FullReads

I suppose it is possible for a young gentleman to be able to read–just think of it, after ten years of grammar and lexicon, not to know Greek literature and have flexible command of all its richness and beauty, but to read it!–it is possible, I suppose, for the graduate of college to be able to read all the Greek authors, and yet to have gone, in regard to his own culture, very little deeper than a surface reading of them; to know very little of that perfect architecture and what it expressed; nor of that marvelous sculpture and the conditions of its immortal beauty; nor of that artistic development which made the Acropolis to bud and bloom under the blue sky like the final flower of a perfect nature; nor of that philosophy, that politics, that society, nor of the life of that polished, crafty, joyous race, the springs of it and the far-reaching, still unexpended effects of it.

Yet as surely as that nothing perishes, that the Providence of God is not a patchwork of uncontinued efforts, but a plan and a progress, as surely as the Pilgrim embarkation at Delfshaven has a relation to the battle of Gettysburg, and to the civil rights bill giving the colored man permission to ride in a public conveyance and to be buried in a public cemetery, so surely has the Parthenon some connection with your new State capitol at Albany, and the daily life of the vine-dresser of the Peloponnesus some lesson for the American day-laborer. The scholar is said to be the torch-bearer, transmitting the increasing light from generation to generation, so that the feet of all, the humblest and the loveliest, may walk in the radiance and not stumble. But he very often carries a dark lantern.

Not what is the use of Greek, of any culture in art or literature, but what is the good to me of your knowing Greek, is the latest question of the ditch-digger to the scholar–what better off am I for your learning? And the question, in view of the interdependence of all members of society, is one that cannot be put away as idle. One reason why the scholar does not make the world of the past, the world of books, real to his fellows and serviceable to them, is that it is not real to himself, but a mere unsubstantial place of intellectual idleness, where he dallies some years before he begins his task in life. And another reason is that, while it may be real to him, while he is actually cultured and trained, he fails to see or to feel that his culture is not a thing apart, and that all the world has a right to share its blessed influence. Failing to see this, he is isolated, and, wanting his sympathy, the untutored world mocks at his super-fineness and takes its own rough way to rougher ends. Greek art was for the people, Greek poetry was for the people; Raphael painted his immortal frescoes where throngs could be lifted in thought and feeling by them; Michael Angelo hung the dome over St. Peter’s so that the far-off peasant on the Campagna could see it, and the maiden kneeling by the shrine in the Alban hills. Do we often stop to think what influence, direct or other, the scholar, the man of high culture, has today upon the great mass of our people? Why do they ask, what is the use of your learning and your art?

The artist, in the retirement of his studio, finishes a charming, suggestive, historical picture. The rich man buys it and hangs it in his library, where the privileged few can see it. I do not deny that the average rich man needs all the refining influence the picture can exert on him, and that the picture is doing missionary work in his house; but it is nevertheless an example of an educating influence withdrawn and appropriated to narrow uses. But the engraver comes, and, by his mediating art, transfers it to a thousand sheets, and scatters its sweet influence far abroad. All the world, in its toil, its hunger, its sordidness, pauses a moment to look on it–that gray seacoast, the receding Mayflower, the two young Pilgrims in the foreground regarding it, with tender thoughts of the far home–all the world looks on it perhaps for a moment thoughtfully, perhaps tearfully, and is touched with the sentiment of it, is kindled into a glow of nobleness by the sight of that faith and love and resolute devotion which have tinged our early history with the faint light of romance. So art is no longer the enjoyment of the few, but the help and solace of the many.