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TNANSLATED, EDITED,AND

VITE

AN INTRODACTION BY

Kurt H. WoIff

The Free Press, Glencoe,Illinois

**-t*tttl

TO THE MEMORY OF

-bddlfR. Louls woLFF


HANS SCHIEBELTIUTH

odii,i'iit cbfrnection wittr


feddnt or-notice of the book in a.gagazine or newspaper.Tnn ircv or Gnonc srlrnrvrnr. been set in Bodoni and Baskervilre has printed on Antique Wove paper supplied for this book by the kins and Squier Company. Composition, printing, and binding Knickerbocker Printing Corp., New york. Manufactured in United Statesof America.

KARL WOLFSKEHL

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DESIGNED

BY

SII'NEY

SOLOMON

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The Stranger haq his,social position asa Jew,nor as the individual bearer {:w or certaln obJectivecontents. Every other citizen was the owner of a particular amount of propeity, and his tax followed its fluctuations. But the Jew ui u i^"plryer was, in the firsr place, Jew, and thus his tax situation h"d u.r i"""ti"ur"'li"["rrr. 1 This same position appearsmost strongly, of cours., or.a these individual chariiterizations (limi?eJ though if,"y *"* "u", Uy rigid.invariance) are omitted, and all strangers pay an alrogether equal head-tax. t: spite of .being inorganically appended ro ir, rhe srranoel_ , rs yet an organic member of the $orp. Its uniform tif; i;;i;e;; the specific conditions of this .i"*"nt. only rve ao ,oi t ro* niry of this position orher than lf certain measuresof nearness luantities of them characterize rortion and reciprocal tension relation to the ,.irranger.',

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Chapter 4

The Metropolis clrld Mentul Lrf"


1 THE DEEPEST PROBLE},TS OF

modern life derive from the claim of the indiviclual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his exisrencein the face of overr.r,helmingsocial forces, of historical heritage, of exter.nal culture, and of the technique of life. 'fhe fight with nature which primitive man has ro wage for his bodily existence amains in this modern form its latest transformation. The eighteenth century called upon man ro free himself of all the historical bonds in the state and in religion, in morals and in economics. Man's nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered.In addition to more liberty, the nineteenth century demanded the functional specializarion of man and his work; this specialization makes one individual incomparable to another, and each of them indispensable to the highest possible extent. However, this specialilation makes eacriman^the more directly dependent upon the supplemenrary acrivities of all others. Nietzscheseesthe full development of the individual conditioned by the most ruthless struggie of individuals; socialism believes in the suppressionof all competition for rhe same reason' Be that as it may, in all thesepositions the same basic motive is at work: the person resiststo being leveled down and worn out by a social-technological mechanism..Aninquiry into the inner meaning of specifically modern life and its products, into the soul of the cultural body, so to speak,-.rrt ,""i. to solve the equation which srructures like the metropolis set up be_ rween the individual and the super-individual conrenrsoi tif.. such an inquiry must ansr'rrer question of how the personality the accommodates itself in the adjustmentsto external forces.This rvill be my task roday,, basisof the merropoliran rype of individ_ lThe psychological
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The Metropolis anil Mental Life ua,lity consisrs in ihe intensification of neraous stimulation which results frog -the swift and uninrerrupted change of ourer and inner stimuliJMan is a difierentiating creature."His mind is stimulated by the difference between a mimentary impression and the one which preceded it. Lasting impressions,'impressions which difier only-slightly from one anothir, impressioirswhich take a regular and habitual course and show regular and habitual contrasts-all these use up, so to speak, leis consciousness than does the rapid crowdinl discontinuity in the graspof a r nessof onrushing impressions. ditions which the metropolis r street, with the and multiplicity of economic, occupa_ l:Tp9 tional and social life, the city sets,rp u deep conrrasr rvith smlll town and rural life with referenceto the sensory.foundations of psychiclife.fThe metropolis exacrsfrom man asa discriminat' ing creature a different amount of consciousness than doesrural life. Here the rhythm of life and sensorymental imagery flows more slowly, more habitually, and more evenli.\ pr"eciielv in this connection the sophisticated character of- metropolitan psychic life becomes understandable-as over againsi small town life which restsmore upon deeply felt and em-otionalrela-in tionships. These latter are roored the more unconscious layers of the psycheand grow most readily in the steadyrhvthm of uninrerrupted habituations. The inteilect, however, has its locus-in the transparnt, conscious,higher layers of the psyche; it is the most adaptable of our inner forces. In order to u..o-modate-to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the in_ tellect does not require any shocks and in-ner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodateto the metropolitan rhythm of events.Thus the metropolitan type of man-which, oi course, exists in a thousand individual variants--develops an organ protecting him against the threatening currents and discrEpun.i", of hii external environment which would uproot him. He reactslvith his head instead of his heart. In this an increaseclar,vareness assumes the psychic prerogative. Metropolitan life, thus, under_ lies a heightened awa'enes and-a predominance of inteiligence in metropolitan man. The reaction to metroporitan phenoirena

