Culture and Anarchy

M >> Matthew Arnold >> Culture and Anarchy

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64. +London's Hyde Park riots occurred in 1866. Reform Leaguers bent
on assembling to promote universal suffrage broke through the iron
rails encompassing the Park.

CHAPTER III

[93] From a man without a philosophy no one can expect philosophical
completeness. Therefore I may observe without shame, that in trying
to get a distinct notion of our aristocratic, our middle, and our
working class, with a view of testing the claims of each of these
classes to become a centre of authority, I have omitted, I find, to
complete the old-fashioned analysis which I had the fancy of
applying, and have not shown in these classes, as well as the
virtuous mean and the excess, the defect also. I do not know that
the omission very much matters; still as clearness is the one merit
which a plain, unsystematic writer, without a philosophy, can hope to
have, and as our notion of the three great English classes may
perhaps be made clearer if we see their distinctive qualities in the
defect, as well as in the excess and in the mean, let us try, before
proceeding further, to remedy this omission.

It is manifest, if the perfect and virtuous mean of that fine spirit
which is the distinctive quality [94] of aristocracies, is to be
found in Lord Elcho's chivalrous style, and its excess in Sir Thomas
Bateson's turn for resistance, that its defect must lie in a spirit
not bold and high enough, and in an excessive and pusillanimous
unaptness for resistance. If, again, the perfect and virtuous mean
of that force by which our middle-class has done its great works, and
of that self-reliance with which it contemplates itself and them, is
to be seen in the performances and speeches of Mr. Bazley, and the
excess of that force and that self-reliance in the performances and
speeches of the Rev. W. Cattle, then it is manifest that their defect
must lie in a helpless inaptitude for the great works of the middle-
class, and in a poor and despicable lack of its self-satisfaction.
To be chosen to exemplify the happy mean of a good quality, or set of
good qualities, is evidently a praise to a man; nay, to be chosen to
exemplify even their excess, is a kind of praise. Therefore I could
have no hesitation in taking Lord Elcho and Mr. Bazley, the Rev. W.
Cattle and Sir Thomas Bateson, to exemplify, respectively, the mean
and the excess of aristocratic and middle-class qualities. But
perhaps there might [95] be a want of urbanity in singling out this
or that personage as the representative of defect. Therefore I shall
leave the defect of aristocracy unillustrated by any representative
man. But with oneself one may always, without impropriety, deal
quite freely; and, indeed, this sort of plain-dealing with oneself
has in it, as all the moralists tell us, something very wholesome.
So I will venture to humbly offer myself as an illustration of defect
in those forces and qualities which make our middle-class what it is.
The too well-founded reproaches of my opponents declare how little I
have lent a hand to the great works of the middle-class; for it is
evidently these works, and my slackness at them, which are meant,
when I am said to "refuse to lend a hand to the humble operation of
uprooting certain definite evils" (such as church-rates and others),
and that therefore "the believers in action grow impatient" with me.
The line, again, of a still unsatisfied seeker which I have followed,
the idea of self-transformation, of growing towards some measure of
sweetness and light not yet reached, is evidently at clean variance
with the perfect self-satisfaction current in my class, the middle-
class, [96] and may serve to indicate in me, therefore, the extreme
defect of this feeling. But these confessions, though salutary, are
bitter and unpleasant.

To pass, then, to the working-class. The defect of this class would
be the falling short in what Mr. Frederic Harrison calls those
"bright powers of sympathy and ready powers of action," of which we
saw in Mr. Odger the virtuous mean, and in Mr. Bradlaugh the excess.
The working-class is so fast growing and rising at the present time,
that instances of this defect cannot well be now very common.
Perhaps Canning's "Needy Knife-grinder" (who is dead, and therefore
cannot be pained at my taking him for an illustration) may serve to
give us the notion of defect in the essential quality of a working-
class; or I might even cite (since, though he is alive in the flesh,
he is dead to all heed of criticism) my poor old poaching friend,
Zephaniah Diggs, who, between his hare-snaring and his gin-drinking,
has got his powers of sympathy quite dulled and his powers of action
in any great movement of his class hopelessly impaired. But examples
of this defect belong, as I have said, to a bygone age rather than to
the present.

