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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he matter here opened is so large, and the trains of thought
to which it gives rise are so manifold, that we must be careful to
limit ourselves scrupulously to what has a direct bearing upon our
actual discussion. We have found that at the [166/167] bottom of our
present unsettled state, so full of the seeds of trouble, lies the
notion of its being the prime right and happiness, for each of us, to
affirm himself, and his ordinary self; to be doing, and to be doing
freely and as he likes. We have found at the bottom of it the
disbelief in right reason as a lawful authority. It was easy to show
from our practice and current history that this is so; but it was
impossible to show why it is so without taking a somewhat wider sweep
and going into things a little more deeply. Why, in fact, should
good, well-meaning, energetic, sensible people, like the bulk of our
countrymen, come to have such light belief in right reason, and such
an exaggerated value for their own independent doing, however crude?
The answer is: because of an exclusive and excessive development in
them, without due allowance for time, place, and circumstance, of
that side of human nature, and that group of human forces, to which
we have given the general name of Hebraism. Because they have
thought their real and only important homage was owed to a power
concerned with their obedience rather than with their intelligence, a
power interested in the moral side of their nature almost
exclusively. Thus they have [167/168] been led to regard in themselves,
as the one thing needful, strictness of conscience, the staunch
adherence to some fixed law of doing we have got already, instead of
spontaneity of consciousness, which tends continually to enlarge our
whole law of doing. They have fancied themselves to have in their
religion a sufficient basis for the whole of their life fixed and
certain for ever, a full law of conduct and a full law of thought, so
far as thought is needed, as well; whereas what they really have is a
law of conduct, a law of unexampled power for enabling them to war
against the law of sin in their members and not to serve it in the
lusts thereof. The book which contains this invaluable law they call
the Word of God, and attribute to it, as I have said, and as, indeed,
is perfectly well known, a reach and sufficiency co-extensive with
all the wants of human nature. This might, no doubt, be so, if
humanity were not the composite thing it is, if it had only, or in
quite overpowering eminence, a moral side, and the group of instincts
and powers which we call moral. But it has besides, and in notable
eminence, an intellectual side, and the group of instincts and powers
which we call intellectual. No doubt, mankind makes in general its
progress in a [168/169] fashion which gives at one time full swing to one
of these groups of instincts, at another time to the other; and man's
faculties are so intertwined, that when his moral side, and the
current of force which we call Hebraism, is uppermost, this side will
manage somehow to provide, or appear to provide, satisfaction for his
intellectual needs; and when his moral side, and the current of force
which we call Hellenism, is uppermost, this, again, will provide, or
appear to provide, satisfaction for men's moral needs. But sooner or
later it becomes manifest that when the two sides of humanity proceed
in this fashion of alternate preponderance, and not of mutual
understanding and balance, the side which is uppermost does not
really provide in a satisfactory manner for the needs of the side
which is undermost, and a state of confusion is, sooner or later, the
result. The Hellenic half of our nature, bearing rule, makes a sort
of provision for the Hebrew half, but it turns out to be an
inadequate provision; and again the Hebrew half of our nature bearing
rule makes a sort of provision for the Hellenic half, but this, too,
turns out to be an inadequate provision. The true and smooth order
of humanity's development [169/170] is not reached in either way. And
therefore, while we willingly admit with the Christian apostle that
the world by wisdom, — that is, by the isolated preponderance of its
intellectual impulses, — knew not God, or the true order of things, it
is yet necessary, also, to set up a sort of converse to this
proposition, and to say likewise (what is equally true) that the
world by Puritanism knew not God. And it is on this converse of the
apostle's proposition that it is particularly needful to insist in
our own country just at present.
Here, indeed, is the answer to many criticisms which have been addressed to all that we have said in praise of sweetness and light. Sweetness and light evidently have to do with the bent or side in humanity which we call Hellenic. Greek intelligence has obviously for its essence the instinct for what Plato calls the true, firm, intelligible law of things; the love of light, of seeing things as they are. Even in the natural sciences, where the Greeks had not time and means adequately to apply this instinct, and where we have gone a great deal further than they did, it is this instinct which is the root of the whole matter and the ground of all [170/171] our success; and this instinct the world has mainly learnt of the Greeks, inasmuch as they are humanity's most signal manifestation of it. Greek art, again, Greek beauty, have their root in the same impulse to see things as they really are, inasmuch as Greek art and beauty rest on fidelity to nature, — the best nature, — and on a delicate discrimination of what this best nature is. To say we work for sweetness and light, then, is only another way of saying that we work for Hellenism. But, oh! cry many people, sweetness and light are not enough; you must put strength or energy along with them, and make a kind of trinity of strength, sweetness and light, and then, perhaps, you may do some good. That is to say, we are to join Hebraism, strictness of the moral conscience, and manful walking by the best light we have, together with Hellenism, inculcate both, and rehearse the praises of both.
