Culture and Anarchy
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Matthew Arnold >> Culture and Anarchy
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Nothing is more striking than to observe in how many ways a limited
conception of human nature, the notion of a one thing needful, a one
side in us to be made uppermost, the disregard of a full and
harmonious development of ourselves, tells injuriously on our
thinking and acting. In the first place, our hold upon the rule or
standard to which we look for our one thing needful, tends to become
less and less near and vital, our conception of it more and more
[177] mechanical, and unlike the thing itself as it was conceived in
the mind where it originated. The dealings of Puritanism with the
writings of St. Paul afford a noteworthy illustration of this.
Nowhere so much as in the writings of St. Paul, and in that great
apostle's greatest work, the Epistle to the Romans, has Puritanism
found what seemed to furnish it with the one thing needful, and to
give it canons of truth absolute and final. Now all writings, as has
been already said, even the most precious writings and the most
fruitful, must inevitably, from the very nature of things, be but
contributions to human thought and human development, which extend
wider than they do. Indeed, St. Paul, in the very Epistle of which
we are speaking, shows, when he asks, "Who hath known the mind of the
Lord?"+--who hath known, that is, the true and divine order of things
in its entirety,--that he himself acknowledges this fully. And we
have already pointed out in another Epistle of St. Paul a great and
vital idea of the human spirit,--the idea of the immortality of the
soul,--transcending and overlapping, so to speak, the expositor's
power to give it adequate definition and expression. But quite
distinct from the question [178] whether St. Paul's expression, or
any man's expression, can be a perfect and final expression of truth,
comes the question whether we rightly seize and understand his
expression as it exists. Now, perfectly to seize another man's
meaning, as it stood in his own mind, is not easy; especially when
the man is separated from us by such differences of race, training,
time, and circumstances as St. Paul. But there are degrees of
nearness in getting at a man's meaning; and though we cannot arrive
quite at what St. Paul had in his mind, yet we may come near it. And
who, that comes thus near it, must not feel how terms which St. Paul
employs in trying to follow, with his analysis of such profound power
and originality, some of the most delicate, intricate, obscure, and
contradictory workings and states of the human spirit, are detached
and employed by Puritanism, not in the connected and fluid way in
which St. Paul employs them, and for which alone words are really
meant, but in an isolated, fixed, mechanical way, as if they were
talismans; and how all trace and sense of St. Paul's true movement of
ideas, and sustained masterly analysis, is thus lost? Who, I say,
that has watched Puritanism,--the force which [179] so strongly
Hebraises, which so takes St. Paul's writings as something absolute
and final, containing the one thing needful,--handle such terms as
grace, faith, election, righteousness, but must feel, not only that
these terms have for the mind of Puritanism a sense false and
misleading, but also that this sense is the most monstrous and
grotesque caricature of the sense of St. Paul, and that his true
meaning is by these worshippers of his words altogether lost?
Or to take another eminent example, in which not Puritanism only,
but, one may say, the whole religious world, by their mechanical use
of St. Paul's writings, can be shown to miss or change his real
meaning. The whole religious world, one may say, use now the word
resurrection,--a word which is so often in their thoughts and on
their lips, and which they find so often in St. Paul's writings,--in
one sense only. They use it to mean a rising again after the
physical death of the body. Now it is quite true that St. Paul
speaks of resurrection in this sense, that he tries to describe and
explain it, and that he condemns those who doubt and deny it. But it
is true, also, that in nine cases out of ten where St. Paul thinks
and speaks of resurrection, he [180] thinks and speaks of it in a
sense different from this; in the sense of a rising to a new life
before the physical death of the body, and not after it. The idea on
which we have already touched, the profound idea of being baptized
into the death of the great exemplar of self-devotion and self-
annulment, of repeating in our own person, by virtue of
identification with our exemplar, his course of self-devotion and
self-annulment, and of thus coming, within the limits of our present
life, to a new life, in which, as in the death going before it, we
are identified with our exemplar,--this is the fruitful and original
conception of being risen with Christ which possesses the mind of St.
