No More Learning

With the significance of space it is frequently no different. When an aesthetic theory declares it the essential task of the plastic arts to make space perceptible for us, it misunderstands that our interest holds only for the particular shapes of things, but not space in general or spatiality, which constitutes only their conditio sine qua non, and neither its special essence nor its generating factor. If an interpre- tation of history presents the spatial factor in the foreground to such an extent that it would understand the greatness or the smallness of the realm, the crowdedness or dispersion of populations, the mobility or stability of the masses etc. as the, as it were, motives radiating out from space to the whole of historical life, then here too the essential spatial preoccupation of all these constellations runs into danger of being confused with their positive functional causes. Indeed kingdoms cannot have just any size whatever; indeed people cannot be near to or far from one another without space lending its form to it, any more than those processes that one attributes to time can occur outside of time. 1 But the contents of these forms still take on the distinctive feature of their fates only through other contents; space remains always the form, in itself ineffectual, in whose modifications the real energies
1 When Simmel was writing, most Western countries were still kingdoms, often significantly so. Constitutional monarchies, of varying levels of democratic practice, in 1908 included Denmark, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria-Hungary, and Belgium. True monarchies included Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Many large nations outside Europe were "dominions" of monarchies: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, India, and Indonesia. Only the United States and by this time also France were fully outside the realm of monarchical government--ed.
? 544 chapter nine
? are indeed revealed, but only in the way language expresses thought processes that proceed certainly in words but not through words. A geo- graphical expanse of so and so many square miles does not make a great kingdom, but what does is the psychological powers that hold the inhabitants of such a realm together politically from a governing center. The form of spatial nearness or distance does not generate the peculiar phenomena of neighborliness or alienation, however inevitably it may seem. Rather even these are facts generated purely by psychological contents, the course of which stands in relationship to its spatial form in principle no differently than a battle or a telephone conversation to that of theirs--thus doubtlessly these processes too can be realized then only under quite specific spatial conditions. Not space, but the psycho- logically consequential organization and concentration of its parts have social significance. This synthesis of the role of space is a specifically psychological function that is certainly individually modified with every apparently 'natural' reality, but the categories from which it originates of course comply, more or less vividly, with the immediacy of space. For the social formation in the medieval cities of Flanders three such bases were cited: the 'natural commons,' i. e. the union of habitations under the common protection of rampart and ditch; the city magistracy, by which the community became a legal person; the church association of inhabitants in parishes. These are three wholly different themes that proceed to a combination of one and the same collection of persons within one and the same piece of terrain. That all three occupy the same district in such undisturbed togetherness, just as light and sound waves flow through the same space, effects its collective composition as of a piece, without the outward clarity of the function of 'rampart and ditch' giving preference basically to this theme over the others. That space is in general only an activity of the psyche, only the human way of binding unbounded sensory affections into integrated outlooks, is specifically reflected in the need of psychological functions for the individual historical forms of space.
In spite of these facts the emphasis on the spatial importance of things and processes is not unjustified. This is so because these often actually take their course in such a way that the formal, positive or negative con- dition of the spatiality comes up especially for consideration and we possess the clearest documentation of real forces in it. If in the end a chemical process or a game of chess is likewise bound to relativities of space, just as the course of war or just as the sales of agricultural products, then indeed the line of vision that pursues the interest of knowledge with
space and the spatial ordering of society 545
? regard to the one or the other case differentiates so methodically that the question regarding the conditions and determinants of space and place falls at one time quite outside of them, at another time is quite definitely included. Social interaction among human beings is--apart from everything else it is--also experienced as a realization space. If a number of persons inside certain spatial boundaries live isolated from one another, then each of them simply fills their own immediate space with their substance and their activity, and between this space and the space right next to them is unfilled space; practically stated: nothing. In the moment in which two of these enter into social interaction, the space between them appears filled and enlivened. Of course this only rests on the double meaning of betweenness: that a relationship between two elements, which though only one, is in the one and in the other immanently an occurring movement or modification between them, in the sense of spatial intervention. Whatever errors this ambiguity might otherwise lead to, it is nevertheless of deep significance in this sociologi- cal matter. The betweenness as a merely functional reciprocity, whose content continues in each of its personal bearers, is also actually realized here as a claim of the space existing between these two; it always takes place actually between both points of space, with regard to which one and the other has a place of theirs designated for it, filled by each alone. Kant defines space simply as "the possibility of being together"--this then is sociological; interaction makes the formerly empty and null into something for us; it fills it, in that it makes it possible. Association, in the various types of interaction among individuals, brought about different possibilities of being together--in the psychological sense; some of them, however, are realized in such a way that the form of space, in which this typically occurs for all of them, justifies a particular emphasis for the purposes of our inquiry. So in the interest of penetrating the forms of association, we pursue the meaning that the spatial circumstances of an association possess for their particular determination and develop- ments in a sociological sense.
I. First are several foundational qualities of spatial form with which forms of social life must reckon.
A. To this belongs that which one can call the exclusivity of space. Just as there is only one single universal space, of which all individual spaces are portions, so each portion of space has a kind of uniqueness for which there is hardly an analogy. To think of a specifically located portion of space in the plural is complete nonsense, and yet this makes it possible for a plurality of fully identical exemplars to be constituted
546 chapter nine
? simultaneously from different objects; because then by each occupying a different portion of space from which one cannot at any time coin- cide with another, there is indeed variety, although their properties are absolutely indistinguishable. This uniqueness of space imparts itself then to the objects, in so far as they are presented as merely space-filling, and this becomes for praxis important for them to the highest degree, from which we tend precisely to emphasize and exploit the importance of space. Thus at the most basic level the three-dimensional nature of space for our purposes is the condition for filling it and making it pro- ductive. To the degree in which a social structure is blended or, so to speak, in solidarity with a certain expanse of ground, it has a character of uniqueness or exclusivity that is likewise not attainable in any other way. Certain types of bond can be realized in their complete sociological form only in such a way that inside the spatial realm, which is filled by one of its exemplars, there is no room for a second. Of others, on the other hand, any number whatever--sociologically similarly consti- tuted--can fill the same sphere, in that they are more-or-less mutually permeable; because they have no intrinsic relationship to space, they cannot also result in spatial collisions. For the former, the single fully sufficient example is the state. Of it, it has been said, it would not be one association among many but the association dominating all, thus the only one of its kind. This conception, whose correctness for the whole essence of the state is beyond debate, holds in every case with regard to the spatial character of the state. The type of bond between the individuals whom the state constitutes or who constitute the state is bound up with the territory to such an extent that a second state contemporaneous with it, even of the same kind, is fully unthinkable. To a certain extent the municipality has the same character: within the boundaries of a city there can be only that city, and if by chance a second nevertheless arises inside the same boundaries, there are not two cities on the same ground and soil but on two territories, formerly united but now separate. However, this exclusivity is not as absolute as that of the state. The significant and functional area of a city--inside a state--ends though not at its geographical boundary, but, more or less noticeably, it extends out ripple-like over the whole land with cultural, economic, political currents, while the general administration of the state allows the strengths and interests of every part to coalesce with those of the whole. From this perspective the community loses its exclusive character and expands functionally over the whole state in such a way that this is the common sphere of influence for the, so to speak, ideal
space and the spatial ordering of society 547
? extension of all individual communities. In that each reaches out over its immediate boundaries, it meets with all the others effective in the same total area, so that no one is the only one in it, and each one maintained a wider sphere, in which it is not alone, around the exclusivity of its narrower one. Also within the individual city this local form of group life can recur. If episcopal sees developed from the core of German communities, then the free community was never in possession of the whole city boundary; rather there existed next to it a bishop who had a comprehensive dominion of independent people behind him, ruled by their own laws. Further, there still existed in most cities a lord's court of the king with a separately administered court community, finally yet independent monasteries and Jewish communities that lived under their own laws. There was then in ancient times communities in the cities, but no genuine municipalities. Unavoidably, however, there developed from spatial proximity amalgamative and incorporative effects that, before all these divisions merged into the essence of a city, first pro- duced an expression in the collectively shared peace of the city. With that, all the inhabitants were given a common law protective of their specifically personal rights; i. e. the legal sphere of each district would reach out beyond its demarcation (inside of which each community was the only one of its kind), extend in a manner equally for all to a total area including all, and lose local exclusivity with this expansion of its operative nature. This pattern constitutes the transition to the further stage of the spatial relationship of groups, where, because they are not bound to a definite expanse, they do not possess even the claim to uniqueness inside any one of them. So there could exist side by side on the territory of a city any number of sociologically quite similarly produced guilds. Each was indeed the guild of the entire city; they did not divide the given expanse quantitatively, but functionally; they did not collide spatially because they were not, as sociological formations, spatial, even though determined by locality. By their contents they had the exclusivity of the accomplishments of spatial expansion, inasmuch as for every particular craft there was just one guild in the city and no room for a second. By their form, however, countless structures of this type could, without opposition, occupy the same space. The most extreme pole of this continuum is exemplified by the church, at least when it, as does the Catholic Church, lays claim to unlimited exten- sion as well as freedom from any limitation to locality. Nevertheless, several religions of this type could find themselves, e. g. , in the same city. The Catholic church would be no less 'the city's Catholic church'--i. e.
