That goal, in Goethe’s thought, was the complete development of the individual life through thought, feeling, and action,—­an aim often misunderstood, but which, seen on all sides, is certainly the very highest disclosed to the human spirit.  And the method of attaining this result was the process, also often and widely misunderstood, of culture.  This word carries with it the implication of natural, vital growth, but it has been confused with an artificial, mechanical process, supposed to be practised as a kind of esoteric cult by a small group of people who hold themselves apart from common human experiences and fellowships.  Mr. Symonds, concerning whose representative character as a man of culture there is no difference of opinion, said that he had read with some care the newspaper accounts of his “culture,” and that, so far as he could gather, his newspaper critics held the opinion that culture is a kind of knapsack which a man straps on his back, and in which he places a vast amount of information, gathered, more or less at random, in all parts of the world.  There was, of course, a touch of humour in Mr. Symonds’s description of the newspaper conception of culture; but it is certainly true that culture has been regarded by a great many people either as a kind of intellectual refinement, so highly specialised as to verge on fastidiousness, or as a large accumulation of miscellaneous information.

Now, the process of culture is an unfolding and enrichment of the human spirit by conforming to the laws of its own growth; and the result is a broad, rich, free human life.  Culture is never quantity, it is always quality of knowledge; it is never an extension of ourselves by additions from without, it is always enlargement of ourselves by development from within; it is never something acquired, it is always something possessed; it is never a result of accumulation, it is always a result of growth.  That which characterises the man of culture is not the extent of his information, but the quality of his mind; it is not the mass of things he knows, but the sanity, the ripeness, the soundness of his nature.  A man may have great knowledge and remain uncultivated; a man may have comparatively limited knowledge and be genuinely cultivated.  There have been famous scholars who have remained crude, unripe, inharmonious in their intellectual life, and there have been men of small scholarship who have found all the fruits of culture.  The man of culture is he who has so absorbed what he knows that it is part of himself.  His knowledge has not only enriched specific faculties, it has enriched him; his entire nature has come to ripe and sound maturity.

This personal enrichment is the very highest and finest result of intimacy with books; compared with it the instruction, information, refreshment, and entertainment which books afford are of secondary importance.  The great service they render us—­the greatest service that can be rendered us—­is the enlargement, enrichment, and unfolding of ourselves; they nourish and develop that mysterious personality which lies behind all thought, feeling, and action; that central force within us which feeds the specific activities through which we give out ourselves to the world, and, in giving, find and recover ourselves.