GopherProxy

NOTE: > 200 lines of crap removed for gopher...

The Art of Self-Culture and the Crucial Difference Between Being Educated and
Being Cultured: John Cowper Powys’s Forgotten Wisdom from 1929

“The art of self-culture begins with a deeper awareness … of the marvel of
our being alive at all; alive in a world as startling and mysterious, as
lovely and horrible, as the one we live in.”

By Maria Popova

[99]The Art of Self-Culture and the Crucial Difference Between Being
Educated and Being Cultured: John Cowper Powys’s Forgotten Wisdom from
1929

“In order to be cultured and not to stand below the level of your
surroundings it is not enough to have read ‘The Pickwick Papers’ and
learnt a monologue from ‘Faust,’ Anton Chekhov wrote in an 1886 letter
to his brother, outlining [100]the eight qualities of cultured people —
among them sincerity, “no shallow vanity,” and a compassionate heart
that “aches for what the eye does not see.” This essential difference
between being educated and being cultured is what the great British
novelist, philosopher, literary critic, educator, and poet John Cowper
Powys (October 8, 1872–June 17, 1963) examined in greater dimension a
generation later in the 1929 masterwork [101]The Meaning of Culture
([102]public library) — one of the most thoughtful and beautifully
written books I’ve ever encountered.

Powys begins with the tenet that “culture is what is left over after
you have forgotten all you have definitely set out to learn” and sets
out to examine what, exactly, is left over — which is often too
surprising and subtle, too aglow with inarticulable radiances, to fit
into our intellectual templates of understanding.

[103]johncowperpowys

He writes:

Whenever I am lost in admiration for a man or a woman, as fulfilling
my ideal of what a human being should be, it is rarely that such a
person fits precisely into the formula whose qualities I have
defined so patiently as bearing the hallmarks of culture.

[…]

Whatever it may be, it is clear that it appeals to elements in us
which are deeper-rooted and more widely human than any trained
aesthetic taste or any industriously acquired scholarship.

[…]

I am sometimes tempted to regard the truest culture as the
compensation of the unsuccessful, something that … can remain with
us when all else is taken away.

Such a conception of culture, Powys points out, is something entirely
different from a good education or a cultivated aesthetic taste. In a
sentiment triply timely today, as we [104]struggle to glean wisdom in
the age of information, he considers that crucial difference:

The truth is that as education is only real education when it is a
key to something beyond itself, so culture is only real culture when
it has diffused itself into the very root and fibre of our endurance
of life. Culture becomes in this way something more than culture. It
becomes wisdom; a wisdom that can accept defeat, a wisdom that can
turn defeat into victory.

And it can render us independent of our weakness, of our
surroundings, of our age. It is at once an individual thing, a
fortress for the self within the self, and a universal thing, a
breaking down of the barriers of race, of class, of nation.

[105]Art from The Three Astronauts, Umberto Eco's vintage semiotic
children's book about cross-cultural tolerance Art from [106]The Three
Astronauts, Umberto Eco’s vintage semiotic children’s book about
cross-cultural tolerance

This kind of culture, Powys asserts, ought to be pushed “down and in,
till it is blood of our blood and bone of our bone,” so that it can
inform our morale and permeate what we call character. Without such
osmotic synthesis, he cautions, what passes for culture is a falsehood
devoid of humanity:

The reason why that super-refined aesthete, Mr. Osborne, the villain
in Henry James’s “Portrait of a Lady,” is so repulsive a figure, is
that his culture has remained purely intellectual and aesthetic. It
has neither fortified his stoicism, nor subtilized his human
sympathy. Culture without natural human goodness has an extremely
disconcerting effect. There is something weird and terrifying about
it.

Echoing the metaphor that [107]a seventeenth-century gardener coined
for human nature, Powys considers how we cultivate such authentic
culturedness within ourselves:

Just as rustic mother-wit has a charm and a dignity that education
too often spoils, so the whole problem of Culture is really the
familiar problem of Horticulture. It is in fact the problem of how
to graft the subtle and the exquisite upon the deep and the vital.
For, by this grafting alone can the sap of the natural give life and
strength to the unusual, and the roots of the rugged sweeten the
distinguished and rare.

