WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME?

By Charles Dudley Warner

 Delivered before the Alumni of Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y. , Wednesday, June 26, 1872

Twenty-one years ago in this house I heard a voice calling me to ascendthe platform, and there to stand and deliver. The voice was the voice ofPresident North; the language was an excellent imitation of that used byCicero and Julius Caesar. I remember the flattering invitation--it is theclassic tag that clings to the graduate long after he has forgotten thegender of the nouns that end in 'um--orator proximus', the grateful voicesaid, 'ascendat, videlicet, ' and so forth. To be proclaimed an orator, and an ascending orator, in such a sonorous tongue, in the face of aworld waiting for orators, stirred one's blood like the herald's trumpetwhen the lists are thrown open. Alas! for most of us, who crowded soeagerly into the arena, it was the last appearance as orators on anystage. 

The facility of the world for swallowing up orators, and company aftercompany of educated young men, has been remarked. But it is almostincredible to me now that the class of 1851, with its classic sympathiesand its many revolutionary ideas, disappeared in the flood of the worldso soon and so silently, causing scarcely a ripple in the smoothlyflowing stream. I suppose the phenomenon has been repeated for twentyyears. Do the young gentlemen at Hamilton, I wonder, still carry on theirordinary conversation in the Latin tongue, and their familiar vacationcorrespondence in the language of Aristophanes? I hope so. I hope theyare more proficient in such exercises than the young gentlemen of twentyyears ago were, for I have still great faith in a culture that is so farfrom any sordid aspirations as to approach the ideal; although the younggraduate is not long in learning that there is an indifference in thepublic mind with regard to the first aorist that amounts nearly toapathy, and that millions of his fellow-creatures will probably live anddie without the consolations of the second aorist. It is a melancholyfact that, after a thousand years of missionary effort, the vast majorityof civilized men do not know that gerunds are found only in the singularnumber. 

I confess that this failure of the annual graduating class to make itsexpected impression on the world has its pathetic side. Youth iscredulous--as it always ought to be--and full of hope--else the worldwere dead already--and the graduate steps out into life with an ingenuousself-confidence in his resources. It is to him an event, thisturning-point in the career of what he feels to be an important andimmortal being. His entrance is public and with some dignity of display. For a day the world stops to see it; the newspapers spread abroad areport of it, and the modest scholar feels that the eyes of mankind arefixed on him in expectation and desire. Though modest, he is notinsensible to the responsibility of his position. He has only packed awayin his mind the wisdom of the ages, and he does not intend to be stingyabout communicating it to the world which is awaiting his graduation. Fresh from the communion with great thoughts in great literatures, he isin haste to give mankind the benefit of them, and lead it on into newenthusiasm and new conquests. 

The world, however, is not very much excited. The birth of a child is initself marvelous, but it is so common. Over and over again, for hundredsof years, these young gentlemen have been coming forward with theirspecimens of learning, tied up in neat little parcels, all ready toadminister, and warranted to be of the purest materials. The world is notunkind, it is not even indifferent, but it must be confessed that it doesnot act any longer as if it expected to be enlightened. It is generallyso busy that it does not even ask the young gentlemen what they can do, but leaves them standing with their little parcels, wondering when theperson will pass by who requires one of them, and when there will happena little opening in the procession into which they can fall. Theyexpected that way would be made for them with shouts of welcome, but theyfind themselves before long struggling to get even a standing-place inthe crowd--it is only kings, and the nobility, and those fortunates whodwell in the tropics, where bread grows on trees and clothing isunnecessary, who have reserved seats in this world. 

To the majority of men I fancy that literature is very much the same thathistory is; and history is presented as a museum of antiquities andcuriosities, classified, arranged, and labeled. One may walk through itas he does through the Hotel de Cluny; he feels that he ought to beinterested in it, but it is very tiresome. Learning is regarded in likemanner as an accumulation of literature, gathered into great storehousescalled libraries--the thought of which excites great respect in mostminds, but is ineffably tedious. Year after year and age after age itaccumulates--this evidence and monument of intellectual activity--pilingitself up in vast collections, which it needs a lifetime even tocatalogue, and through which the uncultured walk as the idle do throughthe British Museum, with no very strong indignation against Omar whoburned the library at Alexandria. 

