ABSTRACT
The two things that Gissing saw most clearly and emphasised with the greatest wealth of illustration are, the vital importance of culture, and the degrading effects of poverty on all above a certain low level of spiritual development. Both these items of his creed are, as treated by him, something new in social criticism. In theory, of course, we have long learned of Matthew Arnold to pay at least lip-service to culture: and, as for education, is it not the favourite theme of every political platform? Are not Lord Rosebery and Mr Chamberlain at one, at least on the need of fighting the foreigner with increased efficiency in instruction? But we realise what culture and its absence mean in practice far more vividly from Gissing's pictures, alive as they are with the very breath of reality, than from any essays of the moralist, writing in the study and dealing with abstractions; while the education for which politicians clamour has little in its nature, and nothing in its aims, in common with education as Gissing understood it. What Gissing meant by education was the development ofthe feeling for the beautiful, the cultivation of interest in the things of the mind for their own sake. For this culture he found the readiest instrument in the study ofGreek, and ofthe great civilisation which Hellenised Rome imposed on the world. The Graeco-Roman age, he tells us, was his Land of Romance; and visions of that gorgeous past were ever with him as a refuge from the squalid present which conscience, characters, and circumstance compelled him to study. That study taught him, that modern life is on wrong lines, because its endeavour is not towards spiritual things. Progress, so-called, aims at merely material goods; education, as at present understood, aims at fitting men to make
merely material acquisitions. The result is, that progress does not bring happiness, education does but intensify our power of causing misery, civilisation is simply the process of putting more and more deadly weapons into the hands of 'ravening and reckless barbarians.'
