Culture and Anarchy

M >> Matthew Arnold >> Culture and Anarchy

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

It is true, what we want is to make right reason act on individual
reason, the reason of individuals; all our search for authority has
that for its end and aim. The Daily News says, I observe, that all
my argument for authority "has a non-intellectual root;" and from
what I know of my own mind and its inertness, I think this so
probable, that I should be inclined easily to admit it, if it were
not that, in [137] the first place, nothing of this kind, perhaps,
should be admitted without examination; and, in the second, a way of
accounting for this charge being made, in this particular instance,
without full grounds, appears to present itself. What seems to me to
account here, perhaps, for the charge, is the want of flexibility of
our race, on which I have so often remarked. I mean, it being
admitted that the conformity of the individual reason of the Rev. W.
Cattle or Mr. Bradlaugh with right reason is our true object, and not
the mere restraining them, by the strong arm of the State, from
Papist-baiting or railing-breaking,--admitting this, we have so
little flexibility that we cannot readily perceive that the State's
restraining them from these indulgences may yet fix clearly in their
minds that, to the collective nation, these indulgences appear
irrational and unallowable, may make them pause and reflect, and may
contribute to bringing, with time, their individual reason into
harmony with right reason. But in no country, owing to the want of
intellectual flexibility above mentioned, is the leaning which is our
natural one, and, therefore, needs no recommending to us, so
sedulously recommended, and the leaning which is [138] not our
natural one, and, therefore, does not-need dispraising to us, so
sedulously dispraised, as in ours. To rely on the individual being,
with us, the natural leaning, we will hear of nothing but the good of
relying on the individual; to act through the collective nation on
the individual being not our natural leaning, we will hear nothing in
recommendation of it. But the wise know that we often need to hear
most of that to which we are least inclined, and even to learn to
employ, in certain circumstances, that which is capable, if employed
amiss, of being a danger to us.

Elsewhere this is certainly better understood than here. In a recent
number of the Westminster Review, an able writer, but with precisely
our national want of flexibility of which I have been speaking, has
unearthed, I see, for our present needs, an English translation,
published some years ago, of Wilhelm von Humboldt's book, The Sphere
and Duties of Government. Humboldt's object in this book is to show
that the operation of government ought to be severely limited to what
directly and immediately relates to the security of person and
property. Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the [139] most beautiful and
perfect souls that have ever existed, used to say that one's business
in life was, first, to perfect oneself by all the means in one's
power, and, secondly, to try and create in the world around one an
aristocracy, the most numerous that one possibly could, of talents
and characters. He saw, of course, that, in the end, everything
comes to this,--that the individual must act for himself, and must be
perfect in himself; and he lived in a country, Germany, where people
were disposed to act too little for themselves, and to rely too much
on the Government. But even thus, such was his flexibility, so
little was he in bondage to a mere abstract maxim, that he saw very
well that for his purpose itself, of enabling the individual to stand
perfect on his own foundations and to do without the State, the
action of the State would for long, long years be necessary; and soon
after he wrote his book on The Sphere and Duties of Government,
Wilhelm von Humboldt became Minister of Education in Prussia, and
from his ministry all the great reforms which give the control of
Prussian education to the State,--the transference of the management
of public schools from their old boards of trustees to the [140]
State, the obligatory State-examination for schools, the obligatory
State-examination for schoolmasters, and the foundation of the great
State University of Berlin,--take their origin. This his English
reviewer says not a word of. But, writing for a people whose dangers
lie, as we have seen, on the side of their unchecked and unguided
individual action, whose dangers none of them lie on the side of an
over-reliance on the State, he quotes just so much of Wilhelm von
Humboldt's example as can flatter them in their propensities, and do
them no good; and just what might make them think, and be of use to
them, he leaves on one side. This precisely recalls the manner, it
will be observed, in which we have seen that our royal and noble
personages proceed with the Licensed Victuallers.