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The Metropolisand Mental Life 4lI and quite remote is shifred to that organ which is least.sensitive from the depth of the personality-Intellectuality is thus seen overwhelming power to nreserve iubiective life aeainst the overwhelming power of against preserve subjective branches out in many dimeiropolitan lif6, and intellectuality rections and is integrated rvith numerous discrete phenomena. 'The metropolis has always been the seat of the money economy. Here the multiplicity and concentration of economic exchange gives an importance to the means of exchange u'hich the scantiness of rural commerce would not have allowed. Money economy and the dominance of the intellect are intrinsically connecred.They sharea matter-of-fact attitude in dealing with men and with things; and, in this attitude, a formal justice is often coupled rvith an inconsiderare hardness.lThe intellectually sophiiticated person is indifferent to all genuine indi viduality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhaustedrvith logical operations. In the same manner, the individuality of ph-enomenais not commensurate wjth the pecuniary principlel Money is concerned only with what is common to all: it asksfbr the exchangevalue, it reduces all quality and individuality to the question: How much? AII intimate emotional relations between persons are founded in their individuality, whereas in rational relations man is reckoned with like a number, Iike an element which is in itself the objective measurable achievement is of indifferenionly interest. Thlus metropolitan man reckons with his merchants his and customers, domestic servantsand often even with persons rvith whom he is obliged to have social intercourseqThese fea- i tures of intellectuality contrast with the nature of the small circle in which the inevitable knowledge of individuality as inevitably producesa warmer tone of behavior, a behavior which is beyond. a mere objective balancing of service and returil) In the sphere of the economic psychology of the small group it is of importance that under primitive conditions production sewes the customer lvho orders the good, so that the producer and the consumer are acquainted. The modern metropolis, however, is supplied almost entirely by production for the market, that is, for entirely unknown purchaserswho never personally enter the producer's actual field of vision. Through this anonymity the interests of each Party acquire an unmerciful

The Metropolis and Mental.I.ife matter-of-factness;and the in egoisms of both parries need of the imponderibles of per economy dominates the metr survivals of domestic producti< it minimizes, from day to day, customers.The matter_of-facf z n saywhether rhe intellectualistic certainly the most fertile soil fr I shall document merely bv eminent English constitu;ion;l course of English history, Lonc heart but often as England,r moneybag!

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rrve ones.Through the calcula_ :ision, a certainty"in the defini_

strrctest punctuality in promisesa would break dotvn into an inex necessicy is-broughtabout by the with such differentiatedinterests.

