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What is Your Culture to Me..............................................................................................................................1

Charles Dudley Warner ............................................................................................................................1

Twentyone years ago in this house I heard a voice calling me to ascend the platform, and there to stand and

deliver. The voice was the voice of President North; the language was an excellent imitation of that used by

Cicero and Julius Caesar. I remember the flattering invitationit is the classic tag that clings to the graduate

long after he has forgotten the gender of the nouns that end in 'umorator proximus', the grateful voice said,

'ascendat, videlicet,' and so forth. To be proclaimed an orator, and an ascending orator, in such a sonorous

tongue, in the face of a world waiting for orators, stirred one's blood like the herald's trumpet when the lists

are thrown open. Alas! for most of us, who crowded so eagerly into the arena, it was the last appearance as

The facility of the world for swallowing up orators, and company after company of educated young men, has

been remarked. But it is almost incredible to me now that the class of 1851, with its classic sympathies and its

many revolutionary ideas, disappeared in the flood of the world so soon and so silently, causing scarcely a

ripple in the smoothly flowing stream. I suppose the phenomenon has been repeated for twenty years. Do the

young gentlemen at Hamilton, I wonder, still carry on their ordinary conversation in the Latin tongue, and

their familiar vacation correspondence in the language of Aristophanes? I hope so. I hope they are more

proficient in such exercises than the young gentlemen of twenty years ago were, for I have still great faith in a

culture that is so far from any sordid aspirations as to approach the ideal; although the young graduate is not

long in learning that there is an indifference in the public mind with regard to the first aorist that amounts

nearly to apathy, and that millions of his fellowcreatures will probably live and die without the consolations

of the second aorist. It is a melancholy fact that, after a thousand years of missionary effort, the vast majority

of civilized men do not know that gerunds are found only in the singular number.

I confess that this failure of the annual graduating class to make its expected impression on the world has its

pathetic side. Youth is credulousas it always ought to beand full of hopeelse the world were dead

alreadyand the graduate steps out into life with an ingenuous selfconfidence in his resources. It is to him

an event, this turning point in the career of what he feels to be an important and immortal being. His

entrance is public and with some dignity of display. For a day the world stops to see it; the newspapers spread

abroad a report of it, and the modest scholar feels that the eyes of mankind are fixed on him in expectation

and desire. Though modest, he is not insensible to the responsibility of his position. He has only packed away

in his mind the wisdom of the ages, and he does not intend to be stingy about communicating it to the world

which is awaiting his graduation. Fresh from the communion with great thoughts in great literatures, he is in

haste to give mankind the benefit of them, and lead it on into new enthusiasm and new conquests.

The world, however, is not very much excited. The birth of a child is in itself marvelous, but it is so common.

Over and over again, for hundreds of years, these young gentlemen have been coming forward with their

specimens of learning, tied up in neat little parcels, all ready to administer, and warranted to be of the purest

materials. The world is not unkind, it is not even indifferent, but it must be confessed that it does not act any

longer as if it expected to be enlightened. It is generally so busy that it does not even ask the young

gentlemen what they can do, but leaves them standing with their little parcels, wondering when the person

will pass by who requires one of them, and when there will happen a little opening in the procession into

which they can fall. They expected that way would be made for them with shouts of welcome, but they find

themselves before long struggling to get even a standingplace in the crowdit is only kings, and the

nobility, and those fortunates who dwell in the tropics, where bread grows on trees and clothing is

To the majority of men I fancy that literature is very much the same that history is; and history is presented as

a museum of antiquities and curiosities, classified, arranged, and labeled. One may walk through it as he does

through the Hotel de Cluny; he feels that he ought to be interested in it, but it is very tiresome. Learning is

regarded in like manner as an accumulation of literature, gathered into great storehouses called librariesthe

thought of which excites great respect in most minds, but is ineffably tedious. Year after year and age after

age it accumulatesthis evidence and monument of intellectual activitypiling itself up in vast collections,

which it needs a lifetime even to catalogue, and through which the uncultured walk as the idle do through the

British Museum, with no very strong indignation against Omar who burned the library at Alexandria.