548 chapter nine
? standing in a particular organizationally local relationship to the city as a unity--than correspondingly that of any other religion. The principle of the church is non-spatial and therefore, although reaching out over every area, not precluded by any similarly formed structure. There is within the spatial a counterpart to the temporal opposition of the eternal and the timeless: the latter by its nature is not affected by the question of the now or earlier or later and is therefore indeed at every moment in time accessible or current; the former is precisely a tempo- ral concept, namely of endless and unbroken time. The corresponding difference in the spatial, for which we have no similarly simple expres- sions, is formed on the one hand by the supra-spatial structures that have, by their own nature, no relationship to space, but then simply an equable relationship to all individual points of it; on the other hand those who enjoy their equable relationship to all spatial points not as equable indifference, but actually as bare possibility, as generically real and essential solidarity with the space. The purest type of the former is obviously the church, and of the latter, the state: between the two move intermediate phenomena, some of which I have alluded to; a particular light may fall on the formal nature of many kinds of social structures, therefore, from their level on the scale that leads from the completely territorially fixed and the exclusiveness following from that, to the completely supra-spatial and the possibility following from that of a co-dominium of many similar ones over the same section of space. Thus the proximity or distance, the exclusivity or multiplicity, which the relationship of the group to its land exhibits, is often the root and symbol of its structure.
B. A further quality of space that vitally affects patterns of social interaction is found in space dividing up for our practical use into por- tions that operate as units and--as cause as well as effect therefrom--are surrounded by boundaries. Now the configurations of the surfaces of the earth may appear to us to mark the boundaries where we are enrolled in the limitlessness of space, or purely ideal lines may divide similarly constituted portions of the land as a watershed, on which this side of and the other side of each little portion is gravitating to a different center: in all cases we comprehend the space, which a social group in some sense fills, as a unit that the unity of the group likewise expresses and bears, just as it is carried by it. The frame, the self-contained bound- ary of a structure, has a very similar meaning for the social group as for an artwork. Regarding this, the frame exercises the two functions that are actually only the two sides of a single one: separating the work
space and the spatial ordering of society 549
? of art from and associating it with the surrounding world; the frame announces that inside of it there is a world subject to its own norms, a world that is not drawn into the determinants and dynamics of the surrounding world; while it symbolizes the self-sufficiency of the artwork, at the same time by its very nature it highlights the reality and imprint of the surroundings. So a society, in that its existential space is encom- passed by keenly conscious borders, is thereby characterized as one also internally cohesive; and conversely: the interacting unity, the functional relationship of each element to each acquires its spatial expression in the framing boundary. There is probably nothing that demonstrates the power particularly of the cohesiveness of the state than that this socio- logical centripetalism, which however is in the end only a psychological coherence of personalities, grows up into a meaningfully experienced structure of a firmly circumscribing boundary line. It is rarely made clear how wondrously now the extensity of space accommodates the intensity of the sociological relationships, how the continuity of space, precisely because it contains subjectively no absolute boundary of any kind, simply allows then such a subjectivity to prevail throughout. As far as nature is concerned, every boundary placement is arbitrary, even in the case of an insular situation, because indeed in principle even the sea can be 'taken possession of. ' Precisely on account of this lack of spatial prejudice in nature, the sharpness, in spite of its prevailing unconditionality, of the physical boundary once it is fixed makes the power of social association and its necessity, originating internally, espe- cially vivid. For that reason the consciousness of being inside borders is also perhaps not the strongest with regard to the so-called natural boundaries (mountains, rivers, seas, deserts), but rather precisely solely with political borders, which lie simply on a geometrical line between neighbors. And in fact precisely because here dislocations, expansions, migrations, mergers are more obvious, because the structure at its edge hits upon vital, psychologically functional borders from which not only passive oppositions but very active repulsions come. Every such border signifies defense and offense; or more correctly perhaps: it is the spa- tial expression of a standard relationship between two neighbors, for which we have no entirely standard expression and which we perhaps can identify as the condition of neutrality for a defense and offense, as a condition of tension in which both lie latent, be it then developing or not.
And with that it is obviously not denied that the psychological border placement in every case would be facilitated and emphasized at those
550 chapter nine
? natural territorial enclosures; indeed space often acquires, through the arrangement of its ground surfaces, divisions that color in a unique manner the relationships of the inhabitants among themselves and with those on the outside. The best known example is formed by the mountain dwellers with their characteristic merging into one of a sense of freedom and conservatism, of reserved behavior towards one another and passionate attachment to the land, which creates an extraordinarily strong bond between them. 2 The conservatism in the mountain valleys is explained very simply by the impediment of interaction with the outside world and the resulting lack of incentives for making changes; where the mountain context does not exercise this prohibitive effect, as in several regions of Greece, the conservative tendency does not in any way prevail. It has then only negative inducements, in contrast perhaps to other geographical determinants with the same result: the Nile offers the inhabitants along its banks, on the one hand, an extraordinary regularity, which they can count on, and the activity, which is necessary for the utilization of it. On the other hand, the fertility of its valley is so great that the population, once settled there, has no inducement to unsettled movements. These very positive elements stamp the region with a uniformity of ever-repeated life contents, bind them as if to the regularity of a machine, and have for centuries frequently forced upon the Nile Valley a conservative rigidity, in a way that was not at all achiev- able on the coasts of the Aegean, surely for geographical reasons.
