SOME PHASES OF CULTURE
CULTURE AND TRAINING—CULTURE STUDIES—A CORE OF PURPOSE—CULTURE IN
SERVICE—ALL SHOULD HAVE AN ALMA MATER—RURAL CULTURE—SOCIAL AND
SPIRITUAL CULTURE—VARIETY IN CULTURE
The idea of life as an organic whole affords an illuminating view of the
old question of practical training _versus_ culture, letting us see that
these are departments, or rather aspects, of the process by which the
individual grows to full membership in the social order. They correspond
to two aspects, of differentiation and of unity, in that order itself.
In one of these society presents itself as an assemblage of special
functions, such as teaching, engineering, farming, and carpentry, for
each of which a special preparation is required. But in another it
appears a continuous and unified organism, with rich and varied
traditions, intricate co-operation, and a wide interplay of thought and
sentiment. Full participation in this calls for a general and human, as
well as a special and technical, adaptation; a development of
personality, of the _socius_, to the measure of the general life.
Under this view culture is growth to fuller membership in the human
organism; not a decoration or a refuge or a mystical superiority, but
the very blood of life, so practical that its vigor is quite as good a
measure as technical efficiency of the power of the social whole. Indeed
the practice of regarding the technical and the cultural as separate and
opposite is unintelligent. They are complements of each other, and
either must share in the other’s defect. A society of training without
culture would be a blind mechanism which could be created and maintained
only by an external force; while one of culture without training would
lack organs by which to live. The real thing in education is the organic
whole of personal development, corresponding to the organic whole of
social life; and of this culture and training are aspects which, far
from being set against each other as hostile principles, should be kept
in close union.
The process of culture, then, is one of enlarging membership in life
through the growth of personality and social comprehension. This
includes the academic idea of culture as the fruit of liberal studies,
such as literature, art, and history, because we get our initiation into
the greater life largely through these studies. The tradition which so
long identified culture with classical studies rested upon this
foundation. From the revival of learning until quite recent years it was
felt that the literatures and monuments of Greece and Rome were the
chief vehicles of the best the human spirit had attained (except,
perhaps, in religion, which was held to be a somewhat separate
province), and accordingly the study of the ancients was an
apprenticeship to the larger life, an initiation into the spiritual
organism. And whatever change has come as regards the classics, it is
still true that studies which, like literature, history, philosophy, and
the appreciation of the arts, aim directly at opening to us our
spiritual heritage, have a central place in real culture.
Culture must always mean, in part, that we rise above the special
atmosphere of our time and place to breathe the large air of great
traditions that move tranquilly on the upper levels. One should not
study contemporaries and competitors, said Goethe, but the great men of
antiquity, whose works have for centuries received equal homage and
consideration.[12]
So far as schools are concerned culture depends at least as much upon
the teacher as upon what purports to be taught. That is, it profits more
by the kindling of a spirit than by the acquirement of formal knowledge.
“Instruction does much, but inspiration does everything.” Any subject is
a culture subject when it is imparted through one who is living ardently
in the great life and knows how to pass the spark on. And on the other
hand it is too plain how technical and narrowing is the routine teaching
of literature, which widely operates to disgust the student with books
he might otherwise have enjoyed.
Indeed culture, in one view, is nothing other than the power to enter
into sympathy with enlarging personalities. We get our start in this
from face-to-face intercourse, and are fortunate if we have companions
who can open out a wider vision of life. But if we are to carry it far
we need the more select and various society that is accessible only
through books, and it often happens that for an eager mind leisure and a
library are the essential things. It seems to me a serious question
whether the present trend of our colleges to suppress idling by
requiring from the student a large quantity of tangible work is not
injurious to culture by crowding out spontaneity and a browsing
curiosity. Disciplinarians scoff at this, as they always will at
anything irregular, but some of us know that to us the chief benefit of
a college course was not anything we learned from the curriculum, but
the mere leisure and opportunity and delay, and we cannot doubt that
there are still students of the same kind. How can a man _vacare Deo_ if
he does conscientiously the “required reading” that his instructors try
to force upon him? I am inclined to think that the ingenuity of the
collegian is often well spent in thwarting these endeavors and securing
time to loaf in spite of the conspiracy against it. We require too much
and inspire too little.
