faith, and practice of all the generations. This opportunity brings,
to one who knows how to use it, deliverance from the ignorance or
half-knowledge of provincialism, from the crudity of its half-trained
tastes, and from the blind passion of its rash and groundless faith in
its own infallibility.

Provincialism is the soil in which philistinism grows most rapidly and
widely. For as the essence of provincialism is the substitution of a
part for the whole, so the essence of philistinism is the conviction
that what one possesses is the best of its kind, that the kind is the
highest, and that one has all he needs of it. A true philistine is not
only convinced that he holds the only true and consistent position,
but he is also entirely satisfied with himself. He is infallible and
he is sufficient unto himself. In politics he is a blind partisan, in
theology an arrogant dogmatist, in art an ignorant propagandist. What
he accepts, believes, or has, is not only the best of its kind, but
nothing better can ever supersede it.

To this spirit the spirit of culture is antipodal; between the two
there is inextinguishable antagonism. They can never compromise or
agree upon a truce, any more than day and night can consent to dwell
together. To destroy philistinism root and branch, to eradicate the
ignorance which makes it possible for a man to believe that he
possesses all things in their final forms, to empty a man of the
stupidity and vulgarity of self-satisfaction, and to invigorate the
immortal dissatisfaction of the soul with its present attainments, are
the ends which culture is always seeking to accomplish. The keen lance
of Matthew Arnold, flashing now in one part of the field and now in
another, pierced many of the fallacies of provincialism and
philistinism, and mortally wounded more than one Goliath of ignorance