that voice of the deepest human experience,--does not only enjoin and
sanction the aim which is the great aim of culture, the aim of setting
ourselves to ascertain what perfection is and to make it prevail; but
also, in determining generally in what human perfection consists,
religion comes to a conclusion identical with that which culture,--
culture seeking the determination of this question through _all_ the
voices of human experience which have been heard upon it, of art,
science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of religion, in order
to give a greater fulness and certainty to its solution,--likewise
reaches. 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. It places it in the ever-increasing
efficacy and in the general harmonious expansion of those gifts of
thought and feeling, which make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and
happiness of human nature. As I have said on a former occasion: "It is
in making endless additions to itself, in the endless expansion of its
powers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the
human race finds its ideal. 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; and here, too, it coincides with
religion.

And because men are all members of one great whole, and the sympathy
which is in human nature will not allow one member to be indifferent to
the rest or to have a perfect welfare independent of the rest, the
expansion of our humanity, to suit the idea of perfection which culture
forms, must be a _general_ expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives
it, is not possible while the individual remains isolated. The
individual is required, under pain of being stunted and enfeebled in his
own development if he disobeys, to carry others along with him in his
march towards perfection, to be continually doing all he can to enlarge
and increase the volume of the human stream sweeping thitherward. And,
here, once more, culture lays on us the same obligation as religion,
which says, as Bishop Wilson has admirably put it, that "to promote the
kingdom of God is to increase and hasten one's own happiness."[394]

But, finally, perfection,--as cultu