To the popular mind this vast accumulation of learning in libraries, orin brains that do not visibly apply it, is much the same thing. Thebusiness of the scholar appears to be this sort of accumulation; and theyoung student, who comes to the world with a little portion of thistreasure dug out of some classic tomb or mediaeval museum, is receivedwith little more enthusiasm than is the miraculous handkerchief of St. Veronica by the crowd of Protestants to whom it is exhibited on Holy Weekin St. Peter's. The historian must make his museum live again; thescholar must vivify his learning with a present purpose. 

It is unnecessary for me to say that all this is only from theunsympathetic and worldly side. I should think myself a criminal if Isaid anything to chill the enthusiasm of the young scholar, or to dashwith any skepticism his longing and his hope. He has chosen the highest. His beautiful faith and his aspiration are the light of life. Without hisfresh enthusiasm and his gallant devotion to learning, to art, toculture, the world would be dreary enough. Through him comes theever-springing inspiration in affairs. Baffled at every turn and drivendefeated from a hundred fields, he carries victory in himself. He belongsto a great and immortal army. Let him not be discouraged at his apparentlittle influence, even though every sally of every young life may seemlike a forlorn hope. No man can see the whole of the battle. It mustneeds be that regiment after regiment, trained, accomplished, gay, andhigh with hope, shall be sent into the field, marching on, into thesmoke, into the fire, and be swept away. The battle swallows them, oneafter the other, and the foe is yet unyielding, and the ever-remorselesstrumpet calls for more and more. But not in vain, for some day, and everyday, along the line, there is a cry, "They fly! they fly!" and the wholearmy advances, and the flag is planted on an ancient fortress where itnever waved before. And, even if you never see this, better thaninglorious camp-following is it to go in with the wasting regiment; tocarry the colors up the slope of the enemy's works, though the nextmoment you fall and find a grave at the foot of the glacis. 

What are the relations of culture to common life, of the scholar to theday-laborer? What is the value of this vast accumulation of higherlearning, what is its point of contact with the mass of humanity, thattoils and eats and sleeps and reproduces itself and dies, generationafter generation, in an unvarying round, on an unvarying level? We havehad discussed lately the relation of culture to religion. Mr. Froude, with a singular, reactionary ingenuity, has sought to prove that theprogress of the century, so-called, with all its material alleviations, has done little in regard to a happy life, to the pleasure of existence, for the average individual Englishman. Into neither of these inquiries doI purpose to enter; but we may not unprofitably turn our attention to asubject closely connected with both of them. 

It has not escaped your attention that there are indications everywhereof what may be called a ground-swell. There is not simply an inquiry asto the value of classic culture, a certain jealousy of the schools whereit is obtained, a rough popular contempt for the graces of learning, afailure to see any connection between the first aorist and the rolling ofsteel rails, but there is arising an angry protest against the conditionsof a life which make one free of the serene heights of thought and givehim range of all intellectual countries, and keep another at the spadeand the loom, year after year, that he may earn food for the day andlodging for the night. In our day the demand here hinted at has takenmore definite form and determinate aim, and goes on, visible to all men, to unsettle society and change social and political relations. The greatmovement of labor, extravagant and preposterous as are some of itsdemands, demagogic as are most of its leaders, fantastic as are many ofits theories, is nevertheless real, and gigantic, and full of a certainprimeval force, and with a certain justice in it that never sleeps inhuman affairs, but moves on, blindly often and destructively often, amovement cruel at once and credulous, deceived and betrayed, andrevenging itself on friends and foes alike. Its strength is in the factthat it is natural and human; it might have been predicted from a mereknowledge of human nature, which is always restless in any relations itis possible to establish, which is always like the sea, seeking a level, and never so discontented as when anything like a level is approximated. 

What is the relation of the scholar to the present phase of thismovement? What is the relation of culture to it? By scholar I mean theman who has had the advantages of such an institution as this. By cultureI mean that fine product of opportunity and scholarship which is to mereknowledge what manners are to the gentleman. The world has a growingbelief in the profit of knowledge, of information, but it has a suspicionof culture. There is a lingering notion in matters religious thatsomething is lost by refinement--at least, that there is danger that theplain, blunt, essential truths will be lost in aesthetic graces. Thelaborer is getting to consent that his son shall go to school, and learnhow to build an undershot wheel or to assay metals; but why plant in hismind those principles of taste which will make him as sensitive to beautyas to pain, why open to him those realms of imagination with theillimitable horizons, the contours and colors of which can but fill himwith indefinite longing?

