Culture; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century
that side exclusively; we ought to try and import it,--guiding
ourselves by the ideal of a human nature harmoniously perfect at all
points,--into all the lines of our activity, and only by so doing can
we rightly quicken, refresh, and renew those very instincts, now so
much baffled, to which Hebraism makes appeal.
But if we will not be warned by the confusion visible enough at
present in our thinking and acting, that we are in a false line in
having developed our Hebrew side so exclusively, and our Hellenic
side so feebly and at random, in loving fixed rules of action so much
more than the intelligible law of things, let us listen to a
remarkable testimony which the opinion of the world around us offers.
All the world now sets great and increasing value on three objects
which have long been very dear to us, and pursues them in its own
way, or tries to pursue them. These three objects are industrial
enterprise, bodily exercises, and freedom. Certainly we have, before
and beyond our neighbours, given ourselves [192] to these three
things with ardent passion and with high success. And this our
neighbours cannot but acknowledge; and they must needs, when they
themselves turn to these things, have an eye to our example, and take
something of our practice. Now, generally, when people are
interested in an object of pursuit, they cannot help feeling an
enthusiasm for those who have already laboured successfully at it,
and for their success; not only do they study them, they also love
and admire them. In this way a man who is interested in the art of
war not only acquaints himself with the performance of great
generals, but he has an admiration and enthusiasm for them. So, too,
one who wants to be a painter or a poet cannot help loving and
admiring the great painters or poets who have gone before him and
shown him the way. But it is strange with how little of love,
admiration, or enthusiasm, the world regards us and our freedom, our
bodily exercises, and our industrial prowess, much as these things
themselves are beginning to interest it. And is not the reason
because we follow each of these things in a mechanical manner, as an
end in and for itself, and not in reference to a general end of human
[193] perfection? and this makes our pursuit of them uninteresting to
humanity, and not what the world truly wants? It seems to them mere
machinery that we can, knowingly, teach them to worship,--a mere
fetish. British freedom, British industry, British muscularity, we
work for each of these three things blindly, with no notion of giving
each its due proportion and prominence, because we have no ideal of
harmonious human perfection before our minds, to set our work in
motion, and to guide it. So the rest of the world, desiring
industry, or freedom, or bodily strength, yet desiring these not, as
we do, absolutely, but as means to something else, imitate, indeed,
of our practice what seems useful for them, but us, whose practice
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