Everyone nowadays has something to say about Culture. Even the
politicians have heard of it, and some morning we may read in our
newspapers that one of them is of opinion that there is some meaning in
the term. Naturally enough we have all of us for some time been groping
after the thing itself. The Time-Spirit is like a skilful driver of
sheep. He may have considerable trouble with his flock, but, thanks
to his unruffled intelligence and the ceaseless exertions of his dog
Genius, he brings them all in in time for the market. It is now almost a
century since the Idea of Culture took definite shape in the mind of a
single man, and ever since then the number of its followers has kept on
increasing, until at last everyone, as I remarked, has now something to
say about it. If, however, one enquires of people, not what they _think_
of Culture, (For everyone from the Vatican Œcumenical Council[11] to
the author of “In Memoriam”[12] is agreed as to the advantage of it),
but what culture _is_, one may go far for a satisfactory answer. Women
are growing dissatisfied with the sphere of their work. What is it that
they need? “More breadth of culture,” answers the Prince of Tennyson’s
Princess readily enough, “more breadth of culture!” And it will be said
that it is easy to see that what the Prince means is, that women should
have thrown open to them the education that has so far been the monopoly
of men. But is this Culture? is this the whole truth about it?—simply the
giving to the many—to women, to the Middle-class and to the People—what
is the education of the few? would that man in whose mind the Idea of
Culture first took definite shape have been satisfied with the sight
of ubiquitous Harrows and Etons and Grammar Schools of Melbourne and
Geelong? There can be no doubt but that such a sight would have pleased,
but it certainly would not have satisfied him. “Schools,” he would
have said, “are of high importance, but what is taught in them is of
importance still higher.”
And so we come back again to our question as to what Culture _is_ with a
sense that the ready answers to it are only half answers. Now everyone
has heard of Goethe, and everyone has read some of his writings—“Faust,”
at any rate—and, as it is to Goethe that we owe the Idea of Culture (as
indeed most things that are really good in the sphere of modern thought),
it would be best to at once quote his own words on the matter, and see
if we cannot find a definition, or at any rate a description, of Culture
that shall satisfy us. Poetry, however, does not exactly lend itself to
definitions of such things as this, or even to descriptions. In Faust
himself the idea may be more or less, as they say, incarnated, but we
plain practical people, who like things put as much in black and white
as may be, have some difficulty in these matters, and would far rather
hear of them in simple English prose which means what it says and says
what it means, than in poetry (and particularly German poetry) which
seems to us to do exactly the reverse. Well, then, let us turn away from
this parabolic Goethe for a little, and see if we cannot find someone who
shall be his expounder to us. And who else should this be, at any rate
in this case, than he whom the newspapers like to call the Apostle of
Culture, Mr. Matthew Arnold? Let us go to Mr. Matthew Arnold, and say:
“Sir, you are constantly talking about Culture, and you have said many
uncomplimentary things to us all about our want of it. Now would you be
so kind as to tell us precisely what you _mean_ by it? And we warn you
that we are plain practical people who like things put as much in black
and white as may be, and that we have a decidedly poor opinion of your
efforts to make us believe that ‘the Eternal not ourselves that makes for
righteousness’ is the same thing as our ‘loving and intelligent Governor
of the Universe,’ and that it makes no difference to us when we eat our
Christmas goose and plum-pudding whether we believe that we do so because
those shepherds and those Three Kings _did_ come that day to Christ in
the Bethlehem manger, to the accompaniment of an angelic concert, or did
not. We want, Sir, a definition of this Culture of yours, or, if you
cannot give us that (But, really now, you are so clever at definitions
that we shall be quite disappointed if you cannot!), then you must give
us a good description of it, so that we may be able to arrive at a proper
decision about it.” Then an expression of bland patience would cross
Mr. Arnold’s countenance, as he sat in his study chair, listening with
that “native modesty” of which he has told us all, to the words of our
curious foreman; and, after a short pause, he would perhaps answer:
“Gentlemen, I am much honoured by this deputation and inquiry. Long ago
in some remarks of mine on translating Homer.... But I will refer you to
a more recent period. A new and revised edition of a little book of mine
called ‘Literature and Dogma’ has just been issued in a cheap form by
Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. You will find that in the Preface to it the
following words occur, which I venture to think may, on investigation,
be found to answer the question with which I am now honoured. But, as
you possibly may not remember it, (for I cannot expect you, any more
than myself, to be always studying my works), I will quote it to you.
