The two notions of culture and civilization are presented both synchronic and diachronic, in order to reveal the intrinsic relations they establish with one another and with the society and their main contextual features. They are delineated along two main characteristics conferred by the human behaviour in different eras of the society: the universality and their meaning and value. Although they perform and exist inseparable intermingled throughout the entire human history, the exacerbated instrumentality of civilization could, due its social and cultural technology, subjugate the vitality of culture, which tremendous consequences for the future of human species.