CHAPTER XII 



CULTURE 



BY " culture " is meant the store of traditions, 

 ideas and habits which is passed on from genera- 

 tion to generation, not by way of inheritance, but 

 as a hand-to-hand gift. The term embraces all 

 that we understand by civilization almost all 

 that is included in our religious, moral, artistic 

 and industrial lives. Culture, like complexion, 

 has been acquired from our environment ; but from 

 an environment not only of things, but of men 

 of human society, as well as of material conditions. 

 Civilization has been developed by the successive 

 inventions of individual men, just as the multi- 

 formity of the animal and the vegetable kingdom 

 has sprung from the physical variations of indi- 

 vidual organisms. If we characterize as "natural" 

 the ordinary balancing of instincts which is to 

 be observed amongst the lower animals, culture 

 may be described as " artificial." It rests upon 

 the effects of habit in enhancing the influence 

 of certain instincts, and in diminishing corre- 

 spondingly the influence of others. The repro- 

 ductive instinct, for instance, prompts male and 

 female to come together at the age of puberty: 

 urged by the instinctive desire to make the most 

 of life, culture has postponed the date of marriage. 

 It has conducted man to a pinnacle far above the 

 station of the brutes ; but it has led him upwards 

 along devious paths of erroi. Undisciplined 