In France the action of the State on individuals is yet more
preponderant than in Germany; and the need which friends of human
perfection feel to enable the individual to stand perfect on his own
foundations is all the stronger. But what says one of the staunchest
of these friends, Monsieur Renan, on State action, and even State
action in that very sphere where in France it is most excessive, the
sphere [141] of education? Here are his words:--"A liberal believes
in liberty, and liberty signifies the non-intervention of the State.
But such an ideal is still a long way off from us, and the very means
to remove it to an indefinite distance would be precisely the State's
withdrawing its action too soon." And this, he adds, is even truer
of education than of any other department of public affairs.

We see, then, how indispensable to that human perfection which we
seek is, in the opinion of good judges, some public recognition and
establishment of our best self, or right reason. We see how our
habits and practice oppose themselves to such a recognition, and the
many inconveniences which we therefore suffer. But now let us try to
go a little deeper, and to find, beneath our actual habits and
practice, the very ground and cause out of which they spring.

NOTES

119. +Proverbs 28:26. "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool:
but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered." The King James
Bible.

122. +"Qui est-ce qu'on trompe ici?" E-text editor's translation:
"Who is the one getting fooled here?"

CHAPTER IV

[142] This fundamental ground is our preference of doing to thinking.
Now this preference is a main element in our nature, and as we study
it we find ourselves opening up a number of large questions on every
side.

Let me go back for a moment to what I have already quoted from Bishop
Wilson:--"First, never go against the best light you have; secondly,
take care that your light be not darkness." I said we show, as a
nation, laudable energy and persistence in walking according to the
best light we have, but are not quite careful enough, perhaps, to see
that our light be not darkness. This is only another version of the
old story that energy is our strong point and favourable
characteristic, rather than intelligence. But we may give to this
idea a more general form still, in which it will have a yet larger
range of application. We may regard this energy driving at practice,
this paramount sense of the obligation of duty, self-control, and
work, this earnestness in going manfully with the best light we [143]
have, as one force. And we may regard the intelligence driving at
those ideas which are, after all, the basis of right practice, the
ardent sense for all the new and changing combinations of them which
man's development brings with it, the indomitable impulse to know and
adjust them perfectly, as another force. And these two forces we may
regard as in some sense rivals,--rivals not by the necessity of their
own nature, but as exhibited in man and his history,--and rivals
dividing the empire of the world between them. And to give these
forces names from the two races of men who have supplied the most
signal and splendid manifestations of them, we may call them
respectively the forces of Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism and
Hellenism,--between these two points of influence moves our world.
At one time it feels more powerfully the attraction of one of them,
at another time of the other; and it ought to be, though it never is,
evenly and happily balanced between them.

The final aim of both Hellenism and Hebraism, as of all great
spiritual disciplines, is no doubt the same: man's perfection or
salvation. The very language which they both of them use in
schooling [144] us to reach this aim is often identical. Even when
their language indicates by variation,--sometimes a broad variation,
often a but slight and subtle variation,--the different courses of
thought which are uppermost in each discipline, even then the unity
of the final end and aim is still apparent. To employ the actual
words of that discipline with which we ourselves are all of us most
familiar, and the words of which, therefore, come most home to us,
that final end and aim is "that we might be partakers of the divine
nature." These are the words of a Hebrew apostle, but of Hellenism
and Hebraism alike this is, I say, the aim. When the two are
confronted, as they very often are confronted, it is nearly always
with what I may call a rhetorical purpose; the speaker's whole design
is to exalt and enthrone one of the two, and he uses the other only
as a foil and to enable him the better to give effect to his purpose.
Obviously, with us, it is usually Hellenism which is thus reduced to
minister to the triumph of Hebraism. There is a sermon on Greece and
the Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned without interest and
respect, Frederick Robertson, in which this rhetorical use of Greece
and the Greek [145] spirit, and the inadequate exhibition of them
necessarily consequent upon this, is almost ludicrous, and would be
censurable if it were not to be explained by the exigences of a
sermon. On the other hand, Heinrich Heine, and other writers of his
sort, give us the spectacle of the tables completely turned, and of
Hebraism brought in just as a foil and contrast to Hellenism, and to
make the superiority of Hellenism more manifest. In both these cases
there is injustice and misrepresentation. The aim and end of both
Hebraism and Hellenism is, as I have said, one and the same, and this
aim and end is august and admirable.

