foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad sense.
With us the word is always used in a somewhat disapproving sense. A
liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things of the mind may be
meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, but with us the word
always conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In
the _Quarterly Review_, some little time ago, was an estimate of the
celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve,[390] and a very inadequate
estimate it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in
this: that in our English way it left out of sight the double sense
really involved in the word _curiosity_, thinking enough was said to
stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was impelled in
his operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either to perceive
that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with him, would
consider that this was praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out
why it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame and not of praise.
For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters which is futile,
and merely a disease, so there is certainly a curiosity,--a desire after
the things of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure
of seeing them as they are,--which is, in an intelligent being, natural
and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as they are,
implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often attained
without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind and
diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we blame
curiosity. Montesquieu says: "The first motive which ought to impel us
to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and to
render an intelligent being yet more intelligent."[391] This is the true
ground to assign for the genuine scientific passion, however manifested,
and for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion; and it is a
worthy ground, even though we let the term _curiosity_ stand to describe
it. But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the
scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are, natural
and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of it. There
is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses towards
action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error,
clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble
aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it,--
motives eminently such as are called social,--come in as part of the
grounds of culture, and the main and preëminent part. Culture is then
properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having
its origin in the love of perfection; it is _a study of perfection_. It
moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion
for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing
good. As, in the first view of it, we took for its worthy motto
Montesquieu's words: "To render an intelligent being yet more
intelligent!" so, in the second view of it, there is no better motto
which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson:[392] "To make
reason and the will of God prevail!"[393]
Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be overhasty in
determining what reason and the will of God say, because its turn is for
acting rather than thinking and it wants to be beginning to act; and
whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, which proceed from its
own state of development and share in all the imperfections and
immaturities of this, for a basis of action; what distinguishes culture
is, that it is possessed by the scientific passion as well as by the
passion of doing good; that it demands worthy notions of reason and the
will of God, and does not readily suffer its own crude conceptions to
substitute themselves for them. And knowing that no action or
institution can be salutary and stable which is not based on reason and
the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and instituting, even with
the great aim of diminishing human error and misery ever before its
thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and instituting are of
little use, unless we know how and what we ought to act and to
institute.
This culture is more interesting and more far-reaching than that other,
which is founded solely on the scientific passion for knowing. But it
needs times of faith and ardor, times when the intellectual horizon is
opening and widening all around us, to flourish in. And is not the close
and bounded intellectual horizon within which we have long lived and
moved now lifting up, and are not new lights finding free passage to
shine in upon us? For a long time there was no passage for them to make
their way in upon us, and then it was of no use to think of adapting the
world's action to them. Where was the hope of making reason and the will
of God prevail among people who had a routine which they had christened
reason and the will of God, in which they were inextricably bound, and
beyond which they had no power of looking? But now, the iron force of
adhesion to the old routine,--social, political, religious,--has
wonderfully yielded; the iron force of exclusion of all which is new has
wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, not that people should
obstinately refuse to allow anything but their old routine to pass for
reason and the will of God, but either that they should allow some
novelty or other to pass for these too easily, or else that they should
underrate the importance of them altogether, and think it enough to
follow action for its own sake, without troubling themselves to make
reason and the will of God prevail therein. Now, then, is the moment for
culture to be of service, culture which believes in making reason and
the will of God prevail, believes in perfection, is the study and
pursuit of perfection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible
exclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas,
simply because they are new.
The moment this view of culture is seized, the moment it is regarded not
solely as the endeavor to see things as they are, to draw towards a
knowledge of the universal order which seems to be intended and aimed at
in the world, and which it is a man's happiness to go along with or his
misery to go counter to,--to learn, in short, the will of God,--the
moment, I say, culture is considered not merely as the endeavor to _see_
and _learn_ this, but as the endeavor, also, to make it _prevail_, the
moral, social, and beneficent character of culture becomes manifest. The
mere endeavor to see and learn the truth for our own personal
satisfaction is indeed a commencement for making it prevail, a preparing
the way for this, which always serves this, and is wrongly, therefore,
stamped with blame absolutely in itself and not only in its caricature
and degeneration. But perhaps it has got stamped with blame, and
disparaged with the dubious title of curiosity, because in comparison
with this wider endeavor of such great and plain utility it looks
selfish, petty, and unprofitable.
And religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts by which
the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself,--religion,
that voice of the deepest human experience,--does not only enjoin and
sanction the aim which is the great aim of culture, the aim of setting
ourselves to ascertain what perfection is and to make it prevail; but
also, in determining generally in what human perfection consists,
religion comes to a conclusion identical with that which culture,--
culture seeking the determination of this question through _all_ the
voices of human experience which have been heard upon it, of art,
science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of religion, in order
to give a greater fulness and certainty to its solution,--likewise
reaches. Religion says: _The kingdom of God_ _is within you_; and
culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an _internal_
condition, in the growth and predominance of our humanity proper, as
distinguished from our animality. It places it in the ever-increasing
efficacy and in the general harmonious expansion of those gifts of
thought and feeling, which make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and
happiness of human nature. As I have said on a former occasion: "It is
in making endless additions to itself, in the endless expansion of its
powers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the
human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an
indispensable aid, and that is the true value of culture." Not a having
and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of
perfection as culture conceives it; and here, too, it coincides with
religion.
And because men are all members of one great whole, and the sympathy
which is in human nature will not allow one member to be indifferent to
the rest or to have a perfect welfare independent of the rest, the
expansion of our humanity, to suit the idea of perfection which culture
forms, must be a _general_ expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives
it, is not possible while the individual remains isolated. The
individual is required, under pain of being stunted and enfeebled in his
own development if he disobeys, to carry others along with him in his
march towards perfection, to be continually doing all he can to enlarge
and increase the volume of the human stream sweeping thitherward. And,
here, once more, culture lays on us the same obligation as religion,
which says, as Bishop Wilson has admirably put it, that "to promote the
kingdom of God is to increase and hasten one's own happiness."[394]
But, finally, perfection,--as culture from a thorough disinterested
study of human nature and human experience learns to conceive it,--is a
harmonious expansion of _all_ the powers which make the beauty and worth
of human nature, and is not consistent with the over-development of any
one power at the expense of the rest. Here culture goes beyond religion
as religion is generally conceived by us.
If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of harmonious
perfection, general perfection, and perfection which consists in
becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward
condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of
circumstances,--it is clear that culture, instead or being the
frivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright,[395] and Mr. Frederic
Harrison,[396] and many other Liberals are apt to call it, has a very
important function to fulfil for mankind. And this function is
particularly important in our modern world, of which the whole
civilization is, to a much greater degree than the civilization of
Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly to become
more so. But above all in our own country has culture a weighty part to
perform, because here that mechanical character, which civilization
tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree. Indeed
nearly all the characters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix
them, meet in this country with some powerful tendency which thwarts
them and sets them at defiance. The idea of perfection as an _inward_
condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and
material civilization in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so
much in esteem as with us. The idea of perfection as a _general_
expansion of the human family is at variance with our strong
individualism, our hatred of all limits to the unrestrained swing of the
individual's personality, our maxim of "every man for himself." Above
all, the idea of perfection as a _harmonious_ expansion of human nature
is at variance with our want of flexibility, with our inaptitude for
seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense energetic
absorption in the particular pursuit we happen to be following. So
culture has a rough task to achieve in this country. Its preachers have,
and are likely long to have, a hard time of it, and they will much
oftener be regarded, for a great while to come, as elegant or spurious
Jeremiahs than as friends and benefactors. That, however, will not
prevent their doing in the end good service if they persevere. And,
meanwhile, the mode of action they have to pursue, and the sort of
habits they must fight against, ought to be made quite clear for every
one to see, who may be willing to look at the matter attentively and
dispassionately.
Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; often in machinery
most absurdly disproportioned to the end which this machinery, if it is
to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in machinery, as if it
had a value in and for itself. What is freedom but machinery? what is
population but machinery? what is coal but machinery? what are railroads
but machinery? what is wealth but machinery? what are, even, religious
organizations but machinery? Now almost every voice in England is
accustomed to speak of these things as if they were precious ends in
themselves, and therefore had some of the characters of perfection
indisputably joined to them. I have before now noticed Mr.
