Alfred J. Drake, PhD, has graciously shared with readers of the Victorian Web this chapter from Arnold's Culture and Anarchy from his website. He has produced this e-text from the first edition, London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1869.
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This fundamental ground is our preference of doing to thinking.
Now this preference is a main element in our nature, and as we study
it we find ourselves opening up a number of large questions on every
side.
Let me go back for a moment to what I have already quoted from Bishop Wilson: — "First, never go against the best light you have; secondly, take care that your light be not darkness." I said we show, as a nation, laudable energy and persistence in walking according to the best light we have, but are not quite careful enough, perhaps, to see that our light be not darkness. This is only another version of the old story that energy is our strong point and favourable characteristic, rather than intelligence. But we may give to this idea a more general form still, in which it will have a yet larger range of application. We may regard this energy driving at practice, this paramount sense of the obligation of duty, self-control, and work, this earnestness in going manfully with the best light we [142/143] have, as one force. And we may regard the intelligence driving at those ideas which are, after all, the basis of right practice, the ardent sense for all the new and changing combinations of them which man's development brings with it, the indomitable impulse to know and adjust them perfectly, as another force. And these two forces we may regard as in some sense rivals, — rivals not by the necessity of their own nature, but as exhibited in man and his history, — and rivals dividing the empire of the world between them. And to give these forces names from the two races of men who have supplied the most signal and splendid manifestations of them, we may call them respectively the forces of Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism and Hellenism, — between these two points of influence moves our world. At one time it feels more powerfully the attraction of one of them, at another time of the other; and it ought to be, though it never is, evenly and happily balanced between them.
The final aim of both Hellenism and Hebraism, as of all great
spiritual disciplines, is no doubt the same: man's perfection or
salvation. The very language which they both of them use in
schooling [143/144] us to reach this aim is often identical. Even when
their language indicates by variation, — sometimes a broad variation,
often a but slight and subtle variation, — the different courses of
thought which are uppermost in each discipline, even then the unity
of the final end and aim is still apparent. To employ the actual
words of that discipline with which we ourselves are all of us most
familiar, and the words of which, therefore, come most home to us,
that final end and aim is "that we might be partakers of the divine
nature" [ identification of passage] These are the words of a Hebrew apostle, but of Hellenism
and Hebraism alike this is, I say, the aim. When the two are
confronted, as they very often are confronted, it is nearly always
with what I may call a rhetorical purpose; the speaker's whole design
is to exalt and enthrone one of the two, and he uses the other only
as a foil and to enable him the better to give effect to his purpose.
Obviously, with us, it is usually Hellenism which is thus reduced to
minister to the triumph of Hebraism. There is a sermon on Greece and
the Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned without interest and
respect, Frederick Robertson, in which this rhetorical use of Greece
and the Greek [144/145] spirit, and the inadequate exhibition of them
necessarily consequent upon this, is almost ludicrous, and would be
censurable if it were not to be explained by the exigences of a
sermon. On the other hand, Heinrich Heine, and other writers of his
sort, give us the spectacle of the tables completely turned, and of
Hebraism brought in just as a foil and contrast to Hellenism, and to
make the superiority of Hellenism more manifest. In both these cases
there is injustice and misrepresentation. The aim and end of both
Hebraism and Hellenism is, as I have said, one and the same, and this
aim and end is august and admirable.
