Part 8

If this, then, is to be the case in Europe, what will it be in America, and still more in Australia? Aristocracies may not be ideal, but they have their use: they establish a certain high tone of social intercourse which is certainly valuable as one element in a really fine civilization; and, when they have passed away, it still lives as a tacit influence. France to-day, for instance, is a republic, but her outward manners, despite all that has happened, bear something of the mark of the Grand Siècle. England, again, is swinging away with heavy speed from her old ideal of Puritanism, and yet, as Mr. Arnold says so well, “the seriousness, solemness, and devout energy of Puritanism are a prize once won, never to be lost; they are a possession to our race for ever.” But America? but Australia? America is not leavened by Puritanism as England is, neither has she any hereditary tone of social intercourse to be compared with that of England, not to say of France. America must settle her own problem for herself, despite all the outer influence which is brought to bear on her: two hundred miles out from the Amazon mouth the water is still fresh, but it is salt at last. But consider this Australia where the Puritanism only began to operate when its sincerity was souring into cant, where the tone of social intercourse flourishes in the hands of those who attain to it as the imitation of an imitation! What can be so disastrous for Australia as the thrusting into power of a class of this sort, to be followed by a class which is to the first as the first is to its prototype in England? How this future presents itself has already been considered here. Mr. Marcus Clarke’s picture of it stands like a perpetual nightmare. What hope, then, remains to us except in that very “higher culture hitherto deemed necessary for a leisured and governing class,” which Mr. Arnold tells us our local private schools will not have influence enough to create as “a class and a power?” Is the only aristocracy possible to us to be, not a broad one like that of Athens, but a narrow one like that of Rome? We all know the picture Juvenal has painted of the decadence of this last, and Johnson’s application of it to the London of his time is not a memory altogether pleasant. “The lustre of a capital,” says M. Renan, with his eye on that of his own country, “springs from a vast provincial dung-heap, where millions of men lead an obscure life, in order to bring forth some brilliant butterflies which come to burn themselves in the light.” And if for capital we substitute plutocracy, and for butterflies creatures of a nature less savoury, we see something like the sort of future with which we are threatened here. Political life at present in Europe can scarcely be called noble, but here in Australia it is positively so base that there is a danger of its becoming the monopoly of men whose verbose incompetence is only equalled by their jovial corruption. The Plutocracy, such as it is, is being thrown in upon itself. Its present generation, it is true, is content to work—and, indeed, can find its only happiness in work; but this will not be so with the next, and still less with the third, generation. The desire to enjoy will grow into a lust, and this lust will spread. The end of this we know, and there will not lack writers to look back upon the present, even as so many of us look forward to the future, with a sort of eager envy. Well, and what is to be done to prevent this, if it is to be prevented? To cease from trying to obtain a secondary education for the Upper-class? to obtain Australian Rugbies, not only for the Plutocracy, but for the Upper-class, and for any one of the People that has the care to climb up to them and the best education which his age and country can afford him? to create a class and power that shall, in their turn, create a really fine civilization?—are we to cease from all direct struggle for this, and meet the present crisis by simply trying “to keep up the love of genuine culture in ourselves, and so to create an ever larger force in the nation to favour it?” I cannot believe that this is so; I cannot even believe that, good way as it is, it is “the best way.” We have all been reading lately what Mr. Arnold had to say in favour of this indirect method, this creation of a Remnant that should at last become a power, and I am sure I should be the last person to say a word against it. All I have to say is, that I have too much belief in the power of institutions (a power “the benefits of which,” Mr. Arnold has just been telling us, “he had not properly appreciated” before his trip to America) to neglect anything that could bring them to the side of Culture. I appreciate the indirect method, and I believe that, in the long run, it is the method which gives permanent solidity, but I cannot blind myself to the immense importance of the direct method. If it is necessary to conduct a river into a city, the pipes must first be made, and care taken that they are not too small. The French Revolution was a violent attempt and a premature one, and yet, such as it was, it brought a greater volume of happiness into France than the abortive attempt that we made in England. _We_ have still to face the problem of the happiness of the few and the debasement of the many, and I cannot see that it is an easier problem to resolve than that which is presenting itself to the French just at present. I still, then, must continue to believe that it is not wise in England, and how much more in America, and how much more in Australia, to refrain from the direct struggle for a higher education for our Upper-class. Our aim is not for the few but for the many, and not for elementary Culture for the many, but for the possibilities of a really fine Culture. We have, too, our distrust of Remnants. We dread their tendency to take to lotus-eating. They are apt to care so little for the propagation of either their species or their Culture.

