

SCIENCE AND CULTURE. 15 



federation, bound to a joint action and working to a 

 common result ; and whose members have, for their com- 

 mon outfit, a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern 

 antiquity, and of one another. Special, local, and tem- 

 porary advantages being put out of account, that mod- 

 ern nation will in the intellectual and spiritual sphere 

 make most progress, which most thoroughly carries out 

 this programme. And what is that but saying that we 

 too, all of us, as individuals, the more thoroughly we 

 carry it out, shall make the more progress ? " * 



"We have here to deal with two distinct propositions. 

 The first, that a criticism _of life is the_essence_of culture j 

 the second, that literature contains the materials which 

 suffice for the construction of such a criticism. 



I think that we must all assent to the first proposi- 

 tion. For culture certainly means something quite dif- 

 ferent from learning or technical skill. It^JmpHes_the 

 possession of an ideal, and tlie_iabit of critically esti- 

 mating the value of things by comparison with a_theo- 

 retic standard. Perfect culture should supply a complete 

 theory of life, based upon a clear knowledge alike of its 

 possibilities and of its limitations. 



But we may agree to all this^and yet strongly dissent 

 from the assumption that literature alone is competent 

 to supply this knowledge. After having learnt all that 

 (jrreek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity have thought and 

 said, and all that modern literatures have to tell us, it 

 is not self-evident that we have laid a sufficiently broad 



* Essays in Criticism, p. 37. 



