(b) A culture offers:

(1) Association, the fact of living together, a fundamental
mode of life and a set of arrangements which make the
group a unit. This it is that makes the members feel
that they "belong," and it is the single most important
fact about a culture. The basis of social union may,
of course, differ from one culture to another.6
(2) Schemes for providing and distributing the things that
are held to be basic to life and well-being. These
schemes determine not only what natural resources shall
be used for these purposes, and how, but also the vari-
ous occupation groups with their specialized functions,
monopolies, privileges, etc.

(3) Ways of understanding and controlling the phenomena
of nature and of life, and arrangements, both formal
and informal, for imparting these data to new members
of the group.

(4) A large number of special associations, groups, clubs, circles, etc., both to perform the above functions and to minister to the various more special interests of members of the group.

Even a hasty comparison of these two classifications should lead to the conviction that some relation must obtain between human needs and cultural offerings. As a matter of fact, the connections are so intimate and complex that they cannot be adequately represented in a summary tabulation. A single human need may be ministered to in many diverse ways, and a single cultural element may minister diversely to many human needs. Where, for example, is religion to be placed among the human needs? Well, in the same or in different persons it can fulfill any or all of the three functions we have distinguished. (1) To some persons, religion has apparently been as necessary as life itself. To many a mystic the candle of life burns only within the aura of the religious experience. (2) No group is without a religion, and so even the man who is not normally endowed himself in this respect will often be expected to understand and deal with the phenomenon as it occurs in other persons. (3) The need for some means of exercising and developing (or, in some cases, of curbing) the religious impulses as they exist in most men is quite evident.

Similarly, an inspection of the matter from the other side will show that religion is capable of fulfilling any of the four cultural functions enumerated in the classification. (1) It has at times, as among the Mohammedans at the height of their power, and perhaps also in medieval Christendom, served as the basic principle of association. (2) Religious beliefs often affect the economic life of the group, as can be seen by the Christian Sabbath, which once required a fairly complete cessation of all economic activity. Not only are religious observances and

piety asserted to be profitable in this world as well as in the next; but, as an actual matter of fact, the conditions under which life. needs are satisfied are affected by the presence of religion. (3) Most religions, and Christianity perhaps above all others, offer rather thoroughgoing schemes for understanding the world, as well as rules prescribing how it is to be handled. Whether these religious philosophies and codes of action be valid or not, they certainly have social consequences. (4) Finally, in innumerable ways religion has ministered to the special interests of human beings by providing careers, offices, organizations, loyalties, and the like in almost overwhelming profusion.

The discussion of religion might be paralleled by a like discussion of every feature of social life. Every element in a culture pattern is capable of satisfying a wide variety of human needs; or, to put the same thing in social terms, of fulfilling a wide variety of social functions.

Human needs and the culture complex 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 much maladaptations are ignorance, the interference of special interests, and changes in the conditions of life unaccompanied by correlative social changes. Wherever 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 by the maladjustment generate one form or another of aberration 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, as can be seen, for example, by a consideration of the case of art under modern industrial conditions. To practically 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 a good 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, to a surprising extent 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 de

velop 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 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 more or less 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 natural growths in an uncongenial social environment. In a similar fashion, though perhaps to a less degree, the lives of those who might have been appreciative of artistic creations, although they have little creative power themselves, will be affected.

It does not follow from the above that art cannot flourish in a great industrial civilization like our own. The antagonism may be a temporary one; old arts may be vigorously reborn in our culture, or big industry may give birth to new arts of its ownto 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 it 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 lacking, and we should be living starved and hampered lives.

As we shall try to show in Chapter 14, there is nothing intrinsically detrimental to human interests in the machine. It is all a matter of our attitudes towards what we have. We certainly have more things than any other culture; and there seems to be no unsurmountable reason why most of them should not be artistically satisfying in the highest sense. As a matter of fact, some would hold that the average man of today is surrounded by more opportunities for esthetic development than he has ever been in the past; although they would admit that there have been greater creative periods than our own.

Early cultural achievements.

Some of the early achievements of culture transmitted to us through the long generations of men are so deeply inbred into our life that we do not commonly regard them as social constructions at all. Their existence is mute testimony to the tremendous

influence culture exerts upon us.

The origins of most of the

great human achievements upon which even our modern 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 achievements 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 its various degrees of validity (as the real, the remembered, the dreamt 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. Culture history 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 no more and no less than any other, 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 flow of culture materials in all directions rather than a development in but one stream, and that flowing toward us. A culture cannot be judged by its date, nor by its congeniality and attractiveness to him who judges.

Institutions.

An inspection of social life will reveal 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 are customs, or 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. It is usual to call customs 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." 8 Institutions, that is to say, lay down the ways in which men shall enter into social relations, although they are not themselves specific ways of acting. Institutions in this respect resemble an architect's plans. The plans themselves are not a building; but they do determine 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 put 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, to change the figure, they provide the pigeon-holes or categories in terms of which men define what they shall be and do. They furnish the framework or scaffolding for all of the great constructions of the group. 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 all other social structures. The more complex structures will include minor, partially independent, substructures, and the boundaries of different institutions. will 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 there is often a prescribed uniform for the function); with business (since there may be rings and veils and flowers and many other things to buy in connection with the ceremony, and since marriage initiates a new economic status for those whom it unites); 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 institutions. The connections and relations of an important institution will stretch out to the farthest limits of the social structure, and will affect, and be affected by, countless other social arrangements.

Even when institutions are very closely related they are frequently only partly synthesized. That is, while they are compelled by the nature of things to function together, they may be so constituted that they cannot function harmoniously. This is