Chapter IV: What Is Culture?1

A prophet of Israel of the latter days of the Kings, who himself seems to have been, in a way, self-taught, announces to his nation the oncoming of a new era in about the following words: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, but of the hearing of the truth. In that day shall the fair youths and maidens faint, who now are relying upon the god at Dan and the way of Beer-sheba. For they shall so fall therewith that they shall not be able to rise again.” What Amos meant by the god at Dan and the “way of Beer-sheba” is hardly to be discovered now with exactness, and indeed, for our purposes, we may leave it undetermined. Only thus much is clear from the context, that they were for the time elements of culture whose insufficiency should later come to light--as actually happened at the beginning of the Christian era.

Widely recognized phenomena of our own days fittingly remind us again of these ancient, half-forgotten words.

On the other hand, a struggle that may almost be called violent is passing through the broad masses of the nations. They are striving to win culture for themselves as quickly as possible, so that they may elevate themselves to the power which, in their view, goes hand in hand with this culture, or, as they mostly conceive it, with the acquisition of certain kinds of knowledge.

On the other hand, the upper circles of the classes hitherto known as cultured are being gripped with a kind of despair over the already attained and still attainable results of this search for knowledge for its own sake, as a renowned scientist has already plainly expressed with his well-known saying, “Ignoramus, ignorabimus,” and as is becoming actually manifest in the ever-growing specializing of the sciences. For this specializing means, at bottom, nothing less than that there is no universal knowledge any more, still less a universal culture which comprehends all that men have achieved and thought; it means that there are only isolated departments of knowledge, behind which the abyss of ignorance yawns, for the most learned specialist, no less than for the most commonplace layman.

In the young generation of the civilized nations which is growing up under such auspices, there is prevailing a certain physical and mental weariness, which makes one seriously doubt whether the whole of modern education must not be on the wrong track if, instead of producing mental and physical power and joy in the lifelong acquisition of new and newer knowledge, it only prematurely dulls and destroys all these capacities, and if it is bringing on a too weakly organized and nervous race which would as little prove a match for the onset of some horde of healthy barbarians as did, once upon a time, the Roman or Greek cosmopolitan culture, outwardly brilliant, but likewise undermined by just such over-civilization as ours.

With this, we have arrived at once at the heart of our question. By culture we must understand something greater, something other than knowledge, or learnedness in special subjects, if it is at all to be something beneficial and desirable. Relatively speaking, the most striking result of general culture must be the healthy and vigorous development of every man’s personality into a full and rounded human life, inwardly at peace. Otherwise it will be of no very definite value, either to himself or to his state.

If it does not effect this it does not justify the hopes that have, for so long a time, been set upon it, and there may stand before us a time such as humanity has already more than once experienced, when the most highly civilized peoples have been overpowered by barbarians, simply by virtue of greater physical strength and greater mental freshness and originality, and when too delicately constituted republics have not been in a condition to withstand the momentum of such onslaughts, directed by some single powerful will.

Therefore the question “What is Culture?” is a question of the life of our whole present race, as well as, in a special degree, of our native land and the nature of its government.

I

By this very ambiguous and therefore often misunderstood word “culture” we must understand ourselves to mean _an evolving_ from an originally formless, rough condition into a condition in which the development into the best of which the material is capable is completed, or at least is in the process of unfolding without hindrance.

Every man at the beginning is a rough block that can only be fashioned into a true human form and a true work of art partly by the formative power of life itself with its manifold influences, and partly by the hand and sagacity of men. And as an unskilful sculptor may so misshape and spoil a stone intrusted to him that no real work of art can any longer be made of it, or may carve it so delicately that it loses the massiveness and strength necessary to resist all outer influences, so also, in the art of human culture, we often speak from painful experience of a man’s culture as neglected, or distorted, or too excessive and refined.

In true culture (one that does not injure but benefits men), three things seem to be essential: the conquering of natural sensuality and natural selfishness through higher interests, the wholesome and symmetrical training of the physical and mental faculties, and a correct philosophical and religious conception of life. Where one of these three is lacking, there is a drying up in the man of something that had been capable of a better development.

