Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor.
From Georg Simmel
Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it.
Every superior personality, and every superior performance, has, for the average of mankind, something mysterious.
For the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions which are revealed to us as the opportunities and the stimuli for the development of both these ways of allocating roles to men.
In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events.
Man's nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered.
Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.
Secrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.
Secrecy sets barriers between men, but at the same time offers the seductive temptation to break through the barriers by gossip or confession.
The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles.
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