To the popular mind this vast accumulation of learning in libraries, or in brains that do not visibly apply it, is

much the same thing. The business of the scholar appears to be this sort of accumulation; and the young

student, who comes to the world with a little portion of this treasure dug out of some classic tomb or

mediaeval museum, is received with little more enthusiasm than is the miraculous handkerchief of St.

Veronica by the crowd of Protestants to whom it is exhibited on Holy Week in St. Peter's. The historian must

make his museum live again; the scholar must vivify his learning with a present purpose.

It is unnecessary for me to say that all this is only from the unsympathetic and worldly side. I should think

myself a criminal if I said anything to chill the enthusiasm of the young scholar, or to dash with any

skepticism his longing and his hope. He has chosen the highest. His beautiful faith and his aspiration are the

light of life. Without his fresh enthusiasm and his gallant devotion to learning, to art, to culture, the world

would be dreary enough. Through him comes the ever springing inspiration in affairs. Baffled at every turn

and driven defeated from a hundred fields, he carries victory in himself. He belongs to a great and immortal

army. Let him not be discouraged at his apparent little influence, even though every sally of every young life

may seem like a forlorn hope. No man can see the whole of the battle. It must needs be that regiment after

regiment, trained, accomplished, gay, and high with hope, shall be sent into the field, marching on, into the

smoke, into the fire, and be swept away. The battle swallows them, one after the other, and the foe is yet

unyielding, and the ever remorseless trumpet calls for more and more. But not in vain, for some day, and

every day, along the line, there is a cry, "They fly! they fly!" and the whole army advances, and the flag is

planted on an ancient fortress where it never waved before. And, even if you never see this, better than

inglorious campfollowing is it to go in with the wasting regiment; to carry the colors up the slope of the

enemy's works, though the next moment 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 the daylaborer? What is the value of this

vast accumulation of higher learning, what is its point of contact with the mass of humanity, that toils and

eats and sleeps and reproduces itself and dies, generation after generation, in an unvarying round, on an

unvarying level? We have had discussed lately the relation of culture to religion. Mr. Froude, with a singular,

reactionary ingenuity, has sought to prove that the progress of the century, socalled, 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 do I purpose to enter; but we may not unprofitably turn our

It has not escaped your attention that there are indications everywhere of what may be called a groundswell.

There is not simply an inquiry as to the value of classic culture, a certain jealousy of the schools where it is

obtained, a rough popular contempt for the graces of learning, a failure to see any connection between the

first aorist and the rolling of steel rails, but there is arising an angry protest against the conditions of a life

which make one free of the serene heights of thought and give him range of all intellectual countries, and

keep another at the spade and the loom, year after year, that he may earn food for the day and lodging for the

night. In our day the demand here hinted at has taken more definite form and determinate aim, and goes on,

visible to all men, to unsettle society and change social and political relations. The great movement of labor,

extravagant and preposterous as are some of its demands, demagogic as are most of its leaders, fantastic as

are many of its theories, is nevertheless real, and gigantic, and full of a certain primeval force, and with a

certain justice in it that never sleeps in human affairs, but moves on, blindly often and destructively often, a

movement cruel at once and credulous, deceived and betrayed, and revenging itself on friends and foes alike.

Its strength is in the fact that it is natural and human; it might have been predicted from a mere knowledge of

human nature, which is always restless in any relations it is 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 this movement? What is the relation of culture to it?

By scholar I mean the man who has had the advantages of such an institution as this. By culture I mean that

fine product of opportunity and scholarship which is to mere knowledge what manners are to the gentleman.

The world has a growing belief in the profit of knowledge, of information, but it has a suspicion of culture.