The concept of boundary is in all human affairs of the utmost impor- tance among them, although its meaning is not always a sociological one; because it indicates often enough only that the sphere of a personality has found a limit to power or intelligence, to the capacity to suffer or enjoy--but without then the sphere of another having settled at this limit and with its own boundary having determined more noticeably that of the first. This latter, the sociological boundary, implies an entirely
2 This passion for the homeland, which is straightforwardly manifest among the mountain dwellers as a typical 'homesickness' and is immediately a purely individual affect, goes back perhaps to the conspicuous differentiating of the land that has to fasten consciousness strongly to it and to the uniqueness of its shape, often precisely to that small patch of earth that belongs to the individual or that one has inhabited. There is no intrinsic reason why mountain dwellers should love their homeland more than lowland dwellers. However, emotional life everywhere blends with the distinctively incomparable as a singularly felt formation in an especially close and effective way, therefore more with an old, angular, irregular city than with the pole-straight modern, more with the mountains in which each portion of the land manifests an entirely individual, unrec- ognizable shape than with the plains whose sections are all the same.
? space and the spatial ordering of society 551
? unique interaction. Each of the two elements affects the other, in that one sets the boundary for the other, but the content of this influence is simply the qualification beyond this boundary, thus still not in general meant to or able to affect the other. When this general concept of mutual limitation is drawn from the spatial boundary, this latter is still, understood more deeply, only the crystallization or removal of the real psychological boundary-establishing processes alone. It is not the lands, not the properties, not the city district and the rural district that set one another's boundaries, but the residents or owners performing the reciprocal action that I just indicated. From the sphere of two person- alities or personality complexes each acquires an inner consistency for itself, a referring-to-one-another of its elements, a dynamic relationship to its center; and between both there is then produced that which is symbolized in the spatial boundary, the completion of the positive mea- sure of power and right of its own sphere by way of the consciousness that does not extend power and right then into the other sphere. The boundary is not a spatial fact with sociological effects, but a sociological reality that is formed spatially. The idealistic principle that space is our conception--more precisely, that it is realized through our synthesizing activity by which we shape sense material--is specified here in such a way that the spatial formation that we call a boundary is a sociological function. If indeed at first it had become a spatial-sensual formation that we write into nature independent of its sociological-practical sense, then it has strong repercussions for the consciousness of the relationship of parties. While this line marks only the differentiation of relationship between the elements of a sphere among one another and between them and the elements of another, it becomes then, nevertheless, a living energy that drives them towards one another and does not leave them out of its unity and moves, as a physical force that radiates repulsions from both perspectives, between both.
Excursus on Social Boundary
Perhaps in most relationships between individuals as well as between groups the concept of the boundary becomes important in some way. Overall, where the interests of two elements concern the same property, their co-existence depends on a boundary line separating their spheres within the property--be this then the end of the dispute as a legal boundary or its beginning as a boundary perhaps of power. I am reminded then of a case, immeasurably meaningful for all human social existence, which the chapter on secrecy dealt with in
552 chapter nine
? detail from a different standpoint. Every close association thoroughly rests on each one knowing more of the others through psychological hypotheses than is exhibited directly and with conscious intent. For if we were dependent only on that which is revealed, we would have before us, instead of a united people whom we understand and with whom we can deal, only numerous accidental and disconnected fragments of a soul. We must then through inferences, inter- pretations, and interpolations supplement the given fragments until as whole a person emerges as we need, internally and for life's praxis. Over against this unquestioned social right of fathoming others, whether or not intentional, stands however one's private possession of one's mental being, one's right to discretion--also to that which refrains from the pondering and deductions by which someone could penetrate against the will of the other into one's intimacies and reserve. Where, however, does the boundary lie between the allowed, indeed essential construction of another's soul and this psychological indiscretion? And this precarious, objective boundary means, however, only the boundary between both personality spheres; it means that the consciousness of the one may cover the sphere of another only up to a certain point and that it is here that the inviolable sphere of this other begins, the revelation of which only that person though has disposal. It is quite obvious that the eter- nally varied management of this demarcation stands in the closest interaction with the entire structure of social life: in indigenous-undifferentiated eras the right to enlargements of this psychological boundary becomes greater; the interest in it, however, is perhaps less than in eras of individualized persons and complicated relationships; with commercial transactions this boundary lies elsewhere than in the relationship between parents and children, among diplomats elsewhere than among comrades-in-arms. I have here touched again on this matter, rather far from the issue of space, in order to clarify in it the incomparable solidity and lucidity that the processes of social boundary-mak- ing obtain through their spatialization. Every boundary is a mental, more exactly, a sociological occurrence; however, by its investment in a border in space the mutual relationship acquires, from its positive and negative sides, a clarity and security--indeed also often a rigidity--that tends to remain denied to it as long as the encountering and partitioning of powers and rights is not yet projected into a physical form, and thus always persists, so to speak, in the status nascens. 3
Another sociological boundary-making problem of the first rank lies in the different degrees to which single members of collective structures partici- pate in them. That there is a difference between the full compatriot and the one-half or one-quarter compatriot signifies a boundary between these latter two and the totality to which one belongs nevertheless; or also a boundary inside the collective that marks the points, their center determined by radiat- ing lines of rights and duties that indicate the boundary of participation for several elements, for others, however, not so, and also within the individual, who will experience especially sharply, in the lack of total acceptance into the
3 Latin: state of being born--ed.
? space and the spatial ordering of society 553
? community, the boundary between the part of the personality that belongs in it and the part that remains outside the whole relationship. Occasionally a tragedy can result from this formation, when of course the group limits the degree in which it includes an individual, but subjectively no corresponding limitation takes place in the individual whose self-experiences, nevertheless, is that of entirely belonging to it, where in reality only a partial membership has been conceded. It is noteworthy and appropriate that the rights and duties of partial members of the group tend to be set more narrowly than those of full members. Since, however, this individual shares entirely in the contents and entirely in the destiny of the association, that which comes to one in terms of requirements, pains, and pleasures as a result of the participation is not determined, as it were, from the very beginning; one can only wait and see what happens with the whole and what the consequences will be according to one's place in the totality. In contrast, there is a tendency for there to be unique, assignable, objectively determined aspects of the association to which the half-compatriot is related; it is as a rule not a weaker relationship to the totality and unity of the group, so no difference in the intensity, but in the extensiveness: an exact determination of what one must accomplish and what one can demand, in relative independence of the fate of the whole group as well as one's own--while with the full compatriots that kind of demarca- tion of the share of the whole and of the part does not occur. The deeper sociological significance of the limitation or lack of limitation of belonging, however, is found in that the more exact determination of the relationship in a case of the latter gives it a more objective character than is possessed in a case of the former. I am reminded, for example, from a very singular realm, the difference in the status of the maid as opposed to the 'cleaning lady. ' The relationship of the domestic servant to the 'household,' however uncoupled it may be from patriarchal circumstances, has nevertheless the nature of an organic membership; one's tasks follow the fluctuation in domestic activities, and one tends, albeit to a lesser degree, to participate in the mood and the fortunes of the household--because inside one's overall prescribed function there exists no precise limit thereof. The cleaning lady, on the other hand, is hired for duties that are precisely defined according to content and number of hours; consequently her relationship to the household has a thoroughly exact character, fully beyond the life process of the house, and she does not have, not even in proportion to the duties, the subjectively personal engage- ment of the domestic servant for the household, but only a purely objective relationship to it existing from a pre-determined sum of rights and duties. The greatest example, characterized elsewhere in this book, is the change from the medieval agreement that claimed the whole person and was thus in turn in solidarity with that person--to the modern one that, even where it is not purely an intentional association, returns typically only a limited amount of a participant's contribution with a limited amount of reciprocal contribution. Here the phenomenon of boundary-making between the whole and the part has propelled most unambiguously the objectificattion of the whole relation- ship as its correlate. It is interesting how occasionally a membership boundary is marked already in the Middle Ages. An aristocratic Anglo-Saxon guild of
554 chapter nine
? the eleventh century decreed: if a comrade kills a person in self-defense or just revenge, the others are supposed to contribute to the wergild; but if it is done out of folly or wantonness, one's culpability is to be borne alone. Here the action of the individual becomes a matter of the collective only in so far as it is moral; in so far as it is an immoral act, the individual must deal with it alone. Other guilds of that time do not observe this boundary; they decree, e. g. , without any reservation that if any one of them has been guilty of an offense: "let all bear it, let all share the same lot;"4 a Danish guild considers explicitly even the case of murder and directs the guild members for their part to help their fellow member in escaping. In that first case, then, a boundary line exists between the whole and the individual, beyond which the latter is on one's own. The rationalistic character, which the boundary phenomena between these structures demonstrated, offers singly then a remarkable aspect when the contents by which the partnership is precisely circumscribed are opposed to such a quantitative division. This is quite likely the case to some extent for the Catholic institution that St. Francis established as the order of tertiaries: Laymen who want to be in brotherhood with a monastic order without themselves actually becoming monks pledge themselves to certain spiritual practices and contributions and thereby share in certain religious advantages of the main order, such as masses and indulgences, while remain- ing nevertheless entirely in their civil state. This careful balancing of being inside and outside seems to me, though, not to conform to the absoluteness of the religious nature. The communal life of the order exists for the sake of a goal whose inner structure rejects any more-or-less of it and, if participation in it occurs at all, turns the form of its boundary into an opposition vis-a`-vis its contents. In general, from an easily observable connection, content is of more decisive significance for boundary phenomena than for other sociological forms. While in general the quantitative limitation of an interest in a common content imposes on the interested a reciprocal limitation, this is not the case for certain contents the types of which are found in the most varied systems of values: at one end, for example, the community commons on which each can allow as many cattle graze as one owns, at the other end, the kingdom of God in which everyone can participate and can posses entirely without the possession of it by the other being thereby curtailed.