413 tions and activities inro a highly complex organism. If all clocks and watches in Berlin would suddenly go wrong in difierent ways, even if only by orle hour, all economic life and communication of the city r,vould be disrupted for a long time. In addition an apparently mere external factor: long distances, would make all waiting and broken appointments result in an ill-afforded waste of time. Thus, the technique of metropolitan life is unimaginable rvithour the most punctual integmtion of all activities and mutual relations into a stable and impersonal ;ime schedule.Here again the generalconclusions this entire of task of reflection become obvious, namely, that from each point on the surfaceof existence-however closely attachedto the surface alone-one may drop a sounding into the depth of the psyche so that all the most banal externalities of life finally are connected lvith the ultimate decisions concerning the meaning and style of lifeilunctuality, calculability, exactness are forcecl upon life by the complexity and extension of metropolitan existence and are not only most intimately connected with its money economy and intellectualistic character. These traits must also color the contents of life and favor the exclusion of those irrational, instinctive, sovereign traits and impulses which aim at determining the mode of life from within, instead of receiving the general and precisely schematized form of life from without. Even though sovereign types of personality, characterizedby irrational impulses, are by no means impossible in jfhe the city, they are, nevertheless, opposed to typical city life_. passionatehatred of men like Ruskin and Nietzsche for the rnetropolis is understandable in these terms. Their natures discovered the value of life alone in the unschematizedexistence which cannot be.defined with precision for all alike. From the samesource of this hatred of the metropolis surged their hatred of money economy and of the intellectualism of modern existence. $he same factors rvhich have thus coalescedinto the exact, nessand minute precision of the form of life have coalesced into a structure of the highest impersonality; on the other hand, they have promoted a highly personal subjectivity.ffhere is perhaps no psychic phenomenon rvhich has been so unconditionally reserved to the metropolis as has the blas6 anitudb. TThe blasi

The Metropolisand Mental Life

414 The Metropolis and, Mental rile attitude results first from the.rapidly changing and closely compressedcontrasting stimulationi of the nerves. From this, the enhancement of metropolitan intellecruality, also, ."._r-orig_ inally to stem. Th_erefore,stupid people who are not intellectually alive in the first prace urualry ate nor exacrly brasd.A life in.boundless pursuit of pleasrrremakes one blasd becausei[ agitates the nerves to their strongest reactivity for sucrr u torrg time that finally cease to ,iu.t ar all. in rhe same rvay, _they through the rapidity and conrradicroriness of their .nurrg.r, imRressions force such violen, ."rporr"r, i"uri"g T:r:ji.:T]1s1 brutally tne nerves so hither and thither that their last reseryes of strength are.spent; and if one remains in the same milieu they have no time to gather nl emerges react to ne\/ sensati( to This constirures rhar blasdattit politan child shows when com and lesschangeable milieus. physiological source of the metroporitan blasd . .T.his a*itude rs Sorned by another source which floivs from the money economy.The essence the brasdattitude consists of in the blunting of discrimination. This does not mean rhar the objects are nor perceived, as is rhe casewith the half_wit, but ratirer that the meaning and difiering values of things, ,fr.."iy'rfr. things themselves, e*peiienced as insubJtanti"l. ""J ih;y ure ;ip"", to the blasdperson in an evenly flat and gray tone; no one obiect de.s9rve1 preference any other.rrr"is-ooJ'ir-ir,"'i"irrir"r over -;;;"y subjective reflecrion, of the internalized _completely economy.. being the equivalerrt io all the By manifolJ ihi"g, i" gi:11d ih. sameway,.moneybecomesthe most frighrful lev?ler. ve difierencesof things in terms ll its colorlessness ur,.-d i.rdift"r_ ably it hollows out the core of t specific value, and their incomp equal specific gravity in the conir All things lie on rhe same leve only in the size of the area rvhich they cover. In the individual case this coloration, or rather discoloratio", of tfrirrg;^rnr."*gf, their money equivalencemay be unnoticeably miriur..- ff "*_

