Cousins JH_Work and Worship - Essays on Culture and Creative Art (1922)

7/29/2019 Cousins JH_Work and Worship - Essays on Culture and Creative Art (1922)

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a5i^i^^1il8'5l!'

WORK AND WORSHIPJAMES H. COUSINS


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QforneU Hniucrattg SItbrarg3tt;ara, S?tu gork

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME Op THESAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

. THE GIFT OFHENRY W. SAGE

1891


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Cornell University LibraryCB19 .C86Work and worship : essays on culture and

olin3 1924 029 755 109


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WORK AND WORSHIP


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BY THE SAME AUTHORThe Wisdom of the Westan Introduction

to the interpretative study of CelticMythology.

The Kingdom of Youth essays on theprinciples of education.New Ways in English Literaturestudiesof a number of the leading poets of thepresent day.

The Renaissance in Indiaa survey of thechief cultural influences in modern India.

Footsteps of Freedomessays on thegrowth of the idea of freedom in certaingreat writers.

The Play of Brahmaan essay on the placeof the drama in national revival.

Modern English Poetry, its characteristicsand tendenciesseven public lectures inthe Keiogijuku University, Japan.

The Cultural Unity of Asiaa study of thetendency to unification in Asian culturalmovements.


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WORK AND WORSHIPESSAYS ON CULTURE AND CREATIVE ART

JAMES H." COUSINS

GANESK & CO., MADRAS1922

Id iV!Hs;;n Y


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Cornell UniversityLibrary

The original of tliis book is intine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions inthe United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029755109


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NOTEDuring the compilation of this book, certainchapters were published in Rupam, Shama'a,Indian Business, Tomorrow and New India.Where necessary, permission has been obtainedfor their inclusion, for which the authorexpresses his thanks.


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DEDICATEDTO THE STAFF AND STUDENTS

OFTHE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

ADYAR, MADRAS


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CHAPTER ITHE FUNCTION OF CULTURE

It is a question whether language has everyet managed to say exactly what it meant tosay. We speak in English of a hlack pencil,and in doing so we utter half a lie and a truththat only conveys at most one-quarter of thetruth ; for a black pencil is not wholly black ;only its lead is ; and the blackness of its leadmay range from HB to BBB. A demand toa person to " state exactly what you want " isa demand for the impossible. A hungry manmay say with very strong emphasis, " I wantfood " ; but the extent of his want and thenature of the supply has all to be said : hemay be a large eater ; he may be a vegetarian.Language is, in truth, only an approximationtowards the fact that is desired to be conveyed.The simpler and nearer to the rudiments ofphysical life the fact is, the closer is the


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2 WORK AND WORSHIPapproximation between the thing itself and itsformulation in language. But as we ascendthe hillside of life, our view becomes widerand takes in a greater content ; and our speechbecomes richer in the unspoken assump-tions that we attach to words and phrases.When we come to the attempted expressionof abstract truth, the approximation betweenidea and language is so remote that the spacebetween can only be crossed on long bridgesof commentary and exposition which rest onincalculable arches of argument and illus-tration. One line in Shelley's poetry has aprose annotation of twelve pages. The fourVedas that one can carry in one's pocket areinexplicable without the sixteen Upanishadsthat few have in their libraries ; and how farthese have succeeded in their purpose is seenfrom the stacks of Commentaries which con-tinue to be produced even unto this day.

The word culture comes no nearer absoluteexpression than others. It comes from aLatin original [colere] which means two thingsto till and to worship. There are manywords in the English language which carryalternative meanings quite unconnected with


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THE FUNCTION OF CULTURE 6one another. The word lei, for example,means, among other things, to permit a personto do something. But the word when usedby Hamlet in his struggle against those whoheld him back from following his father'sghost (" By heaven, I'll make a ghost ofhim that leis me,") appears to be nonsenseuntil we understand that there are really twoforms of let in English, one derived from theAnglo-Saxon laetan, to permit ; the other fromthe Anglo-Saxon lettan, to hinder. There areother words that carry alternative meaningswhich, while apparently opposed or unrelated,are really different stratifications of the samemeaning. The word prevent means to makeit impossible for a person to do a particularaction ; but there is a Christian prayer to Godfor His guidance in all the activities of lifewhich begins, " Prevent us, Lord, in all ourdoings ". The two meanings, apparently con-tradictory, go back to the Latin prae, before,and venire, to come ; and, learning this, wesee that both hindrance and guidance implysomething in front. At the lowest level pre-vention puts a stop to action ; on a higherlevel it modifies action ; the Divine guidance


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4 WORK AND WORSHIPimplies a modified hindrance of waywardhuman activity.There is a Latin saying, Laborare est orare,

to work is to pray. The saying is a punbased on the similarity of the ending oflaborare with the word orare. But its inten-tion goes deeper than a play upon words.Prayer is the offering of the lips ; w^ork is theoffering of the hands. Prayer is faith in God'sprovidence expressing itself in the labour ofwords ; work is faith in God's providenceexpressing itself in the speech of action. Thissaying, with its interplay of meaning, offers usencouragement to see in the two root-meaningsof the word culture (tillage and worship) nota haphazard association in etymology, but afundamental relationship in idea, and in theplace of both in life. Let us consider whetherwork and worship be not but obverse and re-verse of a coinage from the mint of culture.

According to the Christian legend of thebeginnings of the human race, the primaryoccupation of humanity was agriculture. Godmade Adam and Eve, and placed them not ina city, but in a garden. Whether we acceptthis version of human origins literally or


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THE FUNCTION OF CULTUREfiguratively, whether or not we regard tillageas the first occupation of humanity in time, itis certainly first in importance. All economicthought leads back to the land as the onlysource of real wealth. The poet laureate of theChola dynasty of Southern India in the eighthcentury put the matter into a poem in whichhe declared that power, luxury, labour, reli-gion, even the deities themselves, are supportedby the agriculturist.

The hand that holds the spear of power is sup-ported by the hand that holds the plough.The hand that wears jewels in luxury and easeis supported by the hand that holds the plough.

The hand of him whose fate is to toil againstpoverty is supported by the hand that holds theplough.

The hand that makes offerings to the gods issupported by the hand that holds the plough.The hands of the gods that control the worldare supported by the hands that hold the plough.Here we have culture at its lowest point onthe human side, the culture of nature for thepurpose of satisfying the physical needs ofhumanity. To find an analogy between thisculture of nature and the tillage process appliedto man's own nature [the process which wecall moral, intellectual, ssthetical or spiritual


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t) WORK AND WORSHIPculture according as it is directed towardsconduct, thought, feeling or the higher nature),we have to place ourselves in imagination inthe position of nature, and see man as thespecial faculty within nature through whichshe achieves culture. Within her there is theurge to growth and elaboration. Unaided shespreads out her wild progeny of swamp andjungle and forest ; but the tendency of these istoward rankness, overcrowding and ultimatemutual degeneration, if not destruction. Withgrowth unchecked the earth would become(as Milton visualises it in Comus] " quitesurcharged with her own weight,"

And strangled with her waste fertility ;Th' earth cumber'd, and the wing'd airdarkt with plumes,The herds would over-multitude their lords.The sea o'erfraught would swell, andth' unsought diamondsWould so emblaze the forehead of the deep.And so bestud with stars, that they belowWould grow inur'd to light, and come at lastTo gaze upon the sun with shameless brows.

Then comes man who, in cultivating nature inorder to satisfy his own needs, is really satisfy-ing nature's need for cultivation, for redemptionfrom her own embarrassment of wild richness.


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THE FUNCTION OF CULTURE 7He fells her primitive forests, makes habitableclearings, utilises the decayed sheddings of amillion past autumns as fertilising materialfor a new spring, turns wild grasses into com,transmutes the vast quantity of unbridledgrowth into the superb quality of guidedtillage ; and through him is fulfilled the visionof the seer

The wilderness and the solitary place shall bemade glad.And the desert sball rejoice and blossom as therose." The man is only half himself," wrote Emer-son, " the other half is his expression." Thesame naay be said of nature. If her forces ofgrowth and elaboration did not express them-selves, either in the savagery of primitiveluxuriance or the civilisation that comes toher through plough and harrow, seeder, reaperand thresher, she would remain but half her-self, knowing only the dull pressure of herown potentialities, knowing nothing of therelief and joy of fulfilment. It is only inexpression that she achieves progression. Shecasts her seed away with one handandreceives it back in the other. In her perpetualdeath she finds eternal Hfe.


