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The deepest problems of modern life flow modern aspects of contemporary life with
from the attempt of the individual to main- reference to their inner meaning ± when, so
tain the independence and individuality of to speak, one examines the body of culture
his existence against the sovereign powers with reference to the soul, as I am to do
of society, against the weight of the histor- concerning the metropolis today ± the
ical heritage and the external culture and answer will require the investigation of
technique of life. This antagonism repre- the relationship which such a social struc-
sents the most modern form of the conflict ture promotes between the individual
which primitive man must carry on with aspects of life and those which transcend
nature for his own bodily existence. The the existence of single individuals. It will
eighteenth century may have called for lib- require the investigation of the adaptations
eration from all the ties which grew up made by the personality in its adjustment to
historically in politics, in religion, in mor- the forces that lie outside of it.
ality and in economics in order to permit The psychological foundation, upon
the original natural virtue of man, which is which the metropolitan individuality is
equal in everyone, to develop without in- erected, is the intensification of emotional
hibition; the nineteenth century may have life due to the swift and continuous shift of
sought to promote, in addition to man's external and internal stimuli. Man is a crea-
freedom, his individuality (which is con- ture whose existence is dependent on differ-
nected with the division of labour) and his ences, i.e. his mind is stimulated by the
achievements which make him unique and difference between present impressions
indispensable but which at the same time and those which have preceded. Lasting
make him so much the more dependent on impressions, the slightness in their differ-
the complementary activity of others; ences, the habituated regularity of their
Nietzsche may have seen the relentless course and contrasts between them, con-
struggle of the individual as the prerequisite sume, so to speak, less mental energy than
for his full development, while socialism the rapid telescoping of changing images,
found the same thing in the suppression of pronounced differences within what is
all competition ± but in each of these the grasped at a single glance, and the unex-
same fundamental motive was at work, pectedness of violent stimuli. To the extent
namely the resistance of the individual to that the metropolis creates these psycho-
being levelled, swallowed up in the social- logical conditions ± with every crossing
technological mechanism. When one in- of the street, with the tempo and multipli-
quires about the products of the specifically city of economic, occupational and social
12 GEORG SIMMEL
life ± it creates in the sensory foundations of omy and the domination of the intellect
mental life, and in the degree of awareness stand in the closest relationship to one an-
necessitated by our organization as crea- other. They have in common a purely
tures dependent on differences, a deep con- matter-of-fact attitude in the treatment
trast with the slower, more habitual, more of persons and things in which a formal
smoothly flowing rhythm of the sensory- justice is often combined with an unrelent-
mental phase of small town and rural exist- ing hardness. The purely intellectualistic
ence. Thereby the essentially intellectualis- person is indifferent to all things personal
tic character of the mental life of the because, out of them, relationships and re-
metropolis becomes intelligible as over actions develop which are not to be com-
against that of the small town which rests pletely understood by purely rational
more on feelings and emotional relation- methods ± just as the unique element in
ships. These latter are rooted in the uncon- events never enters into the principle of
scious levels of the mind and develop most money. Money is concerned only with
readily in the steady equilibrium of un- what is common to all, i.e. with the ex-
broken customs. The locus of reason, on change value which reduces all quality
the other hand, is in the lucid, conscious and individuality to a purely quantitative
upper strata of the mind and it is the most level. All emotional relationships between
adaptable of our inner forces. In order to persons rest on their individuality, whereas
adjust itself to the shifts and contradictions intellectual relationships deal with persons
in events, it does not require the disturb- as with numbers, that is, as with elements
ances and inner upheavals which are the which, in themselves, are indifferent, but
only means whereby more conservative which are of interest only insofar as they