It is a matter here, then, essentially of the social interactions that arise between the inside and the outside of the boundary; so there is need of an example at least of those interactions that the boundary offers as a framework between the elements of the enclosed group itself. 5 The essential thing here is the narrowness or the breadth of the frame-
4 The phrase "let. . . lot" is without scare quotes but is in English in the original, so presumably then a quotation--ed. trans.
5 Here Simmel is resuming section 'B,' which began before the Excursus--ed.
? ? space and the spatial ordering of society 555
? work--although in no way the only essential thing; because even the form into which the spatial framework brings the group, its uniform or, depending on various locations, strongly varying cohesive energy, the question whether the frame in general is produced by the same structure (as in one respect with islands, in another, with states in the situation of San Marino or the Indian tribute states) or is composed from several adjacent elements--all this is for the inner structure of the group of undoubted significance, which, however, shall here only be mentioned. The narrowness or breadth of the framework does not at all always coincide with the small or large size of the group. Rather, it depends on the tensions that develop within the group; when these find sufficient latitude without their expansion bumping against the boundar- ies, the framework is then wide enough, even if relatively many people meet within it, as is often the case with the constellation of oriental kingdoms. On the other hand, the frame is narrow when it functions even for a small number of people as a constraint beyond which certain energies, unable to unfold within, continually exert outward pressure. The effect of this latter constellation on the social form has, e. g. , been unmistakably the experience of Venice: the narrow and immediately impervious boundedness of its territory is much more of an indication of the, so to speak, dynamic expansion among the relationships of the wider world than of a territorial expansion of power, which offers in such a situation only limited opportunities. Such a spatially far-sighted politics, reaching out beyond the nearest neighbors, makes, however, very emphatic intellectual demands, as cannot be realized on the greater part of the masses. Therefore, direct democracy for Venice was out of the question. It had to cultivate, in accord with its spatial life conditions, an aristocracy that, as has been claimed, governed the people much like the officers of a ship over the crew.
The reality of the spatial frame of the group, as a form-sociological one, is in no way limited to the political boundary. Its narrowness or breadth exercises its forming effects with corresponding modifications wherever a quantity of people congregate spatially. The frequently emphasized assembled aggregate: its impulsivity, its enthusiasm, its mob mentality--depends in part also on its being either out in the open or minimally--in contrast to other residential spaces--in a very large locality. The great open air gives people a feeling of freedom of movement, of being able to reach out into the indeterminate, of the as-yet undefined erecting of greater goals--just as in a narrow room it is felt as decisively impeded. That even those enormous spaces,
556 chapter nine
? however, are frequently too small, i. e. , overcrowded, can only increase this agitating effect, the growth of individual ardor beyond its normal boundaries: then it must increase that collective feeling that melds the individual into a solidarity beyond one's individuality, a solidarity that sweeps over a person like a storm flood beyond one's own personal directives and responsibilities. The stimulating suggestive effects of a large mass and its collective psychological phenomena, in whose form the individual no longer recognizes one's contribution, increases to the extent of its cohesive pressure, and all the more so the greater the space it fills. A locality offering, besides a cohesive crowd, a large atmosphere for individuals not accustomed to it, necessarily favors that feeling of expansion and an unfolding of power going into an indeterminate direction, to which large aggregative masses are so easily directed, and which is grasped, as a glance of clarity into the narrow framework of a conventional room, only occasionally by exceptional individuals. This ambiguity of the spatial framework, which supports so vitally the typical excitements of the collective, however unclear and wide the borders overall, functions not only in the spatial sense, excitingly seductively to degrade clarity of consciousness--precisely this makes even unlawful assemblies in the dark so dangerous that the police of the medieval city sought to prevent them by locking up the back streets in the evening with chains, etc. Darkness gives the assembly actually a rather peculiar framework that brings together the significance of the narrow and the wide into one of characteristic unity. While one of course views only the closest environment, and behind this an impenetrably black wall rises, one feels pressed together closely with those nearest; differentiation from the space, beyond that of the most visible periphery, has reached its extreme case: this space appears to have disappeared altogether. On the other hand this also lets even the truly existing boundaries disap- pear; the imagination augments the darkness with overly exaggerated possibilities; one feels oneself surrounded by a fantastically indefinite and unlimited space. While now the fearfulness and insecurity of this darkness is here removed by that tight cohesiveness and mutual orien- tation of the many to one another, that feared excitement and incal- culability of moving together in the dark arises as an entirely unique increase and combination of the enclosing and inherently expanding spatial boundary.
C.
