ADVERTISEMENTS:
Mclver advances the following points of difference between civilization and culture:
(1) Civilization can be measured according to a precise standard, but culture cannot be so measured or ascertained. Thus, there is no standard directly to compare the finesse of any manufactured product with that of a painting.
(2) Civilization is always advancing, from the primitive to the modern, and one can speak of a distinct march of civilization ahead. Culture knows of no such march. A civilization may be highly cultured though it is ancient; and a modern civilization may be gross and unaesthetic.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
(3) Civilization can be handed down from generation to generation, but one would not say that culture can be transfused in a hereditary manner. Therefore, it follows that civilization can be borrowed or transplanted as, for instance, the white man in the recent centuries extended civilization to the colonies. Culture is not transferable in this sense. Even if the raising of civilization standards somewhat changes the culture of a society, the mixing become a mere ‘hybrid’ culture a type of a pseudo-culture.
(4) Though civilization itself is not culture, the objects of any civilization may have a cultural aspect. Culture alone cannot find expression without a medium, and civilization becomes the medium of its expression. If civilization reaches a standard of higher attainment, the production of bare necessities even can be combined with principles of aesthetics. Hence, all human achievements tend to go by a valuation and not by mere utility or exigency.
Once civilization helps the discovery of a mechanical tool for satisfying human wants, culture comes in to give to it a shape of refinement. Thus, man with his sense of valuation not only wants an automobile, a radio set or even a durable residential building; he looks for constant improvement in the expression of each of these wants that would satisfy his aesthetic sensibilities.