ism, 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 pro-
vincialism is the substitution of a part
for the whole, so the essence of phi-
listinism 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 satis-
fied with himself. He is infallible
and he is sufficient unto himself. In
politics he is a blind partisan, in the-
ology an arrogant dogmatist, in art an
ignorant propagandist. What he ac-
cepts, believes, or has, is not only the

[[159]]

p158 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p159w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p160

v?