Or, rather, we may praise both in conjunction, but we must be careful to praise Hebraism most. "Culture," says an acute, though somewhat rigid critic, Mr. Sidgwick, "diffuses sweetness and light. I do not undervalue these blessings, but religion gives fire and strength, and the world wants fire [170/172] and strength even more than sweetness and light." By religion, let me explain, Mr. Sidgwick here means particularly that Puritanism on the insufficiency of which I have been commenting and to which he says I am unfair. Now, no doubt, it is possible to be a fanatical partisan of light and the instincts which push us to it, a fanatical enemy of strictness of moral conscience and the instincts which push us to it. A fanaticism of this sort deforms and vulgarises the well-known work, in some respects so remarkable, of the late Mr. Buckle. Such a fanaticism carries its own mark with it, in lacking sweetness; and its own penalty, in that, lacking sweetness, it comes in the end to lack light too. And the Greeks, — the great exponents of humanity's bent for sweetness and light united, of its perception that the truth of things must be at the same time beauty, — singularly escaped the fanaticism which we moderns, whether we Hellenise or whether we Hebraise, are so apt to show, and arrived, — though failing, as has been said, to give adequate practical satisfaction to the claims of man's moral side, — at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of the claims of both the sides in man, the moral as well [172/173] as the intellectual, of a full estimate of both, and of a reconciliation of both; an idea which is philosophically of the greatest value, and the best of lessons for us moderns. So we ought to have no difficulty in conceding to Mr. Sidgwick that manful walking by the best light one has, — fire and strength as he calls it, — has its high value as well as culture, the endeavour to see things in their truth and beauty, the pursuit of sweetness and light. But whether at this or that time, and to this or that set of persons, one ought to insist most on the praises of fire and strength, or on the praises of sweetness and light, must depend, one would think, on the circumstances and needs of that particular time and those particular persons. And all that we have been saying, and indeed any glance at the world around us, shows that with us, with the most respectable and strongest part of us, the ruling force is now, and long has been, a Puritan force, the care for fire and strength, strictness of conscience, Hebraism, rather than the care for sweetness and light, spontaneity of consciousness, Hellenism.
Well, then, what is the good of our now rehearsing [173/174] the praises of fire and strength to ourselves, who dwell too exclusively on them already? When Mr. Sidgwick says so broadly, that the world wants fire and strength even more than sweetness and light, is he not carried away by a turn for powerful generalisation? does he not forget that the world is not all of one piece, and every piece with the same needs at the same time? It may be true that the Roman world at the beginning of our era, or Leo the Tenth's Court at the time of the Reformation, or French society in the eighteenth century, needed fire and strength even more than sweetness and light. But can it be said that the Barbarians who overran the empire, needed fire and strength even more than sweetness and light; or that the Puritans needed them more; or that Mr. Murphy, the Birmingham lecturer, and the Rev. W. Cattle and his friends, need them more?
The Puritan's great danger is that he imagines himself in possession
of a rule telling him the unum necessarium, or one thing needful,
and that he then remains satisfied with a very crude conception of
what this rule really is and what it tells him, thinks [174/175] he has
now knowledge and henceforth needs only to act, and, in this
dangerous state of assurance and self-satisfaction, proceeds to give
full swing to a number of the instincts of his ordinary self. Some
of the instincts of his ordinary self he has, by the help of his rule
of life, conquered; but others which he has not conquered by this
help he is so far from perceiving to need subjugation, and to be
instincts of an inferior self, that he even fancies it to be his
right and duty, in virtue of having conquered a limited part of
himself, to give unchecked swing to the remainder. He is, I say, a
victim of Hebraism, of the tendency to cultivate strictness of
conscience rather than spontaneity of consciousness. And what he
wants is a larger conception of human nature, showing him the number
of other points at which his nature must come to its best, besides
the points which he himself knows and thinks of. There is no unum
necessarium, or one thing needful, which can free human nature from
the obligation of trying to come to its best at all these points.
The real unum necessarium for us is to come to our best at all
points. Instead of our "one thing needful," justifying in us
vulgarity, hideousness, ignorance, violence, — our [175/176] vulgarity,
hideousness, ignorance, violence, are really so many touchstones
which try our one thing needful, and which prove that in the state,
at any rate, in which we ourselves have it, it is not all we want.
And as the force which encourages us to stand staunch and fast by the
rule and ground we have is Hebraism, so the force which encourages us
to go back upon this rule, and to try the very ground on which we
appear to stand, is Hellenism, — a turn for giving our consciousness
free play and enlarging its range. And what I say is, not that
Hellenism is always for everybody more wanted than Hebraism, but that
for the Rev. W. Cattle at this particular moment, and for the great
majority of us his fellow-countrymen, it is more wanted.
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
[176/177] 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?" [ Editor's Note: Romans 11:34. "For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who
hath been his counsellor?" King James Bible] — 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 [177/178] 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 [178/179] 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 [179/180] 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 [180/181] 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 [181/182] 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 [182/183] 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 [183/184] 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 [184/185] 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 [185/186] 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 [186/187] 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 [187/188] 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 [188/189] 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 [189/190] commit adultery, dost thou commit
adultery?" [ Editor's Note: Romans 2:21-22. "Thou therefore which teachest another,
teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not
steal, dost thou steal? / Thou that sayest a man should not commit
adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost
thou commit sacrilege?" King James Bible]) — 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, [190/191] 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 [191/192] 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 [192/193] 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 [193/194] 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 [194/195] 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, [195/196] 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 [196/197] 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.
Last updated 3 December 2001