General culture

“ Such individuals have genius in one or another form and offer themselves and their products as a gift to the general welfare of their generation. Scientists, poets, musicians, inventors, artists, teachers, healers, philosophers, statesmen have appeared in each civilization adding their mite to the sum-total of community culture. ”

“ The condition of culture among the various societies of mankind, in so far as it is capable of being investigated on general principles, is a subject apt for the study of laws of human thought and action. ”

“ Religion says: The kingdom of God is within you; and culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an internal condition, in the growth and predominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from our animality, in the ever-increasing efficaciousness and in the general harmonious expansion [13] of those gifts of thought and feeling which make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human nature. ”

“ In the same way as we have elected to distinguish the Soul as the possible and the World as the actual, we can now differentiate between possible and actual culture, i.e., culture as an idea in the (general or individual) existence and culture as the body of that idea, as the total of its visible, tangible and comprehensible expressions—acts and opinions, religion and state, arts and sciences, peoples and cities, economic and social forms, speech, laws, customs, characters, facial lines and costumes. ”

“ With reference to the higher products of culture, not only the United States, but in some degree contemporary civilization in general, is a confused, a raw, society, not as being democratic but as being new. ”

“ Culture, as we commonly use the term, may properly be allowed to pass as merely another aspect of the idealism “deep in the general heart of man” that we should like to believe to be one of the great assets of the West. Still addressing the Folks, my neighbors, I will temerariously repeat an admission tucked into an earlier chapter, that here is a field where we [281] do well to carry ourselves modestly. ”

“ To reach this ideal, culture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true value of culture.' Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it ”

“ We find no difficulty in assenting to the general proposition that culture has been a work of progress. Our difficulty lies in [30] realizing the slow stages of its early development, owing to the complexities both of our mental constitution and of the contemporaneous culture from which experience is drawn, or, again to use Mr. ”

“ And so we bring to an end what we had to say in praise of culture, and in evidence of its special utility for the circumstances in which we find ourselves, and the confusion which environs us. Through culture seems to lie our way, not only to perfection, but even to safety. ”

“ The tone, the habits, the tastes, the pleasures, and, in a large sense, the morals of society depend upon its culture. I use the word culture with the meaning which is commonly given to it in the conversational language of this country, signifying not merely that training of the mental faculties by which useful knowledge is acquired, but the knowledge, appreciation and enjoyment of the beautiful in nature, literature and art, and of the noble, elevated and refined in sentiment and feeling. ”

“ The sum of the relatively abiding interests in a man’s life is called his character, and the sum of the relatively abiding interests of men in any historic period is called the civilization or culture of that period, In contrast with nature, this culture is the human environment. It manifests itself in language, literature, government, science, art, industry, morality, religion and all other human institutions. ”

“ Arthur Mitchell, in inquiring What is Civilization? [209] remarks that “all the things which gather round or grow upon a high state of civilization are not necessarily true parts of it. These conventionalities are often regarded as its very essence.” And it is true that the greater the fool or snob, the deeper is the conviction that the conventional is the core of “culture.” ”

“ For the sake of distinguishing sharply between the true idea of culture and the false, I have thought it better to call the true culture discipline, a word which perhaps brings out its essential character somewhat better.
Here let me call your attention to one very broad generalization on human life which men continually lose sight of, and of which culture is an illustration. The great and heroic things which strike our imagination are never attainable by direct efforts. This is true of wisdom, glory, fame, virtue, culture, public good, or any other of the great ends which men seek to attain. ”

“ In fact, every nation has its traditions, which illumine its history and enrich its life. From tradition springs the flower of culture. On it chiefly depends the cultivation of the character, the customs and manners, of a people. ”

“ This, then, it seems, is Culture—knowing the best that has been thought and known in the world—not only knowledge, but right tact and justness of judgment, forming themselves by and with judgment—reading, but reading with a purpose to guide it, and with system. ”

“ The culture which we wish to see prevail throughout our country is not learning and literary skill; it is character and intellectual openness,—that higher humanity which is latent within us all; which is power, wisdom, truth, goodness, love, sympathy, grace, and beauty; whose surpassing excellence the poor may know as well as the rich; whose charm the multitude may feel as well as the chosen few. ”

“ And it must be admitted that the chief object of culture is, not merely to fill the mind with other men’s thoughts, and to be the passive recipient of their impressions of things, but to enlarge our individual intelligence, and render us more useful and efficient workers in the sphere of life to which we may be called. ”

“ Unless culture be a superficial polish, a veneering of mahogany over common wood, it surely is this—the growth of the imagination in flexibility, in scope, and in sympathy, till the life which the individual lives is informed with the life of nature and of society. ”

“ Imagine the success of the attempt to still the intellectual hunger of any of the men I have mentioned, by putting before him, as the object of existence, the successful mimicry of the measure of a Greek song, or the roll of Ciceronian prose! Imagine how much success would be likely to attend the attempt to persuade such men that the education which leads to perfection in such elegances is alone to be called culture ”