Paul, and this is the central point round which, with such
incomparable emotion and eloquence, all his teaching moves. For him,
the life after our physical death is really in the main but a
consequence and continuation of the inexhaustible energy of the new
life thus originated on this side the grave. This grand Pauline idea
of Christian resurrection is worthily rehearsed in one of the noblest
collects of the Prayer-Book, and is destined, no doubt, to fill a
more and more important place in the Christianity of the future; but
almost as [181] signal as is the essentialness of this characteristic
idea in St. Paul's teaching, is the completeness with which the
worshippers of St. Paul's words, as an absolute final expression of
saving truth, have lost it, and have substituted for the apostle's
living and near conception of a resurrection now, their mechanical
and remote conception of a resurrection hereafter!
In short, so fatal is the notion of possessing, even in the most
precious words or standards, the one thing needful, of having in
them, once for all, a full and sufficient measure of light to guide
us, and of there being no duty left for us except to make our
practice square exactly with them,--so fatal, I say, is this notion
to the right knowledge and comprehension of the very words or
standards we thus adopt, and to such strange distortions and
perversions of them does it inevitably lead, that whenever we hear
that commonplace which Hebraism, if we venture to inquire what a man
knows, is so apt to bring out against us in disparagement of what we
call culture, and in praise of a man's sticking to the one thing
needful,--he knows, says Hebraism, his Bible!--whenever we hear this
said, we may, without [182] any elaborate defence of culture, content
ourselves with answering simply: "No man, who knows nothing else,
knows even his Bible."
Now the force which we have so much neglected, Hellenism, may be
liable to fail in moral force and earnestness, but by the law of its
nature,--the very same law which makes it sometimes deficient in
intensity when intensity is required,--it opposes itself to the
notion of cutting our being in two, of attributing to one part the
dignity of dealing with the one thing needful, and leaving the other
part to take its chance, which is the bane of Hebraism. Essential in
Hellenism is the impulse to the development of the whole man, to
connecting and harmonising all parts of him, perfecting all, leaving
none to take their chance; because the characteristic bent of
Hellenism, as has been said, is to find the intelligible law of
things, and there is no intelligible law of things, things cannot
really appear intelligible, unless they are also beautiful. The body
is not intelligible, is not seen in its true nature and as it really
is, unless it is seen as beautiful; behaviour is not intelligible,
does not account for itself to the mind and show the reason for its
existing, unless it is beautiful. The [183] same with discourse, the
same with song, the same with worship, the same with all the modes in
which man proves his activity and expresses himself. To think that
when one shows what is mean, or vulgar, or hideous, one can be
permitted to plead that one has that within which passes show; to
suppose that the possession of what benefits and satisfies one part
of our being can make allowable either discourse like Mr. Murphy's
and the Rev. W. Cattle's, or poetry like the hymns we all hear, or
places of worship like the chapels we all see,--this it is abhorrent
to the nature of Hellenism to concede. And to be, like our honoured
and justly honoured Faraday, a great natural philosopher with one
side of his being and a Sandemanian with the other, would to
Archimedes have been impossible. It is evident to what a many-sided
perfecting of man's powers and activities this demand of Hellenism
for satisfaction to be given to the mind by everything which we do,
is calculated to impel our race. It has its dangers, as has been
fully granted; the notion of this sort of equipollency in man's modes
of activity may lead to moral relaxation, what we do not make our one
thing needful we may come to treat not [184] enough as if it were
needful, though it is indeed very needful and at the same time very
hard. Still, what side in us has not its dangers, and which of our
impulses can be a talisman to give us perfection outright, and not
merely a help to bring us towards it? Has not Hebraism, as we have
shown, its dangers as well as Hellenism; and have we used so
excessively the tendencies in ourselves to which Hellenism makes
appeal, that we are now suffering from it? Are we not, on the
contrary, now suffering because we have not enough used these
tendencies as a help towards perfection?
