Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/GulturereligioniOOsliairicli CULTURE AND RELIGION. CULTURE AND RELIGION EST SOME OF THEIR RELATIONS. J. C. SHAIRP, PEINaPAL OP THB U^ITKD COU.EGK OP ST. SALVATOK AND ST. LEONA&D, ST. ANDREWS. [Reprinted from the Edinburgh Edition."] • , ." ^ » • NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. 1871. C8 EIVERSIDK, CAMBRIDGS: STEBBOTIPED AND PRINTED BY H. 0. nOUGHTON AND COMPANY, PEEFAOE. This little book is a small contribution to a great subject. The five Lectures which it contains were delivered, on .five successive Saturdays of last Winter Session, to as many of the Students of the United College and others as chose to attend. They were orig- inally written with a view solely to immedi- ate delivery. The publication of them is an afterthought. It is needless to explain my reasons for publishing them, for these could neither increase nor diminish their value, whatever that may be. One object, how- ever, which I hope may be gained by publi- cation is to place them in a permanent form before those for whom they were originally intended. As lectures, meant to be under- stood on first hearing, they are naturally in a style more popular and diffuse than might have beseemed a regular treatise. They are Vlll PREFACE. printed almost as they were spoken, with the exception of the Fifth Lecture, to which some passages have been added. It need hardly be said that no attempt is here made at systematic, much less at ex- haustive, treatment of the subject. To have aimed at this within the space and in the form to which I have restricted myself, would have been impossible. All I have wished to do is to set forth certain views, which seem to me true in themselves, and yet likely to be passed over too lightly, or set aside too summarily, by the ^intellectual temper of the time. No satisfactory adjust- ment of the questions here entertained can, I believe, be reached without assigning to the . spiritual side of man's being and of truth a prominence and an importance, which do not seem to have entered into the thoughts of some of the ablest advocates of Culture. Indeed, to many, and these not the most fool- ish of mankind, Culture seems then only to be worthy of serious regard when it minis- ters to faith , — when it ena bles men to s ee spir itual things more truly and deep ly. If it obstructs or dims the vision of these things, PREFACE. ix as sometimes it does, it then ceases to have for them any value. In handling subjects on which all men have some thoughts, it is impossible exactly to determine where one's own end and those of others begin. Where, however, I have been aware that any thought or expression of thought has been suggested to me by an- other writer, I have tried to acknowlege it, either by quoting in the text some of the author's words, or by giving a quotation from his works in the Notes. Of the passages printed in the Appendix, some were directly suggestive of the thought in the text, others are merely adduced as confirmations of it. It would have been easy to have increased the number of the Notes, but they were drawn out at a place remote from libraries, and were taken only from those books which happened to be at hand. J. C. Shairp. September 1, 1870. CONTENTS. FA6B I. The Aim of CultCjre — its Relation to Re- ligion .13 II. The Scientific Theory of Culture . . 45 III. The Litkrary Theory of Culture . . 74 IV. Hindrances to Spiritual Growth . . 104 Y. Religion combining Culture with Itself . 133 Notes 179 eULTUEE AJ^T> EELIGION LECTURE I. THE AIM OF CULTURE — ITS RELATION TO KK- LIGION. When one is called, following the prac- tice of former Principals, to lecture to the students of this College on some branch of thought or knowledge, and when, with a single restriction, it is left undefined what the subject shall be, the selection might nat- urally be supposed to give rise to some em- barrassment. But two conditions are at hand to restrict and determine the lecturer's choice. One is, that he must choose some subject with which his past studies or ex- perience have made him in some degree familiar ; the other is, that the subject should be such as he may reasonably hope will either interest or benefit his hearers, — if possible, do both. It seemed to me not unfitting that, on this 14 THE AIM OF CULTURE. first occasion of my lecturing to you in a new capacity, I should speak on some subject of wide and general interest, which commands a view, not so much of any one department of study, as of the last and highest ends of all study. Other opportunities may be given for tak- ing up some one definite subject, historical or other, and dealing with it in detail. For this year I shall be Avell content if, without pretending to overtake, much less exhaust, the wide subject which I bring be- fore you, I shall be enabled to ofier a few suggestions, which may be of use to some" who hear me, on matters which very nearly concern them. The questions I shall have to touch on might easily be made to land us in the most abstract and speculative investi- gations. It shall, however, be my endeavor, as far as possible, to keep clear of these, and to put what I have to say in a concrete and practical shape. This I shall do both for other reasons, and especially from the convic- tion that we in Scotland, by getting hold of all subjects by the metaphysical end of them, often contrive to squeeze out of them what- ever vital sap they contain. /The question w^at it is we aim at in men- ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 15 tal cultivation, ^d what relation this latter bears to religion,\annot be said to be out of place here ; for in considering these ques- tions we are brought to contemplate steadily what is the end of university life, and in what relation university life stands to the ultimate ends of life taken as -a whole. Cf a University like this exists for any purpose, I suppose it is to promote mental culture, that is, the cultivation not merely of certain tech- nical and professional faculties, but, over and above these, of the whole many A few years ago there would have been no need to utter a truism like this ; but we live at present in a time of intellectual revulsions. What were till lately held to be first principles are now from time to time made the butts for edu- cational reactionists to jeer at. We have lately heard it asserted by men speaking with some authority that universities and all other places of education exist for one pur- pose only, — to train men for their special crafts or trades. If they do this well, they are useful ; if they do not, they are good for nothing. The belief in any ulterior end be- yond this is denied and ridiculed. Yet, in spite of the utilitarian logic of Mr. Lowe, and the more humorous banter of our pres- 16 THE AIM OF CULTURE. ent Lord Rector, I must still believe that, above and beyond special professional train- ling, there is such a thing as mental culture land enlargement, and that this is an excel- lent gift in itself, apart from any gain it may bring, and that it is one main end of uni- versities to foster the desire and further the attainment of it. The man, I must still hold, is more than his trade. The spirit that is in each man craves other nourishment than the bread he wins. I do not, in saying this, forget that we have each our special work in the world to do, — as lawyers, physicians, teachers, minis- ters, and the like, — and that it tasks all our streno;th and knowledo-e to do it. All men, or almost all, are bound to throw themselves vigorously into some one of the known pro- fessions, and this not for food and raiment only, but as a necessary part of their moral discipline. Few, very few, there are who, even if their circumstances admit it, can dis- pense with the wholesome yoke of a profes- sion, and yet live to any good purpose. But while fully acknowledging not only the ne- cessity, but the advantage of being harnessed to some regular profession, and that to suc- ceed in this the finest edge of faculty and ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 17 the most accurate technical training must be sought, I still believe there is something more than this, and greater, which must never be lost sight of, if we desire to become not mere useful machines or instruments, but complete men. The professional man who, over and above his daily duties and business relations, has learned to feel that he has other relations, wider and more permanent, with all his fellow-beino;s in all acres, — that he is a debtor for all he has and is to a wider circle of things than that he outwardly comes in contact with, — that he is an heir of all the great and good who have lived before him, — is not on that account a worse work- man, and is certainly a higher and better man. It is not, then, a mere dream, but a very real ainijwhich they propos^-who'urge us to seek " a mll^, more^-^iai'monious develop- ment of our hunt?miw, greater freedom from narrowness and^r^iidiQe, more width of| thought, moperexpansive synTpathies, feelings more catholic and humane, a high and un- selfish ideal of life." These are the quali- ties which university training, if it had its perfect work, might be expected to generate and foster. And it does this by bringing 18 THE AIM OF CULTURE. young minds, while they are still plastic, into contact with whatever is best in the past his- tory of the race, — with the great deeds, the high thoughts, the beautiful creations which the best men of former times have be- queathed to us. To learn to know and sym- pathize with these is the work not of one or two years, but of our whole lives. Yet the process may be said to begin here, and in a special way t o belon g to''the~iimversity. For here, if anywhere, it is that the avenues are first opened up which lead to the great store- house of foregone humanities, — here that our apprehension of these things is first awakened. But a small portion of all this richness we can take in during our short university course, — not much, it may be, in a whole life-time. (But it is something to have come to know and feel that these things exist, — exist, too, for us, in as far as we can appropriate them, and to have had our thoughts and desires directed thitherward. When the perception of these things and the love of them have been evoked, culture has begun, and^he university life is the natural time for it.l If this desire does not begin here, it is riot often awakened afterwards. But what do we mean by this fine word ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 19 Culture, so much in vogue at present? What the Greeks naturally expressed by their TratScia, the Romans by their humanitas^ we less happily try to express by the more artificial word Culture. The use of it in its present sense is, as far as I know, recent in our language, forced upon us, I suppose, by the German talk about '-Bildung.'* And the shifts we have been put to, to render that German word, seem to show that the thing is with us something of an exotic, rather than native to the soil. When applied to the hu- man being, it means, I suppose, the " educ- ing or drawing forth all that is potentially in a man," the training all the energies and ca- pacities of his being to the highest pitch, and directing them to their true ends. The means that it employs to attain these ends are manifold and various, as manifold as are the experiences of life. But one of the most pow- erM and characteristic instruments of culture is, as I have said, to bring young and plastic minds into contact with all that is best and greatest in the thoughts, the sentiments, the deeds of past generations of men, in order that these may melt into them and mould the character. But culture is not a product of mere study. / Learning may be got from 20 THE AIM OF CULTURE. books, but not culture. | It is a more living process, and requires thdt the student shall at times close his books, leave his solitary room, and mingle vs^ith his fellow-men. He must seek the intercourse of living hearts as well as of dead books, — especially the companion- ship of those of his own contemporaries whose minds and characters are fitted to instruct, elevate, and sweeten his own. Another thing required is the discipline which must be carried on by each man in himself, the learning of self-control, the forming of habits, the eifort to overcome what is evil and to strengthen what is good in his own nature. But to enumerate all the means of culture would be impossible, seeing they are wide as the world, and the process begins with the cradle, and, we may well believe, does not end with the grave. What, then, is the re- lation in which a university stands to this great life-process ? It may be said to be a sort of microcosm, — a small practical abridg- ment of an unending book, — a compend of the past thought and cultivation of the race, reduced to the shape and dimensions best fitted to be