Still, they pursue this aim by very different courses. The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the uppermost idea with Hebraism is conduct and obedience. Nothing can do away with this ineffaceable difference; the Greek quarrel with the body and its desires is, that they hinder right thinking, the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they hinder right acting. "He that keepeth the law, happy is he;" "There is nothing sweeter than to take heed unto the commandments of the Lord;"+ — that is the Hebrew [145/146] notion of felicity; and, pursued with passion and tenacity, this notion would not let the Hebrew rest till, as is well known, he had, at last, got out of the law a network of prescriptions to enwrap his whole life, to govern every moment of it, every impulse, every action. The Greek notion of felicity, on the other hand, is perfectly conveyed in these words of a great French moralist: "C'est le bonheur des hommes" — when? when they abhor that which is evil? — no; when they exercise themselves in the law of the Lord day and night? — no; when they die daily? — no; when they walk about the New Jerusalem with palms in their hands? — no; but when they think aright, when their thought hits, — "quand ils pensent juste." At the bottom of both the Greek and the Hebrew notion is the desire, native in man, for reason and the will of God, the feeling after the universal order, — in a word, the love of God. But, while Hebraism seizes upon certain plain, capital intimations of the universal order, and rivets itself, one may say, with unequalled grandeur of earnestness and intensity on the study and observance of them, the bent of Hellenism is to follow, with flexible activity, the whole play of the universal order, to be [146/147] apprehensive of missing any part of it, of sacrificing one part to another, to slip away from resting in this or that intimation of it, however capital. An unclouded clearness of mind, an unimpeded play of thought, is what this bent drives at. The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience.
Christianity changed nothing in this essential bent of Hebraism to
set doing above knowing. Self-conquest, self-devotion, the following
not our own individual will, but the will of God, obedience, is the
fundamental idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we
have attached the general name of Hebraism. Only, as the old law and
the network of prescriptions with which it enveloped human life were
evidently a motive power not driving and searching enough to produce
the result aimed at, — patient continuance in well doing, self-
conquest, — Christianity substituted for them boundless devotion to
that inspiring and affecting pattern of self-conquest offered by
Christ; and by the new motive power, of which the essence was this,
though the love and admiration of Christian churches have for
centuries been employed in varying, amplifying, [147/148] and adorning
the plain description of it, Christianity, as St. Paul truly says,
"establishes the law" [ Editor's note: Romans 3:31. "Do we then make void the law through faith? /
God forbid: yea, we establish the law." King James Bible.], and in the strength of the ampler power which
she has thus supplied to fulfil it, has accomplished the miracles,
which we all see, of her history.
So long as we do not forget that both Hellenism and Hebraism are
profound and admirable manifestations of man's life, tendencies, and
powers, and that both of them aim at a like final result, we can
hardly insist too strongly on the divergence of line and of operation
with which they proceed. It is a divergence so great that it most
truly, as the prophet Zechariah says, "has raised up thy sons, O
Zion, against thy sons, O Greece!" The difference whether it is by
doing or by knowing that we set most store, and the practical
consequences which follow from this difference, leave their mark on
all the history of our race and of its development. Language may be
abundantly quoted from both Hellenism and Hebraism to make it seem
that one follows the same current as the other towards the same goal.
They are, truly, borne towards the same goal; but the currents which
bear them are infinitely different. It is true, Solomon will praise
[148/149] knowing: "Understanding is a well-spring of life unto him that
hath it." [ Proverbs 16:22. "Understanding is a wellspring of life unto
him that hath it: but the instruction of fools is folly." King James
Bible.] And in the New Testament, again, Christ is a IMG alt="not in print version" border=0
src="../../icons2/extlink.gif""light," and
"truth makes us free." It is true, Aristotle will undervalue
knowing: "In what concerns virtue," says he, "three things are
necessary, — knowledge, deliberate will, and perseverance; but,
whereas the two last are all important, the first is a matter of
little importance." It is true that with the same impatience with
which St. James enjoins a man to be not a forgetful hearer, but a
doer of the work, Epictetus exhorts us to do what we have
demonstrated to ourselves we ought to do; or he taunts us with
futility, for being armed at all points to prove that lying is wrong,
yet all the time continuing to lie. It is true, Plato, in words
which are almost the words of the New Testament or the Imitation,
calls life a learning to die. But underneath the superficial
agreement the fundamental divergence still subsists. The
understanding of Solomon is "the walking in the way of the
commandments;" this is "the way of peace," and it is of this that
blessedness comes. In the New Testament, the truth which gives us
the peace of God and makes us free, is the love of Christ
constraining [149/150] us to crucify, as he did, and with a like purpose
of moral regeneration, the flesh with its affections and lusts, and
thus establishing, as we have seen, the law. To St. Paul it appears
possible to "hold the truth in unrighteousness,"+ which is just what
Socrates judged impossible [ 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]. The moral virtues, on the other hand,
are with Aristotle but the porch and access to the intellectual, and
with these last is blessedness. That partaking of the divine life,
which both Hellenism and Hebraism, as we have said, fix as their
crowning aim, Plato expressly denies to the man of practical virtue
merely, of self-conquest with any other motive than that of perfect
intellectual vision; he reserves it for the lover of pure knowledge,
of seeing things as they really are, — the philomathÕs [ PhilomathÕs, "fond of knowledge, loving knowledge" (Liddell
and Scott)].
