PATTERNS OF CULTURE
of sexual and child-rearing adjustments. Marriage in each
case must be understood in relation to other traits to
which it has become assimilated, and we should not run
into the mistake of thinking that ‘marriage’ can be under-
|| stood in the two cases by the same set of ideas. We must
allow for the different components which have been built
up into the resulting trait.
We greatly need the ability to analyze traits of our own
cultural heritage into their several parts. Our discussions
of the social order would gain in clarity if we learned to
understand in this way the complexity of even our sim-
plest behaviour. Racial differences and prestige preroga-
tives have so merged among Anglo-Saxon peoples that we
fail to separate biological racial matters from our most
socially conditioned prejudices. Even among nations as
nearly related to the Anglo-Saxons as the Latin peoples,
such prejudices take different forms, so that, in Spanish-
colonized countries and in British colonies racial differ-
ences have not the same social significance. Christianity
and the position of women, similarly, are historically inter-
related traits, and they have at different times interacted
very differently. The present high position of women in
Christian countries is no more a 'result' of Christianity
than was Origen's coupling of woman with the deadly
temptations. These interpenetrations of traits occur and
disappear, and the history of culture is in considerable
degree a history of their nature and fates and associations.
But the genetic connection we so easily see in a complex
trait and our horror at any disturbance of its interrela-
tionships is largely illusory. The diversity of the possible
combinations is endless, and adequate social orders can
be built indiscriminately upon a great variety of these
foundations.