taken in. And this abridgment or summary of the past experience of the race is applied to young minds just at the age ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 21 which is most susceptible to receive impres- sions deeply, and retain them permanently. Every one must observe to what a large extent the advocates of education nowadays, of* the lowest as well as of the highest, agree in urging it for the moral fruits it produces. Remove ignorance, say the advocates of pri- mary education, and you put an end to crime. And though we may doubt the necessity of the alleged sequence, we gladly accept their testimony to the moral aim which all educa- tion should imply. The Culturists, again — by which term I mean not those who esteem culture, (as what intelligent man does not?) but those, its exclusive advocates, who rec- ommend it as the one panacea for all the ills of humanity, — the Culturists are never done insisting that it is not for its utilitarian results, not for the technical skill and information it implies, nor for the professional success it may secure, that they value culture, but for its effect in elevating the whole man. They tell us that men, in the last resort, are not formed by rules or precepts, no, nor by what are called moral principles, — that men's lives and characters are determined mainly by their ideal, that is, by the thing they lay to heart and live by, often without themselves being 22 THE AIM OF CULTURE. aware of it, by that which they in their in- most souls love, desire, aim at, as the best possibility for themselves and others. By the ideal, therefore, that a man loves, and by his persistency in cleaving to it, and working for it, shall you know what he really is. This ideal, whatever it be, seen and embraced, and meltino* into a man, constitutes his true and essential nature, and reveals itself in all he thinks and does. They tell us, and truly, that it is not the educated and refined only who have their ideal, — that every man, even the most illiterate, has an ideal, whether he knows it or not ; that is, every man has some- thing which forms the ruling thought, the main desire, of his life. The beggar in his rao-s is not without his ideal, though that probably does not go beyond plenty to eat and drink, and a comfortable house to live in. If he be advanced a little above abject want, then perhaps his ideal is to become wealthy, respected of all men for his riches. These, though material aims, are yet none the less ideals to those who entertain them. The Culturists, then, go on to say that, since every man must have his ideal, — material and self- ish, or unselfish and spiritual, — it lies mainly with culture to determine whether men shall ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 23 rest content with grosser aims or raise their thoughts to the higher ideals. These lat- ter, they remind us, are manifold : there is the ideal poetical, the ideal scientific, the ideal political, the ideal philanthropic : and that which of these, or other such like, a man shall set before him must be determined by his inborn bias and temperament, his natural gifts, and his outward circumstances. There are diversities of gifts, and to every man his own gift. The kind and measure of gifts each man has will shape and modify the ideal which is proper to him. And each man's practical wisdom consists in truly discover- ing the ideal which naturally belongs to him- self, and in so dealing with the facts and cir- cumstances in which his lot is cast, as to reconcile by a true adjustment his inward aspiration and his outward surroundings. If, then, it be true that every man must have an ideal of some sort, and that this, be it base or lofty, rules his whole being, the Culturists tell us that it is the business of culture to waken men to the consciousness of some ideal, and to set before them true and lofty standards ; for the young especially to open up, through the manifold obstructions of sense and outward things, avenues by 24/^ THE AIM OF CULTURE. y which the soul may catch some glimpse of the true beauty, the real good, " of that light which being compared with the light is found before it, more beautiful than the sun, and above all the orders of the stars." ^ They further tell us that it is the business of culture not only to set before men the vis- ion, but to impart to them the cunning hand which shall impress on outward things the pattern of the things seen in the mount. This culture does, by training them in the best knowledge of the time, by imbuing them with as much of the sciences and arts as tliey can take in and use. Without such practical training of the faculties and the hand, a man, however true his ideal, will become a mere dreamer, powerless to effect anything. And life is so complex, the materials we have to deal with so various and intractable, that it needs long and severe discipline of the facul- ties to give a man the chance of workincr his way towards his ideal through the numberless hinch'ances that surround him. We see, then, that culture, according to the claim put in for it by its most ardent ad- vocates, is said to do two things : first, it sets before a man a high ideal end to aim at, 1 Note I. ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 25 which shall enter into and control his life ; secondly, it trains all the faculties, all the in- ward powers and outward instruments, — hand, eye, ear, — so as to enable him in some measure to realize that ideal end, and over- come the obstructions that lie between him and it. Such is the claim which is put in by the Culturists. And, after what I have said at the commencement, you will believe that I shall not gainsay it. True as far as it goes, it is, however, far enough from being an adequate account of the whole matter. Before quitting this subject, let me but add one word in defense of those who speak of ideal aims. Very practical or cynical persons are fond of sneering at these. They make merry, as it is easy to do, with those who, in their phrase, keep vaporing about ideals. What have we, or most men, they say, to do with ideals ? Let us leave them to the rapt poet, the recluse thinker, the dreaming vis- ionary. It is the actual, the hard facts of life that we have to deal with ; to push our way in the world, maintain the struggle for existence, immersed in the tangible and ma- terial, hemmed in by, often nigh crushed be- neath, imperious circumstances. Enough for us if we can battle through them, without 26y THE AIM OF CULTURE. being overpowered. Ideals ! let ns leave them to those who have wealth and leisure ; they are among the luxuries, not the necessi- ties of life. For us we have enough to do to make something of the real. To make something of the real ! Yes, that's it. But how are we to make anything of the actual unless we have some aim to direct our efforts, some clew to guide us through its labyrinths ? And this aini^iis clew, is just what is meant by the IdeaJ. You may dislike the word and reject it, but the thing you can- not get rid of, if you would live any life above that of brutes. An aim, an ideal of some sort, be it material or spiritual, you must have, if you have reason, and look before and after. True, no man's life can be wholly occupied with the ideal, not even the poet's or the philosopher's. Each man must ac- quaint himself with numberless details ; must learn the stuff that the world is made of, and how to deal with it. Even Phidias and Michael Angelo must study the nature of the rough block they have to hew. Not even the most ethereal being can live wholly upon sunbeams, and most lives are far enough removed from the sunbeams. Yet sunshine, light, is necessary for every man. And ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 27 though most are immersed in business, or battlincr all life throuo-h with touo;h conditions, yet, if we are not to sink into mere selfish animality, we must needs have some master light to guide us ; " something that may dwell upon the heart, though it be not named upon the tongue." For if there be some- times a danger lest the young enthusiast, through too great devotion to an abstract ideal, should essay the impossible, and break himself against the walls of destiny that hem him in, far more common is it for men to be so crushed under manhood's burdens, that they abandon all the high aims of theiryouth, and submit to be driven like gin-horses — *' Round the daily scene Of sad subjection, and of sick routine." The Culturists, then, speak truly when they tell us that every man must have some ideal, and that it is all-important that, while the mind is plastic, each should form some high aim which is true to his own nature, and true to the truth of things. It has been well said that youth is the season when men are engaged in forming their ideals. In mature age they are engaged in trying to impress them on the actual world. And culture pro- fesses to effect that men shall fix their aims 28^ THE AIM OF CULTURE. higli and true, and be equipped with the knowledge, skill, aptitudes, required for car- rying them out successfully. But the question now occurs, wliich has probably suggested itself ere now to some who hear me. What does religion say to all this? We had thouo4it it had been relimon ' which set forth the ends of life, and supplied the motives and the power for striving to- wards them. But now it seems that there is some rival power, called Culture, vv^hich claims for itself these architectonic functions which we had hitherto thought belonged of right to Religion. In the language of Aristotle, which of these two is the architectonic or "master-art which prescribes to all the other arts and occupations of life their functions, as the master-builder prescribes their duties to his workmen ? Or are Culture and Religion •really rival powders ? are they to be regarded as in any way antagonistic to each other? And if not, what are their mutual relations ? in what way do they meet and act on each other ? This is the question with which I shall have to deal more or less, now leaving it, now returning to it, throughout these Lectures. r ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 29 One thing is obvious, that, however much the end of life, as laid down by religion, may diverge from the view taken by culture, yet religion will have nothing to say against the assertion that life must be ruled by an aim which shall be ideal. For what can be more ideal than that which religion sets before us ? " Seek ye first the kingdom of God." '' Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Let this, then, be clearly understood, that whether we look at life from the side of Culture or from that of Religion, in either case we must be guided by an ideal light, which is, indeed, the only real and powerful guidance. Now as to the relation in which these two stand to each other : — -^" Outfure proposes as its end the carrying of man's nature to its highest perfection, the developing to the full all the capacities of our humanity. If, then, in this view, humanity be contemplated in its totality, and not in some partial side of it. Culture must aim at developing our humanity in its Godward as- pect, as well as its mundane aspect. And it must not only recognize the religious side of humanity, but if it tries to assign the due 30 TEE AIM OF CULTURE. place to each capacity, and assign to all the capacities their mutual relations, it must con- cede to the Godward capacities that para- mount and dominating place which rightfully belongs to them, if they are recognized at all. That is, C ulture must emb ra ce R el iction , and end in it. Again, to start from the side or point of view of religion : — The ground of all religf- ion, that which makes it possible, is the rela^ tion in which the human soul stands to God. This relation is the root one, and determines what a man really is. As a Kempis says, " What thou art in the sight of God, that thou truly art." The practical recognition of this relation as the deepest, most vital, most permanent one, as that one w^hich em- braces and regulates all others, this is relig- ion. And each man is religious just in pro- portion as he does practically so recognize this bond, which binds him to his Maker. If, then, religion be this, it must embrace culture : first, because it is itself the culture of the highest capacity of our being; and secondly, because, if not partial and blind, it must acknowledge all the other capacities of man's nature as gifts which God has given, ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 31 and given that man may cultivate them to the utmost, and elevate them by connecting them with the thought of the Giver, and the purpose for which He gave them. We see, then, that religion, Avhen it has its perfect work, must lead on to culture. If this view be true, culture and religion are not, when rightly regarded, two opposite powers, but they are as it were one