For we see whither it has brought us, the long exclusive predominance
of Hebraism,--the insisting on perfection in one part of our nature
and not in all; the singling out the moral side, the side of
obedience and action, for such intent regard; making strictness of
the moral conscience so far the principal thing, and putting off for
hereafter and for another world the care for being complete at all
points, the full and harmonious development of our humanity. Instead
of watching and following on its ways the desire which, as Plato
says, "for ever through all the universe tends towards that which
[185] is lovely," we think that the world has settled its accounts
with this desire, knows what this desire wants of it, and that all
the impulses of our ordinary self which do not conflict with the
terms of this settlement, in our narrow view of it, we may follow
unrestrainedly, under the sanction of some such text as "Not slothful
in business," or, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all
thy might," or something else of the same kind. And to any of these
impulses we soon come to give that same character of a mechanical,
absolute law, which we give to our religion; we regard it, as we do
our religion, as an object for strictness of conscience, not for
spontaneity of consciousness; for unremitting adherence on its own
account, not for going back upon, viewing in its connection with
other things, and adjusting to a number of changing circumstances; we
treat it, in short, just as we treat our religion,--as machinery. It
is in this way that the Barbarians treat their bodily exercises, the
Philistines their business, Mr. Spurgeon his voluntaryism, Mr. Bright
the assertion of personal liberty, Mr. Beales the right of meeting in
Hyde Park. In all those cases what is needed is a freer play of
consciousness [186] upon the object of pursuit; and in all of them
Hebraism, the valuing staunchness and earnestness more than this free
play, the entire subordination of thinking to doing, has led to a
mistaken and misleading treatment of things.
The newspapers a short time ago contained an account of the suicide
of a Mr. Smith, secretary to some insurance company, who, it was
said, "laboured under the apprehension that he would come to poverty,
and that he was eternally lost." And when I read these words, it
occurred to me that the poor man who came to such a mournful end was,
in truth, a kind of type, by the selection of his two grand objects
of concern, by their isolation from everything else, and their
juxtaposition to one another, of all the strongest, most respectable,
and most representative part of our nation. "He laboured under the
apprehension that he would come to poverty, and that he was eternally
lost." The whole middle-class have a conception of things,--a
conception which makes us call them Philistines,--just like that of
this poor man; though we are seldom, of course, shocked by seeing it
take the distressing, violently morbid, and fatal turn, which [187]
it took with him. But how generally, with how many of us, are the
main concerns of life limited to these two,--the concern for making
money, and the concern for saving our souls! And how entirely does
the narrow and mechanical conception of our secular business proceed
from a narrow and mechanical conception of our religious business!
What havoc do the united conceptions make of our lives! It is
because the second-named of these two master-concerns presents to us
the one thing needful in so fixed, narrow, and mechanical a way, that
so ignoble a fellow master-concern to it as the first-named becomes
possible; and, having been once admitted, takes the same rigid and
absolute character as the other. Poor Mr. Smith had sincerely the
nobler master-concern as well as the meaner,--the concern for saving
his soul (according to the narrow and mechanical conception which
Puritanism has of what the salvation of the soul is), and the concern
for making money. But let us remark how many people there are,
especially outside the limits of the serious and conscientious
middle-class to which Mr. Smith belonged, who take up with a meaner
master-concern,--whether it be pleasure, or field-sports, or [188]
bodily exercises, or business, or popular agitation,--who take up
with one of these exclusively, and neglect Mr. Smith's nobler master-
concern, because of the mechanical form which Hebraism has given to
this nobler master-concern, making it stand, as we have said, as
something talismanic, isolated, and all-sufficient, justifying our
giving our ordinary selves free play in amusement, or business, or
popular agitation, if we have made our accounts square with this
master-concern; and, if we have not, rendering other things
indifferent, and our ordinary self all we have to follow, and to
follow with all the energy that is in us, till we do. Whereas the
idea of perfection at all points, the encouraging in ourselves
spontaneity of consciousness, the letting a free play of thought live
and flow around all our activity, the indisposition to allow one side
of our activity to stand as so all-important and all-sufficing that
it makes other sides indifferent,--this bent of mind in us may not
only check us in following unreservedly a mean master-concern of any
kind, but may even, also, bring new life and movement into that side
of us with which alone Hebraism concerns itself, and awaken a
healthier [189] and less mechanical activity there. Hellenism may
thus actually serve to further the designs of Hebraism.
