Culture and Anarchy
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Matthew Arnold >> Culture and Anarchy
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Just the same in religion as in literature. We have most of us
little idea of a high standard to choose our guides by, of a great
and profound spirit, which is an authority, while inferior spirits
are none; it is enough to give importance to things that this or that
person says them decisively, and has a large following of some strong
kind when he says them. This habit of ours is very well shown in
that able and interesting work of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's, which we were
all reading lately, The Mormons, by One of Themselves. Here, again,
I am not quite sure that my memory serves me as to the exact title,
but I mean the well-known book in which Mr. Hepworth Dixon described
the Mormons, and other similar religious bodies in America, with so
much detail and such warm sympathy. In this work it seems enough for
Mr. Dixon that this or that doctrine has its Rabbi, who talks big to
him, has a staunch body of disciples, and, above all, has plenty
[115] of rifles. That there are any further stricter tests to be
applied to a doctrine, before it is pronounced important, never seems
to occur to him. "It is easy to say," he writes of the Mormons,
"that these saints are dupes and fanatics, to laugh at Joe Smith and
his church, but what then? The great facts remain. Young and his
people are at Utah; a church of 200,000 souls; an army of 20,000
rifles." But if the followers of a doctrine are really dupes, or
worse, and its promulgators are really fanatics, or worse, it gives
the doctrine no seriousness or authority the more that there should
be found 200,000 souls,--200,000 of the innumerable multitude with a
natural taste for the bathos,--to hold it, and 20,000 rifles to
defend it. And again, of another religious organisation in America:
"A fair and open field is not to be refused when hosts so mighty
throw down wager of battle on behalf of what they hold to be true,
however strange their faith may seem." A fair and open field is not
to be refused to any speaker; but this solemn way of heralding him is
quite out of place unless he has, for the best reason and spirit of
man, some significance. "Well, but," says Mr. Hepworth Dixon, [116]
"a theory which has been accepted by men like Judge Edmonds, Dr.
Hare, Elder Frederick, and Professor Bush!" And again: "Such are, in
brief, the bases of what Newman Weeks, Sarah Horton, Deborah Butler,
and the associated brethren, proclaimed in Rolt's Hall as the new
covenant!" If he was summing up an account of the teaching of Plato
or St. Paul, Mr. Hepworth Dixon could not be more earnestly
reverential. But the question is, have personages like Judge
Edmonds, and Newman Weeks, and Elderess Polly, and Elderess
Antoinette, and the rest of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's heroes and heroines,
anything of the weight and significance for the best reason and
spirit of man that Plato and St. Paul have? Evidently they, at
present, have not; and a very small taste of them and their doctrines
ought to have convinced Mr. Hepworth Dixon that they never could
have. "But," says he, "the magnetic power which Shakerism is
exercising on American thought would of itself compel us,"--and so
on. Now as far as real thought is concerned,--thought which affects
the best reason and spirit of man, the scientific thought of the
world, the only thought which deserves [117] speaking of in this
solemn way,--America has up to the present time been hardly more than
a province of England, and even now would not herself claim to be
more than abreast of England; and of this only real human thought,
English thought itself is not just now, as we must all admit, one of
the most significant factors. Neither, then, can American thought
be; and the magnetic power which Shakerism exercises on American
thought is about as important, for the best reason and spirit of man,
as the magnetic power which Mr. Murphy exercises on Birmingham
Protestantism. And as we shall never get rid of our natural taste
for the bathos in religion,--never get access to a best self and
right reason which may stand as a serious authority,--by treating Mr.
Murphy as his own disciples treat him, seriously, and as if he was as
much an authority as any one else: so we shall never get rid of it
while our able and popular writers treat their Joe Smiths and Deborah
Butlers, with their so many thousand souls and so many thousand
rifles, in the like exaggerated and misleading manner, and so do
their best to confirm us in a bad mental habit to which we are
already too prone.
