Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1896-10-22
CULTURE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Their Difference Defined and High Hopes
for tho Futurc Exnressed


for tho Future Expressed.
DR.. Edward Card, the master of Bal
liol, in addressing a Glasgow audience
last winter ON 'The Relation of Culture
to knowledge" said that the word cul-
ture had certain air of arrogance and
rretension, so that one could hardly
make use of it without seeming to be
a 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 knowl-
edge-more even than science and lit
erature. 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 oyerburden
the mind. Everyone who had had much
experience as u 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,
1t might be doubted whether there was
such thing.
Overeducation was like the bette 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. Overeducation meant educa-
tion on the wrong things and on the
wrong methods. In other words, it
meant filling the mind with kinds OF
knowledge which were not fitted to
draw forth its powers, or it meant that
the proper kinds of knowledge had been
conveyed in such q way that they could
pot be assimilated by the mind of the
student. In considering what 1t was
that constituted true culture it was
necessary to avoid two opposite errors
the error of those who would sep
orate 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 now 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
lay our privilege and our danger-our
privilege, because we had not now to
cope with all the heavy task of max
ing the universe ineligible, but took
II up at an advanced stage; our danger
because that made it so easy to live q
borrowed intellectual life. Unless
knowledge had life of original activity
in us, it did not deserve the name oi
culture.
Having discussed at length the an
cient ideas of culture DR.. Card said thai
the old Greek idea which combined II
one the idea of the increase of science
or knowledge with the idea Of the de
velopment of the mind was as true fol
us as ever it was. Looking to the prac
teal victory of idealism in philosoph,
and to the gradual approximation o
science to philosophy which had beel
the result of its own advance from tn
inorganic to the organic, and looking
on the other hand, to the extent Il
which religious faiths had freed them
selves from dogmatic insistence OIL
miraculous and exceptional phenom
ena, and had begun to attach them
selves more closely to the central ide.
of the presence Of a divine power in tn
world which found it's clearest expires
sion in the best which the life of mai
had attained, we might say the way
were opened for higher and more hu
name kind of culture in The twentieth
century than the world had ever befor
seH1l, and such culture could not bu
bring with it less imperfect forms o
social union, more perfect, a NOR
equal distribution Of material good, an
firmer resolution on the part Of a
who had to shape the life of the futur
that not one of the sons Of men shoul
he shut out from the enjoyment of hi
share of the great heritage of humanit,
Edinburgh Scotsman.
--------s-
She wouldn't "See Him."
Papa lsourly)-I told you last wee
that / didn't want you to see as much {