line with two opposite poles. Start from the man ward pole, and go along the line honestly and thoroughly, and you land in the divine one. Start from the divine pole, and carry out all that it implies, and you land in the manward pole, or the perfection of humanity. Ideally considered, then, culture must culminatalio- religion, and religion must expand into-^^cult- ture. So it ought to be, — so^ we sometimes imagine, it might be. But it requires little knowledge of history, and a very small ob- servation of men, to convince us that so it has not been in the past, so it is not now. Goethe, the high-priest of culture, loathes Luther, the preacher of righteousness. The earnestness and fervor of the one disturb and offend the calm serenity which the other loves. And Luther, likely enough, had he seen Goethe, would hav^ done him but scant justice. / /' 32 THE AIM OF CULTURE. Mr. Arnold figures to himself Virgil and Shakespeare accompanying the Puritan Pil- grim Fathers on their voyage to America, and asks if the two poets would not have found the company of such men intolerable. /^If, however, the two poets instead of the Pu- ^ ritan exiles had been thrown into the society I of St. Paul and St. John, would they have V found their society much more to their (mind ? These sharp contrasts suggest some questions not easy to answer. It is no use smoothing them over by commonplaces about the one-sidedness of all men, and the limita- tions of our nature. When, however, we think over it, we can see some reasons whicb make the combination of the two things dif- ficult, so difficult that it is only in a few, and these rarely gifted natures, that they have both coexisted in anv hi^h deorree. Take the case of a man who has not had a religious home and childhood, but has begun with cul- ture. It is easy to see that such a one, when from his scientific investigations and philosophical reasonings, or aesthetic ideals, he turns his thoughts for the first time towards religious truth, will come in contact with an order of things that is alien to the ways of thought and repugnant to the modes of feel- JTS RELATION TO RELIGION. 33 ing engendered in him by culture. The practical thought of God is something so dif- ferent from the apprehension of any truth of science or philosopliy, and puts the mind into such a different posture from any to which these have accustomed it, that the mere man of culture will feel that for such contemplation he either requires new facul- ties, or must make a new use of the old, and likely enough he will give it up in despair. Again, the account which Christianity gives of human nature, even if we avoid all exag- geration, is not one that readily falls in wqth the habits either of the scientific or of the poetic mind. The mystery of evil, as its working is described in the Epistle to the Romans, and man's need of redemption, his helplessness until succored by a strength higher than his own : these are truths that do not easily find a place in any system of ordered evolution such as science delights to trace, — rather they are yawning gaps that come in to baffle and perplex all the scien- tific methods. Nor are they less alien to im- aginations that have been fed on the great poetic creations, for these lend themselves readily to the pantheistic idea -of evil as a necessary step on the road to good, rather 3^ THE AIM OF CULTURE. than to the Christian view of sin. In short, the transition from the objects on which cul- ture dwells to those on which religion dwells is the passage from a religion in which hu- man thought, human effort, human self-de- velopment, are paramount, to a region in which man's own powers are entirely subor- dinate, in which recipiency, not self-activity, is the primary law of life, and in which the chief worker is not man, but God. To put the matter forcibly, let me quote the words of a venerable writer still living ; ^ " It is impossible," he says, " to look into the Bible with the most ordinary attention without feelinsc that we have sot into a moral atmosphere quite different from that which we breathe in the world, and in the world's literature. In the Bible God is presented as doing everything, and as being the cause and end of everything ; and man appears only as he stands related to God, either as a revolted creature or as the subject of Divine grace. Whereas in the world, and in the books which contain the history of the world, according to its own judgment, man appears to do every- thing, and there is as little reference to God as if there were no such Being in the uni- verse." 1 See Note II. ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 35 These words point to a great but real op- position, to a vast hiatus not to be gainsaid or passed by, — the rjifffrpripp. between the p^^^t ftf vfpw^^^^^ V.\\<\(^ ^nf\ of ordinaryiit-^ erature, — the opposed aspects that life wears, according as we accept the religious interpre- tation of the world or the secular interpreta- tion of it. No doubt it is the great end of Christianity to heal this long-standing discord, to do away the ancient opposition between things divine and things human, to reconcile all true human learning, not less than human hearts, to God. That in every age Christian- ity has done so in some measure, history is the witness. That it has yet much to do, vast tracts of thought to reclaim and spiritu- alize, before the reconciliation is complete, if it is ever to be complete, — this is but too apparent. It may help to make the whole matter clearer, if, before concluding, we cast our eye backward to the sources whence first issued these two great streams of tendency that long since, more or less combined, and now compose the main current of civilization. Of culture in its intellectual side, of those mental gifts which have educated the civil- 36 THE AIM OF CULTURE. ized world, and moulded thought to what it is, Greece, you all -know, is the birth-land. It was there that these gifts sprang to light, and were matured before they were spread abroad and became the inheritance of the na- tions. The first father, the Apostle of civil- ization, as he has been called, was Homer. For several centuries the poems of the old minstrel floated about orally, intrusted only to men's memories. But when the Athenian prince gathered together his scattered frag- ments, and reduced them to writing, " the vagrant ballad-singer " was, as it were, en- throned as the king of minstrelsy, and " in- vested with the office of forming the young mind of Greece to noble thoughts and bold deeds." ^ Henceforth to be read in Homer became the first requirement of an educated gentleman. And as time went on there fol- lowed in due succession all the order of the poets. Didactic, lyric, tragic, comic poetry, each of these in Greece first came to light, and there, too, found its consummate form. Hesiod, Pindar, JEschylus, Sophocles, Aris- tophanes, — these followed in the train of Homer, and, though subordinate to him, be- »me likewise the teachers of the Greek 1 Note UI. - ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 37 youth. On poetry followed history, — with Herodotus for the father of pictorial, Thu- cydides of philosophic, history. And as his- tory came from the consciousness of political life, so also did oratory, which was one of its younger products. And when all these intellectual forms had nearly completed themselves, last of all, as the maturest creation of Hellenic mind, came philosophy, — philosophy with its countless names and variety of phases, but with Socra- tes, Plato, and Aristotle standing in the fore- front, for all time " the masters of those who know." No one w^ho looks back on that marvelous fertility, that exhaustless variety of the rarest gifts of thought, the product of so small a land and so few centuries, the wonder of which only increases the more we contemplate it, can believe that it was intended to begin and end in the land which gave it birth, — that these words of savers and thinkers had ful- filled the end they were designed for when they had delighted or instructed only the men who first heard them. No; the idea must force itself on every one who really re- flects on it that th^s inexhaustible richness was given to Athens, that she might be the 38 THE AIM OF CULTURE. intellectual mother of the world, — that her thoughts might be a possession for all ages. Just as we ^ee' that the long geological epoch, which stored up the vast coal meas- ures, was evidently preparing those material resources which were not only to minister to the physical comfort, but to create the phys- ical civilization of great nations yet to be, even so this exuberance of intellectual wealth seems, in the design of the world, to have been so marvelously matured in Greece, that it might be as a treasure-house from which not so much the Greeks them- selves as all future generations might be schooled, elevated, and refined. With recrard to the action of Hellenic thought, however, two remarks are to be made. The first is, it was not so much im- mediately and directly, as by creating Latin literature and reaching modern thought through the medium of the Latin language, that Greece has propelled European civiliza- tion. It was not till the revival of letters in the fifteenth century that Greek thought came face to face with the modern world, and infused itself directly into western cul- ture. Of course it is an old remark that in literature Rome produced little original, and ITS RELATION TO RELIGION, 39 mainly imitated Greece. But when we look at it, there is more in this than at first appears. It is, as has been well said, " a proof of the sort of instinct which has guided the course of civilization. The world was to have certain intellectual teachers, and no others. Homer and Aristotle, with the poets and philosophers who circle round them, were to be the schoolmasters of all genera- tions ; and therefore the Latins, falling into the law on which the world's education was to be carried on, so added to the classical library as not to reverse or interfere with what had been already determined." The second remark I would offer is, that whatever else Greece has given to the world, however much she may have educated men to clear and subtle thouo-ht, and to the deli- cate sense of beauty, and to the highest forms of abstract thinking, it is not Greece that has awakened and satisfied the religious longings of humanity. Indeed, it is a very noteworthy fact, that before Hellenic thought became cosmopolitan, it dropped the native ethnic religion, and left it behind in the place of its birth as a residuum that could not live else- where. What was purely intellectual, that was catholic and fitted for all time ; what 40 THE ATM OF CULTURE. was religious, that Avas local, temporary, and doomed to perish. Connected with this fact is the divorce in Greece between religion and morality, in all but a very few of her highest minds. Indeed, it is observable how, as the moral sense of the Hellenic race grew deeper and wider, the orimnal religion of Homer fell off from it as felt to be inadequate. Greece, then, was the source of intellectual culture ; but we must look to a remoter and more eastern land to find d^e original source of religious knowledge, ff^ Jerusalem," as has mQu said, " is the fountain-head of re- ligious knowledge to the world, as Athens is of secular.^ The ancient world contained these two, and only these two, centres of illumination, separate and independent, to which the modern world is indebted for the highest gifts of human learning and the life- giving powers of divine grace. Greece, while it enlio-htened and delicrhted the^ inteT- lect, l eft the conscience a nd spirit of man un- satisfied.) To meet the wants orrtT^seTto reach man in the deepest seats of his being, it required something more inward, more penetrating, more vital. It required the sim- ple yet profound truths of that revelation which began and was perfected in Judaea. ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 41 With retrarcl to the teachincr of that re vela- tion, I will note but two things. One is, that to the Hebrew mind the thought of mo- rality and the thought of God were never sep- arate, but were ever essentially at one. That word belongs to the oldest record of the He- brew race, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " And this interpenetration of morality and religion, which pervades the teachings alike of lawgiver, psalmist, and prophet, finds its perfect consummation in Him in whom the revelation culminated and closed. The other thing I would remark is the striking fact that it was from amidst a people hitherto the most isolated and exclu- sive of all known peoples, — a nation shut off from all the world by the most narrow restrictions and prejudices, — that there arose, in all the force of living conviction, a faith the most unrestricted, the most expan- sive, and all-embracing which the world had hitherto known or ever can know. When we think on these two separate centres of ilhjimiia,tion, — " the grac e's tofg d 'm Jerusalem, and the gifts which rad iate Trom AtliensT'^— the tEought cannot but occur, How do these two stand related to each other ? In that expression, " when the 42 THE AIM OF CULTURE. fullness of the time was come," no thoughtful student of history can fail to recognize, along with the preparations that had gone on in Judasa, some reference to the work which Greece and Rome had done on the earth. You remember that superscription which was written in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew. That superscription seems to symbolize the confluence of powers which thenceforward were to rule the minds of men. That central grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ was to go forth into the world embodied in the lano;uao;e which had been lonor since fashioned bv Homer and Plato, and that Hellenic tongue in its last decadence was to be made " the vehicle of higher truths and a holier inspiration than had ever haunted the dreams of bard or sage in old Achaia." And not less, in order that the glad tidings might spread abroad, was needed the political action of Rome. The world had first to be leveled down into one vast empire, and the stern legionaries, — " those massive hammers of the whole earth," — as they paved the great highways from the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules, were, though they knew it not, fulfiUers of Hebrew prophecy, and preparing the way ITS RELATION TO RELIGION. 43 of the Lord and making straight in the desert a highway for our God. So it was that Ju- dasa, Greece, and Rome combined to make possible the new creation. Not in Judaea alone, but in the other two countries also, there had been going on, as has been well said, " a moral and spiritual expansion, which rendered, the world more capable of appre- hending the Gospel than it would have been in any earlier age." If there is anything providential at all in human history, this con- vero-ence of influences to brino; about " the fullness of the time " must be regarded as such. The agencies which in those past ages combined to form Christendom have their points of contact and cohesion ; they have also their points of divergence and repulsion. During some epochs the harmony of their working has been conspicuous ; in other epochs, for a time at least, they have seemed rather to be divergent. But however much, in certain turning-points of human thought, these great influences, or their modern repre- sentatives, may seem for a time to collide, and though in the collision many individuals may suffer grievous loss, one cannot but be- lieve that out of the conflict of earnest 44 THE AIM OF CULTURE. thougli one-sided convictions, there will at length arise, as there has done in past ages, a revivified faith, a harmony of elements, more simple, more all-embracing, more spir- itual than any that has yet been. LECTURE n. THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF CDLTUBE. I ENDEAVORED in my last lecture to bring before you the meaning of culture as under- stood by. those who most warmly advocate it, the ends it proposes, the means by which it seeks those ends. There was less need to dwell at length on the nature of relicrion, as this, we may assume, is more commonly un- derstood. We saw that these two, though distinct in their nature, and starting from different points of view, are not really op- posed. Fo r culture, if th oroughly and con- sistently carried out, must le ad on to reliction , that is, to the cultivation o f the spi ritual an d heavenward capaci ties of our natu re. And religion, if truthful and wise, must expand into culture, must urge men who are under its power to make the most of all their capacities, not only for the worth of these capacities in themselves, but because they are giffcs of God, and given for this purpose, that 46 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY we may carefully cultivate them. And no ri ^ ^oubt culture, pursued under such a feeling, j,V would acquire a new worth; it would be purified from egotism and unhealthy self- consciousness, would be informed by a more chastened, reverential spirit, which would add to it a new excellence. If we could but attain and keep the highest and truest point of view, and regard " humanity as seen in ,the light of God," all good gifts of nature and of art w^ould fall into their right place, for they would assume in our thoughts that place which they have in the creative thought of the Giver. So it is in truth ; but so we saw it has not been in fact. We saw that often it has hap- pened that culture has taken account of all man's capacities but the highest, and so has become Godless ; on the other hand, that often sincere relig-ion has thought it was honoring things spiritual by depreciating the cultivation of the lower but yet essential ca- pacities of man, and so has narrowed itself, and cut itself off from reality. I then glanced at the two historical centres of illumination, from the one of which the world had received its spiritual, from the OF CULTURE. 47 other its intellectual light, and I noted how these two had providentially combined to bring in the new creation of Christianity. At the close I was led to remark that while these two mighty influences had combined, and doubtless were intended to combine, to bless mankind, one could not but perceive that as they contain elements which draw to each other and tend to coalesce, so they con- tain other elements which may tend, and at certain epochs have tended to divergence, or even to collision. Such an epoch was that wakening of the European mind in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, known as the revival of letters. When the fall of Constantinople had sent crowds of Greek exiles westward, bearing with them their Greek learning into Italy, ^— when the printing press, newly invented, was pouring forth year by year fresh editions of Greek and Latin classics, — when the discovery of another hemisphere had opened a boundless horizon for enterprise and civili- zation, — the minds of men, long hide-bound in scholastic logic and theology, sprang for- ward, as from a musty prison-house, into a fresh world of light. In Florence, then the fountain-head of the revived learning, the 48 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY recoil from the outworn paths drove many minds not only from scholasticism, but even from Christianity. They fancied tliey could find something better, wider, more human in a semi-pagan philosophy. Intoxicated, as was not unnatural, by the fascinations of the new learning, they imagined that in it alone they had found an all-sufficient por- tion. Again, about the beginning of last century, the same tendency to discard religion, at least revealed religion, and to make the products of human learning take its place, set in, thouo;h in another form. After the relimous wars, as they are called, of the seventeenth century had been fought out ; after the strong Puritan movement had spent itself, there came on a period of active philosophiz- ing, but of philosophy unaccompanied by spiritual insight. As you read the works of Bishop Butler, you seem to hear the voice of a great and earnest thinker crying in the wilderness, and pleading with a suffering generation to believe that there is a deeper moral tendency in things than at first sight appears. It was a sifting, active-minded age, analyzing all things and believing In OF CULTURE. 49 nothinor which it could not analyze ; an ase wholly over mastered by the understanding, judging according to sense. So it was for the greater part of last cen- tury. But Germany before the French Rev- olution, and our own country after it, startled by the conclusions to which the Sense-phi- losophy had - led in all departments of life, and the devastation it had made amonor all man's chiefest instincts and most cherished faiths, awoke to think over again those great problems which the past age had settled and dismissed so complacently. The human mind plunged down as it were to a deeper layer of thought and feeling than that which had satisfied the age of the Aufkllirung, as it is called. The philosophy of Voltaire and Hume could hold it no lonojer. This recoil manifested itself in Germany by the rise of the Kantian philosophy and the succession of great idealistic systems that followed it. In this country it was seen in here and there an attempt at a deeper metaphysic than that of Locke and Hume, but much more in the in- creased depth and compass of the poetry and literature of the first fifty years of this cen- tury. Everywhere that literature is per- vaded by greater reach of thought, increased 6(y THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY tenderness, more reverence, finer aspiration. In most of its greater poets there is some- thing of the " Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore," — the stretching forth the hands in yearning for a farther shore. It is clear that when culture is in such a phase, it more readily allies itself with religion than when it is sense-hound, unenthusiastic, and analytic mainly of the more obvious phenomena. The years about 1840 may be taken as the time \^:hen tlie spiritual flood-tide had reached the full. It is always very difficult to esti- mate the age in which you are living, yet I think we seem to have come in during the last twenty years for the ebb of that spiritual wave. Wordsworth, in his day, complained that — " Plain living and high thinking are no more." Of our day it may be truly said that high liv- ing and plain thinking are the all in all. In an age of great material prosperity like the present, when the comforts and conveniences of physical life have greatly increased, and science is every day increasing them, this world is apt to seem in itself a " satisfying OF CULTURE. 51 abode," quite irrespective of any hope be- yond. The spread of knowledge is doing so much to remove many of the surface ills of Kfe, that vague and exaggerated hopes are apt to be fostered of what it may yet do for the healing of the deepest disorders. To minds that have got themselves intoxicated with notions of material progress, this world, as I have said, is apt to seem enough, and man to appear a satisfying object to himself quite apart from God. This tendency, I think, manifests itself, as in other things, so also in some theories of culture which have lately been propounded. In these we see the attempt made either to substitute for religion the last and highest results of knowledge and culture, or to bring religion down from its supremacy, and give the highest place to culture. The first view which I shall bring before you, and w^iich will occupy the rest of our time to-day, is that which is taken by the advocates of a rigorous and exclusively scientific culture, by those who would make the scientific method our only guide in life, not merely in things belonging to the phys- ical order, but not less in the highest con- 52 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY cerns of the human spirit. As tendencies are best seen in an extreme instance, I shall take as the sample of this tendency an in- aucrural lecture delivered about two vears ago by Professor Huxley, at the South Lon- don Working Men's College, of which he was then President. It is entitled " A Lib- eral Education, and where to find it." There is thi-s advantao;e in takinoj the instance I have chosen, that it presents in a strong and easily understood form a way of thinking which in less aggravated degree pervades very widely the intellectual atmosphere of our time. Mr. Huxley lays down as his first principle, that education, in its largest and highest sense, — the education not merely of schools and colleges, but that education which the human spirit is receiving uninterruptedly from birth till death, — that this process con- sists solely in learning the laws of nature, and training one's self to obev them. And within the laws of nature which we have to learn he includes nol only the physical laws, but also those moral laws which gqfvern man and his ways. We must set ourselves there- fore to acquire a knowledge not only of the laws that regulate matter, but also of the OF CULTURE. 