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8 WORK AND WORSHIPThe analogy between nature and humanity

is close and clear. In humanity (as in nature)there is an expansive desire which, uncontrol-led, may grow into the smothering jungle ofselfish passion, and defeat its own ends by itsown surplusages, finding death through excessof life. But, just as, within nature, manbecame the instrument of agriculture whichraised crude growth to the level of cultivation,and changed bulk into excellence, so, withinman, the mind became the instrument of homo-culture which has brought him from savageryto comparative civilisation. When he beganto fell trees in order to make habitable clear-ances in the primeval forest, he began also tomake spaces for sun and air in his own nature.Every discovery that he made among the re-sources of nature was a discovery of powers inhimself. Every effort to understand and forestallthe fluctuations of nature in her moods that wecall seasons was an exercise towards theattainment of imagination and prophecy. Ashe nourished himself on nature he grew innumbers and learned organisation and govern-ment, not only between communities, but inthe community of heart and mind in each


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THE FUNCTION OF CULTURE 9individual. So intimate has been the interac-tion of nature and humanity that it is seen tobe more than a mere parallelism : it is a vitalidentification. As man cultivated nature,nature cultivated man, and both to the samepurposethe turning of diffuse potentialitiesinto definite realisation, the attainment of thatother half of life, expression, and the lifting ofthat expression through successive stages fromlow to high. This is the function of culture.The first stage of the cultural pi^ocess is

actuated by nothing higher than necessity,the necessity of avoiding annihilation throughthe self-destructive powers of appetite whenthese are not controlled and guided by a powerhigher than themselves. A second stage inthe cultural process is reached when cultureis rejoiced in for its own sake, when there is apleasure in the reduction of the bewilderingdisorder of life to the order of a picture or apoem, or in the tidying of a room or one'sdress. There is a third stage at which neces-sity is transcended, when culture ceases to bea merely temperamental but joyful response tothe imposition of a higher desire upon thelower, and becomes an intelligent co-operation


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10 WORK AND WORSHIPwith a superhuman Power which is itself feltto be the source and the culmination of culture.Then it is realised that while necessity at firstappeared to be the parent of culture, it was inreality a cultural urge in the nature of super-humanity that made necessity the means toits own end. When this stage has beenreached (and many of the world's greatcreative artists have reached it), the meaningof the word culture has passed from tillage toworship. The Divine Personality and itsmethod and purpose are glimpsed, and theendeavour of life is henceforth to disclose thecharacteristics of that Divine Personality, tolive (as Milton put it) " as ever in the greatTask-master's eye," with life not a gratificationbut a sacrament.We have not, however, to wait until weare artists in order to experience something ofthe thrill of devotion in culture. The open-eyed poet, Francis Thompson, sang in beauti-ful symbolism and rhythm the realisation ofthe truth which has been stated in terms ofspiritual science by many an Indian seer :

From sky to sod.The world's unfolded blossom smells of God.


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THE FUNCTION OF CULTURE . 11But the first man (or woman) who, comingupon a power of nature, prostrated before it,and began a religious rite that has developedinto a great religion, had felt the same truth.He realised, though not perhaps in termsof mental consciousness, that while thenecessities of his life compelled him togrow things (or to accept the gifts of trees andshrubs without his labour], the miracle ofgrowth, and the equal miracle of decay, werepowers beyond him, powers obviously of aBeing superior to himself. The beginnings ofagriculture and spiritual culture went hand inhand, side by side with the beginnings ofmental culturenot consciously perhaps, butto us, looking back over many centuries of allphases of culture, indicatively of the future ofculture.

But while the vision of the seer is anticipat-ed in the intuitive act of the primitive man,it is only an anticipation, not a realisation.There is no identification of interest betweenupper and lower ; and as time goes on, thegulf between God and His creation growswider and deeper, until culture (agricultureand homoculture) and worship have come to


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12 WORK AND WORSHIPmean different, and in some phases, opposedactivities of life. Many centuries of culture,religious and artistic, went into the creationof the beautiful cathedral of Rheims ; but acultured enemy nation, with the name of Godon its lips, flung fiery destruction on theprecious monument of art. And who knowswhat would have happened had the fortunesof war given the French the opportunity ofbeing belligerent invaders of German territory?Is it not alleged that the bowmen of Gasconyin France made the model of Francesco Sforzaby Leonardo da Vinci a target for their arrowsto such effect that art was robbed of one of itsmasterpieces ?These anomalies in the life of nations which

regard themselves as cultured are due to twomain causes ; first, that the majority of civilisedhuman beings, while nominally cultured, havenot yet passed beyond the tillage aspect of cul-ture. They have developed their resources,sharpened their wits, blunted their sensibilityto the needs of others, boasted of wealth withpoverty in their heartsbut have kept the spiritof worship, of devotion to a higher Power,a matter of one day in seven and of a place


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THE FUNCTION OF CULTURE 13apart from life. The second cause of suchanomalies in so-called cultured life is that,nowithstanding generations of production ofwonderful objects of culture in the arts, thebulk of the so-called cultured nations have notyet risen above the domination of low neces-sity. Here and there are found a few fore-runners of the true cultured future ; but themasses of the nations, and their leaders, will,at some threat to their material possessions,turn their backs without apology on theirprofession of faith and their boast of culture,and take to that last ugly negation of all thatculture stands forphysical warfare. At thepresent stage of human culture the law ofmaterial gravitation is predominant ; thegeneral tendency of the mass consciousness isdownwards. A nation will commit the tragiccontradiction of killing a man in punishmentfor his killing a man, accounting murder themost serious crime; but it will march withbands playing and the blessing of its religiousleaders to wholesale murder. But these thingswill pass. The cultural urge will carryhumanity on to a time when the gravitation ofthe spirit will overtake and dominate that of the


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14 WORK AND WORSHIPflesh. We take legitimate pride in the artsand artists of humanity when we regard themas forerunners of future achievement. Atpresent they are more of a rebuke, since notyet, despite the glories of architecture andsculpture and painting, have we succeeded inmaking the face of common life fair to lookupon ; not yet, despite the achievements ofmusic and poetry, has life itself become rhyth-mical and harmonious.

Culture without worship is incomplete. Wesee this incompleteness in that era of Englishliterature in the eighteenth century calledclassical, when the thrill of reverence anddevotion (even at the comparatively low levelof Elizabethan reverence for its own powerand dovotion to its own self-interest) had diedout of life, and culture became a two-edgedmental blade that wounded where it struck insatire, but more deeply wounded its wielderin his own soul. And because of this in-completeness there came a movement to whatis called romance in literature, when the heartwas given scope, and ultimately the soul itselffound utterance that only now is beginningto reveal its full significance, the utterance


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THE FUNCTION OF CULTURE 15of Shelley's poetry which is aflame with thespirit of devotion

The desire of the moth for the star,Of the night for the morrow ;The devotion to something afarFrom the sphere of our sorrow.But if culture without worship is incomplete,worship without culture is no less incomplete,is soft, vapourous, fanatical, vulgar, cruel.Each needs the other for its fulfilment, andeducationists with their eyes turned towardsa rational future for humanity must see thatculture is given its essentially double inter-pretation colere, to till, to -worship.


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CHAPTER IITHE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTUREIn the previous chapter, we endeavoured toget a clear idea of the function of culture ingeneral. We saw that the word came from aLatin root which meant both to till and toworship. We saw, further, that these twomeanings were not casual and unrelated, butwere stages in the evolution of culture, theprocess of tillage in nature and of education inhumanity first arising out of necessity, andpassing to a recognition of a purpose beyondthe human will, which recognition bringsabout the attitude of worship. The culturalprocess was seen as a response in nature andhumanity to an inner urge of growth whichimposed destruction as the penalty for failureto rise to higher and higher stages of lifeand consciousness. Let us now enquire as to


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THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE 17what are the characteristics of culture, themarks of its identification.

Here again we shall find illumination bytaking Nature as our guidenot merely in thesense of finding apt parallels which we bendto our purpose, but in an identification of bothroot-life and subsequent leaves and flowersand fruit.