[118] If our habits make it hard for us to come at the idea of a high
best self, of a paramount authority, in literature or religion, how
much more do they make this hard in the sphere of politics! In other
countries, the governors, not depending so immediately on the favour
of the governed, have everything to urge them, if they know anything
of right reason (and it is at least supposed that governors should
know more of this than the mass of the governed), to set it
authoritatively before the community. But our whole scheme of
government being representative, every one of our governors has all
possible temptation, instead of setting up before the governed who
elect him, and on whose favour he depends, a high standard of right
reason, to accommodate himself as much as possible to their natural
taste for the bathos; and even if he tries to go counter to it, to
proceed in this with so much flattering and coaxing, that they shall
not suspect their ignorance and prejudices to be anything very unlike
right reason, or their natural taste for the bathos to differ much
from a relish for the sublime. Every one is thus in every possible
way encouraged to trust in his own heart; but "he that trusteth in
his [119] own heart," says the Wise Man, "is a fool;"+ and at any
rate this, which Bishop Wilson says, is undeniably true: "The number
of those who need to be awakened is far greater than that of those
who need comfort." But in our political system everybody is
comforted. Our guides and governors who have to be elected by the
influence of the Barbarians, and who depend on their favour, sing the
praises of the Barbarians, and say all the smooth things that can be
said of them. With Mr. Tennyson, they celebrate "the great broad-
shouldered genial Englishman," with his "sense of duty," his
"reverence for the laws," and his "patient force," who saves us from
the "revolts, republics, revolutions, most no graver than a
schoolboy's barring out," which upset other and less broad-shouldered
nations. Our guides who are chosen by the Philistines and who have
to look to their favour, tell the Philistines how "all the world
knows that the great middle-class of this country supplies the mind,
the will, and the power requisite for all the great and good things
that have to be done," and congratulate them on their "earnest good
sense, which penetrates through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and
gives to conventional illusions their [120] true value." Our guides
who look to the favour of the Populace, tell them that "theirs are
the brightest powers of sympathy, and the readiest powers of action."
Harsh things are said too, no doubt, against all the great classes of
the community; but these things so evidently come from a hostile
class, and are so manifestly dictated by the passions and
prepossessions of a hostile class, and not by right reason, that they
make no serious impression on those at whom they are launched, but
slide easily off their minds. For instance, when the Reform League
orators inveigh against our cruel and bloated aristocracy, these
invectives so evidently show the passions and point of view of the
Populace, that they do not sink into the minds of those at whom they
are addressed, or awaken any thought or self-examination in them.
Again, when Sir Thomas Bateson describes the Philistines and the
Populace as influenced with a kind of hideous mania for emasculating
the aristocracy, that reproach so clearly comes from the wrath and
excited imagination of the Barbarians, that it does not much set the
Philistines and the Populace thinking. Or when Mr. Lowe calls the
Populace drunken and venal, he [121] so evidently calls them this in
an agony of apprehension for his Philistine or middle-class
Parliament, which has done so many great and heroic works, and is now
threatened with mixture and debasement, that the Populace do not lay
his words seriously to heart. So the voice which makes a permanent
impression on each of our classes is the voice of its friends, and
this is from the nature of things, as I have said, a comforting
voice. The Barbarians remain in the belief that the great broad-
shouldered genial Englishman may be well satisfied with himself; the
Philistines remain in the belief that the great middle-class of this
country, with its earnest common-sense penetrating through sophisms
and ignoring commonplaces, may be well satisfied with itself: the
Populace, that the working-man with his bright powers of sympathy and
ready powers of action, may be well satisfied with himself. What
hope, at this rate, of extinguishing the taste of the bathos
implanted by nature itself in the soul of man, or of inculcating the
belief that excellence dwells among high and steep rocks, and can
only be reached by those who sweat blood to reach her? But it will
be said, perhaps, that candidates for [122] political influence and
leadership, who thus caress the self-love of those whose suffrages
they desire, know quite well that they are not saying the sheer truth
as reason sees it, but that they are using a sort of conventional
language, or what we call clap-trap, which is essential to the
working of representative institutions. And therefore, I suppose, we
ought rather to say with Figaro: Qui est-ce qu'on trompe ici?+ Now,
I admit that often, but not always, when our governors say smooth
things to the self-love of the class whose political support they
want, they know very well that they are overstepping, by a long
stride, the bounds of truth and soberness; and while they talk, they
in a manner, no doubt, put their tongue in their cheek. Not always;
because, when a Barbarian appeals to his own class to make him their
representative and give him political power, he, when he pleases