There is a lingering notion in matters religious that something is lost by refinementat least, that there is

danger that the plain, blunt, essential truths will be lost in aesthetic graces. The laborer is getting to consent

that his son shall go to school, and learn how to build an undershot wheel or to assay metals; but why plant in

his mind those principles of taste which will make him as sensitive to beauty as to pain, why open to him

those realms of imagination with the illimitable horizons, the contours and colors of which can but fill him

It is not necessary for me in this presence to dwell upon the value of culture. I wish rather to have you notice

the gulf that exists between what the majority want to know and that fine fruit of knowledge concerning

which there is so widespread an infidelity. Will culture aid a minister in a "protracted meeting"? Will the

ability to read Chaucer assist a shopkeeper? Will the politician add to the "sweetness and light" of his lovely

career if he can read the "Battle of the Frogs and the Mice" in the original? What has the farmer to do with

I suppose it is not altogether the fault of the majority that the true relation of culture to common life is so

misunderstood. The scholar is largely responsible for it; he is largely responsible for the isolation of his

position, and the want of sympathy it begets. No man can influence his fellows with any power who retires

into his own selfishness, and gives himself to a selfculture which has no further object. What is he that he

should absorb the sweets of the universe, that he should hold all the claims of humanity second to the

perfecting of himself? This effort to save his own soul was common to Goethe and Francis of Assisi; under

different manifestations it was the same regard for self. And where it is an intellectual and not a spiritual

greediness, I suppose it is what an old writer calls "laying up treasures in hell."

It is not an unreasonable demand of the majority that the few who have the advantages of the training of

college and university should exhibit the breadth and sweetness of a generous culture, and should shed

everywhere that light which ennobles common things, and without which life is like one of the old landscapes

in which the artist forgot to put sunlight. One of the reasons why the collegebred man does not meet this

reasonable expectation is that his training, too often, has not been thorough 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 not impressed with

the intimacy of his relation to that which is below him as well as that which is above him, and his culture is

out of sympathy with the great mass that needs it, and must have it, or it will remain a blind force in the

world, the lever of demagogues who preach social anarchy and misname it progress. There is no culture so

high, no taste so fastidious, no grace of learning so delicate, no refinement of art so exquisite, that it cannot at

this hour find full play for itself in the broadest fields of humanity; since it is all needed to soften the

attritions of common life, and guide to nobler aspirations the strong materialistic influences of our restless

One reason, as I said, for the gulf between the majority and the select few to be educated is, that the college

does not seldom disappoint the reasonable expectation concerning it. The graduate of the carpenter's shop

knows how to use his toolsor used to in days before superficial training in trades became the rule. Does the

college graduate know how to use his tools? Or has he to set about fitting himself for some employment, and

gaining that culture, that training of himself, that utilization of his information which will make him

necessary in the world? There has been a great deal of discussion whether a boy should be trained in the

classics or mathematics or sciences or modern languages. I feel like saying "yes" to all the various

propositions. For Heaven's sake train him in something, so that he can handle himself, and have free and

confident use of his powers. There isn't a more helpless creature in the universe than a scholar with a vast

amount of information over which he has no control. He is like a man with a load of hay so badly put upon

his cart that it all slides off before he can get to market. The influence of a man on the world is generally

proportioned to his ability to do something. When Abraham Lincoln was running for the Legislature the first

time, on the platform of the improvement of the navigation of the Sangamon River, he went to secure the

votes of thirty men who were cradling a wheat field. They asked no questions about internal improvements,

but only seemed curious whether Abraham had muscle enough to represent them in the Legislature. The

obliging man took up a cradle and 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 many thousands of lines from the

Vedas, and perhaps backwards as well as forwards. I heard of an excellent old lady who had counted how

many times the letter A occurs in the Holy Scriptures. The Chinese students who aspire to honors spend years

in verbally memorizing the classics Confucius and Menciusand receive degrees and public

advancement upon ability to transcribe from memory without the error of a point, or misplacement of a single

teachest character, the whole of some books of morals. You do not wonder that China is today more like an

herbarium than anything else. Learning is a kind of fetish, and it has no influence whatever upon the great

