Bright,[395] and Mr. Frederic
Harrison,[396] and many other Liberals are apt to call it, has a very
important function to fulfil for mankind. And this function is
particularly important in our modern world, of which the whole
civilization is, to a much greater degree than the civilization of
Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly to become
more so. But above all in our own country has culture a weighty part to
perform, because here that mechanical character, which civilization
tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree. Indeed
nearly all the characters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix
them, meet in this country with some powerful tendency which thwarts
them and sets them at defiance. The idea of perfection as an _inward_
condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and
material civilization in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so
much in esteem as with us. The idea of perfection as a _general_
expansion of the human family is at variance with our strong
individualism, our hatred of all limits to the unrestrained swing of the
individual's personality, our maxim of "every man for himself.
Pages:
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422