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,And all is clear from east to west,Spirit that lurks each form withinBeckons to spirit of its kin,

sang Emerson. The chain of life is unbroken."It is a long way from granite to the oyster,farther yet to Plato and the preaching of theimmortality of the soul. Yet all must come."fEmerson Nature). " If we look at her work,we seem to catch a glance of a system intransition. Plants are the young of the world,vessels of health and vigour ; but they gropeever upward towards consciousness ; the treesare imperfect men, and seem to bemoan theirimprisonment, rooted in the ground. Theanimal is the novice and probationer of a moreadvanced order. The men, though young,having tasted the first drop from the cup ofthought, are already dissipated; the maples

2


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18 WORK AND WORSHIPand ferns are still uncorrupt ; yet no doubt,when they come to consciousness, they toowill curse and swear."

First let us realise that the cultural urgeis unescapable. This point is emphasised inthe chapter on Culture and Training inEducation in " The Kingdom of Youth " inthese words : "We sometimes refer to thesocalled savage races as uncultured, but thereis no such thing as unculture. Culture is apositive without a negative. If we do notconsciously put our hands to the plough andharrow, the pruning hook and the irrigationrope, we shall not find flowers or fruit or ricein our patch of universe ; neither shall we findnothing: we shall find either the primitiveculture of the jungle, or the degenerate culturethat has reverted to type."

This cultural urge is not a whirlpool, but ariver. Here and there it has eddies, sometimesso large (as over Europe today) that the eyethat can only see what it looks upon mighteasily mistake the shape of progress as a circle.Its nearest approach, however, to the circular isthe spiral : there is always an escape onwards.And as the river of culture moves onwards


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THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE 19it gathers volume and increases in depthwhich is the same thing, counting from thebottom upwards, as increasing in height. Cutacross at any point, it is seen to be receivingfrom its source and simultaneously passing onwhat it receives to the future. Dr. HugoMagus, a European scholar, made a study ofthe growth of human recognition of therainbow colourswhich were not invented bychemists, but have existed from the beginningof things. He found that Homer saw onecolour, purple ; Xenophon saw three, purple,red and green ; Aristotle saw red, green andblue, with yellow sometimes seen betweenthe red and green. Ovid, with considerablepoetical licence, saw "a thousand dazzlingcolours ". The stream of colour-consciousnesswas filling up. The seasonal procession innature gives us another figure of speech forthe realisation of the cultural characteristicwhich we are approaching. After tillage comesgrowth, after growth harvest. The river isnot broadest at its source. After culture comesthe fruit of culture, not before. And the harvestof homoculture, as of agriculture, is only trulyharvest when its fruitage is not made a burden


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20 WORK AND WORSHIPon the fields, but is gathered only to be scat-tered in beauty and nourishment, with somereservation of seed for the next season.We can see now, taking nature as ourexemplar, that hoarding is not a characteristicof the cultural process. You may advertisein every paper on earth offering a largereward for a specimen of the cultured miser,and you will have no honest applicant. Anart-collector is not necessarily an artist ; alibrarian is not necessarily an author. Aroom stuffed with costly bric-a-brac should notbe exhibited with pride by its owner but withhumility, for it is more certainly a testimonialto vulgarity than to culture unless accompaniedby an apology. This does not mean that allcollecting (in a room or in one's head) isvulgar ; it applies only to the room or thebrain that has only one door, and that openinginwards. There are people to whom a littlecollection is a burden because it is a cul-de-sac in which we get, not the flying odours offlowers on the breeze, but the stench of stag-nation. There are others to whom big museumsand libraries would be as feathers becausebalanced by their outflow, not necessarily


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THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE 21in the giving away of actual physical objects,but in imparting pleasure and edification toothers.The gathering of knowledge is not culture,

notwithstanding the general reverence for thegraduate. He may have done no more thancram his barn with other people's seeds andmanures ; but until he has put these into theland of his own thought and feeling andexperience, and received their progeny withsomething of his own substance in them, hehas not come near the profit of work or thejoy of worship.

Let us here observe in this connection a fur-ther application of our figure of speech. The soiland principle of growth are within ourselves.The seed and the fructifying or blighting influ-ences of sun and rain, their excess or theirdefect, are outside us. " We owe the greaterwriters of the golden age of our literature (theElizabethan) to that fervid awakening of thepublic mind [the Renaissance] which shook tothe dust the oldest and most oppressive formof the Christian religion," said Shelley in hispreface to ' Prometheus Unbound,' discussingthe influence of environment on genius. " We


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22 WORK AND WORSHIPowe Milton to the progress and developmentof the same spirit ... A number ofwriters possess the form, whilst they want thespirit of those whom it is alleged they imitatebecause the former is the endowment of theage in which they live, and the latter must bethe incommunicable lightning of their ownmind." They are seeded and sunned andwatered by their age, but the ageless processof tillage is in themselves.Yet (to return to our main line of thought)

while knowledge is not culture, while profoundscholarship and gross vulgarity may dwell inthe same body, be it remembered that therecan be no real cultural expression withoutknowledge; just as there can be no culturalprocess in the fields until the accumulatedseed of a previous growing (which was lumberwhile it remained in its bag) is scattered. Werecognise in many people a natural refinementof disposition, an intuitive affinity for " thethings that are more excellent". They areobviously cultured people ; and while outsideAsia they move as anomalies, if not as flatcontradictions of the necessity of knowledge toculture, in Asia their period of seed-gathering


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THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE 23is dated back to lives lived long agoandthus the anomaly is done away with. Butwhether this be so or not, whether thisintuitive culture be a sport of nature or thepushing of a flower into this life from a rootin a life far back, we must realise that relianceon the past for both soil and seed will lead tothinness, perhaps to decay. We carry ourown farms about with us, but the only seedswe can carry to any purpose are thoseimbedded in our soil, and these and the usefulfertilisers of enthusiasms for causes and move-ments, we must take from outside.

Knowledge, therefore, is only of service inhomoculture (as seed and manure in agri-culture) when applied. " Reading [that is, theacquisition of knowledge) maketh a full man,"said Bacon ; but a full man mentally may beas far from mental culture as a full man (afterdinner) from physical culture, if the reader donot turn his reading into his own mental bloodand tissue. Culture lies not in accumulationbut in assimilation. We know him for a manof culture who, with a library at his elbow,will speak most from the open book of hisown mind, with some reference to authority


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24 WORK AND WORSHIPas a mark of the humility of all true culture,but chiefly with reference to his own convic-tion. He has gathered the fruits of manytrees, but the drink expressed from themwhich he offers to us he offers in his own glass.We have said that culture means assimila-tion. The parallel brings us to anothercharacteristic of culture. It is a matter of con-siderable illumination to calculate the weightof food we have comsumed in our lifetime, andfor which we have nothing to show but onepuny body. A rough estimate of the quantityof solid food consumed by a man or woman ofthirty-five years of age gives (exclusive ofwhat is cast out of the system in the processof digestion) a weight equivalent to that offrom seventeen to twenty-five adults. In thematter of weight the resultant is hopelesslydeficient. Even his market value as chemicalconstituents is hardly more than ten rupees ona favourable rate of exchange. But put a manin one scale and his total food-consumption inanother, and an invisible pointer will movetowards the man. Raja Krishnadevaraja ofVijayanagar is still [even as a memory) ofgreater weight than the jewels that he weighed


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THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE 25annually against himself for distributionamongst his people. That greater valueconsists in the qualities and faculties whichhumanity has developed through the interplayof its inner power of growth and ascensionfrom lower to higher stages of consciousnessand activity, with the substance and environ-ment given to him by nature. The fruitage ofhomoculture does not trail for long upon theground, but lifts itself first by support as thevine towards light and air, and afterwardsby its own power stands erect as the treeand one day will be even as the tree ofwestern mythology, the Yggdrasil, which,though its roots are in hell, tosses its branchesamong the starry fruitage of the heavens.The process of culture (both agriculture andhomoculture) is from quantity to quality, fromgrossness to fineness, from a simple elabora-tion, as in the vast proliferations of rudimen-tary plants, to an elaborate simplicityas inthe make-up of the grain of wheat with itsapportionment of food elements in such nicetyto the needs of humanity as to induce a feelingof conspiracy between the Goddess of Cornand the God in ourselves.