[108]Illustration by Ralph Steadman for a rare edition of Ray
Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 Illustration by Ralph Steadman for [109]a
rare edition of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

Long before Alain de Botton’s [110]terrific definition of philosophy’s
role in our everyday lives, Powys argues that this grafting is the true
task of philosophy and the central preoccupation of what was once
called metaphysics:

The long personal pilgrimage of culture begins with the formulation
of one’s own philosophy… In considering those obscure motions of the
mind, wherein our individual consciousness, ceasing to be content
with blind responses to its environment, begins to look before and
after, it is important to remember that behind all the great
controversial names, such as “will,” “behaviour,” “soul,” “First
Cause,” “the One, the Many,” “universe,” “multiverse,” “good and
evil,” “substance,” “essence,” “immortality,” there lies some actual
feeling or sensation or experience; which, under a quite different
name, or perhaps under no name at all, must still exist, when the
logical fashion of the hour, refusing to use such traditional
expressions, has moved on and away.

But to harness that experience fully and properly, Powys notes, we must
learn to culture ourselves:

The art of self-culture begins with a deeper awareness, borne in
upon us either by some sharp emotional shock or little by little
like an insidious rarefied air, of the marvel of our being alive at
all; alive in a world as startling and mysterious, as lovely and
horrible, as the one we live in.

And yet marvel alone, Powys cautions, is not enough — or at least not
something that passively befalls us. Rather, the seedbed of
self-culture lies in a deliberate and habitual orientation toward
wisdom:

Self-culture without some kind of integrated habitual manner of
thinking is apt to fail us just when it is wanted most. To be a
cultured person is to be a person with some kind of original
philosophy… This implies a desire to focus such imaginative reason
as we possess upon the mystery of life. The subtle and imperceptible
stages, however, by which this will to think condenses and hardens
into a will to live according to one’s thought are not always easy
to articulate.

Powys’s most salient point — and the point most urgent amid our culture
of instant opinions — is that the personal philosophy of the cultured
person is not a hodgepodge of impressions and reactions assembled
around an ego but a reflective and considered tapestry of
understanding:

Our innermost self, as we grow more and more conscious of it,
surprises us again and again by new explosions of feeling drawn from
emotional, nervous, and even chemical reactions; but for all its
surreptitious dependence on these impulses, its inner report upon
its own nature is that it is a clear, hard, enclosed, secretive
nucleus with a detached and independent existence of its own. Our
reliance upon this introspective report may easily be shaken by
logical argument; but it is not often that any argument, however
plausible, disposes of the feeling of this interior identity, of the
feeling of this integral “I am I,” underlying the stream of our
impressions. The truth is that every man and every woman has,
consciously or unconsciously, some sort of patched-up,
thrown-together philosophy of life, a concretion of accumulated
reactions gathered round this nucleus of personality. What, however,
denotes the cultured person is the conscious banking up of this
philosophy of his own, its protection from disintegrating elements,
the guiding of its channel-bed through jungles of brutality and
stupidity.

In a sentiment that Tom Wolfe would come to echo eight decades later in
his [111]magnificent admonition against the rise of the
pseudo-intellectual, Powys draws the vital distinction between an
educated person and a cultured person:

The more culture a man has, the more austerely — though naturally
with many ironic reserves — does he abide by his own taste.

[…]

An educated person can glibly describe what he wishes you to regard
as his last ready-made philosophy. A cultured person often finds it
very difficult to explain what his philosophy is; but when he does
manage to articulate it you feel that this is what he has secretly
and profoundly lived by for many a long year. For in a cultured
person’s life intellectual snobbishness has ceased to exist. He is
not interested in the question whether his attitude is
“intellectual” according to the current fashion or not.

[112]Illustration from Mr. Tweed's Good Deeds by Jim Stoten
Illustration from [113]Mr. Tweed’s Good Deeds by Jim Stoten

The distinction Powys makes is essentially that between artifice and
authenticity. The latter necessitates that we do something inherently
difficult and increasingly rare today — cultivate a capacity for nuance
and duality and master [114]the art of living with opposing truths.
Powys writes:

Real culture has almost always a certain tendency to combine
infinite subtlety with a kind of childish naïveté… What a perpetual
stumbling-block, for instance, is the cultured person’s innate
predilection for combining extreme opposites in his thought and his
taste! His philosophical opinions will be found as a rule, judged by
the standards of the merely educated, to be at once startlingly
revolutionary and startlingly reactionary… One always feels that a
merely educated man holds his philosophical views as if they were so
many pennies in his pocket. They are separate from his life. Whereas
with a cultured man there is no gap or lacuna between his opinions
and his life. Both are dominated by the same organic, inevitable
fatality. They are what he is.

