There is always this danger when anything is passionately pursued as a
fashion, that it will one day cease to be the fashion. Plato and Buddha
and even Emerson become in time like a last season's fashion plate. Even
a "friend of the spirit" will have to go. Culture is certain to mock
itself in time.
The clubs for the improvement of the mind--the female mind--and of
speech, which no doubt had their origin in modern Athens, should know,
then, that it is the highest mark of female culture now in that beautiful
town to despise culture, to affect the gayest and most joyous ignorance
--ignorance of books, of all forms of so-called intellectual development,
and all literary men, women, and productions whatsoever! This genuine
movement of freedom may be a real emancipation. If it should reach the
metropolis, what a relief it might bring to thousands who are, under a
high sense of duty, struggling to advance the intellectual life. There is
this to be said, however, that it is only the very brightest people,
those who have no need of culture, who have in fact passed beyond all
culture, who can take this position in regard to it, and actually revel
in the delights of ignorance. One must pass into a calm place when he is
beyond the desire to know anything or to do anything.
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