It is not necessary for me in this presence to dwell upon the value ofculture. I wish rather to have you notice the gulf that exists betweenwhat the majority want to know and that fine fruit of knowledgeconcerning which there is so widespread an infidelity. Will culture aid aminister in a "protracted meeting"? Will the ability to read Chaucerassist a shop-keeper? Will the politician add to the "sweetness andlight" of his lovely career if he can read the "Battle of the Frogs andthe Mice" in the original? What has the farmer to do with the "RoseGarden of Saadi"?

I suppose it is not altogether the fault of the majority that the truerelation of culture to common life is so misunderstood. The scholar islargely responsible for it; he is largely responsible for the isolationof his position, and the want of sympathy it begets. No man can influencehis fellows with any power who retires into his own selfishness, andgives himself to a self-culture which has no further object. What is hethat he should absorb the sweets of the universe, that he should hold allthe claims of humanity second to the perfecting of himself? This effortto save his own soul was common to Goethe and Francis of Assisi; underdifferent manifestations it was the same regard for self. And where it isan intellectual and not a spiritual greediness, I suppose it is what anold writer calls "laying up treasures in hell. "

It is not an unreasonable demand of the majority that the few who havethe advantages of the training of college and university should exhibitthe breadth and sweetness of a generous culture, and should shedeverywhere that light which ennobles common things, and without whichlife is like one of the old landscapes in which the artist forgot to putsunlight. One of the reasons why the college-bred man does not meet thisreasonable expectation is that his training, too often, has not beenthorough and conscientious, it has not been of himself; he has acquired, but he is not educated. Another is that, if he is educated, he is notimpressed with the intimacy of his relation to that which is below him aswell as that which is above him, and his culture is out of sympathy withthe great mass that needs it, and must have it, or it will remain a blindforce in the world, the lever of demagogues who preach social anarchy andmisname it progress. There is no culture so high, no taste so fastidious, no grace of learning so delicate, no refinement of art so exquisite, thatit cannot at this hour find full play for itself in the broadest fieldsof humanity; since it is all needed to soften the attritions of commonlife, and guide to nobler aspirations the strong materialistic influencesof our restless society. 

One reason, as I said, for the gulf between the majority and the selectfew to be educated is, that the college does not seldom disappoint thereasonable expectation concerning it. The graduate of the carpenter'sshop knows how to use his tools--or used to in days before superficialtraining in trades became the rule. Does the college graduate know how touse his tools? Or has he to set about fitting himself for someemployment, and gaining that culture, that training of himself, thatutilization of his information which will make him necessary in theworld? There has been a great deal of discussion whether a boy should betrained in the classics or mathematics or sciences or modern languages. Ifeel like saying "yes" to all the various propositions. For Heaven's saketrain him in something, so that he can handle himself, and have free andconfident use of his powers. There isn't a more helpless creature in theuniverse than a scholar with a vast amount of information over which hehas no control. He is like a man with a load of hay so badly put upon hiscart that it all slides off before he can get to market. The influence ofa man on the world is generally proportioned to his ability to dosomething. When Abraham Lincoln was running for the Legislature the firsttime, on the platform of the improvement of the navigation of theSangamon River, he went to secure the votes of thirty men who werecradling a wheat field. They asked no questions about internalimprovements, but only seemed curious whether Abraham had muscle enoughto represent them in the Legislature. The obliging man took up a cradleand led the gang round the field. The whole thirty voted for him. 

What is scholarship? The learned Hindu can repeat I do not know how manythousands of lines from the Vedas, and perhaps backwards as well asforwards. I heard of an excellent old lady who had counted how many timesthe letter A occurs in the Holy Scriptures. The Chinese students whoaspire to honors spend years in verbally memorizing the classics--Confucius and Mencius--and receive degrees and public advancement uponability to transcribe from memory without the error of a point, ormisplacement of a single tea-chest character, the whole of some books ofmorals. You do not wonder that China is today more like an herbarium thananything else. Learning is a kind of fetish, and it has no influencewhatever upon the great inert mass of Chinese humanity. 