Living out of one’s essence, and continually clarifying that essence
through the daily act of living itself, is what Powys sees as both the
measure of philosophy and the mark of the cultured person:

To philosophize with the real wisdom of the serpent and the real
harmlessness of the dove it is not necessary to exhaust one’s brain
upon riddles which are likely enough eternally insoluble. What is
necessary, is to experiment with ordinary life; to adjust one’s
appreciative and analytical powers to all the natural human
sensations which are evoked by the recurrences of the seasons, by
birth and death, by good and evil, by all those little diurnal
happenings which make up our life upon earth… To isolate them, as
they form and re-form in the calm-flowing stream of the deeper
reality, to contemplate them, to assimilate them, as they pass, this
is the true philosophical art.

[…]

A cultured man is not one who turns from a disorganized feverish day
to a nightly orgy with Hegel and Bergson. He is rather one for whom
the diurnal magic-mirror, whether its fleeting images catch the sun
or sink into shadow, offers a vision of the world that becomes
steadily more and more his own. To philosophize is not to read
philosophy; it is to feel philosophy… None can call himself a
philosopher whose own days are not made more intense and dramatic by
his philosophizing.

[115]John Cowper Powys by Gertrude Mary Powys (1944) John Cowper Powys
by Gertrude Mary Powys (1944)

Out of this feeling philosophy, Powys argues, springs forth what
Nathaniel Hawthorn memorably termed (and Oliver Sacks [116]memorably
echoed) “an intercourse with the world” — the dynamic interaction that
comes to define our lived, living experience:

This life in itself is not passively reflected, but is something
that has been half-created, as well as half-discovered, by the
creative mind.

[…]

In the lovely-ghastly world … we are all of us half-creating and
half-discovering.

In the remainder of the wholly rewarding [117]The Meaning of Culture,
Powys goes on to explore this symbiosis of creation and discovery by
examining culture’s dialogue with literature, nature, art, happiness,
and love. Complement it with Bertrand Russell, a compatriot and
contemporary of Powys’s, on [118]what “the good life” really means and
Simone Weil on [119]how to be a complete human being.

Many thanks to [120]Tim O’Reilly for pointing me to this vintage gem.

donating = loving

Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time,
thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free
(and ad-free) and is made possible by patronage. It takes me hundreds
of hours a month to research and compose, and thousands of dollars to
sustain. If you find any joy and solace in this labor of love, please
consider becoming a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation
of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good lunch. Your support
really matters.

Monthly donation

♥ $3 / month

♥ $5 / month

♥ $7 / month

♥ $10 / month

♥ $25 / month

[121]START NOW

One-time donation

You can also become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in
any amount:

[122]GIVE NOW

Sunday newsletter

Brain Pickings has a free Sunday digest of the week's most interesting
and inspiring articles across art, science, philosophy, creativity,
children's books, and other strands of our search for truth, beauty,
and meaning. Here's an [123]example. Like? Claim yours:
____________________
____________________
____________________
Subscribe

midweek newsletter

Also: Because Brain Pickings is in its twelfth year and because I write
primarily about ideas of a timeless character, I have decided to plunge
into my vast archive every Wednesday and choose from the thousands of
essays one worth resurfacing and resavoring. Subscribe to this free
midweek pick-me-up for heart, mind, and spirit below — it is separate
from the standard Sunday digest of new pieces:
____________________
____________________
____________________
Subscribe

—
Published November 25, 2015
—
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/25/the-meaning-of-culture-powys/
—
BP

www.brainpickings.org

BP

[124]PRINT ARTICLE

[125]EMAIL ARTICLE

Share Article

* [126]Tweet
*
* [127]Pocket
*

Filed Under

[128]books[129]culture[130]John Cowper Powys[131]out of print[132]philosophy

View Full Site

Brain Pickings participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates
Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means
for sites to earn commissions by linking to Amazon. In more human
terms, this means that whenever you buy a book on [133]Amazon from a
link on here, I receive a small percentage of its price. [134]Privacy
policy.

