The Forgotten Man, and Other EssaysSumner, William Graham
Science
The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays
Sumner, William Graham
Economics; Social sciences
We have got so far now as to begin to distinguish different kinds of
culture. There is chromo culture, of which we heard much a little while
ago, and there is bouffe culture, which is only just invented. If I
were in the way of it, I should like to add another class, which might
be called sapolio culture, because it consists in putting a high polish
on plated ware. There seems great danger lest this kind may come to be
the sort aimed at by those who regard culture as the end of education.
A truer idea of culture is that which regards it as equivalent to
training, or the result of training, which brings into intelligent
activity all the best powers of mind and body. Such a culture is not to
be attained by writing essays about it, or by forming ever so clear a
literary statement or mental conception of what it is. It is not to be
won by wishing for it, or aping the external manifestations of it. We
men can get it only by industrious and close application of the powers
we want to develop. We are not sure of getting it by reading any number
of books. It requires continual application of literary acquisitions to
practice and it requires a continual correction of mental conceptions
by observation of things as they are. For the sake of distinguishing
sharply between the true idea of culture and the false, I have thought
it better to call the true culture discipline, a word which perhaps
brings out its essential character somewhat better.
Here let me call your attention to one very broad generalization on
human life which men continually lose sight of, and of which culture
is an illustration. The great and heroic things which strike our
imagination are never attainable by direct efforts. This is true
of wisdom, glory, fame, virtue, culture, public good, or any other
of the great ends which men seek to attain. We cannot reach any of
these things by direct effort. They come as the refined result, in a
secondary and remote way, of thousands of acts which have another and
closer end in view. If a man aims at wisdom directly, he will be very
sure to make an affectation of it. He will attain only to a ridiculous
profundity in commonplaces. Wisdom is the result of great knowledge,
experience, and observation, after they have all been sifted and
refined down into sober caution, trained judgment, skill in adjusting
means to ends.
In like manner, one who aims at glory or fame directly will win only
that wretched caricature which we call notoriety. Glory and fame, so
far as they are desirable things, are remote results which come of
themselves at the end of long and repeated and able exertions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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