“Let us alone! What pleasure can we have to war with evil? Is there any peace in ever climbing up the climbing wave?”

It is with difficulty, with great and perpetual difficulty, that a Goethe can keep his duty to his art and his duty to his neighbour at the perfect poise. It is so hard to keep your duty to yourself from running into your duty to your selfishness. Light, and the love of light, and the love of bringing light to others, is after all impossible without a certain admixture of heat. Let us, then, still continue to nourish our enthusiasm for a direct purpose, which shall be the future to that great mass of average human beings who are thoughtlessly moulded by whatever they find is strong enough to mould them. Let us be jealous of individuals. “_Non Angli, sed angeli._”

“_Leave not a human soul_ _to grow old in darkness and pain!_”

_October, 1885._

CULTURE.

Everyone nowadays has something to say about Culture. Even the politicians have heard of it, and some morning we may read in our newspapers that one of them is of opinion that there is some meaning in the term. Naturally enough we have all of us for some time been groping after the thing itself. The Time-Spirit is like a skilful driver of sheep. He may have considerable trouble with his flock, but, thanks to his unruffled intelligence and the ceaseless exertions of his dog Genius, he brings them all in in time for the market. It is now almost a century since the Idea of Culture took definite shape in the mind of a single man, and ever since then the number of its followers has kept on increasing, until at last everyone, as I remarked, has now something to say about it. If, however, one enquires of people, not what they _think_ of Culture, (For everyone from the Vatican Œcumenical Council[11] to the author of “In Memoriam”[12] is agreed as to the advantage of it), but what culture _is_, one may go far for a satisfactory answer. Women are growing dissatisfied with the sphere of their work. What is it that they need? “More breadth of culture,” answers the Prince of Tennyson’s Princess readily enough, “more breadth of culture!” And it will be said that it is easy to see that what the Prince means is, that women should have thrown open to them the education that has so far been the monopoly of men. But is this Culture? is this the whole truth about it?—simply the giving to the many—to women, to the Middle-class and to the People—what is the education of the few? would that man in whose mind the Idea of Culture first took definite shape have been satisfied with the sight of ubiquitous Harrows and Etons and Grammar Schools of Melbourne and Geelong? There can be no doubt but that such a sight would have pleased, but it certainly would not have satisfied him. “Schools,” he would have said, “are of high importance, but what is taught in them is of importance still higher.”

