"Thanks then be to nature for the unsociableness, the spiteful competition of vanity, the insatiate desires for power and gain." These quotations, selected from Kant's little essay on an "Idea for a Universal History," are precious for understanding two of the most characteristic traits of subsequent German thought, the distinctions made between Society and the State and between Civilization and Culture. Much of the trouble which has been experienced in respect to the recent use of _Kultur_ might have been allayed by a knowledge that _Kultur_ has little in common with the English word "culture" save a likeness in sound. _Kultur_ is sharply antithetical to civilization in its meaning. Civilization is a natural and largely unconscious or involuntary growth. It is, so to speak, a by-product of the needs engendered when people live close together. It is external, in short. Culture, on the other, is deliberate and conscious. It is a fruit not of men's natural motives, but of natural motives which have been transformed by the inner spirit. Kant made the distinction when he said that Rousseau was not so far wrong in preferring savagery to civilization, since civilization meant simply social decencies and elegancies and outward proprieties, while morality, that is, the rule of the end of Reason, is necessary to culture. And the real significance of the term "culture" becomes more obvious when he adds that it involves the slow toil of education of the Inner Life, and that the attainment of culture on the part of an individual depends upon long effort by the community to which he belongs. It is not primarily an individual trait or possession, but a conquest of the community won through devotion to "duty."