Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental …

1 Georg simmel , The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903) in Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, eds. The Blackwell City Reader. Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 1 TheMetropolisandMentalLifeGeorgSimmelThe deepest problems of modern life flowfrom the attempt of the individual to main-tain the independence and individuality ofhis existence against the sovereign powersof society, against the weight of the histor-ical heritage and the external culture andtechnique of life. This antagonism repre-sents the most modern form of the conflictwhich primitive man must carry on withnature for his own bodily existence.

2 Theeighteenth century may have called for lib-eration from all the ties which grew uphistorically in politics, in religion, in mor-ality and in economics in order to permitthe original natural virtue of man, which isequal in everyone, to develop without in-hibition; the nineteenth century may havesought to promote, in addition to man'sfreedom, his individuality (which is con-nected with the division of labour )and hisachievements which make him unique andindispensable but which at the same timemake him so much the more dependent onthe complementary activity of others.

3 Nietzsche may have seen the relentlessstruggle of the individual as the prerequisitefor his full development, while socialismfound the same thing in the suppression ofall competition but in each of these thesame fundamental motive was at work,namely the resistance of the individual tobeing levelled, swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism. When one in-quires about the products of the specificallymodern aspects of contemporary life withreference to their inner meaning when, soto speak, one examines the body of culturewith reference to the soul, as I am to doconcerning the Metropolis today theanswer will require the investigation ofthe relationship which such a social struc-ture promotes between the individualaspects of life and those which transcendthe existence of single individuals.

4 It willrequire the investigation of the adaptationsmade by the personality in its adjustment tothe forces that lie outside of psychological foundation, uponwhich the metropolitan individuality iserected, is the intensification of emotionallife due to the swift and continuous shift ofexternal and internal stimuli. Man is a crea-ture whose existence is dependent on differ-ences, his mind is stimulated by thedifference between present impressionsand those which have preceded. Lastingimpressions, the slightness in their differ-ences, the habituated regularity of theircourse and contrasts between them, con-sume, so to speak, less Mental energy thanthe rapid telescoping of changing images,pronounced differences within what isgrasped at a single glance, and the unex-pectedness of violent stimuli.

5 To the extentthat the Metropolis creates these psycho-logical conditions with every crossingof the street, with the tempo and multipli-city of economic, occupational and sociallife it creates in the sensory foundations ofmental life, and in the degree of awarenessnecessitated by our organization as crea-tures dependent on differences, a deep con-trast with the slower, more habitual, moresmoothly flowing rhythm of the sensory- Mental phase of small town and rural exist-ence. Thereby the essentially intellectualis-tic character of the Mental life of themetropolis becomes intelligible as overagainst that of the small town which restsmore on feelings and emotional relation-ships.

6 These latter are rooted in the uncon-scious levels of the mind and develop mostreadily in the steady equilibrium of un-broken customs. The locus of reason, onthe other hand, is in the lucid, consciousupper strata of the mind and it is the mostadaptable of our inner forces. In order toadjust itself to the shifts and contradictionsin events, it does not require the disturb-ances and inner upheavals which are theonly means whereby more conservativepersonalities are able to adapt themselvesto the same rhythm of events. Thus themetropolitan type which naturally takeson a thousand individual modifications creates a protective organ for itself againstthe profound disruption with which thefluctuations and discontinuities of the ex-ternal milieu threaten it.

7 Instead of reactingemotionally, the metropolitan type reactsprimarily in a rational manner, thus creat-ing a Mental predominance through theintensification of consciousness, which inturn is caused by it. Thus the reaction ofthe metropolitan person to those events ismoved to a sphere of Mental activity whichis least sensitive and which is furthest re-moved from the depths of the intellectualistic quality which isthus recognized as a protection of theinner life against the domination of themetropolis, becomes ramified into numer-ous specific phenomena.

8 The metropolishas always been the seat of money economybecause the many-sidedness and concentra-tion of commercial activity have given themedium of exchange an importance whichit could not have acquired in the commer-cial aspects of rural life. But money econ-omy and the domination of the intellectstand in the closest relationship to one an-other. They have in common a purelymatter-of-fact attitude in the treatmentof persons and things in which a formaljustice is often combined with an unrelent-ing hardness. The purely intellectualisticperson is indifferent to all things personalbecause, out of them, relationships and re-actions develop which are not to be com-pletely understood by purely rationalmethods just as the unique element inevents never enters into the principle ofmoney.

9 Money is concerned only withwhat is common to all, with the ex-change value which reduces all qualityand individuality to a purely quantitativelevel. All emotional relationships betweenpersons rest on their individuality, whereasintellectual relationships deal with personsas with numbers, that is, as with elementswhich, in themselves, are indifferent, butwhich are of interest only insofar as theyoffer something objectively perceivable. Itis in this very manner that the inhabitant ofthe Metropolis reckons with his merchant,his customer and with his servant, and fre-quently with the persons with whom he isthrown into obligatory association.

10 Theserelationships stand in distinct contrast withthe nature of the smaller circle in whichthe inevitable knowledge of individualcharacteristics produces, with an equal in-evitability, an emotional tone in conduct, asphere which is beyond the mere objectiveweighting of tasks performed and pay-ments made. What is essential here asregards the economic-psychological aspectof the problem is that in less advanced cul-tures production was for the customer whoordered the product so that the producerand the purchaser knew one another. Themodern city, however, is supplied almostexclusively by production for the market,that is, for entirely unknown purchaserswho never appear in the actual field of vis-ion of the producers themselves.