And so we come back again to our question as to what Culture _is_ with a sense that the ready answers to it are only half answers. Now everyone has heard of Goethe, and everyone has read some of his writings—“Faust,” at any rate—and, as it is to Goethe that we owe the Idea of Culture (as indeed most things that are really good in the sphere of modern thought), it would be best to at once quote his own words on the matter, and see if we cannot find a definition, or at any rate a description, of Culture that shall satisfy us. Poetry, however, does not exactly lend itself to definitions of such things as this, or even to descriptions. In Faust himself the idea may be more or less, as they say, incarnated, but we plain practical people, who like things put as much in black and white as may be, have some difficulty in these matters, and would far rather hear of them in simple English prose which means what it says and says what it means, than in poetry (and particularly German poetry) which seems to us to do exactly the reverse. Well, then, let us turn away from this parabolic Goethe for a little, and see if we cannot find someone who shall be his expounder to us. And who else should this be, at any rate in this case, than he whom the newspapers like to call the Apostle of Culture, Mr. Matthew Arnold? Let us go to Mr. Matthew Arnold, and say: “Sir, you are constantly talking about Culture, and you have said many uncomplimentary things to us all about our want of it. Now would you be so kind as to tell us precisely what you _mean_ by it? And we warn you that we are plain practical people who like things put as much in black and white as may be, and that we have a decidedly poor opinion of your efforts to make us believe that ‘the Eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness’ is the same thing as our ‘loving and intelligent Governor of the Universe,’ and that it makes no difference to us when we eat our Christmas goose and plum-pudding whether we believe that we do so because those shepherds and those Three Kings _did_ come that day to Christ in the Bethlehem manger, to the accompaniment of an angelic concert, or did not. We want, Sir, a definition of this Culture of yours, or, if you cannot give us that (But, really now, you are so clever at definitions that we shall be quite disappointed if you cannot!), then you must give us a good description of it, so that we may be able to arrive at a proper decision about it.” Then an expression of bland patience would cross Mr. Arnold’s countenance, as he sat in his study chair, listening with that “native modesty” of which he has told us all, to the words of our curious foreman; and, after a short pause, he would perhaps answer: “Gentlemen, I am much honoured by this deputation and inquiry. Long ago in some remarks of mine on translating Homer.... But I will refer you to a more recent period. A new and revised edition of a little book of mine called ‘Literature and Dogma’ has just been issued in a cheap form by Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. You will find that in the Preface to it the following words occur, which I venture to think may, on investigation, be found to answer the question with which I am now honoured. But, as you possibly may not remember it, (for I cannot expect you, any more than myself, to be always studying my works), I will quote it to you. ‘_Culture_,’ I said (Culture in italics)—‘_Culture_, knowing the best that has been thought and known in the world.’ I can give no better definition than this. ‘True Culture,’ I say again, ‘true Culture implies not only knowledge, but right tact and justness of judgment, forming themselves by and with judgment.’ Or, yet again: ‘Culture is _reading_’ (Reading in italics), ‘but reading with a purpose to guide it, and with system.’”—And with this, and a renewal of compliments on both sides, our jury bows itself out, and presently the sound of the closing hall-door mounts up to the silent chamber.

“But an awful pleasure bland spreading o’er the Poet’s face, when the sound climbs near his seat, the encircled library sees; as he lets his lax right hand which the lightnings doth embrace sink upon his mighty knees.”

This, then, it seems, is Culture—_knowing the best that has been thought and known in the world—not only knowledge, but right tact and justness of judgment, forming themselves by and with judgment_—reading, _but reading with a purpose to guide it, and with system_. And is not this something like what Goethe meant in that enigmatic sentence of his, which we have heard so often quoted by people who understood it as much as we did: “Vom Halben zu entwöhnen; Im Ganzen, Guten, Schönen resolut zu leben.” “I resolved to wean myself from halves, and to live for the Whole, the Good, the Beautiful.” But even now, even now that we know what it is (And after all, we say, what much more is it than saying that we ought to try for the best article, and not rest content with anything but the best article?), wherein are we, we plain practical people with our attachment to black and white, helped to the attainment of it? Culture, we are told, is reading, but reading with a purpose to guide it and with system. The purpose, it is presumed, is attainment, but what is the system? We are to have knowledge, and not only knowledge but right tact and justness of judgment, forming themselves by and with judgment. All very nice, we say, but how are we to get them? You say to a man who hobbles, “Run:” he is quite as capable of saying it as you are. Either show him how to run, or hold your tongue!—unless it be that he thinks he _is_ running, and even then it seems useless enough to undeceive him without you can teach him how to do what he now thinks he is. What, then, is this system of which you speak? what is the receipt for it? is it a system possible to _us_?