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26 WORK AND WORSHIPIndeed (to turn again to an illuminating

side-thought), this nicety of apportionment isnot limited to the single grain, but is seen inNature's marvellous power of multiplicity.She takes from us one seed and from it returnsus three hundred. This appears to be a flawin our parallels of nature and humanity ; butit is not. It is an inverse adjustment of humannecessity and natural supply. Humanity, withits wastage of material in its life of perpetualstruggle towards higher and higher levels ofpower, transmutes the elements of food intoinvisible, unweighable energy. Nature says," Very well, I shall meet your need by givingyou back much more than you give me, sothat of ' seed for the sower and bread for theeater ' there may be enoughand to spare ".The secondary branches of meaning whichhave sprung up about the main meaning ofthe word culture reflect certain ideas whichwe must realise. To cultivate is regarded asmuch the same as to refine. Refinement iscompounded of two roots which, roughly,mean, to carry a thing to an end (finis) andthen change its state ; in other words, to carrya thing on from one stage of ' perfection ' to


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THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE 27t

another, though with continuity. This phaseof culture reflects itself in the refinementof body and mind which is associated withcultured people. An ugly fold in a dress,an unharmonious colour, a harsh tone inthe voice, a vulgar gesture, an uncharit-able remarkthese things will give a jarto cultured sensibility ; and the charge whichthe cultured person will make against theoffending thing will be that ' it was not in goodtaste ' ; in other words, that it erred froma standard of perfection which is not separatefor each offence but applicable to all. Refine-ment and taste are regarded as synonymsfor one of the characteristics of culture. Dowe not speak of a refined taste ? A man orwoman of taste is one who has developed akeen sensibility to the gradations of approachto or retreat from a standard of excellencewhich is not in text-books of culture but is thewisdom distilled from a thousand experiencesinto a single comprehension. Taste is alwaysintelligent. There is no taste in the ignorant,the stupid or the merely acquisitive; for tastecomes from the quick and continuous movingof the mind in a cultural process which


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28 WORK AND WORSHIPaccepts here, rejects there, never goes down,always moves upward, links remote thingsthrough hidden affinities, teases out elaboratetangles to get at their simple root, searchesfor the secret word of silence in the midst ofsounds. This is again the process of assi-milation of which we have already spoken.Its fruit isnot accumulated knowledge, nothard-edged intellect, but open-eyed and open-hearted understanding. An Asian poet sangthree thousand years ago :

Happy is the man that getteth wisdom, and theman that getteth understanding.For the merchandise of it is better than themerchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than

fine gold.She is more precious than rubies : and all the

things thou canst desire are not to be compared untoher. {Proverbs III, 13, 14, 15.)No ! for she is a living light in the mind andheart, and the desiring of many things buildswalls of darkness around her. In a multitudeof tastes there is no Taste.

Another branch of meaning is improvement.Improvement means 'to advance in value orexcellence,' which is simply an epitomisedhistory of both agriculture and homoculture.


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THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE 29It means also 'to turn to advantage,' and, fromwhat we have already said of the forth-givingnature of culture, it will be seen that the' advantage ' in the cultural sense cannot bepurely personal or selfish. Indeed, the word'improvement' used thus (as in 'improvingthe occasion to make a few rupees ') is usedwrongly, for its true connections deep downamong its roots are with the word prowess, andthe word prowess (though commonly thoughtof as having strong muscles, a big sword, anddare-devil eyes) really means 'to do good'.We gather, therefore, that culture is not anegative thing, not a thing of well-bound books,well-framed pictures, easy chairs and a languor-ous pose, but a positive, active, serious matter.It loves beautiful things, but not as ends inthemselves. It finds pleasure, but pleasure isnot its purpose. Says Emerson in his essayon ' Art,' " As soon as beauty is sought, notfrom religion and love, but for pleasure, itdegrades the seeker ". Now both religion andlove are positive, outgoing impulses of devo-tion. Scholasticism in either can never knowtheir true joy. " Not every one that saithunto me ' Lord ! Lord ! ' but he that doeth the


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30 WORK AND WORSHIPwill of my father is fit to be my disciple " saidJesus the Christ. Tennyson prayed

Let knowledge grow from more to more,But more of reverence in us dwell.

But between knowledge (which is the rawmaterial of culture) and reverence (which isthe highest fruitage of culture) there is thenecessary process of ploughing and sowing,reaping and threshing. Culture, we see finally,is not simply appreciation of the beautiful innature and art, but active participation in theprocess of creation. Our reverence will be inaccordance with the extent of our active part-nership with God, Scholars, critics, theoristsin life and art may reduce the universe toblind forces ; but the creators in life and artare never in doubt as to the existence of aCreator, for they are He.


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CHAPTER IIITHE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE

1. Vital and SensationalThere is in Nature and humanity (as wehave seen in the foregoing chapters] an urgeto growth which, if uncontrolled, would elabo-rate itself to a point at which decay and deathwould supervene. This tendency has beencounteracted by the association of humanitywith Nature, the necessity for the productionof the means to human subsistence leading toorganisation and a progression from uncontroll-ed quantity to controlled quality. The appli-cation of this process of culture (agriculture)by humanity reacted in a similar way onman's own inner nature, leading to an organi-sation within the human units, and togroupings which have developed from familiesto empires. This cultural process is unescap-able and continuous ; and its characteristics are


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32 WORK AND WORSHIPa gradual refinement and improvement whichcome through the assimilation of knowledge,and the giving out of the results even as theharvest of Nature is scattered for the good ofhumanity as well as of herself. Let us nowconsider the means or instruments throughwhich the Culture-powers work their will.

In a broad sense all life is the instrument ofculture in general ; but when we speak ofculture we usually have in mind a specialaspect of life, a level of attainment above theordinary, and implied in our thought is arecognition of some special means for theattainment of that level of culture. Thegeneric term for the instruments of culture(the whole tool-box] is education. In its earlystages education seeks to develop the innatepowers of the child in an allround way untilthe special bent of the child discloses itself andspecialisation is taken up. In the etymologicalsense education means 'leading forth'drawing out, developing, intensifying, strength-ening the powers latent in the child. But ifeducation only meant this, it would mean in ashort time the annihilation of humanitythrough the over-stimulation of the natural


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 33active urge to growth, which, if left uncheck-ed, would lead to over-elaboration, mutualdestruction and death. We shall realise thetruth of this if we bear in mind certain con-siderations with regard to the compositemake-up of the human being.A Upanishad says, " The nature of Purushais desire ". (Purusha is the Universal Spirit,God the Creator.} Put into terms of our study,this means that the principle of growth innature and humanity may be called also an urgeto satisfaction, a reflection of the cosmic 'desire'.This desire defines and endeavours to satisfyitself in nature through a multitude of rela-tively simple instruments in the subhumankingdoms ; but none of these has succeeded inanswering the cosmic desire with cosmicsatisfaction ; and the desire has moved hun-grily onward until it has created the complexhuman instrument, and, through it, searchesstill for satisfaction. The human instrumentmay be regarded as fourfold in composition.It has, first, its vital aspect ; and the cosmicdesire, defined through this, takes the formof appetite which has the tendency to fulfilitself at any cost, even the cost of its own

3


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34 WORK AND WORSHIPinstruments. That is to say, the unchecked appe-tite for indulging in, say, alcoholic stimulationwill lead to poisoning and death. This is nota matter which concerns only the individual.A drunkard who hurts his brain and nerves,not only inflicts injury on himself, but, byreducing his ability to contribute to the publicservice, inflicts an injury on the community.Because of this, education has sought (veryinadequately so far) to impose the restraint ofculture on growing youth. It has adoptedphysical culture as part of the educationalsystems of the world.

