Culture and Anarchy

M >> Matthew Arnold >> Culture and Anarchy

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Perhaps we may help ourselves to see this clearer by an illustration
drawn from the treatment of a single great idea which has profoundly
engaged the human spirit, and has given it eminent opportunities for
showing its nobleness and energy. It surely must be perceived that
the idea of the immortality of the soul, as this idea rises in its
generality before the human spirit, is something grander, truer, and
more satisfying, than it is in the particular forms by which St.
Paul, in the famous fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the
Corinthians,+ and Plato, in the Phaedo, endeavour to develope and
establish it. Surely we cannot but feel, that the argumentation with
which the Hebrew apostle goes about to expound this great idea is,
after all, confused and inconclusive; and that the reasoning, drawn
from analogies of likeness and equality, which is employed upon it by
the Greek philosopher, is over-subtle and sterile? Above and beyond
the inadequate solutions which Hebraism and Hellenism here attempt,
extends the immense [159] and august problem itself, and the human
spirit which gave birth to it. And this single illustration may
suggest to us how the same thing happens in other cases also.

But meanwhile, by alternations of Hebraism and Hellenism, of man's
intellectual and moral impulses, of the effort to see things as they
really are, and the effort to win peace by self-conquest, the human
spirit proceeds, and each of these two forces has its appointed hours
of culmination and seasons of rule. As the great movement of
Christianity was a triumph of Hebraism and man's moral impulses, so
the great movement which goes by the name of the Renascence* was an
uprising and re-instatement of man's intellectual impulses and of
Hellenism. We in England, the devoted children of Protestantism,
chiefly know the Renascence by its subordinate and secondary side of
the Reformation. The Reformation has been often called a Hebraising
revival, a return to the ardour and sincereness of primitive [160]
Christianity. No one, however, can study the development of
Protestantism and of Protestant churches without feeling that into
the Reformation too,--Hebraising child of the Renascence and
offspring of its fervour, rather than its intelligence, as it
undoubtedly was,--the subtle Hellenic leaven of the Renascence found
its way, and that the exact respective parts in the Reformation, of
Hebraism and of Hellenism, are not easy to separate. But what we may
with truth say is, that all which Protestantism was to itself clearly
conscious of, all which it succeeded in clearly setting forth in
words, had the characters of Hebraism rather than of Hellenism. The
Reformation was strong, in that it was an earnest return to the Bible
and to doing from the heart the will of God as there written; it was
weak, in that it never consciously grasped or applied the central
idea of the Renascence,--the Hellenic idea of pursuing, in all lines
of activity, the law and science, to use Plato's words, of things as
they really are. Whatever direct superiority, therefore,
Protestantism had over Catholicism was a moral superiority, a
superiority arising out of its greater sincerity and earnestness,--at
the moment of its apparition at any [161] rate,--in dealing with the
heart and conscience; its pretensions to an intellectual superiority
are in general quite illusory. For Hellenism, for the thinking side
in man as distinguished from the acting side, the attitude of mind of
Protestantism towards the Bible in no respect differs from the
attitude of mind of Catholicism towards the Church. The mental habit
of him who imagines that Balaam's ass spoke, in no respect differs
from the mental habit of him who imagines that a Madonna of wood or
stone winked; and the one, who says that God's Church makes him
believe what he believes, and the other, who says that God's Word
makes him believe what he believes, are for the philosopher perfectly
alike in not really and truly knowing, when they say God's Church and
God's Word, what it is they say, or whereof they affirm.

In the sixteenth century, therefore, Hellenism re-entered the world,
and again stood in presence of Hebraism,--a Hebraism renewed and
purged. Now, it has not been enough observed, how, in the
seventeenth century, a fate befell Hellenism in some respects
analogous to that which befell it at the commencement of our era.
The Renascence, that [162] great re-awakening of Hellenism, that
irresistible return of humanity to nature and to seeing things as
they are, which in art, in literature, and in physics, produced such
splendid fruits, had, like the anterior Hellenism of the Pagan world,
a side of moral weakness, and of relaxation or insensibility of the
moral fibre, which in Italy showed itself with the most startling
plainness, but which in France, England, and other countries was very
apparent too. Again this loss of spiritual balance, this exclusive
preponderance given to man's perceiving and knowing side, this
unnatural defect of his feeling and acting side, provoked a reaction.
Let us trace that reaction where it most nearly concerns us.