Well, I really have not the courage to go and face Mr. Arnold again. Handlers of the lightnings like he is can be so disagreeable when they please. Where is the joy of figuring in some ludicrous or contemptible attitude in their writings for the next few hundred years or so? It is all very well to say that we shall all of us be in our graves presently, and all equally ignorant of what our descendants may think of us, but the truth is no one likes to be held up to the nations as a fool or a knave, and especially if he be both. I see nothing for it but to let the oracle alone. I for one will have nothing to do with stirring up Phoibos again. I have done so more than once already, and am too grateful for a whole hide to tempt the arrows further. We must be our own Oidipous. At most we can reverently finger the Sibylline leaves, and see if anything of “pleasant to the eye and good for food” can be extracted therefrom.

To begin with, however, does it not seem best to say at once that, after all, there is no receipt for not saying and doing foolish things except not to be foolish? No system in the world will give wings to a worm. On the other hand, there is really no reason why the descendants of that worm should not one day navigate the sky; and, as a matter of fact, they do. Similarly with the stupidest and the most degraded of us, I cannot see why a single moment should be lost in attempting to better them. The earth is likely to be inhabitable for the next eight millions of years or so, it seems, and I am sure that is long enough for us. We need not be in such a hurry as the Socialists would have us, nor yet creep along on all fours in the Conservative manner; but we must not, of course, undervalue either fashion or progress, since both wheels and a drag are important parts of a carriage in uneven country. But here again, as is always the case, we are brought face to face with the question, not only of the wheels and the drag, not only of the carriage itself, and not only of even the driver of it, but of the end of the journey. “The purpose,” we said a moment ago in our ready way, “is, it is presumed, attainment, but what is the system?—Never mind,” we say, “about where we are going to: let us hear about the carriage we are going in! Let us have Etons and Harrows and Melbourne and Geelong Grammar Schools everywhere, and then we shall be alright. Let us resolve to have the best article, and not rest content with anything but the best article, and that’s all!”

Alas, for the impatience of mankind! In order to _try_ for the best article, not to say to _have_ it, must we not first know what the best article _is_? should we not know where we are going to, before we construct our carriage and purchase our horses? And yet, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are we not content to _go_, and leave more or less to chance where we are going _to_? do we not waste half our lives in overcoming difficulties with which we ought to have had nothing to do? It is so easy to talk and to act: it is so difficult to think, and mould your words and actions to your thoughts rather than your thoughts to your words and actions. It is the weary old tale of the more haste and the less speed, the weary old tale that is for ever new. And yet we will not listen to it. Sooner than trouble ourselves with the _whys_ of things, we will throw ourselves with energy into the first _hows_ that present themselves, and leave the rest to chance, or, as Dr. Moorhouse’s good “unintelligent orthodox” people say, to God. But nothing real, nothing lasting, is achieved in this way. Nature does not work in this way: God does not work in this way. The beasts do and the vast majority of men do, and that is why, in Hamlet’s words, life is such “an unweeded garden that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.” No, if we are to understand, not only Culture but anything at all, we must begin at the very beginning: we must learn the _whys_. Take care of the _whys_, we might say, and the _hows_ will take care of themselves. And let us not for a moment be deceived by those who tell us that our fathers got along very well without inquiring into the _whys_, into the causes of things, and so can we. This is not so. Whatever success has been achieved has been achieved by a recognition, conscious or unconscious it may be, of the causes of the thing worked upon. Instead of our fathers having had any success from their ignorance of causes, or their reliance on good fortune, they have had success in despite in these, and only so far as they banished the one and knew how to turn to account the other.

And Culture? what has this to do with Culture? Everything!—In this, as in so many other cases, we concentrate all our attention on the _how_ and leave the _why_ to take care of itself. “More breadth of Culture, more breadth of Culture,” cry the Princes and the Priests, and everyone else, in emulous chorus. But when they are asked what they _mean_ by Culture—what Culture _is_, then they have no answer ready save one (as Shelley says),

“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_.