Let us pause here to consider the apparentlycontradictory relationship of culture whichimposes restraint, and education which drawsforth. An education which lived completelyup to its name, and was purely and simplya ' leading forth ' of powers on one level ofhuman activity, would (as has been alreadyobserved more than once) lead forth humanityover the precipice of destruction. For in-stance, the development to their fullest extentof all and only the powers of observation,calculation, adaptation of means to ends, thatmake the perfect burglar or murderer, and the


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 35universal establishment of Colleges of Theftand Assassination, would bring mankind tothe level of the primitive jungle. Somethingin this direction has been achieved in Europein the appalling economical anarchy and moraldecay which have followed the War. Fortu-nately the purely burglarious and murderouselements in commercial and military educa-tion have had their destructive tendenciescounterbalanced to some extent by the culturaltendency in general education which liftsthings to higher levels, reduces quantity andincreases quality. Take an example. Twenty-two men set themselves to the single purposeof developing their kicking and runningpowers. Each has a ball as the instrument ofhis education. Obviously the more powerfulthe kicking capacity becomes the more des-tructive it will be on the unfortunate ball. Atime comes when a single kick is sufficient toburst a ball. The purses of the kickers willnot stand this. An idea (a cultural idea)strikes one of them. They combine in thepurchase of one ball twenty-two times betterin quality than the single balls. They set itin their midst and {since they are all engaged


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36 WORK AND WORSHIPall the time in kicking-education) they proceedto kick it simultaneously. Either of threethings happens ; the ball stands still and norunning can be done ; or the simultaneousimpact so stiffens the otherwise resilient ballthat the kickers break their toes and no morekicking can be done ; or the ball bursts. Thisis all a fantastic supposition, but it helps us ina familiar and graphic way to disentangle thesimple elements of a situation. We see fromit that unchecked individual developmentiflife permitted itcould lead nowhere. Ourkickers realise this, and call a meeting atwhich they decide unanimously that no furtherkicking-education is possible under the cir-cumstances. A light flashes across themand when the meeting closes they have divid-ed themselves into two sets of friendly rivalswho engage to supply one another withthe necessary opposition to develop theirpowers. Within the group there are sub-groups for the distribution of opportunities forkicking and running, and the whole activityis focussed and guided by an aim beyondthe mere matter of kicking and runningthe putting of the ball through the space


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 37between two standing sticks. And at the end,the losers give three cheers for the winners andthe winners give three cheers for the losers,and all are happy for, lose or win, all aregainers. The merely disruptive operation ofindividual kicking and running has been [toglance again at certain dictionary meaningsof the word culture) refined, that is, liftedto a higher level, and improved, that is, givena higher value ; and the prowess of eachplayer has had the double satisfaction of givinggood to himself and all the others.The co-operative activity indicated in the

foregoing instance is made stable and progress-ively continuous by the formulation of certainmutually acceptable rules whereby men ' playthe game '. These rules are parallelled in thelarger life of the world by moral laws andlegislative enactments which (though still farfrom perfect) tend towards the provision ofmeans whereby all humanity may be able toadjust the fulfilment of their own vital goodto that of the community as a whole. But thepoint which emerges from our hypotheticalcase in regard to the relationship between thedrawing-forth process of education and the


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38 WORK AND WORSHIPrestraining influence of culture, is this, thatculture also is a drawing forth, but at a higherlevel. A perfectly developed man physicallymay be only a menace to those around himbut a man whose power of feeling with andfor others is developed to the same extent ashis physical powers, will not need to be keptin check by the external pitting of equalstrength against his strength (which is themethod of control by force in the present lowstage of human life) but will, without con-scious effort, express the intermingling offeeling and strength, and this interminglingwill lift what otherwise might be mere bruteforce to the level of beneficent power.

This principle of exercising a cultural controlover the education of the relatively lowerhuman powers by the education of the rela-tively higher powers, works all the way up fromthe most material needs of the physical bodyto the highest response of the soulfrom thehunger of the flesh that seeks to absorb allelse into itself, to the hunger of the spirit thatseeks to be absorbed in the Self of the universe.So much for the first aspectthe vitalin

what we have referred to as the composite


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40 WORK AND WORSHIPsensational. The nerve-body, which is themedium for sensation, demands its own nourish-ment and satisfaction, otherwise it will fall intodisease, and the diseased condition will notremain in the nerves only, but will communi-cate itself to the other parts of the compositehuman being ; for the nerve-body stretches itsmultitude of hands from the deeps of the vitalnature to the lofty verge of the spiritual con-sciousness. There is a world of wisdom in thehomely injunction to " laugh and grow fat."There is also a world of wisdom in the Indianaphorism : " There is no Yoga without health ".A healthy nerve-body will put its wearer intoa happy relationship with the world throughthe gates of touch and taste, sound, sight andsmell, and that happy relationship will reflectitself in good digestion. It will also reflectitself in greater clearness of mind and thusopen the way to richer incursions from thehigher levels of one's being.The five nerve-gates to which we have justreferred are the fivefold subject of sense-

educationsmell, taste, touch, hearing andsight. Through them we receive the experi-ence of pain which may by education be


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 41transmuted into a higher form of pleasurethrough them we receive the experience ofpleasure which, without the cultural controlof education, may by over-indulgence lead topain, decay and death. The first three senses(smell, taste and touch) notwithstanding theimportant part which they play in human life,have seldom been thought of until recentlyas requiring education, and have been allow-ed to develop themselves haphazard and withno conscious relationship to culture. Yet acultivated sense of smell could be a valuableadjunct to human evolution by enabling peopleto recognise the presence of things dangerousto well-being. In Japan in olden times therewas some recognition of the aesthetic possibili-ties of smell in the holding of competitions inthe identification of the ingredients in variouskinds of incense. Unfortunately the sense ofsmell in Japan has not been developed in otherdirections, and tolerates odours about houseswhich at first shatter the senses of foreignvisitors. The cultural education of the futurewill see to it that, since nature takes thetrouble to produce odorous shrubs and flowers,humanity will have the grace to fit itself to


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42 WORK AND WORSHIPrespond to nature's purifying invitation, andwill definitely take up the education of thesense of smell.Much the same may be said also of taste.

All over the world taste has been vitiated. InIndia it has been vitiated by the use of stronglypungent flavourings and of salt and sugarin excess. The delicate flavours of the simplefoods that nature has provided for frugivoroushumanity are smothered, and even when theirarrogant enemies are absent, the sensibilityof the palate has been degraded to such anextent that it is incapable of recognising andenjoying the true flavours. Outside Indialand inside India also) this vitiation of tastehas been accomplished through the useof flesh foods which not only themselvespossess enslaving tastes but call for the use ofstrong condiments to mask their putrefyinghorror. A cultivated taste (which is quite adifferent thing from an acquired taste) couldnot tolerate the flaming tang of distilledalcoholic liquors or the sourness of brewedliquors. Lack of culture in this respect isat the root of intemperance in both food anddrink.


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 43Touch, too, must be educated. The Mon-

tessori method does something towards this inteaching the recognition of shape, size andquantity by touch. But the education oftouch will go much further than this, and willnot limit itself to the fingers. The wholeperipheral nerve system presents its claim forschooling. There is a world of possibility ofaesthetical enjoyment through the feeling-power of the feet ,* but this is unrealised incountries which equate civilisation with thewearing of stockings (and the generation ofsour odours and dirt), and it is unrealised inIndia through exposure producing insensibility.But taking the hand alone ; in the case ofmost people its power of perception by touchis limited to a few crude external qualitiessuch as hardness and softness, roughness andsmoothness. But there are immense possi-bilities of extension of the sense of touch inthe discovery of subtle gradations of tegument,in the detection of obnoxious elements, say, inthe binding of a book that make it unpleasantto handle, though pleasing to the eye ; and.there is a power of a far deeper kind that isat present the precious possession of a very


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44 WORK AND WORSHIPfew peoplescouted by the ignorant andpseudo-scientific, but known by serious en-quirers into the latent powers of humanitythe power sometimes called psychometry,which is largely an extension of touch into aregion beyond physical qualities, a regionwhich will add a vast territory to conscioushuman life when children are encouraged(before the ' shades of the prison house ' ofnegation and materialism are cast over them)to perceive by touch not only the body of anobject, but something of what I shall call bythe dark name of its spiritual history.We are left with the two senses of hearingand sight as the channels between the outerworld and the inner consciousness which arethe almost exclusive subjects of sense-educa-tion. Yet it is hardly true to say even of theear and the eye that they are educated at all.They are used, just as hands and feet are used,mainly for purposes of physical well-being;but they are not specifically trained, as thebody is in physical culture ; and their usemainly for a purpose which is at a lower levelthan themselves keeps them from the culturaladvantages which they might gain and give


