Toynbee argues that relations can become especially uncomfortable when two social groups have become partly similar but still perceive an underlying difference in status or culture. In his example, a group that has adopted some of another class’s customs may expect the remaining distinction to be treated as irrelevant, while both sides continue to recognise it privately. The resulting tension comes less from difference itself than from disagreement over whether that difference still matters.

He contrasts this with encounters between groups that make no claim to similarity. In such cases, he suggests, each side may behave more openly because neither is required to pretend that distinctions have disappeared. The passage uses class relations as an analogy for contact between civilisations and raises broader questions about assimilation, status and authenticity. Its language about a “cultivated class” also reflects the hierarchical social assumptions of Toynbee’s period rather than an established sociological rule.

Full quotation

“This phenomenon in the relationships between people of different civilisations is a commonplace in those between individuals of different classes in the same society. A cultivated class, for example, finds most difficulty in getting on with another which has acquired part—but only part—of its culture and customs, and which seeks on this account to establish the convention that no class distinction is there, when both parties are secretly aware of its presence in its intercourse with members of one which makes no pretensions to similarity. In this relationship both parties can be themselves, and they can each enjoy the experience of discovering the other’s distinctive qualities, without the discomfort of detecting insincerity in his attitude and their own.”