sometimes the case with laws. Since they are laws, we feel that they should be respected and enforced; but they sometimes confront us with aggravating dilemmas when they run counter to long-established ways of life. Confusions and conflicts of purpose and action naturally result. The Eighteenth Amendment is a case in point.

The very heart and core of a living institution is the set of shared human purposes and ideals which lies behind it. Institutions are moribund and in process of decay, though they may for a time persist to encumber the social scene, when they are no longer warmed by human allegiance and loyalty. This allegiance does not so often secure active and explicit expression from all who realize themselves within the terms of some great institution. It is rather when men begin to exhibit disaffection and apathy towards an institutional structure that the importance of faith and confidence in its arrangements becomes apparent. It is possible that societies decline and disappear more through failures in morale than for any other reason. A conquered people need not lose its identity and become a mere memory of itself, if it can but keep a lively faith in its own way of life in the face of the invader.

The number and variety of institutions in our own culture.

A complete enumeration of all the institutions of a culture in their interrelations, were this possible, would give an outline picture of its social structure, and we should then be able to see it in its most general aspects. The classification of cultural offerings presented earlier in this chapter was really an attempt to carry the analysis a step further, for the aim there was to indicate in the briefest possible compass what kinds of institutions will be found in any society. The very generality of such a classification, however, requires that it be supplemented by materials of greater concreteness when any particular culture is under discussion. It does not seem possible, in the present state of our knowledge, to catalogue in analytical detail all of the institutions of our contemporary culture, showing all the important relations which bind them into some semblance of unity; but a summary list of a few of them may help to clarify the meaning of the term. The headings of the following classification have been rather arbitrarily chosen, and are by no means exhaustive:

Domestic-the family; marriage; relationship; the home; the meal; telling children stories; inheritance; having books in the home; etc.

Economic-the various occupation groups; barter and trade; credit; money; the rights of property; industrialism; the fac

tory; division of labor; distinction between employer and employee; laws regulating trade and commerce; etc.

Political-the state; the party system; universal suffrage; the police power; the principle of checks and balances; letting the country be run_by_politicians; the various governmental offices; representation in Congress determined geographically (by congressional districts, etc.); "law and order"; war; etc.

"Social"-friendship; romantic love; rules of social intercourse; etiquette; play (and all the various games); charity; arrangements for health, insurance, and the like; etc.

"Personal"-classifications as to age, sex, status, locality, etc.; the idea of being a distinct personality, and of "amounting to something"; ways of regarding one's self; etc.

Educational-the school; books; libraries; the newspaper; moving pictures; the various ways in which gossip and rumor are institutionalized; etc.

Moral-leagues for and against vice; moral and ethical codes; the rights of animals and of children; the notion of what constitutes "a good time"; etc.

Religious-the church and churches; the clergy; "the Christian way of life"; holy days and sacraments; Heaven and Hell; the Bible; etc.

Artistic-all the various arts and crafts; the canons and principles of art, and of the various arts; the symphony, the sonnet, and all other art forms; etc.

Scientific-all the various sciences, and the habits of thought they characteristically generate; the experimental method; hypotheses; the laboratory, the test-tube, and the microscope; the notion of cause; the idea of one uniform Nature; etc.

Cultural change.

Even a list so incomplete and sketchy as the above cannot fail to suggest the great medley of impulses behind social activity. A single institution may serve a staggering array of human needs, and by its very permeation into so many other institutions and into the deepest recesses of our lives may seem almost impervious to essential change. Consider the present economic order-in its effects it invades the farthermost reaches of human living and thinking. Scarcely a single human impulse of any consequence could be named whose expression has not been altered in important ways since the rise of industrialism during the last two or three hundred years. Yet nothing is clearer than that such institutions do change, and even disappear, for the past is richly strewn with their wrecks. How, then, do cultures change? Two fairly distinct processes may be distinguished:

(1) Diffusion-the importation of elements into a group through the contact of cultures. No culture has ever existed in perfect isolation, and a constant interchange of elements goes on between even the most primitive cultures. This process involves trading, not merely in material goods, but also in ideas. Things which originate in one place spread far and wide, often being

greatly altered in the process to make them conform to the culture patterns into which they penetrate. In many instances even as respects primitive groups with no written records it is possible to draw maps which seem to indicate where the trait in question must first have arisen." It is difficult to realize to what an extent borrowing is characteristic of culture history; the attempt to trace the places of origin of the different elements of any culture would probably take us over continents, across seas, and perhaps to all parts of the globe.

No better examples of the importance of diffusion could be found than those offered by our own culture. Disregarding the countless minor instances, such as the derivation of tobacco from the American Indians, of coffee from the Arabians, silk from the Chinese, the vine from the Caucasus, cats from Egypt, astronomy from Chaldaea, there yet remain a considerable number of cultural borrowings of the very first magnitude. Modern science, modern art, and modern philosophy were fed at their sources by materials drawn from Greek culture; our religion comes from Palestine; the Phoenicians gave us the alphabet and the Hindus (through the Arabs) our number system; the Romans and the Teutons our system of law; nor did any one of the cultures which made these major contributions to our life elaborate them in isolation of other culture contacts.