The third significance of space for social formations lies in the settling that it makes possible for its contents. Whether a group or specific individual elements of it or essential objects of its interest are fully fixed
space and the spatial ordering of society 557
? or spatially indefinable obviously has to influence its structure, and, however much the conditions of nomadic and firmly settled groups are determined hereby through their differences is frequently enough real- ized to require here only an indication thereof. It is in no way a matter merely of a schematic extension of the principle of settling: that, appli- cable in the realm of the spatial, it would now be revealed in the mate- rial life contents as a stabilization and fixed order. This is because this immediately intelligible connection does not hold absolutely; precisely in very consolidated circumstances, freed from the possibility of external eradication, one will be able to dispense with some regulations and legal controls that are urgently required with general uncertainty and troubled relationships more easily prone to fragmentation. Whether and how, though, the group locks in its members with legal determina- tion, that yields a manifest continuum of many members that ranges from the completely local bond to complete freedom. The bond has presumably the main forms that leaving home is either absolutely for- bidden or that one is indeed at liberty to do so, but threatened with the loss of group membership entirely or more likely with its communal rights. Of many examples I would mention only the city ordinance from Harlem that stipulated in 1245, there are to be no expatriates: every citizen is duty-bound to live in the city, which one was permitted to leave only for planting and for harvesting up to 40 days for each. This is not exactly the question of freedom of movement that refers to the various districts within a larger political whole. Here rather is the issue whether one can leave the political unit entirely and yet still remain its citizen. The other type of bond is exemplified when in the eastern provinces of Prussia until 1891 the municipal suffrage is only for residents until the provincial reform of that year accorded it to all federal taxpayers. The more primitive the mental disposition is, the less can membership exist for it without residence and the more are the actual relationships accordingly also based on this personal presence of group members; with greater suppleness and range of mind, matters are organized in such a way that the essential determinants of member- ship can be preserved even in spatial absence, so that ultimately with a thoroughgoing money economy and division of labor an ever more extensive 'representation' of unmediated powers makes the presence of the individuals to a great extent dispensable.
A second sociological significance of spatial definition can be indi- cated by the symbolic expression of the 'pivot': the spatial situation of an object of interest generates specific forms of relationship that
558 chapter nine
? group around it. Now every fixed thing of value--around which activi- ties, economic transactions of any type are taking place--is actually such a stable pivot for unsettled relationships and social interactions. However, the spatial immobility of the object, at least today, does not determine those relationships in a particularly characteristic sociological manner. This is observed in a not uninteresting modification in that relationship of economic individuals that is realized with the mort- gage. Fundamentally, with the mortgage this relationship gets directly linked almost exclusively to fixed property, the fixedness of which is combined with its indestructibility, which can count as the correlate of the previously treated exclusivity: it achieves the permanence for the singularity with which every part of our space is, so to speak, limited, by virtue of which real estate is so especially suited to the mortgage commitment. This is because only in this way is it possible that the mortgaged object remains in the hands of the debtor and is yet fully secured for the creditor; it can be neither carried off nor exchanged with another. But now the principle of insurance has made precisely those objects, the fixed nature in space of which is lacking altogether, still accessible to mortgage, namely ships. This is because what is espe- cially important for the spatial fixedness of the mortgage--suitability for public registration--is what otherwise is readily attainable for ships. Thereupon, as in many other cases, the substantial definiteness revealed itself as a functional equivalent. The fixedness, which as a quality of property favors the mortgage, acquires this in reality at least in part through public record-making, to which it is disposed, which can also be established, though, by other means with the same result. So the pivot of economic interactions then is here certainly rather dominantly a spatially fixed value, but not actually because of its immobility, but rather because of specific functions connected to it. It was otherwise, however, in the Middle Ages, which required in general an altogether different mix of stability and mobility of life contents. We find countless 'relationships' in the social traffic of the Middle Ages that entirely elude our understanding of economic and private legal action, but still made into objects of such a kind. Governing power over territories as well as jurisdiction within them, church patronage as well as tax privileges, roads as well as coin minting privileges--all this is sold or loaned, pro- vided as collateral or given away. To turn such labile objects, already in themselves existing in the basic interactions between people, into the object of nevertheless economic transactions would have to lead to still
space and the spatial ordering of society 559
? more fluctuating and precarious circumstances if all these rights and conditions had not had the property of being immovably fixed at the place of their practice. This was the moment of stability that gave their purely dynamic and relativistic nature enough stability that further economic transactions could themselves then be grouped around them. Its local stabilization was not like that of a material object, which one would always find in the same place, but like the actually ideal one of a pivot that maintains a system of elements at a particular distance, in a social interaction, in mutual dependence.
The importance of a sociological relationship as pivot attaches to the fixed locality especially where the contact or assembly can occur only at a particular place for elements otherwise independent of one another. I will treat several examples of this phenomenon, which actually represents an interaction of the internally sociologically determined and the spatially. For churches in a situation of diaspora it is an extremely wise policy, especially where only the smallest number of adherents lives in a district, to immediately erect a chapel and permanent station of pastoral care. This establishment of a space comes to be a pivotal point for the relationships and the solidarity of the faithful, so that not only the strengths of the religious community develop in a location of pure isolation, but the strengths that radiate from such an apparent center also reawaken the consciousness of belonging to the confession in its adherents, whose religious desires in their isolation long lay asleep. The Catholic Church is far superior in this to the Evangelical. 6 She does not simply wait in the diaspora for a formal community of persons to constitute it spatially but starts it around the smallest core of persons, and this localization has countless times become the point of crystallization for an internally and numerically growing vital community. Everywhere cities function as the pivotal point of commerce for their narrower and wider surroundings; i. e. each one generates in itself countless ongoing and changing pivotal points of commercial interactivity. Commerce needs cities all the more decisively the more brisk it is, thereby revealing the complete difference of its vitality in contrast to the restless nomadic movement of ancient groups. It is the typical contrast of social activities: whether they involve simply a striving outwards from the spatially and
6 Presumably Simmel is referring here to Germany or even to continental Europe. Evangelical in this instance means Protestants--trans.
? 560 chapter nine
? objectively given, or the cycle of herding peoples alternating between pasture lands--or whether they rotate around fixed points. In the latter case, only as they are actually formed do they crystallize as the jumping- off point for permanent values, even if these only exist in the unaltered form of relationships and movements. This contrast in their forms of movement so often altogether dominates the outer and inner life that its spatial realization appears as merely a special case. Whether mental and social relationships have a firm center, around which interests and discourse circulate, or whether they simply follow the linear form of time, whether two political parties possess a fixed point between them (be it a steady similarity of stance or a steady opposition), or whether their relationship develops without prejudice on a case-by-case basis, whether in the individual person a strong singularly colored feeling for life prevails (perhaps of an aesthetic type) that links all of one's diverse interests (religious as well as theoretical, social as well as erotic), shades them into one another, sets them firmly in a sphere or whether one's interests unfold only according to their own relational strengths without such a lasting connection and ordering criterion--this leads evidently to the greatest difference of life schemata and defines the actual course of our existence through perpetual conflicts and mixtures of both. All of these, however, are simply individual developments of the same general antithesis inherent in the spatiality of the sociological pivot. When com- merce shapes the city into such an antithesis, only then does the real meaning of commerce emerge; for this is indeed--in contrast to the simple venture into the realm of the unlimited in which the movement encounters a second equivalent power, without this encounter being nec- essarily hostile--which is always prior to a developed commerce. It now no longer means mutual elimination but a complementarity and thereby increase of strengths that needs the spatial base of support and therefore generates it. I am reminded, moreover, of the rendezvous, a specifically sociological form whose spatial specificity is characterized linguistically by the double meaning of the word: it indicates the encounter itself as well as the place for it. 7 The sociological nature of the rendezvous lies
7 The more decidedly a concept is purely of a sociological type, i. e. indicating absolutely nothing substantial or individual but a pure form of relationship, the more likely it will be defined linguistically by its own contents or its bearer. Thus 'sovereignty' [Herrschaft] is nothing other than the functional relationship or relational form between those who command and those who obey; but in our language Herrschaft is then also the expression for the first party itself, but at the same time for the territory on which its governing occurs. What characteristically has the purest sociological word there
? space and the spatial ordering of society 561
? in the tension between the punctuality and the hastiness of the event on the one hand and its spatial-temporal fixednesss on the other. The rendezvous--and by no means only the erotic or illegitimate--stands out psychologically from the usual form of existence by the trait of temporal singularity, urgency, coming exclusively by way of the specific opportunity; and because it breaks away from the ongoing course of life's contents in an island-like manner, it wins immediately with its formal moments of time and place a particular hold on consciousness. For memory, the place, because it is perceptibly more graphic, usually develops a stronger associative power than the time, so that for memory, especially where it is a matter of a single and strongly emotional social interaction, the interaction tends to bind insolubly immediately with place, and thus, since this occurs reciprocally, the place thereafter remains the pivot around which memory then spins the individuals into an increasingly idealized correlation.