If we view culture as a phase of the healthy growth of the mind, we may
expect that it will be most real when it is allied with serious
occupation and endeavor, provided these are spontaneous, rather than
when remaining apart. We travel to see the world; but one who stays at
home with a spirit-building task will see more of it than one who
travels without one. The reason is that hearty human life and work bring
us into intelligence of those realities that are everywhere if we live
deep enough to find them. The surest way to know men is to have simple
and necessary relations with them—as of buyer and seller, employer and
workman, teacher and scholar. It is not easy to know them when you have
no real business with them. Culture must be won by active participation
of some sort, by putting oneself into something—as Goethe won his by
taking up a dozen arts and sciences in succession, and working at each
as if he meant to make a profession of it. Any specialty, if one takes
it largely enough, may be a gate to wide provinces of culture. Thus the
study of law, which is merely a technical discipline to most students,
Burke found to be “one of the first and noblest of human sciences, a
science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than
all the other kinds of learning put together.”[13]
Technical training in the schools would not prove hostile to a real
culture if it were associated with leisure and liberal studies, and if
the training itself were given in a large spirit which leads the mind
out to embrace the whole of which the specialty is a member. And
certainly manual arts are not deficient in this respect. I imagine that
I have derived considerable culture from the practice of amateur
carpentry and wood-carving; and I have no doubt that any one who has
cared for an occupation of this kind will have a similar feeling. There
is a whole department of life, full of delight and venerable
associations, to which handicraft is the key.
Indeed, nothing is more surely culture than any work in the spirit of
art. Since one is doing it for self-expression he puts himself into it;
he must also undergo discipline in the mastery of technic, and he has
the social zest of imparting joy to others and being appreciated by
them. It is real and vital as mere learning under instruction rarely is.
And one who has practised an art, though with small success, will have a
sense of what art is that the mere looker-on can never have.
It is quite true, in my opinion, that household training could be given
to girls in such a way that they would get more culture out of it than
nine-tenths of them now do from the perfunctory study of history,
languages, and music. It would only require teachers who could impart a
spirit of craftsmanship and a sense of human significance. An almost
universal trouble with both boys and girls in the present state of
society is that they are not given, in connection with their work,
enough of the general plan and movement of life to get interested in
that and in their part in it. The general movement is too much for them;
they do not see any plan in it, and merely catch on to it where they
can, work with it when they have to, and put their real interest into
crude amusement. We do not make it natural for the individual to
identify himself and his task with the whole. To do that would be
culture.
Possibly the view that culture is not opposed to technical studies may,
under the present ascendancy of the latter, tend practically to confirm
the subordination of culture; but I aim to state underlying principles,
and it seems to me that the right relation between the two is not much
forwarded by partisanship for either, but rather by showing that they
are complementary and suggesting a line of co-operation. The actual
hostility of technical and professional schools to culture arises from
their usually exacting and narrow character, which crowds everything
liberal out.
I may add in this connection that it is a great part of culture to learn
how to _do something well_, no matter what it is, to have the discipline
and insight that we get by persistent endeavor, undergoing alternate
success and failure, observing how, with time, the unconscious processes
come to our aid, and so gaining at last some degree of mastery; in
short, by experiencing how things are really done. Unfortunately many
students slip through a supposed liberal education without getting this
experience; and no wonder the colleges are discredited by their
subsequent performance. In these times when home life has widely ceased
to afford practical discipline it is peculiarly important that schools
should do so.
But the enlargement of the spirit, which is culture, calls for something
more than studies, of any kind. It needs also a hearty participation in
some sort of a common life. The merging of himself in the willing
service of a greater whole raises man to the higher function of human
nature.
We need to aim at this in all phases of our life, but nowhere is it
easier to attain or more fruitful of results than in connection with the
schools. Since the school environment is comparatively easy to control,
here is the place to create an ideal formative group, or system of
groups, which shall envelop the individual and mould his growth, a model
society by assimilation to which he may become fit to leaven the rest of
life. Here if anywhere we can insure his learning loyalty, discipline,
service, personal address, and democratic co-operation, all by willing
practice in the fellowship of his contemporaries. As a good family is an
ideal world in miniature, in respect of love and brotherhood, so the
school and playground should supply such a world in respect of
self-discipline and social organization. There is nothing now taking
place, it would seem, more promising of great results than the
development of groups which appeal to the young on the social and active
side of their natures and evoke a community spirit. They take eagerly to
such groups, under sympathetic leadership, finding self-expression in
them, and there seems to be no great obstacle to their becoming
universal and embracing all the youth of the land in a wholesome _esprit
de corps_ which would be a hundred times more real and potent with them
than any kind of moral instruction. The motive force is already there,
in the natural idealism of boyhood and adolescence; all we need to do,
apparently, is to provide the right channels for it. This is a field
where the harvest is plenteous, and which the laborers are only
beginning to discover.
