Journals Reading

INTRODUCTION

IN the last decades of the eighteenth century., and in the

first half of the nineteenth century, a number of words, which are now of capital importance, came for the first

time into common English use, or, where they had already been generally used in the language, acquired new and

important meanings. There is in fact a general pattern of

change in these words, and this can be used as a special

kind of map by which it is possible to look again at those

wider changes in life and thought to which the changes in

language evidently refer.

Five words are the key points from which this map can

be drawn. They are industry, democracy, class, art and

culture. The importance of these words, in our modern structure of meanings, is obvious. The changes in their use,

at this critical period, bear witness to a general change in

our characteristic ways of thinking about our common life:

about our social, political and economic institutions; about

the purposes which these institutions are designed to em body; and about the relations to these institutions and pur

poses of our activities in learning, education and the arts.

The first important word is industry, and the period in

which its use changes is the period which we now cal the

Industrial Revolution. Industry, before this period, was a

name for a particular human attribute, which could be

paraphrased as 'skill, assiduity, perseverance, diligence*.

This use of industry of course survives. But, in the last

decades of the eighteenth century, industry came also to

mean something else; it became a collective word for our

manufacturing and productive institutions, and for their

general activities. Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations

(3,776), is one of the first writers to use the word in this

way, and from his time the development of this use is as

sured. Industry, with a capital letter, is thought of as a

thing in itself an institution, a body of activities rather

than simply a human attribute. Industrious, which de-

Xll INTRODUCTION

scribed persons, is joined, in the nineteenth century, by in-

dustfialy which describes the institutions. The rapid growth in importance of these institutions is seen as creating a new system, which in the 18303 is first called Industrialism. In

part, this is the acknowledgement of a series of very im portant technical changes, and of their transforming effect

on methods of production. It is also, however, an acknowl

edgement of the effect of these changes on society as a

whole, which is similarly transformed. The phrase Indus trial Revolution amply confirms this, for the phrase, first

used by French writers in the 18203, and gradually

adopted, in the course of the century, by English writers,

is modeled explicitly on an analogy with the French Revo lution of 1789. As that had transformed France, so this has

transformed England; the means of change are different,

but the change is comparable in kind: it has produced, by a pattern of change, a new society.

The second important word is democracy, which had been known, from the Greek, as a term for 'government by the people', but which only came into common English use at the time of the American and French Revolutions.

WeeHey, in Words Ancient and Modern, writes:

It was not until the French Revolution tihat democracy ceased to be a mere literary word, and became part of

the political vocabulary. 1

In this he is substantially right. Certainly, it is in reference

to America and France that the examples begin to multiply, at the end of the eighteenth century, and it is worth noting that the great majority of these examples show the word being used unfavourably: in close relation with the hated

Jacobinism, or with the familiar mob-rule. England may have been (the word has so many modern definitions) a

democracy since Magna Carta, or since the Common wealth, or since 1688, but it certainly did not call itself one.

Democrats, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, were seen, commonly, as dan

gerous and subversive mob agitators. Just as industry and its derived words record what we now call the Industrial

Revolution, so democracy and democrat, in their entry into

INTBODUGTION xiil

ordinary speech, record the effects, in England, of the American and French Revolutions, and a crucial phase of the straggle, at home, for what we would now call demo cratic representation.

Industry, to indicate an institution, begins in about 1776; democracy, as a practical word, can be dated from about the same time. The third word, class, can be dated, in its

most important modern sense, from about 1772. Before this, the ordinary use of class, in English, was to refer to a divi

sion or group in schools and colleges: 'the usual Classes in

Logick and Philosophy*, It is only at the end of the eight eenth century that the modern structure of elms, in its social

sense, begins to be built up. First comes lower classes, to

join lower orders, which appears earlier in the eighteenth

century. Then, in the 17903, we get higher dosses; middle classes and middling classes follow at once; working classes

in about 1815; upper classes in tihe i8aos. Class prejudice, class legislation, class consciousness, class conflict and class

war follow in the course of the nineteenth century. The upper middle classes are first heard of in the 18908; the lower middle class in our own century.

