For culture exists only if man draws into his development something that is external to him. Cultivation is certainly a state of the soul, but one that is reached only by means of the use of purposely created objects. This externality and objectivity is not to be understood only in a spatial sense. The forms of comportment, the refinement of taste expressed in judgments, the education of moral tact which make an individual a delightful member of society—they are all cultural formations in which the perfection of the individual is routed through real and ideal spheres outside of the self. The perfection does not remain a purely immanent process, but is consummated in a unique adjustment and teleological interweaving of subject and object. … Thus we comprehend why very inner-oriented persons, who shun every detour of the soul into the surrounding world in the course of seeking their own perfection, can feel hatred for culture.

DEFINE: Defines culture as necessarily routed through external objects, not merely an immanent soul-state.

XREF: Echoes Simmel's broader sociology of objective versus subjective culture, and anticipates alienation critiques.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 555