The Metropolis and Mental Life

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ever, through the relations of the rich to the objects to be had for money, perhaps even through the total character which the mentality of the contemporary public everywhere imparts to these objects, the exclusively pecuniary. evaluation of objects has becomequite considerable. The large cities, the main seats of the money exchange, bring the purchasability of things to the fore much more impressivelythan do smaller localities. That is rvhy cities are also the genuine locale of the blas6 attitude. In the blas6attitude the concentrationof men and things srimulate the nervous systemof the individual to its highest achievement so that it attains its peak. Through the mere quantitative intensification of the same conditioning factors this achievement is transformed into its opposite and appearsin the peculiar adjustmentof the blasdattitude. In this phenornenonrhe nerves find in the refusal to react to their stimulation the last.possibility of accommodating to the contents and forms of metropolitan life. The self-preservation cerrain personalities is of brought at the price of devaluating the rvhole objecrive rvorld, a devaluation which in the end unavoidably drags one's own personality dor.vninto a feeling of the same worthlessness. Whereas the subject of this form of existence has to come to terms with it entirely for himself, his self-preservationin the face of the large city demands from him a no less negarive behavior of a social nature. This mental attitude of metropolitans toward one another we may designate,from a formal point of vierv, as reserve.If so many inner reactionswere responses the to continuous external contacts with innumerable people as are those in the small town, where one knows almost everybody one meetsand where one has a positive relation to almost everyone, one \,vouldbe completely atomized internally and come to an unimaginable psychicstate.Partiy this psychologicalfact, partly the right to distrust which men have in the face of the touch-and-go elementsof rnetropolitanlife, necessita[es reserve. a resJlt our As of this reserve n'e frequently do not even knorv by sight those who have been our neighbors for years. And ir is this reserve rvhich in the eyesof the small-torvn people makes us appear to be cold and heartless. Indeed, if I do not deceivemyself, the inner aspectof this ourer reserveis not only indifference bur, more often than rve are aware, it is a slight aversion, a mutual

416 The Metropolis and, Mcntat Lifc srrangeness and repulsion, which will break into hatred and fight at the moment of a closer .orro.,, however caused. The whole inner organization of such Iife restsupon-anexrremely "n-.*t"rrriue communicative varied. rrier"r.ty indifferences,and aversionsof tn. brietest as well "f^ry,ii"ini.r, as of the most permanent nature. The sphere is not as large as might appe activity still respondsto almts else with a somiwhat disrinct and changing character of this rmpressron seemsto result in a stare of indifference. Actually as unnatural as the diffusion c tion lvould be unbearable. Fro the metropolis, indifierence ar antipathy prorects us. A latent stage of practical antagonism ef u'irhour which this mode of life could nor ar ail be red. The extent and the mixture of this style of life, the ,nytfr_'of it, emergenceand disappearance, forms in rhe which it ii r"iirn.a_ all these,with the motives in the ,.;;; 'rnlrr", f;r_ "nifying the inseparabrewhole oJ trre merropoliran ""rro*", styre llr". l appearsin the metroporitan-styre iite "r I of direcily as disrociution is in realiry only one bf its elemenhl forms of socialization. This reserve with its overrone of hidden uu;;J;;;p""r, in turn as the form or the cloak of a more general mental phe_ nomenon of the mecroporis: it grants to th! i"aiuiJ"ui-" {i"a and an amount of personal freed"on soever under other conditions. one of the large developmental t to one of the few tendencies for versal formula can be discoverer formations found in historical as structures is this: a relatively srr neighboring, ,!tulg",. or in some way antagonistic circles. How_ ever, this circre is closery coherent ancl illorvs r" i"ai"ia"rr members only a narrow field for the develop_; ;i;;iq*". qualities and free, self-responsiblemovements. political ancl kinship. g.olpt, parties.and religious associatir", U"gi" i" lhi, way. The self-preservationof u"-ry yo.rrg association-s ,.;;i;",