It is obvious, of course, that this spectacular history of

tibe new use of class does not indicate the beginning of social

divisions in England. But it indicates, quite clearly, a

change in tibe character of these divisions, and it records,

equally clearly, a change in attitudes towards them. Class

is a more indefinite word than rank, and this was probably one of the reasons for its introduction. The structure then built on it is in nineteenth-century terms: in terms, that is

to say, of the changed social structure, and the changed social feelings, of an England which was passing through the Industrial Revolution, and which was at a crucial phase in the development of political democracy. The fourth word, art, is remarkably similar, in its pattern

of change, to industry. From its original sense of a human attribute, a 'skill', it had come, by the period with, which we are concerned, to be a Mnd of institution, a set body of

activities of a certain kind. An art had formerly been any human skill; but Art, now, signified a particular group of

skills, th 'imaginative* or 'creative* arts. Artist had meant

XIV INTRODUCTION

a skilled person, as had artisan; but artist now referred to

these selected skills alone. Further, and most significantly, Art came to stand for a special kind of truth, 'imaginative truth*, and artist for a special kind of person, as the words artistic and artistical, to describe human beings, new in the

18403, show. A new name, aesthetics, was found to describe

the judgement of art, and this, in its turn, produced a name for a special kind of person aesthete. The arts literature,

music, painting, sculpture, theatre were grouped together, in this new phrase, as having something essentially in com mon which distinguished them from other human skills.

The same separation as had grown up between artist and artisan grew up between artist and craftsman. Genius, from

meaning 'a characteristic disposition', came to mean 'exalted

ability', and a distinction was made between it and talent.

As art had produced artist in the new sense, and aesthetics

aesthete, so this produced a genius, to indicate a special land of person. These changes, which belong in time to the

period of the other changes discussed, form a record of a remarkable change in ideas of the nature and purpose of

art, and of its relations to other human activities and to

society as a whole.

The fifth, word, culture, similarly changes, in the same critical period. Before this period, it had meant, primarily, the 'tending of natural growth', and then, by analogy, a

process of human training. But this latter use, which had usually been a culture of something, was changed, in the

nineteenth century, to culture as such, a thing in itself. It

came to mean, first, 'a general state or habit of the mind',

having close relations with the idea of human perfection.

Second, it came to mean 'the general state of intellectual

development, in a society as a whole'. Third, it came to

mean 'the general body of the arts'. Fourth, later in the

century, it came to mean *a whole way of life, material, intellectual and spiritual'. It came also, as we know, to

be a word which often provoked either hostility or em barrassment.

The development of culture is perhaps the most striking

among all the words named. It might be said, indeed, that

the questions now concentrated in the meanings of the word

INTRODUCTION XV

culture are questions directly raised by the great historical

changes which the changes in industry, democracy and class, m their own way, represent, and to which the changes in art are a closely related response. The development of

the word culture is a record of a number of important and continuing reactions to these changes in our social, eco

nomic and political life, and may be seen, in itself, as a

special kind of map by means of which the nature of the

changes can be explored. I have stated, briefly, the fact of the changes in these

important words. As a background to them I must also

draw attention to a number of other words which are either

new, or acquired new meanings, in this decisive period.

Among the new words, for example, there are ideology,

intellectual, rationalism, scientist, humanitarian, utilitarian,

romanticism, atomistic; bureaucracy, capitalism, collectiv

ism, commercialism, communism, doctrinaire, equalitarian,

liberalism, masses, mediaeval and mediaevalism, operative

(noun), primitivism, proletariat (a new word for *mob'),

socialism, unemployment; cranks, highbrow, isms and pre tentious. Among words which then acquired their .now

normal modern meanings are business ( = trade) , common ( = vulgar) , earnest (derisive) , Education and educational,

getting-on, handmade, idealist ( = visionary) , Progress,

rank-and-file (other than military), reformer and reform

ism, revolutionary and revolutionize, salary (as opposed to

'wages') , Science ( = natural and physical sciences) , specu lator (financial), solidarity, strike and suburban (as a de

scription of attitudes) . The field which these changes cover

is again a field of general change, introducing many ele

ments which we now point to as distinctively modern in

situation and feeling. It is the relations within this general

pattern of change which it will be my particular task to

describe.

