ABSTRACT
We enter a semantic jungle. Is any man here brave enough to define 'culture', so we may know what we're talking about? The world is differently understood by the anthropologist, the historian, the sociologist, the psychologist, the theologian, the aesthete, the athlete, the economist, the bacteriologist and the farmer. I once shared a platform on 'Culture in Canada' with a learned gentleman who wanted only to talk about the structure of family life in Quebec —which left me with quite a lot of territory to cover. I did, however, learn my lesson—which is to stake out a limited claim of one's own and let who will explore further. I therefore propose to confine myself in this exploration to one commonly accepted meaning of 'culture': that part of a society's life-style manifested in the arts and letters. No one should be misled by this circumscription into regarding all our social activities—sports, technology, religion, lovemaking, politics and other bad habits—as anything but facets of a whole.