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the establishment of strict boundaries and a centripetal unity. Therefore they cannot allow the individual freedom and unique inner and outer development. From this stage social development proceedsat once in two different, yet corresponding,directions. To the extent to which the group grows-numerically, spatially, in significance and in conrent of life-to rhe same degree the group's direct, inner unity loosens,and the rigidity of the original demarcation against others is softened through mutual relations and connections.At the same time, the individual gains freedom of movement, far beyond the first jealous delimitation. The individual also gains a specificindividuality to rvhich the division of labor in the enlargedgroup gives both occasionand necessity. The state and Christianity, guilds and political parties,and innumerable other groups have developed according to this formula, horvever much, of course, the special conditions and forces of the respective groups have modified the general scheme. This schemeseemsto me distinctly recognizable also in the evolution of individuality .rvithin urban life. The small-torvn life in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages set barriers against movement and relations of the individual torvard the outside, and it set up barriers against individual independence and differentiation within the individual self. These barriers were such that under them modern man could not have breathed. Even,today a metropolitan man u'ho is placed in a small town feels a restriction similar, at least,in kind. The smaller the circle which forms our milieu is, and the more restricted those relations to others are which dissolve the boundaries of the individual, the more anxiously the circle guards the achievements, the conduct of life, and the outlook of the individual, and the more readily a quantitative and qualitative specialization would break up the frame'rvork of the whole little circle. The ancient polis in this respecrseelns have had the very to characterof a small town. The constant threat to its existence at the hands of enemies from near and afar effectedstrict coherence in political and military respects,a supervision of the citizen by the citizen, a jealousy of the .rvholeagainst the individual lvhoseparticular life was suppressed such a degreethat to he could compensate only by acting asa despotin his orvn house-

circles are never felt more strongry by the individual in their ippl:, upon his independen." inun in the thickest crowd of the big city' This is bicause the bodily proximity und n"rro*oj spacemakes rhe mental distanie-only the l"T ,,'or" .,ririUt". It is obviously only the obverseof this freed.om if, under ..r,oin clrcumstances'one norvhere feers as lonery and rost as in the metropolitan crowd. For here as elsewhere it is Uy ,ro *"urm necessary that the freedom of man be reflected in his l-orionur life as comfort. It is not only the immediate size of the area and.the number . of personswhich, becauseof the universal historical ;;r;;;;i"" between the enlargemenr of the circle and the p"rr;;;il;;.,

whichhem in the small-town man.For the t..ffiii-iJJru. -iurg. and indifference and the intelrecruar condiiions rife oi

The Metropolis and, Mentat Life hold. The tremendous agitation and excitement, the unique colorfulness of Athenian life, can perhaps be unaerrrooa in terms of the fact thar a peopre of iniompirabry individuarized personalities struggled against the constant inner and ourer pressure of a de-individualizing smal town. This produced a tense atmosphere in which rhe rveaker individuals' were suppressed and those of stronger natures were incited. to prove themselves in rhe -ort pursionare mannet. Tnit is pt.iir"ry why it was thar there brossomedin Athens whar musr be cailed, without-defining it exactly, ,,the general human character,,in the intellectual development of ot-urspecies.For rve maintain factual as well as historical validity for the fotto*irrg ;;rr".tion: the most extensive and the Lost general contents and forms of life are most intimately.orrrr".t.i lvith the most indi_ vjdua^lones. They have a pr"puiutory stagein common, thar is, they find rheir enemy in narrow formatiIns trr. t;;;l"g., ""d maintenance of rvhich placesboth of them into u ,tlt. oi d.i.rrr. against :xpanse and generality lying without and the freely moving individuality within. Just asii the feudal uge,th" ..fr..,, man was the one who stood under the law of the jand, that is, under the larv of the largest social orbit, and the u"ir". Lu' was the one who derived his right merely from the na.row-circre of a feudal associarionand.wai excluded from the l"r.; s"ocial orbit-so today metroporitan man is "free" i" uiir"a and refined sense,in iontrast to the pettiness " $iiit" urd pr"i,ral..,

