A philosophy of culture begins with the assumption that the world of human culture is not a mere aggregate of loose and detached facts. It seeks to understand these facts as a system, as an organic whole. For an empirical or historical view it would seem to be enough to collect the data of human culture. Here we are interested in the breadth of human life. We are engrossed in a study of the particular phenomena in their richness and variety we enjoy the polychromy and the polyphony of man ' s nature. But a philosophical analysis sets itself a different task. Its starting point and its working hypothesis are embodied in the conviction that the varied and seemingly dispersed rays may be gathered together and brought into a common focus. The facts here are reduced to forms, and these forms themselves are supposed to possess an inner unity. But have we been able to prove this essential point? Did not all our individual analyses show us just the opposite? For we have had to stress all along the specific character and structure of the various symbolic forms--of myth, language, art, religion, history, science. Bearing in mind this aspect of our investigation we may perhaps feel inclined to favor the converse thesis, the thesis of the discontinuity and radical heterogeneity of human culture. From a merely ontological or metaphysical point of view it would be very difficult indeed to refute this thesis. But for a critical philosophy the problem assumes another face. Here we are under no obligation to prove the substantial unity of man. Man is no longer considered as a simple sub stance which exists in itself and is to be known by itself. His unity is conceived of as a functional unity. Such a unity does not presuppose a homogeneity of the various elements of which it consists. Not merely does it admit of, it even requires, a multiplicity and multiformity of its constituent parts, for this is dialectic unity, a coexistence of contraries. 'Men do not understand,' said Heraclitus, 'how that which is torn in different directions comes into accord with itself-harmony in contrariety, as in the case of the bow and the lyre.' In order to demonstrate such a harmony we need not prove the identity or similarity of the different forces by which it is produced. The various forms of human culture are not held together by an identity in their nature, but by a conformity in their nature, by a conformity in their fundamental task. If there is an equipoise in human culture it can only be described as a dynamic, not as a static equilibrium it is the result of a struggle between opposing forces. This struggle does not exclude that 'hidden harmony' which, according to Heraclitus, 'is better than that which is obvious'. We learn from the beginning of the text that a philosophy of culture ______.