63 moFai-4aw&-af___the universe. These moral laws Mr. Huxley holds to be as rigid and self- exacting as the physical laws appear to be. This view of the condition of our existence here, and of the part which man bears in it, Mr. Huxley sets forth in a startling, not to say daring, figure. "Suppose it were per- fectly certain," he says, " that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or another, depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess, don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the name and moves of the pieces ; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of a check ? Do you not think we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn upon the father who allowed his son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight ? " Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth that the life, the fortune, and the hap- piness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those connected with us, do depend on our knowinor somethincr of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and compli- cated than chess. It is a game which has 64 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a gaijie of his or her own. The chess- board is the world, the pieces are the phe- nomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well the highest stakes are paid with that overflowing gener- osity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is check- mated, without haste, but without remorse. My metaphor," Professor Huxley proceeds, " will remind some of you of the famous pic- ture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan play- ing chess with a man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel, who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win, and I should accept it as an image of human life. Well, what I mean by education is learning the rules of this mighty game. Jn r>fV)f^v words, education is the instruction of lli e4«tel* lect in the laws of nature, under which name OF CULTURE, 55 I include not merely tlyngs and their forops, but men and their ways^ and the fashioning oiThe affections and tlie will into an earnes t and loving 3esire to move in har mony with these laws. For me education nie ai^s i^eithe r more nor less than this." Now, painful as such a view of life must be to those who have been trained in a de- vouter school, it is well that we should look at it steadily, and try to understand and in- terpret it fairly. For it is a strong exposi- tion of a way of thinking very prevalent at the present time, which contains a peculiar fascination for many minds which, impatient of mystery, long, before all things, to attain and hold a clearly cut and systematic view. Definiteness is with them the test of truth, and this theory is so definite. However, let us first get Professor Huxley's whole state- ment. After setting it forth in that startling metaphor, he goes on to remark that nature begins the education of her children before the schools do, and continues it after. She takes men in hand as soon as they are born, and be(Tins to educate them. It is a rouorh kind of education, one in which " ignorance is treated like willful disobedience, incapacity 66 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY is punished as a crime. It is not even a word and a blow, but the blow first without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed." Now here man comes in, and takes up the process which nature has begun. And the aim of the artificial education which he gives in schools and col- leges is, or ought to be, to make good the defects in nature's methods, to prepare the child to receive nature's teaching, and to pei-fect it. All artificial education should be an anticipation of nature's education ; and a liberal education is an artificial education, one which has prepared a man, not only to escape nature's cuffs and blows, but to seize the rewards which she scatters no less lavishly. Then Mr. Huxley gives us the foHowing picture of what he conceives an educated man to be, as the result of a truly liberal education : — *' That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold^ logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth OF CULTURK 57 working order; ready, like a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind ; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature, and of the laws of her op- erations ; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience ; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself." This, whatever defects it may have, must be allowed to be, in many ways, a high ideal of education. Though it gives the chief promise to physical nature, and the scien- tific knowledge of it, yet the moral side of man is bv no means foro;otten. Mr. Hux- ley's ideally-educated man is to have his pas- sions trained to obey a strong will ; this will is to be the servant of a tender conscience ; he is to lov^e beauty, to hate vileness, to re- spect others as himself. I would have you mark these things, both that we may do full justice to this view, and that we may the better understand the radical defect under which this whole theory of the world labors. 68 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY The first remark I would make is, that it takes for granted and founds on that theory of knowledge which is known as pure and exclusive phenomenalism. Phenomenalism, you know, is that philosophy which holds that all existences, all possible objects of thought, are of two kinds only, external and internal phenomena ; or sensuous objects, such as color, shape, hardness, or groups of these, and the unsensuous ideas we have of sensuous objects. If, however, we add that there is a third kind of existence, or object of thought, not included in either of those classes already named, but distinct and dif- ferent from these, namely, " the unsensuous percipients, or spirits or egos, which we are each of us conscious that we ourselves are," then we turn the flank of this philosophy ; the inadequacy of the theory on which Mr. Huxley's view is based becomes at once ap- parent. But into this matter, pertinent though it is to our discussion, I will not enter. For, as I have already said, I wish in these lectures to enter as little as possible into questions purely metaphysical .^ The second remark I would make is, that Jthis so-called scientific theory of life implies 1 Note IV. OF CULTURE. 69 that, though probably there is some power behind the phenomena, we have no means of ascertaining what mind and character it is of what purpose it has in creating and upholding this universe, if indeed it did create and does uphold it. I think I am not misinterpreting Professor Huxley when I assume that he holds that our only means of conjecturing what is the mind of the great chess-player he fimires, lie in the scientific investio-ation of the facts of the world. Now, Hume long ago observed that if we judge merely by the facts of the world, we cannot infer any fixed character in the Divine Being ; but, if we in- fer character at all, it must be a two-sided, in- consistent character, partly bencYolent, partly the contrary. As it has been well expressed, the theory comes to this, that '' we, as intelligent, think- ing heinous, find ourselves in a universe which meets us at all points with fixed laws, which encompass us about externally, and rule us also within ; fixed laws in the region of mat- ter, fixed laws in the region of mind ; that,, therefore, knowledore for us is knowledore of laws, and can be nothing more*^ and that wisdom in us is simply the skill to turn t^e knowledoje of these laws to the best account, 60 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY conforming ourselves to them, and availing ourselves of them to appropriate to ourselves all tlie good they bring within our reach." A dreary prospect ,it would be if science really shut us up to this. Well may it be said that " men of keener hearts would be overpowered with despondency, and would even loathe existence, did they suppose thena- selves under the mere operation of fixed laws, powerless to excite the pity or the attention of Him who appointed them." If, however, truth compelled us to admit it, we might try to bear up under it as best we could. But is it truth, or only a one-sided philosophy, that shuts us into this corner ? That it is not truth, the following considerations will, I hope, help to convince us. Observe, then, that while Professor Hux- ley's ideal man is to respect others as him- self, we are not told how or whence this most desirable habit of mind is to be engendered. As a man of science, Professor Huxley is bound to take note of facts l)efore all things, and to pass over none. In this very lecture he declares himself to have the greatest re- spect for all facts. Now, if there is one fact atout human nature more certain than an- other, it is that men do not naturally re- OF CULTURE. spect the welfare of others, — rather that "all men seek their own," not the things which beloncr to tlicir fellow-men. It takes much moral discipline to overcome this in- born propensity. Experience has, I believe, proved that it cannot be overcome except by a man being taken out of self as his centre, and finding a new centre out from and above himself, on which he can rest, to which all men stand equally related, on which all can rest even as he. But Professor Huxley's theory supplies no such centre. If life were really such a game as he describes, — if men were once convinced that they had to do with only such a hidden chess-player as he pic- tures, would they not more than ever be driven inward, would not the natural selfish- ness be tenfold more concentrated and inten- sified ? To bring a man near the Christian require- ment, to love his neighbor as himself, takes the whole weight of Christian motive ; noth- ing less will avail. Assuredly the considera- tion of the evil consequences that will come to one's self from an opposite line of conduct, — which seems to be the moral theory rec- ognized in this lecture, — will be powerless to do so. We conclude, therefore, and say 62 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY that the merely scientific view of Culture ^ will not work for want of a lever. It postu- ^ lates as one of its ingredients respect for others, yet it provides no means for securing the presence of that ingredient. Again, another element which it postulates is " a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience." Now, a tender conscience, a true and quick sense of right, and the habit of obeying it, are not born in men ready- made and full formed. The elements, in- deed, of such a conscience lie in all men, but- it requires long, careful, and delicate train- ing to bring them to maturity. Mr. Huxley has not told us what resources his theory sup- plies for maturing such a conscience. If the world were to come to recoo-nize no other moral sanctions than those which ntihtarian- ism insists on, would its morality continue to be even as high as it now is ? I think not. Certainly if men Were once convinced that they were placed in such a world as Profes- sor Huxley pictures, — that their relations to its Ruler were such as he describes, — a ten- der conscience would be the last thing which would be engendered by such a conviction. We know how childi*en grow up who are OF CULTURE. 63 reared in homes where no kindness is, but where the only rule is a word and a blow. The rule of terror, whether by parents or teachers, does not generally result in a ten- der conscience, but in hardness, suspicious- ness, deception. If the universe were believed to be such a home or school on a larger scale, would the result be different ? In other words, would a tender conscience be produced by the mere study of the laws of the game ? But again, let us suppose such a conscience to exist, and to be active in a man. Such a one, in proportion as the moral nature in him was true and strong, would desire the right to prevail in his own life and in the life of all men, — the desire of his heart would be to see the reicm of righteousness established. How would such a man feel, what would be his position, confronted with the Hidden Player, who moves the phenomena of the universe,- in whose hand he knows his own life and the life of all men are ? — the man loving right, and desiring to see it prevail, the Great Automaton with whom he has to do, being either regardless of it, or affording to men no evidence that he does regard it. 64 THE S CIE y TIFl C THE ORY In such circumstances would not the tender conscience be a most inconvenient posses- sion ? Would not he who had it feel that it put him out of harmony with the universe in which he was placed? For his best en- deavors would find no sympathy, no response in the purpose of Him who rules the uni- verse. What would remain to such a man except either to rid himself of this sensitive conscience, which he found to be no help but rather a hindrance to successful playing of the game, or to desire to get out of a world, as soon as may be, in which the best part of his nature fqund itself strange and out of place. But again, this leads me to observe that Professor Huxley's theory either goes too. far or not far enough, to be consistent. He ouffht either to have excluded moral consid- erations entirely, and to have confined his view wholly to visible and tangible issues ; or, if he once introduced moral elements into his theory, these necessitated his going fur- ther. Indeed, if we once brino; in the hicrher or spiritual issues of the game, these put an end to the aptness of the similitude, and destroy all its illustrative force. For con- sider. Each move in the game, that is, each OF CULTURE. 