‘_Culture_,’ I said (Culture in italics)—‘_Culture_, knowing the best
that has been thought and known in the world.’ I can give no better
definition than this. ‘True Culture,’ I say again, ‘true Culture implies
not only knowledge, but right tact and justness of judgment, forming
themselves by and with judgment.’ Or, yet again: ‘Culture is _reading_’
(Reading in italics), ‘but reading with a purpose to guide it, and with
system.’”—And with this, and a renewal of compliments on both sides, our
jury bows itself out, and presently the sound of the closing hall-door
mounts up to the silent chamber.
“But an awful pleasure bland
spreading o’er the Poet’s face,
when the sound climbs near his seat,
the encircled library sees;
as he lets his lax right hand
which the lightnings doth embrace
sink upon his mighty knees.”
This, then, it seems, is Culture—_knowing the best that has been thought
and known in the world—not only knowledge, but right tact and justness of
judgment, forming themselves by and with judgment_—reading, _but reading
with a purpose to guide it, and with system_. And is not this something
like what Goethe meant in that enigmatic sentence of his, which we have
heard so often quoted by people who understood it as much as we did:
“Vom Halben zu entwöhnen; Im Ganzen, Guten, Schönen resolut zu leben.”
“I resolved to wean myself from halves, and to live for the Whole, the
Good, the Beautiful.” But even now, even now that we know what it is (And
after all, we say, what much more is it than saying that we ought to try
for the best article, and not rest content with anything but the best
article?), wherein are we, we plain practical people with our attachment
to black and white, helped to the attainment of it? Culture, we are told,
is reading, but reading with a purpose to guide it and with system. The
purpose, it is presumed, is attainment, but what is the system? We are
to have knowledge, and not only knowledge but right tact and justness of
judgment, forming themselves by and with judgment. All very nice, we say,
but how are we to get them? You say to a man who hobbles, “Run:” he is
quite as capable of saying it as you are. Either show him how to run, or
hold your tongue!—unless it be that he thinks he _is_ running, and even
then it seems useless enough to undeceive him without you can teach him
how to do what he now thinks he is. What, then, is this system of which
you speak? what is the receipt for it? is it a system possible to _us_?
Well, I really have not the courage to go and face Mr. Arnold again.
Handlers of the lightnings like he is can be so disagreeable when they
please. Where is the joy of figuring in some ludicrous or contemptible
attitude in their writings for the next few hundred years or so? It is
all very well to say that we shall all of us be in our graves presently,
and all equally ignorant of what our descendants may think of us, but the
truth is no one likes to be held up to the nations as a fool or a knave,
and especially if he be both. I see nothing for it but to let the oracle
alone. I for one will have nothing to do with stirring up Phoibos again.
I have done so more than once already, and am too grateful for a whole
hide to tempt the arrows further. We must be our own Oidipous. At most
we can reverently finger the Sibylline leaves, and see if anything of
“pleasant to the eye and good for food” can be extracted therefrom.
To begin with, however, does it not seem best to say at once that, after
all, there is no receipt for not saying and doing foolish things except
not to be foolish? No system in the world will give wings to a worm. On
the other hand, there is really no reason why the descendants of that
worm should not one day navigate the sky; and, as a matter of fact, they
do. Similarly with the stupidest and the most degraded of us, I cannot
see why a single moment should be lost in attempting to better them. The
earth is likely to be inhabitable for the next eight millions of years
or so, it seems, and I am sure that is long enough for us. We need not
be in such a hurry as the Socialists would have us, nor yet creep along
on all fours in the Conservative manner; but we must not, of course,
undervalue either fashion or progress, since both wheels and a drag are
important parts of a carriage in uneven country. But here again, as is
always the case, we are brought face to face with the question, not only
of the wheels and the drag, not only of the carriage itself, and not only
of even the driver of it, but of the end of the journey. “The purpose,”
we said a moment ago in our ready way, “is, it is presumed, attainment,
but what is the system?—Never mind,” we say, “about where we are going
to: let us hear about the carriage we are going in! Let us have Etons and
Harrows and Melbourne and Geelong Grammar Schools everywhere, and then we
shall be alright. Let us resolve to have the best article, and not rest
content with anything but the best article, and that’s all!”
