sary to react to the religious convictions and behavior of other members of his group. (3) The need of opportunities for the exercise and development (or, in some cases, for the curbing) of the religious impulses which manifest themselves in most men is quite evident.

In a similar manner, religion is capable of fulfilling any of the cultural functions enumerated in the classification. (1) It has at times served as the basic principle of association. This was the case among the Mohammedans at the height of their power, and perhaps also in medieval Christendom. (2) Religious beliefs often affect the economic life of the group, as in the case of the Christian Sabbath, which once required a fairly complete cessation of economic activity. Not only are religious observances and piety thought to be profitable; religious scruples and tenets actually affect the conditions under which life needs are satisfied. (3) Most religions, and Christianity perhaps above all others, offer rather complete schemes for understanding the world, as well as codes for the regulation of the believer's conduct. Whether these religious philosophies and codes of action are valid or not, they do have social consequences. (4) Finally, religion ministers in many ways to the special interests of human beings by providing careers, offices, organizations, loyalties, and the like in great profusion.

What has been said concerning religion might be repeated with reference to all other aspects of social life. Every element in a culture pattern satisfies a wide variety of human needs; or, to put the thing in social terms, fulfills a wide variety of social functions.

Human needs and the culture pattern are never perfectly adapted to each other, however, and in nearly all cultures important human needs are very imperfectly satisfied. In many instances, no doubt, the existing cultural developments are positively detrimental to human well-being. The chief reasons for such maladaptations are ignorance, the interference of special interests, and changes in the conditions of life unaccompanied by correlative social changes. Whereever maladaptations occur, the interdependence of the individual and the group is by no means destroyed, for this

interdependence is a permanent feature of the social situation. Instead, the stresses and strains set up generate aberrations of one kind or another in the individuals composing the group, and they exhibit the symptoms of what might be called a social disease.

These remarks apply to our own culture no less than to others. Consider, for example, the status of art in a highly industrialized society. To nearly all of us, certain shapes and forms are more pleasing than others; that is to say, we are to some extent appreciative of beauty. In addition, many of us possess to some small degree the power of making beautiful things. In some persons, however, the feeling for beauty is exquisitely developed; and in a few the power of artistic creation has blossomed forth into a lovely flower. What even such persons will be able to appreciate and will call beautiful is, of course, surprisingly dependent on social standards, and will differ greatly from one society to another. But some part of it will go back to personal endowment pure and simple. Such persons, however, will usually need the stimulus of a friendly social environment to help them develop and give form to their powers; for few of us are strong enough to stand alone. Now, if people like this live in a highly industrialized society, where nearly all of the goods of life are made by machines, often with little regard to artistic canons, and where quantity of production is frequently considered more important than quality, many of them are bound to feel frustrated, and their artistic impulses will not remain unaffected. They may not cease to produce works of art, but may band together in little coteries and patronize the trivial, the exotic, the unhealthy, or the merely shocking. Such vagaries are the natural outgrowth of an uncongenial social environment. In a similar fashion, the lives of those who might have been appreciative of artistic creations, although they have little creative power themselves, will also be affected.

It does not follow from what has been said that art cannot flourish in a great industrial civilization. The existing difficulties may be temporary; old arts may be vigorously reborn in our culture, or big industry may give birth to new

arts of its own-to such things as skyscraper architecture, great ocean liners, vigorously modeled automobiles, new literary styles, etc.-thoroughly worthy of comparison with the arts of the past. But, on the other hand, if modern industry remains indifferent to art, we may see the esthetic impulse starved and pushed into the nooks and crannies of life. The thing might go so far as to result in a whole society almost completely devoid of developed artistic interests, and almost entirely lacking in creative artistic talent. One of the great historic life-giving foods of the mind of man would then be missing, and we should be living starved and hampered lives.