1. The final goal of all true culture is the liberation of man from the “sensual gravitation” which every one experiences in himself, and from the selfishness which, though it rests in the final analysis upon man’s impulse to self-preservation, stands nevertheless in opposition to the purpose of his life. Essentially as a creature of the senses man begins his course in this world, essentially as a creature of the spirit he should finish it here, and, as we hope, continue it in another world under more favorable conditions. Thus there lies already in his nature a conflict between that which _is_ and therefore would naturally like to persist, and that which is undoubtedly demanded by his deepest and best feelings and which is meant to grow and develop. If he does not stay as he is, then the ground seems at times to give way under his feet; but if he does stay as he is, then his better self is always grievously reproving him, and saying that he is not fulfilling his duty and is not becoming what he could and should become. This is the battle that every man begins with himself as soon as he comes to consciousness about himself, and in this battle he must at any cost carry off the victory.

All inward dissatisfaction springs from sensuality or selfishness; these two never fail to show themselves as the primal causes, when the matter is run to the ground. Any genuine happiness is not conceivable where the spiritual nature has not gained the day over the sensual, and where a disposition toward liberality, humanity, and kindliness has not won the victory over a disposition to narrow selfishness--a victory already decided in one’s innermost tendency, and, as a matter of practical life, to be daily gained anew.

Whoever has not been able thus to subdue himself will never be a match for the world around him, which fights him with the same though thousand fold greater powers of selfishness. All that is left for him is to defend himself in this struggle for existence by continually injuring and destroying others and by uniting himself with others into groups with mutual interests, groups that are likewise of a purely selfish nature.

To try to suppress this struggle for existence which now threatens to destroy all the nobility that is in man and to make us like beasts of prey, is the chiefest task of all the truly cultured men of our time.

They must first show by their own example that this struggle is not necessary, and that there is a way out of the labyrinths of this life other than the sad one of who shall be strongest in his selfishness. After all, the man who proves strongest in this struggle, even in the most favorable case, only makes the existence of many fellow-men the heavier, and his own better self, besides, has suffered harm.

The first step is, that one shall no longer be recognized as a truly cultured man who has any trace of such a conception of life. And it must and will come to that, before long, in our civilized states. On the one hand, selfish solicitude for self and as much as possible of sensual enjoyment during a short life--on the other, human kindness, care for others, mental advancement, and the development of the nobler powers of the soul: these are the two great armies which now stand over against each other, ready for battle, and in one or the other you will be obliged to take your place.

2. The second point is the proper and healthy physical and mental development of all our faculties, in the interest of these higher aims. We are not to live with this better conception of life in cloisters or studies, but as far as possible to bring it into use in our ordinary life and in every calling--but not, of course, in any calling that stands in radical opposition to this better conception of life.

Here is the point where oftentimes a somewhat morbid and exaggerated philosophical, religious, or scientific tendency stands likewise opposed to true culture. There is no profit in a philosophy that does not hold its own in the full current of life, and there is little help in a religion which exists only in the church on Sundays and has no value in the market or in business. And even knowledge, in itself, has no great worth if it does not serve, somehow, to build up a more worthy kind of life for oneself or for others.

In a sickly, overfatigued body, with nerves continually overexcited, no quite healthy soul can live and work unimpeded. It is one of the chief mistakes in the culture of our day that a kind of misunderstanding has arisen between body and mind, whereby the body is harmed directly and, through the body, the mind. Besides, our whole modern education is much more directed toward the mechanical acquisition of things to be remembered than to the attainment of real convictions and of true knowledge.

3. But all these things, the pursuit of ideals, the search for true knowledge, and the maintenance of bodily tone, do not yet help a man toward true culture, unless they rest upon the conviction of the existence of a transcendental world whose forces can effectively come to his help. His sensual tendency and his natural selfishness are far too strong for him to subdue them wholly by his own expedients and without the help of such a Power residing outside himself. And the motives for doing it are too weak. What indeed should impel him to fight a hard and at first apparently almost fruitless battle with himself and the surrounding world his life long, if this life is only a transitory animal existence with no further destination?

