And as if to emphasise the value of a
quality so rare among critics, the same wise reader, who was also the
greatest writer of modern times, says also that "where keen perception
unites with good will and love, it gets at the heart of man and the
world; nay, it may hope to reach the highest goal of all." To get at
the heart of that knowledge, life, and beauty which are stored in
books is surely one way of reaching the highest goal.
That goal, in Goethe's thought, was the complete development of the
individual life through thought, feeling, and action,--an aim often
misunderstood, but which, seen on all sides, is certainly the very
highest disclosed to the human spirit. And the method of attaining
this result was the process, also often and widely misunderstood, of
culture. This word carries with it the implication of natural, vital
growth, but it has been confused with an artificial, mechanical
process, supposed to be practised as a kind of esoteric cult by a
small group of people who hold themselves apart from common human
experiences and fellowships. Mr. Symonds, concerning whose
representative character as a man of culture there is no difference of
opinion, said that he had read with some care the newspaper accounts
of his "culture," and that, so far as he could gather, his newspaper
critics held the opinion that culture is a kind of knapsack which a
man straps on his back, and in which he places a vast amount of
information, gathered, more or less at random, in all parts of the
world.
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