life. What appears in the metropolitan style of life directly as dissociation is in reality only one of its elemental forms of socialization. This reserve with its overtone of hidden aversion appears in turn as the form or the cloak of a more general mental phenomenon of the metropolis; it grants to the individual a kind and an amount of personal freedom which has no analogy whatsoever under other conditions. The metropolis goes back to one of the large developmental tendencies of social life as such, to one of the few tendencies for which an approximately universal formula can be discovered. The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighbouring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles. However, this circle is closely coherent and allows its individual members only a narrow field for the development of unique qualities and free, self-responsible movements. Political and kinship groups, parties and religious associations begin in this way. The self-preservation of very young associations requires the establishment of strict boundaries and a centripetal unity. Therefore they cannot allow the individual freedom and unique inner and outer development. From this stage, social development proceeds at once in two different, yet corresponding, directions. To the extent to which the group grows - numerically, spatially, in significance and in content of life - to the same degree the group's direct, inner unity loosens, and the rigidity of the original demarcation against others is softened through mutual relations and connections. At the same time, the individual gains freedom of movement, far beyond the first jealous delimitation. The individual also gains a specific individuality to which the division of labour in the enlarged group gives both occasion and necessity. The state and Christianity, guilds and political parties, and innumerable other groups have developed according to this formula, however much, of course, the special conditions and forces of the respective groups have modified the general scheme. This scheme seems to me distinctly recognizable also in the evolution of individuality within urban life. The small-town life in antiquity and in the Middle Ages set barriers against movement and relations of the individual toward the outside, and it set up barriers against individual independence and differentiation within the individual self. These barriers were such that under them modern man could not have breathed. Even today a metropolitan man who is placed in a small town feels a restriction similar, at least, in kind. The smaller the circle which forms our milieu is, and the more restricted those relations to others are which dissolve the boundaries of the individual, the more anxiously the circle guards the achievements, the conduct of life, and the outlook of the individual, and the more readily a quantitative and qualitative specialization iu^.,1^1 U.— ..1.---»1-- c------- ir.. •...... IThe ancient polls in this respect seems to have had the very character of a small town. The constant threat to its existence at the hands of enemies I from near and afar effected strict coherence in political and military I respects, a supervision of the citizen by the citizen, a jealousy of the whole I against the individual whose particular life was suppressed to such a degree | that he could compensate only by acting as a despot in his own household, j The tremendous agitation and excitement, the unique colourfulness of * Athenian life, can perhaps be understood in terms of the fact that a people j of incomparably individualized personalities struggled against the constant f inner and outer pressure of a de-individualizing small town. This produced ! a tense atmosphere in which the weaker individuals were suppressed and ; those of stronger natures were incited to prove themselves in the most pas-: sionate manner. This is precisely why it was that there blossomed in Athens .{ what must be called, without defining it exactly, 'the general human char-I acter' in the intellectual development of our species. For we maintain t factual as well as historical validity for the following connection: the most j extensive and the most general contents and forms of life are most inti-j mately connected with the most individual ones. They have a preparatory f stage in common, that is, they find their enemy in narrow formations and ■ groupings, the maintenance of which places both of them into a state of [ defence, against expanse and generality lying without and the freely moving 1 individuality within. Just as in the feudal age, the 'free' man was the one it who stood under the law of the land, that is. under the law of the largest • social orbit, and the unfree man was the one who derived his right merely j from the narrow circle of a feudal association and was excluded from the t larger social orbit - so today metropolitan man is 