Matthew Arnold

802 I MATTHEW ARNOLD
the practices adopted by women at all times to consolidate and as it were to

make divine their fragile beauty. To erlu~erate them would be an endless
task: but to confine ourselves to what today is vulga,rly called 'maquillage',~
ar:tyone can see that the use of rice-powder, so stupidly anathematized by oui"
Arcadian philosophers, 5 is successfully designed to rid the complexion ,of
those blemishes that Nature has outragepusly strewn there, and thus to cr¢~
ate an abstract unity in the colour 'and texture of the skin, a unity, which,
like, that produced by the tights of a dancer, immediately approximates the
human being to the statue, that is to something superior and divine. As for
the artificial black with which the eye is outlined, and the rouge with which
the upper part of the cheek is painted, although their use derives from the
same principle, the need to surpass Nature,~he result is calculated to satisfy
an absolutely opposite need. Red and black represent life, a supernatural and
excessive life: its black frame renders the glance more penetrating and indi-
vidual, and gives the eye a more decisive appearance of a window open upon
the infinite; and the rouge which sets fire to the cheek-bone only goes to
increase the brightness of the pupil and adds to the face of a beautiful woman
the mysterious p~~sion of the priestess':
Thus, if you will understand me aright, face-painting should not be used
with the vulgar, unavowable object ofiniitating fair Nature and of eritering
into competition with youth. It hasmoteover been remarked that artifice
canriotI~nd charm to ugliness and c~ri only serve beauty. Who would dare
to assigri to art the sterile function of imitating Nature'? Maquillage has no
need tohJde itself or to shrink from being suspected; on the contrary, let it
display itself, at least if it does so with frankness and honesty.
I ~rri perfectly happy for those whose owlish graVity prevents them from
s~eking Beauty in its most minute manifestations to laugh at these reflections
of mine and to accuse them of a childish self-importance; their austere ver-
dict le~ves me quite unmoved; I conterit myself with 'appealing to true artists
as wei. as to those women themselves, who, havirig received at birth a spark
of that sacred flame, would tend it so that their whole beings were on fire
with it. '
1863
4. Makeup (French). Greece) i. the home of pastoral simplicity and hap.
5. Utopian lovers of nature; according to long· piness.
standing literary convention, Arcadia (a district of
MATTHEW ARNOLD
1822-1888
In an assessment published in the 19705, the New York Intellectual Lionel Triiling
concluded that Matthew Arnold is "virtually the founding father of modern criticism
in the English-speaking' world." Citing our first selection, "The Function of Criticism
at the Present Time" (1865), Trilling quoted Arnold's famous injunction that the critic
should strive to "see the object as in itself it really is" and his celebrated definition of
MATTHEW ARNOLD I 803
criticism as the "disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known
and thought in the world." These authoritative statements, Trilling maintained, gave
later scholars and teachers their inspiration and interpretive mission.
Arnold provided literary criticism with an important social function and paved the
way for its "institutionalization" in the academy. He regarded the writing and read-
ing of literature as urgent activities in the world, insisting "that poetry is at bottom a
criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful appli-
cation of ideas to Iife,-to the question: How to live." Serious criticism, he believed,
was responsible for generating and maintaining the context of ideas and high stan-
dards that the production of literature required. Even more: criticism, for Arnold,
meant an engagement with history, education, politics, religion, philosophy and other
subjects and concerns; literature is vitally connected to society and culture.
Arnold continues today to represent an ideal of Hterary and cultural humanism that
many critics honor. But this same ideal is one that radical critics and contemporary
literary theorists have sought to complicate or undermine. As the scholar Joseph
Carroll has noted, Arnold's key term "disinterestedness" is "now the most violently
disputed word in the Arnoldian lexicon," and many theorists from the 19?:Os to the
present have launched their proposals by taking issue with Arnold's and his followers'
account of the critic's role and procedures. For example, STANLEY FISH's reader-
response criticism denies the possibility of "disinterested" objective perception, and
the Marxist critic TERRY EAGLETON emphasizes Arnold's alignment with state power
and the privileged classes in his stress on "timeless truths."
