THE PHILISTINE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3808, 8 March 1927, Page 74

THE PHILISTINE.

The word is often thrown at me, but I have only the vaguest idea of its exact meaning (says a writer in John o’ London’s Weekly). In a general way, I suppose, it is a term of reproach/ a label used for the common sort of chap who is not as intellectual as the other fellow. So much I, a mere business man, am made to understand when I jar the finer sensibilities . of the literary celestials. They make it plain in their looks, if not in words, that I am to be pitied. * * * What is culture, anyway? What sort of educational equipment must one have to be within, the pale? Why are some of us frozen} mute as a fish wKen the pundits arc abroad, or why do we slink .from their presence like pariah dogs? I am asking the question in the hope of receiving a satisfactory answer from somebody. What I want to get at is this: Is the culture, of the literary or academical fraternity worthy of more respect than the native wisdom of the solid, shrewd, self-taught business- man—the despised and rejected of the pundits? The man who lays no claim to be “educated’’ in the academic sense—without rhetoric, without a divine flow of language, without technique of expression, as he usually is—is such a one an inferior animal? * * « If a person has no classical education, is without scholastic attainments, if he is note widely read, if he cannot be classed as “intellectual,” is he a Philistine? What really is a Philistine? Is “Education” the index of a man’s mental powers? As a business man, I say it is not.- The brain power and mental activity of the “uneducated,” successful man of business, speaking generally, is equal to that shown by men occupied in academical pursuits, or in the professions. From the very nature of his work he has been led to cultivate close intercourse with his fellowmen, to practise keen observation, -to develop imagination, to draw conclusions, and all his mental activities are personal to himself. If he does not dream the droums of philosophers, of poets and artists, he may have come as near to fundamental cosmic realities as anyone of them. That his spiritual being is submerged in his money bags is a libel. * * * —• The majority of successful business men, although possessing highlyorganised brains, would not in the academic sense, be termed ‘educated” by their scholastic friends. But the business man can claim his store of ‘‘worldly” knowledge—a clear brain, mental activity, and abounding commori sense. His school has been intercourse with his fellowmen; his wits pitted

against theirs; he has no slavish dependence on books; he has experienced the truth of a saying of the -Tate Professor John Stuart Blackie (perhaps wearied of book-learning) :— The original and proper sources of knowledge are not books, but life, experience, personal thinking, feeling, and acting. . . Books are no doubt very useful helps to knowledge, and in some measure also to the practice of useful arts and accomplishments, but they are not," in any case, the primary and rational sources of culture, and in my opinion their virtue is not a little ant to be overrated, even in those branches of acquirements where they seem most indispensable. They are not creative powers in any sense; they are merely helps, instruments, tools, and even as tools they are only artificial tools, superadded to those with which the wise provision of Nature has equipped us. The business man experiences a life of intense vitality, and if anyone is in touch with “the original and proper sources of knowledge” it is he. * * * Life is a blend of thought and action; the life of the business man is that. So much cannot be said of any other class of men whatever. The atmosphere of the business world is distasteful to the literary and artistic mind, just because the study develops a forced hot-house type of mind. The bookish-educated man is self-centred and conceited, slavishly reliant on other minds, and hence we nave the damned reiteration” of presentday writers, repeating things over and over that others have said, and said better, before them. These sentiments reveal £he cloven hoof’ no doubt. Nevertheless, I maintain that, in the main, the average business man is a pretty good judge of books, as well as of men., He is rarely of courae, saturated with the atmosphere of things artistic. Before a person ean appreciate to the full art, music, and literature, he must have the root of trie matter in him. That I understand. 1 know that without that he will never fully . enjoy or appreciate what the superior person holds in highest estima? tion, nor experience the spiritual exaltations, or the sensuous emotions that stir the artistic soul of the celestials. But do these things connote a cultured mindlu enjoy poetry is no more than to eniov a good dinner. 1 - • J *

at* * * n ™ 1 a Philistine if I confess that Dante and Milton and Wordsworth make no appeal to me? I have no use for Keats, Shelley, and rowning (one or two obvious poems excepted) and I have consigned also to Jones s Locker” Meredith and Conrad, where they keep company with a lot of other unreadables. I have not that Kruschen feeling when I read Kipliimhe sends me to sleep; and (much as°l dislike the condiment) I would rather join the Mustard Club than spend an evening to re-read a line of any poet of to-day. ’ 1 * * * I like to read Tennyson at Christmastime, and Matthew Arnold’s poems find some wistful response in my spiritual being. I know nearly the whole of old Omar off by heart. I cannot enthuse over H. G. Wells; of Arnold z ßennett’s books there is not one I should ever think worth reading a second time. Can a Philistine say anything more damning? I would add this. I havespent many soul-satisfying hours with Emerson and Charles ‘ Lamb; to me George Borrow, and Richard Jefferies’s Story of My Heart ” are a great jov. So is “ The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and if I were condemned to a desert island. I would wish nothing better than to have all that Thomas Hardy ever wrote. I like Bernard Shaw. In some respects he is the modern Thomas Carlyle. Galsworthy is great, and J. M. Barrie a perennial delight. I can read and reread Dickens and Thackeray. I prefer Froude to Macaulay, and ‘ Plutarch I turn to more than to either. * * * These are finger-posts. Am I Philistine? Is there any standard of taste or of book .knowledge that settles the question? Did not one great writer say that there were not 20 volumes he had any desire to read oftener than once? Are we supposed to read to enlarge our vision of the universe? If so, I know few books that accomplish that end. Five days in the city and a weekend in the country, with God’s free air and the munificence of Nature, is of worth untold, compared with the whole of the London Library.