Science has now made visible to everybody the great and pregnant
elements of difference which lie in race, and in how signal a manner
they make the genius and history of an Indo-European people vary from
those of a Semitic people. Hellenism is of Indo-European growth,
Hebraism is of Semitic growth; and we English, a nation of Indo-
European stock, seem to belong naturally to the movement of
Hellenism. But nothing more strongly marks the essential unity of
man than the affinities we can [163] perceive, in this point or that,
between members of one family of peoples and members of another; and
no affinity of this kind is more strongly marked than that likeness
in the strength and prominence of the moral fibre, which,
notwithstanding immense elements of difference, knits in some special
sort the genius and history of us English, and of our American
descendants across the Atlantic, to the genius and history of the
Hebrew people. Puritanism, which has been so great a power in the
English nation, and in the strongest part of the English nation, was
originally the reaction, in the seventeenth century, of the
conscience and moral sense of our race, against the moral
indifference and lax rule of conduct which in the sixteenth century
came in with the Renascence. It was a reaction of Hebraism against
Hellenism; and it powerfully manifested itself, as was natural, in a
people with much of what we call a Hebraising turn, with a signal
affinity for the bent which was the master-bent of Hebrew life.
Eminently Indo-European by its humour, by the power it shows, through
this gift, of imaginatively acknowledging the multiform aspects of
the problem of life, and of thus getting itself unfixed from its own
over- [164] certainty, of smiling at its own over-tenacity, our race
has yet (and a great part of its strength lies here), in matters of
practical life and moral conduct, a strong share of the assuredness,
the tenacity, the intensity of the Hebrews. This turn manifested
itself in Puritanism, and has had a great part in shaping our history
for the last two hundred years. Undoubtedly it checked and changed
amongst us that movement of the Renascence which we see producing in
the reign of Elizabeth such wonderful fruits; undoubtedly it stopped
the prominent rule and direct development of that order of ideas
which we call by the name of Hellenism, and gave the first rank to a
different order of ideas. Apparently, too, as we said of the former
defeat of Hellenism, if Hellenism was defeated, this shows that
Hellenism was imperfect, and that its ascendency at that moment would
not have been for the world's good.

Yet there is a very important difference between the defeat inflicted
on Hellenism by Christianity eighteen hundred years ago, and the
check given to the Renascence by Puritanism. The greatness of the
difference is well measured by the difference in force, beauty,
significance and usefulness, between [165] primitive Christianity and
Protestantism. Eighteen hundred years ago it was altogether the hour
of Hebraism; primitive Christianity was legitimately and truly the
ascendent force in the world at that time, and the way of mankind's
progress lay through its full development. Another hour in man's
development began in the fifteenth century, and the main road of his
progress then lay for a time through Hellenism. Puritanism was no
longer the central current of the world's progress, it was a side
stream crossing the central current and checking it. The cross and
the check may have been necessary and salutary, but that does not do
away with the essential difference between the main stream of man's
advance and a cross or side stream. For more than two hundred years
the main stream of man's advance has moved towards knowing himself
and the world, seeing things as they are, spontaneity of
consciousness; the main impulse of a great part, and that the
strongest part, of our nation, has been towards strictness of
conscience. They have made the secondary the principal at the wrong
moment, and the principal they have at the wrong moment treated as
secondary. This contravention of the [166] natural order has
produced, as such contravention always must produce, a certain
confusion and false movement, of which we are now beginning to feel,
in almost every direction, the inconvenience. In all directions our
habitual courses of action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit,
and control, both with others and even with ourselves; everywhere we
see the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to some sound
order and authority. This we can only get by going back upon the
actual instincts and forces which rule our life, seeing them as they
really are, connecting them with other instincts and forces, and
enlarging our whole view and rule of life.

