Society is full of provincialism in art, politics, religion, and economics; and the essence of this provincialism is always the same,—­the substitution of a part for the whole.  Larger knowledge of the world and of history would make it perfectly clear that there has always been not only a wide latitude, but great variation, in ritual and worship; that the political story of all the progressive nations has been one long agitation for reforms, and that no reform can ever be final; that reform must succeed reform until the end of time,—­reforms being in their nature neither more nor less than those readjustments to new conditions which are involved in all social development.  A wider survey of experience would make it clear that art has many manners, and that no manner is supreme and none final.

A long experience gives a man poise, balance, and steadiness; he has seen many things come and go, and he is neither paralysed by depression when society goes wrong, nor irrationally elated when it goes right.  He is perfectly aware that his party is only a means to an end, and not a piece of indestructible and infallible machinery; that the creed he accepts has passed through many changes of interpretation, and will pass through more; that the social order for which he contends, if secured, will be only another stage in the unbroken development of the organised life of men in the world.  And culture is, at bottom, only an enlarged and clarified experience,—­an experience so comprehensive that it puts its possessor in touch with all times and men, and gives him the opportunity of comparing his own knowledge of things, his faith and his practice, with the knowledge, faith, and practice of all the generations.  This opportunity brings, to one who knows how to use it, deliverance from the ignorance or half-knowledge of provincialism, from the crudity of its half-trained tastes, and from the blind passion of its rash and groundless faith in its own infallibility.

Provincialism is the soil in which philistinism grows most rapidly and widely.  For as the essence of provincialism is the substitution of a part for the whole, so the essence of philistinism is the conviction that what one possesses is the best of its kind, that the kind is the highest, and that one has all he needs of it.  A true philistine is not only convinced that he holds the only true and consistent position, but he is also entirely satisfied with himself.  He is infallible and he is sufficient unto himself.  In politics he is a blind partisan, in theology an arrogant dogmatist, in art an ignorant propagandist.  What he accepts, believes, or has, is not only the best of its kind, but nothing better can ever supersede it.