'free' in a spiritualized and j refined sense, in contrast to the pettiness and prejudices which hem in the ! small-town man. For the reciprocal reserve and indifference and the intellectual life conditions of large circles are never felt more strongly by the individual in their impact upon his independence than in the thickest crowd I of the big city. This is because the bodily proximity and narrowness of space ; makes the mental distance only the more visible. It is obviously only the obverse of this freedom if, under certain circumstances, one nowhere feels ; as lonely and lost as in the metropolitan crowd. For here as elsewhere it is : by no means necessary that the freedom of man be reflected in his emotional | life as comfort. \ It is not only the immediate size of the area and the number of persons i which, because of the universal historical correlation between the enlarge- ment of the circle and the personal inner and outer freedom, has made the metropolis the locale of freedom. It is rather in transcending this visible expanse that any given city becomes the seat of cosmopolitanism. The horizon of the city expands in a manner comparable to the way in which wealth develops; a certain amount of property increases in a quasi-automatical way in ever more rapid progression. As soon as a certain limit has been ; passed, the economic, personal, and intellectual relations of the ci tizenry, the 182 SIMMEL ON CULTURE SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 183 in geometrical progression. Every gain in dynamic extension becomes a step, ,; :■■■ ■■]■ not for an equal, but for a new and larger extension. From every thread spinning out of the city, ever new threads grow as if by themselves, just as within the city the unearned increment of ground rent, through the mere increase in communication, brings the owner automatically increasing profits. At this point, the quantitative aspect of life is transformed directly into qualitative traits of character. The sphere of life of the small town is, in the main, self-contained and autarchic. For it is the decisive nature of the metropolis thai its inner life overflows by waves into a far-flung national or international area. Weimar is not an example to the contrary, since its significance was hinged upon individual personalities and died with them; whereas the metropolis is indeed characterized by its essential independence even from the most eminent individual personalities. This is the counterpart to the independence, and it is the price the individual pays for the independence, which he enjoys in the metropolis. The most significant characteristic of the metropolis is this functional extension beyond its physical boundaries. And this efficacy reacts in turn and gives weight, importance, and responsibility to metropolitan life. Man does not end with the limits of his body or the area comprising his immediate activity. Rather is the range of the person constituted by the sum of effects emanating from him temporally and spatially. In the same way, a city consists of its total effects which extend beyond its immediate confines. Only this range is the city's actual extent in which its existence is expressed. This fact makes it obvious that individual freedom, the logical and historical complement of such extension, is not to be understood only in the negative sense of mere freedom of mobility and elimination of prejudices and petty philistinism. The essential point is that the particularity and incomparability, which ultimately every human being possesses, be somehow expressed in the working out of a way of life. That we follow the laws of our own nature - and this after all is freedom - becomes obvious and convincing to ourselves and to others only if the expressions of this nature differ from the expressions of others. Only our unmistakability proves that our way of life has not been superimposed by others. Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labour. They produce thereby such extreme phenomena as in Paris the remunerative occupation of the quatorzieme. They are persons who identify themselves by signs on their residences and who are ready at the dinner hour in correct attire, so that they can be quickly called upon if a dinner party should consist of thirteen persons. In the measure of its expansion, the city offers more and more the decisive conditions of the division of labour. It offers a circle which through its size can absorb a highly diverse variety of services. At the same time, the concentration of individuals and their struggle for customers compel the individual to specialize in a function from which he cannot be readily displaced by another. It is decisive that city life has transformed the struggle with nature for livelihood into an inter-human struggle for gain, which here is not granted by nature but by other men. For from the underlying fact that the seller