I suppose it is possible for a young gentleman to be able to read--justthink of it, after ten years of grammar and lexicon, not to know Greekliterature and have flexible command of all its richness and beauty, butto read it!--it is possible, I suppose, for the graduate of college to beable to read all the Greek authors, and yet to have gone, in regard tohis own culture, very little deeper than a surface reading of them; toknow very little of that perfect architecture and what it expressed; norof that marvelous sculpture and the conditions of its immortal beauty;nor of that artistic development which made the Acropolis to bud andbloom under the blue sky like the final flower of a perfect nature; norof that philosophy, that politics, that society, nor of the life of thatpolished, crafty, joyous race, the springs of it and the far-reaching, still unexpended effects of it. 

Yet as surely as that nothing perishes, that the Providence of God is nota patchwork of uncontinued efforts, but a plan and a progress, as surelyas the Pilgrim embarkation at Delfshaven has a relation to the battle ofGettysburg, and to the civil rights bill giving the colored manpermission to ride in a public conveyance and to be buried in a publiccemetery, so surely has the Parthenon some connection with your new Statecapitol at Albany, and the daily life of the vine-dresser of thePeloponnesus some lesson for the American day-laborer. The scholar issaid to be the torch-bearer, transmitting the increasing light fromgeneration to generation, so that the feet of all, the humblest and theloveliest, may walk in the radiance and not stumble. But he very oftencarries a dark lantern. 

Not what is the use of Greek, of any culture in art or literature, butwhat is the good to me of your knowing Greek, is the latest question ofthe ditch-digger to the scholar--what better off am I for your learning?And the question, in view of the interdependence of all members ofsociety, is one that cannot be put away as idle. One reason why thescholar does not make the world of the past, the world of books, real tohis fellows and serviceable to them, is that it is not real to himself, but a mere unsubstantial place of intellectual idleness, where he dalliessome years before he begins his task in life. And another reason is that, while it may be real to him, while he is actually cultured and trained, he fails to see or to feel that his culture is not a thing apart, andthat all the world has a right to share its blessed influence. Failing tosee this, he is isolated, and, wanting his sympathy, the untutored worldmocks at his super-fineness and takes its own rough way to rougher ends. Greek art was for the people, Greek poetry was for the people; Raphaelpainted his immortal frescoes where throngs could be lifted in thoughtand feeling by them; Michael Angelo hung the dome over St. Peter's sothat the far-off peasant on the Campagna could see it, and the maidenkneeling by the shrine in the Alban hills. Do we often stop to think whatinfluence, direct or other, the scholar, the man of high culture, hastoday upon the great mass of our people? Why do they ask, what is the useof your learning and your art?

The artist, in the retirement of his studio, finishes a charming, suggestive, historical picture. The rich man buys it and hangs it in hislibrary, where the privileged few can see it. I do not deny that theaverage rich man needs all the refining influence the picture can exerton him, and that the picture is doing missionary work in his house; butit is nevertheless an example of an educating influence withdrawn andappropriated to narrow uses. But the engraver comes, and, by hismediating art, transfers it to a thousand sheets, and scatters its sweetinfluence far abroad. All the world, in its toil, its hunger, itssordidness, pauses a moment to look on it--that gray seacoast, thereceding Mayflower, the two young Pilgrims in the foreground regardingit, with tender thoughts of the far home--all the world looks on itperhaps for a moment thoughtfully, perhaps tearfully, and is touched withthe sentiment of it, is kindled into a glow of nobleness by the sight ofthat faith and love and resolute devotion which have tinged our earlyhistory with the faint light of romance. So art is no longer theenjoyment of the few, but the help and solace of the many. 

