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 us to do;" and so also he would go further and seek to find, in
the idea of truth itself, as to what we ought and ought not to
believe--trying to discover some one test of truth which we can apply.

Indeed, we may therefore formulate and apply to nations at large what
Goethe has there suggested; and we shall find