Alas, for the impatience of mankind! In order to _try_ for the best
article, not to say to _have_ it, must we not first know what the best
article _is_? should we not know where we are going to, before we
construct our carriage and purchase our horses? And yet, in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred, are we not content to _go_, and leave more or
less to chance where we are going _to_? do we not waste half our lives in
overcoming difficulties with which we ought to have had nothing to do?
It is so easy to talk and to act: it is so difficult to think, and mould
your words and actions to your thoughts rather than your thoughts to your
words and actions. It is the weary old tale of the more haste and the
less speed, the weary old tale that is for ever new. And yet we will not
listen to it. Sooner than trouble ourselves with the _whys_ of things,
we will throw ourselves with energy into the first _hows_ that present
themselves, and leave the rest to chance, or, as Dr. Moorhouse’s good
“unintelligent orthodox” people say, to God. But nothing real, nothing
lasting, is achieved in this way. Nature does not work in this way: God
does not work in this way. The beasts do and the vast majority of men do,
and that is why, in Hamlet’s words, life is such “an unweeded garden that
grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.” No,
if we are to understand, not only Culture but anything at all, we must
begin at the very beginning: we must learn the _whys_. Take care of the
_whys_, we might say, and the _hows_ will take care of themselves. And
let us not for a moment be deceived by those who tell us that our fathers
got along very well without inquiring into the _whys_, into the causes of
things, and so can we. This is not so. Whatever success has been achieved
has been achieved by a recognition, conscious or unconscious it may be,
of the causes of the thing worked upon. Instead of our fathers having had
any success from their ignorance of causes, or their reliance on good
fortune, they have had success in despite in these, and only so far as
they banished the one and knew how to turn to account the other.
And Culture? what has this to do with Culture? Everything!—In this, as
in so many other cases, we concentrate all our attention on the _how_
and leave the _why_ to take care of itself. “More breadth of Culture,
more breadth of Culture,” cry the Princes and the Priests, and everyone
else, in emulous chorus. But when they are asked what they _mean_ by
Culture—what Culture _is_, then they have no answer ready save one (as
Shelley says),
“pinnacled dim in the intense inane;”
and this sort of thing will, in the end, satisfy no man.
Well, we have heard what Culture _is—knowing the best that has been
thought and known in the world_. But we have been brought up sharply at
the very next step: _Culture is reading, but reading with a purpose to
guide it_. What is the purpose? Attainment. Yes, but _how_? _how_ and
_why_?
But before we try to answer that, let us think a moment whether the
expounder of our parabolic Goethe has given us a definition that is
quite satisfactory. We have nothing to say against his definition of
Culture itself. It expresses Goethe’s “the Whole, the Good and the
Beautiful” perfectly. But what about this second definition? what about
Culture being reading, but reading with a purpose to guide it? Is
this a pure parallel equivalent of the first, or has it something of
a limitation in it? Can we, indeed (supposing us the happy possessors
of a certain purpose and system), achieve a knowledge of the best that
has been thought and known in the world—of the Whole, the Good and the
Beautiful—by reading, and by reading only? is this what Goethe has to
say to us? is this the lesson of Goethe’s life? If it is, why is it that
he lays such stress on the absolute personal experience of things? If
Faust could have achieved Truth in his study, why does Goethe show us
his achievement of it by taking him away from his reading, and flinging
him in the arms, first of Love and then of Life? Faust does not leave
his reading and his thinking behind him: they accompany him everywhere,
from Margarete’s bedroom to the witch-revel on the Brocken. And what does
this mean but that, to achieve a knowledge of the best that the world
has thought and known, two things are necessary—reading and experience;
or, in the same words, thought and knowledge. No amount of reading will
compensate for want of experience. It is useless for me to think I
have attained to Truth, if I have never felt her absolute presence. Is
idealization the essence of true love? Is there a more real inspiration
to be found in the faëry princesses of Shelley, than in the breathing
women of Wordsworth? Idealization is good, but it must have a firm
foundation in reality, or it is barren of anything but fantasticality. So
it is with thought and knowledge. No man who has not himself lived and
loved can tell us the truth of love and life. Gibbon had immense reading,
and a purpose and a system in it (I do not here enter upon their precise
nature), and his history of the Decline and Fall of Rome is in many
respects quite admirable, but he does not attain to truth in it. And why?