[97] The same desire for clearness, which has led me thus to extend a
little my first analysis of the three great classes of English
society, prompts me also to make my nomenclature for them a little
fuller, with a view to making it thereby more clear and manageable.
It is awkward and tiresome to be always saying the aristocratic
class, the middle-class, the working-class. For the middle-class,
for that great body which, as we know, "has done all the great things
that have been done in all departments," and which is to be conceived
as chiefly moving between its two cardinal points of Mr. Bazley and
the Rev. W. Cattle, but inclining, in the mass, rather towards the
latter than the former--for this class we have a designation which
now has become pretty well known, and which we may as well still keep
for them, the designation of Philistines. What this term means I
have so often explained that I need not repeat it here. For the
aristocratic class, conceived mainly as a body moving between the two
cardinal points of Lord Elcho and Sir Thomas Bateson, but as a whole
nearer to the latter than the former, we have as yet got no special
designation. Almost [98] all my attention has naturally been
concentrated on my own class, the middle-class, with which I am in
closest sympathy, and which has been, besides, the great power of our
day, and has had its praises sung by all speakers and newspapers.
Still the aristocratic class is so important in itself, and the
weighty functions which Mr. Carlyle proposes at the present critical
time to commit to it must add so much to its importance, that it
seems neglectful, and a strong instance of that want of coherent
philosophic method for which Mr. Frederic Harrison blames me, to
leave the aristocratic class so much without notice and denomination.
It may be thought that the characteristic which I have occasionally
mentioned as proper to aristocracies,--their natural inaccessibility,
as children of the established fact, to ideas,--points to our
extending to this class also the designation of Philistines; the
Philistine being, as is well known, the enemy of the children of
light, or servants of the idea. Nevertheless, there seems to be an
inconvenience in thus giving one and the same designation to two very
different classes; and besides, if we look into the thing closely, we
shall find that the term Philistine conveys a sense which [99] makes
it more peculiarly appropriate to our middle class than to our
aristocratic. For Philistine gives the notion of something
particularly stiff-necked and perverse in the resistance to light and
its children, and therein it specially suits our middle-class, who
not only do not pursue sweetness and light, but who prefer to them
that sort of machinery of business, chapels, tea meetings, and
addresses from Mr. Murphy and the Rev. W. Cattle, which makes up the
dismal and illiberal life on which I have so often touched. But the
aristocratic class has actually, as we have seen, in its well-known
politeness, a kind of image or shadow of sweetness; and as for light,
if it does not pursue light, it is not that it perversely cherishes
some dismal and illiberal existence in preference to light, but it is
seduced from following light by those mighty and eternal seducers of
our race which weave for this class their most irresistible charms,--
by worldly splendour, security, power and pleasure. These seducers
are exterior goods, but they are goods; and he who is hindered by
them from caring for light and ideas, is not so much doing what is
perverse as what is natural.

