ion; it must also be freed from the oppression of
culture. For, of all the enemies of art, culture is perhaps the most
dangerous, because the least obvious. By "culture" it is, of course,
possible to mean something altogether blameless. It may mean an
education that aims at nothing but sharpening sensibility and
strengthening the power of self-expression. But culture of that sort is
not for sale: to some it comes from solitary contemplation, to others
from contact with life; in either case it comes only to those who are
capable of using it. Common culture, on the other hand, is bought and
sold in open market. Cultivated society, in the ordinary sense of the
word, is a congeries of persons who have been educated to appreciate
_le beau et le bien_. A cultivated person is one on whom art has not
impressed itself, but on whom it has been impressed--one who has not
been overwhelmed by the significance of art, but who knows that the
nicest people have a peculiar regard for it. The characteristic of this
Society is that, though it takes an interest in art, it does not take
art seriously. Art for it is not a necessity, but an amenity. Art is not
something that one might meet and be overwhelmed by between the pages of
_Bradshaw_, but something to be sought and saluted at appropriate times
in appointed places. Culture feels no imperative craving for art such as
one feels for tobacco; rather it thinks of art as something to be taken
in polite and pleasant doses, as one likes to take the society of one's
less interesting acquaintances. Patronage of the Arts is to the
cultivated classes what religious practice is to the lower-middle, the
homage that matter pays to spirit, or, amongst the better sort, that
intellect pays to emotion. Neither the cultivated nor the pious are
genuinely sensitive to the tremendous emotions of art and religion; but
both know what they are expected to feel, and when they ought to feel
it.

Now if culture did nothing worse than create a class of well-educated
ladies and gentlemen who read books, attend concerts, travel in Italy,
and talk a good deal about art without ever guessing what manner of
thing it is, culture would be nothing to make a fuss about.
Unfortunately, culture is an active disease which causes positive ill
and baulks potential good. In the first place, cultivated people always
wish to cultivate others. Cultivated parents cultivate their children;
thousands of wretched little creatures are d