Because he has not experience, he has not knowledge. All his reading, all
his purpose, all his system will not compensate for the want of their
corollary. No, Culture, the achieving of the best that has been thought
in the world, is not reading, not reading with any purpose or system that
has been or will ever be devised. Culture is the combination of reading
with experience, of thought with knowledge. The one thing acts as a check
on the other; the one is the spirit and the other the body; the one,
in Shakspere’s words, the “judgment” and the other the “blood,” and in
their “co-mingling” is found the perfect man. The purpose, the system
remain unchanged. We have only, as it seems to me, to develop our second
definition: to say that Culture _is reading and experience, but reading
and experience with a purpose to guide them, and a system_.
And so, having disposed somewhat of the _why_, we come back to the _how_,
the purpose and the system. In reality the two are one. Mr. Arnold
speaks once of Goethe’s “profound impartiality,” and elsewhere he lays
the greatest stress on that which alone can help criticism “to produce
fruit for the future”—_disinterestedness_. By _disinterestedness_ he
means the sincere endeavour, the pure and simple endeavour, to get at the
truth of things, to see them as they really are. And what is this but
Goethe’s determination to “wean himself from halves,” from partial views
of things? Now nothing is easier than to say that you seek for Truth
and Truth only, and nothing is more difficult to do. Who is there that
does not make this profession? And yet how few, how infinitely few, are
those who turn it into practice! And why is this? The answer of course is
because, say what they may, the pursuit of most men is merely relative.
I no more attain to Truth by saying “Go to, I will attain to it,” than I
should fly over the moon by a like formula. It is only the really honest
and sincere, the really pure and simple endeavour to find Truth that
makes me competent to even set out in search of it, and it is only by
the ceaseless use of a system of resolute patience and clear-sightedness
that I can hope to proceed with any success upon my way. This is indeed a
hard saying; but who, except him who ought to feel it least, feels that
Truth is a goal to be won by rose-crowned processions to the sound of
cymbals and dances? Some people, indeed, have a conviction that a special
exception has been made in their case, and that what has been hidden
from the wise and prudent has been revealed to babes and sucklings; and
I am sure it is a pleasant sight enough to see the way the babes and
sucklings enjoy this idea, and will continue to do so as long as the
milk lasts. (And, indeed, at this very hour when the milk is running
rather low, what a dismal howl the poor little things are setting up, and
how on earth are we ever going to wean them?) No, it is only by utter
and unwearying honesty, by the obstinate determination to admit of no
delusion or illusion, however attractive, however pleasant to our souls,
that we can hope to attain to anything like Truth. How often, when we
think we have found the jewel, must we put it down and remove ourselves,
now to this side, now to that, to be sure that the cutting is indeed
flawless! how much must we give up, and how much must we win, before our
mind is trained to, as it were, of itself, effortlessly, spontaneously,
look at things with that patient clear-sightedness which reaches to their
essence! This, then, is our purpose in Culture, and this our system, and
this is the fruit of it—a habit of thought which shall have _not only
thought and knowledge, but right tact and justness of judgment, forming
themselves by and with judgment_. And so our scheme is complete.