I suppose it is possible for a young gentleman to be able to readjust think of it, after ten years of grammar

and lexicon, not to know Greek literature and have flexible command of all its richness and beauty, but to

read it!it is possible, I suppose, for the graduate of college to be able to read all the Greek authors, and yet

to have gone, in regard to his own culture, very little deeper than a surface reading of them; to know very

little of that perfect architecture and what it expressed; nor of that marvelous sculpture and the conditions of

its immortal beauty; nor of that artistic development which made the Acropolis to bud and bloom under the

blue sky like the final flower of a perfect nature; nor of that philosophy, that politics, that society, nor of the

life of that polished, 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 not a patchwork of uncontinued efforts,

but a plan and a progress, as surely as the Pilgrim embarkation at Delfshaven has a relation to the battle of

Gettysburg, and to the civil rights bill giving the colored man permission to ride in a public conveyance and

to be buried in a public cemetery, so surely has the Parthenon some connection with your new State capitol at

Albany, and the daily life of the vinedresser of the Peloponnesus some lesson for the American daylaborer.

The scholar is said to be the torchbearer, transmitting the increasing light from generation to generation, so

that the feet of all, the humblest and the loveliest, may walk in the radiance and not stumble. But he very

Not what is the use of Greek, of any culture in art or literature, but what is the good to me of your knowing

Greek, is the latest question of the ditchdigger to the scholarwhat better off am I for your learning? And

the question, in view of the interdependence of all members of society, is one that cannot be put away as idle.

One reason why the scholar does not make the world of the past, the world of books, real to his fellows and

serviceable to them, is that it is not real to himself, but a mere unsubstantial place of intellectual idleness,

where he dallies some 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,

and that all the world has a right to share its blessed influence. Failing to see this, he is isolated, and, wanting

his sympathy, the untutored world mocks at his superfineness and takes its own rough way to rougher ends.

Greek art was for the people, Greek poetry was for the people; Raphael painted his immortal frescoes where

throngs could be lifted in thought and feeling by them; Michael Angelo hung the dome over St. Peter's so that

the faroff peasant on the Campagna could see it, and the maiden kneeling by the shrine in the Alban hills.

Do we often stop to think what influence, direct or other, the scholar, the man of high culture, has today upon

the great mass of our people? Why do they ask, what is the use of 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 his library, where the privileged few can see it. I do not deny that the average rich man

needs all the refining influence the picture can exert on him, and that the picture is doing missionary work in

his house; but it is nevertheless an example of an educating influence withdrawn and appropriated to narrow

uses. But the engraver comes, and, by his mediating art, transfers it to a thousand sheets, and scatters its

sweet influence far abroad. All the world, in its toil, its hunger, its sordidness, pauses a moment to look on

itthat gray seacoast, the receding Mayflower, the two young Pilgrims in the foreground regarding it, with

tender thoughts of the far homeall the world looks on it perhaps for a moment thoughtfully, perhaps

tearfully, and is touched with the sentiment of it, is kindled into a glow of nobleness by the sight of that faith

and love and resolute devotion which have tinged our early history with the faint light of romance. So art is

The scholar who is cultured by books, reflection, travel, by a refined society, consorts with his kind, and more

and more removes himself from the sympathies of common life. I know how almost inevitable this is, how

almost impossible it is to resist the segregation of classes according to the affinities of taste. But by what

mediation shall the culture that is now the possession of the few be made to leaven the world and to elevate

and sweeten ordinary life? By books? Yes. By the newspaper? Yes. By the diffusion of works of art? Yes.