personalities are able to adapt themselves offer something objectively perceivable. It
to the same rhythm of events. Thus the is in this very manner that the inhabitant of
metropolitan type ± which naturally takes the metropolis reckons with his merchant,
on a thousand individual modifications ± his customer and with his servant, and fre-
creates a protective organ for itself against quently with the persons with whom he is
the profound disruption with which the thrown into obligatory association. These
fluctuations and discontinuities of the ex- relationships stand in distinct contrast with
ternal milieu threaten it. Instead of reacting the nature of the smaller circle in which
emotionally, the metropolitan type reacts the inevitable knowledge of individual
primarily in a rational manner, thus creat- characteristics produces, with an equal in-
ing a mental predominance through the evitability, an emotional tone in conduct, a
intensification of consciousness, which in sphere which is beyond the mere objective
turn is caused by it. Thus the reaction of weighting of tasks performed and pay-
the metropolitan person to those events is ments made. What is essential here as
moved to a sphere of mental activity which regards the economic-psychological aspect
is least sensitive and which is furthest re- of the problem is that in less advanced cul-
moved from the depths of the personality. tures production was for the customer who
This intellectualistic quality which is ordered the product so that the producer
thus recognized as a protection of the and the purchaser knew one another. The
inner life against the domination of the modern city, however, is supplied almost
metropolis, becomes ramified into numer- exclusively by production for the market,
ous specific phenomena. The metropolis that is, for entirely unknown purchasers
has always been the seat of money economy who never appear in the actual field of vis-
because the many-sidedness and concentra- ion of the producers themselves. Thereby,
tion of commercial activity have given the the interests of each party acquire a relent-
medium of exchange an importance which less matter-of-factness, and its rationally
it could not have acquired in the commer- calculated economic egoism need not fear
cial aspects of rural life. But money econ- any divergence from its set path because of
THE METROPOLIS AND MENTAL LIFE 13
the imponderability of personal relation- cerns of the typical metropolitan resident
ships. This is all the more the case in the are so manifold and complex that, espe-
money economy which dominates the cially as a result of the agglomeration of
metropolis in which the last remnants of so many persons with such differentiated
domestic production and direct barter of interests, their relationships and activities
goods have been eradicated and in which intertwine with one another into a many-
the amount of production on direct per- membered organism. In view of this fact,
sonal order is reduced daily. Furthermore, the lack of the most exact punctuality in
this psychological intellectualistic attitude promises and performances would cause
and the money economy are in such close the whole to break down into an inextric-
integration that no one is able to say able chaos. If all the watches in Berlin sud-
whether it was the former that effected the denly went wrong in different ways even
latter or vice versa. What is certain is only only as much as an hour, its entire economic
that the form of life in the metropolis is the and commercial life would be derailed for
soil which nourishes this interaction most some time. Even though this may seem
fruitfully, a point which I shall attempt to more superficial in its significance, it tran-
demonstrate only with the statement of the spires that the magnitude of distances
most outstanding English constitutional results in making all waiting and the break-
historian to the effect that through the ing of appointments an ill-afforded waste
entire course of English history London of time. For this reason the technique of
has never acted as the heart of England metropolitan life in general is not conceiv-
but often as its intellect and always as its able without all of its activities and recipro-
money bag. cal relationships being organized and
In certain apparently insignificant char- coordinated in the most punctual way into
acters or traits of the most external aspects a firmly fixed framework of time which
of life are to be found a number of charac- transcends all subjective elements. But
teristic mental tendencies. The modern here too there emerge those conclusions
mind has become more and more a calcu- which are in general the whole task of this
lating one. The calculating exactness discussion, namely, that every event, how-
of practical life which has resulted from a ever restricted to this superficial level it
money economy corresponds to the ideal of may appear, comes immediately into con-