Now, leave this theoretical consideration of it for a moment, and see
with what result it has been applied to actual things. It has been
applied, it is being applied, everywhere and to almost everything. Take
the domain of Science, where it has, so far, been applied in a manner
which appeals most to most people—practical success, as we call it. There
is no need for me to sing the praises of this practical success. It rises
all round me in choruses and peans and hosannas. What I want to say
about it is, that all this practical success is due solely and entirely
to the fact that its creators have applied that purpose and system of
ours on, it is true, a more virgin soil than most, but also with a more
thoroughness than any. Look at the patience and clear-sightedness that
breathes and shines in every page Darwin wrote! It was well said of him,
that you could be sure no one would state the case against anything he
had to say more fully than he did himself. What a serenity the man had,
what depths of power and peace! It was my privilege to have had for
father one who, to his own depths of serenity, and power, and peace,
added those drawn from his friendship with this great Darwin, and from
an unrivalled appreciation of his work. When I think of that method of
the pursuit of the truth of things which I have myself seen in the late
Professor Leith Adams, my father, I seem to myself to despair of ever
thoroughly mastering the reality of anything at all. I am overwhelmed
with the mystery of Butters’ Spelling Book: I dare not lift up my eyes
to criticise a barrel-organ, and the young lady so painfully practising
scales there is a whole heaven above me. We cannot too much praise the
complete singleness of heart and soul with which the Scientists have
faced their problems. When I compare Lord Tennyson’s consideration of
the Struggle in Nature in _In Memoriam_, with Darwin’s in his _Descent
of Man_, the radical insincerity of the former, I confess, disgusts me,
and I fear to do some one or other of its good qualities an injustice.
What intellectual exercise all this despair is! The poet’s mind is made
up before he starts, and all this paraphernalia of doubt is really simply
to show that he can enter into the opposite point of view to his own,
and yet retain his original convictions! What is the sum total of it?
That here is a man of the past, born into a present from which none but
those of the future can evolve that future. Five are five and ten are
ten, and he adds them together and makes seven! With how different a
temper does Darwin face his problem! He has become “as a little child”
in his simple attitude towards things. “Where’er thou leadest, will I
follow thee.” And it was just because this was so, that what he had to
say to us prevails more and more; for, having attained to the secret of
the purpose and system of patience and clear-sightedness, he had not only
knowledge but right tact and justness of judgment, forming themselves by
and with judgment; and so he achieved Truth for himself and for others.
Nor does the good of such a man, his life and his work, end here. He has
communicated to all who have anything to do with his work, his secret
or something of his secret, even as Goethe did before him. Why, here
we have Professor Huxley warning the coming race of Scientists against
taking for granted the very things in the discovery and revelation of
which he has himself toiled all his life, and the cry has been taken up
with enthusiasm. “All is possible,” said Professor Clifford, “to him
who doubts.” What an admirable temper is this. Imagine Cardinal Newman
warning the young Catholics against taking the Infallibility of the
Church for granted! Or Lord Tennyson assuring us that that fine personal
individuality theory of his (“I am I, thou art thou,” and so on) must
not be considered by young Churchmen as finally settled! And yet it is
in the possession or non-possession of this temper, I say, that lies
the essential difference between the men of the past and the men of the
future. Mr. Arnold laments that Cardinal Newman, “that exquisite and
delicate genius,” was not born a little later, so that the Time-Spirit
might have touched and transformed him. The same may be said of Lord
Tennyson, and will be said in another fifty years. But let us have an
end to such laments. To these men, as to their contemporaries, the light
came, and they chose the twilight where others chose the dawn, and,
having had their hour of victory in the applause of the mass of their
time, the doubters and the believers, let us recognize that, at any rate
as influences on thought, they are but ghosts in the bright daytime,
speechless and ineffectual.
I have, despite myself, been singing the praises of the Scientists.
And why not? Have they not shown us that they have (as Darwin says so
gracefully of Mr. Wallace) “an innate genius for solving difficulties?”