NOTES

145. +Proverbs 29:18 is the source of the first passage. I have not
found the exact language of the second quotation, but the thought
resembles that of Psalms 19:9-10: "The fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous
altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much
fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb." King James
Bible.

148. +Romans 3:31. "Do we then make void the law through faith? /
God forbid: yea, we establish the law." King James Bible.

148. +Zechariah 9:12-13. "Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners
of hope: even to day do I declare that I will render double unto
thee; / When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim,
and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made
thee as the sword of a mighty man." King James Bible.

149. +Proverbs 16:22. "Understanding is a wellspring of life unto
him that hath it: but the instruction of fools is folly." King James
Bible.

149. +John 8:12. "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am
the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life." And again: John 9:4-5.
"I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the
night cometh, when no man can work. / As long as I am in the world, I
am the light of the world." King James Bible.

149. +John 8:31-32. "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on
him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; /
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
King James Bible.

149. +James 1:25. "But whoso looketh into the perfect law of
liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but
a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." King
James Bible.

149. +Proverbs 2:20-21 may be the passage Arnold has in mind,
although the language differs: "That thou mayest walk in the way of
good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. / For the upright
shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it." One of
the central devices in Proverbs is the metaphor of the "path"--of
uprightness, folly, etc. King James Bible.

150. +Romans 1:18. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the
truth in unrighteousness." King James Bible.

150. +Philomathes, "fond of knowledge, loving knowledge." (Liddell
and Scott.) GIF image:

154. +Zechariah 8:23. "Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days
it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all
languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him
that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that
God is with you." King James Bible.

155. +Ephesians 5:6. "Let no man deceive you with vain words: for
because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of
disobedience." King James Bible.

155. +Romans 6:3. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized
into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?" King James Bible.

155. *The two first books. +Arnold refers to the Imitatio Christi,
attributed to fourteenth-century priest Thomas a Kempis. The Benham
translation and a modern English translation are currently available
from the College of St. Benedict at Saint John's University Internet
Theology Resources site. See also the Benham text link.

156. +Romans 3:1-2. "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what
profit is there of circumcision? / Much every way: chiefly, because
that unto them were committed the oracles of God." King James Bible.

158. +See 1 Corinthians 15. Saint Paul wrestles in this chapter to
explain the Resurrection's promise. For example, refer to 15:50-53:
"Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. /
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall
all be changed, / In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed. / For this corruptible must
put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality."

159. *I have ventured to give to the foreign word Renaissance,
destined to become of more common use amongst us as the movement
which it denotes comes, as it will come, increasingly to interest us,
an English form.

