Mauss’s denial that there is any such thing as natural behaviour is confusing.-It falsely poses the relation ‘between nature and culture. Here I seek to identify a natural: tendency to express situations of a certain kind in an appropriate bodily style. In so far as it is unconscious, in so far as it is obeyed universally in all cultures, the tendency is natural. It is generated in response to a perceived social situation, but. the latter must always come clothed in its local history and culture. Therefore the natural expression is culturally determined. I am merely relating what has long been well known of literary style to the total bodily style. Roland Barthes gives a contemporary description of style as a non-verbal channel of meaning.