But they, too, have their assailable side. I have spoken of Professor
Clifford. His talent we were all bound to admire, and his sincerity;
but how wonderfully inept he was when he came to consider things
outside his own immediate sphere! We all remember what he had to say
about Christianity. He had the same narrowness towards Christianity
that the Christians have towards Science. In them it is excusable,
perhaps. Circumstances have been all against them. They have had such
little opportunity of attaining to the secret of the purpose and system
of Culture. It has taken its rise outside their pale, and has been
combated as a foe, and is still combated. But in a man who _had_ this
secret, how inexcusable the not being able to apply it outside his own
immediate sphere! and how doubly inexcusable to apply to his opponents
that very method which had made them so! Really he should have known
better. And unfortunately there are so many of the young Scientists that
are following in his footsteps, and not in the footsteps of Darwin. And
this is a great misfortune, and should be struggled against with all
our powers. But otherwise (since I cannot end here with the note of
blame), how truly admirable is the temper of these men when they are only
let alone in their own sphere! Compare the teaching of Science in our
colleges and universities with that of Literature! And yet, slow as is
the progress of Literature in its application of the purpose and system
of Culture to things, it _is_ a progress. The success of that charming
series of biographies, the English Men of Letters—nay, of the little
shilling Literature Primers—is a sign of it. And the same thing, too, is
being done with regard to Philosophy; but, so far, the men of Science
have the lead, and they deserve it; for, as I have said, theirs has been
the most complete singleness of heart and soul with which Truth has been
sought out, they have the most thoroughly applied the secret of the
purpose and system of Culture.
Now, let us again leave our consideration of these things, and see
wherein this question of Culture concerns us plain practical people with
our attachment to black and white; how does it, in a word, come into our
daily life. I can only answer as before, everywhere!—The other day the
son of a friend of mine, (say) Jones, wished to apprentice himself as
a brewer, or, rather, wished to start as a brewer at once. His father
sent him to a well-known brewer to be, as the father said, put through
his paces. The young man returned crestfallen. What was the matter? The
father could not understand it, and I was set to find it out.—“_Tom
hasn’t enough Culture_,” I reported.—“What do you mean?” asked the
father.—“He doesn’t know the best that has been thought and known in the
world in the matter of brewing,” I replied, “I should advise a course of
practical chemistry.”—“But I’m sure X ..., the brewer’s father, didn’t
know anything about chemistry, or his father before him.”—“Probably; but,
if _X_ ... didn’t, I expect he’d have to give up brewing,” I said. And it
is the same in everything. More and more the perception that things move
by fixed laws, which must be obeyed if we would direct ourselves with
success, spreads and intensifies. The necessity of moulding our words
and actions to our thoughts, rather than our thoughts to our words and
actions, is becoming apparent to all men who would avoid the workhouse,
actual or metaphorical. The _whys_ of things press upon us. It is no use
contenting ourselves with the _hows_. If we do, someone else finds out
the _whys_, and we are left in the lurch. The other day an intelligent
sheep-breeder told me an amusing tale. He had with much trouble and
cost purchased in Tasmania a small stud of prize sheep, which he took
up to his station in the North. The flower of the first generation he
sent to a neighbouring show. The wool of the sheep was thick and close,
unlike that of the locky sheep which are considered the best there. His
sheep was laughed at by all the judges, who wondered such a sensible man
should have sent such a senseless sheep! These judges were deficient
in Culture: they did not know the best that has been thought and known
in the world in the matter of sheep-breeding. The sheep of these men
were shearing on an average less by more than two pounds of wool than
the sheep of the more scientific sheep-breeders further south! It is a
question, then, whether their children will be so jubilant when they are
brought face to face with the competition of an enormously increased home
wool-production, and a still more enormously increased wool-production
from South America. You cannot now with impunity be wanting in Culture.
The stream of life flows too fast for the straws that want to go
exploring back-waters, or stopping to admire the scenery.
And Australia—this Australia in which we live—what a need for Culture is
here! I see nothing here of the best, and much of the worst. Take this
very question of sheep-breeding. Australia is in advance of England,
for sheep-breeding is the staple support of the one country, and only
an item in the produce of the other. But in what a backward state it is
to what, as a staple support, it ought to be! By what rough and ready
methods things are still done here. What a dearth of real intelligence
there is! of that patience and clear-sightedness which is the secret of
the purpose and system of Culture. Who seems to see that in this, as in
all matters, the _why_ is the important matter on which the _how_ will
follow, and not the reverse? There is abundance of shrewdness to hand,
and finger and thumb wisdom, but who sees that the great necessity is
sheer knowledge? Australia was made by men of this stamp, and they still
rule it, but their rule is passing, as it was bound to pass, before
the unruffled intelligence of the Time-Spirit. These were the men who
gave us our absurd nomenclature of birds and flowers. If they saw a
bird was black and had one dissonant cry, they called it a jay, and it
sufficed. A flower is yellow and little: call it a primrose. And so on.
