I
By this very ambiguous and therefore often misunderstood word “culture” we must understand ourselves to mean an evolving from an originally formless, rough condition into a condition in which the development into the best of which the material is capable is completed, or at least is in the process of unfolding without hindrance.
Every man at the beginning is a rough block that can only be fashioned into a true human form and a true work of art partly by the formative power of life itself with its manifold influences, and partly by the hand and sagacity of men. And as an unskilful sculptor may so misshape and spoil a stone intrusted to him that no real work of art can any longer be made of it, or may carve it so delicately that it loses the massiveness and strength necessary to resist all outer influences, so also, in the art of human culture, we often speak from painful experience of a man’s culture as neglected, or distorted, or too excessive and refined.
In true culture (one that does not injure but benefits men), three things seem to be essential: the conquering of natural sensuality and natural selfishness through higher interests, the wholesome and symmetrical training of the physical and mental faculties, and a correct philosophical and religious conception of life. Where one of these three is lacking, there is a drying up in the man of something that had been capable of a better development.
1. The final goal of all true culture is the liberation of man from the “sensual gravitation” which every one experiences in himself, and from the selfishness which, though it rests in the final analysis upon man’s impulse to self-preservation, stands nevertheless in opposition to the purpose of his life. Essentially as a creature of the senses man begins his course in this world, essentially as a creature of the spirit he should finish it here, and, as we hope, continue it in another world under more favorable conditions. Thus there lies already in his nature a conflict between that which is and therefore would naturally like to persist, and that which is undoubtedly demanded by his deepest and best feelings and which is meant to grow and develop. If he does not stay as he is, then the ground seems at times to give way under his feet; but if he does stay as he is, then his better self is always grievously reproving him, and saying that he is not fulfilling his duty and is not becoming what he could and should become. This is the battle that every man begins with himself as soon as he comes to consciousness about himself, and in this battle he must at any cost carry off the victory.
All inward dissatisfaction springs from sensuality or selfishness; these two never fail to show themselves as the primal causes, when the matter is run to the ground. Any genuine happiness is not conceivable where the spiritual nature has not gained the day over the sensual, and where a disposition toward liberality, humanity, and kindliness has not won the victory over a disposition to narrow selfishness—a victory already decided in one’s innermost tendency, and, as a matter of practical life, to be daily gained anew.
Whoever has not been able thus to subdue himself will never be a match for the world around him, which fights him with the same though thousand fold greater powers of selfishness. All that is left for him is to defend himself in this struggle for existence by continually injuring and destroying others and by uniting himself with others into groups with mutual interests, groups that are likewise of a purely selfish nature.
To try to suppress this struggle for existence which now threatens to destroy all the nobility that is in man and to make us like beasts of prey, is the chiefest task of all the truly cultured men of our time.
They must first show by their own example that this struggle is not necessary, and that there is a way out of the labyrinths of this life other than the sad one of who shall be strongest in his selfishness. After all, the man who proves strongest in this struggle, even in the most favorable case, only makes the existence of many fellow-men the heavier, and his own better self, besides, has suffered harm.
The first step is, that one shall no longer be recognized as a truly cultured man who has any trace of such a conception of life. And it must and will come to that, before long, in our civilized states. On the one hand, selfish solicitude for self and as much as possible of sensual enjoyment during a short life—on the other, human kindness, care for others, mental advancement, and the development of the nobler powers of the soul: these are the two great armies which now stand over against each other, ready for battle, and in one or the other you will be obliged to take your place.
2. The second point is the proper and healthy physical and mental development of all our faculties, in the interest of these higher aims. We are not to live with this better conception of life in cloisters or studies, but as far as possible to bring it into use in our ordinary life and in every calling—but not, of course, in any calling that stands in radical opposition to this better conception of life.
Here is the point where oftentimes a somewhat morbid and exaggerated philosophical, religious, or scientific tendency stands likewise opposed to true culture. There is no profit in a philosophy that does not hold its own in the full current of life, and there is little help in a religion which exists only in the church on Sundays and has no value in the market or in business. And even knowledge, in itself, has no great worth if it does not serve, somehow, to build up a more worthy kind of life for oneself or for others.