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 45if they were intelligently educatedthat is,developed to their fullest capacity in culturalpartnership with the mental side of humannature. As it is, not merely is the develop-ment of hearing and sight restricted largely tolower than aesthetical enjoyment, but theirpower of transmission is tampered with bythe prejudice of the lower mind. The eyes ofa man of culture like Mr. William Archerhave been so twisted and made so rigid that aSouth Indian temple is to him only a mass ofugliness. John Ruskin could only see mon-strosity in an eight-armed Hindu figure. AnIndian, to whom the figure of Sri Chamundiwas the height of artistic beauty, confessed tome that a Celtic design (which to me was apiece of exquisite arrangement and colour)appeared to him to be crude and barbarous.The oleographs of the Ravi Varma press areused for divine worship in India. I carefullypreserve two of them as ' horrible examplesof bad art. It is the same with hearing. AnIndian curses a piano for making ' such adevil of a noise,' because the simultaneoussounding of two or more notes (though instrict harmony to western ears] bewilders the


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46 WORK AND WORSHIPuntrained ear. But he loves a shrieking baby-harmonium which to a musical westerner isnot an instrument of music but of torture. Acultured English lady of musical tastes regardsIndian singing as caterwauling, which meansthat she is offended not only by harshness oftone to ears which have learned to rejoice insweet and smooth sounds, but by the soundingof minute intervals which bewilder her earsthat can only intelligibly hear semitones.There is of course a considerable amount of

mental prejudice involved in these contradic-tions ; nevertheless, out of my own experienceand thought, I emphasise the fact that muchof this mental prejudice could be broken downby the specific education of sight and hearing.The foundations of true seeing could be laid inchildhood by the wise encouragement of thenatural love of children for pretty and colouredobjects, by letting them find their owntemperamental affinities among good reproduc-tions of pictures from all countries, by givingthem wide opportunities for clay modelling(without limiting the number of limbs theymay choose to put on a human being or ananimal), and. above all, by putting them in


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 47close association with flowers and plants, evenas flower-arrangement is a recognised part ofeducation in Japanunfortunately, however,limited to girls. Similar opportunities shouldbe given for the cultivation of hearing. Andin all such education there should be a perpe-tual atmosphere of pleasure, an increasingencouragement to the students to find andpossess and exchange the things that givethem delight. Thus will love for the beautythat is undistinguishable from truth be drawnforth, and a race of artists be evolved whowill not talk of eastern and western art as oftwo eternal enemies but as obverse and reverseof a divine coinage current the world over.Uncultivated dabblers in painting and musicdraw lines of justification around their ownnarrownesses, but the coming true lovers ofthe arts will have a welcome for all the varia-tions of the central impulse to limn somefeature or express some quality of the oneDivine Personality.


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50 WORK AND WORSHIPWhere the poet differs from the scientist isin seeing the evolutionary succession not as a

movement from rudimentary ' beginnings ' ina physical basis of life, but as a response tothe ' plastic stress ' of one superphysical' Spirit '. The stuff of the universe [' the un-willing dross ') is transmuted by what wehave called the cultural urge into suchsemblance to that urge as the various aggrega-tions of the cosmic stuff allow. Pain is tran-slated into consciousness. Consciousness riseshigher and higher. Man (and not man alone,but all the kingdoms of nature) is created " inthe likeness of God ". This is the vision thatgives certainty to hope, wisdom to education,stability and continuity to action, grace to thearts, dignity to life.

In the previous chapter we thought of thevital and sensational aspects of human activity.Let us now consider the mental and spiritual.The predominance of the mental element in

education is often criticised. The flaw, how-ever, is not that there is too much of themental, but that there is too little reinforce-ment from the vital and the sensational. Aphysical body that is not functioning healthily


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 51will not permit the most healthy expressionof the inner Thinker. Nerves, which are thebell-pulls of the soul, when jarred will producenot a harmonious chime, but the din of "sweetbells jangled, out of tune and harsh ". Man is amental being, and in his own mental worldcan (as has been demonstrated in psychical re-search) live independently of his physical in-struments ; but so soon as a relationship is set upbetween him and the sensible universe, heenters on a phase of activity which puts uponhim the duty of so developing and using hismeans of communication between inner andouter that they will receive and give withrapidity, accuracy and disinterestedness.We considered (in the previous chapter) thenecessity for the full education of the fivesenses. We emphasised the need for thetraining of the sense of smell (to refer here toonly one of the senses) as smell, as a functioncapable of giving joy in its exercise as a func-tion not merely for what it can add to ourknowledge of the nature of plants or sewagegases. But while making this plea for theeducation of the senses as students in their ownright, and not as mere victims of vocational


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52 WORK AND WORSHIPtraining, we do not overlook the fact thatunless the mental co-operates with the sensa-tional and the vital, there can be no educationof any kind, for all activity is realised in con-sciousness. Physical culture is reduced ineffectiveness to the extent that mental atten-tion to routine exercises is reduced. An Asianscripture, the " Anugita," sets out the relation-ship between the mind and the senses thus :Mind says :

The nose smells not without me ; the tonguedoes not perceive taste ; the eye does not take incolour ; the skin does not become aware of anyobject of touch. Without me the ear does not inany way hear sound. I am the eternal chief amongall elements. Without me the senses never shinelike an empty dwelling, or like fires whose flamesare extinct.Hence in Indian thought the mind is regardedas the sixth sense, the antahkarana or cohererof the system. Culture involves continuitycontinuity involves memory by which to carrythe cultural experience to a higher level.There is a certain power of mechanical me-mory in the cells of the body. Some degreeof consciousness is involved, but it does notrise above its own level. The fingers of thecraftsman can only remember as fingers ; they


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 53cannot remember for the ear. But the memorywhich is one of the functions of the mind, re-members for all the instruments of the mind.Hence in trying to understand and improvethe instruments of culture, including the men-tal instrument, there must always be an inter-relation of thought with sensibility and action.Thought, which is by nature cold, must bewarmed at the hearth of feeling and correctedin action ; feeling, which belongs to the torridzone of the human sphere, must be modifiedby the cool breezes from the pole of thought.Action which is related to feeling only, maybe merely destructive ; related to thought only,may be cruel. The ideal for which educationshould aim is a balanced co-ordination ; and ifsufficient mental attention is given to actionand feeling, the education of the mind in thecultural sense will proceed with little trouble.The expediting of the powers of observation,retention and enjoyment will evolve a higherdegree of aesthetic sensitiveness and intel-ligence, and react beneficially on the formaland informative side of mental education.

But our cultural process will stop short offulfilment, our educational schemes remain


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54 WORK AND WORSHIPinadequate, if we fail to take into account thefourth aspect of our composite nature, the>aspect which we have called spiritual, andwhich is the individual parallel to the cosmicworld of illumination" the heaven's light "in which " the one Spirit's plastic stressfinds ultimate repose both individually andcosmically. Here the Cosmic Desire findssatisfactionin Itself. It can find it in no-thing lower. Cosmic desire can only have cos-mic fulfilment ; and the reflection of this lawof life in the human being is the dissatisfactionwhich dogs mankind at every step until theconsciousness rises to the point at which itrealises its unity with all beings and with theOne Being in whom all beings are rooted.When this point is reached, the attitude of theindividual is reverence ; the impulse, devotion ;the direction, aspiration. The cultural processhas passed from tillage to adoration ; loborareest orare ; work and worship are one. Tothis end all life moves through its seonianlabours. In the end there is the realisation ofthe truth that " there is no small and no greatin the absolute ". But the way towards thatvision is through the relative universe from


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56 WORK AND WORSHIPby looking at certain features belonging tothem.Each of the defined phases of the ' desire

of Purusha ' has a special form of activity, aspecial direction of activity, and a specialcharacteristic of activity. We shall tabulatethem as follows, and then examine them :

Phase


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 57A person in a state of pleasant excitementis expansive, and imparts the stimulus of hisown pleasure to others. This inward andoutward movement is the systolic and diastolicaction of the Cosmic Heart.