must always seek to call forth new and differentiated needs of the lured customer. In order to find a source of income which is not yet exhausted, and to find a function which cannot readily be displaced, it is necessary to specialize in one's services. This process promotes differentiation, refinement, and the enrichment of the public's needs, which obviously must lead to growing personal differences within this public. All this forms the transition to the individualization of mental and psychic traits which the city occasions in proportion to its size. There is a whole series of obvious causes underlying this process. First, one must meet the difficulty of asserting his own personality within the dimensions of metropolitan life. Where the quantitative increase in importance and the expense of energy reach their limits, one seizes upon qualitative differentiation in order somehow to attract the attention of the social circle by playing upon its sensitivity for differences. Finally, man is tempted to adopt the most tendentious peculiarities, that is, the specifically metropolitan extravagances of mannerism, caprice, and preciousness. Now, the meaning of these extravagances does not at all lie in the contents of such behaviour, but rather in its form of 'being different', of standing out in a striking manner and thereby attracting attention. For many character types, ultimately the only means of saving for themselves some modicum of self-esteem and the sense of filling a position is indirect, through the awareness of others. In the same sense a seemingly insignificant factor is operating, the cumulative effects of which are, however, still noticeable. I refer to the brevity and scarcity of the inter-human contacts granted to the metropolitan man, as compared with social intercourse in the small town. The temptation to appear 'to the point', to appear concentrated and strikingly characteristic, lies much closer to the individual in brief metropolitan contacts than in an atmosphere in which frequent and prolonged association assures the personality of an unambiguous image of himself in the eyes of the other. The most profound reason, however, why the metropolis conduces to the urge for the most individual personal existence - no matter whether justified and successful - appears to me to be the following: the development of modern culture is characterized by the preponderance of what one may call the 'objective spirit' over the 'subjective spirit'. This is to say, in language as well as in law. in the technique of production as well as in art, in science as well as in the objects of the domestic environment, there is embodied a sum of spirit. The individual in his intellectual development follows the growth of this spirit very imperfectly and at an ever increasing distance. If, for instance, we view the immense culture which for the last hundred years has been embodied in things and in knowledge, in institutions and in comforts, and if we compare all this with the cultural progress of the individual during the same period - at least in high status groups - a frightful disproportion in growth between the two becomes evident. Indeed, at some points we notice a retrogression in the culture of the individual with reference to 184 SIMMEL ON CULTURE SPATIAL AND URBAN CULTURE 185 the growing division of labour. For the division of labour demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a-one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of th"e individual. In any case, he can cope less and less with the overgrowth of objective culture. The individual is reduced to a negligible quantity, perhaps less in his consciousness than in his practice and in the totality of his obscure emotional states that are derived from this practice. The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life. It needs merely to be pointed out that the metropolis is the genuine arena of this culture which outgrows all personal life. Here in buildings and educational institutions, in the wonders and comforts of space-conquering technology, in the formations of community life, and in the visible institutions of the state, is offered such an overwhelming fullness of crystallized and impersonated spirit that the personality, so to speak, cannot maintain itself under its impact. On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream, and one needs hardly to swim for oneself. On the other hand, however, life is composed more and more of these impersonal contents and offerings which tend to displace the genuine personal colorations and incomparabilities. This results in the individual's summoning the utmost in uniqueness and particularization, in order to preserve his most personal core. He has to exaggerate this personal element in order to remain audible even to himself. The atrophy of individual culture through the hypertrophy of objective culture is one reason