This sociological meaning of the point fixed in space is certainly similar to another that could be identified as the individualization of location. It appears an inconsequentially superficial fact that the urban houses in the Middle Ages quite universally and frequently up until into the 19th century were identified by proper names; the inhabit- ants of the Faubourg St. Antoine in Paris until just about 60 years ago are supposed to have regularly identified the houses with the proper names (Au roi de Siam, E? toile d'or, etc. ) in spite of the numbering already in existence. For all that, in the distinction between the individual names and the mere number of the house a difference in the relationship of the owner as well as of the occupants to it--and likewise to that of its neighborhood--is expressed. The determinate and the indeterminate in identification are mixed here to quite a unique extent. The house designated with the proper name must give those persons a sense of spatial individuality, relationship to a qualitatively established spot in space; through the name, which was associated with the conception of the house, there is formed much more an inherent being of individually colored existence; it contains intuitively a higher type of individuality than does the identification by numbers that are repeated similarly in every street and constitute only quantitative differences between them.
is: relationship [das Verha? ltnis]--to which popular linguistic usage has added to the fullest extent possible an erotic relationship to its meaning. Lovers 'have' a relation- ship [Verha? ltnis]; they are as a sociological entity 'a relationshp'; and finally he is 'her relationship' and she 'his relationship. '
? 562 chapter nine
? Over against the ebb and flow of the social, especially the urban, traf- fic, that sort of naming testifies to a distinctiveness and personality of being according to its spatial aspect, which, compared to the situation now, however, is indeed paid for with an indistinctness and a lack of objective fixedness and must therefore disappear over a certain expanse and rapidity of traffic. The named house is not readily found; one cannot objectively construe its location, as now with geographical identifica- tion. The numbers signify, with all their indifference and abstractness as merely ordinal numbers, still a definite place in space, which the proper name of a locality does not do. The ultimate step, then, is on the one hand the reference to hotel guests by their room number and on the other that even the streets are no longer named but numbered consecutively as it is in part in New York. This antithesis in kinds of naming reveals in the sphere of the spatial a fully antithetical sociological position for the individual. The individualistic person with a qualita- tive fixedness and unchangeability of life contents thereby eludes the arrangement in an order that holds for all, in which one would have a definitely calculable location according to a constant principle. Where conversely the organization of the whole regulates the activities of the individual in accord with a goal not within the self, one's place must be fixed in accord with a system external to the self; not an inner or ideal norm but the relationship to the whole determines one's place, which is therefore established most suitably by a numerical-like arrangement. The automatic readiness of the waiter or coachman, whose unindi- viduality is distinguished precisely in that it is in its content ultimately not so mechanically uniform as that of the machinist, is therefore most highly appropriately emphasized through one's numbering instead of any kind of personal identification. This sociological difference is that which those different ways of identifying houses represent in the rela- tionships of urban sectors projected into space. The numerability of city houses means in general an advance initially in the spatial fixing of individuals, in that these are now traceable by a mechanical method. This traceability is obviously of quite another nature than that of the medieval designating of particular quarters and streets for particular social strata and occupations or of the separation of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim quarters in oriental cities. 8 In contrast to this that system
8 This immeasurably important sociological motif, that the qualitative relation is even spatially correlated, has found also, so to speak, an absolute expression: the common abode of departed souls.
? space and the spatial ordering of society 563
? is eminently unhistorically diagramatic; it is, as in the manner of any rationalism, on the one hand much more individual, on the other hand much more indifferent towards the individual as a person. Accordingly the intra-societal nature of urban life is expressed in the language of space. The purer this becomes, the more rationalistic it reveals itself to be--above all in the displacement of the individual, the accidental, the twisted, the bent in the layout of streets by the deadly straight, estab- lished by geometrical norms, universal rules. When, at the time of the sophists and of Socrates, the clear and consciously intentional rational triumphed over the intuitively traditional character of ancient Greece, Hippodamus of Miletus was recommending the principle of perfectly straight streets! 9 The straightening of crooked streets, the installation of new diagonal roads, the whole modern system of right-angled symmetry and systematics is certainly immediately space-saving for the traffic but above all time-saving, as is required by the rationalization of life. With these traffic principles of traceability, on the one hand mechanical, on the other hand as fast as possible, the nature of the city in general, in contrast to the rural, is brought to the greatest purity, just as had been demonstrated indeed from the very beginning in the parallelism of the two aspects of streets--a perceptible rationalism, to which the structure of rural life possesses no analogy at all. In the essence of the city, following its whole possibility of existence, there lies a certain 'constructability,' in deep contrast to the more organic, intuitive, in the psychological sense, tribal principle. In conceptual connection with this, such, as it were, a posteriori constructed empires as that of Alexander and the Alexandrians, on the one hand, the Roman, on the other hand, were built absolutely on the principle of urban communities, not on that of the tribal entities: these empires were to be composed from citizenries settled inside the ringed wall. And this contrast of the rationally laid out urban settlement against the more natural-like tribal idea is echoed yet again among the Arabs: as long as they, in their earlier epochs, led a nomadic life without fixed settlements, genealogy was the only means of 'traceability,' of designating a person; later Omar I10 complains that
9 Hippodamus of Miletus was a fifth-century BCE architect who favored straight streets intersecting at right angels and geometrical forms; he planned Piraeus, the port of Athens, for Pericles, the city of Rhodes, and the Italian town of Thurii--ed.
10 Omar I: associate of Mohammed and early caliph--ed.
? 564 chapter nine
? the farmers no longer used their tribe but their village for identifying a person!
Were the individuality of the spatial elements now not to be united with the relationship to a wide and manifold circle in the one symbol of those proper names of individual houses, one can nevertheless per- haps by this measure, rather formally understood, set up a sociological scale. That is: the individuality, more-or-less the character of a personal uniqueness, which the location of certain persons or groups possesses, hinders or favors it, in the most varied mixtures, so that wide ranging relationships are linked by it to a variety of other elements. The most complete union of both determinants has been achieved by the Catholic Church with its seat in Rome. On the one hand, Rome is simply the unique location, the most incomparable historical geographical forma- tion, established as though by a system of countless coordinates, hence "All roads lead to Rome"; on the other hand, however, through the immense scope and content of its past, it has appeared as a geometrical location for all the changes and contrasts of history whose meaning and traces have merged spiritually as though visibly in it or for it--thereby it lost entirely the limitation of being located at one spot. The church has, in that it possesses Rome, certainly a continuous local homeland with all the advantages of being always easily located, of perceptibly visual continuity, of a definite centralization of its functions and its own institutions; however, it need not pay for this with all the other difficul- ties and narrow-mindedness of the localization of power at one single individual point because Rome is, so to speak, not a single location at all. It reaches out in its social-psychological effect by the scope of the destinies and importance invested in it, far beyond its fixed location, while it offers the church, however, precisely also the definitiveness of such a localizability. It possesses, in order to support the purposes of the church in its governing relationship to the faithful, the utmost individuality and distinctiveness that any particular location would possess, and at the same time the elevation beyond all limitation and happenstance of an individually fixed existence. Large organizations as such require a spatial middle point because they cannot manage without domination and subordination, and the commander must as a rule occupy a fixed location in order, on the one hand, to have one's subordinates at hand and thereby, on the other hand, for them to know where at any given time they can find the chief. However, where the wonderful union of locality and supra-locality as in Rome does not occur, this can be acquired, then, always only with certain sacrifices.