65 human action, has two sides, — a double as- pect ; it has its visible ai}d tangible result ; it has also its invisible and moral character.^ And this last, though not recognized by sense, and even when wholly disregarded by meii, still exists as really as the seen result. If we regard the moves solely in their first as- pect, a man may contrive so to play the game of life as to secure a large amount of visible success, to get for himself most of the good things of this world, health, riches, rep- utation of a sort, long life, without any very tender conscience. To do this requires only worldly wisdom, only an average stock of market morality. For this kind of success a higher, more sensitive morality is so far from being necessary that it is actually a hin- drance. But look at the moves on their spiritual side, weigh success in a moral bal- ance, and our whole estimate is changed. He who is soonest eheekmated," he who, judging by what is seen merely, comes by the earliest, most disastrous defeat, may in reality have won the highest moral victory. Such are they who in each age have jeop- arded their lives for the truth, those who have been willing to lose life that they might 1 Note V. 5 66 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY find it, who against the world have stood for right, and in that contest have sacrificed themselves, and by that sacrifice have made all future generations their debtors. They were losers, indeed, of the visible game, but they were winners of the invisible and spiritual one. They had for their reward not what the world calls success, but the sense that they were servants of the truth, doers of the right, and that in doing it they had the approval and sympathy of Him with whom " A noble aim, Faithfully kept, is as a noble deed, In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed." This view of things, however, takes into ac- count a fact which Mr. Huxley has failed to recognize, that there is an open path between the soul and God. The thought of this re- lation, the sense of His approval, forms no part of the success which the mere worldly player aims at. But other men of finer spirit have, in the very crisis of earthly fail- ure, felt the sense of this approval to have been an over-payment for all they suffered. Indeed, the longer we reflect on the aim which Professor Huxley's theory assigns to human existence, the more will it be seen to OF CULTURE. 67 contradict, I will not say the best aspirations, but the most indubitable facts of man's higher nature. If life were indeed nothino- more than such a game, who would be truly reck- oned the most successful players ? Not the select spirits of the race, but the men of merely average morality, those whose guide in life was mere prudence, a well-calculated regard to self-interest ; while the nobler spirits, those who sought to raise themselves and others to purer heights of being, would find that they were mere irrelevant creatures. All that was best and purest in them would be objectless, an anomaly and disturbance, in such a universe. For it would contain nothing which could so much as warrant their finer perceptions to exist. Or again, look at this other fact, or perhaps it is the same fact put in another light : there is at the core . of all men something which the whole world of nature, of science and of art, is inadequate to fill. And this part of man is no mere adjunct of his nature, but his very, most permanent, highest self. . What this inmost personality craves is sympathy with something like itself, yet high above it, — a will consubstantial with our better will, yet transcending, supporting, controlling it. This 68 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY longing is, J believe, latent in all men, though they may not be aware of it. But in the best men it not only exists in latency, but is paramount, — the animating principle of their lives. Of them that ancient w^ord is literally true, " their soul is athirst for God." The desire to have their will conformed to to His will, the hope that they shall yet be brought into perfect sympathy with Him, is what in their estimate makes the chief good of existence. They believed that they could know something of the character of God, and that they might reasonably aspire to grow in likeness to that character. This be- lief has been the root out of which has grown, I will not say all, but certainly much of, the finest flower of morality that has bloomed on earth. It is not easy to believe that what was so true and excellent had its root in a delusion ; yet this is the conclusion to which the chess-playing theory, if true, would force us. But there is a further fact regarding these men which we must not pass over : they have left it on record that their seeking to know God and find rest in Him was not in vain, but that in proportion as they sought in OF CULTURE. 69 singleness of will to know Him, not with the understanding only, but with their whole spirit, they did really grow in that knowledge. They have told us that, darkly though they here saw, and imperfectly, yet the vision they had was better than anything else they knew of, that compared with it earthly suc- cess and merely secular knowledge seemed to them of but little moment. And as to the laws of nature, these, they have told us, had for them a new meaning and a higher value when they saw in them a discipline leading up to the knowledge of Him who ordained them, and as being in their order and marvelous adaptations a reflection of His wisdom and will. This is the witness they gave of them- selves, and the lives they lived and the works they did confirm that witness. Their lives and deeds, making allowance for human infirmity, were in keeping with what they declared respecting themselves. With rea- son, I think, we may trust them, when they add that the things they did on earth they were enabled to do bv a strength which was not of themselves, but which, when they sought it from a source above themselves, they found. 70 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY My examination of the theory which has to-day engaged us has led me to observe two things : — Firsts That of the moral elements of hu- man nature which that theory postulates, it gives no sufficient account ; it provides noth- ing which shall insure their presence. Secondly^ That it leaves out facts of man's nature which are as certain, though it, may be not so apparent, as gravitation, or any other fact which science registers. These facts are indubitable ; and the truly scientific spirit would lead man to give heed to them, and ask what they really mean. The spiritual facts of human nature to which I have ad- verted, no doubt imply, as their support, other facts which are above nature, — an outcoming of the Divine will in a special way, manifesting itself among the phenomena it has made, for the purpose of reaching the human wills which are dependent on it. But this, and all the wonderful economy it im- plies, I have refrained from speaking of to- dav, that I might fix attention all the more clearly on those moral facts which are part of our own experience, but which are apt to be disregarded in comparison with other facts more obvious, but not more real. OF CULTURE. 71 In conclusion, let me note a mentaj\- j)iag against which persons, both of sci^„tific and metaphysical turn, do well to be on their guard. Their habits of inquiry sometimes lead thern— 4&^emand, in proof of things spiritual, a kind of evidence which the sub- ject does not admit, and to be insensible to the kind of evidence which it does admit. Habits of scientific investigation are excep- tional, and must always be confined to a few. Christianity is meant for all men. It makes its appeal, not to that in which men differ, but to that which they have in common, — to those primary instincts, sentiments, judg- ments which belong to all men as men. Therefore it is no unreasonable demand to make, that the man of science, when judging of the things of the spirit, shall leave his soli- tary eminence, and place himself among the sympathies and needs which he shares with all men, and judge of the claim which religion makes on him, not from the exceptional point of view which he shares only with a few, but from that ground which he occupies in common with his poorest, least scientific brothers. In askinor this we are not asking that he should place his higher faculty in abeyance, 72 THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY and ismiploy a lower in order to weigh and accept rfcji^^ious truth. The logical or scien- tific facuhy, iibat by which we discern logical, mathematical^ or scientific relations, is not the hiorhest exercise of reasu«.- The knowl- edtre of the hio-hest thino-s, those which most deeply concern us, is not attained by mere intellect, but by the harmonious action of un- derstanding, imagination, feeling, conscience, will, — that is, of the. whole man. This is rea- son in its highest exercise, intelligence raised to its highest power ; and it is to this exer- cise of reason we are called in apprehending the thino;s of God. It is well that we should be convinced, on rational grounds, that science simply as sci- ence can never reach God. To him who insists on a purely scientific- solution of the problem of man's life and destiny, and who will accept no other, there is no solution; and for this reason : the highest concerns of humanity, the greatest objects with which the soul has to do, cannot even be appre- hended by the scientific family. If appre- hended at all, it must be by the exercise of quite another side of our being than that which science calls into play. " No telescope will enable us to see God. No finest microscope OF CULTURE, 73 will make Him visible, in the act of working. No chemistry, no study of physical forces, no search after the one primary force, can bring us one ' hand-breadth nearer God.' Science in the abeyance of our spiritual nature at- tains not to God. No scientific study of the phenomena which imply a reign of law could ever have issued in the discovery of the kingdom of God ; but neither can it issue in any discovery that contradicts that kingdom." These are the words of Dr. M'Leod Camp- bell, whose writings I have found peculiarly suggestive on the questions I have been dis- cussinor. Therefore it is of no use — indeed, it is a grave error — when those who contend for the religious view of the world attempt to prove to men of science, as if found in sci- ence, that which merely scientific faculty will never find there, but which has been brought thither by their faith. Indeed, scientific men, who are also religious, will be the first to acknowledge that their faith in God they did not get from science, but from quite another source ; although this faith, when once possessed, invested with a new meaning, and illumined with a higher light, all that science taught them. LECTURE m. THE LITERARY THEORY OF CULTURE. A TRUE poet and brilliant critic of the present time, admired by all for his fine and cultivated genius, and to me endeared by never-fading memories of early companion- ship, has identified his name with a very different view of culture from that which I brought before you the last time I addressed you. If Professor Huxley's is the exclu- sively scientific view of culture, Mr. Arnold's may be called the literary or aesthetic one. In discussing the former theory, I attempted to examine it in the light of facts, and to avoid applying to it any words which its au- thor might disown. For mere appeal to popular prejudice should have no place in discussions about truth, and he who has re- course to that weapon in so far weakens the cause he advocates. If, however, I was con- strained to call attention to some not unim- portant facts of human nature which that theory fails to account for, this should be re- THE LITERARY THEORY OF CULTURE. 