one that may, once we allow our imagination to play upon it, be
very disconcerting. It gives an importance to our most trivial
pursuits, to the occupation of our every minute, which we cannot
contemplate long without the horror of nightmare. When we
consider the quality of the integration required for the full cultivation of the spiritual life, we must keep in mind the possibility of grace and the exemplars of sanctity in order not to sink into
despair. And when we consider the problem of evangelization, of
the development of a Christian society, we have reason to quail.
To believe that we are religious people and that other people are
without religion is a simplification which approaches distortion.
To reflect that from one point of view religion is culture, and
from another point of view culture is religion, can be very
disturbing. To ask whether the people have not a religion
already, in which Derby Day and the dog track play their parts,
is embarrassing ; so is the suggestion that part of the religion of
the higher ecclesiastic is gaiters and the Athenaeum. It is inconvenient for Christians to find that as Christians they do not believe enough, and that on the other hand they, with everybody
else, believe in too many things : yet this is a consequence of
reflecting, that bishops are a part of English culture, and horses
and dogs are a part of English religion.
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It is commonly assumed that there is culture, but that it is the
property of a small section of society ; and from this assumption it
is usual to proceed to one of two conclusions : either that culture
can only be the concern of a small minority, and that therefore
there is no place for it in the society of the future ; or that in the
society of the future the culture which has been the possession of
the few must be put at the disposal of everybody. This assumption and its consequences remind us of the Puritan antipathy to monasticism and the ascetic life : for just as a culture which is only
accessible to the few is now deprecated, so was the enclosed and
contemplative life condemned by extreme Protestantism, and
celibacy regarded with almost as much abhorrence as perversion.
In order to apprehend the theory of religion and culture which
I have endeavoured to set forth in this chapter, we have to try to
avoid the two alternative errors : that of regarding religion and
culture as two separate things between which there is a relation,
and that of identifying religion and culture. I spoke at one point of
the culture of a people as an incarnation of its religion ; and while I
am aware of the temerity of employing such an exalted term, I
cannot think of any other which would convey so well the intention to avoid relation on the one hand and identification on the other. The truth, partial truth, or falsity of a religion neither
consists in the cultural achievements of the peoples professing
that religion, nor submits to being exactly tested by them. For
what a people may be said to believe, as shown by its behaviour,
is, as I have said, always a great deal more and a great deal less
than its professed faith in its purity. Furthermore, a people whose
culture has been formed together with a religion of partial truth,
may live that religion (at some period in its history, at least) with
greater fidelity than another people which has a truer light. It is
only when we imagine our culture as it ought to be, if our society
were a really Christian society, that we can dare to speak of
Christian culture as the highest culture ; it is only by referring to
all the phases of this culture, which has been the culture of
Europe, that we can affirm that it is the highest culture that the
world has ever known. In comparing our culture as it is today,
with that of non-Christian peoples, we must be prepared to find
that ours is in one respect or another inferior. I do not overlook
the possibility that Britain, if it consummated its apostasy by
reforming itself according to the prescriptions of some inferior or
materialistic religion, might blossom into a culture more brilliant
than that we can show today. That would not be evidence that the
new religion was true, and that Christianity was false. It would
merely prove that any religion, while it lasts, and on its own level,
gives an apparent meaning to life, provides the frame-work for a
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.
culture, and protects the mass of humanity from boredom and
despair.
[ii
In an elite composed of individuals who find their way into it
solely for their individual pre-eminence, the differences of background will be so great, that they will be united only by their common interests, and separated by everything else. An elite
must therefore be attached to some class, whether higher or lower :
but so long as there are classes at all it is likely to be the dominant
class that attracts this elite to itself. What would happen in a
classless society - which is much more difficult to envisage than
people think - brings us into the area of conjecture. There are,
however, some guesses which seem to me worth venturing.
The primary channel of transmission of culture is the family :
no man wholly escapes from the kind, or wholly surpasses the
degree of culture which he acquired from his early environment.
