The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1896-09-30
CULTURE AND KNOWlEDGE.
Their Difference Defined and High Hopes
for the Future Expressed.

Their Difference Defin ed and High Hopes
for the Future Expressed
DR.. Edward Card, the master of Bal
Eol, in addressing Glasgow audience
last winter on 1.-The Relation of Culture
to knowledge" said that the word cul-
ture had a certain air of arrogance and
Tretension, so that one could hardly
make use of it without seeming to be
q superior person; yet, on the other
hand, it expressed an idea for which no
other word was quite SO appropriate.
People meant by it more than krowl-
edge-more even than science and lit
eIature. They meant by IT science and
literature taken up into the mind and
made one with IT, so that they formed
part of its very substance in addition
to its natural forces.
No sooner did we provide the oppor-
tunities and means of education than
we had to encounter the difficulty of
so using them as not To overburden
the mind. Everyone who had had much
experience as a teacher must often have
met with cases in which the definition,
'-overeducated for your intellect"
would apply. The root of the evil. how
ever, was seldom overeducation; indeed,
II might be doubted whether there was
such thing
Overeducation was like the pete noir
of bad political economists-overpro-
duction, which really meant production
that was badly organized, and, there
fore, did not supply what was really
wanted. Generalization meant educa-
ton on the wrong things and on the
wrong methods. In other words, it
meant filling the mind with kinds OF
knowledge which were not ftted TO
draw forth its powers, or it meant that
the proper kinds of knowledge had heen
conveyed in such a way that they could
lot be assimilated by the mind of the
student. In considering what it was
that constituted true culture it was
necessary to avoid two opposite errors
the error of those who would sep
arate culture from knowledge and the
more common error of those who would
simply identify it with knowledge.
Speaking more particularly Of cul-
ture and knowledge as the instrument
toculture. he said we could not how take
the world at first hand. We inevitably
saw it as interpreted by great bodies
Of literature and science, which had
been the result of the thought of those
who had gone before them. Therein
ley our privilege and our danger-our
privilege, because we hah not now to
cope with all the heavy task of max
ing the universe ineligible, but took
il up at an advanced stage; our danger.
because that made it SO easy to live a
borrowed intellectual life. Unless
knowledge had life of original activity
in us. it did not deserve the name of
culture.
Having discussed at length the an
Gent ideas of culture DR.. Card said that
the old Greek idea which combined in
enc the idea of the increase of science
or knowledge with the idea of the de-
velopment Of the mind was as true for
US as ever it was. Looking to the prac-
teal victory of idealism In philosophy
and to the gradual approximation of
science TO philosophy which had been
the result of its own advance from the
inorganic to the organic. and looking,
on the other hand, TO the extent to
which religious faiths had freed them
selves from a dogmatic insistence on
miraculous and exceptional phenom-
ena, and had begun to attach them
selves more closely to the central idea
Of the presence of divine power n the
world which found its clearest express
sion in the best which the life of man
had attained. we might say the ways
were opened for higher and more hu-
name kind of culture in the twentieth
century than the world had ever before
seen, and such culture could not but
bring with it less imperfect forms of
social union, a more perfect, more
equal distribution of material good, and
a irmer resolution on the part of all
who had to shape the life of the future
that not one of the sons Of men should
be shut out from the enjoyment Of his
share of the great heritage of humanity.
Edinburgh Scotsman.