The scholar who is cultured by books, reflection, travel, by a refinedsociety, consorts with his kind, and more and more removes himself fromthe sympathies of common life. I know how almost inevitable this is, howalmost impossible it is to resist the segregation of classes according tothe affinities of taste. But by what mediation shall the culture that isnow the possession of the few be made to leaven the world and to elevateand sweeten ordinary life? By books? Yes. By the newspaper? Yes. By thediffusion of works of art? Yes. But when all is done that can be done bysuch letters-missive from one class to another, there remains the need ofmore personal contact, of a human sympathy, diffused and living. Theworld has had enough of charities. It wants respect and consideration. Wedesire no longer to be legislated for, it says; we want to be legislatedwith. Why do you never come to see me but you bring me something? asksthe sensitive and poor seamstress. Do you always give some charity toyour friends? I want companionship, and not cold pieces; I want to betreated like a human being who has nerves and feelings, and tears too, and as much interest in the sunset, and in the birth of Christ, perhapsas you. And the mass of uncared-for ignorance and brutality, finding avoice at length, bitterly repels the condescensions of charity; you haveyour culture, your libraries, your fine houses, your church, yourreligion, and your God, too; let us alone, we want none of them. In thebear-pit at Berne, the occupants, who are the wards of the city, have hadmeat thrown to them daily for I know not how long, but they are not tamedby this charity, and would probably eat up any careless person who fellinto their clutches, without apology. 

Do not impute to me quixotic notions with regard to the duties of men andwomen of culture, or think that I undervalue the difficulties in the way, the fastidiousness on the one side, or the jealousies on the other. It isby no means easy to an active participant to define the drift of his ownage; but I seem to see plainly that unless the culture of the age findsmeans to diffuse itself, working downward and reconciling antagonisms bya commonness of thought and feeling and aim in life, society must moreand more separate itself into jarring classes, with mutualmisunderstandings and hatred and war. To suggest remedies is much moredifficult than to see evils; but the comprehension of dangers is thefirst step towards mastering them. The problem of our own time--thereconciliation of the interests of classes--is as yet very ill defined. This great movement of labor, for instance, does not know definitely whatit wants, and those who are spectators do not know what their relationsare to it. The first thing to be done is for them to try to understandeach other. One class sees that the other has lighter or at leastdifferent labor, opportunities of travel, a more liberal supply of theluxuries of life, a higher enjoyment and a keener relish of thebeautiful, the immaterial. Looking only at external conditions, itconcludes that all it needs to come into this better place is wealth, andso it organizes war upon the rich, and it makes demands of freedom fromtoil and of compensation which it is in no man's power to give it, andwhich would not, if granted over and over again, lift it into thatcondition it desires. It is a tale in the Gulistan, that a king placedhis son with a preceptor, and said, "This is your son; educate him in thesame manner as your own. " The preceptor took pains with him for a year, but without success, whilst his own sons were completed in learning andaccomplishments. The king reproved the preceptor, and said, "You havebroken your promise, and not acted faithfully. "

He replied, "O king, the education was the same, but the capacities aredifferent. Although silver and gold are produced from a stone, yet thesemetals are not to be found in every stone. The star Canopus shines allover the world, but the scented leather comes only from Yemen. " "'Tis anabsolute, and, as it were, a divine perfection, " says Montaigne, "for aman to know how loyally to enjoy his being. We seek other conditions, byreason we do not understand the use of our own; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside. "

But nevertheless it becomes a necessity for us to understand the wishesof those who demand a change of condition, and it is necessary that theyshould understand the compensations as well as the limitations of everycondition. The dervish congratulated himself that although the onlymonument of his grave would be a brick, he should at the last day arriveat and enter the gate of Paradise before the king had got from under theheavy stones of his costly tomb. Nothing will bring us into thisdesirable mutual understanding except sympathy and personal contact. Lawswill not do it; institutions of charity and relief will not do it. 

We must believe, for one thing, that the graces of culture will not bethrown away if exercised among the humblest and the least cultured; it isfound out that flowers are often more welcome in the squalidtenement-houses of Boston than loaves of bread. It is difficult to sayexactly how culture can extend its influence into places uncongenial andto people indifferent to it, but I will try and illustrate what I mean byan example or two. 

