think of adapting the
world's action to them. Where was the hope of making reason and the will
of God prevail among people who had a routine which they had christened
reason and the will of God, in which they were inextricably bound, and
beyond which they had no power of looking? But now, the iron force of
adhesion to the old routine,--social, political, religious,--has
wonderfully yielded; the iron force of exclusion of all which is new has
wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, not that people should
obstinately refuse to allow anything but their old routine to pass for
reason and the will of God, but either that they should allow some
novelty or other to pass for these too easily, or else that they should
underrate the importance of them altogether, and think it enough to
follow action for its own sake, without troubling themselves to make
reason and the will of God prevail therein. Now, then, is the moment for
culture to be of service, culture which believes in making reason and
the will of God prevail, believes in perfection, is the study and
pursuit of perfection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible
exclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas,
simply because they are new.

The moment this view of culture is seized, the moment it is regarded not
solely as the endeavor to see things as they are, to draw towards a
knowledge of the universal order which seems to be intended and aimed at
in the world, and which it is a man's happiness to go along with or his
misery to go counter to,--to learn, in short, the will of God,--the
moment, I say, culture is considered not merely as the endeavor to _see_
and _learn_ this, but as the endeavor, also, to make it _prevail_, the
moral, social, and beneficent character of culture becomes manifest. The
mere endeavor to see and learn the truth for our own personal
satisfaction is indeed a commencement for making it prevail, a preparing
the way for this, which always serves this, and is wrongly, therefore,
stamped with blame absolutely in itself and not only in its caricature
and degeneration. But perhaps it has got stamped with blame, and
disparaged with the dubious title of curiosity, because in comparison
with this wider endeavor of such great and plain utility it looks
selfish, petty, and unprofitable.

And religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts by which
the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself,--religion,