space and the spatial ordering of society 565
? The Franciscans were originally fully homeless beings; this demanded their individualistic liberation from all earthly ties, their poverty, their preaching mission. Only as the widely dispersed order then required 'ministers,' these needed, for the reasons mentioned, a permanent resi- dence and therefore the brothers could not manage henceforth without the establishing of cloisters. This was of so much service technically to their power, though, that it reduced that incomparable peacefulness, that inner certainty of the first brothers, of whom one would say they certainly had nothing, but possessed everything; while they now shared with the rest of humanity ties of residence, their form of life became trivialized; their freedom was still very great but no longer infinite, because now they were bound to one point at least.
Entirely differently from Rome, the localization of the Jewish cult, otherwise comparable in some aspects, was ultimately effective in Jerusalem. As long as the Temple endured in Jerusalem, there ran from it, as it were, an invisible thread to every Jew dispersed in count- less locations with their various state affiliations, interests, languages, indeed nuances of faith; it was the meeting point that mediated the partly substantial, partly spiritual connections for all of Jewry. But it had a regulation by which the local individualization was more strictly spun than the Roman and which enveloped them: sacrifices could be made only here; Yahweh had no other proper places of sacrifice. The destruction of the Temple, therefore, had to sever that bond; the spe- cific strength and coloring that had come to the Yahweh cult through the rather singular specialization now made room for a more colorless deism. Thereby the displacement by Christianity happened more readily and with more energy; the place of the central site in Jerusalem was taken by the autonomous synagogue; the effective bond among the Jews withdrew ever more from the religious factor to the racial. That was the result of that loss of locality that the sociological tie had formulated so rigidly: here or nowhere.
D. A fourth type of outward relationship that is transformed in the vitality of sociological patterns of interaction is offered by space through the perceptible nearness or distance between persons who stand in some kind of relationship to one another. The first glance convinces that two associations, held together by the principle of common interests, strengths, attitudes, will differ in their character, depending on whether their participants are spatially in touch or separated from one another. And in fact not only in the obvious sense of a difference of total rela- tionships--insofar as developing through physical proximity is added
566 chapter nine
? to the relationship still internally independent of it, but in a way that spatially grounded patterns of interaction nevertheless essentially modify the former, possibly even at a distance. An economic cartelization as well as a friendship, an association of stamp collectors as well as a religious community can go without personal contact continuously or intermittently; but immediately manifest is the possibility of countless quantitative and qualitative transformations of binding ties when it does not have to overcome any distance. Before going into these, let the principle be noticed that the difference of both kinds of bond is more relative than the logical abruptness of the contrast of being together and being separate leads one to presume. The psychological effect of the former can be actually very largely replaced by means of indirect interaction and still more by that of the imagination. It is precisely for the opposite poles of human linkages in the psychological sense, i. e. , for the purely objectively impersonal and for that placed entirely on the intensity of feeling--that this result succeeds most readily; for the one, perhaps certain economic or scientific transactions because their contents are expressible in logical forms and so therefore completely in written form; for the other, such as religious and some unions of the heart, because the force of imagination and the submission of feeling often enough overcome the conditions of time and space in a mystically appearing manner. To the extent that these extremes lose their purity, spatial proximity becomes more necessary: when those objectively grounded relationships manifest gaps that are to be filled by simply logically incomprehensible imponderables, or when the purely internal ones cannot escape the mixture of externally perceptible needs. Perhaps the totality of social interactive patterns produces a gradient from this standpoint: which measure of spatial proximity or spatial distance a combination of given forms and content either requires or endures. The manner in which one could combine the criteria of such a scale should be exemplified further in the following.
The capacity for managing spatial tension in an association under common conditions of feeling and interests is dependent on the amount of available potential for abstraction. The more primitive the consciousness is, the less it is able to imagine the solidarity of the spa- tially separated or the lack of solidarity of the spatially near. At that point the manner of socially associative strengths reverts immediately to the ultimate foundations of mental life: namely to that where the nai? ve consistency of undeveloped imagination does not yet generally distinguish well between the 'I' and its environment. On the one hand
space and the spatial ordering of society 567
? the 'I' merges, without further individualistic emphasis, into the images of other people and things, just as the lack of the 'I' is manifest with the child and the communistic semi-undifferentiation of earlier social circumstances; on the other hand no being-for-itself is acknowledged for the objects on this level; the nai? ve egoism of the child and of the natural person wants to acquire every desired thing immediately for oneself--and desires nearly everything that approaches perceptibly near--and thus the sphere of the 'I' reaches out for all practical pur- poses even over things, as occurs theoretically through the subjectivism of thought and the unawareness of objective legalities. For that reason, it becomes obvious how decisive for this mental constitution perceptible proximity must be for the consciousness of belonging-to-one-another. Because this proximity comes into play indeed not as an objective spatial fact but as the mental superstructure over it, it can thus, as mentioned already, be replaced at times even on this level by other psychological constellations, e. g. by membership in the same totemic band, which among the Australian aborigines brings individuals from entirely separate groups into close relationship so that they avoid enter- ing into a group conflict with one another. As a whole, however, with primitive consciousness, then, the external contacts are the bearers of the internal--however varied these may be in their character; the undifferentiated imagination does not know rightly how to keep the two apart from one another; just as even today still in the backward- ness of small-town relations the relationship to the next-door neighbor and the interest in that person plays an entirely different role than in the large city, in which one becomes accustomed, by the complication and confusion of the outward image of life, to perpetual abstractions, to indifference towards spatial intimacy as well as the close relation- ship to someone far away. In epochs in which spatially transcending abstraction is needed by objective circumstances but is hindered by the lack of psychological development, sociological stresses of considerable consequence arise for the form of relationship. E. g. , the patronage of the Anglo-Saxon king over the Church was justified legally based on the distance of the See of Rome. Personal presence was felt at that time still very much as a condition for the exercise of authority, so that one would have to voluntarily relinquish this to an authority that far away. By the way, I would also like to take a historical digression in this context. Where the mental superiority of one part or the force of circumstances makes inevitable relationships at a distance for which the consciousness is actually not yet matured, then this would have to
568 chapter nine
? contribute greatly to the formation of abstraction, as it were an elasticity of mind; sociological necessity would require the cultivation of its own ear for individual psychology. So probably the relationship of medieval Europe to Rome, where it was not breaking down on account of spatial distance, became indeed, precisely because of it, a school for the capac- ity for abstraction, for the ability to be consciously aware beyond what is perceptibly nearest, for the triumph of powers effective then by their content over those which were based on spatial presence. There seems to be a 'threshold' for overcoming distance for each of the relevant sociological relationships in such a way that the spatial distance, up to one of a certain size, increases the capacity for abstraction by which it is overcome; beyond this level, though, it is immediately weakened. Spatial distances with their flowing transitions and their different mental meanings manifest in general multiple threshold phenomena, especially in combination with temporal distances. This is most noteworthy with emotional relationships: a spatial separation may bring the mutual feeling to its highest attainable intensity for a while, but from a certain moment on it consumes the strength of the feeling, so to speak, and leads to its cooling and to an indifference. A close spatial distance will often modify the sensation only a little according to its tenor; a very great distance will allow it to flare up in desperate ardor; on the other hand, then, precisely that separation, spatially then insignificant, when it is nevertheless insurmountable, often leads to the most tragic situa- tion because the divisive forces are felt more sharply in their substantial strength as though the space, in itself indifferent, stepped in between: the purely physical obstacle does not embitter as much as the moral; it does not function so very much as a fate tapered to the personality but more as the generally nonhuman.