The strength of a merely natural nobility, which for a time, perhaps, may lift itself above these things, does not, under all circumstances, hold out in the presence of this conception of life, but easily despairs of itself when trials, continuing and great, draw nigh. There must therefore be the introduction into human existence of a power which is mightier than all a man’s natural forces and which makes it possible for him to master himself and no longer to fear all external evils, in comparison with the evil of high treason to his better self.

That there is such a power, which one can not indeed logically prove, but which he can put to the test and himself experience,--this is the mysterious truth of religion; and it would be much less of a mystery if all men, if but once in their life, would venture the trial whether there is such a power. To be sure, if any one does not want to let quite go of his pleasure-seeking and selfishness, or does not altogether yet desire to attain, at any cost, to something better than the ordinary life, then, in spite of his trial, he will not have a perfect experience of this power, and in that case the mere outward profession of a religion does not help him much. He remains on the whole as he is, even though he go to church every day.

But if he has this will, then he receives this power, then he infallibly becomes another man, to such a degree that one may truthfully call it a new birth. Then only will all his natural gifts and knowledge become really alive in him and productive for the welfare of himself and others.

The highest step is complete self-renunciation, in which a man is only the receptacle of divine thoughts and impulses; but it is very dangerous to work oneself into such a condition by the fantasy, before it comes of itself and is really at hand. The main thing in religion is not its immediate perfect attainment, but that every one who will may enter on the way and pass from a joyless existence to a gradually ascending life.

This is the way to true culture, and every one must try to travel it by himself. It can not be taught; it can only be shown.

The evidence that one has true culture is, first, a gradually increasing mental health and power, then a certain higher sagacity that comes in, and finally a peculiar, larger caliber of spirit which one can bring about in no other way, which one can not imitate, and which really forms the chief element in culture. Yet these thoroughly cultured men are, for all that, entirely natural human beings, but free from all pretence and vanity; free also from all struggling, from all seeking for life’s good things, on which human happiness does not have to depend, and in whose incessant pursuit men only lose their souls; free from all unhealthy pessimism, or monkish seclusion; free from fear or nervousness or impatience; cheerful and quiet in the innermost centre of their being, and continuing in their mental and spiritual soundness up to the highest goal of human life. “As their days, so is their strength,” as the Old Testament says with great beauty and truth.

The highest imaginable degree of this culture is a complete devotion to all that is good and great, a devotion that no sort of trouble any longer clouds, or can cloud; it is that condition of the soul, mentally conceivable but seemingly rarely attained, in which there is no longer any battle with the sensual and the transitory, and the struggle of nature against the law of the spirit is completely at end.

This is that condition of perfection which we ascribe, in its consummate development, to the Divine Being alone, but toward which we also are called to strive; and the gradual winning of all men to this goal is the task in particular of all true education, and looked at in the whole, it is the end to which all history is moving.

II

No false culture nor half-culture is therefore to be compared with this true culture, which is unmistakable in its effects upon the whole nature of men, and upon their manner of intercourse with others. Even in the very simple relations of life it will always reveal itself by a certain greatness of spirit it confers, a spirit that distinguishes its possessor from the ordinary man in the like ranks of life. And along with this there is a quiet sense of peace with oneself and with others such as no other philosophy of life can assure, and which, by its contagious serenity, is apparent to every one who has ever been with such people.

However, it is not wholly unnecessary, particularly at the present time, to set down the chief characteristics of a false or insufficient culture, characteristics which one meets very often and can not help but notice. They are particularly the following:

1. Great extravagance in living. A man of genuine culture will never set a _very_ high value either upon his outward personal appearance, or upon where he lives, or what he eats and drinks, or the like things: and so he will carefully avoid luxury, as improper for himself and unjust toward others. Excessive finery, golden rings on all the fingers, watch chains with which one might, if necessary, tie a calf, houses in which one can not move for the furniture, banquets at which one risks undermining even a robust constitution--these are all quite sure signs of a lack of culture and things that one must guard against. For whoever has intelligence sees through all this; it is only the fools who are blinded by it. The surest mark of culture in all these things is a certain noble, easy simplicity in one’s whole personal appearance and manner of life.