“ In all questions affecting national character and tendency, the development of civilization, public manners, morals, habits, idiosyncrasies, the influence of institutions, of education, of literature, his insight was penetrating, his point of view perfectly original, and his judgment, if not always sound, invariably suggestive. These qualities, among others, gave to such books as Essays in Criticism, Friendship's Garland, and Culture and Anarchy, an interest and a value quite independent of their literary merit. ”

“ The term "civilization" is here used in its broad and legitimate sense, as including not only mental culture, with progress in science and art, but also the comforts, luxuries, and æsthetics of life, which are its natural and inevitable concomitants. ”

“ If not only knowledge and art, but at the same time moral and political excellence, be taken into consideration, it becomes yet harder to reckon on an ideal scale the advance or decline from stage to stage of culture. ”

“ Those who know their besetting faults, those who have watched them and listened to them, or those who will read the instructive account recently given of them by one of themselves, the Journeyman Engineer, will agree that the idea which culture sets before us of perfection,—an increased spiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy,—is an idea which the new democracy needs far more than the idea of the blessedness of the franchise, or the wonderfulness of their own industrial performances. ”

“ And this aim we cannot seek without coming in sight of another aim too, which we have often and often pointed out, and tried to recommend: culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit. ”

“ To another the mark of civilization is the diffusion of valuable knowledge, the spread of popular education, and the sharing by a whole people of the culture and scholarship of the great creative minds. To yet another the real test of civilization is in the cultivation of a greater capacity for enjoyment of all that life has to offer. ”

“ I pass on, however, to another opinion just now much more fashionable and held by people who are, at any rate, much more elegant than the supporters of the view just mentioned, that is, the opinion that what we expect from education is “culture.” ”

“ I believe the refinements of modern society, its elegant accomplishments, its intellectual culture, and its conceptions of the beautiful, are glorious evidences of our advancement toward a higher plane of being. ”

“ To find the real ground for the very differing estimate which serious people will set upon culture, we must find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a motive the word curiosity gives us. ”

“ Now, if I have not led you too deep into social philosophy, let us turn again to culture. We find that culture comes from thought, study, observation, literary and scientific activity, and we find that men practice these for gain, for professional success, for immediate pleasure, or to gratify their tastes. The great motive of interest provides the energy and this culture is but a secondary result. It is a significant fact to observe that when the motive of interest is removed, culture becomes flaccid and falls into dilletantism. ”

“ The ideal presented is that of complete harmonious culture, the aim of which is not to make an artisan, a physician, a merchant, a lawyer, but a man alive in all his faculties, touching the world at many points, for whom all knowledge is desirable, all beauty lovable, and for whom fine bearing and noble acting are indispensable. ”

“ Our work lies primarily with the inward culture, at the springs and sources of individual life and character, seeking everywhere to encourage, and assist to the fullest emancipation of the human mind from ignorance, inviting the largest liberty of thought, and the utmost possible exaltation of life into approximation to the loftier standard of cultivated 242 character. ”

“ And culture is, at bottom, only an enlarged and clarified experience,—an experience so comprehensive that it puts its possessor in touch with all times and men, and gives him the opportunity of comparing his own knowledge of things, his faith and his practice, with the knowledge, faith, and practice of all the generations. This opportunity brings, to one who knows how to use it, deliverance from the ignorance or half-knowledge of provincialism, from the crudity of its half-trained tastes, and from the blind passion of its rash and groundless faith in its own infallibility. ”

“ THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE. Culture or Civilization—Its phenomena related according to definite Laws—Method of classification and discussion of the evidence—Connexion of successive stages of culture by Permanence, Modification, and Survival—Principal topics examined in the present work.
Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. ”

“ If this abundance all slighted and unencouraged can still comfort us, what wouldn't it do for us tended and fostered and cultivated? That is my moral, for I believe in Culture—speaking strictly now of the honest and of our own congruous kind. ”

“ Theoretical culture must it seems bring along with it practical culture, and yet the latter must be the condition of the former. All improvement in the political sphere must proceed from the ennobling of the character. ”

“ Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its attitude towards all this machinery, even while it insists that it is machinery. ”

“ These are the two main ingredients of human culture; but they do not exhaust the whole of it. There is a third division, which, if subordinate, and owing allegiance to the two others, is barely inferior to them, and not less needful to the completeness of the human being; I mean the aesthetic branch; the culture which comes through poetry and art, and may be described as the education of the feelings, and the cultivation of the beautiful. ”

“ There never was a more radical misconception of a fundamental process, for culture in the true sense involves, as a process, the highest and truest development of a race, and, as a product, the most enduring spiritual expression of race genius and experience. ”

“ Human culture is the sum total of ideas, relationships, artifacts, institutions, purposes and ideals currently functioning in any community. Three elements are present in each human society: man, nature and the social structure. Human culture at any point in its history is the social structure: the aggregate of existing culture traits, the products of man's ingenuity, inventiveness and experimentation, set in their natural environment.
Civilization is a level of culture built upon foundations laid down through long periods of pre-civilized living. ”

“ I propose now to try and enquire, in the simple unsystematic way which best suits both myPg 146 taste and my powers, what Culture really is, what good it can do, what is our own special need of it; and I shall seek to find some plain grounds on which a faith in Culture—both my own faith in it and the faith of others—may rest securely. ”