But when all is done that can be done by such lettersmissive from one class to another, there remains the

need of more personal contact, of a human sympathy, diffused and living. The world has had enough of

charities. It wants respect and consideration. We desire no longer to be legislated for, it says; we want to be

legislated with. Why do you never come to see me but you bring me something? asks the sensitive and poor

seamstress. Do you always give some charity to your friends? I want companionship, and not cold pieces; I

want to be treated 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, perhaps as you. And the mass of uncaredfor ignorance and brutality,

finding a voice at length, bitterly repels the condescensions of charity; you have your culture, your libraries,

your fine houses, your church, your religion, and your God, too; let us alone, we want none of them. In the

bearpit at Berne, the occupants, who are the wards of the city, have had meat thrown to them daily for I

know not how long, but they are not tamed by this charity, and would probably eat up any careless person

Do not impute to me quixotic notions with regard to the duties of men and women 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 is

by no means easy to an active participant to define the drift of his own age; but I seem to see plainly that

unless the culture of the age finds means to diffuse itself, working downward and reconciling antagonisms by

a commonness of thought and feeling and aim in life, society must more and more separate itself into jarring

classes, with mutual misunderstandings and hatred and war. To suggest remedies is much more difficult than

to see evils; but the comprehension of dangers is the first step towards mastering them. The problem of our

own timethe reconciliation of the interests of classesis as yet very ill defined. This great movement of

labor, for instance, does not know definitely what it wants, and those who are spectators do not know what

their relations are to it. The first thing to be done is for them to try to understand each other. One class sees

that the other has lighter or at least different labor, opportunities of travel, a more liberal supply of the

luxuries of life, a higher enjoyment and a keener relish of the beautiful, the immaterial. Looking only at

external conditions, it concludes that all it needs to come into this better place is wealth, and so it organizes

war upon the rich, and it makes demands of freedom from toil and of compensation which it is in no man's

power to give it, and which would not, if granted over and over again, lift it into that condition it desires. It is

a tale in the Gulistan, that a king placed his son with a preceptor, and said, "This is your son; educate him in

the same manner as your own." The preceptor took pains with him for a year, but without success, whilst his

own sons were completed in learning and accomplishments. The king reproved the preceptor, and said, "You

He replied, "O king, the education was the same, but the capacities are different. Although silver and gold are

produced from a stone, yet these metals are not to be found in every stone. The star Canopus shines all over

the world, but the scented leather comes only from Yemen." "'Tis an absolute, and, as it were, a divine

perfection," says Montaigne, "for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being. We seek other conditions,

by reason we do not understand the use of our own; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there

But nevertheless it becomes a necessity for us to understand the wishes of those who demand a change of

condition, and it is necessary that they should understand the compensations as well as the limitations of

every condition. The dervish congratulated himself that although the only monument of his grave would be a

brick, he should at the last day arrive at and enter the gate of Paradise before the king had got from under the

heavy stones of his costly tomb. Nothing will bring us into this desirable mutual understanding except

sympathy and personal contact. Laws will 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 be thrown away if exercised among the

humblest and the least cultured; it is found out that flowers are often more welcome in the squalid tenement

houses of Boston than loaves of bread. It is difficult to say exactly how culture can extend its influence into

places uncongenial and to people indifferent to it, but I will try and illustrate what I mean by an example or

Criminals in this country, when the law took hold of them, used to be turned over to the care of men who

often had more sympathy with the crime than with the criminal, or at least to those who were almost as coarse

in feeling and as brutal in speech as their charges. There have been some changes of late years in the care of

criminals, but does public opinion yet everywhere demand that jailers and prisonkeepers and executioners

of the penal law should be men of refinement, of high character, of any degree of culture? I do not know any

class more needing the best direct personal influence of the best civilization than the criminal. The problem

of its proper treatment and reformation is one of the most pressing, and it needs practically the aid of our best

men and women. I should have great hope of any prison establishment at the head of which was a gentleman

of fine education, the purest tastes, the most elevated morality and lively sympathy with men as such,

provided he had also will and the power of command. I do not know what might not be done for the viciously

inclined and the transgressors, if they could come under the influence of refined men and women. And yet

you know that a boy or a girl may be arrested for crime, and pass from officer to keeper, and jailer to warden,

and spend years in a career of vice and imprisonment, and never once see any man or woman, officially, who

has tastes, or sympathies, or aspirations much above that vulgar level whence the criminals came. Anybody

who is honest and vigilant is considered good enough to take charge of prison birds.