Undoubtedly it thus served in the first days of Christianity.
Christianity, as has been said, occupied itself, like Hebraism, with
the moral side of man exclusively, with his moral affections and
moral conduct; and so far it was but a continuation of Hebraism. But
it transformed and renewed Hebraism by going back upon a fixed rule,
which had become mechanical, and had thus lost its vital motive-
power; by letting the thought play freely around this old rule, and
perceive its inadequacy; by developing a new motive-power, which
men's moral consciousness could take living hold of, and could move
in sympathy with. What was this but an importation of Hellenism, as
we have defined it, into Hebraism? And as St. Paul used the
contradiction between the Jew's profession and practice, his
shortcomings on that very side of moral affection and moral conduct
which the Jew and St. Paul, both of them, regarded as all in all--
("Thou that sayest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? thou that
sayest a man should not [190] commit adultery, dost thou commit
adultery?")+--for a proof of the inadequacy of the old rule of life,
in the Jew's mechanical conception of it, and tried to rescue him by
making his consciousness play freely around this rule,--that is, by
a, so far, Hellenic treatment of it,--even so, when we hear so much
said of the growth of commercial immorality in our serious middle-
class, of the melting away of habits of strict probity before the
temptation to get quickly rich and to cut a figure in the world; when
we see, at any rate, so much confusion of thought and of practice in
this great representative class of our nation, may we not be disposed
to say that this confusion shows that his new motive-power of grace
and imputed righteousness has become to the Puritan as mechanical,
and with as ineffective a hold upon his practice, as the old motive-
power of the law was to the Jew? and that the remedy is the same as
that which St. Paul employed,--an importation of what we have called
Hellenism into his Hebraism, a making his consciousness flow freely
round his petrified rule of life and renew it? Only with this
difference: that whereas St. Paul imported Hellenism within the
limits of our moral part only, [191] this part being still treated by
him as all in all; and whereas he exhausted, one may say, and used to
the very uttermost, the possibilities of fruitfully importing it on
that side exclusively; we ought to try and import it,--guiding
ourselves by the ideal of a human nature harmoniously perfect at all
points,--into all the lines of our activity, and only by so doing can
we rightly quicken, refresh, and renew those very instincts, now so
much baffled, to which Hebraism makes appeal.
But if we will not be warned by the confusion visible enough at
present in our thinking and acting, that we are in a false line in
having developed our Hebrew side so exclusively, and our Hellenic
side so feebly and at random, in loving fixed rules of action so much
more than the intelligible law of things, let us listen to a
remarkable testimony which the opinion of the world around us offers.
All the world now sets great and increasing value on three objects
which have long been very dear to us, and pursues them in its own
way, or tries to pursue them. These three objects are industrial
enterprise, bodily exercises, and freedom. Certainly we have, before
and beyond our neighbours, given ourselves [192] to these three
things with ardent passion and with high success. And this our
neighbours cannot but acknowledge; and they must needs, when they
themselves turn to these things, have an eye to our example, and take
something of our practice. Now, generally, when people are
interested in an object of pursuit, they cannot help feeling an
enthusiasm for those who have already laboured successfully at it,
and for their success; not only do they study them, they also love
and admire them. In this way a man who is interested in the art of
war not only acquaints himself with the performance of great
generals, but he has an admiration and enthusiasm for them. So, too,
one who wants to be a painter or a poet cannot help loving and
admiring the great painters or poets who have gone before him and
shown him the way. But it is strange with how little of love,
admiration, or enthusiasm, the world regards us and our freedom, our
bodily exercises, and our industrial prowess, much as these things
themselves are beginning to interest it. And is not the reason
because we follow each of these things in a mechanical manner, as an
end in and for itself, and not in reference to a general end of human
[193] perfection? and this makes our pursuit of them uninteresting to
humanity, and not what the world truly wants? It seems to them mere
machinery that we can, knowingly, teach them to worship,--a mere
fetish. British freedom, British industry, British muscularity, we
work for each of these three things blindly, with no notion of giving
each its due proportion and prominence, because we have no ideal of
harmonious human perfection before our minds, to set our work in
motion, and to guide it. So the rest of the world, desiring
industry, or freedom, or bodily strength, yet desiring these not, as
we do, absolutely, but as means to something else, imitate, indeed,
of our practice what seems useful for them, but us, whose practice
they imitate, they seem to entertain neither love nor admiration for.