for the bitter hatred which the preachers of the most extreme individualism, above all Nietzsche, harbour against the metropolis. But it is, indeed, also a reason why these preachers are so passionately loved in the metropolis and why they appear to the metropolitan man as the prophets and saviours of his most unsatisfied yearnings. If one asks for the historical position of these two forms of individualism which are nourished by the quantitative relation of the metropolis, namely, individual independence and the elaboration of individuality itself, then the metropolis assumes an entirely new rank order in the world history of the spirit. The eighteenth century found the individual in oppressive bonds which had become meaningless - bonds of a political, agrarian, guild, and religious character. They were restraints which, so to speak, forced upon man an unnatural form and outmoded, unjust inequalities. In this situation the cry for liberty and equality arose, the belief in the individual's full freedom of movement in all social and intellectual relationships. Freedom would at once permit the noble substance common to all to come to the fore, a substance which nature had deposited in every man and which society and history had only deformed. Besides this eighteenth-centuiy ideal of liberalism, in the nineteenth century, through Goethe and Roman- the other hand, another ideal arose: individuals liberated from historical bonds now wished to distinguish themselves from one another. The carrier of man's values is no longer the 'general human being' in every individual, but rather man's qualitative uniqueness and irreplaceability. The external and internal history of our time takes its course within the struggle and in the changing entanglements of these two ways of defining the individual's role in the whole of society. It is the function of the metropolis to provide the arena for this struggle and its reconciliation. For the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions which are revealed to us as the opportunities and the stimuli for the development of both these ways of allocating roles to men. Therewith these conditions gain a unique place, pregnant with inestimable meanings for the development of psychic existence. The metropolis reveals itself as one of those great historical formations in which opposing streams which enclose life unfold, as well as join one another with equal right. However, in this process the currents of life, whether their individual phenomena touch us sympathetically or antipathetically, entirely transcend the sphere for which the judge's attitude is appropriate. Since such forces of life have grown into the roots and into the crown of the whole of the historical life in which we, in our fleeting existence, as a cell, belong only as a part, it is not our task either to accuse or to pardon, but only to understand.2 Notes to Part IV 1. The unequal juxtaposition of these two necessities, which do not find a harmony, organization or supplementation in any higher aspect dominating the two, is perhaps the reason for the minimal and difficult development of tribes at the nomadic level. 2. The content of this lecture by its very nature does not derive from a citable literature. Argument and elaboration of its major cultural-historical ideas are contained in my Philosophic (ks Celdes [The Philosophy of Money]. 298 SIMMEL ON CULTURE BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION 299 The Crisis of Culture G. Simmel 'Die Krisis der Kultur', Frankfurter Zeitung, 13 February 1916. Reprinted in G. Simmel, Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen. Reden und Aufsätze, Munich & Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1917. This translation in P. Lawrence (ed.), Georg Simmel: Sociologist and European, Sunbury: Nelson, 1976, pp. 253-66. Translated by D.E. Jenkinson. The Future of Our Culture G. Simmel, 'Die Zukunft unserer Kultur', Frankfurter Zeitung. 14 April 1909. Translated by Mark Ritter and David Frisby. The Change in Cultural Forms G. Simmel, 'Wandel der Kulturformen', Berliner Tageblatt, 27 August 1916. English translation by Mark Ritter and David Frisby. Sociology of the Senses G. Simmel, 'Soziologie der Sinne7, Die Neue Rundschau, 18,1907, vol. 2. pp. 1025-36. See also G. Simmel, Aufsätze und Abhandtungen 1901- 1908, vol. 2, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993, pp. 276-92. English translation by Mark Ritter and David Frisby. The Sociology of Sociability G. Simmel, 'Soziologie der Geselligkeit', Schriften der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie, series 1, vol. 1, 1911, pp. 1-16. English translation by Everett C. Hughes reprinted here from 'The Sociology of Sociability', American Journal of Sociology, 55, 1949/50, pp. 254-61. Sociology of the Meal G. Simmel, 'Soziologie der Mahlzeit', Berliner Tageblatt, 10 October 1910, English translation by