Let it be here emphasised that the lines ofour tabulation are not impenetrable steel orinsurmountable barriers. The four phasesare phases of one activity. Their existenceinheres in their interdependence. Therecould be no physical existence without a super-physical basis. There could be no super-physical activity in the physical world withouta physical form. The ocean of Divine Energyhas interfused throughout it the super-pro-toplasmic substance which ultimately becomesthe means (and the limitation) of the DivineActivity. Every physical atom has involvedwithin it a super-physical tension (" the oneSpirit's plastic stress ") which acts as a trans-muting power bringing matter back towardsits original state of pure simplicity. This isthe basis of the old alchemy. From this pointof view, cultural education should aim at therefining and simplifying of the instruments ofPurusha so that they may allow the spirit


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 63But where, on the higher levels of culture, itis necessary to repress for the sake of balance,then the illuminated teacher will employ oneor other of the other Yogas. The working ofthis method is seen in the effect which a deepattachment for a person (such as love for agood woman or a child) has in making agrossly appetitive man give up an evil habit.

There are sub-types set up by the action ofone of the ego-types through combinations inpersonality, such as the vital-sensational, vital-mental, etc., but it is not necessary to workthese out in detail here.The highest aim of the homoculturist

should be to produce the perfect beingtheseer who is not only psychic, but intelligent,and with intelligence has artistic taste and ahealthy body ;the aasthetic-intuitional-vision-ary, the highest type of practical idealist.In carrying out this aim the arts must find amore extensive and vital place in educationthan they do to-day, for they stand as the truecommunicators between the outer and innerlife. They are more specifically creative thanthe other mental and emotional activities, andtherefore come close to the cosmic movement.


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64 WORK AND WORSHIPThey do not bind. They release. There aremany to whom the word freedom bears onlya political connotation ; but Schiller, whoearned the title of the poet of freedom inGermany a century and a half ago, in his" Letters on iEsthetic Culture " wrote as fol-lows of the comparative claims of politics andaethetical culture

The eyes of the philosopher and the man of theworld are turned full of expectation towards thepolitical arena, where, as is believed, the greatdestiny of man is now developed ... If I sufferBeauty to precede Freedom, I trust not only toaccommodate it to my inclination, but to vindicateit by principles. I hope to convince you that thismatter of assthetic culture is far less foreign to thewants than to the taste of the age ; nay, more, thatin order to solve this political problem in experience,one must pass through the aesthetic, since it isbeauty that leads to freedom.In other words, aesthetic culture is notsimply a means to the gratifying of culturedtaste, but a need for the achievement of humanfreedom. Goethe also regarded culture asthe way to freedom through providing a wayof expression for the true humanity whichlies encumbered within each of us. Politicsis concerned with divergent interests andleads to inartistic violence in emotion and


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THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURE 65action ; the arts are concerned with con-vergent interests, and lead to harmoniousco-operative activity.


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CHAPTER VTHE UNITY OF ART

In the work of reconstruction which iscrying out today to the pioneer souls ofhumanity, the arts must occupy a position ofgreater prominence than they have done inthe past. Their nature is such that they bringinto life a fuller expression than perhaps any-thing else can bring of the two qualitiesnecessary to real progressthe quality ofconservation and the quality of elasticity.These are the complementary elements in theevolutionary process which, in their interac-tion, allow the cultural urge, that animates alllife, to find expression in forms of graduallyascending responsiveness, purity and beauty.The creative element in all true art puts theartist in sympathetic touch with the urge tofreer expression which is behind all theadvanced movements in human society ; but


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THE UNITY OF ART 67the intuition of the artist apprehends the innerunity of the diverse expressions of the arts,and the practice of the artist brings a healthyrecognition of the value of limitations. Theartist, faced with a technical difficulty, doesnot sit down and lament that oil and waterbehave differently, and that he, a lord ofcreation, has to adapt himself to the conditionsimposed on him by the nature of inanimatecreatures. Least of all will he destroy paperbecause it does not act like canvas. True, theartist bends his materials to his purpose butthe objective of his purpose has itself undergonemodification to meet what the artist knows hecan and cannot do at the point where he standsin the evolution of his art. His success iscompounded partly of joy in the surmountingof limitations. Every work of art is to anextent a tour de force ; and life, under theinfluence of the spirit of artistic adventure,need not be a thing for peevish complaint orexplosive rejection, but can take on the happyand stimulating character of what Americanphraseology calls a stunt, a jolly performance.The play-spirit is slowly coming into edu-

cation. By and by it will find its way into


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THE UNITY OF ART, ' 69many players playing the game from differentdirections. The goal may be one in the willof each, but the activities and rules are many,and the opponent is as valuable as thecolleague. The artist acts on these laws oflife. Even if he or she is not conscious ofthem and their implications, they worksecretly in every stroke of a loaded brush oncanvas, which brings together in creativecompanionship a democracy of fibres, oils,earths and timbers that could tell the story ofthe five continents. In the materials of hisart the artist is free from religious intolerance,colour prejudice, racial egotism. He imposesno conscience clause and no poll-tax onhis brushes or his paints. He accepts thevariety which enriches his art ; and whenthis acceptance of variety finds its waythrough art into the life of the younger genera-tion, and through them into the general life ofthe future, ' national interests,' which fill somuch space in the heads of publicists, and leadto disintegration, will be transformed intohuman interest in God's varietyinterestwhich leads to integration, harmony, respect,happiness. True art-culture, that is, culture


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70 WORK AND WORSHIPwhich is artistic because of its recognition ofthe inner unity of all human activity, rejoicesin the richness of variety in human expression.And what a treasure of mutually enrichinginterest in varied yet unified expression thearts of the world hold for the study of the newgenerationsthe study of European and Asianart for the illuminating purpose of comparingtheir external differences and fundamentalsimilarities.

Half of the pleasure of cultured life, or more,lies in the exercise of comparison, from theputting together of things so remotely con-nected with one another that their mentionproduces the incongruity which is the basis oflaughter, to the making of those subtle ana-logies of word, incident or idea through whichwe rise to some degree of inner vision of thedeep root of being from which springs thebeauty and variety of God's blossoming. Butin the exercise of this power of comparison,with its enrichment of memory and its exhila-ration of the soul with the expressed juice ofthe grapes of wisdom, we must, if we are toexperience the fullness of aesthetic joy, castout all thought of exclusiveness or separateness


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74 WORK AND WORSHIPthwarted in their cosmic labours. Throughour narrownesses they will accomplish parti-cularities of achievement only possible withinboundaries ;the beauty of definition of therunning stream which is beyond the titanicgeneralisation of the ocean ; the thin sweetwhistle of the wind (dumb of itself) when itfinds lips for its otherwise unheard music in acracked leaf, and utters the luring call to thespirit which the braggart thunder would vainly" struggle and howlat fits " to imitate.Thus does Nature justify by use the little-

nesses of greatness and genius, without whichconstriction its special revelation of a great-ness beyond itself could not be elaborated.We must therefore concede to the creativeartist his and her moments of enthusiasm anddogma, when the flame leaps up " blind withexcess of light ; " when the wheel of theimagination moves so rapidly that it sweepsinto its vortex the artist himself,and thosewith eyes capable of passing beneath theexterior of things into the burning centre ofthe artist's being might well exclaim, '" Whois the potter, pray, and who the pot ?" for thepersonal has wholly yielded itself up to the


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THE UNITY OF ART 75super-personal, the worker and his work havebecome one. Afterwards, at the end of a dayof creation, reflection may supervene, and theartist, in the satisfaction of a measure ofaccomplishment, may throb with a far-offrepercussion from that day on which anotherArtist caused the dry land to appear abovethe waste of waters, and at the end of the day" saw that it was good ". Then the mood ofthe solitary peak steps down to the level ofthe valley, and enters into that salutary com-munion of heart and brain with other climberstowards the skies which is only possible atthe bases of the hills of life, and impossible onthe summits save in lightnings which flashfrom peak to peak in a code of the spirit whichis not yet current even among the masters ofinterpretation. Then the creator, becomingawhile the critic, may discover that the solitarypeak is not a thing apart from the mass of thegood earth and its life, but an elevation andsubtilisation of the general substance and con-sciousness, a turning of the flatness of thecommon horizontal life into the visible per-pendicularity of high purpose. The artist, inthe ascent of his peak, may set his face towards


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76 WORK AND WORSHIPaloofness and narrowness ; but in the descenttherefrom, with face outwards towards infinity,he will bring to us of the lower levels theinspiration and large sanity of extendedview.

