ashion of the clothes men wear. The ridiculous
little tails of the German postilion's coat show of themselves
how they came to dwindle to such absurd rudiments; but the English
clergyman's bands no longer so convey their history to the eye, and
look unaccountable enough till one has seen the intermediate stages
through which they came down from the more serviceable wide
collars, such as Milton wears in his portrait, and which gave their
name to the "band-box" they used to be kept in. In fact, the books
of costume showing how one garment grew or shrank by gradual
stages and passed into another, illustrate with much force and
clearness the nature of the change and growth, revival and decay, which
go on from year to year in more important matters of life. In books,
again, we see each writer not for and by himself, but occupying his
proper place in history; we look through each philosopher, mathematician,
chemist, poet, into the background of his education--through
Leibnitz into Descartes, through Dalton into Priestly,
through Milton into Homer.[1]

[Footnote 1: Tylor, Edward B.: _Primitive Culture_, vol. I. pp. 17 ff.]

Besides understanding the present better in terms of its
history, there is much in the heritage of the past, especially
of its finished products, that the citizen of contemporary
civilization will wish preserved for its own sake. The works
of art, of music, and of literature which are handed down to us
are "possessions forever." Whatever be the limitations of
our social inheritance, as instruments for the solution of our
difficulties, those finished products which constitute the "best
that has been known and thought" in the world are beyond
cavil. They may not solve our problems, but they immensely
enrich and broaden our lives. They are enjoyed because they
are intrinsically beautiful, but also because they widen men's
sympathies and broaden the scope of contemporary purposes
and ideals.

The culture that this transmission of racial experience makes possible,
can be made perfect by the critical spirit alone, and, indeed,
may be said to be one with it. For who is the true critic but he who
bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad
generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional
impulse obscure. And who is the true man of culture, if not he in
whom fine scholarship and fastidious rejection... develops that
spirit of disinterested curiosity which is the real spiri