Keeping this in view, I have in my own mind [100] often indulged
myself with the fancy of putting side by side with the idea of our
aristocratic class, the idea of the Barbarians. The Barbarians, to
whom we all owe so much, and who reinvigorated and renewed our worn-
out Europe, had, as is well-known, eminent merits; and in this
country, where we are for the most part sprung from the Barbarians,
we have never had the prejudice against them which prevails among the
races of Latin origin. The Barbarians brought with them that staunch
individualism, as the modern phrase is, and that passion for doing as
one likes, for the assertion of personal liberty, which appears to
Mr. Bright the central idea of English life, and of which we have, at
any rate, a very rich supply. The stronghold and natural seat of
this passion was in the nobles of whom our aristocratic class are the
inheritors; and this class, accordingly, have signally manifested it,
and have done much by their example to recommend it to the body of
the nation, who already, indeed, had it in their blood. The
Barbarians, again, had the passion for field-sports; and they have
handed it on to our aristocratic class, who of this passion too, as
of the passion for asserting one's personal liberty, are the [101]
great natural stronghold. The care of the Barbarians for the body,
and for all manly exercises; the vigour, good looks, and fine
complexion which they acquired and perpetuated in their families by
these means,--all this may be observed still in our aristocratic
class. The chivalry of the Barbarians, with its characteristics of
high spirit, choice manners, and distinguished bearing,--what is this
but the beautiful commencement of the politeness of our aristocratic
class? In some Barbarian noble, no doubt, one would have admired, if
one could have been then alive to see it, the rudiments of Lord
Elcho. Only, all this culture (to call it by that name) of the
Barbarians was an exterior culture mainly: it consisted principally
in outward gifts and graces, in looks, manners, accomplishments,
prowess; the chief inward gifts which had part in it were the most
exterior, so to speak, of inward gifts, those which come nearest to
outward ones: they were courage, a high spirit, self-confidence. Far
within, and unawakened, lay a whole range of powers of thought and
feeling, to which these interesting productions of nature had, from
the circumstances of their life, no access. Making allowances for
the [102] difference of the times, surely we can observe precisely
the same thing now in our aristocratic class. In general its culture
is exterior chiefly; all the exterior graces and accomplishments, and
the more external of the inward virtues, seem to be principally its
portion. It now, of course, cannot but be often in contact with
those studies by which, from the world of thought and feeling, true
culture teaches us to fetch sweetness and light; but its hold upon
these very studies appears remarkably external, and unable to exert
any deep power upon its spirit. Therefore the one insufficiency
which we noted in the perfect mean of this class, Lord Elcho, was an
insufficiency of light. And owing to the same causes, does not a
subtle criticism lead us to make, even on the good looks and
politeness of our aristocratic class, the one qualifying remark, that
in these charming gifts there should perhaps be, for ideal
perfection, a shade more soul?

I often, therefore, when I want to distinguish clearly the
aristocratic class from the Philistines proper, or middle-class, name
the former, in my own mind, the Barbarians: and when I go through the
country, and see this and that beautiful and [103] imposing seat of
theirs crowning the landscape, "There," I say to myself, "is a great
fortified post of the Barbarians."

It is obvious that that part of the working-class which, working
diligently by the light of Mrs. Gooch's Golden Rule, looks forward to
the happy day when it will sit on thrones with Mr. Bazley and other
middle-class potentates, to survey, as Mr. Bright beautifully says,
"the cities it has built, the railroads it has made, the manufactures
it has produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest
mercantile navy the world has ever seen,"--it is obvious, I say, that
this part of the working-class is, or is in a fair way to be, one in
spirit with the industrial middle-class. It is notorious that our
middle-class liberals have long looked forward to this consummation,
when the working-class shall join forces with them, aid them heartily
to carry forward their great works, go in a body to their tea-
meetings, and, in short, enable them to bring about their millennium.
That part of the working-class, therefore, which does really seem to
lend itself to these great aims, may, with propriety, be numbered by
us among the Philistines. That part of it, again, which [104] so
much occupies the attention of philanthropists at present,--the part
which gives all its energies to organising itself, through trades'
unions and other means, so as to constitute, first, a great working-
class power, independent of the middle and aristocratic classes, and
then, by dint of numbers, give the law to them, and itself reign
absolutely,--this lively and interesting part must also, according to
our definition, go with the Philistines; because it is its class and
its class-instinct which it seeks to affirm, its ordinary self not
its best self; and it is a machinery, an industrial machinery, and
power and pre-eminence and other external goods which fill its
thoughts, and not an inward perfection. It is wholly occupied,
according to Plato's subtle expression, with the things of itself and
not its real self, with the things of the State and not the real
State. But that vast portion, lastly, of the working-class which,
raw and half-developed, has long lain half-hidden amidst its poverty
and squalor, and is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an
Englishman's heaven-born privilege of doing as he likes, and is
beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it
likes, bawling what it likes, [105] breaking what it likes,--to this
vast residuum we may with great propriety give the name of Populace.

Thus we have got three distinct terms, Barbarians, Philistines,
Populace, to denote roughly the three great classes into which our
society is divided; and though this humble attempt at a scientific
nomenclature falls, no doubt, very far short in precision of what
might be required from a writer equipped with a complete and coherent
philosophy, yet, from a notoriously unsystematic and unpretending
writer, it will, I trust, be accepted as sufficient.