The love of display and pleasure is always a sign of lacking culture, and culture alone can thoroughly guard against it. Even a general raising of the standard of life in a country is desirable only in so far as a rough, half-animal, unworthy mode of living is by its means done away with; otherwise a continual increase in men’s needs is a misfortune for any country, and the cultured classes must earnestly strive against it and set a better example. A noble simplicity of living has also the advantage that it can always remain the same under any circumstances, while people inclined to luxury usually have two modes of living, one before people, and the other for themselves.

2. An external, but also very easily recognizable and characteristic mark of culture is the possession or absence of books; especially with persons who have the most ample means of procuring them. A fine lady who reads a soiled volume from a lending library you may safely set down as but half-cultured at best, and if she slips an embroidered cover over the volume, it does not remedy the matter; it only shows that she is conscious of her fault. An elegant home in which but a dozen books stand unread on an ornamental whatnot you may quietly regard as uncultured, with all its inmates; especially if, as usual, the books are only novels.

Much reading still remains, in our day as always, a necessity of general culture. Of a thoroughly cultured man one can properly require that in the course of a moderately long life he shall have read all of the very best in literature, and shall have gained, besides, a tolerably general and correct idea of all the branches of human knowledge, so that “nothing of human is to him quite alien.”

But if you ask how one can get time for this, outside of one’s business or occupation, the answer is this: Break away from all unnecessary things, from the hotel, from societies, clubs, and social pleasures, from the useless reading of a great portion of the newspapers, from the theatre, where you learn little that is worth knowing in these days, from the too frequent concerts, from skating for whole afternoons, and from much else besides that every one can easily charge against himself as his special manner of squandering time. One can not be very cultured and at the same time enjoy all the possible pleasures going.

But, if necessary, you may even break away somewhat from business. That pays, and you will soon see what a difference there is, even as regards business success, between a cultured merchant and a merely clever manager.

3. A further sign of defective culture is a loud, rude nature: talking very loud, in public localities, in cars, in restaurants, etc.; acting as if one were the only person there; and conducting oneself discourteously in places where many men gather. Our age is less cultured in this respect than some earlier ones have been.

On the same footing stands everything that savors of advertising and boasting, all showy pretence and braggadocio. A merchant, for example, who greatly exaggerates the importance of his business, or puts very boastful advertisements in the papers; or a lady who wears a silk dress without quite immaculate undergarments--those surely you would not take for people of sufficient culture.

4. Work also belongs to culture. It is not only a quite indispensable means of attaining thereto, but idleness, even if one can “afford” it, is always the mark of a disposition with low ideals; and that is directly opposed to culture. Such a man will seek his pleasure in something else, something less fine, or will possess a foolish pride in not being obliged to work, or finally he is a fellow of coarse sensibilities to whom it is a matter of indifference whether others perish by his side whom he could have helped by his exertions.

An idler by profession is therefore surely a man without ideals and without real culture, however elegant may be the external forms of culture he has gathered round him. They are empty forms without real substance, and every man of better culture is bound not to allow himself to be deceived thereby and not to respect such people.

5. But not much less harmful is the inordinate passion for work. When it is voluntary, it nearly always springs from ambition or greed, two of the worst enemies of true culture; they always show that one sets the highest value upon something else than culture. Or this passion for work is only a bad habit and the imitation of a bad example, or finally it may spring from a want of inner peace and control, which are themselves the fruit of culture.

Whoever works on Sundays just the same as on week-days, when he is not compelled to, you may quietly consider as little cultured as the man who does nothing any day.