their self-love by extolling broad-shouldered genial Englishmen with
their sense of duty, reverence for the laws, and patient force,
pleases his own self-love and extols himself, and is, therefore,
himself ensnared by his own smooth words. And so, too, when a
Philistine wants to represent his brother Philistines, and [123]
extols the earnest good sense which characterises Manchester, and
supplies the mind, the will, and the power, as the Daily News
eloquently says, requisite for all the great and good things that
have to be done, he intoxicates and deludes himself as well as his
brother Philistines who hear him. But it is true that a Barbarian
often wants the political support of the Philistines; and he
unquestionably, when he flatters the self-love of Philistinism, and
extols, in the approved fashion, its energy, enterprise, and self-
reliance, knows that he is talking clap-trap, and, so to say, puts
his tongue in his cheek. On all matters where Nonconformity and its
catchwords are concerned, this insincerity of Barbarians needing
Nonconformist support, and, therefore, flattering the self-love of
Nonconformity and repeating its catchwords without the least real
belief in them, is very noticeable. When the Nonconformists, in a
transport of blind zeal, threw out Sir James Graham's useful
Education Clauses in 1843, one-half of their parliamentary
representatives, no doubt, who cried aloud against "trampling on the
religious liberty of the Dissenters by taking the money of Dissenters
to teach the tenets of the [124] Church of England," put their tongue
in their cheek while they so cried out. And perhaps there is even a
sort of motion of Mr. Frederic Harrison's tongue towards his cheek
when he talks of the "shriek of superstition," and tells the working-
class that theirs are the brightest powers of sympathy and the
readiest powers of action. But the point on which I would insist is,
that this involuntary tribute to truth and soberness on the part of
certain of our governors and guides never reaches at all the mass of
us governed, to serve as a lesson to us, to abate our self-love, and
to awaken in us a suspicion that our favourite prejudices may be, to
a higher reason, all nonsense. Whatever by-play goes on among the
more intelligent of our leaders, we do not see it; and we are left to
believe that, not only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of our
representative and ruling men, there is nothing more admirable than
our ordinary self, whatever our ordinary self happens to be,--
Barbarian, Philistine, or Populace.
Thus everything in our political life tends to hide from us that
there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves, and to prevent our
getting the notion of a paramount right reason. Royalty itself,
[125] in its idea the expression of the collective nation, and a sort
of constituted witness to its best mind, we try to turn into a kind
of grand advertising van, to give publicity and credit to the
inventions, sound or unsound, of the ordinary self of individuals. I
remember, when I was in North Germany, having this very strongly
brought to my mind in the matter of schools and their institution.
In Prussia, the best schools are Crown patronage schools, as they are
called; schools which have been established and endowed (and new ones
are to this day being established and endowed) by the Sovereign
himself out of his own revenues, to be under the direct control and
management of him or of those representing him, and to serve as types
of what schools should be. The Sovereign, as his position raises him
above many prejudices and littlenesses, and as he can always have at
his disposal the best advice, has evident advantages over private
founders in well planning and directing a school; while at the same
time his great means and his great influence secure, to a well-
planned school of his, credit and authority. This is what, in North
Germany, the governors do, in the matter of education, for the [126]
governed; and one may say that they thus give the governed a lesson,
and draw out in them the idea of a right reason higher than the
suggestions of an ordinary man's ordinary self. But in England how
different is the part which in this matter our governors are
accustomed to play! The Licensed Victuallers or the Commercial
Travellers propose to make a school for their children; and I
suppose, in the matter of schools, one may call the Licensed
Victuallers or the Commercial Travellers ordinary men, with their
natural taste for the bathos still strong; and a Sovereign with the
advice of men like Wilhelm von Humboldt or Schleiermacher may, in
this matter, be a better judge, and nearer to right reason. And it
will be allowed, probably, that right reason would suggest that, to
have a sheer school of Licensed Victuallers' children, or a sheer
school of Commercial Travellers' children, and to bring them all up,
not only at home but at school too, in a kind of odour of licensed
victualism or of bagmanism, is not a wise training to give to these
children. And in Germany, I have said, the action of the national
guides or governors is to suggest and provide a better. But, in
England, the action of the national [127] guides or governors is, for
a Royal Prince or a great Minister to go down to the opening of the
Licensed Victuallers' or of the Commercial Travellers' school, to
take the chair, to extol the energy and self-reliance of the Licensed
Victuallers or the Commercial Travellers, to be all of their way of
thinking, to predict full success to their schools, and never so much
as to hint to them that they are doing a very foolish thing, and that
the right way to go to work with their children's education is quite
different. And it is the same in almost every department of affairs.
