In every aspect of life, then, from its highest to its lowest, let us remember this idea of Culture, let us make for the best article, and be secure in its possession. The other day a Melbourne lady was saying to me how pretty and charming a place the Fitzroy Gardens were as a public park. “But the brown plaster statues,” I said, “and the concrete water-shrines.” And this Melbourne lady frankly declared her allegiance to these things, and, when in my disagreeable unsatisfied way I began to compare them with the marble copies from the Antique which are to be seen in the Inner Domain and Botanical Gardens in Sydney, she frankly told me that after all it was only a matter of opinion, and my opinion was this and hers was that! “And so,” I said, “my dear lady, it is, after all, only a matter of opinion whether the Apollo of the Belvidere or the Venus of Milo is more beautiful or less beautiful than the statue of Burke and Wills in Collins Street, not to say the brown-plaster statues in the Fitzroy Gardens?” And then this Melbourne lady, who had read many novels and magazines, and several volumes of sermons and even popular “philosophy books,” maintained her original assertion with the charming assurance of her sex; and I could only think that it was a pity she had not Culture—did not know the best, or even the second or third best, of what has been known and thought in the world in the matter of sculptural beauty, for then she would not have helped to persuade her husband to vote for the erection of any more brown-plaster statues and concrete water-shrines in the public places of his city. But, as it is, I am so thankful that the Sydney people have decorated one of their public places with really fine marble copies from the Antique (which none of these Australians, with their superior love for beautiful things has yet, so far as I am aware, thought of defacing), that I wonder at myself for thinking of saying it is a pity to see beside these so many poor modern and perhaps colonial products; for who can be wise—do I say in an hour, in a day, in a year, in a life-time? nay, rather, in a generation? Certainly not the architects and public decorators of Australia. Let us be thankful for what we have got, and diligently go on showing our thankfulness by asking for more.
But no; the time has passed when silly people can say that silliness is, after all, only a matter of opinion—or, if it has not passed, then we ought all of us to be striving our utmost to make it be passed. Culture is possible to so many! Its text-books are no longer in the hands of the incompetent: we have really no excuse for thinking Mr. Martin Tupper is preferable as a poet to Lord Tennyson, or Miss Eliza Cook to Mr. Arnold; and I will confess that I look with suspicion on the intellectual attainments of a man who sees no difference in the opinion of Darwin or Professor Huxley and of the popular Theologians and Mr. Lilly. Look, I say, at the text-books of Culture now, of the best which has been known and thought in the world. We have all seen Professor Huxley’s little primer of Physiology. Well, that is for Science. Then there is Mr. Stopford Brooke’s little primer of English Literature. That is for Literature; and these are only examples. Really, now, we have no excuse for reading the wrong books and thinking the wrong thoughts any more. And we have not, either, to confine ourselves to the thought of our own language. Everywhere excellent translations of noteworthy works are to be found. We would get to know something of the literature of Greece? At the end of Mr. Jebbs’ excellent little primer of Greek Literature, we shall find a list of the best translations. We have heard people talking of Professor Haeckel and his wonderful physiological work? Good translations of his best-known books are to hand. And so on throughout the whole domain of thought.
Let us sum up and conclude. We see, then, I think, what Culture is, and what is the purpose and system which should form and guide it. There is only one thing more to say about it, and that is that Culture, in this sense of the word, is the distinct product of our own times. No other country at no other time possessed it. The Jews possessed an unrivalled insight into Religion, into the sense of Righteousness. It is to a Jew that we owe most of what is best in Religion. Indeed, to the great majority of us his name is still a synonyme for Religion. But Righteousness is not the sole necessity of life—there is also Beauty. “Beauty,” says Keats,
“beauty is truth, truth beauty: this is all
ye know on earth or that ye need to know.”
But Keats, we remember, was a Pagan, a modern Greek, and men like this are quite as apt to think that Beauty is “the one thing needful” as the other stamp of man is to think that Righteousness is “the one thing needful;” whereas the real fact is that both are needful. What an advantage, then, have we over both Jews and Greeks in our appreciation of this! At the best, it is not possible to look upon either Paul or Plato as exponents of anything final. It requires two wings to soar with, and who can think that this “ugly little Jew,” as M. Renan has it, who talked nonsense about an Art which at best seemed to him mostly diabolical, was dowered with two? Nor yet can we think this of that “high Athenian gentleman,” as Carlyle retorts, with his illustrious Master who would have been so “terribly at ease in Zion.” Let us recognize it at once: the Jews are great and the Greeks are great, but neither of them by themselves can satisfy us. Nay, further; to the sense of Righteousness and Beauty must now be added that sense which Bacon first brought with any fertility to us—the sense of Science. “And we,” says Arnold,
“and we have been on many thousand lines,
and we have shown, in each, spirit and power.”
And it is just from the combination of the results of our spirit and power on these many thousand lines that this Culture of ours, this unique product of our times, springs. It was not before this possible. How could Paul understand the Greek Art? how could Plato have understood the Hebrew Righteousness? It was not till the Renascence, till Shakspere, that such a thing was possible, and it was not till Modernity, till Goethe, that it was possible to find these two senses, the sense of Beauty and of Righteousness, united to that third great sense, the sense of Science. I do not say that our age is necessarily a peculiarly great age: you may call it the dwarf on the giant’s shoulders, if you please; but what I do say is, that it is the first age which has been able to attain to anything like a really comprehensive Culture, a knowledge of the best that has been known and thought in the world. Possibly we are only on the threshold of Truth: possibly it will be left to another age to work out and complete what we have but begun; but this I think is certain: We are on the threshold, and the sooner we realize it, the sooner shall we realize that we are men in whom it is incumbent to put off childish things, the sooner shall we advance into the palace and very home.
Ah, then, let us no longer content ourselves with anything less than the best article! Let us live for the Idea of Culture, for and by it—for the best that has been thought and known in the world! Let us, too, like Goethe, resolve to wean ourselves from halves, from partial and prejudiced views of things, and to live “im Ganzen, Guten, Schönen”—“for the Whole, the Good, the Beautiful!”