And, on the other hand, in recent centuries our culture has spread over the whole globe, effacing or degenerating practically all of the minor cultures that once dotted the surface of the earth, and even seriously threatening the great civilizations of Islam, India, and China. Of a truth is this "the European epoch of the human mind." 10 It is seriously to be doubted whether the wholesale destruction of cultures that has accompanied the spread of western civilization is a good thing. In many instances it has meant the complete extinction of whole peoples, and, with them, the total disappearance of their arts, achievements, and general outlook on life. The invader is as a rule both unwilling and unable to salvage these things. Quite aside from any questions of justice, this makes us so much the poorer in the resources of the mind. Every people has its own religion, its own mythology and folklore, its own store of homely wisdom, its own arts and knowledges, its own organization of life. It takes long ages of living together to build such things, and it seems like destroying time itself to see them disappear under the heavy pressures we lay upon them.

(2) Invention-the putting of old materials to new uses. This topic will be discussed in a somewhat different setting in a later chapter, so we may for the present confine ourselves to the

remark that inventions do occur in every group; indeed they are found to be exceedingly common when once the term is properly understood as not implying more than the minimum of originality. Adaptations and adjustments of the existing body of cultural materials are continually being made, and in this give and take, culture traits slowly take on new forms. It is in this fashion that languages undergo those long-term changes which are scarcely noticeable except after the lapse of centuries. No Shakespeare or other great molder of the speech is necessary for this to happen. Slowly and imperceptibly the processes of invention of minute adaptations, that is to say, in the pronunciation and usage of words to make them correspond more closely with each other or with prevailing ways of regarding the things they refer to act on the mother tongue, and in the end make it far other than it was.

In a way the diffusion process may be regarded as a special case of invention as here defined, for borrowing never takes place except when accompanied by inventive adaptations. With invention proper, however, no new elements are introduced into the culture from another complex, for the whole process is confined to a working over of already available materials.

Our dependence upon our culture.

We should have to work for many lifetimes to make all of the things we use in the course of a single day, if indeed we could ever hope to learn all of the arts and techniques necessary for such a task. Primitive peoples sometimes ask white men if they themselves have made their own clothing, shoes, gun, camp equipment, etc., and are surprised to learn that they have made almost none of the things they are in the habit of using. But the primitive himself is hardly in a better way, for, though he may have made everything he ever had occasion to use, he could not have made all of these things with arts which he himself had invented. He too, no less than we, is dependent upon his culture for the apparatus that makes his life possible.

But our dependence upon the patterns of our culture extends much further than this. Both the questions we ask the world and ourselves, and the answers we are led to give to these questions, are, except in isolated instances of the greatest originality, culturally determined. Lévy-Bruhl has dealt very fully with this point in his book entitled "Primitive Mentality." He points out, for example, how living in an orderly, well-established society affects the notions we form of causation : 11

The uninterrupted feeling of intellectual security is so thor

oughly established in our minds that we do not see how it can be disturbed, for even supposing we were suddenly brought face to face with an altogether mysterious phenomenon, the causes of which might entirely escape us at first, we should be convinced that our ignorance was merely temporary; we should know that such causes did exist, and that sooner or later they would declare themselves. Thus the world in which we live is, as it were, intellectualized beforehand. . . . Our daily activities, even in their minutest details, imply calm and complete confidence in the immutability of natural laws.

Nor are the emotions, those presumably most personal and internal of all our experiences, free from the influence of group behaviors. When shall we feel grieved, insulted, elated, disturbed, insensate, and how shall we give vent to these feelings? Our culture indoctrinates us with formulae which tell us when and how to be moved, and without being distinctly aware of the fact we follow these rules. It is not that we should have no feelings whatever without cultural indoctrination, for an infant can work up a perfectly respectable rage in absolute independence of any training, but that the feelings we do have, with their accompanying behaviors, are in large measure socially determined.

The virtues that we praise and the vices we abhor are similarly described and classified for us by our culture, and oftentimes one group will admire the very thing that another group will despise. We assimilate these preferences and aversions, and seldom work our way around them. Aristotle, for example, is the author of the greatest treatise on ethics ever produced in the western world, and yet, following a very characteristic Greek ideal, he elaborates the following picture of one type of virtuous

This man rightly regards himself as worthy of high honors, and he possesses the greatness appropriate to every virtue. He will be only moderately pleased when honors are bestowed upon him, for they are really less than he deserves; but he will accept them for lack of something better. He is little interested in wealth, political power, or success, and must often appear disdainful. But his contempt is justified, for he estimates other people at their real worth. He will face great dangers gladly, for this brings in honor, but small dangers do not interest him. He will confer benefits, but is ashamed to receive them, for that would make him feel inferior. And so he remembers those whom he has helped, but forgets those who have helped him; and he likes to be reminded of his benefactions, while he cannot bear to be told of those who have benefited him. He is open in word and deed, and does not hesitate to say whatever he thinks. He admires but few things. He will speak evil of his enemies only in order to insult them. He will not easily cry out for help, nor be always bustling around.

In this passage, I have taken the liberty of condensing Aristotle's description somewhat, without, however, altering its general content.