Both Hellenism and Hebraism arise out of the wants of human nature,
and address themselves to satisfying those wants. But their methods
are so different, they lay stress on such different points, and call
into being by their respective disciplines such different activities,
that the face which human nature presents when it passes from the
hands of one of them to those of the other, is no longer the [150/151]
same. To get rid of one's ignorance, to see things as they are, and
by seeing them as they are to see them in their beauty, is the simple
and attractive ideal which Hellenism holds out before human nature;
and from the simplicity and charm of this ideal, Hellenism, and human
life in the hands of Hellenism, is invested with a kind of a‘rial
ease, clearness, and radiancy; they are full of what we call
sweetness and light. Difficulties are kept out of view, and the
beauty and rationalness of the ideal have all our thoughts. "The
best man is he who most tries to perfect himself, and the happiest
man is he who most feels that he is perfecting himself," — this
account of the matter by Socrates, the true Socrates of the
Memorabilia, has something so simple, spontaneous, and
unsophisticated about it, that it seems to fill us with clearness and
hope when we hear it. But there is a saying which I have heard
attributed to Mr. Carlyle about Socrates, — a very happy saying,
whether it is really Mr. Carlyle's or not, — which excellently marks
the essential point in which Hebraism differs from Hellenism.
"Socrates," this saying goes, "is terribly at ease in Zion"
Hebraism, — and here is the source of its [151/152] wonderful strength, —
has always been severely preoccupied with an awful sense of the
impossibility of being at ease in Zion; of the difficulties which
oppose themselves to man's pursuit or attainment of that perfection
of which Socrates talks so hopefully, and, as from this point of view
one might almost say, so glibly. It is all very well to talk of
getting rid of one's ignorance, of seeing things in their reality,
seeing them in their beauty; but how is this to be done when there is
something which thwarts and spoils all our efforts? This something
is sin; and the space which sin fills in Hebraism, as compared with
Hellenism, is indeed prodigious. This obstacle to perfection fills
the whole scene, and perfection appears remote and rising away from
earth, in the background. Under the name of sin, the difficulties of
knowing oneself and conquering oneself which impede man's passage to
perfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active entity hostile
to man, a mysterious power which I heard Dr. Pusey the other day, in
one of his impressive sermons, compare to a hideous hunchback seated
on our shoulders, and which it is the main business of our lives to
hate and oppose. The discipline of the [152/153] Old Testament may be
summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the
discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline teaching us to die
to it. As Hellenism speaks of thinking clearly, seeing things in
their essence and beauty, as a grand and precious feat for man to
achieve, so Hebraism speaks of becoming conscious of sin, of
awakening to a sense of sin, as a feat of this kind. It is obvious
to what wide divergence these differing tendencies, actively
followed, must lead. As one passes and repasses from Hellenism to
Hebraism, from Plato to St. Paul, one feels inclined to rub one's
eyes and ask oneself whether man is indeed a gentle and simple being,
showing the traces of a noble and divine nature; or an unhappy
chained captive, labouring with groanings that cannot be uttered to
free himself from the body of this death.
