This is a fair statement of the mental temper in which young and inexperienced Liberals found themselves in the year 1869. And there was much to encourage us in our complacency. Gladstone, to whom during the rather dreary reign of exhausted Whiggery we had looked as to our rising star — the one man who combined Religion and Poetry and Romance with the love of Progress and the passion of Freedom — had told us that “the great social forces were on our side,” and that our opponents “could not fight against the future.” Philosophers, like Mill, had told us that all the intelligence, all the science, all the mental courage of the world were with us, and that Toryism was the creed of the intellectually destitute. Morning after morning a vigorous Press sang its loud hymn of triumph, and assured us that, even if for a moment our chariot-wheels drave rather heavily, still we were going forth conquering and to conquer, and that the future of Liberalism was to be one long series of victories, uninterrupted till the crack of doom.
And then to us, thus comfortably entrenched in self-esteem, there entered the figure, unknown to most, only half-known to any, of a new and most disturbing critic. Here was a man whose very name breathed Liberalism; for whom speculation had no fears; who had harassed the most hoary conventions with obstinate questionings; who had accepted Democracy as the evolution of natural law; who had poked delicious fun at the most highly-placed impostures, the most solemn plausibilities. In such a one we might surely have expected to find a friend, an ally, a comforter, a fellow-worker; a preacher of the smooth things which we loved to hear, an encourager of the day-dreams which we had learned from Locksley Hall. Instead of all this we found a critic — so gracious that we could not quarrel with him, so reasonable that we found it hard to dispute with him; so absolutely free from pomposity that we could not laugh at him, so genuinely and freshly witty that we could not help laughing with him — but a critic still. He thought scorn of our pleasant land, and gave no credence unto our word. He belittled our heroes; he pooh-poohed our achievements; he cast doubt on our prophecies; he caricatured our aspirations. He told us that we were the victims of a profound delusion. He warned us that the great Democracy on which we relied as our unchangeable foundation would give way under our feet. He pointed out that Labour had no more reason to expect its salvation from Liberalism than from Toryism. He insisted that all our political reform was mere machinery; that the end and object of politics was Social Reform; and that the promise of the future was for those who should help us to be better, wiser, and happier; for those who concerned themselves rather with the product of the machine than with the machine itself; who were not satisfied by eternally taking it to pieces and putting it together again, but who wanted to know what sort of stuff it was, when perfected, to turn out. He suggested that “the present troubled state of our social life” had at least something to do with “the thirty years’ blind worship of their idols by our Liberal friends,” and that it threw some doubt on “the sufficiency of their worship.” “It is not,” he said, “fatal to our Liberal friends to labour for Free Trade, Extension of the Suffrage, and Abolition of Church Rates, instead of graver social ends; but it is fatal to them to be told by their flatterers, and to believe, with our social condition what it is, that they have performed a great, a heroic work, by occupying themselves exclusively, for the last thirty years, with these Liberal nostrums.”
And, while our new critic was thus disdainful of much that we held sacred, of political machinery and logical government, and individual liberty of speech and action, he recalled our attention to certain objects of reverence which we, or at least some of us, had forgotten. He insisted on the immense value of history and continuity in the political life of a nation. He extolled (though the words were not his) the “institutions which incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the dead.” He affirmed that external beauty, stateliness, splendour, gracious manners, were indispensable elements of civilization, and that these were the contributions which Aristocracy made to the welfare of the State. He reminded us that the true greatness of a nation was to be found in its culture, its ideals, its sentiment for beauty, its performances in the intellectual and moral spheres — not in its supply of coal, its volume of trade, its accumulated capital, or its multiplication of railways. Above all — and this was to some of our Party the unkindest cut — he asserted for Religion the chief place among the elements of national well-being. We were just then living at the fag-end of an anti-religious time. The critical, negative, and utilitarian spirit which had seized on Oxford after the apparent defeat and collapse of Newman’s movement had profoundly affected the Liberal Party. It was an essential characteristic of the political Liberals to pour scorn on that “retrograding transcendentalism” which was “the hardheads’ nickname for the Anglo-Catholic Symphony.” The fact that Gladstone was so saturated with the spirit of that symphony was a cause of mistrust which his genius and courage could barely overcome; and, even when it was overcome, a good many of his Party followed him as reluctantly and as mockingly as Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote. The only heaven of which the political Liberal dreamed was what Arnold called “the glorified and unending tea-meeting of popular Protestantism.” And the portion of the Party which regarded itself as the intellectual wing, seemed to have reverted to the temper described by Bishop Butler; “taking for granted that Christianity is not so much as a subject of enquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious”; and habitually talking as if “this were an agreed point among all people of discernment.” Great was the vexation of the “old Liberal hacks” who had been repeating these dismal shibboleths, and ignoring or denying the greatest force in human life, to find in this new teacher of liberal ideas a convinced and persistent opponent. He affirmed that Religion was the best, the sweetest, and the strongest thing in the world; he insisted that without it there could be no perfect culture, no complete civilization; he showed a reverent admiration for the historical character and teaching of Jesus Christ; he urged the example of His “mildness and sweet reasonableness.” He taught that the best way of extending Christ’s kingdom on earth was by sweetening the character and brightening the lives of the men and women whose nature He shared.
