WORK AND CULTURE

Evening Star, Issue 23130, 2 December 1938, Page 11

WORK AND CULTURE

DISTINCTION IN ART MR ERIC GILL’S VIEWS Mr Eric Gill, A.R.A., R.D.1., delivered a lecture on ‘ Work and Culture ’ before the members of the Royal Society of Arts, a full report of which appears in the journal of the society, says ‘ Public Opinion.’ We quote from the first section of the lecture, which is of an unusual character, for Mr Eric Gill has a style of his own, but from the discussion which followed it was evident that Mr Gill deeply impressed his select audience. Mr Gill said: — “ What is this thing called ‘ Culture?’ Culture is the training and discipline by which man’s moral and intellectual nature is refined and enlightened. (Annandale.) Culture is the product of Culture pertains to people and things. You cannot have cultivation as an abstraction. You must have some thing or some person who is cultivated. “ But people and things differ in their natures; they differ both as objects of observation and as objects of speculation or teleology. “ They are not only different in shapes and sizes; they are different in their ends or. purposes. In the one sense it is ‘ natural ’ for pigs to eat acorns. In the other sense, it is ‘ natural ’ for acorns to become oaks. It is the latter sense with which we are concerned when we deal with culture. “ The culture of human beings is their cultivation according to their nature —i.e., their purpose, both immediate and ultimate. THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT. “There is, therefore, no cultivation of men in general except religious cultivation. Religious cultivation is the cultivation of the whole race of men with a view to eternal beatitude or temporal happiness. “It is assumed that such beatitude and happiness is most in accord with human nature (for if you refuse to believe in eternal bliss, perhaps _ you simply hold that man’s nature is to win a Kingdom of Heaven on earth—that is in this temporal life. In either case it is a religious cultivation). “ Religious cultivation is the root and ground of all others, and all _ others must, obviously, be in accord with it. “ But although mankind in general must be cultivated in accordance with man’s last end—the ultimate purpose of his existence, whatever that may be —men in particular must bg cultivated in accordance with particular ends. Thus the culture of a peasantry is different from that of a factory town. “ The culture of a class of persons living on dividends is different from that of people ivho earn their livings. “ And to come down to individuals, the culture of a blacksmith is different from that of a clerk. And the culture of a farm labourer is different from that of a banker. ACCORDING TO NATURE. “ For culture is cultivation according to nature. “ It is the quality of being cultivated according to the character of your particular purpose—religious in relation to your 1 last end,’ secular in_ relation to your means of earning a living. “ But the secular is absorbed into the religious; inasmuch as the business of living has for its purpose the training of persons for the end envisaged by religion. It is desirable therefore to see all things ‘ sub specie aeternitatis ’ —that is to say, to see all things in God.

“ For this very reason each man and each class or calling of men, peasants, craftsmen, merchants, teachers, lawyers, doctors, and entertainers, must each and all severally and collectively, find in their particular manner of living the special means of earning beatitude.

“ Culture then, and, as regards this lecture—-that, is to say, the cultivation of men, means the quality of men who are trained, cultivated according to their common end of attaining eternal beatitude: but as all men differ from one another, and therefore live and earn their livings in different manners, the qualities and kind of culture will differ. THE THREE WISE MEN. “ The three wise men, according to the story, all arrived at Bethlehem; but they all brought different gifts. “ And so we in modern England all hope for happiness, all hope for beatitude—that is to say, some kind of ultimate satisfaction, and that is to say, whether we say it or not, some kind of ultimate union; but we travel by many different roads, and therefore develop many different qualities and kinds of culture. “ Such is the nature of culture as I understand it. It is not something added like sugar on a pill. It is the quality *of being cultivated according to your way and purpose of living. “ A peasant culture is the product of peasants cultivated according to the nature of peasant life. A town culture is the product of townsmen cultivated according to the nature of town life. There is no such thing as culture apart from purpose. AndTiuman culture is the product of townsmen cultia living. “To examine this it is to probe human work in its historical setting. “ It is obvious that human labour is primarilv the business of manipulating natural materials in order to make them serviceable to man. That is the root and ground of all labour. And that is the root and ground of all property. WORKS BOTH WAYS. “ And it works both ways—what you own, you can freely manipulate according to your needs; and what you have manipulated you have made your own—you have, so to say, extended your personality to it. (If you cut a stick from the bush and make it into a walking stick you have made that piece of bush your own because you have added it to your personality as you have added your personality to it—it has become part of you. “ In its nature, then, human labour is the business of making what is needed —and the need is man’s. Therefore all human labour must or should be directed in accordance with the nature of man—for otherwise it will be inhuman or sub-human. “ In primitive societies—i.e., societies in which human labour is all done by human beings using their own muscular and intellectual power, assisted by tools and also perhaps by draught animals, but unassisted by mechanical power except such simple contrivances as wind and water mills—in primitive societies there is'very little division or subdivision of labour. “ If a man makes anything he generally makes the whole of that thing, and he generally designs what he makes. There is no separation between maker and designer, just as there is no separation between the maker or one part of a thing and the maker ot another part. . . “ There is, therefore, in primitive societies a full human responsibility in the workman, and as the ultimate definition of the word ‘ artist ’ is that ‘ the artist is simply the responsible workman,’ it is true to say that m primitive societies * the artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist ’ (Ananda Coomaraswamy). IT MEANS HUMAN SKILL. “ Art simply means skill, human skill. Therefore, it is the skill of rational beings—rational, that is _ to say, using deliberation and choice, therefore responsible skill. Hence the artist is the responsible workman, and there is no such thing as art apart from the thing to which the skill is applied—just as there is no such thing as culture apart from the person or thing cultivated. ... “ The idea that the distinction between art and fine art is that art is skill applied to the making of useful tilings and fine art is skill applied to the making of things of beauty is dearly unreasonable—because there is no reason why useful things should not be beautiful, ami there is no reason to suppose that beautiful things have no use. Are tables and chairs and houses

and pottery necessarily ugly ? Are portraits and statues and church paintings and wall decorations necessarily useless P

“ And the idea that the beauty of useful things is accidental, whereas in the fine arts it is the usefulness that is accidental is equally unreasonable, for you cannot have beauty by itself, any more than you can have art or culture by themselves. Beauty is a quality of things. • “ Beautiful things are those which please when seen (using the word ‘ seen ’ in both a wide and narrow sense), and nothing can be pleasing except that which is as it ought to be. “The beautiful thing, therefore, is the thing which we recognise as being as it should be—whether drain pipe or musical tune—and to make a thing as it should be by accident is absurd.”