But in using this new, and, I hope, convenient division of English
society, two things are to be borne in mind. The first is, that
since, under all our class divisions, there is a common basis of
human nature, therefore, in every one of us, whether we be properly
Barbarians, Philistines, or Populace, there exists, sometimes only in
germ and potentially, sometimes more or less developed, the same
tendencies and passions which have made our fellow-citizens of other
classes what they are. This consideration is very important, because
it has great influence in begetting that spirit of indulgence which
[106] is a necessary part of sweetness, and which, indeed, when our
culture is complete, is, as I have said, inexhaustible. Thus, an
English Barbarian who examines himself, will, in general, find
himself to be not so entirely a Barbarian but that he has in him,
also, something of the Philistine, and even something of the Populace
as well. And the same with Englishmen of the two other classes.
This is an experience which we may all verify every day. For
instance, I myself (I again take myself as a sort of corpus vile to
serve for illustration in a matter where serving for illustration may
not by every one be thought agreeable), I myself am properly a
Philistine,--Mr. Swinburne would add, the son of a Philistine,--and
though, through circumstances which will perhaps one day be known, if
ever the affecting history of my conversion comes to be written, I
have, for the most part, broken with the ideas and the tea-meetings
of my own class, yet I have not, on that account, been brought much
the nearer to the ideas and works of the Barbarians or of the
Populace. Nevertheless, I never take a gun or a fishing-rod in my
hands without feeling that I have in the ground of my nature the
self-same seeds which, fostered by [107] circumstances, do so much to
make the Barbarian; and that, with the Barbarian's advantages, I
might have rivalled him. Place me in one of his great fortified
posts, with these seeds of a love for field-sports sown in my nature,
With all the means of developing them, with all pleasures at my
command, with most whom I met deferring to me, every one I met
smiling on me, and with every appearance of permanence and security
before me and behind me,--then I too might have grown, I feel, into a
very passable child of the established fact, of commendable spirit
and politeness, and, at the same time, a little inaccessible to ideas
and light; not, of course, with either the eminent fine spirit of
Lord Elcho, or the eminent power of resistance of Sir Thomas Bateson,
but, according to the measure of the common run of mankind, something
between the two. And as to the Populace, who, whether he be
Barbarian or Philistine, can look at them without sympathy, when he
remembers how often,--every time that we snatch up a vehement opinion
in ignorance and passion, every time that we long to crush an
adversary by sheer violence, every time that we are envious, every
time that we are brutal, [108] every time that we adore mere power or
success, every time that we add our voice to swell a blind clamour
against some unpopular personage, every time that we trample savagely
on the fallen,--he has found in his own bosom the eternal spirit of
the Populace, and that there needs only a little help from
circumstances to make it triumph in him untameably?

The second thing to be borne in mind I have indicated several times
already. It is this. All of us, so far as we are Barbarians,
Philistines, or Populace, imagine happiness to consist in doing what
one's ordinary self likes. What one's ordinary self likes differs
according to the class to which one belongs, and has its severer and
its lighter side; always, however, remaining machinery, and nothing
more. The graver self of the Barbarian likes honours and
consideration; his more relaxed self, field-sports and pleasure. The
graver self of one kind of Philistine likes business and money-
making; his more relaxed self, comfort and tea-meetings. Of another
kind of Philistine, the graver self likes trades' unions; the relaxed
self, deputations, or hearing Mr. Odger speak. The sterner self of
the [109] Populace likes bawling, hustling, and smashing; the lighter
self, beer. But in each class there are born a certain number of
natures with a curiosity about their best self, with a bent for
seeing things as they are, for disentangling themselves from
machinery, for simply concerning themselves with reason and the will
of God, and doing their best to make these prevail;--for the pursuit,
in a word, of perfection. To certain manifestations of this love for
perfection mankind have accustomed themselves to give the name of
genius; implying, by this name, something original and heaven-
bestowed in the passion. But the passion is to be found far beyond
those manifestations of it to which the world usually gives the name
of genius, and in which there is, for the most part, a talent of some
kind or other, a special and striking faculty of execution, informed
by the heaven-bestowed ardour, or genius. It is to be found in many
manifestations besides these, and may best be called, as we have
called it, the love and pursuit of perfection; culture being the true
nurse of the pursuing love, and sweetness and light the true
character of the pursued perfection. Natures with this bent emerge
in all classes,--among the Barbarians, among the Philistines, [110]
among the Populace. And this bent always tends, as I have said, to
take them out of their class, and to make their distinguishing
characteristic not their Barbarianism or their Philistinism, but
their humanity. They have, in general, a rough time of it in their
lives; but they are sown more abundantly than one might think, they
appear where and when one least expects it, they set up a fire which
enfilades, so to speak, the class with which they are ranked; and, in
general, by the extrication of their best self as the self to
develope, and by the simplicity of the ends fixed by them as
paramount, they hinder the unchecked predominance of that class-life
which is the affirmation of our ordinary self, and seasonably
disconcert mankind in their worship of machinery.

