Culture is the final product of a long evolutionary ascent of human beings from primitive, physical struggle for individual survival to cooperative, refined, mentally-directed, mutually-beneficial relationship.
Civilized life matures as culture as long history ripens into civilization. Though culture is a very common conception, rarely do we think about how it came about. The physically strong man who is industrious lives in affluence. His strength naturally offers protection to those around, even when he does not exercise it.
This is the process of man's ascent, rising from the physical to the mental. Such a progress is substantial. The progress in the descent - from mind to the body - is of a greater value. Mind imposes order on the chaotic vital, tames the brute body into quiet. Body and vital learn more from the ideas of Mind than from their own experience. Also they must have enough experience in their own planes to benefit by the descending ideas from the Mind.
Spiritual skills are values in life. When they are brought down to the lower planes, they energize the faculties of mind, vital and body. As the ascent prepares each level to rise to the next, this descent of higher values initiates a process of maturity in the mind, emotions, nerves and even the body.
Beyond these parts of being - mind, vital, body, spirit - there is the Being which makes Man the embodied being. Anything spills over the parts of the being only when that part is saturated. Then it descends on the next lower plane and is more ready to receive from the higher plane or planes. Patience, endurance, wisdom, magnanimity, hospitality, loyalty, integrity are symptoms of culture. Unselfish living of strong natures that have received constant external experience results in culture collecting in the depths of being. This is the essential culture far different from the cultural habits commonly referred to which are social behaviors pertaining to that society.