It is because of the artist's fluctuation bet-ween all that is implied in these two pointsof view (the ascent and descent of his peak ofcreation) that he is not seldom a contradictiona broad-minded bigot, a provincial univer-salist. His own safety and peace of mind liein his acceptance of his own artistic prejudiceas simply one singularity in the plural numberof God's grammar through which He hasuttered the fundamental prejudice of theuniverse, a prejudice so rigidly imposed on allwithin its sphere of influence that not eventhe moon, for all the prayers of her lovers,will move from her rut and for once travelfrom north to south. " The mountain and thesquirrel had a quarrel," as Emerson reports,but the squirrel settled the matter by makinga compromise of recognition, though in anegative form.

If I cannot carry forests on my back,Neither can you crack a nut.


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THE UNITY OF ART 77It is as much, perhaps, as one can expect

from an ordinary squirrel, this concession(turned into positive terms) that while it isthe business of squirrels to crack nuts, it is thebusiness of mountains to carry forests on theirbacks. But a succeeding generation of squir-rels (and human beings including artists) willgrow eyes capable of seeing that, but for themountain, the squirrel would have no nut tocrack, and that the vast inertia of the mount-ain, dull and lumpish as it is, is the relativelystable thing against which the foot of the squir-rel finds elasticity. The other side of the matter(which future mountains also may learn to see)is that, but for the services of the nut-crackingsquirrel (and all his kin) the mountain in afew millennia might find himself without hisprotective forest cloak, and a few millennialater might lift a bald head and nakedshoulders to the laceration and disintegra-tion of sun and wind, rain and snow anddrought.Let it be admitted that the dull mountainhas its place and work in the scheme of thingsas well as the nimble squirrel. Let the samebe admitted likewise of artists of various cults,


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78 WORK AND WORSHIPand of non-artists at various levels of apprecia-tion which stimulates to creation, and of mis-appreciation which provokes to criticism. Letit be admitted also that, while prejudice isusually the offspring of ignorance and pride,artistic culture is itself only a glorifiedprejudicea more self-conscious, self-explana-tory and talkative way of surveying life fromone corner of it, and dealing with it according-ly, with false truth and true falsehood and allthe paradox that comes out of our position assimultaneous heirs to the double estate of theeternal and the transient.

All the arts reflect some ray of the Truth,otherwise they could not exist, for there is nofragment of the universal life that is notrelated to the whole. On the other hand thereis no art or phase of art that can completelyreflect " the Truth, the whole truth and nothingbut the truth " ; for " our little systems " arelines of pitiful logic drawn around a sphere,lines which take on a sense of completness andassurance when the head succeeds in bitingthe tail ; but some of these lines cut across thepole, and when they pride themselves onhaving touched truth's absolute north, are at


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THE UNITY OF ART 79that very moment facing the south on allsides ; and some run merely parallel to oneanother and translate mere motion into theword progress, apparently not knowing thatMr. Chesterton has said that the thing thatmerely progresses moves to its destruction.

All the arts are untrue, inasmuch as nopart can express the whole ; and they becomethe more untrue the more they try to live upto the illusion that " art should be true tonature and life ". No artist ever yet sawNature in the fullness of her truth ; he cannotbe true to that of which he has only a frag-mentary comprehension. No human beingevery yet lived life in its fullness. To seelife steadily and see it whole is a poeticalimpossibility invented by the late Mr. MatthewArnold. We cannot see life steadily, becauselife itself is not steady. Its very genius is flux.If the Lord of the World ceased His cosmicdance for an instant, the sun would staggerdazed into annihilation, and all that hangs uponhim. And yet, if we do not catch somesuggestion of stability behind the perpetualmovement of life, we have not seen anythingaright. We cannot see life whole, because


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80 WORK AND WORSHIPour personal life is inexplicable save in rela-tionship to an environing life whose ramifica-tions pass round our own street corner out ofour sightand trail their antennae beyond theorbits of Uranus and Neptune. We cannot seebeyond what our eyes tell us. A dead cameracan do better. We cannot hear beyond thecrude noises that our rudimentary ears catchupthe surf of sound that deafens us to themusic of the spheres. " Our hearing is nothearing, and our seeing is not sight," sangLewis Morris the Welsh poet. And yet, ifwe have not caught come hint of the fullnessthat enspheres us, some glimpse of the " divin-ity that shapes our ends," we have not seenor heard at all.

This is why the path of human culture,from the cave-man's rock-scratched drawingof the reindeer to the latest school of paint-ing, is strewn with the debris of cults andmovements and renaissances. School succeedsschool, and out of the works of art which thenew impulse sends across the sky of culturein a trajectory whose fall is crossed by therise of a still newer impulse (as the risingcurve of romanticism in English poetry crossed


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THE UNITY OF ART 81the descending curve of classicism, andimpressionism in painting crossed in its fallthe path of the soaring rocket of post-impres-sionism), a few masterpieces survive, notbecause their particular cult was any moretrue than its predecessors, but because theywere wholly true to their cult. Artistic im-mortality does not come at the call of theslovenly or the egotistical or the self-right-eous. The true conservatism in art comes outof a radical abandonment to one's measure ofdarkness and crooked vision. " He that losethhis life for My sake and the gospel's shall saveit unto life eternal," said a Master of Wisdom;yet that gospel was incomplete ; the Spirit ofTruth was to come and guide His disciplesinto all Truth. He that loseth his personallife for the sake of his artistic gospel shall saveit through the changings of the future byrealising the truth that every new movementin art is, in the nature of relative things, buta new way of looking at things wrongly.


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CHAPTER VI

THE FOUR DEGREES OF ARTThis is how the art of painting began. Onceupon a time the son of a Brahman died. Thefather in his grief went to Yama, the God ofthe Dead, and begged him to return his sonbut Yama would not give him up. Then theBrahman went to the God of Life, Brahma,and asked him to get his son back from Yama.This was impossible, as already the son in hisafter-death existence was no longer what hehad been. But Brahma, for the father's com-fort, offered to give him a substitute. Thisthe father wisely agreed to accept, whereuponthe God of Life instructed the bereaved fatherhow to make colours and brushes, and withthese to make an image of his dead son.When the father had thus re-created in exter-nal form his own mental image of his son,Brahma breathed into it the breath of life, andthe image became a living being.


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THE FOUR DEGREES OF ART 83There are two basic truths embodied in thisancient Indian myth ; one, that the impulse to

expression in the arts comes, not from thereasoning or feeling sides of our complexnature, but from that side which reflects theDivine within us, the creative. Thought andfeeling are modes of art, not sources ; minordeities who, if permitted to usurp the autho-rity of the true creator, degrade art on the onehand to cold didacticism, and on the other tosentimentality.The other truth (the ignoring of which in

modern art-criticism leads to much confusionof thought and loss of illumination) is, that artis neither a reproduction of life nor a commen-tary on it, but a substitute for it.

These two truths are obverse and reverseof a single deeper truth,that the urge of theDivine Artist within his human instrumentsin this outer world cannot be satisfied withthe inartistic redundancies and trivialities ofthe thing called life, and must transmutemultiplicity and complexity into a simplerthing on a higher level. It is this power oftransmutation that is the distinguishing markof the true artist. Every artistic act is an act


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THE FOUR DEGREES OF ART 85blinded by multiplicity against the largegeneralities of art ; the other, when we with-draw to a distance from life in order to get abetter view of it, as the artist steps back fromhis easel the better to see his picture. It is inthese times of withdrawal, when life ceases tobe our business, and becomes our pleasure,when the man of figures relaxes even to acomic song, that the Artist within us getsto work. Every act of recreation is anopportunity for creation; and we miss thegrand purpose of both life land art if in suchmoments we set a mere copy of life on ourstage, and allow the mimicry of realism tousurp the creative function.

Creation, physiological or aesthetical, as ourIndian myth implies, does not come of thebody, but by the body. No man is p

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Cousins JH_Work and Worship - Essays on Culture and Creative Art (1922)

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