classical literature. Do they read it? Or, on the
other hand, do they confine themselves to believing that it is a good
thing for other people to read it?

When I was a schoolboy, people told me that the classical authors of
antiquity were eminently useful, and indeed absolutely necessary to the
culture of the human mind, but I perceived that they did not read them.
So I have heard many people express great respect for art and science,
only they did not go so far as to master any department of art or
science.

If you will apply this test to the professions of what is especially
called fashionable society it is probable that you will arrive at the
conclusions of the minority, which I have endeavored to express. You
will find that the fashionable world remains very contentedly outside
the true working intellectual life, and does not really share either its
labors or its aspirations.

Another kind of evidence, which tells in the same direction, is the
mobility of fashionable taste. At one time some studies are fashionable,
at another time these are neglected and others have taken their place.
You will not find this fickleness in the true intellectual world, which
steadily pursues all its various studies, and keeps them well abreast,
century after century.

If I insist upon this distinction with reference to you, do not accuse
me of hostility even to fashion itself. Fashion is one of the great
Divine institutions of human society, and the best philosophy rebels
against none of the authorities that be, but studies and endeavors to
explain them. The external deference which Society yields to culture is
practically of great service, although (I repeat the epithet) it is
_external_. The sort of good effect is in the intellectual sphere what
the good effect of a general religious profession is in the moral
sphere. All fashionable society goes to church. Fashionable religion
differs from the religion of Peter and Paul as fashionable science
differs from that of Humboldt and Arago, yet, notwithstanding this
difference, the profession of religion is useful to Society as some
restraint, at least during one day out of seven, upon its inveterate
tendency to live exclusively for its amusement. And if any soul happens
to come into existence in the fashionable world which has the genuine
religious nature, that nature has a chance of developing itself, and of
finding ready to hand certain customs which are favorable to its
well-being