While, on the Continent, the idea prevails that it is the business of
the heads and representatives of the nation, by virtue of their
superior means, power, and information, to set an example and to
provide suggestions of right reason, among us the idea is that the
business of the heads and representatives of the nation is to do
nothing of the kind, but to applaud the natural taste for the bathos
showing itself vigorously in any part of the community, and to
encourage its works.
Now I do not say that the political system of foreign countries has
not inconveniences which may outweigh the inconveniences of our own
political [128] system; nor am I the least proposing to get rid of
our own political system and to adopt theirs. But a sound centre of
authority being what, in this disquisition, we have been led to seek,
and right reason, or our best self, appearing alone to offer such a
sound centre of authority, it is necessary to take note of the chief
impediments which hinder, in this country, the extrication or
recognition of this right reason as a paramount authority, with a
view to afterwards trying in what way they can best be removed.
This being borne in mind, I proceed to remark how not only do we get
no suggestions of right reason, and no rebukes of our ordinary self,
from our governors, but a kind of philosophical theory is widely
spread among us to the effect that there is no such thing at all as a
best self and a right reason having claim to paramount authority, or,
at any rate, no such thing ascertainable and capable of being made
use of; and that there is nothing but an infinite number of ideas and
works of our ordinary selves, and suggestions of our natural taste
for the bathos, pretty equal in value, which are doomed either to an
irreconcileable conflict, or else to a [129] perpetual give and take;
and that wisdom consists in choosing the give and take rather than
the conflict, and in sticking to our choice with patience and good
humour. And, on the other hand, we have another philosophical theory
rife among us, to the effect that without the labour of perverting
ourselves by custom or example to relish right reason, but by
continuing all of us to follow freely our natural taste for the
bathos, we shall, by the mercy of Providence, and by a kind of
natural tendency of things, come in due time to relish and follow
right reason. The great promoters of these philosophical theories
are our newspapers, which, no less than our parliamentary
representatives, may be said to act the part of guides and governors
to us; and these favourite doctrines of theirs I call,--or should
call, if the doctrines were not preached by authorities I so much
respect,--the first, a peculiarly British form of Atheism, the
second, a peculiarly British form of Quietism. The first-named
melancholy doctrine is preached in The Times with great clearness and
force of style; indeed, it is well known, from the example of the
poet Lucretius and others, what great masters of style the atheistic
[130] doctrine has always counted among its promulgators. "It is of
no use," says The Times, "for us to attempt to force upon our
neighbours our several likings and dislikings. We must take things
as they are. Everybody has his own little vision of religious or
civil perfection. Under the evident impossibility of satisfying
everybody, we agree to take our stand on equal laws and on a system
as open and liberal as is possible. The result is that everybody has
more liberty of action and of speaking here than anywhere else in the
Old World." We come again here upon Mr. Roebuck's celebrated
definition of happiness, on which I have so often commented: "I look
around me and ask what is the state of England? Is not every man
able to say what he likes? I ask you whether the world over, or in
past history, there is anything like it? Nothing. I pray that our
unrivalled happiness may last." This is the old story of our system
of checks and every Englishman doing as he likes, which we have
already seen to have been convenient enough so long as there were
only the Barbarians and the Philistines to do what they liked, but to
be getting inconvenient, and productive of anarchy, [131] now that
the Populace wants to do what it likes too. But for all that, I will
not at once dismiss this famous doctrine, but will first quote
another passage from The Times, applying the doctrine to a matter of
which we have just been speaking,--education. "The difficulty here"
(in providing a national system of education), says The Times, "does
not reside in any removeable arrangements. It is inherent and native
in the actual and inveterate state of things in this country. All
these powers and personages, all these conflicting influences and
varieties of character, exist, and have long existed among us; they
are fighting it out, and will long continue to fight it out, without
coming to that happy consummation when some one element of the
British character is to destroy or to absorb all the rest." There it
is; the various promptings of the natural taste for the bathos in
this man and that amongst us are fighting it out; and the day will
never come (and, indeed, why should we wish it to come?) when one
man's particular sort of taste for the bathos shall tyrannise over
another man's; nor when right reason (if that may be called an
element of the British character) shall absorb and [132] rule them
all. "The whole system of this country, like the constitution we
boast to inherit, and are glad to uphold, is made up of established
facts, prescriptive authorities, existing usages, powers that be,
persons in possession, and communities or classes that have won
dominion for themselves, and will hold it against all comers." Every
force in the world, evidently, except the one reconciling force,
right reason! Sir Thomas Bateson here, the Rev. W. Cattle on this
side, Mr. Bradlaugh on that!--pull devil, pull baker! Really,
presented with the mastery of style of our leading journal, the sad
picture, as one gazes upon it, assumes the iron and inexorable
solemnity of tragic Destiny.