The age is merciful and abounds in charitieshouses of refuge for poor women, societies for the conservation

of the exposed and the reclamation of the lost. It is willing to pay liberally for their support, and to hire

ministers and distributors of its benefactions. But it is beginning to see that it cannot hire the distribution of

love, nor buy brotherly feeling. The most encouraging thing I have seen lately is an experiment in one of our

cities. In the thick of the town the ladies of the city have furnished and opened a readingroom,

sewingroom, conversationroom, or what not, where young girls, who work for a living and have no

opportunity for any culture, at home or elsewhere, may spend their evenings. They meet there always some of

the ladies I have spoken of, whose unostentatious duty and pleasure it is to pass the evening with them, in

reading or music or the use of the needle, and the exchange of the courtesies of life in conversation. Whatever

grace and kindness and refinement of manner they carry there, I do not suppose are wasted. These are some

of the ways in which culture can serve men. And I take it that one of the chief evidences of our progress in

this century is the recognition of the truth that there is no selfishness so supremenot even that in the

possession of wealthas that which retires into itself with all the accomplishments of liberal learning and

rare opportunities, and looks upon the intellectual poverty of the world without a wish to relieve it. "As often

as I have been among men," says Seneca, "I have returned less a man." And Thomas a Kempis declared that

"the greatest saints avoided the company of men as much as they could, and chose to live to God in secret."

The Christian philosophy was no improvement upon the pagan in this respect, and was exactly at variance

The American scholar cannot afford to live for himself, nor merely for scholarship and the delights of

learning. He must make himself more felt in the material life of this country. I am aware that it is said that the

culture of the age is itself materialistic, and that its refinements are sensual; that there is little to choose

between the coarse excesses of poverty and the polished and more decorous animality of the more fortunate.

Without entering directly upon the consideration of this muchtalkedof tendency, I should like to notice the

influence upon our present and probable future of the bounty, fertility, and extraordinary opportunities of this

The American grows and develops himself with few restraints. Foreigners used to describe him as a lean,

hungry, nervous animal, gaunt, inquisitive, inventive, restless, and certain to shrivel into physical inferiority

in his dry and highly oxygenated atmosphere. This apprehension is not well founded. It is quieted by his

achievements the continent over, his virile enterprises, his endurance in war and in the most difficult

explorations, his resistance of the influence of great cities towards effeminacy and loss of physical vigor. If

ever man took large and eager hold of earthly things and appropriated them to his own use, it is the

American. We are gross eaters, we are great drinkers. We shall excel the English when we have as long

practice as they. I am filled with a kind of dismay when I see the great stockyards of Chicago and

Cincinnati, through which flow the vast herds and droves of the prairies, marching straight down the throats

of Eastern people. Thousands are always sowing and reaping and brewing and distilling, to slake the

immortal thirst of the country. We take, indeed, strong hold of the earth; we absorb its fatness. When

Leicester entertained Elizabeth at Kenilworth, the clock in the great tower was set perpetually at twelve, the

hour of feasting. It is always dinnertime in America. I do not know how much land it takes to raise an

average citizen, but I should say a quarter section. He spreads himself abroad, he riots in abundance; above

all things he must have profusion, and he wants things that are solid and strong. On the Sorrentine

promontory, and on the island of Capri, the hardy husbandman and fisherman draws his subsistence from the

sea and from a scant patch of ground. One may feast on a fish and a handful of olives. The dinner of the

laborer is a dish of polenta, a few figs, some cheese, a glass of thin wine. His wants are few and easily

supplied. He is not overfed, his diet is not stimulating; I should say that he would pay little to the physician,

that familiar of other countries whose family office is to counteract the effects of over eating. He is

temperate, frugal, content, and apparently draws not more of his life from the earth or the sea than from the

genial sky. He would never build a Pacific Railway, nor write a hundred volumes of commentary on the

Scriptures; but he is an example of how little a man actually needs of the gross products of the earth.