If relationships at a far distance presuppose in the first place a certain intellectual development, conversely the more perceptible character of local proximity is manifest in them, so that one tends to stand on a friendly or, short of a decidedly positive one, hostile footing with close neighbors, and mutual indifference tends to be excluded to the extent of spatial closeness. The dominating intellectuality always means a reduction of emotional extremes. In accord with its objectivity as well as mental function, it is placed beyond the contrasts between which feeling and will swing; it is the principle of impartiality, so that neither individuals nor historical epochs of essentially intellectual color tend to be marked by one-sidedness or the intensity of love and hate. This correlation also holds for the individual relationships of people. Intel-
space and the spatial ordering of society 569
? lectuality, as much as it offers a ground for general understanding, nev- ertheless places precisely thereby a distance between people: because it enables understanding and agreement between the most distant people, it establishes a cool and an often estranging objectivity between the clos- est. If spatially far distant relationships tend to manifest a certain calm, formality, disaffectedness, this appears to those thinking naively likewise as a direct consequence of distance, in the same way that the decrease of a throwing motion, according to the measure of the space traversed, looks like merely the result of spatial breadth. In reality the importance of spatial interval lies then in that it excludes the incitements, tensions, attractions, and repulsions that physical proximity calls forth, and thus produces in the complexity of socially interactive mental processes the dominant mode for those thinking intellectually. Towards the spatially near, with whom one is reciprocally involved in the most varied situations and moods without the possibility of foresight and choice, there tends to be then definite feelings so that this proximity can be the foundation of the most exuberant joy as well as the most unbearable coercion. It is an exceedingly old experience for residents of the same house to stand on friendly or hostile footing. Wherever there exists close relationships that would not be enhanced any further in their essentials by incessantly immediate nearness, such nearness is thereby best avoided because it brings with it all kinds of chances for contrasting coloration and thus offers too little to gain, but much to lose; it is good to have one's neigh- bors as friends, but it is dangerous to have one's friends as neighbors. There are probably only very few friendship relationships that do not involve some kind of distance in their closeness; spatial remoteness takes the place of the often embarrassing and irritating rules by which it is necessary to maintain that inner distance with continuous contact. The exceptions to that rule of emotional polarity with greater nearness confirm its basis: on the one hand with a very high educational level, on the other hand in the modern large city, complete indifference and exclusion of any mutual emotional reaction can occur among the clos- est of neighbors along the hall. In the first case, because the dominat- ing intellectuality reduces the impulsive reactions to the, so to speak, attraction of contact; in the second, because incessant contact with countless people produces the very same effect through indifference; here indifference toward those proximally close is simply a protective device, without which a person in the metropolis would be mentally torn and scattered. Where this mitigating effect of life in the metropolis is counteracted by the particularly lively temperaments, other protective
570 chapter nine
? devices have been occasionally pursued: in the Alexandria of the Roman Empire two of the five city quarters were inhabited principally by Jews, so that neighborly conflicts might be prevented as much as possible through mutually held customs. If, then, the mediator seeks first of all to separate colliding parties spatially, in contrast to this absolute move, the same mediator takes the trouble to bring them directly together when they are far from one another. Because with some natures the effective imagination at a distance unleashes an uninhibited exaggera- tion of feelings, over against which the consequent stimuli of physical proximity, however great they may be, seem nevertheless at the same time as somehow limited and finite.
Besides the practical effects of immediate spatial proximity and for consciousness, most important sociologically, to have such effects at least in that moment at hand, even if one does not actually make use of them--next to these the consequence of proximity for the form of association lies in the importance of the individual perceptions by which the individuals perceive one another.
Excursus on the Sociology of Sense Impression
The fact that we notice people physically near us at all develops in two respects whose joint effect is of fundamental sociological significance. Acting on the subject, the sense impression of a person brings about feelings in us of desire and aversion, of one's own enhancement and diminishment, of excitement or calm by the other's appearance or the tone of that person's voice, by the mere physical presence in the same space. All this is not of use for getting to know or defining the other; it is simply fine for me or just the opposite if someone is there whom I would see and hear. That person's self is left, so to speak, outside by this reaction of feeling to one's physical appearance. In the direction of the opposed dimension the development of the sense impression proceeds as soon as it becomes the means of knowledge of the other: what I see, hear, feel of the other is simply the bridge over which I would get to where that person is an object to me. The speech-sound and its meaning forms perhaps the clearest example. Just as the organ of a person has a fully immediately engaging or repulsive effect on us, irrespective of what that person says, so on the other hand what that person says helps us to the knowledge not only of the other's immediate thoughts but also to that person's mental being--thus is it probably with all sense impressions; they usher into the subject as that person's voice and feeling, and out to the object as knowledge of that one. Vis-a`-vis non- human objects, both of these tend to lie far apart. To the physical presence of non-human objects, we emphasize either their emotional value: the aroma of the rose, the charm of a sound, the attraction of the branches that bend in the wind--we experience these things as a happiness in the interior of the
space and the spatial ordering of society 571
? soul itself. Or we want to identify the rose or the sound or the tree--thus we apply fully different energies for that, often with conscious avoidance of feel- ing. What are here rather disparately alternating with one another are for the most part interwoven into a unity vis-a`-vis human beings. Our sense impres- sions of a person allows the emotional value, on the one hand, the usefulness for an instinctive or sought-after knowledge of that person, on the other, to become jointly effective and for all practical purposes actually inextricable in the foundation of our relationship to the person. To a very different extent, of course, the construction being done by both, the sound of the voice and the content of what is said, the appearance and its psychological interpretation, the attraction or repulsion of the environment and the instinctive sizing-up of the other based on that person's mental coloration and sometimes also on the other's level of culture--in very different measures and mixes both of these developments of sense impression construct our relationship to the other.
Among the individual sense organs, the eye is applied to a fully unique socio- logical accomplishment: to the bonds and patterns of interaction of individuals who are looking at each other. Perhaps this is the most immediate and purest interactive relationship. Where otherwise sociological threads are spun, they tend to possess an objective content, to produce an objective form. Even the word spoken and heard still has an objective interpretation that would yet be transmissible perhaps in another manner. The most vital interactivity, however, in which the eye-to-eye look intertwines human beings, does not crystallize in any kind of objective formation; the unity that it establishes between them remains dissolved directly in the event, in the function. And so strong and sensitive is this bond that it is borne only by the shortest, the straight line between the eyes, and that the least diversion from this, the slightest glance to the side, fully destroys the singularity of this bond. There remains for sure no objective trace, as indeed, directly or indirectly, from all other types of relationships between people, even from exchanged words; the interactivity dies in the moment in which the immediacy of the function is abandoned; but the entire interaction of human beings, their mutual understanding and mutual rejection, their intimacy and their coolness, would in some way be incalculably changed if the eye-to-eye view did not exist--which, in contrast with the simple seeing or observing of the other, means a completely new and unparalleled relationship between them.