Civilization Versus Culture

CIVILIZATION VERSUS CULTURE R. M. MACIVER T HE price we pay for being civilized is that we live in a peculiarly unstable world. The world of nature is capricious and unpredictable in detail, but beneath its caprice there is a fundamental rhyth1n and regularity. The world of man offers no such assurance . It is·as restless as his own spirit. Let us imagine for a moment that the only changes we had to face were those of the established order .of nature, of the organic life that passes from youth to age, of the periodic sequence of day and night, of spring and fall, of the changing moons which divide the Indian year. Let us imagine that there were no industrial and social revolutions , no scientific discoveries, no disturbing inventions, no complicated systems of finance and politics which crack and are repaired, which break and are replaced, no challenge of new creeds and new philosophies which upturn the order of our thought. Let us, in brief, think ourselves back into a 1nore primitive or a more static society. In such a society, whatever its disadvantages, men have the sense of being at home. Their individual lives tnay be subject to grievous hazards, but their mental world is secure. They may be utterly 1gnorant of the causes of things, but they are never at a loss to explain them. Whatever befalls, they suffer no inward bewilderment . Whatever nature does to them, in spite of physical and spiritual terrors and all the tragedies of life, they are still her believing children. -In such a world the arts and crafts, the rules and techniques by aid of which men satisfy their needs, are all embedded in the social system. The bow and the spear are not 1nere utilitarian instru1nents by which 3!6 CIVILIZATION VERSUS CULTURE 111en hunt ·animals or :fight enemies, they are also the objects of tradition and ceremonial, sy1nbolic objects around which myths and 1nagics gather. The canoe is not merely a means of transportation. It is constructed and utilized according to the rules of the tribal lore, with appropriate rites no less than with practical skill. Every object has in short a social as well as a technical significance . It belongs to the total culture of the community, harmoniously set within the order of its folkways. A simiJar statement can be made, in degree at least, concerning the more permanent utilitarian institutions of our own society. The mode in which we eat our dinner is · not determined by the pangs of hunger. It is the product of our social life, elaborated into manners, surrounded vvith taboos, dignified by custom-determined apparatus, made ceremonial by a prescribed succession of courses and regulated meal-honrs, and on more formal occasions by appropriate dress and order of precedence. Again, the institution of marriage does not stand by itself in a bare simplicity determined by the biological needs of sex or the social imperative of reproduction. It is a ceremonial affair, regulated not only by law but by a whole system of cultural standards, many of which have no obvious relation to the primary functions which the institution serves. The difference between ourselves and the primitive peoples is that this infusion of cultural significance permeates the whole apparatus of their lives whereas with us large portions of our civilization are sheer unadorned utilitarian objects and activities, devoid of any significance beyond their direct instrumental function.. To this latter category belong, for example} most of our mechanisms and modes of production with their concomitant systems of industrial organizati~n. The cement-mixer, the gasoline tank, and the steam THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY shovel have no cultural meanings. They embody no traditions, they are attended by no rituals, they are never wreathed with garlands and they are not socially enriched with associations and memories which relieve their stark utility; nor do cultural amenities control the work-a-day routine or the division of labour within our factories. We may express the difference by saying that in primitive life culture and civilization are harmonized, whereas in modern society they are in part unreconciled and antithetical. I must here apologize for using these terms culture and...