After this, the milder doctrine of our other philosophical teacher,
the Daily News, has, at first, something very attractive and
assuaging. The Daily News begins, indeed, in appearance, to weave
the iron web of necessity round us like The Times. "The alternative
is between a man's doing what he likes and his doing what some one
else, probably not one whit wiser than himself, likes." This points
to the tacit compact, mentioned [133] in my last paper, between the
Barbarians and the Philistines, and into which it is hoped that the
Populace will one day enter; the compact, so creditable to English
honesty, that no class, if it exercise power, having only the ideas
and aims of its ordinary self to give effect to, shall treat its
ordinary self too seriously, or attempt to impose it on others; but
shall let these others,--the Rev. W. Cattle, for instance, in his
Papist-baiting, and Mr. Bradlaugh in his Hyde Park anarchy-
mongering,--have their fling. But then the Daily News suddenly
lights up the gloom of necessitarianism with bright beams of hope.
"No doubt," it says, "the common reason of society ought to check the
aberrations of individual eccentricity." This common reason of
society looks very like our best self or right reason, to which we
want to give authority, by making the action of the State, or nation
in its collective character, the expression of it. But of this
project of ours, the Daily News, with its subtle dialectics, makes
havoc. "Make the State the organ of the common reason?"--it says.
"You may make it the organ of something or other, but how can you be
certain that [134] reason will be the quality which will be embodied
in it?" You cannot be certain of it, undoubtedly, if you never try
to bring the thing about; but the question is, the action of the
State being the action of the collective nation, and the action of
the collective nation carrying naturally great publicity, weight, and
force of example with it, whether we should not try to put into the
action of the State as much as possible of right reason, or our best
self, which may, in this manner, come back to us with new force and
authority, may have visibility, form, and influence, and help to
confirm us, in the many moments when we are tempted to be our
ordinary selves merely, in resisting our natural taste of the bathos
rather than in giving way to it?
But no! says our teacher: "it is better there should be an infinite
variety of experiments in human action, because, as the explorers
multiply, the true track is more likely to be discovered. The common
reason of society can check the aberrations of individual
eccentricity only by acting on the individual reason; and it will do
so in the main sufficiently, if left to this natural operation."
This is what I call the specially British form of [135] Quietism, or
a devout, but excessive, reliance on an over-ruling Providence.
Providence, as the moralists are careful to tell us, generally works
in human affairs by human means; so when we want to make right reason
act on individual reason, our best self on our ordinary self, we seek
to give it more power of doing so by giving it public recognition and
authority, and embodying it, so far as we can, in the State. It
seems too much to ask of Providence, that while we, on our part,
leave our congenital taste for the bathos to its natural operation
and its infinite variety of experiments, Providence should
mysteriously guide it into the true track, and compel it to relish
the sublime. At any rate, great men and great institutions have
hitherto seemed necessary for producing any considerable effect of
this kind. No doubt we have an infinite variety of experiments, and
an ever-multiplying multitude of explorers; even in this short paper
I have enumerated many: the British Banner, Judge Edmonds, Newman
Weeks, Deborah Butler, Elderess Polly, Brother Noyes, the Rev. W.
Cattle, the Licensed Victuallers, the Commercial Travellers, and I
know not how [136] many more; and the numbers of this noble army are
swelling every day. But what a depth of Quietism, or rather, what an
over-bold call on the direct interposition of Providence, to believe
that these interesting explorers will discover the true track, or at
any rate, "will do so in the main sufficiently" (whatever that may
mean) if left to their natural operation; that is, by going on as
they are! Philosophers say, indeed, that we learn virtue by
performing acts of virtue; but to say that we shall learn virtue by
performing any acts to which our natural taste for the bathos carries
us, that the Rev. W. Cattle comes at his best self by Papist-baiting,
or Newman Weeks and Deborah Butler at right reason by following their
noses, this certainly does appear over-sanguine.
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