Then their children arose in their turn, and found themselves rich, and
took to building cities, and we have (what Mr. Sala calls) Marvellous
Melbourne, with the Picture-gallery and Statue-gallery which we know,
and the crowning glory of its Government House, perhaps the most hideous
hospital in existence. Or the good Sydney people would like to decorate
their Post-office with emblematic sculpture, and the result is, what has
at last become, the mockery of a Continent. And at last, too, the Picture
Gallery at Melbourne is coming into disrepute, and some day, perhaps, the
Government House will do the same. It would be pleasant, I think, to see
it turned into an asylum. No nation that calls itself civilized stands
in more need of Culture, of the best that has been thought and known in
the world, in each and every branch of it, than Australia does. Some
faint perception of this seems positively to be beginning to dawn upon
its complacency. Let us do all we can to forward this. “The Australians,”
said an Australian to me the other day, “are much more fond of beautiful
things than the English.” “Alas,” I answered, “that is not saying much,
but I have not yet remarked it.” No, the one commendable wish that the
Australians have, is that they really do want the best article in things,
and for the best article they are ready to pay. The unfortunate thing is,
that there seems nothing in which they are yet qualified to know the best
article when they see it! “We want fine pictures,” say the Victorians,
and they are befooled by ship-loads of London tea-trays, which no one but
members of Assembly and the wives of tradespeople and squatters would
take for anything else.—And yet, how is it possible for me to continue to
pile up anathemas like this against these Australians for whom I hope so
much, unless it be that I think in this way to do the little best I can
towards helping to the realization of my hopes? But this is an old tale
now, and we will say no more of it.
In every aspect of life, then, from its highest to its lowest, let us
remember this idea of Culture, let us make for the best article, and
be secure in its possession. The other day a Melbourne lady was saying
to me how pretty and charming a place the Fitzroy Gardens were as a
public park. “But the brown plaster statues,” I said, “and the concrete
water-shrines.” And this Melbourne lady frankly declared her allegiance
to these things, and, when in my disagreeable unsatisfied way I began to
compare them with the marble copies from the Antique which are to be seen
in the Inner Domain and Botanical Gardens in Sydney, she frankly told me
that _after all_ it was only _a matter of opinion_, and _my_ opinion was
this and _hers_ was that! “And so,” I said, “my dear lady, it is, _after
all_, only _a matter of opinion_ whether the Apollo of the Belvidere or
the Venus of Milo is more beautiful or less beautiful than the statue of
Burke and Wills in Collins Street, not to say the brown-plaster statues
in the Fitzroy Gardens?” And then this Melbourne lady, who had read many
novels and magazines, and several volumes of sermons and even popular
“philosophy books,” maintained her original assertion with the charming
assurance of her sex; and I could only think that it was a pity she had
not Culture—did not know the best, or even the second or third best, of
what has been known and thought in the world in the matter of sculptural
beauty, for then she would not have helped to persuade her husband to
vote for the erection of any more brown-plaster statues and concrete
water-shrines in the public places of his city. But, as it is, I am
so thankful that the Sydney people have decorated one of their public
places with really fine marble copies from the Antique (which none of
these Australians, with their superior love for beautiful things has
yet, so far as I am aware, thought of defacing), that I wonder at myself
for thinking of saying it is a pity to see beside these so many poor
modern and perhaps colonial products; for who can be wise—do I say in an
hour, in a day, in a year, in a life-time? nay, rather, in a generation?
Certainly not the architects and public decorators of Australia. Let
us be thankful for what we have got, and diligently go on showing our
thankfulness by asking for more.
But no; the time has passed when silly people can say that silliness is,
_after all_, only a _matter of opinion_—or, if it has not passed, then we
ought all of us to be striving our utmost to make it be passed. Culture
is possible to so many! Its text-books are no longer in the hands of the
incompetent: we have really no excuse for thinking Mr. Martin Tupper
is preferable as a poet to Lord Tennyson, or Miss Eliza Cook to Mr.