The word which more than any other comprises these

relations is culture, with all its complexity of idea and ref

erence. My over-all purpose in the book is to describe and

analyse this complex, and to give an account of its historical

formation. Because of its very range of reference, it is nec

essary, however, to set the enquiry from the beginning on a

XVi INTRODUCTION

wide basis. I had originally intended to keep very closely to

culture itself, but, the more closely I examined it, the more

widely my terms of reference had to be set. For what I see

in the history of this word, in its structure of meanings, is a

wide and general movement in thought and feeling. I shall

hope to show this movement in detail. In summary, I wish to show the emergence of culture as an abstraction and an absolute: an emergence which, in a very complex way, merges two general responses first, the recognition of the

practical separation of certain moral and intellectual activi

ties from the driven impetus of a new kind of society; sec

ond, the emphasis of these activities, as a court of human appeal, to be set over the processes of practical social judge ment and yet to offer itself as a mitigating and rallying

alternative. But, in both these senses, culture was not a

response to the new methods of production, the new In-

dustvy, alone. It was concerned, beyond these, with the

new kinds of personal and social relationship: again, both as a recognition of practical separation and as an emphasis of alternatives. The idea of culture would be simpler if it

had been a response to industrialism alone, but it was also,

quite evidently, a response to the new political and social

developments, to Democracy. Again, in relation to this, it

is a complex and radical response to the new problems of

social class. Further, while these responses define bearings, in a given external area that was surveyed, there is also, in

the formation of the meanings of culture, an evident refer

ence back to an area of personal and apparently private

experience, which was notably to affect the meaning and

practice of art. These are the first stages of the formulation

of the idea of culture, but its historical development is at

least as important. For the recognition of a separate body of moral and intellectual activities, and the offering of a

court of human appeal, which comprise the early meanings of the word, are joined, and in themselves changed, by the

growing assertion of a whole way of life, not only as a scale

of integrity, but as a mode of interpreting all our common experience, and, in this new interpretation, changing it.

Where culture meant a state or habit of the mind, or the

body of intellectual and moral activities, it means now, also,

INTRODUCTION

a whole way of life. This development, like each of the

original meanings and the relations between them, is not

accidental, but general and deeply significant.

My terms of reference then are not only to distinguish the meanings, but to relate them to their sources and effects.

I shall try to do this by examining, not a series of abstracted

problems, but a series of statements by individuals. It is not

only that, by temperament and training, I find more mean ing in this kind of personally verified statement than in a

system of significant abstractions. It is also that, in a theme of this kind, I feel myself committed to the study of actual

language: that is to say, to the words and sequences of

words which particular men and women have used in try

ing to give meaning to their experience. It is true that I

shall be particularly interested in the general developments of meaning in language, and these, always, are more than

personal. But, as a method of enquiry, I have not chosen

to list certain topics, and to assemble summaries of par ticular statements on them. I have, rather, with only oc

casional exceptions, concentrated on particular thinkers and their actual statements, and tried to understand and value

them. The framework of the enquiry is general, but the

method, in detail, is the study of actual individual state

ments and contributions.

In my First Part, I consider a number of nineteenth-

century thinkers, of whom many if not all will be familiar to

the informed reader, but whose relations, and even whose individual meanings, may be seen from this standpoint in a

somewhat different light. I consider next, and more briefly,

certain writers at the turn of the nineteenth into the twen tieth century, who form, as I see them, a particular kind of

interregnum. Then, in my Third Part, I consider some writers and thinkers of our own century, in an attempt to

make the structure of meanings, and the common language in these matters, fully contemporary. Finally, in my Con clusion, I offer my own statement on an aspect of this com mon experience: not indeed as a verdict on the tradition,

but as an attempt to extend it in the direction of certain

meanings and values.

The area of experience to which the book refers has

XViii INTRODUCTION

produced its own difficulties in terms o method. These,

however, will be better appreciated, and judged, in the

actual course of the enquiry. I ought perhaps to say that I

expect the book to be controversial: not that I have written

it for the sake of controversy as such, but because any such

enquiry involves the discussion and the proposition of val

ues, which are quite properly the subject of difference, and which affect even what we are in the habit of calling the

known facts. I shall, at any rate, be glad to be answered, in

whatever terms, for I am enquiring into our common lan

guage, on matters of common interest, and when we con

sider how matters now stand, our continuing interest and

language could hardly be too lively.