More to be pitied is the lot of those who have not had any schooldays at all worth speaking of, and who are awaking to their own mental poverty—poverty, while there is wealth all about them which they cannot make their own. Their case is like that of the heir to some vast estates, who cannot enjoy them, because he cannot prove his title.
What, then, is this much talked-of culture?
There are several things which it is _not_.
To begin with, it is not a superficial smattering of certain accomplishments.
It is not a general readiness to talk about the reviews one has read of new books.
It is not the varnish acquired from associating day by day with well-educated and urbane people.
It is not development to an enormous extent in one direction only.
It is not attending one course of University Extension Lectures.
It is not the knack of cramming for examinations, and of passing them with _éclat_.
All these elements may enter into culture, but they are not culture itself.
It is a harder matter to define culture than to say what it is not. As we write these words, our eye falls on the saying of a well-known prelate, reported in the _Times_ of the day: “General culture—another name for sympathetic interest in the world of human intelligence.” This sounds rather highflown and difficult, but we may add three more definitions—
“Culture is a study of perfection.”—_Matthew Arnold._
“Culture is the passion for sweetness and light, and (what is more) the passion for making them prevail.”—_Matthew Arnold._
“Culture is the process by which a man becomes all that he was created capable of being.”—_Carlyle._
The third of these is, perhaps, the best working definition of culture, for it shows its real importance and significance, and also makes it simpler to understand.
Look at a neglected garden. The grass is long and rank; the beds are a mere tangle of weeds and of straggling flowers that have run to seed, or deteriorated in size and sweetness until they can hardly be called flowers at all. It is a wilderness.
The garden is taken in hand and cultivated, not by a mechanical ignorant gardener, but by someone who understands the capacities of the soil, and knows what will do well and repay his care. See the transformation in time to come! There is everything by turn that is beautiful in its season; the lovely herbaceous border, the standard rose-trees, the sheltered bed of lilies of the valley, the peaches on the warm southern wall, the ferns waving in feathery profusion in the cool corner near the well—all that the garden can produce for delight to the eye or for food is there. The ground is not given over exclusively to one flower, one vegetable; it is not stocked mechanically for the summer with geraniums and calceolarias; but it is, as we say in homely parlance, “made the most of” in every particular, and is a delight to behold.