“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.