Culture and Anarchy | Page 5

have therefore, as spiritual productions, in their contents
something excessive and morbid, in their form something not
thoroughly sound. On a lower range than the Imitation, and awakening
in our nature chords less poetical and delicate, the Maxims of Bishop
Wilson are, as a religious work, far more solid. To the most sincere
ardour and unction, Bishop Wilson unites, in these Maxims, that
downright honesty [vii] and plain good sense which our English race
has so powerfully applied to the divine impossibilities of religion; by
which it has brought religion so much into practical life, and has done
its allotted part in promoting upon earth the kingdom of God. But with
ardour and unction religion, as we all know, may still be fanatical; with

honesty and good sense, it may still be prosaic; and the fruit of honesty
and good sense united with ardour and unction is often only a prosaic
religion held fanatically. Bishop Wilson's excellence lies in a balance
of the four qualities, and in a fulness and perfection of them, which
makes this untoward result impossible; his unction is so perfect, and in
such happy alliance with his good sense, that it becomes tenderness and
fervent charity; his good sense is so perfect and in such happy alliance
with his unction, that it becomes moderation and insight. While,
therefore, the type of religion exhibited in his Maxims is English, it is
yet a type of a far higher kind than is in general reached by Bishop
Wilson's countrymen; and yet, being English, it is possible and
attainable for them. And so I conclude as I began, by saying that a work
of this sort is one which the Society for Promoting Christian [viii]
Knowledge should not suffer to remain out of print or out of currency.
To pass now to the matters canvassed in the following essay. The
whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out
of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection
by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us,
the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this
knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock
notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically,
vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly
which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically. This,
and this alone, is the scope of the following essay. I say again here,
what I have said in the pages which follow, that from the faults and
weaknesses of bookmen a notion of something bookish, pedantic, and
futile has got itself more or less connected with the word culture, and
that it is a pity we cannot use a word more perfectly free from all
shadow of reproach. And yet, futile as are many bookmen, and helpless
as books and reading often prove for bringing nearer to perfection those
who [ix] use them, one must, I think, be struck more and more, the
longer one lives, to find how much, in our present society, a man's life
of each day depends for its solidity and value on whether he reads
during that day, and, far more still, on what he reads during it. More
and more he who examines himself will find the difference it makes to
him, at the end of any given day, whether or no he has pursued his
avocations throughout it without reading at all; and whether or no,

having read something, he has read the newspapers only. This, however,
is a matter for each man's private conscience and experience. If a man
without books or reading, or reading nothing but his letters and the
newspapers, gets nevertheless a fresh and free play of the best thoughts
upon his stock notions and habits, he has got culture. He has got that
for which we prize and recommend culture; he has got that which at the
present moment we seek culture that it may give us. This inward
operation is the very life and essence of culture, as we conceive it.
Nevertheless, it is not easy so to frame one's discourse concerning the
operation of culture, as to avoid giving frequent occasion to a
misunderstanding whereby the essential inwardness of the [x] operation
is lost sight of. We are supposed, when we criticise by the help of
culture some imperfect doing or other, to have in our eye some
well-known rival plan of doing, which we want to serve and
recommend. Thus, for instance, because I have freely pointed out the
dangers and inconveniences to which our literature is exposed in the
absence of any centre of taste and authority like the French Academy, it
is constantly said that