It would not do to suggest that this can be the only channel of
transmission : in a society of any complexity it is supplemented
and continued by other conduits of tradition. Even in relatively
primitive societies this is so. In more civilized communities of
specialized activities, in which not all the sons would follow the
occupation of their father, the apprentice (ideally, at least) did not
merely serve his master, and did not merely learn from him as one
would learn at a technical school - he became assimilated into a
way of life which went with that particular trade or craft ; and
perhaps the lost secret of the craft is this, that not merely a skill
but an entire way of life was transmitted. Culture - distinguishable from knowledge about culture - was transmitted by the older universities : young men have profited there who have been
profitless students, and who have acquired no taste for learning,
or for Gothic architecture, or for college ritual and form. I suppose that something of the same sort is transmitted also by societies of the masonic type : for initiation is an introduction into
a way of life, of however restricted viability, received from the
past and to be perpetuated in the future. But by far the most
important channel of transmission of culture remains the family :
and when family life fails to play its part, we must expect our
culture to deteriorate. Now the family is an institution of which
nearly everybody speaks well : but it is. advisable to remember that
this is a term that may vary in extension. In the present age it
means little more than the living members. Even if living members, it is a rare exception when an advertisement depicts a large family of three generations : the usual family on the
hoardings
J.OO
NOTES TOWARDS THE DEF I N I T I O N O F CULTURE
consists of two parents and one or two young children. What is
held up for admiration is not devotion to a family, but personal
affection between the members of it: and the smaller the family,
the more easily can this personal affection be sentimentalized. But
when I speak of the family, I have in mind a bond which embraces a longer period of time than this : a piety towards the dead, however obscure, and a solicitude for the unborn, however
remote. Unless this reverence for past and future is cultivated in
the horne, it can never be more than a verbal convention in the
community. Such an interest in the past is different from the
vanities and pretensions of genealogy ; such a responsibility for
the future is different from that of the builder of social programmes.
I should say then that in a vigorous society there will be visible
both class and elite, with some overlapping and constant interaction between them. An elite, if it is a governing elite, and so far as the natural impulse to pass on to one's offspring both power and
prestige is not artificially checked, will tend to establish itself as
a class - it is this metamorphosis, I think, which leads to what
appears to me an oversight on the part of Dr. Mannheim. But an
elite which thus transforms itself tends to lose its function as elite,
for the qualities by which the original members won their position,
will not all be transmitted equally to their descendants. On the
other hand, we have to consider what would be the consequence
when the converse took place, and we had a society in which the
functions of class were assumed by elites. Dr. Mannheim seems
to have believed that this will happen ; he showed himself, as a
passage which I have quoted shows, aware of the dangers ; and he
does not appear to have been ready to propose definite safeguards
against them.
The situation of a society without classes, and dominated
exclusively by elites is, I submit, one about which we have no
reliable evidence. By such a society, I suppose we must mean one
in which every individual starts without advantage or handicap ;
and in which, by some mechanism set up by the best designers of
such machinery, everybody will find his way, or be directed, to
that station of life which he is best fitted to fill, and every position
will be occupied by the man or woman best fitted for it. Of course,
not even the most sanguine would expect the system to work as
well as that : if, by and large, it seemed to come nearer to putting
the right people in the right places than any previous system, we
should all be satisfied. When I say 'dominated', rather than
'governed' by elites, I mean that such a society must not be
content to be governed by the right people : it must see that the
ablest artists and architects rise to the top, influence taste, and
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execute the important public commissions ; it must do the same
by the other arts and by science ; and above all, perhaps, it must
be such that the ablest minds will find expression in speculative
thought. The system must not only do all this for society in a
particular situation - it must go on doing it, generation after
generation. It would be folly to deny that in a particular phase of
a country's development, and for a limited purpose, an elite can do
a very good job. It may, by expelling a previous governing group,
which in contrast to itself may be a class, save or reform or revitalize the national life. Such things have happened. But we have very little evidence about the perpetuation of government by
elite, and such as we have is unsatisfactory . . . .
