The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical EditionVol. 7: A European Society, 1947-1953

Notes towards the Definition of Culture

London: Faber & Faber, 1962. Pp. 124. ¹

contents

preface to the 1962 edition

preface to the first edition

introduction

i. the three senses of “culture”

ii. the class and the élite

iii. unity and diversity: the region

iv. unity and diversity: sect and cult

v. a note on culture and politics

vi. notes on education and culture: and conclusion

appendix – the unity of european culture

These “Notes” began to take shape towards the end of the Second World War. When it was suggested that they should be reprinted in “paper back” form, I re-read them for the first time for some years, expecting that I should have to qualify some of the opinions expressed herein. I found to my surprise that I had nothing to retract, and nothing upon which I was disposed to enlarge. One footnote, on page 70 [7.237], I have re-written: it may still be that I have tried to say too much too briefly, and that the notion needs further elaboration. Here and there I have tried to improve a sentence without altering the sense. I owe to a friend, the late Richard Jennings, the correction of a spelling which gives a false etymology ( autarchycorrected to autarkyon page 116 [7.272]). ³

I have lately had occasion to review my literary criticism over forty years and account for developments and changes of opinion, and I propose one day to submit my social criticism to the same examination. ⁴ For as a man matures, and acquires greater experience of the world, the years may be expected to bring about even greater changes in his views on social and political matters than in his tastes and opinions in the field of literature. I should not now, for instance, call myself a “royalist” tout court, as I once did: ⁵ I would say that I am in favour of retaining the monarchy in every country in which a monarchy still exists. But that question, as well as others on which my views, or the way in which I would express my views, have changed, or developed, is not touched upon in the present essay.

t. s. e. October, 1961.

This essay was begun four or five years ago. A preliminary sketch, under the same title, was published in three successive numbers of The New English Weekly. From this sketch took shape a paper called “Cultural Forces in the Human Order,” which appeared in the volume Prospect for Christendom, edited by Mr. Maurice B. Reckitt (Faber: 1945): a revision of this paper forms the first chapter of the present book. The second chapter is a revision of a paper published in The New English Reviewin October, 1945. ⁶

I have added as an appendix the English text of three broadcast talks to Germany which have appeared under the title of “Die Einheit der Europäischen Kultur” (Carl Habel Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin: 1946).

Throughout this study, I recognise a particular debt to the writings of Canon V. A. Demant, Mr. Christopher Dawson, and the late Professor Karl Mannheim. It is the more necessary to acknowledge this debt in general, since I have not in my text referred to the first two of these writers, and since my debt to the third is much greater than appears from the one context in which I discuss his theory.

I have also profited by reading an article by Mr. Dwight Macdonald in Politics(New York) for February 1944, entitled “A Theory of ‘Popular Culture’”; and an anonymous critique of this article in the issue of the same periodical for November 1946. ⁷ Mr. Macdonald’s theory strikes me as the best alternativeto my own that I have seen.

t. s. e. January, 1948.

I think our studies ought to be all but purposeless. They want to be pursued with chastity, like mathematics. – Acton. ⁸

My purpose in writing the following chapters is not, as might appear from a casual inspection of the table...