General Training
It was the habit of an American statesman who rose to the highest official
position, to prepare himself in advance upon every question which was
likely to come before Congress by thorough and prolonged study. His
vacations and his leisure hours during the session were spent in
familiarising himself with pending questions in all their aspects. He was
not content with a mastery of the details of a measure; he could not rest
until he had mastered the principle behind it, had studied it in the light
of history, and in its relation to our political institutions and
character. His voluminous note-books show the most thorough study, not
only of particular measures and questions as they came before the country
from time to time, but of a wide range of related subjects. He once said
that for every speech he had delivered he had prepared five; and the
statement throws clear light on a career of extraordinary growth and
success.
For the characteristic of this career was its steady expansion along
intellectual lines. It was exceptional in its disclosure of that inward
energy which carries the man who possesses it over all obstacles, enables
him to master adverse conditions, to secure education without means and
culture without social opportunity; but it was not unexampled in a country
which has seen many men of ultimate distinction emerge from entire
obscurity. Its material success has been paralleled many times; but its
intellectual success has rarely been paralleled. It disclosed inward
distinction; a passion for the best in life and thought; an eager desire
to see things in their largest relations. And so out of conditions which
generally breed the politician the statesman was slowly matured. History,
religion, literature, art were objects of his constant and familiar study;
and he made himself rich in general knowledge as well as in specific
information. This ample background of knowledge of the best which the
world has known and done in all the great fields of its activity gave his
discussions of specific questions breadth, variety, charm, and literary
interest. He brought to the particular measure largeness of view,
dispassionateness of temper, and the philosophic mind; and his work came
to have cultural significance and quality.
Such a career, the record of which may be clearly traced not only in
public history but in a vast mass of preparatory notes and memoranda of
every description, illustrates in a very noble way the importance of that
constant and general preparation which ought to include special
preparation as a landscape includes the individual field. That field may
have great value and ought to have the most careful tillage; but it cannot
be separated, in any just and true vision, from the other fields which it
touches and which run, in unbroken continuity, to the horizon; and this
preparation not only involves the fruitful attitude towards life upon
which comment has been made, but it involves also constant study in many
directions with the definite purpose of enrichment and enlargement. No
kind of knowledge comes amiss in this larger training. History,
literature, art, and science have their different kinds of nurture to
impart, and their different kinds of material to supply; and the wise man
will open his mind to their teaching and his nature to their ripening
touch. The widely accepted idea that a man not only needs nothing more for
a specific task than the specific skill which it demands, but that any
larger skill tends to superficiality, is the product of that tendency to
excessive specialisation which has impaired the harmony of modern
education and dwarfed many men of large native capacity.
In some departments of knowledge and activity the demands are so great on
time and strength that the man who works in them can hardly venture
outside of them without impairing the totality of his achievement; but
even in these cases it is often a question whether too great a price has
not been paid for a narrow and highly specialised skill. There is not only
no conflict between a high degree of technical skill and wide interests
and knowledge; there is a clear and definite connection between the two.
For in all those higher forms of work which involve not only expert
workmanship but a spiritual content of some kind, the worker must bring to
his task not only skill but ideas, force, personality, temperament; and,
sound workmanship being secured, his rank will depend not on specific
expertness, but on the depth, energy, and splendour of the personality
which the work reveals.
Creative men feel the necessity of many interests and of wide activities.
Their natures require rich pasturage; they must be fed from many sources.
They secure the skill of the specialist, but they never accept his
limitations of interest and work. The clearer their vision of the unity of
all forms of human action and expression, the deeper their need of
studying at first hand these different forms of action and expression.
Goethe did not choose that comprehensiveness of temper which led him into
so many fields; it was the necessity of a mind vast in its range and deep
in its insight. Herbert Spencer has done work which discloses at every
point the tireless industry and rigorous method of the specialist; but the
field in which he has concentrated his energy has included practically the
development of the universe and of human life and society. Mr. Gladstone
was a master of all the details, skill, and knowledge of his profession;
but how greatly he gained in power by the breadth of his interests, and
what charm there was in the disclosure of the man of religious enthusiasm,
of ardent devotion, and of ripe culture behind the politician and
statesman!
Byron knew the secrets of the art which he practiced with such splendid
success as few men have known them. His command of the lyric form was
complete. And yet who that loves his work has not felt that lack in it
which Matthew Arnold had in mind when he said that with all his genius
Byron had the ideas of a country squire? The poet was a master of the
technique of his art; he had rare gifts of passion and imagination; but he
lacked breadth, variety, and depth of thought. There is a monotony of
theme and of motive in his compositions. Tennyson, on the other hand,
exalted his technical skill by the reality and richness of his culture.
Nothing which contains and reveals the human spirit was alien to him. He
did not casually touch a great range of themes; he studied them patiently,
thoroughly, persistently. Religion, philosophy, science, literature,
history were his familiar friends; he lived with them, and they so
completely confided to him their richest truths that he became their
interpreter. So wide were his interests and so varied his studies that he
came to be one of those men in whom the deeper currents of an age flow
together and from whom the tumult of angry and contending currents issues
in a great harmonious tide. No modern man has prepared himself more
intelligently for specific excellence by special training, and no man has
more splendidly illustrated the necessity of combining the expertness of
the skilled workman with the insight, power, and culture of a great
personality. A life which issues in an art so beautiful in form and so
significant in content reveals both the necessity of constant and general
preparation, and the identity of great working power with great spiritual
energy.