Roebuck's[397] stock argument for proving the greatness and happiness of
England as she is, and for quite stopping the mouths of all gainsayers.
Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reiterating this argument of his, so I do
not know why I should be weary of noticing it. "May not every man in
England say what he likes?"--Mr. Roebuck perpetually asks: and that, he
thinks, is quite sufficient, and when every man may say what he likes,
our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations of culture,
which is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men
say, when they may say what they like, is worth saying,--has good in
it, and more good than bad. In the same way the _Times_, replying to
some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behavior of the English
abroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one should be free to
do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to
make what each raw person may like, the rule by which he fashions
himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful,
graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that.
And in the same way with respect to railroads and coal. Every one must
have observed the strange language current during the late discussions
as to the possible failure of our supplies of coal. Our coal, thousands
of people were saying, is the real basis of our national greatness; if
our coal runs short, there is an end of the greatness of England. But
what _is_ greatness?--culture makes us ask. Greatness is a spiritual
condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the
outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest,
and admiration. If England were swallowed up by the sea to-morrow, which
of the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite the love, interest,
and admiration of mankind,--would most, therefore, show the evidences of
having possessed greatness,--the England of the last twenty years, or
the England of Elizabeth, of a time of splendid spiritual effort, but
when our coal, and our industrial operations depending on coal, were
very little developed? Well, then, what an unsound habit of mind it must
be which makes us talk of things like coal or iron as constituting the
greatness of England, and how salutary a friend is culture, bent on
seeing things as they are, and thus dissipating delusions of this kind
and fixing standards of perfection that are real!
Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious works for material
advantage are directed,--the commonest of commonplaces tells us how men
are always apt to regard wealth as a precious end in itself: and
certainly they have never been so apt thus to regard it as they are in
England at the present time. Never did people believe anything more
firmly than nine Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe that
our greatness and welfare are proved by our being so very rich. Now, the
use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its spiritual standard
of perfection, to regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say as
a matter of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, but really to
perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for this purging effect
wrought upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the future as well
as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people
who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being
very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich,
are just the very people whom we call Philistines. Culture says:
"Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their
manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively;
observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure,
the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make
the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having
with the condition that one was to become just like these people by
having it?" And thus culture begets a dissatisfaction which is of the
highest possible value in stemming the common tide of men's thoughts in
a wealthy and industrial community, and which saves the future, as one
may hope, from being vulgarized, even if it cannot save the present.
Population, again, and bodily health and vigor, are things which are
nowhere treated in such an unintelligent, misleading, exaggerated way as
in England. Both are really machinery; yet how many people all around us
do we see rest in them and fail to look beyond them! Why, one has heard
people, fresh from reading certain articles of the _Times_ on the
Registrar-General's returns of marriages and births in this country, who
would talk of our large English families in quite a solemn strain, as if
they had something in itself beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in
them; as if the British Philistine would have only to present himself
before the Great Judge with his twelve children, in order to be received
among the sheep as a matter of right!
