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?