Still, they pursue this aim by very different courses. The uppermost
idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the
uppermost idea with Hebraism is conduct and obedience. Nothing can
do away with this ineffaceable difference; the Greek quarrel with the
body and its desires is, that they hinder right thinking, the Hebrew
quarrel with them is, that they hinder right acting. "He that
keepeth the law, happy is he;" "There is nothing sweeter than to take
heed unto the commandments of the Lord;"+--that is the Hebrew [146]
notion of felicity; and, pursued with passion and tenacity, this
notion would not let the Hebrew rest till, as is well known, he had,
at last, got out of the law a network of prescriptions to enwrap his
whole life, to govern every moment of it, every impulse, every
action. The Greek notion of felicity, on the other hand, is
perfectly conveyed in these words of a great French moralist: "C'est
le bonheur des hommes"--when? when they abhor that which is evil?--
no; when they exercise themselves in the law of the Lord day and
night?--no; when they die daily?--no; when they walk about the New
Jerusalem with palms in their hands?--no; but when they think aright,
when their thought hits,--"quand ils pensent juste." At the bottom
of both the Greek and the Hebrew notion is the desire, native in man,
for reason and the will of God, the feeling after the universal
order,--in a word, the love of God. But, while Hebraism seizes upon
certain plain, capital intimations of the universal order, and rivets
itself, one may say, with unequalled grandeur of earnestness and
intensity on the study and observance of them, the bent of Hellenism
is to follow, with flexible activity, the whole play of the universal
order, to be [147] apprehensive of missing any part of it, of
sacrificing one part to another, to slip away from resting in this or
that intimation of it, however capital. An unclouded clearness of
mind, an unimpeded play of thought, is what this bent drives at. The
governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of
Hebraism, strictness of conscience.

Christianity changed nothing in this essential bent of Hebraism to
set doing above knowing. Self-conquest, self-devotion, the following
not our own individual will, but the will of God, obedience, is the
fundamental idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we
have attached the general name of Hebraism. Only, as the old law and
the network of prescriptions with which it enveloped human life were
evidently a motive power not driving and searching enough to produce
the result aimed at,--patient continuance in well doing, self-
conquest,--Christianity substituted for them boundless devotion to
that inspiring and affecting pattern of self-conquest offered by
Christ; and by the new motive power, of which the essence was this,
though the love and admiration of Christian churches have for
centuries been employed in varying, amplifying, [148] and adorning
the plain description of it, Christianity, as St. Paul truly says,
"establishes the law,"+ and in the strength of the ampler power which
she has thus supplied to fulfil it, has accomplished the miracles,
which we all see, of her history.

So long as we do not forget that both Hellenism and Hebraism are
profound and admirable manifestations of man's life, tendencies, and
powers, and that both of them aim at a like final result, we can
hardly insist too strongly on the divergence of line and of operation
with which they proceed. It is a divergence so great that it most
truly, as the prophet Zechariah says, "has raised up thy sons, O
Zion, against thy sons, O Greece!"+ The difference whether it is by
doing or by knowing that we set most store, and the practical
consequences which follow from this difference, leave their mark on
all the history of our race and of its development. Language may be
abundantly quoted from both Hellenism and Hebraism to make it seem
that one follows the same current as the other towards the same goal.
They are, truly, borne towards the same goal; but the currents which
bear them are infinitely different. It is true, Solomon will praise
[149] knowing: "Understanding is a well-spring of life unto him that
hath it."+ And in the New Testament, again, Christ is a "light,"+ and
"truth makes us free."+ It is true, Aristotle will undervalue
knowing: "In what concerns virtue," says he, "three things are
necessary,--knowledge, deliberate will, and perseverance; but,
whereas the two last are all important, the first is a matter of
little importance." It is true that with the same impatience with
which St. James enjoins a man to be not a forgetful hearer, but a
doer of the work,+ Epictetus exhorts us to do what we have
demonstrated to ourselves we ought to do; or he taunts us with
futility, for being armed at all points to prove that lying is wrong,
yet all the time continuing to lie. It is true, Plato, in words
which are almost the words of the New Testament or the Imitation,
calls life a learning to die. But underneath the superficial
agreement the fundamental divergence still subsists. The
understanding of Solomon is "the walking in the way of the
commandments;" this is "the way of peace,"+ and it is of this that
blessedness comes. In the New Testament, the truth which gives us
the peace of God and makes us free, is the love of Christ
constraining [150] us to crucify, as he did, and with a like purpose
of moral regeneration, the flesh with its affections and lusts, and
thus establishing, as we have seen, the law. To St. Paul it appears
possible to "hold the truth in unrighteousness,"+ which is just what
Socrates judged impossible. The moral virtues, on the other hand,
are with Aristotle but the porch and access to the intellectual, and
with these last is blessedness. That partaking of the divine life,
which both Hellenism and Hebraism, as we have said, fix as their
crowning aim, Plato expressly denies to the man of practical virtue
merely, of self-conquest with any other motive than that of perfect
intellectual vision; he reserves it for the lover of pure knowledge,
of seeing things as they really are,--the philomathes.+

