Notes
T
awards a Definition
of Culture*
T. S. ELIOT
I
WISH
to
try
to make clear the sense or senses in which I propose
to use the word
culture
throughout this article. It will be remembered
that Matthew Arnold laid down that culture is the acquainting our–
selves with the best that has been known or said in the world. Without
necessarily accepting or rejecting this definition within its own limits,
I am not here concerned with the culture which the individual mav
envisage as an ideal or set himself to acquire, but with the culture th'a:t
a whole society may develop and transmit. I wish to keep in relation
two meanings of the word which tend to become separated, each of
which should be present when we intend the other. The first meaning
is that which first suggests itself: that of a refinement of living, includ–
ing appreciation of philosophy and the arts, among the upper levels
of society. The second is the more fundamental: it is what we imply
when we speak of
primitive culture.
It is the whole complex of be–
havior, thought and feeling, expressing itself in custom, in art,
in
political and social organization, in religious structure and religious
thought, which we can perceive most clearly as a whole in the less
advanced societies, but which is equally present
as
the peculiar char–
acter of the most highly developed people or nation. It is what we
mean when we speak of
a
culture, instead of culture without the
article. These two meanings, that of the culture of a class and that of
the culture of a whole people, have to be kept distinct but always in
relation. For it is
a
part of my thesis that there is no "culture" without
"a culture," and no culture of a class or of an individual unless there
is a living culture in the people to which that class or individual
belongs, however remote the most highly and the least developed
individuals of that people may appear superficially to be from each
other.
It is obvious that among the more primitive communities the
several parts of culture are inextricably interwoven. The Dyak who
*
This essay, reprinted here with the permission of the author, was originally
published in
The New English Weekly
(Jan.-Feb. 1943).
