Consider these statements as you rethink our reading selections and our presentation. Be sure you understand key definitions: culture,
perfection, sweetness, light, and machinery.
Perfection consists of an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances that is at variance with the mechanical and material civilisation [sic] in esteem with us.
But Greece did not err in having the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection , so present and paramount. It is impossible to have this idea too present and paramount; only, the moral fibre [sic] must be braced too. And we, because we have braced the moral fibre [sic], are not on that account in the right way, if at the same time the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection, is wanting or misapprehended amongst us [. . .] .
Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing good.
[Culture incorporates the intellectual, moral, and social.]
Additional passage related to culture: 1419 (bottom paragraph--middle): "And they have been punished for their failure . . . ."
In Literature and Science, see 1442, 1st full paragraph.
Machinery, 1420, ftnt #6
Faith in machinery, is, I said our besetting danger; often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in machinery, as if it had a value in and for itself. What is freedom but machinery? what is population but machinery? what is coal but machinery? what are railroads but machinery? [. . .] . what are, even, religious organisations [sic] but machinery?