All of us who have been at college know something of the spiritual value
of an _alma mater_, of memories, associations, and symbols to which we
can recur for the revival of fellowship and the ideals of youth. If we
ever have noble ideals it is when we are young, and if we keep them it
is apt to be by continuing early influences.
It seems, then, that every one ought to have an _alma mater_, that
whatever kind of school one leaves to enter the confusion and conflict
of the world, it should be enshrined within him by friendship, beauty,
ceremony, and high aims, and that these should be renewed by revisiting
the academic scene at occasional festivals. Our common schools, in town
and country, might thus play the part in the life of the mass of the
people that colleges do in that of a privileged class, providing
continuous groups charged with a high social spirit, and capable of
extending this spirit indefinitely. There is nothing we need more than
continuity and organization of higher influence, and hardly any way of
achieving this so practicable as through the schools.
Each community should have a centre of social culture connected with the
public schools, and the character of this would vary with that of the
community. There is especial need for building up in the country a type
of culture which is distinctively rural in character, and yet not
inferior to urban culture in its power to enlarge life. Country life
attracts the imagination by its comparative repose, by the stability and
dignity that one associates with living on the land, and by its
wholesome familiarity with plant and animal life. But these attractions
are offset at present by social and spiritual limitations which lead
most of those who have a choice to prefer the towns. If each district
had a culture centre where the finer needs of life might be gratified in
as great a measure as anywhere, and yet with a rural flavor and
individuality, the country would be more a place to live in and less one
to flee from as soon as you can afford to do so. These centres, we may
hope, will grow up about the centralized and enlarged schools that are
now beginning to replace the scattered one-room buildings, bringing
better and more various instruction, including studies especially
appropriate to rural life. Around the school might be grouped the rural
church; also consolidated, socialized, and made a real centre of
fellowship and co-operation; the public library, art gallery, and hall
for political and social gatherings. In a community enjoying such
institutions, with a spirit and traditions of its own, life ought to be
at least as livable as in town.
It will turn out, I believe, that the higher social culture is of a
kindred spirit with religion. The essence of religion, I suppose, is the
expansion of the soul into the sense of a Greater Life; and the way to
this is through that social expansion which, however less in extent, is
of the same nature. One who has developed a spirit of loyalty, service,
and sacrifice toward a social group, has only to transform this to a
larger conception in order to have a religious spirit. Indeed it is
clear that the more ardent kind of social devotion, like that of the
patriot for his country in extreme times, is hardly distinguishable from
devotion to God. His country, for the time being, is the incarnation of
God, and in some measure this is true of any group which embodies his
actual sense of a greater life than that of his own more confined
spirit. I think, then, that social culture through devotion to the
service and ideals of an inspiring group is in the direction of
religious culture, and probably, for most minds, the natural and healthy
road to the latter. I do not mean to suggest that school and community
groups should supplant the churches; but it seems to me that they may
supply a broad foundation upon which churches and other organizations
may set their more special structures.
Shall we not come to teaching every one, by concrete social experience,
a community spirit that shall be the basis at once of citizenship, of
morals, and of religion? Why should not the simple principles of
democracy and righteousness and worship be so humanized and popularized
in the life of the community and the school that the children shall
almost unconsciously learn and practise them? Do we not need, in these
matters, an alphabet of a few letters to replace the Chinese writing of
the past?
I may add that if every man had a suitable task of his own, for which he
was properly trained, and could see the relation of that task first to
larger work of the same sort and then to the general human life, it
would build up religious faith in a way not otherwise possible. Our work
is the most vital part of us, or should be, and if we can see it as one
with the ordered life of humanity, and divine a connection with the
Greater Life, we shall hardly lack religion. Religion is, for one thing,
the sense of a man’s self as member of a worthy whole, and his sense of
self is formed by his striving. On the other hand, anarchy of endeavor
breaks up faith.
It is perhaps unnecessary that we should agree upon definitions and
programmes of culture. Although it is always some kind of enlargement of
the spirit, it must vary with individuals and communities. The higher
literary culture, calling for mastery of languages and long immersion in
the great traditions, is only for a few, and yet it is essential for
some kinds of leadership and should always be open to those who show an
aptitude for it. The group culture in connection with the schools is of
great promise as affording a simple and genial way of spiritual growth
in which the least intellectual may share. The study and practice of
specialties is capable of indefinite development on the culture side. In
short, culture is itself a complex organic process which ought to
permeate life, but can never be reduced to rules.