CHAPTER V

[166] The matter here opened is so large, and the trains of thought
to which it gives rise are so manifold, that we must be careful to
limit ourselves scrupulously to what has a direct bearing upon our
actual discussion. We have found that at the [167] bottom of our
present unsettled state, so full of the seeds of trouble, lies the
notion of its being the prime right and happiness, for each of us, to
affirm himself, and his ordinary self; to be doing, and to be doing
freely and as he likes. We have found at the bottom of it the
disbelief in right reason as a lawful authority. It was easy to show
from our practice and current history that this is so; but it was
impossible to show why it is so without taking a somewhat wider sweep
and going into things a little more deeply. Why, in fact, should
good, well-meaning, energetic, sensible people, like the bulk of our
countrymen, come to have such light belief in right reason, and such
an exaggerated value for their own independent doing, however crude?
The answer is: because of an exclusive and excessive development in
them, without due allowance for time, place, and circumstance, of
that side of human nature, and that group of human forces, to which
we have given the general name of Hebraism. Because they have
thought their real and only important homage was owed to a power
concerned with their obedience rather than with their intelligence, a
power interested in the moral side of their nature almost
exclusively. Thus they have [168] been led to regard in themselves,
as the one thing needful, strictness of conscience, the staunch
adherence to some fixed law of doing we have got already, instead of
spontaneity of consciousness, which tends continually to enlarge our
whole law of doing. They have fancied themselves to have in their
religion a sufficient basis for the whole of their life fixed and
certain for ever, a full law of conduct and a full law of thought, so
far as thought is needed, as well; whereas what they really have is a
law of conduct, a law of unexampled power for enabling them to war
against the law of sin in their members and not to serve it in the
lusts thereof. The book which contains this invaluable law they call
the Word of God, and attribute to it, as I have said, and as, indeed,
is perfectly well known, a reach and sufficiency co-extensive with
all the wants of human nature. This might, no doubt, be so, if
humanity were not the composite thing it is, if it had only, or in
quite overpowering eminence, a moral side, and the group of instincts
and powers which we call moral. But it has besides, and in notable
eminence, an intellectual side, and the group of instincts and powers
which we call intellectual. No doubt, mankind makes in general its
progress in a [169] fashion which gives at one time full swing to one
of these groups of instincts, at another time to the other; and man's
faculties are so intertwined, that when his moral side, and the
current of force which we call Hebraism, is uppermost, this side will
manage somehow to provide, or appear to provide, satisfaction for his
intellectual needs; and when his moral side, and the current of force
which we call Hellenism, is uppermost, this, again, will provide, or
appear to provide, satisfaction for men's moral needs. But sooner or
later it becomes manifest that when the two sides of humanity proceed
in this fashion of alternate preponderance, and not of mutual
understanding and balance, the side which is uppermost does not
really provide in a satisfactory manner for the needs of the side
which is undermost, and a state of confusion is, sooner or later, the
result. The Hellenic half of our nature, bearing rule, makes a sort
of provision for the Hebrew half, but it turns out to be an
inadequate provision; and again the Hebrew half of our nature bearing
rule makes a sort of provision for the Hellenic half, but this, too,
turns out to be an inadequate provision. The true and smooth order
of humanity's development [170] is not reached in either way. And
therefore, while we willingly admit with the Christian apostle that
the world by wisdom,--that is, by the isolated preponderance of its
intellectual impulses,--knew not God, or the true order of things, it
is yet necessary, also, to set up a sort of converse to this
proposition, and to say likewise (what is equally true) that the
world by Puritanism knew not God. And it is on this converse of the
apostle's proposition that it is particularly needful to insist in
our own country just at present.

Here, indeed, is the answer to many criticisms which have been
addressed to all that we have said in praise of sweetness and light.
Sweetness and light evidently have to do with the bent or side in
humanity which we call Hellenic. Greek intelligence has obviously
for its essence the instinct for what Plato calls the true, firm,
intelligible law of things; the love of light, of seeing things as
they are. Even in the natural sciences, where the Greeks had not
time and means adequately to apply this instinct, and where we have
gone a great deal further than they did, it is this instinct which is
the root of the whole matter and the ground of all [171] our success;
and this instinct the world has mainly learnt of the Greeks, inasmuch
as they are humanity's most signal manifestation of it. Greek art,
again, Greek beauty, have their root in the same impulse to see
things as they really are, inasmuch as Greek art and beauty rest on
fidelity to nature,--the best nature,--and on a delicate
discrimination of what this best nature is. To say we work for
sweetness and light, then, is only another way of saying that we work
for Hellenism. But, oh! cry many people, sweetness and light are not
enough; you must put strength or energy along with them, and make a
kind of trinity of strength, sweetness and light, and then, perhaps,
you may do some good. That is to say, we are to join Hebraism,
strictness of the moral conscience, and manful walking by the best
light we have, together with Hellenism, inculcate both, and rehearse
the praises of both.