75 garded not as appeal to unreasoning preju- dice, but as a statement of omitted facts. But whatever might be said of Professor Huxley's view,* as leaving out of sight the spiritual capacities and needs of man, the same objection cannot equally be urged against Mr. Arnold's theory of culture. He fully recognizes religion as an element, and a very important one, in his theory ; only we may see cause to differ from him in the place which he assigns to it. Though I believe Mr. Arnold's theory to be defective when taken as a total philosophy of life, yet so large-minded and generous are the views it exhibits, so high and refined are the motives it urges for self-improvement, that I believe no one can seriously and candidly consider what he says without deriving good from it. As a recent writer has truly said, — " The author of this theory deserves much praise for having brought the subject before men's minds, and forced a httle unwilling examina- tion on the ' self-complacent but very uncul- tured British public' " Many who now h§ar me may have proba- bly read in Mr. Arnold's several works all his pleadings for culture. To these the re- 76 THE LITERARY THEORY capitulation of his views whicli I shall give may be somewhat tedious, but 1 hope those who know his writings will bear with me while I briefly go over his views, for the sake of those of my hearers who may be less ac- quainted with them. Those who were present at my first lec- ture may remember that I tried to describe what is meant by culture. That description was not identical with the one I have now to give, but, though different in form, the two will not, I believe, conflict. In Mr. Arnold's view, the aim of culture is not merely to render an intelligent being more intelligent, to improve our capacities to the uttermost, but, in words whicli he bor- rows from Bishop Wilson, " to make reason and the kingdom of God prevail." It is im- pelled not merely by the scientific desire to see things as they are, but rather by the moral endeavor to know more and more the universal Order, which seems intended in the world, that we may conform to it ourselves, and make others conform to it; in short, that we may help to make the will of God pre- vail in us and around us. In this, he says. OF CULTURE. Tl is seen the moral, social, beneficent nature of culture, that while it seeks the best knowl- edge, the highest science that is to be had, it seeks them in order to make them tell on human life and character. The aim of culture, therefore, is the per- fection of our human nature on all its sides, in all its capacities. First, it tries to deter- mine in what this perfection consists, and, in order to solve this question, it consults the manifold human experience that has ex- pressed itself in such diverse ways, through- out science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as throucrh religion. And the conclusion which culture reaches is, Mr. Arnold holds, in harmony with the voice of religion. For it places human per- fection in an internal condition of soul, in the growth and predominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from our animality. Again, it does not rest content with any condition of soul, however excellent, but presses ever onwards to an ampler growth, to a gradual harmonious expansion of those gifts of thought and feeling which make the peculiar dignity, wealth and happiness of hu- man nature. Not a having and resting, but a growing and becoming, is the true charac- ter of perfection as culture conceives it. 78 THE LITERARY THEORY Again, in virtue of that bond of brother- hood which binds all men to each other, whether they will it or not, this perfection cannot be an isolated individual perfection. Unless the obligation it lays on each man to consider others as well as himself is recog- nized, the perfection attained must be a stunted, ignoble one, far short of true per- fection. In all these three considerations the aim of culture, Mr. Arnold thinks, coincides with the aim of religion. Firsts in that it places perfection not in any external good, but in an internal condi- tion of soul, — " The kingdom of God is within you.'* Secondly^ in that it sets before men a con- dition not of having and resting, but of grow- ing and becoming as the true aim, — " For- getting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before." Thirdly^ in that it holds that a man's per- fection cannot be self-contained, but must embrace the good of others equally with his own, and as the very condition of his own, — "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.*' OF CULTURE. 79 These three notes belong alike to the per- fection which culture aims at, and to that which religion enjoins. But there is a fourth note of perfection as conceived by culture, in which, as Mr. Ar- nold thinks, it transcends the aim of religion. " As an harmonious expansion of all the powers which make the beauty and worth of human nature," Mr. Arnold holds that it "goes beyond religion, as religion is gen- erally conceived among us." For religion, Mr. Arnold thinks, aims at the cultivation of some, and these, no doubt, the highest pow- ers of the soul, at the expense, even at the sacrifice, of other powers, which it regards as lower. So it falls short of that many-sided, even-balanced, all-embracing, totality of de- velopment which is the aim of the highest culture. Mark well this point, for, though I cannot stop to discuss it now, I must return to it after I have set before you Mr. Arnold's view in its further bearings. After insisting, then, that culture is the study of perfection, harmonious, all-embrac- ing, consisting in becoming something rather 80 THE LITERARY THEORY than in having something, in an inward con- dition of soul rather than in any outward cir- cumstances, Mr. Arnold goes on to show how hard a battle culture has to fight in this country, with how many of our strongest tendencies, our most deep-rooted characteris- tics, it comes into direct, even violent collis- ion. The prominence culture gives to the soul, the inward and spiritual condition, as transcending all outward goods put together, comes into conflict with our worship of a me- chanical and material civilization. The so- cial aspirations it calls forth for the general elevation of the human family conflict with our intense individualism, our " every man for himself." The totality of its aim, the harmonious expansion of all human capaci- ties, contradicts our inveterate one-sidedness, our absorption each in his own one pursuit. It conflicts, above all, with the tendency so strong in us to worship the means and to for- get the ends of life. Everywhere, as he looks around him, Mr. Arnold sees this great British people chasing the means of living with unparalleled energy, and forgetting the inward things of our be- ing, which alone give these means their value. We are, in fact, idol- worshippers without OF CULTURE. 81 knowing it. We worship freedom, the right to do every man as he chooses, careless whether the thing we choose to do be good or not. We worship railroads, steam, coal, as if these made a nation's greatness, forget- ting that — " by the soul Only the nations shall be great and free." We worship wealth, as men have done in all ages, in spite of the voices of all the wise, only perhaps never before in the world's history with such unanimity, such strength and consistency of devotion, as at this hour, in this land. I must quote the words in which -he makes Culture addre^ the mam- mon-worshippers, those who have either got- ten w^ealth, or, being hot in the pursuit of it, regard wealth and welfare as synony- mous : — " Consider," he makes Culture say, " these people, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice ; look at them attentively, observe the literature they read (if they read any), the things that give them pleasure, the words which come forth from their mouths, the thoughts which make' the furniture of their minds ; would any amount of wealth be worth having with 82 THE LITERARY THEORY the condition that one was to become like these people by having it ? Thus," he says, " culture begets a dissatisfaction which is of the highest possible value in stemming the common tide of men's thoughts in a wealthy and industrious community, and w^hich saves the future, as one may hope, from being wholly materialized and vulgarized, if it can- not save the present." Against all this ab- sorbing faith in machinery, whatever form it take^, whether faith in wealth or in liberty, used or abused, or in coals and railroads, or in bodily health and vigor, or in population, Mr. Arnold lifts up an earnest protest. It is an old lesson, but one w^hich each age forgets dnd needs to be taught anew: men forgetting the inward and spiritual goods, and setting their hope on the outward and material ones. Against this all the wise of the earth have, each one in his day, cried aloud, — the philosophers, moralists, and sat- irists of Greece and Rome, Plato, Epictetus, Seneca, and Juvenal, not less than Hebrew prophets and Christian apostles, up to that Divine voice which said, " What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? " This same old lesson Mr. Arnold repeats, OF CULTURE. 83 but in modern language, and turns against the shapes of idol-Avorship, which he sees everywhere around him. In contrast, then, to all the grosser inter- ests that absorb us, he pleads for a mental and spiritual perfection, which has two sides, or prominent notes, beauty and intelligence, or, borrowing words which Swift first used, and which, since Mr. Arnold reproduced them, have become proverbial, " Sweetness and Light," — " An inward and spiritual ac- tivity having for its characters increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, in- creased sympathy." The age of the world in which these two, " sweetness and light," were preeminently combined was, Mr. Arnold thinks, the best age of Athens — that which is represented in the poetry of Sophocles, in whom " the idea of beauty and a full-developed human- ity " took to itself a religious and devout energy, in the strength of which it worked. But this was but for a moment of time, when the Athenian mind touched its acme. It was a hint of what might be when the world was ripe for it, rather than a condition which could then continue. In our own countrymen, 84 THE LITERARY THEORY Mr. Arnold believes, partly from the tough-^ ness and earnestness of the Saxon nature, partly from the predominance in our edu- cation of the Hebrew teaching, the moral and . religious element has been drawn out too exclusively. There is among us an en- tire want of the idea of beauty, harmony, and completely rounded human excellence. These ideas are either unknown to us, or entirely misapprehended. Mr. Arnold then goes on to contrast his idea of a perfectly and harmoniously devel- oped human nature with the idea set up by Puritanism, and prevalent amid our modern multifarious churches. He grants that the church organizations have done much. They have greatly helped to subdue the grosser animalities, — they have made life orderly, moral, serious. But when we go beyond this, and look at the standards of per- fection which these religious organizations have held up, he finds them poor and miser- able, starving more than a half, and that the finest part of human nature. He turns to modern religious life, as imaged in the Non- conformist or some other religious newspaper of the hour, and asks. What do we find there ? " A life of jealousy of other churches, dis- OF CULTURE. 86 putes, tea meetings, openings of chapels, ser- mons." And then he exclaims, " Think of this as an ideal of human life, completing itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its or- gans after sweetness, light, and perfection ! '' " How," he asks, " is the ideal of a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so narrow, so far removed from a true and satisfying ideal of human perfection, .... to conquer and transform all the vice and hideousness " that we see around us ? " Indeed, the strong- est plea for the study of perfection as pur- sued by culture, the clearest proof of the act- ual inadequacy of the idea of perfection held by the religious organizations, — expressing, as I have said, the most wide-spread effort which the human race has yet made after perfection, — is to be found in the state of our life and society with these in possession of it, and having been in possession of it I know not how many years. We are all of us in- cluded in some religious organization or other ; we all call ourselves, in the sublime and as- piring language of religion, children of God. Children of God, — it is an immense preten- sion ! — and how are we to justify it ? By the works which we do, and the words which we speak. And the work which we collect- 86 THE LITERARY THEORY ive children of God do, our grand centre of life, our city, is London ! London, with its unutterable external hideousness, and with its internal canker, puhlice egestas, privatim opulentia, unequaled in the world ! " These are severe w^ords, yet they have a side of truth in them. They portray our act- ual state so truly, that, though they may not be the whole truth, it is well we should re- member them, for they cannot be altogether gainsaid. I have now done with the exposition of Mr. Arnold's theory. Before going on to note what seems to me to be its radical de- fect, let me first draw attention to two of its most prominent merits. His pleading for a perfection which con- sists in a condition of soul, evenly and har- moniously developed, is but a new form of saying, " A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of tlie things which he possesseth^" You will say, perhaps. Is not this a very old truth? Why make such ado about it, as though it were a new discovery ? Has it not been expressed far more strongly in the Bible than by Mr. Arnold ? True, it is an old truth, and we all know it is in the Bible. OF CULTURE. 