which, however, is entirely drawn into the positive quality of the essential relationship, at the same time an organic member of the latter, which nevertheless does not immediately affect the soul of the whole—all this is not capable of further explanation on its conceptual side, but it must be psychologically experienced.
It is obvious, however, that these two manifestations of irreconcilability, which are so widely different from those usually designated by the term, still include the whole scale of this situation. The one permits the consequence of the conflict, utterly detached from its real content, to sink into the center of the soul. It completely makes over the personality in its profoundest depths, so far as it is related to the other. It leaves to the will for remedial action no access. In the other case, on the contrary, the psychological deposit of the struggle which seems to produce a sociological deficit, is also at the same time isolated; it remains a separate element which may be taken up into the image of the other, with the result that it is included in the total relationship to the other. Between this worst and this best case of irreconcilability—the former in which it vitiates the fundamental attitude, the latter in which it remains rigidly limited—stretches obviously the whole quantitative variety of degrees in which irreconcilability places peace still in the shadow of the conflict.
Georg Simmel.
[To be continued.]