Arnold; and I will confess that I look with suspicion on the intellectual
attainments of a man who sees no difference in the _opinion_ of Darwin
or Professor Huxley and of the popular Theologians and Mr. Lilly. Look,
I say, at the text-books of Culture now, of the best which has been
known and thought in the world. We have all seen Professor Huxley’s
little primer of Physiology. Well, that is for Science. Then there is
Mr. Stopford Brooke’s little primer of English Literature. That is for
Literature; and these are only examples. Really, now, we _have_ no excuse
for reading the wrong books and thinking the wrong thoughts any more.
And we have not, either, to confine ourselves to the thought of our own
language. Everywhere excellent translations of noteworthy works are to be
found. We would get to know something of the literature of Greece? At the
end of Mr. Jebbs’ excellent little primer of Greek Literature, we shall
find a list of the best translations. We have heard people talking of
Professor Haeckel and his wonderful physiological work? Good translations
of his best-known books are to hand. And so on throughout the whole
domain of thought.
Let us sum up and conclude. We see, then, I think, what Culture is, and
what is the purpose and system which should form and guide it. There
is only one thing more to say about it, and that is that Culture, in
this sense of the word, is the distinct product of our own times. No
other country at no other time possessed it. The Jews possessed an
unrivalled insight into Religion, into the sense of Righteousness. It is
to a Jew that we owe most of what is best in Religion. Indeed, to the
great majority of us his name is still a synonyme for Religion. But
Righteousness is not the sole necessity of life—there is also Beauty.
“Beauty,” says Keats,
“beauty is truth, truth beauty: this is all
ye know on earth or that ye need to know.”
But Keats, we remember, was a Pagan, a modern Greek, and men like
this are quite as apt to think that Beauty is “the one thing needful”
as the other stamp of man is to think that Righteousness is “the one
thing needful;” whereas the real fact is that both are needful. What an
advantage, then, have we over both Jews and Greeks in our appreciation of
this! At the best, it is not possible to look upon either Paul or Plato
as exponents of anything final. It requires two wings to soar with, and
who can think that this “ugly little Jew,” as M. Renan has it, who talked
nonsense about an Art which at best seemed to him mostly diabolical,
was dowered with two? Nor yet can we think this of that “high Athenian
gentleman,” as Carlyle retorts, with his illustrious Master who would
have been so “terribly at ease in Zion.” Let us recognize it at once:
the Jews are great and the Greeks are great, but neither of them by
themselves can satisfy us. Nay, further; to the sense of Righteousness
and Beauty must now be added that sense which Bacon first brought with
any fertility to us—the sense of Science. “And we,” says Arnold,
“and we have been on many thousand lines,
and we have shown, in each, spirit and power.”
And it is just from the combination of the results of our spirit and
power on these many thousand lines that this Culture of ours, this unique
product of our times, springs. It was not before this possible. How could
Paul understand the Greek Art? how could Plato have understood the Hebrew
Righteousness? It was not till the Renascence, till Shakspere, that such
a thing was possible, and it was not till Modernity, till Goethe, that
it was possible to find these two senses, the sense of Beauty and of
Righteousness, united to that third great sense, the sense of Science.
I do not say that our age is necessarily a peculiarly great age: you
may call it the dwarf on the giant’s shoulders, if you please; but what
I do say is, that it is the first age which has been able to attain to
anything like a really comprehensive Culture, a knowledge of the best
that has been known and thought in the world. Possibly we are only on the
threshold of Truth: possibly it will be left to another age to work out
and complete what we have but begun; but this I think is certain: We
_are_ on the threshold, and the sooner we realize it, the sooner shall
we realize that we are men in whom it is incumbent to put off childish
things, the sooner shall we advance into the palace and very home.
Ah, then, let us no longer content ourselves with anything less than
the best article! Let us live for the Idea of Culture, for and by
it—for the best that has been thought and known in the world! Let us,
too, like Goethe, resolve to wean ourselves from halves, from partial
and prejudiced views of things, and to live “_im Ganzen, Guten,
Schönen_”—“for the Whole, the Good, the Beautiful!”
_December, 1885._
[Illustration]
“DAWNWARDS:”