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andouterfreedom,^":r"r,"#:':#:.r;::"'#:i,"ntl
dom. It is rather in transcending this visible expanse that any given city becomes the seat of cosmopolitanism. The horizon of the city expands in a manner comparable to the way in which wealth develops; a certain amount of property increasesin a quasi-automatical way in ever more rapid progression.As soon as a certain limit has been passed,the economic, personal, and intellectual relations of the citizenry, the sphere of intellectual predominance of the city over its hinterland, grow as in geometrical progression.Every gain in dynamic extension becomes a step, not for an equal, but for a new and'larger extension. From every thread spinning out of the city, ever nerv threads grow as if by themselves,just as rvithin the city the unearned increment of ground rent, through the mere increase in communication, brings the owner automatically increasing profits. At this point, the quantitative aspect of life is transformed directly into qualitative traits of character. The sphere of life of the small town is, in the main, self-containedand autarchic. For it is the decisive nature of the metropolis that its inner life overflows by waves into a far-flung national or international area. Weimar is not an example to the contrary, since its significance was hinged upon individual personalities and died with them; whereas the metropolis is indeed characterized by its essential independence even from the most eminent individual personalities. This is the counterpart to the independence, and it is the price the individual pgyr for the independence, which he enjoys in the metropolis.She most significant characteristic of the metropolis is this functional extension beyond its physical boundaries. And this efficacy reacrs in turn and gives weight, importance, and responsibility to metropolitan life. Man does not end with the Iimits of his body or the area comprising his immediate activity. Rather is the range of the person constitucedby chesum of effectsemanacingfrom him tcmporaily and spatially. In the same way, a city consistsof its. total effects which extend beyond its immediate confined. , Only this range is the city's actual extenr in which irs existence is expressed.This fact makes it obvious that individual freedom, the logical and historical complement of such extension, is not to be understood only in the negative sense of mere

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420 The Metropolis anil Mental Life freedom of mobility and eliminarion of prejudices and petty philistinism. The essential point is rhat rhe parricularity and incomparability, which ultimately every human being possesses, be somehow expressedin the working-out of away of life. That we follow the laws of our own nature-and this after all is freedom-becomes obvious and convincing to ourselves and to others only if the expressions of this nature differ from the expressionsof others. Only our unmistakability proves that our way of life has not been superimposed by others. Cities are, first of all, searsof the highest economic division of labor. They produce thereby such extreme phenomena as in Paris the renumerative occupacionof the quatorzidme.They are personswho identify themselvesby signs on their residences and who are ready at the dinner hour in correct attire, so that they can be quickly called upon if a dinner party should consisr of thirteen persons. In the measure of its expansion, the city ofiers more and more the decisive conditions of rhe division of labor. It ofiers a circle which through its sizecan absorb a highly diverse variety of services.At the same time, the concentration of individuals and their struggle for customers compel the individual to specialize in a function from which he cannor be readily displaced by another. & is decisive that city life has transformed the struggle with nature for livelihood into an inter-human struggle for gain, which here is nor granred by nature but by other merflFor specializationdoes not flow only from the competition for gain but also from the underlying fact that the seller must always seek to call forth new and differentiated needs of the lured customer. In order to find a source of income which is not yer exhausred,and to find a function which cannot readily be displaced,it is necessary specializein one's to services.This processpromotes difierentiation, refinement, and the enrichment of the public's needs, which obviously must lead to growing personal differences within this public. All this forms the transition ro the individualization of

The MetroPolisand Mental Life 421 upon qualitativedifierenof energy reach their limits, one seizes order somehow to attlact the attention of the social tiation"in .tivitY for difierences' FinalIY, . tendentious Peculiarities, that extravagancesoI mannerlsm, the meaning of these extrava-

striking manner and thereby attracting attention' {ot Tu"y for them.trutu.i"t types, ultimately the only means of saving ielf-esteem and the senseof filling a selvessome modicum of the position is indirect, through the awarenessof others' lln in"significant factor is operatin$' the same sense a seemingly I refer cumulative efiectsor rirrict ur"",ho*"u.r, still noticeable. the inter-human contacts granted io tft. brevity and scarcity of to the netroPolitan man, as co in the small tou'q. The temptati aDDear concentrated and strik. .io'r., to the individual in briel an atmosphere in which frequ assuresthe personality of an un the eyesof the other.-'1, The most proforrnd reason' however, why the metropolis