6. A very necessary element in culture is an absolute trustworthiness and an upright conduct in all money-matters. To the cultured man it is not permitted to display prodigality, or an aristocratic contempt for money; a disposition like that always indicates lack of culture, and is unjust toward one’s needy fellow-men, besides being mostly pretence. Nor is it permitted him, on the other hand, to show undue parsimony, nor dishonesty even in the smallest particulars. On this point, the Scriptures say quite truly: “He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”

An absolutely rightful employment of money, with the strictest honesty, with complete disregard for money as the goal of life, and yet with a proper valuation of it as the means of attaining higher ends, is perhaps the surest of all signs of a man of genuine culture; as the chase after gains and the worship of money most surely betrays the uncultured man.

7. Another sufficient indication of defective culture is arrogance toward inferiors or toward those who are poorer off, and this is usually combined with subservience toward superiors and toward the wealthy. This is the special characteristic of parvenus who spring from uncultured surroundings. A man of the best culture will always be polite and friendly, but the more so, the more he has to do with those who stand below him, with the dependent or the oppressed; and the less so, even to the bare edge of politeness, the more he has to do with some one who makes pretensions, or wants to treat him as an inferior. To show deep respect for the mere wealth of another is, as said before, the most unmistakable mark of a man completely lacking in any culture of his own.

8. There are still a number of minor signs of lack of culture, which may, however, be in part only bad habits or the result of defective bringing up; they do not always point conclusively to a general lack of culture. Among these minor signs one may rightly reckon: much talking about oneself; gossip and scandal over the personal affairs of others; a great tendency to talkativeness on all occasions; a hasty, uncertain, violent temperament; making many excuses for oneself where it is not necessary or has already been done; to accuse or disparage oneself in the hope that others will then assert the contrary; a too-zealous officiousness; or a too-effusive politeness.

The thoroughly fine aristocratic temperament, such as the English especially prefer, demands a very great self-possession and preciseness; but this can easily degenerate into indifference and coldness, and is then a fault. Enthusiasm and eagerness for whatever is good a cultured man always possesses; where this is lacking, there is also a lack of true culture, in spite of fine pretences.

But this is also certain: when the enthusiasm is genuine and is not merely manufactured or the zeal of a beginner in the noble art of life, then it will never be too forward and loud in expressing itself. A noisy virtue is always a little suspicious, or at least is still in its infancy.

Culture, therefore, is essentially the gradual development of inner power toward what is right and true, with the purpose of elevating and liberating one’s own higher nature from the bonds of the ordinary animal sensuality with which it came into the world, and of training it up to a higher level of life in complete soundness of mind and body. Wherever it does not do this, it is of very subordinate value; and this it must always above all things do in the so-called cultured classes, for whom this is a primal duty.

It noway suffices to be always talking of the “elevation of the lower classes,” who are often superior now to the upper in particular elements of true culture. The chief need of our present day is much rather the vigorous rehabilitation of this upper class, which is deeply sunk in pleasure-seeking and the materialistic conception of things, and has turned aside from the higher ends of life.

III

Now if you should resolve to try in this manner to attain to true culture, you must have great patience with yourself. It is not the matter of a single day or of a single resolution, although a great part is played by making, once for all, a firm and binding resolve, to which one always comes back again as often as one has in some particular departed from it.

True culture, like true virtue in the main, is a matter of growth. By degrees it grows in strength and insight, but can not be suddenly and forcibly won by any kind of magic process; one must make some definite beginning and then persevere in it for life. But this is the only true purpose of living, never to be laid aside, and the only outcome of life wholly to be wished.

A beginning can be made in different ways: in a purely practical way by the acquisition of good habits; or philosophically, by meditating upon, and coming to know, and discriminating between, the true and the untrue in the conduct of life; or, through religion, at once seeking the infinite and the power that thence springs. The easiest way is undoubtedly the last, and to this, even though one takes the other ways, one is finally led. For the secret of true culture, its beginning and its real key, lies in the conquering of selfishness and especially of the inordinate desire for pleasure. Thus it comes about that often a very simple man, who possesses little knowledge and has had little contact with so-called good society, is nevertheless more truly cultured than some aristocratic or learned gentleman. He has the real essentials of culture before they have, and has taken the easiest way to acquire it.