Criminals in this country, when the law took hold of them, used to beturned over to the care of men who often had more sympathy with the crimethan with the criminal, or at least to those who were almost as coarse infeeling and as brutal in speech as their charges. There have been somechanges of late years in the care of criminals, but does public opinionyet everywhere demand that jailers and prison-keepers and executioners ofthe penal law should be men of refinement, of high character, of anydegree of culture? I do not know any class more needing the best directpersonal influence of the best civilization than the criminal. Theproblem of its proper treatment and reformation is one of the mostpressing, and it needs practically the aid of our best men and women. Ishould have great hope of any prison establishment at the head of whichwas a gentleman of fine education, the purest tastes, the most elevatedmorality and lively sympathy with men as such, provided he had also willand the power of command. I do not know what might not be done for theviciously inclined and the transgressors, if they could come under theinfluence of refined men and women. And yet you know that a boy or a girlmay be arrested for crime, and pass from officer to keeper, and jailer towarden, and spend years in a career of vice and imprisonment, and neveronce see any man or woman, officially, who has tastes, or sympathies, oraspirations much above that vulgar level whence the criminals came. Anybody who is honest and vigilant is considered good enough to takecharge of prison birds. 

The age is merciful and abounds in charities-houses of refuge for poorwomen, societies for the conservation of the exposed and the reclamationof the lost. It is willing to pay liberally for their support, and tohire ministers and distributors of its benefactions. But it is beginningto see that it cannot hire the distribution of love, nor buy brotherlyfeeling. The most encouraging thing I have seen lately is an experimentin one of our cities. In the thick of the town the ladies of the cityhave furnished and opened a reading-room, sewing-room, conversation-room, or what not, where young girls, who work for a living and have noopportunity for any culture, at home or elsewhere, may spend theirevenings. They meet there always some of the ladies I have spoken of, whose unostentatious duty and pleasure it is to pass the evening withthem, in reading or music or the use of the needle, and the exchange ofthe courtesies of life in conversation. Whatever grace and kindness andrefinement of manner they carry there, I do not suppose are wasted. Theseare some of the ways in which culture can serve men. And I take it thatone of the chief evidences of our progress in this century is therecognition of the truth that there is no selfishness so supreme--noteven that in the possession of wealth--as that which retires into itselfwith all the accomplishments of liberal learning and rare opportunities, and looks upon the intellectual poverty of the world without a wish torelieve it. "As often as I have been among men, " says Seneca, "I havereturned less a man. " And Thomas a Kempis declared that "the greatestsaints avoided the company of men as much as they could, and chose tolive to God in secret. " The Christian philosophy was no improvement uponthe pagan in this respect, and was exactly at variance with the teachingand practice of Jesus of Nazareth. 

The American scholar cannot afford to live for himself, nor merely forscholarship and the delights of learning. He must make himself more feltin the material life of this country. I am aware that it is said that theculture of the age is itself materialistic, and that its refinements aresensual; that there is little to choose between the coarse excesses ofpoverty and the polished and more decorous animality of the morefortunate. Without entering directly upon the consideration of thismuch-talked-of tendency, I should like to notice the influence upon ourpresent and probable future of the bounty, fertility, and extraordinaryopportunities of this still new land. 

The American grows and develops himself with few restraints. Foreignersused to describe him as a lean, hungry, nervous animal, gaunt, inquisitive, inventive, restless, and certain to shrivel into physicalinferiority in his dry and highly oxygenated atmosphere. Thisapprehension is not well founded. It is quieted by his achievements thecontinent over, his virile enterprises, his endurance in war and in themost difficult explorations, his resistance of the influence of greatcities towards effeminacy and loss of physical vigor. If ever man tooklarge and eager hold of earthly things and appropriated them to his ownuse, it is the American. We are gross eaters, we are great drinkers. Weshall excel the English when we have as long practice as they. I amfilled with a kind of dismay when I see the great stock-yards of Chicagoand Cincinnati, through which flow the vast herds and droves of theprairies, marching straight down the throats of Eastern people. Thousandsare always sowing and reaping and brewing and distilling, to slake theimmortal thirst of the country. We take, indeed, strong hold of theearth; we absorb its fatness. When Leicester entertained Elizabeth atKenilworth, the clock in the great tower was set perpetually at twelve, the hour of feasting. It is always dinner-time in America. I do not knowhow much land it takes to raise an average citizen, but I should say aquarter section. He spreads himself abroad, he riots in abundance; aboveall things he must have profusion, and he wants things that are solid andstrong. On the Sorrentine promontory, and on the island of Capri, thehardy husbandman and fisherman draws his subsistence from the sea andfrom a scant patch of ground. One may feast on a fish and a handful ofolives. The dinner of the laborer is a dish of polenta, a few figs, somecheese, a glass of thin wine. His wants are few and easily supplied. Heis not overfed, his diet is not stimulating; I should say that he wouldpay little to the physician, that familiar of other countries whosefamily office is to counteract the effects of over-eating. He istemperate, frugal, content, and apparently draws not more of his lifefrom the earth or the sea than from the genial sky. He would never builda Pacific Railway, nor write a hundred volumes of commentary on theScriptures; but he is an example of how little a man actually needs ofthe gross products of the earth. 

