CHAPTER VII
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.