Therefore, when we speak of ourselves as divided into Barbarians,
Philistines, and Populace, we must be understood always to imply that
within each of these classes there are a certain number of aliens, if
we may so call them,--persons who are mainly led, not by their class
spirit, but by a general humane spirit, by the love of human
perfection; and that this number is capable of being diminished or
augmented. I mean, the number of those who will succeed in [111]
developing this happy instinct will be greater or smaller, in
proportion both to the force of the original instinct within them,
and to the hindrance or encouragement which it meets with from
without. In almost all who have it, it is mixed with some infusion
of the spirit of an ordinary self, some quantity of class-instinct,
and even, as has been shown, of more than one class-instinct at the
same time; so that, in general, the extrication of the best self, the
predominance of the humane instinct, will very much depend upon its
meeting, or not, with what is fitted to help and elicit it. At a
moment, therefore, when it is agreed that we want a source of
authority, and when it seems probable that the right source is our
best self, it becomes of vast importance to see whether or not the
things around us are, in general, such as to help and elicit our best
self, and if they are not, to see why they are not, and the most
promising way of mending them.

Now, it is clear that the very absence of any powerful authority
amongst us, and the prevalent doctrine of the duty and happiness of
doing as one likes, and asserting our personal liberty, must tend to
prevent the erection of any very strict standard of [112] excellence,
the belief in any very paramount authority of right reason, the
recognition of our best self as anything very recondite and hard to
come at. It may be, as I have said, a proof of our honesty that we
do not attempt to give to our ordinary self, as we have it in action,
predominant authority, and to impose its rule upon other people; but
it is evident, also, that it is not easy, with our style of
proceeding, to get beyond the notion of an ordinary self at all, or
to get the paramount authority of a commanding best self, or right
reason, recognised. The learned Martinus Scriblerus well says:--"The
taste of the bathos is implanted by nature itself in the soul of man;
till, perverted by custom or example, he is taught, or rather
compelled, to relish the sublime." But with us everything seems
directed to prevent any such perversion of us by custom or example as
might compel us to relish the sublime; by all means we are encouraged
to keep our natural taste for the bathos unimpaired. I have formerly
pointed out how in literature the absence of any authoritative
centre, like an Academy, tends to do this; each section of the public
has its own literary organ, and the mass of the public is without any
suspicion that [113] the value of these organs is relative to their
being nearer a certain ideal centre of correct information, taste,
and intelligence, or farther away from it. I have said that within
certain limits, which any one who is likely to read this will have no
difficulty in drawing for himself, my old adversary, the Saturday
Review, may, on matters of literature and taste, be fairly enough
regarded, relatively to a great number of newspapers which treat
these matters, as a kind of organ of reason. But I remember once
conversing with a company of Nonconformist admirers of some lecturer
who had let off a great fire-work, which the Saturday Review said was
all noise and false lights, and feeling my way as tenderly as I could
about the effect of this unfavourable judgment upon those with whom I
was conversing. "Oh," said one who was their spokesman, with the
most tranquil air of conviction, "it is true the Saturday Review
abuses the lecture, but the British Banner" (I am not quite sure it
was the British Banner, but it was some newspaper of that stamp)
"says that the Saturday Review is quite wrong." The speaker had
evidently no notion that there was a scale of value for judgments on
these topics, and that the judgments of the [114] Saturday Review
ranked high on this scale, and those of the British Banner low; the
taste of the bathos implanted by nature in the literary judgments of
man had never, in my friend's case, encountered any let or hindrance.

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