References

Visible links
1. http://feedproxy.google.com/brainpickings/rss
2. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/25/richard-hamblyn-clouds-ted-ed/
3. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/28/dark-matter-and-the-dinosaurs-lisa-randall/
4. https://www.brainpickings.org/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url=https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/25/the-meaning-of-culture-powys/
5. https://www.brainpickings.org/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url=https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/25/the-meaning-of-culture-powys/&format=xml
6. https://www.brainpickings.org/
7. https://www.brainpickings.org/about/
8. https://www.brainpickings.org/contact/
9. https://www.brainpickings.org/donate/
10. https://www.brainpickings.org/newsletter/
11. https://www.brainpickings.org/
12. https://www.brainpickings.org/
13. https://www.brainpickings.org/donate/
14. https://www.brainpickings.org/donate/
15. https://www.brainpickings.org/donate/
16. https://www.brainpickings.org/cancel-recurring-donation/
17. https://www.brainpickings.org/surprise/
18. http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=de29ba37e7&e=b2dbad0745
19. https://www.brainpickings.org/about/
20. https://www.brainpickings.org/contact/
21. https://www.brainpickings.org/donate/
22. https://www.brainpickings.org/newsletter/
23. http://feedproxy.google.com/brainpickings/rss
24. https://www.facebook.com/brainpickings.mariapopova
25. https://twitter.com/brainpicker
26. https://instagram.com/brainpicker/
27. http://explore.brainpickings.org/
28. http://art.brainpickings.org/
29. http://bookpickings.brainpickings.org/
30. https://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/
31. http://explore.brainpickings.org/
32. https://www.brainpickings.org/figuring/
33. https://www.brainpickings.org/figuring/
34. https://www.brainpickings.org/a-velocity-of-being/
35. https://www.brainpickings.org/a-velocity-of-being/
36. https://www.brainpickings.org/live/
37. https://www.brainpickings.org/live/
38. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/12/28/best-of-brain-pickings/
39. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/12/28/best-of-brain-pickings/
40. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/12/19/best-books-2019/
41. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/12/19/best-books-2019/
42. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/12/16/favorite-childrens-books-of-2019/
43. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/12/16/favorite-childrens-books-of-2019/
44. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/12/26/katharina-kepler-witchcraft-dream/
45. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/12/26/katharina-kepler-witchcraft-dream/
46. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/10/23/13-learnings-13-years/
47. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/10/23/13-learnings-13-years/
48. https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/12/10/emily-dickinson-love-letters-susan-gilbert/
49. https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/12/10/emily-dickinson-love-letters-susan-gilbert/
50. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/01/03/a-velocity-of-being-rebecca-solnit/
51. https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/01/03/a-velocity-of-being-rebecca-solnit/
52. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/
53. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/
54. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/12/21/reflection/
55. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/12/21/reflection/
56. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/08/27/seneca-anxiety/
57. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/08/27/seneca-anxiety/
58. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/09/25/e-e-cummings-advice/
59. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/09/25/e-e-cummings-advice/
60. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/01/27/rachel-carson-silent-spring-dorothy-freeman/
61. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/01/27/rachel-carson-silent-spring-dorothy-freeman/
62. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/05/03/advice-on-writing/
63. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/05/03/advice-on-writing/
64. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/19/a-rap-on-race-margaret-mead-and-james-baldwin/
65. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/19/a-rap-on-race-margaret-mead-and-james-baldwin/
66. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/20/esther-sternberg-balance-within-stress-emotion/
67. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/20/esther-sternberg-balance-within-stress-emotion/
68. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/20/mary-oliver-molly-malone-cook-our-world/
69. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/20/mary-oliver-molly-malone-cook-our-world/
70. https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/16/rebecca-solnit-hope-in-the-dark-2/
71. https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/16/rebecca-solnit-hope-in-the-dark-2/
72. https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/07/11/the-lonely-city-olivia-laing/
73. https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/07/11/the-lonely-city-olivia-laing/
74. https://www.brainpickings.org/favorite-reads/
75. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/10/22/elizabeth-peabody-education/
76. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/10/22/elizabeth-peabody-education/
77. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/29/anton-chekhov-8-qualities-of-cultured-people/
78. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/29/anton-chekhov-8-qualities-of-cultured-people/
79. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/03/31/descartes-reason-opinion/
80. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/03/31/descartes-reason-opinion/
81. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/12/16/writers-wakeup-times-literary-productivity-visualization/
82. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/12/16/writers-wakeup-times-literary-productivity-visualization/
83. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/25/7-learnings-holstee-poster/
84. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/25/7-learnings-holstee-poster/
85. https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/12/03/anais-nin-love-debbie-millman-1/
86. https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/12/03/anais-nin-love-debbie-millman-1/
87. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/02/21/anais-nin-on-love-by-debbie-millman-2/
88. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/02/21/anais-nin-on-love-by-debbie-millman-2/
89. https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/08/03/susan-sontag-on-love/
90. https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/08/03/susan-sontag-on-love/
91. https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/11/30/susan-sontag-on-art/
92. https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/11/30/susan-sontag-on-art/
93. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/16/albert-camus-diary-wendy-macnaughton/
94. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/16/albert-camus-diary-wendy-macnaughton/
95. http://holstee.com/manifesto-bp
96. http://holstee.com/manifesto-bp
97. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/31/remembering-oliver-sacks
98. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/31/remembering-oliver-sacks
99. http://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Culture-John-Cowper-Powys/dp/1125161337/?tag=braipick-20
100. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/29/anton-chekhov-8-qualities-of-cultured-people/
101. http://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Culture-John-Cowper-Powys/dp/1125161337/?tag=braipick-20
102. http://www.worldcat.org/title/meaning-of-culture/oclc/188551&referer=brief_results
103. http://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Culture-John-Cowper-Powys/dp/1125161337/?tag=braipick-20
104. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/09/wisdom-in-the-age-of-information/
105. https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/03/15/the-three-astronauts-umberto-eco/
106. https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/03/15/the-three-astronauts-umberto-eco/
107. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/11/the-spiritual-uses-of-fruit-trees-ralph-austen/
108. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/15/ralph-steadman-fahrenheit-451/
109. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/15/ralph-steadman-fahrenheit-451/
110. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/24/what-is-philosophy-for-alain-de-botton/
111. http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/19/tom-wolfe-boston-university-commencement/
112. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/13/mr-tweeds-good-deeds/
113. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/13/mr-tweeds-good-deeds/
114. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/15/cheryl-strayed-longform-podcast-interview/
115. http://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Culture-John-Cowper-Powys/dp/1125161337/?tag=braipick-20
116. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/24/oliver-sacks-gratitude-book
117. http://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Culture-John-Cowper-Powys/dp/1125161337/?tag=braipick-20
118. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/02/03/bertrand-russell-immortality-good-life/
119. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/04/07/simone-weil-notebooks/
120. https://twitter.com/timoreilly
121. https://www.brainpickings.org/donate/
122. https://www.brainpickings.org/donate/
123. http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=de29ba37e7&e=b2dbad0745
124. javascript:window.print()
125. mailto:?subject=A wonderful read from Brain Pickings&body=The Art of Self-Culture and the Crucial Difference Between Being Educated and Being Cultured: John Cowper Powys's Forgotten Wisdom from 1929

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/25/the-meaning-of-culture-powys/

- - - - -

Get the week’s most interesting and inspiring reads straight to your inbox every Sunday morning: https://www.brainpickings.org/newsletter/

126. https://twitter.com/share
127. https://getpocket.com/save
128. https://www.brainpickings.org/tag/books/
129. https://www.brainpickings.org/tag/culture/
130. https://www.brainpickings.org/tag/john-cowper-powys/
131. https://www.brainpickings.org/tag/out-of-print/
132. https://www.brainpickings.org/tag/philosophy/
133. http://www.amazon.com/?tag=braipick-20
134. https://www.brainpickings.org/donate/privacy-terms/

Hidden links:
136. https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/25/the-meaning-of-culture-powys/