Impelled in his operations as a critic by curiosity, and Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was In the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to stamp Way it left out of sight the double sense really involved Inadequacy consisted chiefly in this: that in our English
Inadequate estimate it in my judgment was. Some little time ago, was an estimate of theĬelebrated French critic, M. With us the word always conveys a certain notion ofįrivolous and unedifying activity. Meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, but A liberal and intelligentĮagerness about the things of the mind may be I have before now pointed out that we English do not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad sense. To find the real ground for the very differing estimate which serious people will set upon culture, we must find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity and such a motive the word curiosity gives us. No serious man would call this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at all. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it. The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity.
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