In a sickly, overfatigued body, with nerves continually overexcited, no quite healthy soul can live and work unimpeded. It is one of the chief mistakes in the culture of our day that a kind of misunderstanding has arisen between body and mind, whereby the body is harmed directly and, through the body, the mind. Besides, our whole modern education is much more directed toward the mechanical acquisition of things to be remembered than to the attainment of real convictions and of true knowledge.
3. But all these things, the pursuit of ideals, the search for true knowledge, and the maintenance of bodily tone, do not yet help a man toward true culture, unless they rest upon the conviction of the existence of a transcendental world whose forces can effectively come to his help. His sensual tendency and his natural selfishness are far too strong for him to subdue them wholly by his own expedients and without the help of such a Power residing outside himself. And the motives for doing it are too weak. What indeed should impel him to fight a hard and at first apparently almost fruitless battle with himself and the surrounding world his life long, if this life is only a transitory animal existence with no further destination?
The strength of a merely natural nobility, which for a time, perhaps, may lift itself above these things, does not, under all circumstances, hold out in the presence of this conception of life, but easily despairs of itself when trials, continuing and great, draw nigh. There must therefore be the introduction into human existence of a power which is mightier than all a man’s natural forces and which makes it possible for him to master himself and no longer to fear all external evils, in comparison with the evil of high treason to his better self.
That there is such a power, which one can not indeed logically prove, but which he can put to the test and himself experience,—this is the mysterious truth of religion; and it would be much less of a mystery if all men, if but once in their life, would venture the trial whether there is such a power. To be sure, if any one does not want to let quite go of his pleasure-seeking and selfishness, or does not altogether yet desire to attain, at any cost, to something better than the ordinary life, then, in spite of his trial, he will not have a perfect experience of this power, and in that case the mere outward profession of a religion does not help him much. He remains on the whole as he is, even though he go to church every day.
But if he has this will, then he receives this power, then he infallibly becomes another man, to such a degree that one may truthfully call it a new birth. Then only will all his natural gifts and knowledge become really alive in him and productive for the welfare of himself and others.
The highest step is complete self-renunciation, in which a man is only the receptacle of divine thoughts and impulses; but it is very dangerous to work oneself into such a condition by the fantasy, before it comes of itself and is really at hand. The main thing in religion is not its immediate perfect attainment, but that every one who will may enter on the way and pass from a joyless existence to a gradually ascending life.
This is the way to true culture, and every one must try to travel it by himself. It can not be taught; it can only be shown.
The evidence that one has true culture is, first, a gradually increasing mental health and power, then a certain higher sagacity that comes in, and finally a peculiar, larger caliber of spirit which one can bring about in no other way, which one can not imitate, and which really forms the chief element in culture. Yet these thoroughly cultured men are, for all that, entirely natural human beings, but free from all pretence and vanity; free also from all struggling, from all seeking for life’s good things, on which human happiness does not have to depend, and in whose incessant pursuit men only lose their souls; free from all unhealthy pessimism, or monkish seclusion; free from fear or nervousness or impatience; cheerful and quiet in the innermost centre of their being, and continuing in their mental and spiritual soundness up to the highest goal of human life. “As their days, so is their strength,” as the Old Testament says with great beauty and truth.
The highest imaginable degree of this culture is a complete devotion to all that is good and great, a devotion that no sort of trouble any longer clouds, or can cloud; it is that condition of the soul, mentally conceivable but seemingly rarely attained, in which there is no longer any battle with the sensual and the transitory, and the struggle of nature against the law of the spirit is completely at end.
This is that condition of perfection which we ascribe, in its consummate development, to the Divine Being alone, but toward which we also are called to strive; and the gradual winning of all men to this goal is the task in particular of all true education, and looked at in the whole, it is the end to which all history is moving.