Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 | Page 6

because during the middle ages we could only say that Europe was in a semi-civilized condition. They knew something about writing; but at a time when Dean, the writer of the early history of England, said that throughout the whole of England there were not half a dozen men who could read what he had written, you can see that writing was a very unimportant part of the culture of that nation; so it can only be when writing becomes a common possession of the majority that we can call it an element of civilization.
It is not to be supposed that we ourselves have reached the type of the highest culture. We leave something for our descendants to do. We do not wish to relieve them of the privilege of being better than ourselves; and we shall leave them, probably, plenty of room; because it is supposed that the stage of enlightenment which is the highest stage of culture--which we foresee, but do not see--that that rather applies to the future than to ourselves. That period will come when mankind has freed itself very much more than now from the bonds of nature and the environment of society. It will come when the ideas of our equality are much more perfect than they are now; when that equality extends to the equality of women with men before the law and in all rights; when it comes to the equality of all men of all castes before the law and the equal opportunity of all men to obtain that which is best in the life of all. We are very far from that yet. It will come also when the idea of international legislation is such that it will not be necessary, in order to cure great evils, that we should have recourse to weapons of any material whatsoever; that time is not yet come; and so we have much that is left for our descendants to work out in this direction.
It would, however, appear that all these various criteria which I have named are somewhat unsatisfactory. They do not, it appears to me, quite touch the question at issue. They are in a measure external measures altogether--even that somewhat psychological one which I quoted from the German authorities. Were I to propose a criterion, or a series of criteria, of culture which could be applied to all nations, it would be that which might as well and easily be applied to each individual; and when we come to apply it in that manner it is much more easy to understand its bearing. Herbert Spencer, in defining what he means by culture, says: "It means the knowledge of one thing thoroughly and a knowledge of the groundwork of all other branches of human knowledge." He claimed that we can only understand one thing thoroughly; but that we could and ought to understand the general outline of all other things which are studied by mankind. This is somewhat defective, it appears, because it bases culture entirely from an intellectual point of view; and if man were merely a walking intellectual machine, it would be well enough; but he is not; for the intellectual man is but a small portion of his life. We are engaged, most of our time, in something which is very far from purely intellectual action. We are governed distinctly by our emotions and our feelings--our sentiments; and culture must touch them, or it is vague and empty. Therefore it is that I would say that we should think with Goethe--to whom we must often recur for an insight into the profoundest trends of human nature--must recur to him; and we find that he lays down the principle of culture in the individual to be "A general sympathy with all the highest ideas which have governed and are governing the human mind." He said: "We should keep ourselves first (each man and woman should keep himself and herself) in touch with the highest elements of his and her own nature." He said, "It is not so difficult, if we give but a little time to it--provided we give that time regularly. We must remember," he says, "to cultivate our intellect by some study, every day and our sense of the beautiful by looking at something which is beautiful; and there is much around us which costs us nothing to look at were we to observe it--the cloud, the sunlight, the tree, the flower, a butterfly--anything of that kind studied for a few minutes each day would continue to develop in man's mind the sense of the beautiful. We should also appreciate carefully our actions and govern them and measure them, as to whether they are just to others--a matter which a very few minutes a day will probably enable