Let us observe, on the other hand, the love and enthusiasm excited by
others who have laboured for these very things. Perhaps of what we
call industrial enterprise it is not easy to find examples in former
times; but let us consider how Greek freedom and Greek gymnastics
have attracted the love and praise of mankind, who give so little
love and praise to ours. And what can be the reason [194] of this
difference? Surely because the Greeks pursued freedom and pursued
gymnastics not mechanically, but with constant reference to some
ideal of complete human perfection and happiness. And therefore, in
spite of faults and failures, they interest and delight by their
pursuit of them all the rest of mankind, who instinctively feel that
only as things are pursued with reference to this ideal are they
valuable.
Here again, therefore, as in the confusion into which the thought and
action of even the steadiest class amongst us is beginning to fall,
we seem to have an admonition that we have fostered our Hebraising
instincts, our preference of earnestness of doing to delicacy and
flexibility of thinking, too exclusively, and have been landed by
them in a mechanical and unfruitful routine. And again we seem
taught that the development of our Hellenising instincts, seeking
skilfully the intelligible law of things, and making a stream of
fresh thought play freely about our stock notions and habits, is what
is most wanted by us at present.
Well, then, from all sides, the more we go into the matter, the
currents seem to converge, and together [195] to bear us along
towards culture. If we look at the world outside us we find a
disquieting absence of sure authority; we discover that only in right
reason can we get a source of sure authority, and culture brings us
towards right reason. If we look at our own inner world, we find all
manner of confusion arising out of the habits of unintelligent
routine and one-sided growth, to which a too exclusive worship of
fire, strength, earnestness, and action has brought us. What we want
is a fuller harmonious development of our humanity, a free play of
thought upon our routine notions, spontaneity of consciousness,
sweetness and light; and these are just what culture generates and
fosters. Proceeding from this idea of the harmonious perfection of
our humanity, and seeking to help itself up towards this perfection
by knowing and spreading the best which has been reached in the
world--an object not to be gained without books and reading--culture
has got its name touched, in the fancies of men, with a sort of air
of bookishness and pedantry, cast upon it from the follies of the
many bookmen who forget the end in the means, and use their books
with no real aim at perfection. We will not stickle for a name,
[196] and the name of culture one might easily give up, if only those
who decry the frivolous and pedantic sort of culture, but wish at
bottom for the same things as we do, would be careful on their part,
not, in disparaging and discrediting the false culture, to
unwittingly disparage and discredit, among a people with little
natural reverence for it, the true also. But what we are concerned
for is the thing, not the name; and the thing, call it by what name
we will, is simply the enabling ourselves, whether by reading,
observing, or thinking, to come as near as we can to the firm
intelligible law of things, and thus to get a basis for a less
confused action and a more complete perfection than we have at
present.
And now, therefore, when we are accused of preaching up a spirit of
cultivated inaction, of provoking the earnest lovers of action, of
refusing to lend a hand at uprooting certain definite evils, of
despairing to find any lasting truth to minister to the diseased
spirit of our time, we shall not be so much confounded and
embarrassed what to answer for ourselves. We shall say boldly that
we do not at all despair of finding some lasting truth to minister to
the diseased spirit of our time; but that we have [197] discovered
the best way of finding this to be, not so much by lending a hand to
our friends and countrymen in their actual operations for the removal
of certain definite evils, but rather in getting our friends and
countrymen to seek culture, to let their consciousness play freely
round their present operations and the stock notions on which they
are founded, show what these are like, and how related to the
intelligible law of things, and auxiliary to true human perfection.
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