As we shall try to show in Chapter XIV, there is nothing intrinsically detrimental to human interests in the existence of machinery in a culture. It all depends on our attitudes towards the things we have. We certainly do possess more apparatus than any other culture; and there seems to be no unsurmountable reason why most of the things we have should not be made esthetically satisfying. As a matter of fact, some would hold that the average man is surrounded by more opportunities for esthetic development at the present time than he ever was in the past; although they would admit that there have been greater creative periods than the present.

Early cultural achievements

Some of the earliest cultural achievements transmitted to us from the most distant times are so deeply inbedded in our life that we do not commonly regard them as social constructions at all. Their existence is mute testimony to the tremendous influence the culture pattern exerts upon us. The origins of most of the great constructs upon which our civilization rests are lost in the dim and remote past. We are indebted to we know not whom, in we know not what distant age, for such things as the development of language; the subjugation of fire; the invention of writing and the alphabet; the discovery of the principle of the lever; the introduction of pottery and weaving; the domestication of animals and of plants; the development of government and

of settled ways of life; the elaboration of processes for the extraction of metals from their ores; the creation of the rich pictures furnished by mythology; and many other developments of equal magnitude. Similarly anonymous are the originators of the great categories in terms of which we still conduct our thinking: of such things as the notion of cause and the principles of inference; the fundamental interpretation of life associated with religion; the great idea of responsibility; the distinction between a thing and its qualities; the analysis of experience into various degrees of validity (as the real, the remembered, the dreamed of, the imagined, etc.); and a thousand other nodes of our mental life.

Many things have come down to us from the past, and many others of perhaps equal worth have been lost in time's ceaseless shiftings. The history of a culture is not a tale of constantly accelerating progress, of the steady accumulation of all the riches of all the ages for our delectation and advantage. Every contemporary culture, our own included, stands at the end of a long historical process in which much has been lost and much gained, much remembered and much forgotten-in which, in short, there has been a continuous interchange of culture materials in all directions rather than a steady development in but one direction. A culture should not be judged by its date, nor by its congeniality and attractiveness to the person who happens to be judging.

Institutions

An inspection of social life reveals two fairly distinct types of phenomena:

(1) Social relations-actual social interactions carried on within the terms of the culture under examination. Most of these activities are customs-conventionalized acts exhibited by all (or nearly all) the members of a group. Thus in our culture it is customary for a gentleman to tip his hat when he meets a lady of his acquaintance; for a woman to take the name of her husband when she marries; for the conductor of an orchestra to use a baton; for clergymen to wear a distinctive kind of dress; for horses to be shod; for flags to be displayed on national holidays; for bank presidents to

play golf; for professors to maintain an air of aloof impartiality in the face of all the things that normally concern human beings. Customs are often called social habits; and the phrase is permissible as a useful figure of speech.

(2) Institutions-"the determinate forms in accordance with which men enter into social relations." Institutions, that is to say, indicate how men under given conditions shall perform social acts, although they are not themselves specific ways of acting. Institutions in this respect resemble an architect's plans. The plans are not a building; but they do indicate how a building shall be erected. Thus a code of honor is not a concrete set of actions; but it does tell people how to act in concrete situations. So with the family; it does nothing, but the members of a family are placed in certain situations and have many obligations and privileges because they belong to that institution.

Institutions structuralize a culture. They canalize and organize its activities; or, once more to change the figure, they provide the pigeonholes or categories in terms of which men define what they shall be and do. They furnish the framework or scaffolding for the group constructions. Every culture is rich in institutions of varying degrees of complexity, and serving a large variety of human interests. Nor is every institution a distinct and separate entity, guiding and directing human activity in complete independence of other social forms. The more complex structures always include minor, partially independent, substructures, and the boundaries of different institutions cross each other in perplexing confusion. Thus the institution of marriage is partly bound up, not only with the family, but also with the law (since marriage is a form of contract); with dress (since a garb appropriate to the occasion is usually prescribed); with business (since there are rings and veils and flowers and many other things to buy in connection with the ceremony, and since marriage usually marks the formation of a new economic unit); with religion (since marriage is often regarded as a sacrament); with politics (as in the case of members of a royal house); and, indeed, with a myriad other social forms. The connection and relations of an important