It belongs to another part of this work to enquire what he meant by Religion and Christianity, and how far his interpretations accorded with, or how far they departed from, the traditional creed of Christendom. But enough, perhaps, has been said to explain why the appearance of Culture and Anarchy so profoundly disquieted the “old Liberal hacks” and the popular teachers of irreligion. One of these called Christianity “that awful plague which has destroyed two civilizations and but barely failed to slay such promise of good as is now struggling to live amongst men.” Of that teacher, and of others like him, Arnold wrote in later years: “If the matter were not so serious one could hardly help smiling at the chagrin and manifest perplexity of such of one’s friends as happen to be philosophical radicals and secularists, at having to reckon with religion again when they thought its day was quite gone by, and that they need not study it any more or take account of it any more; that it was passing out, and a kind of new gospel, half Bentham, half Cobden, in which they were themselves particularly strong, was coming in. And perhaps there is no one who more deserves to be compassionated than an elderly or middle-aged man of this kind, such as several of their Parliamentary spokesmen and representatives are. For perhaps the younger men of the Party may take heart of grace, and acquaint themselves a little with religion, now that they see its day is by no means over. But, for the older ones, their mental habits are formed, and it is almost too late for them to begin such new studies. However, a wave of religious reaction is evidently passing over Europe, due very much to our revolutionary and philosophical friends having insisted upon it that religion was gone by and unnecessary, when it was neither the one nor the other.”
Oriel College, Oxford
In March, 1845, Matthew Arnold was elected to a Fellowship at Oriel
Photo H.W. Taunt
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sp; A study of Arnold’s work ought to give something more than a sketch of the prose-book by which he most powerfully affected the thinking of his time, and we will therefore take the contents of Culture and Anarchy chapter by chapter. The Preface is only a summary of the book, and may therefore be disregarded. The Introduction briefly points out the foolishness of orators and leader-writers who had assumed that Culture meant “a smattering of Greek and Latin,” and then addresses itself to the task of finding a better definition. “I propose now to try and enquire, in the simple unsystematic way which best suits both my taste and my powers, what Culture really is, what good it can do, what is our own special need of it; and I shall seek to find some plain grounds on which a faith in Culture — both my own faith in it and the faith of others — may rest securely.”
The First Chapter bears the memorable heading— “Sweetness and Light”; in reference to which Lord Salisbury so happily said that, when he conferred the degree of D.C.L. on Arnold, he ought to have addressed him as “Vir dulcissime et lucidissime.” In this chapter Arnold lays it down that Culture, as he understands the word, is, in part, “a desire after the things of the mind, simply for their own sakes, and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are.” But he goes on to say that “there is of Culture another view, in which not solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it — motives eminently such as are called social — come in as part of the grounds of Culture, and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing good.... There is no better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson: “To make reason and the will of God prevail.” Thus the true disciple of Culture will not be content with merely “learning the truth for his own personal satisfaction”; but will try to make it prevail; and in this endeavour Religion plays a commanding part. It is “the greatest and most important of the efforts by which the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself”; it is “the voice of the deepest human experience.” It teaches that “The Kingdom of God is within you,” and that internal perfection must first be sought; but then it goes on, hand in hand with Culture, to spread perfection in widest commonalty. “Perfection is not possible, while the individual remains isolated.” “To promote the Kingdom of God is to increase and hasten one’s own happiness.” Finally, Perfection as Culture conceives it, is a harmonious expansion of all the powers which make the beauty and worth of human nature: “and here,” says Arnold, “Culture goes beyond Religion, as Religion is generally conceived by us.” Stress must be laid upon those last words; for Religion, according to its full and catholic ideal, is the perfection and consecration of man’s whole nature, intellectual and physical, as well as moral and spiritual. All that is lovely, splendid, moving, heroic, even enjoyable, in human life — all health and vigour and beauty and cleverness and charm — all nature and all art, all science and all literature — are among the good and perfect gifts which come down from the Father of Lights. But this is just the conception of Religion which Puritanism never grasped — nay, rather which Puritanism definitely rejected.” And here probably is the origin of that quarrel with Puritanism, at least in its more superficial and obvious aspects, which so coloured and sometimes barbed Arnold’s meditations on Religion. “As I have said with regard to wealth: Let us look at the life of those who live in and for it — so I say with regard to the religious organizations. Look at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Nonconformist — a life of jealousy of the Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons; and then think of it as an ideal of human life completing itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and perfection!”
So much then for his definition of Culture; and we must admit that “the old Liberal hacks,” the speakers on Liberal platforms, and the writers in Liberal papers, were not without excuse when they failed so utterly to divine what the new Teacher meant by harping on a word which Bacon and Pope had used in so different a sense.