Arnold excelled as a critic and polemicist, and he frequently took deiight in the
public controversies that his books and articles kindled and in the charges hurled
against him. But Arnold was also a poet, an educator, and an advocate for civility and
moderation who followed in the footsteps of his eminent father-Thomas Arnold
(1795-1842), a religious leader, historian, and, from 1828 to 1841, the influential,
reform-minded headmaster of Rugby, a venerable boarding school for boys. At Rugby,
Thomas Arnold added the study of French, German, and mathematics to the tradi-
tional classical curriculum and gave new emphasis to history and geography. He res-
olutely campaigned for Christianity, patriotism, self-reliance, loyalty, duty, and public
service, and he won great renown for his commitment to them in education.
Educated at Rugby and Oxford University, Matthew Arnold seems at first to have
concentrated more on his social life (he was something of a dandy) than on his studies.
His poetry-most of which he wrote during the 1840s and I 850s-left him uns~tis
fied, yet it eloquently expresses the self-doubt, intellectual unease, and emotional
hesitancy felt by midcentury intellectuals, when Charles Darwin's theories of evolu-
tion and the skeptical inquiry into the historical status and transmission of biblical
texts (the "higher criticism") were calling the time-honored principles of ChriS'tiim
faith into question. Arnold's first two books were The Strayed Reveller, and Other
Poe1nS (I849) and Empedocles on Etna," and Other Poems (I852). In his preface to
his 1853 collection-his first piece of published prose-Arnold articulated what he
conceded was missing from his own verse: "the spirit of the great classical works,"
"their intense significance, their noble simplicity, and their calm pathos" that create
"unity and profoundness of moral impression." He felt that this failure to evoke the
best in European moral value was shared generally by modern literature.
In 185 I Arnold received an appointment as an inspector of schools, and this
demanding work involved much tedious discussion with teachers and administrators
and painstaking reviews of students' examinations and papers. It also required exten-
sive travel in England and research trips abroad in 1859 and 1865, which led to three
books on European (particularly French) systems of education. Though it was often
wearying, Arnold took great pride in his work and did not retire until 1883; he viewed
the schools as the crucial site for "civilising the next generation of the lower classes,
who, as things are going, will have most of the political power of the country in their
hands." Clearly, much more than literary interpretation was at stake. In his duties as
an inspector, he saw the privations that workers and their families suffered, and he
was dedicated to the task of social and cultural progress, identifying himself as a
"Liberal of the future,"
Arnold was named Professor of Poetry at Oxford University in 1857, a position he
held until 1867. This appointment did riot oblige.him to teach or superVise students
or to be in residence, and so he was able both to remain in his government post· and
to gain notice as a prolific social, cultural, and literary critic. His major prose' works
are Essays in Criticism, First Series (I.865), Essays in Criticism, Second series (1888);
and Culture and Anarchy (1869), which examines the condition of Englanq as rep-
resented by the three groups Arnold nicknamed the Barbarians' (the aristocracy), the
'Philistines (the middle classes), and the Populace (the working classes). He also wrote
extensively ori religion, including Literature and Dogma (1873), which, he said, was
the "most important" of all his prose works, the one most capable ~'of being useful."
Examining the shaken doctriries and tenets of orthodox creeds and churches., it made
a forthright case for a literary response and approach to the Scriptures·that would
treasure their enduring moral truths. Literature and Dogma sold 100;000 copies,far
more than any of his other books.
·Arnold stated in Culture :and.Anarchy that he··wanted to heighten among the
English "the impulse to the development of the whole man, to connecting and har-
monizing all parts of him, perfecting all, leaviris·none to take·their chance." Though
these sentiments were presented as 'possessing a timeless validity, Arnold voiced them
at a moment in English history when. "anarchy"-soclal unrestand.rloting---had
erupted In the 'streets and reVolution seemed a ·real possibility. The· Reform Act of
1832 had increased the number of voters by SO percentl but'theworldng cia.. and
the poor remained without the vote. The defeat of an effort to extend 'ellgibility to
their ranks in '1866. brought· down the Uberal government and epurred maaa proteata
and violent demonstrations across the country. The· Reform Act 'of 1867, passed in
the midst of this social and political upheaval, added 938,000 voters and thereby
doubled the size of the electorate.. ... ..'