natural science, namely that of transform- tact with the depths of the soul, and that the
ing the world into an arithmetical problem most banal externalities are, in the last an-
and of fixing every one of its parts in a alysis, bound up with the final decisions
mathematical formula. It has been money concerning the meaning and the style of
economy which has thus filled the daily life life. Punctuality, calculability and exact-
of so many people with weighing, calculat- ness, which are required by the complica-
ing, enumerating and the reduction of tions and extensiveness of metropolitan
qualitative values to quantitative terms. Be- life, are not only most intimately connected
cause of the character of calculability with its capitalistic and intellectualistic
which money has there has come into the character but also colour the content of
relationships of the elements of life a preci- life and are conductive to the exclusion
sion and a degree of certainty in the defin- of those irrational, instinctive, sovereign
ition of the equalities and inequalities and human traits and impulses which originally
an unambiguousness in agreements and ar- seek to determine the form of life from
rangements, just as externally this precision within instead of receiving it from the out-
has been brought about through the general side in a general, schematically precise
diffusion of pocket watches. It is, however, form. Even though those lives which are
the conditions of the metropolis which are autonomous and characterized by these
cause as well as effect for this essential vital impulses are not entirely impossible
characteristic. The relationships and con- in the city, they are, none the less, opposed
14 GEORG SIMMEL
to it in abstracto. It is in the light of this that dullness, but rather that the meaning and
we can explain the passionate hatred of the value of the distinctions between things,
personalities like Ruskin and Nietzsche and therewith of the things themselves, are
for the metropolis ± personalities who experienced as meaningless. They appear
found the value of life only in unschema- to the blase person in a homogeneous, flat
tized individual expressions which cannot and grey colour with no one of them
be reduced to exact equivalents and in worthy of being preferred to another. This
whom, on that account, there flowed from psychic mood is the correct subjective re-
the same source as did that hatred, the flection of a complete money economy to
hatred of the money economy and of the the extent that money takes the place of all
intellectualism of existence. the manifoldness of things and expresses all
The same factors which, in the exactness qualitative distinctions between them in the
and the minute precision of the form of distinction of how much. To the extent that
life, have coalesced into a structure of the money, with its colourlessness and its indif-
highest impersonality, have on the other ferent quality, can become a common de-
hand, an influence in a highly personal dir- nominator of all values, it becomes the
ection. There is perhaps no psychic phe- frightful leveller ± it hollows out the core
nomenon which is so unconditionally of things, their peculiarities, their specific
reserved to the city as the blase outlook. It values and their uniqueness and incompar-
is at first the consequence of those rapidly ability in a way which is beyond repair.
shifting stimulations of the nerves which They all float with the same specific gravity
are thrown together in all their contrasts in the constantly moving stream of money.
and from which it seems to us the intensifi- They all rest on the same level and are
cation of metropolitan intellectuality seems distinguished only by their amounts. In in-
to be derived. On that account it is not dividual cases this colouring, or rather this
likely that stupid persons who have been de-colouring of things, through their equa-
hitherto intellectually dead will be blaseÂ. tion with money, may be imperceptibly
Just as an immoderately sensuous life small. In the relationship, however, which
makes one blase because it stimulates the the wealthy person has to objects which can
nerves to their utmost reactivity until they be bought for money, perhaps indeed in the
finally can no longer produce any reaction total character which, for this reason,
at all, so, less harmful stimuli, through the public opinion now recognizes in these
rapidity and the contradictoriness of their objects, it takes on very considerable pro-
shifts, force the nerves to make such violent portions. This is why the metropolis is the
responses, tear them about so brutally that seat of commerce and it is in it that the
they exhaust their last reserves of strength purchasability of things appears in quite a
and, remaining in the same milieu, do not different aspect than in simpler economies.