[iii
I said at the end of my second talk that I should want to make a
little clearer what I mean when I use the term culture. Like
'democracy', this is a term which needs to be, not only defined,
but illustrated, almost every time we use it. And it is necessary to
be clear about what we mean by 'culture', so that we may be clear
about the distinction between the material organization of Europe,
and the spiritual organism of Europe. If the latter dies, then what
you organize will not be Europe, but merely a mass of human
beings speaking several different languages. And there will be no
longer any justification for their continuing to speak different
languages, for they will no longer have anything to say which cannot be said equally well in any language : they will, in short, have no longer anything to say in poetry. I have already affirmed that
there can be no 'European' culture if the several countries are
isolated from each other : I add now that there can be no European
culture if these countries are reduced to identity. We need variety
in unity : not the unity of organization, but the unity of nature.
By 'culture', then, I mean first of all what the anthropologists
mean : the way of life of a particular people living together in one
place. That culture is made visible in their arts, in their social
system, in their habits and customs, in their religion. But these
things added together do not constitute the culture, though we
often speak for convenience as if they did. These things are simply
the parts into which a culture can be anatomized, as a human
body can. But just as a man is something more than an assemblage
of the various constituent parts of his body, so a culture is more
than the assemblage of its arts, customs, and religious beliefs.
These things all act upon each other, and fully to understand one
you have to understand all. Now there are of course higher cultures and lower cultures, and the higher cultures in general are 3.02
NOTES T O WARDS THE DEF I N I T I ON O F CULTURE
distinguished by differentiation of function, so that you can speak
of the less cultured and the more cultured strata of society, and
finally, you can speak of individuals as being exceptionally
cultured. The culture of an artist or a philosopher is distinct from
that of a mine worker or field labourer ; the culture of a poet will
be somewhat different from that of a politician ; but in a healthy
society these are all parts of the same culture ; and the artist, the
poet, the philosopher, the politician and the labourer will have a
culture in common, which they do not share with other people of
the same occupations in other countries.
Now it is obvious that one unity of culture is that of the people
who live together and speak the same language : because speaking
the same language means thinking, and feeling, and having
emotions, rather differently from people who use a different
language. But the cultures of different peoples do affect each
other : in the world of the future it looks as if every part of the
world would affect every other part. I have suggested earlier, that
the cultures of the different countries of Europe have in the past
derived very great benefit from their influence upon each other.
I have suggested that the national culture which isolates itself
voluntarily
, or the national culture which is cut off from others by
circumstances which it cannot control, suffers from this isolation.
Also, that the country which receives culture from abroad, without having anything to give in return, and the country which aims to impose its culture on another, without accepting anything in
return, will both suffer from this lack of reciprocity.
There is something more than a general exchange of culture
influences, however. You cannot even attempt to trade equally
with every other nation : there will be some who need the kind of
goods that you produce, more than others do, and there will be
some who produce the goods you need yourselves, and others
who do not. So cultures of people speaking different languages can
be more or less closely related : and sometimes so closely related
that we can speak of their having a common culture. Now when
we speak of 'European culture', we mean the identities which we
can discover in the various national cultures ; and of course even
within Europe, some cultures arc more closely related than others.
Also, one culture within a group of cultures can be closely related,
on different sides, to two cultures which are not closely related to
each other. Your cousins are not all cousins of each other, for
some are on the father's side and some on the mother's. Now, just
as I have refused to consider the culture of Europe simply as the
sum of a number of unrelated cultures in the same area, so I
refused to separate the world into quite unrelated cultural groups ;
I refused to draw any absolute line between East and West,
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.
between Europe and Asia. There are, however, certain common
features in Europe, vhich make it. possible to speak of a European
culture. What are they ?
The dominant force in creating a common culture between
peoples each of which has its distinct culture, is religion. Please do
not, at this point, make a mistake in anticipating my meaning.
This is not a religious talk, and I am not setting out to convert
anybody. I am simply stating a fact. I am not so much concerned
with the communion of Christian believers today ; I am talking
about the common tradition of Christianity which has made
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