Apparently it was the Hellenic conception of human nature which was
unsound, for the world could not live by it. Absolutely to call it
unsound, however, is to fall into the common error of its Hebraising
enemies; but it was unsound at that particular moment of man's
development, it was premature. The indispensable basis of conduct
and [153/154] self-control, the platform upon which alone the perfection
aimed at by Greece can come into bloom, was not to be reached by our
race so easily; centuries of probation and discipline were needed to
bring us to it. Therefore the bright promise of Hellenism faded, and
Hebraism ruled the world. Then was seen that astonishing spectacle,
so well marked by the often quoted words of the prophet Zechariah,
when men of all languages of the nations took hold of the skirt of
him that was a Jew, saying: — "We will go with you, for we have heard
that God is with you" [Editor's note: 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]. And the Hebraism which thus received and
ruled a world all gone out of the way and altogether become
unprofitable, was, and could not but be, the later, the more
spiritual, the more attractive development of Hebraism. It was
Christianity; that is to say, Hebraism aiming at self-conquest and
rescue from the thrall of vile affections, not by obedience to the
letter of a law, but by conformity to the image of a self-sacrificing
example. To a world stricken with moral enervation Christianity
offered its spectacle of an inspired self-sacrifice; to men who
refused themselves nothing, it showed one who refused [154/155] himself
everything; — "my Saviour banished joy" says George Herbert. When the
alma Venus, the life-giving and joy-giving power of nature, so fondly
cherished by the Pagan world, could not save her followers from self-
dissatisfaction and ennui, the severe words of the apostle came
bracingly and refreshingly: "Let no man deceive you with vain words,
for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children
of disobedience" [Editor's note: 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]. Throughout age after age, and generation after
generation, our race, or all that part of our race which was most
living and progressive, was baptized into a death [Editor's note: 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]; and endeavoured,
by suffering in the flesh, to cease from sin. Of this endeavour, the
animating labours and afflictions of early Christianity, the touching
asceticism of mediaeval Christianity, are the great historical
manifestations. Literary monuments of it, each, in its own way,
incomparable, remain in the Epistles of St. Paul, in St. Augustine's
Confessions, and in the two original and simplest books of the
Imitation.*
Of two disciplines laying their main stress, the [155/156] one, on clear
intelligence, the other, on firm obedience; the one, on
comprehensively knowing the grounds of one's duty, the other, on
diligently practising it; the one on taking all possible care (to use
Bishop Wilson's words again) that the light we have be not darkness,
the other, that according to the best light we have we diligently
walk, — the priority naturally belongs to that discipline which braces
man's moral powers, and founds for him an indispensable basis of
character. And, therefore, it is justly said of the Jewish people,
who were charged with setting powerfully forth that side of the
divine order to which the words conscience and self-conquest point,
that they were "entrusted with the oracles of God;"+ as it is justly
said of Christianity, which followed Judaism and which set forth this
side with a much deeper effectiveness and a much wider influence,
that the wisdom of the old Pagan world was foolishness compared to
it [[ Editor's note: 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]. No words of devotion and admiration can be too strong to render
thanks to these beneficent forces which have so borne forward
humanity in its appointed work of coming to the knowledge and
possession of itself; above all, in those great [156/157] moments when
their action was the wholesomest and the most necessary.
But the evolution of these forces, separately and in themselves, is not the whole evolution of humanity, — their single history is not the whole history of man; whereas their admirers are always apt to make it stand for the whole history. Hebraism and Hellenism are, neither of them, the law of human development, as their admirers are prone to make them; they are, each of them, contributions to human development, — august contributions, invaluable contributions; and each showing itself to us more august, more invaluable, more preponderant over the other, according to the moment in which we take them, and the relation in which we stand to them. The nations of our modern world, children of that immense and salutary movement which broke up the Pagan world, inevitably stand to Hellenism in a relation which dwarfs it, and to Hebraism in a relation which magnifies it. They are inevitably prone to take Hebraism as the law of human development, and not as simply a contribution to it, however precious. And yet the lesson must perforce be [157/158] learned, that the human spirit is wider than the most priceless of the forces which bear it onward, and that to the whole development of man Hebraism itself is, like Hellenism, but a contribution.
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 [158/159] 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. [Arnold's note: "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."] 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 [159/160] 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 [160/161] 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 [161/162] 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 [162/163] 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- [163/164] 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 [164/165] 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 [165/166] 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.
Last updated December 2001