But bodily health and vigor, it may be said, are not to be classed with
wealth and population as mere machinery; they have a more real and
essential value. True; but only as they are more intimately connected
with a perfect spiritual condition than wealth or population are. The
moment we disjoin them from the idea of a perfect spiritual condition,
and pursue them, as we do pursue them, for their own sake and as ends in
themselves, our worship of them becomes as mere worship of machinery, as
our worship of wealth or population, and as unintelligent and
vulgarizing a worship as that is. Every one with anything like an
adequate idea of human perfection has distinctly marked this
subordination to higher and spiritual ends of the cultivation of bodily
vigor and activity. "Bodily exercise profiteth little; but godliness is
profitable unto all things,"[398] says the author of the Epistle to
Timothy. And the utilitarian Franklin says just as explicitly:--"Eat and
drink such an exact quantity as suits the constitution of thy body, _in
reference to the services of the mind_."[399] But the point of view of
culture, keeping the mark of human perfection simply and broadly in
view, and not assigning to this perfection, as religion or
utilitarianism assigns to it, a special and limited character, this
point of view, I say, of culture is best given by these words of
Epictetus: "It is a sign of[Greek: aphuia]," says he,--that is, of a
nature not finely tempered,--"to give yourselves up to things which
relate to the body; to make, for instance, a great fuss about exercise,
a great fuss about eating, a great fuss about drinking, a great fuss
about walking, a great fuss about riding. All these things ought to be
done merely by the way: the formation of the spirit and character must
be our real concern."[400] This is admirable; and, indeed, the Greek
word[Greek: euphuia], a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the
notion of perfection as culture brings us to conceive it: a harmonious
perfection, a perfection in which the characters of beauty and
intelligence are both present, which unites "the two noblest of
things,"--as Swift, who of one of the two, at any rate, had himself all
too little, most happily calls them in his _Battle of the Books_,--"the
two noblest of things, _sweetness and light_."[401] The[Greek:
euphuaes] is the man who tends towards sweetness and light; the[Greek:
aphuaes], on the other hand, is our Philistine. The immense spiritual
significance of the Greeks is due to their having been inspired with
this central and happy idea of the essential character of human
perfection; and Mr. Bright's misconception of culture, as a smattering
of Greek and Latin, comes itself, after all, from this wonderful
significance of the Greeks having affected the very machinery of our
education, and is in itself a kind of homage to it.
In thus making sweetness and light to be characters of perfection,
culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows one law with poetry. Far
more than on our freedom, our population, and our industrialism, many
amongst us rely upon our religious organizations to save us. I have
called religion a yet more important manifestation of human nature than
poetry, because it has worked on a broader scale for perfection, and
with greater masses of men. But the idea of beauty and of a human nature
perfect on all its sides, which is the dominant idea of poetry, is a
true and invaluable idea, though it has not yet had the success that the
idea of conquering the obvious faults of our animality, and of a human
nature perfect on the moral side,--which is the dominant idea of
religion,--has been enabled to have; and it is destined, adding to
itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern
the other.
The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which religion and poetry are
one, in which the idea of beauty and of a human nature perfect on all
sides adds to itself a religious and devout energy, and works in the
strength of that, is on this account of such surpassing interest and
instructiveness for us, though it was,--as, having regard to the human
race in general, and, indeed, having regard to the Greeks themselves, we
must own,--a premature attempt, an attempt which for success needed the
moral and religious fibre in humanity to be more braced and developed
than it had yet been. But Greece did not err in having the idea of
beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection, so present and
paramount. It is impossible to have this idea too present and paramount;
only, the moral fibre must be braced too. And we, because we have braced
the moral fibre, are not on that account in the right way, if at the
same time the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection, is
wanting or misapprehended amongst us; and evidently it _is_ wanting or
misapprehended at present. And when we rely as we do on our religious
organizations, which in themselves do not and cannot give us this idea,
and think we have done enough if we make them spread and prevail, then,
I say, we fall into our common fault of overvaluing machinery.
Nothing is more common than for people to confound the inward peace and
satisfaction which follows the subduing of the obvious faults of our
animality with what I may call absolute inward peace and satisfaction,--
the peace and satisfaction which are reached as we draw near to complete
spiritual perfection, and not merely to moral perfection, or rather to
relative moral perfection. No people in the world have done more and
struggled more to attain this relative moral perfection than our English
race has. For no people in the world has the command to _resist the
devil_, to _overcome the wicked one_, in the nearest and most obvious
sense of those words, had such a pressing force and reality. And we have
had our reward, not only in the great worldly prosperity which our
obedience to this command has brought us, but also, and far more, in
great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me few things are more
pathetic than to see people, on the strength of the inward peace and
satisfaction which their rudimentary efforts towards perfection have
brought them, employ, concerning their incomplete perfection and the
religious organizations within which they have found it, language which
properly applies only to complete perfection, and is a far-off echo of
the human soul's prophecy of it. Religion itself, I need hardly say,
supplies them in abundance with this grand language. And very freely do
they use it; yet it is really the severest possible criticism of such an
incomplete perfection as alone we have yet reached through our religious
organizations.