87 But it is just these old truths which we know so well by the ear, but so little with the heart, that need to be reiterated to each age in the new language which it speaks. The deepest truths are always becoming commonplaces, till they are revivified by thought. And they are true thinkers and benefactors of their kind who, having thought them over once more, and passed them through the alembic of their own hearts, bring them forth fresh-minded, and make them tell anew on their generation. And of all the old prov- erbs that this age needs applied to it, none is more needed than that which Mr. Arnold has proclaimed so forcibly. Again, as to the defects which Mr. Ar- nold charges against our many and divided religious organizations, it cannot be denied that the moral and social results we see around us are far from satisfactory. In this state of things we cannot afford to neglect whatever aid that culture or any other power offers, — to ignore those sides and forces of human nature which, if called into play, might render our ideal at once more com- plete and more efficient. There is much to excuse the complaints which highly educated men are apt to make, that religious minds 88 THE LITERARY THEORY have often been satisfied with a very partial and narrow development of humanity, such as does not satisfy, and ought not to satisfy, thoughtful and cultivated men. The wise and truly religious thing to do is not to get angry at such criticisms, and give them bad names, but to be candid, and listen to those who tell us of our shortcomings, — try to see what justice there may be in them, and to turn whatever truth they may contain to good account. Mr. Arnold sets before us a lofty aim, — he has bid us seek our good in something un- seen, in a spiritual energy. In doing this he has done well. But I must hold that he has erred in his estimate of what that spiritual energy is, and he lias missed, I think, the true source from which it is to be mainly de- rived. For in his account of it he has placed that as primary which is secondary and sub- ordinate, and made that secondary which by right ought to be supreme. You will remember that when describing his idea of the perfection to be aimed at, he makes religion one factor in it, — an impor- tant^ and powerful factor no doubt, still but one element out of several, and that not nee- OF CULTURE. 89 essarily jhfijruling element, but a means to- wards an end, higher, more supreme, more all-embracinor than itself. The end was a many-sided, harmonious development of hu- man nature, and to this end religion was only an important means. In thus assigning to religion a secondary, however important, place, this theory, as I conceive, if consistently acted on, would an- nihilate religion. There are thino;s wliich are either ends in themselves or they are nothing; and such, I conceive, religion is. It either is supreme, a good in itself and for its own sake, or it is not at all. The first and great commandment must either be so set before us as to be obeyed, entered into, in and for itself, without any ulterior view, or it cannot be obeyed at all. It cannot be inadg,_sjihservient to any. ulterior purpose. And herein is instanced " a remarkable law of ethics, which is well known to all who have given their minds to the subject." I shall give it in the words of one who has ex- pressed it so well in his own unequaled lan- guage that it has been proposed to name it after him. Dr. Newman's law: — " ^11 vir- tue and goodness tend to make men pow- erful in this world ; but they who aim at the 90 THE LITERARY THEORY power have not the virtue. Again : Virtue " is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasures ; but they who cultivate it for the pleasure-sake are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleas- ure, because they never can have the virtue." Apply this to the present subject. They who seek religion for culture-sake are aes- thetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they never can have the religion. To seek religion for the personal elevation or even for the social improvement it brings, is really to fall from faith which rests in God and the knowledge of Him as the ultimate good, and has no by-ends to serve. And what do we see in actual life ? There shall be two men, one of whom has started on the road of self- improvement from a mainly intellectual in- terest, from the love of art, literature, sci- ence, or from the delight these give, but has not been actuated by a sense of responsibility r /'to a Higher than himself. The other has be- gun with some sense of God, and of his rela- tion to Him, and starting from this centre has gone on to add to it all the moral and mental improvement within his reach, feel- ing that, beside the pleasure these things give OF CULTURE. 91 in themselves, he will thus best fulfill the purpose of Him who gave them, thus best promote the good of his fellow-men, and at- tain the end of his own existence. Which of these two will be the highest man, in which will be gathered up the most excellent graces of character, the truest nobility of soul? You cannot doubt it. The sense that a man is serving a Higher than himself, with a service which will become ever more and more perfect freedom, evokes more pro- found, more humbling, more exalted emo- tions than anything else in the world can do. The spirit of man is an instrument which cannot give out its deepest, finest tones, ex- cept under the immediate hand of the Divine Harmonist. That is, before it can educe the highest capacities of which human nature is susceptible, culture must cease to be merely culture, and pass over into religion. And here we see another aspect of that great eth- ical law already noticed as compassing all human action, whereby " the abandoning of some lower object in obedience to a higher aim is made the very condition of securing the said lower object." According to this law it comes that he will approach nearer to per- fection, or (since to speak of perfection in such 92 THE LITERARY THEORY as we are sounds like presumption) rather let us say, he will reach further, will attain to a truer, deeper, more lovely humanity, who makes not culture, but oneness with the will of God, his ultimate aim. The ends of culture, truly conceived, are best attained by forgetting culture, and aiming higher. And what is this but translating into modern and less forcible language the old words, whose meaning is often greatly misunderstood, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all other things will be added unto you ? " But by seeking the other things first, as we nat- urally do, we miss not only the kingdom of God, but those other things also which are only truly attained by aiming beyond them. Another objection to the theory we have been considering remains to be noted. Its starting-point is the idea of perfecting self; and though, as it gradually evolves, it tries to forget self, and to include quite other ele- ments, yet it never succeeds in getting clear of the t:uat of self-referance with which it set out. While making this objection, I do not forgot that Mr. Arnold, in drawing out his view, proposes as the end of culture to make reason and the kingdom of God prevail ; that he sees clearly, and insists strongly, that an OF CULTURE. 93 isolated self-culture is impossible, that we cannot make progress towards perfection ourselves, unless we strive earnestly to carry our fellow-men along with us. Still may it not with justice be said that these unselfish elements — the desire for others' good, the desire to advance God's kingdom on earth — are in this theory awakened, not simply for their own sakes, not chiefly because they are good in themselves, but because they are clearly discerned to be necessary to our self- perfection, — elements apart from which this cannot exist ? And so it comes that culture, though made our end never so earnestly, cannot shelter a man from thoughts about himself, cannot free him from that which all must feel to be fatal to high character, — continual self-consciousness. The only forces strong enough to do this are great truths which carry him out of and beyond himself, the things of the spiritual world sought, not mainly because of their reflex ac- tion on us, but for their own sakes, because of their own inherent worthiness. There is perhaps no truer sign that a man is really advancing than that he is learning to forgot himself, that he is losing the natural thoughts about self in the thought of One higher than 94 THE LITERARY THEORY himself, to whose guidance he can commit himself and all men. This is no doubt a les- son not quickly learnt ; but there is no help to learning it in theories of self-culture which exalt man's natural self-seeking into a spe- cious and refined philosophy of life. Again, it would seem that in a world made like ours, Culture, as Mr. Arnold con- ceives it, instead of becoming an all-embrac- ing bond of brotherhood, is likely to be rather a principle of exclusion and isolation. Cul- ture such as he pictures is at present con- fessedly the possession of a very small circle. Consider, then, the average powers of men, the circumstances in which the majority must live, the physical wants that must al- ways be uppermost in their thoughts, and say if we can conceive that, even in the most advanced state of education and civili- zation possible, high culture can become the common portion of the multitude. And with the few on a high level of cultivation, the many, to take the best, on a much lower, what is the natural result ? Fastidious ex- clusiveness on the part of the former, which is hardly human, certainly not Christian. Take any concourse of men, from the House of Commons down to the humblest conven- OF CULTURE, 95 tide, how will the majority of them appear to eyes refined by elaborate culture, but not humanized by any deeper sentiment ? To such an onlooker will not the countenances of most seem unlovely, their manners repul- sive, their modes of thought commonplace, — it may be, sordid ? By any such concourse the man of mere culture will, I think, feel himself repelled, not attracted. So it must be, because Culture, being mainly a literary and aBsthetic product, finds little in the un- lettered multitude that is akin to itself. It is, after all, a dainty. and divisive quality, and cannot reach to the depths of humanity. To do this takes some deeper, broader, more brotherly impulse, one which shall touch the universal ground on which men are one, not that in which they differ, — their common nature, common destiny, the needs that poor and rich alike share. For this we must look elsewhere than to Culture, however enlarged. The view I have been enforcing will ap- pear more evident if from abstract arguments we turn to the actual lives of men. Take any of the highest examples of our race, those who have made all future generations their debtors. Can we imagine any of these being content to set before themselves, 96 THE LITERARY THEORY merely as the end of their endeavors, such an aim as the harmonious development of human nature ? A Goethe perhaps might, and if we take him as the highest, we will take his theory likewise. Hardly, I think, Shakespeare, if we can conceive of him as ever having set before himself consciously any formal aim. But could we imagine St. Paul doing so, or Augustine, or Luther, or such men as Pascal or Archbishop Leighton ? Would such a theory truly represent the ends they lived for, the powers that actuated them, tlie ideal whence they drew their strength ? These men chano-ed the moral orbit of the world, but by what lever did they change it ? Not by seeking their own perfection, nor even by making the progress of the race their only aim. They found a higher, more permanent world on which to plant the lever that was to move this one. Thev soucrht first the advancement of the kingdom of God and truth for its own sake, and they knew that this embraced the true good of man and every other good thing. Indeed, of Culture put in the supreme place, it has been well said that it holds forth a hope for humanity by enlightening self, and not a hope for humanity by dying OF CULTURK 97 to self. This last is the hope which Chris- tianity sets before us. It teaches, wliat in- deed Imman experience in the long-run teaches too, that man's chief good lies in ceasing from the Individual Self, that he may live in a higher Personality, in whose pur- pose all the ends of our true Perscmality are secure. The sayings in the Gospels to this effect will readily occur to every one. Some glimpse of the same truth had visited the mind of the speculative Greek poet four hundred years before the Christian era, when he said : — T^S olSev «t TO ^riv fiev i