The mere enumerations of these various aspects of life, however, does not constitute culture. A culture is less precise. It can mean the forms of traditional behavior which are characteristics of a given society, or of a group of societies, or of a certain race, or of a certain area, or of a certain period of time. It is significant because it reveals relationships which are important to us due to their connection with our values. The focus of attention on reality under the guidance of values which lend it significance and the selection and ordering of the phenomena which are thus affected in the light of their cultural significance is entirely different from the analysis of reality in terms of laws and general concepts.
Culture is neither simply juxtaposed to nor simply superposed over life.
In a way, culture substitutes itself to life, in another way culture uses and transforms life to realise a synthesis of a higher order. And there is perhaps no better definition of culture than that it is the capacity for constantly expanding the range and accuracy of one's perception of meanings. When we look at a people in the degree of abstraction which the idea of culture implies, we cannot but be touched and impressed by what we see, we cannot help being awed by something mysterious at work, some crative power which seems to transcend any particular act or habit or quality that may be observed. But he also sees the self as set against the culture, struggling against it, having been from the first reluctant to enter it. It is indeed in the area of these complex transformations that the signifying system is itself developed and must be analyzed.