Both Hellenism and Hebraism arise out of the wants of human nature,
and address themselves to satisfying those wants. But their methods
are so different, they lay stress on such different points, and call
into being by their respective disciplines such different activities,
that the face which human nature presents when it passes from the
hands of one of them to those of the other, is no longer the [151]
same. To get rid of one's ignorance, to see things as they are, and
by seeing them as they are to see them in their beauty, is the simple
and attractive ideal which Hellenism holds out before human nature;
and from the simplicity and charm of this ideal, Hellenism, and human
life in the hands of Hellenism, is invested with a kind of aerial
ease, clearness, and radiancy; they are full of what we call
sweetness and light. Difficulties are kept out of view, and the
beauty and rationalness of the ideal have all our thoughts. "The
best man is he who most tries to perfect himself, and the happiest
man is he who most feels that he is perfecting himself,"--this
account of the matter by Socrates, the true Socrates of the
Memorabilia, has something so simple, spontaneous, and
unsophisticated about it, that it seems to fill us with clearness and
hope when we hear it. But there is a saying which I have heard
attributed to Mr. Carlyle about Socrates,--a very happy saying,
whether it is really Mr. Carlyle's or not,--which excellently marks
the essential point in which Hebraism differs from Hellenism.
"Socrates," this saying goes, "is terribly at ease in Zion"
Hebraism,--and here is the source of its [152] wonderful strength,--
has always been severely preoccupied with an awful sense of the
impossibility of being at ease in Zion; of the difficulties which
oppose themselves to man's pursuit or attainment of that perfection
of which Socrates talks so hopefully, and, as from this point of view
one might almost say, so glibly. It is all very well to talk of
getting rid of one's ignorance, of seeing things in their reality,
seeing them in their beauty; but how is this to be done when there is
something which thwarts and spoils all our efforts? This something
is sin; and the space which sin fills in Hebraism, as compared with
Hellenism, is indeed prodigious. This obstacle to perfection fills
the whole scene, and perfection appears remote and rising away from
earth, in the background. Under the name of sin, the difficulties of
knowing oneself and conquering oneself which impede man's passage to
perfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active entity hostile
to man, a mysterious power which I heard Dr. Pusey the other day, in
one of his impressive sermons, compare to a hideous hunchback seated
on our shoulders, and which it is the main business of our lives to
hate and oppose. The discipline of the [153] Old Testament may be
summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the
discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline teaching us to die
to it. As Hellenism speaks of thinking clearly, seeing things in
their essence and beauty, as a grand and precious feat for man to
achieve, so Hebraism speaks of becoming conscious of sin, of
awakening to a sense of sin, as a feat of this kind. It is obvious
to what wide divergence these differing tendencies, actively
followed, must lead. As one passes and repasses from Hellenism to
Hebraism, from Plato to St. Paul, one feels inclined to rub one's
eyes and ask oneself whether man is indeed a gentle and simple being,
showing the traces of a noble and divine nature; or an unhappy
chained captive, labouring with groanings that cannot be uttered to
free himself from the body of this death.

