Culture and the State 



37 



by culture, what is proposed. Then we may understand 

 its bearing upon our more public life. 



In the first place, then, let us define, if we can, just 

 what we mean by culture. 



You who have been affecting the classics know, of 

 course, that our present use of the word is entirely a 

 figure of speech. Culture, to start with, meant the care 

 and development of a plant. This significance still lin- 

 gers in agriculture, the cultivation of the field that is, 

 of what grows there , horticulture, the tillage of the 

 hort-yard, or orchard, as we say, and so on. Thousands 

 of years ago men found that if they took a little care of 

 a plant, gave it a good place on which to grow, with 

 plenty of air and sunshine and water, the plant greatly 

 changed, offered new characters, or at least new phases 

 of the old : the smooth-leafed wild mustard of Europe, on 

 cultivation, took on the form of cabbage, became a cab- 

 bage-head, in fact; the green, tough fruit of a Persian 

 shrub became a peach ; the sour crab, an apple ; the wild 

 grain, wheat ; and so on ; all this thousands of years be- 

 fore men had ever written a word. Small brown men, 

 as I think, away back yonder in the forgotten years, in 

 the childhood of humanity, made wonderful discoveries; 

 they discovered the culture of plants. So it happened 

 that when at last men did begin to think and to write, 

 the culture of plants had long been familiar as to you 

 and to me. 



As compared with the story of the plants, Cicero was 

 a modern. He looked out upon a civilized world; and, 

 full of genius and wit and all accomplishment as he was, 

 it occurred to him to compare the mental experiences of 



