Social origins are lost behind the veil of the past, but the general scheme of culture is the same everywhere. There is first some degree of practical knowledge and development of the industrial arts. Here are included kinds of food, clothing and shelter, tools and techniques, means of transport, rights of property and barter, and forms of personal service. These have primarily to do with the satisfaction of physical needs, especially food and security. There is, secondly, some plan for controlling sex expression and securing the perpetuation of the species. Here are included the sex mores, marriage customs, the family, and the rights and duties of kinship groups in relation to each other. There is, thirdly, language and communication. There is, fourthly, an enormous range of ideas and practices regarding the nature of the world and man's relation thereto. Here are included myth, magic, religion, medical lore and, latterly, scientific knowledge and research. A fifth aspect of culture includes all those manners and customs regulating the private relations of individuals, such as ceremonial forms, private morals, voluntary clubs and associations, play and sports. Sixthly, we may include under ideas and practices regulating the public relations of individuals those ethical rules that are believed essential to group welfare, and all juridical and political customs, forms, agencies, and institutions. There is, seventhly, all expression of aesthetic emotions and interests, such as personal adornment, drawing, painting, sculpture, music, and architecture. And, finally, the arts and traditions of war and diplomacy. These constitute the universal culture complexes. Each and all vary from culture to culture, though all are found in every one. Moreover, they are inclusive of all that men anywhere have devised by way of cultural device.

Though origins are irretrievably lost, we are not without some insight into some of the principles and conditions that have guided social evolution. Early cultures are purely and simply adaptations to environment. From very early stages this environment included not only physical habitat but also the spirit world. Later the political environment became highly important, while with advanced cultures we see adaptation to the conditions of world trade and world politics. We may conceive primitive man, like ourselves, trying, by trial and error, various ways of satisfying his wants, always seeking, with the least effort, to avoid pain and increase pleasure. The more successful ways tended to be adopted and so to become the folkways of the group. One could, without distortion, describe this as a process of selection among variates. That a full set of culture traits, as outlined above, was attained in the very remote past is shown by the fact that the most primitive races known have cultures which, in one or more respects, are highly elaborate. Since culture is man's device, he cherishes it; among savages, even apparently trivial matters are often imbued with a ceremonial Tightness which makes departure from them dangerous and sinful. The primary reason for this is that a large part of the folkways become mores - that is, they become imbued with a quality of sacredness because believed essential to group welfare. Age gives authority among primitive minds; and the more ancient a custom is, the more it is believed entitled to sacredness. Back of the mores are placed awe-inspiring and fearsome mandates of the gods with which primitive man peoples his world. Henceforth they become inviolate; their Tightness and adequacy are no longer proper subjects for critical thought. Every culture thus resists, in greater or less degree, invasion by alien cultural elements, partly because it cultivates in the group a strong sentiment of superiority and partly because it tends to become a homogeneous whole. Alien elements, therefore, set up cultural conflicts which tend to affect all parts of the cultural scheme. Isolation deepens cultural homogeneity, fixity, and distinctiveness. For this reason, certain primitive peoples may well have lived for thousands of years with little or no cultural change. The mores set the patterns of approved thought, of"right thinking," at all times and places; few, even among modern well-educated persons, ever think or feel except in those terms inculcated in them by their mores.

If these reflections are sound, one seems warranted in drawing two inferences. One is that age is not a useful criterion of the validity of a doctrine or belief. The more ancient such tenets are, the closer they approach the original innocence and ignorance of the race. The other is that the doctrine of relativity applies to all that relates to human institutions. Ethical rules relating to sex, family, property, public agencies, and private rights and duties are all relative to time and place and must be judged, not by absolute principles, or by the light and darkness of our own culture, but by their fitness as means of adaptation in the culture where they are found.

Slow as cultural change has been during most of human history, there nevertheless has been change. It results from whatever produces an internal crisis or external contact or conflict of one group or its customs with another. Those eight or ten periods which have produced so-called civilizations since the first arose in the ancient east have all been periods of contacts multiplied through trade, immigration, and travel, and conflicts in the form of war and conquest. Such conditions set up processes of selection, elimination, and recasting in the whole cultural scheme. Probably the basic changes are those in industry and war. These touch closely the perennial needs for food and security. Economic activities are less imbued with inviolate taboos than are most others; they are more nearly commonplace and hence more readily modifiable in the light of experience and rational thought. Methods of warfare are subjected to the selective action of competitive value. Changes in economic life especially tend to exert a modifying influence on all other aspects of the associated culture. There is a constant "strain toward consistency"1 among the mores. New ways are brought under old sanctions in the same way that Christianity devoutly approves both a holy war and world peace, or first opposed the charging of interest and later embraced the capitalist economics, only to be transformed thereby.2 These transformations of culture often have a quality of rationality attributed to them that does not properly belong to them. The judgments of a social group no doubt represent all the powers of reason it can muster, but the premises of thought are mainly derived from the mores, and the action of reason is guided by the overpowering emotions associated with ethical, religious, and philosophical principles. The facts which would expose reality are obscure, while only proximate ends can be envisaged. The resulting adjustments are, therefore, hit and miss affairs. Abundant illustrations may be found for modern times in Herbert Spencer's writings - especially in his 'The Sins of Legislators" - showing that the unexpected results of laws often greatly exceed the expected; in Ber-trand Russell's exposition of "the harm that good men do"; and in the thousand and one instances in the evolution of western culture where the distant consequences of an 1 Sumner, Wm. G., "Folkways," Ginn & Company, Boston, 1915. 2Tawney, R. H., "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism," Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, 1926; Max Weber, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," trans, by Talcott Parsons, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1930.