Level of Culture

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 33, 9 February 1937, Page 11

Level of Culture

“It is an old-established habit in this country,” Mr A. P. Herbert said a while back, “to neglect if not to despise the artist until he is rich, successful, or fashionable” (writes R. A. Seott-Jamcs from London to the Christian Science Monitor). Member for Oxford University, he was addressing the House of Commons on the insuffi-

ciency of the Civil List pensions 'paid to needy persons who have done distinguished service in literature, art, science, philosophy, or research. The discussion raises the whole question of the obligations which are accepted or not accepted by a modern community for services, not obviously utilitarian, rendered in the interests of culture.

There are services tfhose value can be easily estimated iu terms of money, and those which cannot. The former do not fail to get their reward. Even in the domain of natural science and art much effort is capable of being roughly assessed in terms of cash, especially when it is applied to utilitarian obects. The engineer must be employed iu the interests of industry, the architect, of building. The art designers needed to design articlees for manufacture. The natural scientist must be employed for purposes of industrial research. Even the skilled writer is needed for committing to writing certain kinds of information and certain propaganda. Craft of Pleasure. The provision of pleasure for the populace demands its craftsmen skilled in making pleasant stories or songs. And a certain amount of learned proficiency must always be available for teaching the young in schools and universities. The law of supply and demand iu meeting the ordinary requirements of a modern community suffices for the employment of large numbers of persons whose training has been mainly intellectual or artistic. B-ut is that enough? Will it suffice to encourage—or, rather, not discourage—that pioneer effort in scientific research, or pure thought, or that disr interested pursuit of perfection in art, through which civilisation has been advanced in the past? It must be recognised that such work cannot at once be appreciated by the many who will ultimately benefit; or will it be rewarded by industrialists, since it makes no obvious contribution to industry. Its vwlue can only be discerned by comparatively few who have themselves been trained to understand it. Does it not seem likely that a State governed by men who are ready to respond to such appreciative influences is a State which will contribute most to the advancement of civilisation. Seen in Ancient Athens Such influences were never more operative than they were in ancient Athens, which reached the pinnacle of its greatness under the imaginative rule of Pericles. Public and private manificence provided the splendours of the theatre as a medium for the finest poetry and music. Architecture, sculpture, and painting were encouraged by profusion in public building. Learned men and writers who had rendered distinguished services to the State were maintained at the public expense in the Prytaneuin. The cultural failure of the Middle Ages in Europe lay not in any omission to encourage the finer work of the finer representative minds, but in the restricted sphere of its faith. Within that narrow sphere it gave abundant encouragement to scholastic theology, on the one hand, which in the main proved barren, and on the other to religious architecture, which embodied what was best in the feeling of \he age. If we pass on to the period of the Renaissance we find all the arts not merely liberated but stimulated by Italian rulers—including Popes—and by kinds and nobles in France, and in England great patrons eased the path of men of letters. In Britain and America during the nineteenth century, rich men contributed much to. learning and research by public endowments, nd in literature and art—no longer supported by private patronage—the existence of a cultivated middle class provided a moderately discrimminating public for men .of letters and artists. The Decay of Riches. But to-day the supremacy of the many, desirable in their own interests, has altered the economic conditions under which books are published; and the increasing taxation of the rich is drying up the sources from which learned endowments sprang, or from which works of art were financed. Since the State is taking upon itself more and more functions, is it not becoming increasingly its duty, so far as private munificence fails, to provide facilities for pure research, and certain other facilities—such, for example, as national theatres—for the encouragement of disinterested art? By some means, if civilisation is to be advanced, provision for non-profit-mak-ing activities must be made. If it cannot be done by other means, must it not be done by Government.