I suppose that life was never fuller in certain ways than it is here in America. If a civilization is judged by its

wants, we are certainly highly civilized. We cannot get land enough, nor clothes enough, nor houses enough,

nor food enough. A Bedouin tribe would fare sumptuously on what one American family consumes and

wastes. The revenue required for the wardrobe of one woman of fashion would suffice to convert the

inhabitants of I know not how many square miles in Africa. It absorbs the income of a province to bring up a

baby. We riot in prodigality, we vie with each other in material accumulation and expense. Our thoughts are

mainly on how to increase the products of the world; and get them into our own possession.

I think this gross material tendency is strong in America, and more likely to get the mastery over the spiritual

and the intellectual here than elsewhere, because of our exhaustless resources. Let us not mistake the nature

of a real civilization, nor suppose we have it because we can convert crude iron into the most delicate

mechanism, or transport ourselves sixty miles an hour, or even if we shall refine our carnal tastes so as to be

satisfied at dinner with the tongues of ortolans and the breasts of singingbirds.

Plato banished the musicians from his feasts because he would not have the charms of conversation interfered

with. By comparison, music was to him a sensuous enjoyment. In any society the ideal must be the

banishment of the more sensuous; the refinement of it will only repeat the continued experiment of

historythe end of a civilization in a polished materialism, 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, and not in the refinement and accumulation of the material. The word culture is

often used to signify that dainty intellectualism which is merely a sensuous pampering of the mind, as

distinguishable from the healthy training of the mind as is the education of the body in athletic exercises from

the petting of it by luxurious baths and unguents. Culture is the blossom of knowledge, but it is a fruit

blossom, the ornament of the age but the seed of the future. The socalled culture, a mere fastidiousness of

You would expect spurious culture to stand aloof from common life, as it does, to extend its charities at the

end of a pole, to make of religion a mere 'cultus,' to construct for its heaven a sort of Paris, where all the

inhabitants dress becomingly, and where there are no Communists. Culture, like fine manners, is not always

the result of wealth or position. When monseigneur the archbishop makes his rare tour through the Swiss

mountains, the simple peasants do not crowd upon him with boorish impudence, but strew his stony path with

flowers, and receive him with joyous but modest sincerity. When the Russian prince made his landing in

America the determined staring of a bevy of accomplished American women nearly swept the young man off

the deck of the vessel. One cannot but respect that tremulous sensitiveness which caused the maiden lady to

The materialistic drift of this agethat is, its devotion to material developmentis frequently deplored. I

suppose it is like all other ages in that respect, but there appears to be a more determined demand for change

of condition than ever before, and a deeper movement for equalization. Here in America this is, in great part,

a movement for merely physical or material equalization. The idea seems to be wellnigh universal that the

millennium is to come by a great deal less work and a great deal more pay. It seems to me that the

millennium is to come by an infusion into all society of a truer culture, which is neither of poverty nor of

wealth, but is the beautiful fruit of the development of the higher part of man's nature.

And the thought I wish to leave with you, as scholars and men who can command the best culture, is that it is

all needed to shape and control the strong growth of material development here, to guide the blind instincts of

the mass of men who are struggling for a freer place and a breath of fresh air; that you cannot stand aloof in a

class isolation; that your power is in a personal sympathy with the humanity which is ignorant but

discontented; and that the question which the man with the spade asks about the use of your culture to him is