It is not development to an enormous extent in one direction only.
It is not attending one course of University Extension Lectures.
It is not the knack of cramming for examinations, and of passing them with éclat.
All these elements may enter into culture, but they are not culture itself.
It is a harder matter to define culture than to say what it is not. As we write these words, our eye falls on the saying of a well-known prelate, reported in the Times of the day: “General culture—another name for sympathetic interest in the world of human intelligence.” This sounds rather highflown and difficult, but we may add three more definitions—
“Culture is a study of perfection.”—Matthew Arnold.
“Culture is the passion for sweetness and light, and (what is more) the passion for making them prevail.”—Matthew Arnold.
“Culture is the process by which a man becomes all that he was created capable of being.”—Carlyle.
The third of these is, perhaps, the best working definition of culture, for it shows its real importance and significance, and also makes it simpler to understand.
Look at a neglected garden. The grass is long and rank; the beds are a mere tangle of weeds and of straggling flowers that have run to seed, or deteriorated in size and sweetness until they can hardly be called flowers at all. It is a wilderness.