A DEFINITION OF CULTURE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 526, 22 July 1949, Page 5

A DEFINITION OF CULTURE

Sir,-Nothing would be easier than to return. Mr. McCormick’s intemperate abuse. But I shall say nothing about » such things as his thoughtless gibe at |

A. N. Whitehead. Obviously the form of my first letter annoyed him; and I am willing to admit that it was probably too pungent. But perhaps if I state once more why I think that J. C. Beaglehole’s criticism of T. §S. Eliot was fully justified, the admirers of Eliot from Auckland and Dunedin will feel tempted to defend his views instead of abusing his critics. T. S. Eliot has made at least one good point-namely, that culture is not a top-dressing to a society which has materially grown rich, but something inherent in society as such. It fis the sum total of a society’s manifestations and expresses itself as clearly in economic relationships as in religion. This has been true for over a hundred years. But I think Eliot is justified in stating it once more since there are only too many people amongst us who believe that culture is the final polish to a society. There is, however, another reason why Eliot made this point. He wanted to persuade his readers that only one special kind of society has "culture" and that all other kinds of society have none. He believes that only a_ hierarchical society exhibits culture and that an egalitarian society does not. This seems to me a clear fallacy: if one agrees that "culture" d not mean "top-dressing," then one pe sbi admit that also our egalitarian society must have a culture. But Eliot wants to discredit egalitarian societies by maintaining that they will have no culture. Apparently T. S. Eliot uses the word "culture" in at least two senses. In the first sense it means the sum-total of a society’s manifestations; in the second sense it means the special values of T. S. Eliot (and of Messrs. McCormick and Olssen), i.e, a hierarchical order/of society with a special form of religion. This confusion of the two senses of "culture" seems to me quite unpardonable in a book which was written to define the meaning of culture. However, the main issue is Mr. Eliot’s claim that hierarchical societies have a monopoly of culture. I feel that this view is due to his lack of imagipation (it is very puzzling that.so inspired a poet should show himself so unimagina-_ tive a thinker), He cannot envisage new. values. The only values he knows are the ones his experience of certain types of European society have taught him. And because he cannot imagine any others he maintains that the old ones are values par excellence and that any new ones which differ from them can therefore be no values at all. This kind of thought which conditions us to be prejudiced against all new patterns of thought, will kill our civilization-if it is not already the sympton of petrification. We shall have a serious lesson to learn from Toynbee: we cannot retrace © our steps any more than we can remain stationary.. If we do not go ahead we will be fossilised.

PETER

MUNZ

(Wellington),