I suppose that life was never fuller in certain ways than it is here inAmerica. If a civilization is judged by its wants, we are certainlyhighly civilized. We cannot get land enough, nor clothes enough, norhouses enough, nor food enough. A Bedouin tribe would fare sumptuously onwhat one American family consumes and wastes. The revenue required forthe wardrobe of one woman of fashion would suffice to convert theinhabitants of I know not how many square miles in Africa. It absorbs theincome of a province to bring up a baby. We riot in prodigality, we viewith each other in material accumulation and expense. Our thoughts aremainly on how to increase the products of the world; and get them intoour own possession. 

I think this gross material tendency is strong in America, and morelikely to get the mastery over the spiritual and the intellectual herethan elsewhere, because of our exhaustless resources. Let us not mistakethe nature of a real civilization, nor suppose we have it because we canconvert crude iron into the most delicate mechanism, or transportourselves sixty miles an hour, or even if we shall refine our carnaltastes so as to be satisfied at dinner with the tongues of ortolans andthe breasts of singing-birds. 

Plato banished the musicians from his feasts because he would not havethe charms of conversation interfered with. By comparison, music was tohim a sensuous enjoyment. In any society the ideal must be the banishmentof the more sensuous; the refinement of it will only repeat the continuedexperiment of history--the end of a civilization in a polishedmaterialism, and its speedy fall from that into grossness. 

I am sure that the scholar, trained to "plain living and high thinking, "knows that the prosperous life consists in the culture of the man, andnot in the refinement and accumulation of the material. The word cultureis often used to signify that dainty intellectualism which is merely asensuous pampering of the mind, as distinguishable from the healthytraining of the mind as is the education of the body in athleticexercises from the petting of it by luxurious baths and unguents. Cultureis the blossom of knowledge, but it is a fruit blossom, the ornament ofthe age but the seed of the future. The so-called culture, a merefastidiousness of taste, is a barren flower. 

You would expect spurious culture to stand aloof from common life, as itdoes, to extend its charities at the end of a pole, to make of religion amere 'cultus, ' to construct for its heaven a sort of Paris, where all theinhabitants dress becomingly, and where there are no Communists. Culture, like fine manners, is not always the result of wealth or position. Whenmonseigneur the archbishop makes his rare tour through the Swissmountains, the simple peasants do not crowd upon him with boorishimpudence, but strew his stony path with flowers, and receive him withjoyous but modest sincerity. When the Russian prince made his landing inAmerica the determined staring of a bevy of accomplished American womennearly swept the young man off the deck of the vessel. One cannot butrespect that tremulous sensitiveness which caused the maiden lady toshrink from staring at the moon when she heard there was a man in it. 

The materialistic drift of this age--that is, its devotion to materialdevelopment--is frequently deplored. I suppose it is like all other agesin that respect, but there appears to be a more determined demand forchange of condition than ever before, and a deeper movement forequalization. Here in America this is, in great part, a movement formerely physical or material equalization. The idea seems to be well-nighuniversal that the millennium is to come by a great deal less work and agreat deal more pay. It seems to me that the millennium is to come by aninfusion into all society of a truer culture, which is neither of povertynor of wealth, but is the beautiful fruit of the development of thehigher part of man's nature. 

And the thought I wish to leave with you, as scholars and men who cancommand the best culture, is that it is all needed to shape and controlthe strong growth of material development here, to guide the blindinstincts of the mass of men who are struggling for a freer place and abreath of fresh air; that you cannot stand aloof in a class isolation;that your power is in a personal sympathy with the humanity which isignorant but discontented; and that the question which the man with thespade asks about the use of your culture to him is a menace.