Mark Ritter and David Frisby. The Sociology of Space G. Simmel, 'Soziologie des Raumes', Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft, 27, 1903, pp. 27-71. See also G. Simmel, Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 1901-1908, vol. 1, edited by L. Rüdiger Kramme, Angela Rammstedt and Otthein Rammstedt, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1995, pp. 132-83. English translation by Mark Ritter and David Frisby. Bridge and Door G. Simmel 'Brücke und Tür', Der Tag, 15 September 1909. English translation by Mark Ritter as 'Bridge and Door', Theory, Culture & Society, 11, 1994, pp. 5-10. The Metropolis and Mental Life G. Simmel, 'Die Grossstädte und das Geistesleben'. Jahrbuch der Abhandlungen 1901-1908, vol. 1,1995, pp. 116-31. This English translation by Hans Gerth in Kurt H. Wolff (ed.). The Sociology of Georg Simmel, Glencoe: Free Press, 1950, pp. 409-24. The Philosophy of Fashion G. Simmel, Philosophie der Mode, Berlin: Pan Verlag 1905, p. 41. Also in G. Simmel, Philosophische Kultur, (second edn) Leipzig: Kröner 1919, pp. 25-57. See also G. Simmel, Philosophie der Mode. Die Religion. Kant und Goethe, Schopenhauer und Nietzsche. (GSGA vol 10, edited by Michael Behr, Volkhard Krech and Gert Schmidt), Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1995, pp. 7-38. This translation by Mark Ritter and David Frisby. Adornment See G, Simmel, 'Pychologie des Schmuckes', Morgen, 2, 1908, pp. 1685-89. Also G. Simmel, 'Exkurs über den Schmuck' in G. Simmel, Soziologie, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1908, pp. 365-72. See also G. Simmel, Sozi-ologieAGSGA vol. 11, edited by Otthein Rammstedt), Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992, pp. 414-21. This English translation by Kurt H. Wolff in Kurt H. Wolff (ed.) The Sociology of Georg Simmel, Glencoe: Free Press, 1950, pp. 338-44. The Problem of Style G. Simmel, 'Das Problem des Stiles', Dekorative Kunst, 16,1908, pp. 307-16. English translation by Mark Ritter as 'The Problem of Style', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 8, no. 3,1991, pp. 63-71. The Alpine Journey G. Simmel, 'Alpenreisen', Die Zeit (Vienna). 4,13 July 1895. English translation by Sam Whimster as 'The Alpine Journey', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 8. no. 3,1991, pp. 95-8. The Adventure G. Simmel, 'Philosophie des Abenteuers', Der Tag, Berlin 7 and 8 June 1910. See also 'Das Abenteuer' in G. Simmel, Philosophische Kultur (second edn) Leipzig: Kröner 1919, pp. 7-24. This translation as 'The Adventure' by David Ketller in Kurt H. Wolff (ed.) Georg Simmel 1858-1918, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1958, pp. 243-58. On the Psychology of Money G. Simmel, 'Zur Psychologie des Geldes', Jahrbuch fiir Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft, 13, 1889, pp. 1251-64. English translation by Mark Ritter and David Frisby. Money in Modern Culture G. Simmel, 'Das Geld in der Modernen Kultur', Zeitschrift des Oberschlcsts-chen Berg und Huttenmännischen Vereins, 35,1896, pp. 319-24. See also 'Das ~ ... . . .... :_ n c:~,m*i Auhiine und Abhandlungen Theory, Culture & Society Theory, Culture & Society caters for the resurgence of interest in culture within contemporary social science and the humanities. Building on the heritage of classical social theory, the book series examines ways in which this tradition has been reshaped by a new generation of theorists. It will also publish theoretically informed analyses of everyday life, popular culture, and new intellectual movements. EDITOR: Mike Featherstone, Nottingham Trent University SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD Roy Boyne, University of Durham Mike Hepworth, University of Aberdeen Scott Lash, Lancaster University Roland Robertson, University of Pittsburgh Bryan S. Turner, Deakin University THE TCS CENTRE The Theory, Culture & Society book series, the journals Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society, and related conference, seminar and postgraduate programmes operate from the TCS Centre at Nottingham Trent University. For further details of the TCS Centre's activities please contact: Centre Administrator The TCS Centre, Room 175 Faculty of Humanities Nottingham Trent University Clifton Lane, Nottingham, NG11 SNS, UK e-mail: tcs@ntu.ac.uk Recent volumes include: The Body and Society Explorations in Social Theory Second edition Bryan S. Turner The Social Construction of Nature Klaus Eder Deleuze and Guattari An Introduction to the Politics of Desire Philip Coodchild Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory Critical Investigations Bridget Fowler Re-Forming the Body Religion, Community and Modernity Philip A. Mellar and Chris Shilling The Shopping Experience edited by Pasi Falk and Colin Campbell Undoing Aesthetics SIMMELON CULTURE Selected Writings edited by David Frisby and Mike Featherstone SAGE Publications