Only when a man is no longer constantly busied about himself and no longer thinks of himself alone does he receive his freedom of spirit and the full use of the forces that lie in his mental and spiritual power. The spirit, then for the first, becomes in some sort free from an occupation not worthy of itself, and becomes capable of taking up and quietly working at things which otherwise had remained forever concealed under personal cares and pleasures.

To be sure--and this also must be said--these things are hard so long as the youthful man is in the full tide of his physical and mental unfolding. Such young people as have already attained to these things very early in life usually do not live very long. It appears that man, like the animal, and like the plant before it bears fruit, needs a time of self-seeking activity, in order first to obtain a sufficient growth and strength as a natural creature. In the case of man, however, there surely and naturally comes a moment when an exclusive or preëminent occupation about one’s own self becomes unnatural, and in every larger nature--and, it may perhaps be said, in every existence at all worthy of men--there comes the impulse to free oneself from oneself and to live for an idea.

This is the most decisive moment of existence. It is, with some men, comparable to a sudden, violent death, and a new birth to another life. With others, it is more like the gradual and quiet sinking of the former things into slumber, and the awakening and slow fashioning of a new nature.

But if this change has once taken place, in one way or the other, then all the real questions of human existence appear in another light, clear and solved.

But if this change does not take place in a man who is not wholly animal in his nature, then there always stays with him a never-quieted thirst for such a change; and likewise a feeling of guilt, which clearly says to him that he could and should have become something better, a voice within him he can not drown, however great his seeming success.

IV

With this we have also solved the last question you will put: “What shall we get out of it? What real gain has a man from true culture?” To this is to be answered that every great inward advancement a man makes rests first upon a faith. He must forsake something he knows, and seek something toward which only a presentiment is leading him, something he can not understand yet fully, because the capacity is for the present lacking.

But if he possesses the courage to will it, he attains it; and of those who have attained this goal, not one has yet found the cost too high, or the toil too hard.

The reward of virtue in this world is just this, that virtue _is_, and that it can be overcome by no power of the world, but itself is the only real power and force that will completely fill life full and satisfy.

Tennyson has expressed this very beautifully in his poem “Wages”:

“_Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,
Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea--
Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong--
Nay, but she aim’d not at glory, no lover of glory she:
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be._

“_The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust,
Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly?
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just,
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky:
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die._”

It is therefore, in the judgment of the best even of our own day, fully worth the trouble to strive for true culture, and all attain who really desire--rich or poor, learned or unlearned. Indeed, what Christ first said for his own generation is also very appropriate for ours, that simple souls and modest lives stand much more intimately near to true culture, and on the way to it do not meet so many and so great hindrances as do the wise and the prudent, and especially the rich, who must first strip off infinitely many prejudices and attachments to outward things, all of which are irreconcilable with true culture.

It is therefore harder for some and easier for others to attain to culture, but for none impossible, save those whose mind is wholly bound up with material things, and are satisfied besides with a merely external culture that is rather form and show than reality, however much it may claim to be real.

An ancient Chinese philosopher has already expressed this very well in the following verses, somewhat naïvely translated:

“_Men who win the highest prize
Are quick to learn and quickly wise;
Men in the second rank belong
Who’re wise, but in the learning long;
Those people must be classed as thirds
Who stupid stay, and learn--but words._”

It scarcely lies within the will of every one of us whether his lot shall assign him to the first of these classes, and happily it is not a matter of very much concern. They are the great exceptions, the moral geniuses of humanity. But to the second rank every one of us is called, yes, emphatically challenged, when once the way has been shown. And the saddest thing that can happen to him in life is, if he nevertheless remains among the third sort of men, whose existence, at the end, has had no real worth, either for themselves, or for others.

“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding; for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.

“Wisdom is more precious than rubies: and none of the things thou canst desire are to be compared unto her.

“Length of days is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.

“Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”

V. NOBLE SOULS