" An aspiration with which all intelligent men
must sympathise. The quest at once of local colour and cosmopolitanism is
not at all self-contradictory. The truest cosmopolitanism goes with the
intensest local colour, for otherwise you contribute nothing to the human
treasury and make mankind one vast featureless monotony. Harmonious
diversity is the true cosmopolitan concept, and who will not applaud this
desire of Edinburgh to range itself again amongst the capitals of
culture? Why should it take its tone from London? That centripetal force
which draws villages to towns and towns to capitals everywhere tends to
concentrate in one city a country's culture, and to brand as provincial
that which is not of the centre. But the centre is corrosive of
originality, and if now and then a great man does abide therein, it is
because he has the gift of solitude amid crowds, and is not obnoxious to
the contagion of the common thought. The Scotch School, though its effort
to emancipate itself from the intellectual thraldom of London is to be
commended, does not escape the dangers that lie in wait for all schools,
which upset one convention by another. Still, a school of thought which
is also a school of action has in itself the germs of perpetual
self-recuperation.
Pages:
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449