Or, rather, we may praise both in conjunction, but we must be careful
to praise Hebraism most. "Culture," says an acute, though somewhat
rigid critic, Mr. Sidgwick, "diffuses sweetness and light. I do not
undervalue these blessings, but religion gives fire and strength, and
the world wants fire [172] and strength even more than sweetness and
light." By religion, let me explain, Mr. Sidgwick here means
particularly that Puritanism on the insufficiency of which I have
been commenting and to which he says I am unfair. Now, no doubt, it
is possible to be a fanatical partisan of light and the instincts
which push us to it, a fanatical enemy of strictness of moral
conscience and the instincts which push us to it. A fanaticism of
this sort deforms and vulgarises the well-known work, in some
respects so remarkable, of the late Mr. Buckle. Such a fanaticism
carries its own mark with it, in lacking sweetness; and its own
penalty, in that, lacking sweetness, it comes in the end to lack
light too. And the Greeks,--the great exponents of humanity's bent
for sweetness and light united, of its perception that the truth of
things must be at the same time beauty,--singularly escaped the
fanaticism which we moderns, whether we Hellenise or whether we
Hebraise, are so apt to show, and arrived,--though failing, as has
been said, to give adequate practical satisfaction to the claims of
man's moral side,--at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of the
claims of both the sides in man, the moral as well [173] as the
intellectual, of a full estimate of both, and of a reconciliation of
both; an idea which is philosophically of the greatest value, and the
best of lessons for us moderns. So we ought to have no difficulty in
conceding to Mr. Sidgwick that manful walking by the best light one
has,--fire and strength as he calls it,--has its high value as well
as culture, the endeavour to see things in their truth and beauty,
the pursuit of sweetness and light. But whether at this or that
time, and to this or that set of persons, one ought to insist most on
the praises of fire and strength, or on the praises of sweetness and
light, must depend, one would think, on the circumstances and needs
of that particular time and those particular persons. And all that
we have been saying, and indeed any glance at the world around us,
shows that with us, with the most respectable and strongest part of
us, the ruling force is now, and long has been, a Puritan force, the
care for fire and strength, strictness of conscience, Hebraism,
rather than the care for sweetness and light, spontaneity of
consciousness, Hellenism.

Well, then, what is the good of our now rehearsing [174] the praises
of fire and strength to ourselves, who dwell too exclusively on them
already? When Mr. Sidgwick says so broadly, that the world wants
fire and strength even more than sweetness and light, is he not
carried away by a turn for powerful generalisation? does he not
forget that the world is not all of one piece, and every piece with
the same needs at the same time? It may be true that the Roman world
at the beginning of our era, or Leo the Tenth's Court at the time of
the Reformation, or French society in the eighteenth century, needed
fire and strength even more than sweetness and light. But can it be
said that the Barbarians who overran the empire, needed fire and
strength even more than sweetness and light; or that the Puritans
needed them more; or that Mr. Murphy, the Birmingham lecturer, and
the Rev. W. Cattle and his friends, need them more?

The Puritan's great danger is that he imagines himself in possession
of a rule telling him the unum necessarium, or one thing needful,+
and that he then remains satisfied with a very crude conception of
what this rule really is and what it tells him, thinks [175] he has
now knowledge and henceforth needs only to act, and, in this
dangerous state of assurance and self-satisfaction, proceeds to give
full swing to a number of the instincts of his ordinary self. Some
of the instincts of his ordinary self he has, by the help of his rule
of life, conquered; but others which he has not conquered by this
help he is so far from perceiving to need subjugation, and to be
instincts of an inferior self, that he even fancies it to be his
right and duty, in virtue of having conquered a limited part of
himself, to give unchecked swing to the remainder. He is, I say, a
victim of Hebraism, of the tendency to cultivate strictness of
conscience rather than spontaneity of consciousness. And what he
wants is a larger conception of human nature, showing him the number
of other points at which his nature must come to its best, besides
the points which he himself knows and thinks of. There is no unum
necessarium, or one thing needful, which can free human nature from
the obligation of trying to come to its best at all these points.
The real unum necessarium for us is to come to our best at all
points. Instead of our "one thing needful," justifying in us
vulgarity, hideousness, ignorance, violence,--our [176] vulgarity,
hideousness, ignorance, violence, are really so many touchstones
which try our one thing needful, and which prove that in the state,
at any rate, in which we ourselves have it, it is not all we want.
And as the force which encourages us to stand staunch and fast by the
rule and ground we have is Hebraism, so the force which encourages us
to go back upon this rule, and to try the very ground on which we
appear to stand, is Hellenism,--a turn for giving our consciousness
free play and enlarging its range. And what I say is, not that
Hellenism is always for everybody more wanted than Hebraism, but that
for the Rev. W. Cattle at this particular moment, and for the great
majority of us his fellow-countrymen, it is more wanted.

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