Who shall .inherit England? This question, which Trilling called central to. one
major tradition of-English novelists from Charles Dickens (1812-1870) to E. M.
Forster (1879-1970), was raised as well by intellectuals of the nineteerith century
(such as Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin) and twentieth century (such as T. S. ELIOT
and D. H. -Lawrence) in their works of cultural criticism. Not only who shall inherit
England,.btit.what kinds 'of.power could they be trusted with? What. forms of edu-
cation should they. receive? For Arnold ih particular, the answers 'to these crucial,
interconnected questions could be found in many· literary sourCes~50nie In the :dis,;
tant past, others closer to his own era. He counseled. moral bettei:llJent arid spiritual
renewal, 'achieved through the appreciative reading of:the· best literature. The best
persons would be critics-poised I balanced, and reflective;, they, ,would be foes of
fanaticism, zealotry, and politiCal enthusiasm, and they would be aspirants to "per-
"fection" (a term Arnold ·fastened on in both Essays in Criticism 'and'Culture and
Anarchy). Such arguments echo those of literary and philosophical precursors and
contemporaries. In "An Apology for Poetry" ( 1595; see above); foi'example, SIR PHILIP
SIDNEY had affirmed that "the final end" of learning ,"is to lead and· draw us to as high
a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clayey lodgings, can be
capable of." And in "The Poet" (1844; see.above), RALPH WALDO EMERSON, whose
writings Arnold knew.well, celebrated the poet as "representative of man, in virtue of
being the largest power to receive and impart."
Arnold's limitations· are not hard to identifY. ,Because he is mainly ink!rested in the
personality and moral tone of the author, 'not, in the resourc~s of language or:.the
unfolding meanings of literary works themselves; he does not deVote much ·atten"
tion to. specific 'texts (an exception is his series of lectures On Translating Homer,
published in 1861). Lines that he does quote typically function for him 'as "touch-
stones," those "specimens of poetry of the high, the very highest quality" that "save
MATTHEW ARNOLD I 805
us from fallacious estimates of value"-and that seem to beg the very question of
"greatness" that they are meant to answer. Arnold assumed that his readers would
know these authors and texts and their contexts, and that the "touchstones" would
be recognized by all as profound and memorable. Yet he himself had little sympathy
for (or understanding of) English writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Moreover, Arnold mentioned fiction only briefly and not very perceptively. Unlike,
for example, HENRY JAMES, he showed little interest in music, sculpture, painting, or
the theater.
But even these serious faults do little to diminish the power with which Arnold
defined the "function of criticism" for the Victorian and modern periods. Whole-
heartedly defending literature against its enemies and detractors, whose emphasis on
science, moneymaking, and commercial prosperity had led them to regard poetry as
merely a pleasant pastime, he argued that it equipped men and women to perceive
authentic value in the workings of the society and culture around them.
Criticism is not, ultimately, something one does; it gestures toward who one is.
And the same is true of "culture," as Arnold presents it in Culture and Anarchy
(excerpted below). Culture is "a study otperfection," an "Internal condition"; it man-
dates a shatp yet supple movement of mind, a vigilant guard against an excess of
commitment to a single point of view, and a refusal to accept the alluring power of
extreme, polarizingjudgmtmts. Unlike later criti<!s influenced by anthropology, Arnold
does not view culture· as designating the distinctive whole way of life of a people or a
period. Nor would he ·agree with such critics as ANTONIO GRAMSCI, STUART HALL, and
EDWARD SAID, who characterize culture as orten' an instrument of. social and political
control and conquest. For Arnold; culture i. selective and harmonlcilil, not·conflic-
tual. Critic:l.m arid culture loom large·bec.uld of their beneficent effects on the
Individual,· al they Im'pel suitalned acts bheflecdon and prevent persons from falling
Into complacency and "self-satisfaction."·
. Arnold 'lIeSnes criticism as involving flexibility, ·openness to new experient:es, and
curiosity(d word he explores in both "The Fundion of Criticism'? and Gultureat#l
Anarchy). He il'lslsts, too, on the·"free play" Of mind-"'-a phrase thsl:'.pos~structuralist
theorists such as JACQUES DERRIDA would define far more radically'and subversively,
without Arnold's belief in a stable textual objt!Clt that provides a center ar~und which
analysis and reflection occur. Arnold tethers critielsm to a rigorous duty; criticism,
he explains, "tends to establish an ·order of ideas";and seeks to "make the best·ideas
prevail." As his choice of verbs indicates, criticism is ehallenglrtgwork; the:cllmpaign
must be waged, in a phrase used in "The Function of Criticism," with "inflexible
honesty." Arnold firmly believes that some ideas are right and others wrong: he is no
relativist. Nor is he arevo)utionary, but rather a careful, cautious, deliberate reformer,
wary of the ways in which the impulse for change call ,rup wild and become destruc-
tive. A gOQd iiterary critic is, inevitably for Arnold, a good critic in general: a person
of culture embarked on a steady, steadfast i!'1quiry into self and .socie.ty. For all of his
witty turns of ph~se, topical references and allusions, and stylist~c clarity and poise,
Arnold is at heart a writer who realized, as he ~cknowledged in a letter in 1863, that
his arguments would make "a good many people uncomfortable." .
