Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/646

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to make them our own, and fit them into the living and growing system of our thought; and the trained faculty of doing this, the alert and supple intelligence exercised and continually developed in doing this—it is in these that culture essentially lies." And if this is what culture really means, evidently it cannot be regarded as something superfine,—as an intellectual luxury suited only for people who can lead lives of elegant leisure. Education consists in organising the resources of the human being; it seeks to give him powers which shall fit him for his social and physical world. One mark of an uneducated person is that he is embarrassed by any situation to which he is not accustomed. The educated person is able to deal with circumstances in which he has never been placed before; he is so, because he has acquired general conceptions; his imagination, his judgment, his powers of intelligent sympathy have been developed. The mental culture which includes such attributes is of inestimable value in the practical work of life, and especially in work of a pioneer kind. It is precisely in a country which presents new problems, where novel difficulties of all sorts have to be faced, where social and political questions assume complex forms for which experience furnishes no exact parallels,—it is precisely there that the largest and best gifts which the higher education can confer are most urgently demanded.

But how is culture, as distinct from mere knowledge, to be attained? The question arises