Apparently it was the Hellenic conception of human nature which was
unsound, for the world could not live by it. Absolutely to call it
unsound, however, is to fall into the common error of its Hebraising
enemies; but it was unsound at that particular moment of man's
development, it was premature. The indispensable basis of conduct
and [154] self-control, the platform upon which alone the perfection
aimed at by Greece can come into bloom, was not to be reached by our
race so easily; centuries of probation and discipline were needed to
bring us to it. Therefore the bright promise of Hellenism faded, and
Hebraism ruled the world. Then was seen that astonishing spectacle,
so well marked by the often quoted words of the prophet Zechariah,
when men of all languages of the nations took hold of the skirt of
him that was a Jew, saying:--"We will go with you, for we have heard
that God is with you."+ And the Hebraism which thus received and
ruled a world all gone out of the way and altogether become
unprofitable, was, and could not but be, the later, the more
spiritual, the more attractive development of Hebraism. It was
Christianity; that is to say, Hebraism aiming at self-conquest and
rescue from the thrall of vile affections, not by obedience to the
letter of a law, but by conformity to the image of a self-sacrificing
example. To a world stricken with moral enervation Christianity
offered its spectacle of an inspired self-sacrifice; to men who
refused themselves nothing, it showed one who refused [155] himself
everything;--"my Saviour banished joy" says George Herbert. When the
alma Venus, the life-giving and joy-giving power of nature, so fondly
cherished by the Pagan world, could not save her followers from self-
dissatisfaction and ennui, the severe words of the apostle came
bracingly and refreshingly: "Let no man deceive you with vain words,
for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children
of disobedience."+ Throughout age after age, and generation after
generation, our race, or all that part of our race which was most
living and progressive, was baptized into a death;+ and endeavoured,
by suffering in the flesh, to cease from sin. Of this endeavour, the
animating labours and afflictions of early Christianity, the touching
asceticism of mediaeval Christianity, are the great historical
manifestations. Literary monuments of it, each, in its own way,
incomparable, remain in the Epistles of St. Paul, in St. Augustine's
Confessions, and in the two original and simplest books of the
Imitation.*

Of two disciplines laying their main stress, the [156] one, on clear
intelligence, the other, on firm obedience; the one, on
comprehensively knowing the grounds of one's duty, the other, on
diligently practising it; the one on taking all possible care (to use
Bishop Wilson's words again) that the light we have be not darkness,
the other, that according to the best light we have we diligently
walk,--the priority naturally belongs to that discipline which braces
man's moral powers, and founds for him an indispensable basis of
character. And, therefore, it is justly said of the Jewish people,
who were charged with setting powerfully forth that side of the
divine order to which the words conscience and self-conquest point,
that they were "entrusted with the oracles of God;"+ as it is justly
said of Christianity, which followed Judaism and which set forth this
side with a much deeper effectiveness and a much wider influence,
that the wisdom of the old Pagan world was foolishness compared to
it. No words of devotion and admiration can be too strong to render
thanks to these beneficent forces which have so borne forward
humanity in its appointed work of coming to the knowledge and
possession of itself; above all, in those great [157] moments when
their action was the wholesomest and the most necessary.

But the evolution of these forces, separately and in themselves, is
not the whole evolution of humanity,--their single history is not the
whole history of man; whereas their admirers are always apt to make
it stand for the whole history. Hebraism and Hellenism are, neither
of them, the law of human development, as their admirers are prone to
make them; they are, each of them, contributions to human
development,--august contributions, invaluable contributions; and
each showing itself to us more august, more invaluable, more
preponderant over the other, according to the moment in which we take
them, and the relation in which we stand to them. The nations of our
modern world, children of that immense and salutary movement which
broke up the Pagan world, inevitably stand to Hellenism in a relation
which dwarfs it, and to Hebraism in a relation which magnifies it.
They are inevitably prone to take Hebraism as the law of human
development, and not as simply a contribution to it, however
precious. And yet the lesson must perforce be [158] learned, that
the human spirit is wider than the most priceless of the forces which
bear it onward, and that to the whole development of man Hebraism
itself is, like Hellenism, but a contribution.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16