Books and Culture | Page 2

the books of power as
from the stars; every new generation must make acquaintance with
them, because they are as much a part of that order of things which
forms the background of human life as nature itself. With every
intelligent man or woman the question is not, "Shall I take account of
them?" but "How shall I get the most and the best out of them for my
enrichment and guidance?"
It is with the hope of assisting some readers and students of books, and
especially those who are at the beginning of the ardours, the delights,
and the perplexities of the book-lover, that these chapters are
undertaken. They assume nothing on the part of the reader but a desire
to know the best that has been written; they promise nothing on the part
of the writer but a frank and familiar use of experience in a pursuit
which makes it possible for the individual life to learn the lessons
which universal life has learned, and to piece out its limited personal
experience with the experience of humanity. One who loves books, like
one who loves a particular bit of a country, is always eager to make
others see what he sees; that there have been other lovers of books and
views before him does not put him in an apologetic mood. There
cannot be too many lovers of the best things in these pessimistic days,
when to have the power of loving anything is beginning to be a great
and rare gift.
The word love in this connection is significant of a very definite
attitude toward books,--an attitude not uncritical, since it is love of the
best only, but an attitude which implies more intimacy and receptivity
than the purely critical temper makes possible; an attitude, moreover,
which expects and invites something more than instruction or
entertainment,--both valuable, wholesome, and necessary, and yet
neither descriptive of the richest function which the book fulfils to the
reader. To love a book is to invite an intimacy with it which opens the
way to its heart. One of the wisest of modern readers has said that the

most important characteristic of the real critic--the man who penetrates
the secret of a work of art--is the ability to admire greatly; and there is
but a short step between admiration and love. And as if to emphasise
the value of a quality so rare among critics, the same wise reader, who
was also the greatest writer of modern times, says also that "where keen
perception unites with good will and love, it gets at the heart of man
and the world; nay, it may hope to reach the highest goal of all." To get
at the heart of that knowledge, life, and beauty which are stored in
books is surely one way of reaching the highest goal.
That goal, in Goethe's thought, was the complete development of the
individual life through thought, feeling, and action,--an aim often
misunderstood, but which, seen on all sides, is certainly the very
highest disclosed to the human spirit. And the method of attaining this
result was the process, also often and widely misunderstood, of culture.
This word carries with it the implication of natural, vital growth, but it
has been confused with an artificial, mechanical process, supposed to
be practised as a kind of esoteric cult by a small group of people who
hold themselves apart from common human experiences and
fellowships. Mr. Symonds, concerning whose representative character
as a man of culture there is no difference of opinion, said that he had
read with some care the newspaper accounts of his "culture," and that,
so far as he could gather, his newspaper critics held the opinion that
culture is a kind of knapsack which a man straps on his back; and in
which he places a vast amount of information, gathered, more or less at
random, in all parts of the world. There was, of course, a touch of
humour in Mr. Symonds's description of the newspaper conception of
culture; but it is certainly true that culture has been regarded by a great
many people either as a kind of intellectual refinement, so highly
specialised as to verge on fastidiousness, or as a large accumulation of
miscellaneous information.
Now, the process of culture is an unfolding and enrichment of the
human spirit by conforming to the laws of its own growth; and the
result is a broad, rich, free human life. Culture is never quantity, it is
always quality of knowledge; it is never an extension of ourselves by
additions from without, it is always enlargement of ourselves by

development from within; it is never something acquired, it is always
something possessed; it is never a result of accumulation, it is always a
result of growth. That