2 PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 



acquisitions, divided by the number of human beings who 

 have lived, allowing for the actual physical and cultural con- 

 ditions, approximately yields the single individual's intellectual, 

 moral, and other capacities for invention and discovery. From 

 this definition, if substantially correct, it follows that the unaided 

 individual, reared in a cultureless environment, looms indiffer- 

 ently above his cousins, the apes. Fairly and squarely facing 

 the facts of general historical development from the most primi- 

 tive times to our day the gigantic evolution of intercommuni- 

 cation through language and transport, of buildings and furniture, 

 of implements and industrial processes, of domesticated animals 

 and cultivated plants, of discovered energies and raw materials, 

 of trade and tribal intercourse to internationalism, of dress 

 and education, of play and pastimes and the inner life and its 

 expression, of nutrition and care of health, of morals and reli- 

 gion, of science and art, of the family and other non-civic 

 groupings, of civic groupings, government, and law small doubt 

 should remain in regard to the general soundness of the above 

 position. 1 (For some details, see Conclusion 13.) 



We may consider here with advantage the signification of three con- 

 nected expressions. 



Culture is a term which is frequently, but unwarrantably, confused with 

 intellectual culture. Those who do so should remember that it is common 

 to speak of physical culture ; that there are organisations in many countries 

 calling themselves societies for ethical culture ; 2 and that the phrase artistic 

 or aesthetic culture is not unknown. Culture, then, simply implies culti- 

 vation, whether it be that of the soil, of the intelligence, of moral and 

 aesthetic sentiments, or of practical ability, on the basis of the inventions 

 and discoveries made by the human race. Culture, in other words, is a 

 comprehensive term to be employed in contradistinction to native power 

 or spontaneity. He who is truly cultured, is highly cultivated in respect 

 of every important part of his nature. 



Secondly. It is often asserted that culture is a social product. The 

 term social provides, however, no insight into the fact that virtually the 

 whole of humanity, from earliest times to to-day, is collectively responsible 

 for the contemporary store of general culture. Alternative terms, such 

 as inter-individual, inter-social, super-social, are alike unsatisfactory because 

 of their indefiniteness. A new term is therefore required. In our genera- 

 tion we have heard much of Pan-Germans, Pan-Slavs, Pan-Islamists, terms 

 expressive of a universal category. Profiting by the current use of pan 

 as an adjective and adverb, we may speak of culture as pan-human. The 



1 A signal example of collective advance is furnished by the fact that 

 the Royal Society, the Accademia del Cimento of Florence, the Academic 

 Royale at Paris, and the Berlin Academy were founded within a few years 

 of each other, plainly indicating a trend of the times rather than the 

 embodiment of novel ideas occurring to exceptionally gifted individuals. 



2 Mill (System of Logic, bk. 6, ch. 10, 2) speaks of "intellectual und 

 moral culture". 