have time for new reserves to form. This It is also the peculiar seat of the blase atti-
incapacity to react to new stimulations tude. In it is brought to a peak, in a certain
with the required amount of energy consti- way, that achievement in the concentration
tutes in fact that blase attitude which every of purchasable things which stimulates the
child of a large city evinces when compared individual to the highest degree of nervous
with the products of the more peaceful and energy. Through the mere quantitative in-
more stable milieu. tensification of the same conditions this
Combined with this physiological source achievement is transformed into its oppos-
of the blase metropolitan attitude there is ite, into this peculiar adaptive phenomenon
another, which derives from a money econ- ± the blase attitude ± in which the nerves
omy. The essence of the blase attitude is an reveal their final possibility of adjusting
indifference toward the distinctions be- themselves to the content and the form
tween things. Not in the sense that they of metropolitan life by renouncing the
are not perceived, as is the case of mental response to them. We see that the self-
THE METROPOLIS AND MENTAL LIFE 15
preservation of certain types of personal- suggestions would be unbearable. From
ities is obtained at the cost of devaluing these two typical dangers of metropolitan
the entire objective world, ending inevit- life we are saved by antipathy which is the
ably in dragging the personality downward latent adumbration of actual antagonism
into a feeling of its own valuelessness. since it brings about the sort of distantiation
Whereas the subject of this form of exist- and deflection without which this type of
ence must come to terms with it for himself, life could not be carried on at all. Its extent
his self-preservation in the face of the great and its mixture, the rhythm of its emergence
city requires of him a no less negative type of and disappearance, the forms in which it
social conduct. The mental attitude of the is adequate ± these constitute, with the sim-
people of the metropolis to one another may plified motives (in the narrower sense) an
be designated formally as one of reserve. If inseparable totality of the form of metro-
the unceasing external contact of numbers politan life. What appears here directly as
of persons in the city should be met by the dissociation is in reality only one of the
same number of inner reactions as in the elementary forms of socialization.
small town, in which one knows almost This reserve with its overtone of con-
every person he meets and to each of cealed aversion appears once more, how-
whom he has a positive relationship, one ever, as the form or the wrappings of a
would be completely atomized internally much more general psychic trait of the
and would fall into an unthinkable mental metropolis. It assures the individual of a
condition. Partly this psychological circum- type and degree of personal freedom to
stance and partly the privilege of suspicion which there is no analogy in other circum-
which we have in the face of the elements of stances. It has its roots in one of the great
metropolitan life (which are constantly developmental tendencies of social life as a
touching one another in fleeting contact) whole; in one of the few for which an ap-
necessitates in us that reserve, in conse- proximately exhaustive formula can be dis-
quence of which we do not know by sight covered. The most elementary stage of
neighbours of years standing and which per- social organization which is to be found
mits us to appear to small-town folk so historically, as well as in the present, is
often as cold and uncongenial. Indeed, if I this: a relatively small circle almost entirely
am not mistaken, the inner side of this ex- closed against neighbouring foreign or
ternal reserve is not only indifference but otherwise antagonistic groups but which
more frequently than we believe, it is a has however within itself such a narrow
slight aversion, a mutual strangeness and cohesion that the individual member has
repulsion which, in a close contact which only a very slight area for the development
has arisen any way whatever, can break out of his own qualities and for free activity for
into hatred and conflict. The entire inner which he himself is responsible. Political
organization of such a type of extended and familial groups began in this way as
commercial life rests on an extremely varied do political and religious communities; the
structure of sympathies, indifferences and self-preservation of very young associations
aversions of the briefest as well as of the requires a rigorous setting of boundaries
most enduring sort. This sphere of indiffer- and a centripetal unity and for that reason
ence is, for this reason, not as great as it it cannot give room to freedom and the
seems superficially. Our minds respond, peculiarities of inner and external develop-
with some definite feeling, to almost every ment of the individual. From this stage
impression emanating from another social evolution proceeds simultaneously
person. The unconsciousness, the transi- in two divergent but none the less corres-
toriness and the shift of these feelings seem ponding directions. In the measure that the
to raise them only into indifference. Actu- group grows numerically, spatially, and in
ally this latter would be unnatural to us as the meaningful content of life, its immedi-
immersion into a chaos of unwished-for ate inner unity and the definiteness of its
16 GEORG SIMMEL