ABSTRACT
Cultural tradition may not only be segregated within an isolated society and its power of development become paralysed by the fixation of custom, it can also be segregated and sterilised by being confined to a class within the social aggregate. Civilisation is commonly thought of as an advanced state of culture differing merely in degree from one which is more backward. The development of civilisation is not, accordingly, a gradual transition out of lower forms of culture, but a revolution from a state of social equality to one of social inequality. Civilisation is the fact of that distribution of power, which is non-existent in lower phases of social development. Over and above the primitive irrationalism which seeks to circumvent inacceptable facts by self-suggestion, over and above the despotfism of tradition which imposes conformity, the human means of adaptation by rational intelligence are deflected from their function by an even more potent force.
