any set of cultural patterns which can, in the literal sense of the It is impossible to think of word, be referred to society as such. There are no facts of political organization or family life or religious belief or magical procedure or technology or aesthetic endeavor which are coterminous of society. The fact that John Do is with society or with any mechanically defined segment registered in some municipal office as a member of such and such a ward only define him with reference to those cultural patterns which are conveniently assembled under "municipal administration." The psychological and the cultural realities of John Doe's registration may vary enormously. If John Doe is paying taxes on a house which is likely to keep him a resident of the ward for the rest of his life and if he also happens to be in personal contact with a number of ward classification may easily become a symbol of his orientation in his municipal officers, world of meanings which is comparable to his definition as a father or as a frequent participant in olf Ward membership, for such an individual, may easily precipitate itself into many visible forms of behavior. The ward system and its functions, real or supposed, may for such a John Doe assume an impersonal and objective reality which is comparable to the objective reality of rain or sunshine But there is sure to be another John Doe, perhaps a neighbor of the first, who does not even know that the town is divided into wards and that he is enrolled in one of them and that he has certain duties and privileges connected with such enrollment. While the municipal office classifies these two John Does in exactly the same way and while there is a theory that ward organization is an entirely impersonal matter to which all members of a given society must adjust, it is rather obvious that such a manner of speech is a metaphor. The cultures of these two individuals are as significantly different, on the given level and scale, as though one were the representative of Italian culture and the other of Turkish culture. Such differen ces of culture never seem as significant as they really are; partly because in the workaday world of experience they [do] not emerge into sharp consciousness, partly because the economy of interpersonal relations and the friendly ambiguities of language reinterpret for each individual all behavior in the terms of those meanings which are relevant to his own life. The concept of culture, as it is handled by the cultural anthropologist, is necessarily something of a statistical fiction and it easy to see that the social psychologist and the psychiatrist must eventually induce him to carefully reconsider his terms. It is not the concept culture which is subtly misleading but the metaphysical locus to which culture is generally assigned. Clearly, not all cultural traits are of equal importance for the development of personality. Some modes of behavior and attitude are pervasive and compelling beyond the powe of even the most isolated individual to withstand or reject. Such patterns would be, for example, the symbolisms of affection or hostility; the overtones of emotionally significant words; certain fundamental implications of the economic order; much, but by no means all, of those understandings and procedures which constitute the law of the land. Patterns of this kind ar compulsive for the vast majority of human beings but the degree of compulsi is in no relation to the official significance of these patterns. Thus, the use of an offensi word may be of negligible importance from a legal standpoint but may, psychologically considered, have a repelling potency that far transcends the significance of so serious a behavior pattern as, say, embezzlement. A culture as a whole cannot be said to be adequately known for purposes of