Chapter II is headed “Doing as One Likes.” And here it was that our new critic came most sharply into conflict with our cherished beliefs. We believed in the liberty which Milton loved, “to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to conscience,” and to frame our action by sole reference to our conviction. We believed that of such liberty there was only one endurable limit, and that was the condition that no man should so use his own liberty as to lessen his brother’s — and the liberty thus conceived we regarded as the supreme boon of human life, for which no other could conceivably be taken in exchange. And now came the new Teacher of Liberalism with a doctrine which, while it made us angry, also set us thinking. “Our familiar praise of the British Constitution under which we live, is that it is a system of checks — a system which stops and paralyzes any power in interfering with the free action of individuals.... As Feudalism, which with its ideas and habits of subordination was for many centuries behind the British Constitution, dies out, and we are left with nothing but our system of checks, and our notion of its being the great right and happiness of an Englishman to do as far as possible what he likes, we are in danger of drifting towards Anarchy.” Aristocracy, according to Arnold, who strangely mingled admiration of it with contempt, had been doing what it liked from time immemorial. It had enjoyed all the good things of life — great station, great wealth, great power — with a comfortable assurance that they belonged to it by divine right. It had governed England with credit to itself and benefit to the country. As Lord Beaconsfield said, it was only because a Whig Minister wished to curry favour with the populace, that an Earl who had committed a murder was hanged.
The Middle Class also, had, at any rate, since the Reform Act of 1832, “done what it liked,” in a style not quite so grand but excessively comfortable and self-satisfied. It had carried some great reforms on which it had set its heart. It had established, enormously to its profit, Free Trade, and it had accumulated vast wealth. Its maxim had been— “Every man for himself in business, every man for himself in religion,” — and the devil take the hindmost.
But now, said Arnold, is the judgment of this world. The Aristocracy and the Middle Class had come to an end of their reign. A “tide of secret dissatisfaction had mined the ground under the self-confident Liberalism of the last thirty years (1839-1869) and had prepared the way for its sudden collapse and supersession.” So far, the young Liberals and Radicals of the day did not disagree. They liked this doctrine, and had preached it; but from this point they and their new Teacher parted company. The working-man was now enfranchised; and of the newly-enfranchised working-man, or at least of some of the most conspicuous representatives of his class, Arnold had a curious dread. “His apparition is somewhat embarrassing; because, while the Aristocratic and Middle Classes have long been doing as they like with great vigour, he has been too undeveloped and too submissive hitherto to join in the game; and now, when he does come, he comes in immense numbers, and is rather raw and rough.”
The dread of the working-men, and the apprehension of the bad use which they might make of their new power, can be traced to certain incidents which happened just before they were admitted to the Franchise and which perhaps precipitated their admission. In June, 1866, the Reform Bill, for which Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone were responsible, was defeated in the House of Commons, and the Tories came into office. The defeated Bill would have enfranchised the upper class of artisans, and its rejection led to considerable riots,
in which certain leaders of the working-men played conspicuous parts. The mob carried all before it, and the railings of Hyde Park were broken. The Tory Government behaved with the most incredible feebleness. The Home Secretary shed tears. The whole business, half scandalous and half ridiculous, furnished Arnold with an illustration for his sermon on “Doing What One Likes.” Reviewing, three years after their occurrence, the events of July, 1866, he wrote thus: “Everyone remembers the virtuous Alderman-Colonel or Colonel-Alderman, who had to lead his militia through the London streets; how the bystanders gathered to see him pass; how the London roughs, asserting an Englishman’s best and most blissful right of doing what he likes, robbed and beat the bystanders; and how the blameless warrior-magistrate refused to let his troops interfere. ‘The crowd,’ he touchingly said afterwards, ‘was mostly composed of fine, healthy, strong men, bent on mischief; if he had allowed his soldiers to interfere, they might have been overpowered, their rifles taken from them and used against them by the mob; a riot, in fact, might have ensued, and been attended with bloodshed, compared with which the assaults and loss of property that actually occurred would have been as nothing.’ Honest and affecting testimony of the English Middle Class to its own inadequacy for the authoritative part which one’s convictions would sometimes incline one to assign to it! ‘Who are we?’ they say by the voice of their Alderman-Colonel, ‘that we should not be overpowered if we attempt to cope with social anarchy, our rifles taken from us and used against us by the mob, and we, perhaps, robbed and beaten ourselves? Or what light have we, beyond a freeborn Englishman’s impulse to do as he likes, which would justify us in preventing, at the cost of bloodshed, other freeborn Englishmen from doing as they like, and robbing and beating as much as they please?’ And again, ‘the Rough is just asserting his personal liberty a little, going where he likes, assembling where he likes, bawling as he likes, hustling as he likes.... He sees the rich, the aristocratic class, in occupation of the executive government; and so, if he is stopped from making Hyde Park a bear-garden or the streets impassable, he cries out that he is being butchered by the aristocracy.’”
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Page 101