BIaLIOGRAPHY
The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, edited by R. H. Super (II vols., 1960-
77), offers a definitive text and excellentnotes. ~.J: Keat~ng (1970) and Christopher
Ricks (1972) have edited collections of Arnold's critical writings. For the poetry and
prose,the editions by ~ionel Trilling (I 949) and A. ,DWight Culler (1961) are useful,
though thin in their annotations. For the correspondence, Letters, 1848-1888,edited
by George W;. E; Russell (2 vols., 1895) remains hrlportant. This edition, and other
selections, will be s·uperseded by the multivohi~~ :t;tters of Matthew Arnold, edited
by Cecil Y. Lang (1996--). Excellent biographies include Park Honan, Matthew
806 / MATTHEW ARNOLD
Arnold: A Life (I 98 1); Nicholas Murray, A Life of Matthew Arnold (I995); and Ian
Hamilton, A Gift l_pnsoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold (1999). . ... 1
For critical overviews, see Lionel Trilling, Matthew Arnold (1939); Douglas Bush,
Matthew Arnold: A Survey of His Poetry and Prose (1971), an especially cogent and'
infonnative survey of Arnold's life and literary career; and Stefan Collini, Arnold
(I988). Also helpful is a collection of essays, Matthew Arnold, edited by Kenneth
Allott (1976). . .
Critical studies that focus on Arnold's prose include John Holloway, The Victorian
Sage: Studies in Argutnent (1953), insightful on Arnold's style and rhetorical strate:
gies; Raymond Williams, Culture and Society: 1780-1950 (1958), a landmark history
of British cultural criticism that includes a substantial discussion of Arnold; Vincent
Buckley, Poetry and Morality: Studies on the Criticis_ of Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot,
and F. R. Leavis (1959); Leon Gottfried, Matthew Arnold and the Romantics (1963);
David J. DeLaura, Hebrew and Hellene in Victorian England: Newman, Arnold, and
Pater (1969), which explicates keenly the affinities and differences between Arnold
and his contemporaries and successors; Fred G. Walcott, The Origins of Culture and
Anarchy: Matthew Arnold and Popular Education in England (1970); Sidney Coulling,
Matthew Arnold and His Critics: A Study of Arnold's Controversies (I974), which
provides historical context; Joseph Carroll, The Cultural Theory of Matthew Arnold
(I982), an excellent study of Arnold's main themes and ideas; and Ruth apRoberts,
Arnold and God (1983). For responses to Arnold by his contemporaries, see Matthew
Arnold-Prose Writings: The Critical Heritage, edited by Carl Dawson and John pfor-
dresher (1979). Edward Said, in The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983), and
Geoffrey H. Hartman, in Criticis_ in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today
(1980), are among the important contemporary literary theorists who have assessed
Arnold's impact on the academy. Additional commentaries can be found in an edition
of Culture and Anarchy prepared by Samuel Lipman (1994).