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conducestotheurgeforthemostindividual-personalexistto ence-qo matter rvhether justified and successful-appears culture is me to be the following: thl development of modern call the characterized by the p"reponderanci of what one may in ;ofj".tiu. spirii" ou.t the "s1l!i9c!rv9 rylrit"' This is,to-.=s.aY' as language as rvell as in law, iri the technique of prodt'rtron d-omestic *"1i uJi, art, in science as well as in the objects of the there is embodied a sum of ryirit' The-ind.ividual environment, sPrrrt in his intellectual development follows the growth ot thrs and at in ever increasingdistance' If' for inu.ry i*p"tfectly hundred ,,",,.", we view,the immense culture which for the last in things and in knowledge' in instituyearshas been embodied tionsandincomforts,andif*..ompu'eallthiswiththecul. i,rrut ptogtess of the individual during the same period-at growth least in hrth status groups-a frightfut disproportion in Indeed, at some points we between the two bEcomesevident.

The Metrobqlis anil Mcnbt Lifc notice a reffogression in tlic culture of the individual with reference ro spirirualiry, delicacy, and ideal.ism. fi, ;;;;;pancy resuks essentialry from the growing division or r"uor.-rJ, trr. division of labor demandsfr&n tn. iroiuiaual an ever more onesided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one_sided pursuit only roo frequendy -.Jr* dearth to tt e p.*r""iiry the individual. In any case,he can cope "r less and less wirh the e. The individual is reduced co a ess in his consciousness than in , of his obscure emotional states u'hich tear from his hands all in order to transform them fro: lt needsmerely to be pointeciout rine arena of this cuitur. r,vhich :e in buildings and educational technology, in the formacions

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If one asksfor the historical position of these two forms of individualism which are nourished by the quantitarive relation of the metropolis, namely, i4dividual;i4!9pn4eqce and the elaboration of individuality itself, then the merropolis assumes an entirely new rank order in the world history of the spirit. The eighteenth century found the individual in oppressive bonds which had become meaningless-bonds of a political, agrarian, guild, and religious character. They rvere rescraints which, so to speak, forced upon man an unnatural form and outmoded, unjust inequalities. In this situation the cry for liberty and equality arose,the belief in the individual's full freedom of movement in all social and intellectual relationships. Freedom would at once permit the noble substancecommon to all to come to the fore, a substancervhich nature had deposited in every man and rvhich society and history had only deformed. Besidesthis eighteenth-century ideal of liberalism, in the nineteenth century, through Goethe and Romanticism, on the one hand, and through the economic division of labor, on the other hand, another ideal arose: individuals liberated from hisrorical bonds now wished to distinguish themselvesfrom one another. The carrier of man's values is no longer the "general human

conrents and offerings which tend tc sonal colorations and incomparabiliti vidual s summoning the utmtst in uniqueness and particularizain or{e5 to preserve ni, -ori plrsonal core. He has ro 1lon, ex?g.ger1le personarelemenr in order gl,is to remain audible even to himself. The atrophy of individrrul.ultrl.. through th" hyper_ ttgply of objective currure is one reason for the Bii[, rrll"a which the preachers of the most extreme individualism, above : metropolis. But it is, indeed, rs are so passionatelyloved in pear to the metropolitan man i most unsatisfiedyearnings.

role in the whole of society.It is the function of the metropolis to provide the arena for this struggle and its reconciliation. For the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions rvhich are revealedto-usas the opportunities and the stimuli for the development of both these ways of allocating roles to men. Therewilh theseconditions gain a unique place, pregnant with inestimable meanings for the development of psychic exisrence.The metropolis reveals itself as one of those great hisrorical formations in rvhich opposing streams which enclose Iife unfold, as well

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