Concentrating on Arnold's poetry but including pertinent commentary on the prose
are A. Dwight Culler, Imaginative Reason: The Poetry of Matthew Arnold (1961); Alan
Roper, Arnold's Poetic Landscapes (1969); and David G. Riede, Matthew Arnold and
the Betrayal of Language (1988).
Thomas Burnett Smart has compiled The Bibliography of Matthew Arnold (1892);
it should be supplemente4 by the .listing in The Works of Matthew Anwld, vol. 15
(1903--04). See also 'Clinton Machann, The Essential Matthew Arnold: An Annotated
Bibliography of Major Modern Studies (1993).
The Function of Criticism at the Present Time 1

Many objections have been made to a proposition which, in some remarks
of mine on translating Homer,2 I ventured to put forth; a proposition about
criticism, and its importance at the present day. I said: 'Of the literature of
France and Germany, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort,
for now many years, has been a critical effort; the endeavour, in all branches
of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as
in itself it really is.' I added, that owing to the operation in English literature
of certain causes, 'almost the last thing for which one would come to English
I. First deiivered as a lecture at Oxford University, 1875 third edition, the last one that Arnold pre-
on October 29, 1864, and published In the pared.
National Review In November 1864, with the title 2. See Lecture II of 0.. T .......latin' H .......r (I 86 I).
given In the plural, "Functions." Arnold altered the The Greek Iliad and Odyssey of Homer (ca. 8th c.
title for the book version (1865) and added several B.C.Il.) were a standard part of English eltte edu-
footnotes. The text reprinted here I. that of the cation.
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME I 807
literature is just that very thing which now Europe most desires,-criticism';
and that the power and value of English literature was thereby impaired.
More than one rejoinder declared that the importance I here assigned to
criticism was excessive, and asserted the inherent superiority of the creative
effort of the human spirit over its critical effort. And the other day, having
becn led by a Mr. Shairp's excellent notice of Wordsworth 3 to turn again to
his biography, I found, in the words of this great man, whom I, for one, must
always listen to with the profoundest respect, a sentence passed on the
critic's business, which seems to justify every possible disparagement of it.
Wordsworth says in one of his letters:-
The writers in these publications' (the Reviews), 'while they prosecute
their inglorious employment, can not be supposed to be in a state of mind
very favourable for being affected by the finer influences of a thing so pure
as genuine poetry.'
And a trustworthy reporter4 of his conversation quotes a more elaborate
judgment to the same effect:-
'Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, infinitely lower than the
inventive; and he said to-day that if the quantity of time consumed in writing
critiques on the works of others were given to original composition, of what-
ever kind it might be, it would be much better employed; it would make a
man find out sooner his own level, and it would do infinitely less mischief.
A false or malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds of others, a
stupid invention, either in prose or verse, is quite harmless.'
It is almost too much to expect of poor human nature, that a man capable
of producing some effect in one line of literature, should, for the greater
good of society, voluntarily doom himself to impotence and obscurity in
another. Still less is this to be expected from men addicted to the composition
of the 'false or malicious criticism' of which Wordsworth speaks. However,
everybody would admit that a false or malicious criticism had better never
have been written. Everybody, too, would be willing to admit, as a general
proposition, that the critical faculty is lower than the inventive. But is it truE',
that criticism is really, in itself, a baneful and injurious employment; is it
true that all time given to writing critiques on the works of others would be
much better employed if it were given to original composition, of whatev~ ,
kind this may be'? Is it true that Johnson had better have gone on producing
more lrenes 5 instead of writing his Lives of the Poets; nay, is it certain that
Wordsworth himself was better employed in making his Ecclesiastical Son-
nets than when he made his celebrated Preface,6 so full of criticism, and
.~, I cannot help thinking that a practice, common "notice" (In which Arnold is praised) i. 'Words-
in Englund during the last century. nnd still fal- worth: The Man and the Poet," North Brilish
1""H'd in France, of printing a notice oflhis kind,- Review 41 (August 1864): I-54. WILLIAM WORIlS-
a notice by a competent critic,-to serve as an WORTH (1770-1850) Is the preeminent English
introduction to an eminent author's ",'orks, might Romantic poet.
he' fl!.vived among us with advantage. To introduce 4. Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of William
"II slI<,ceeding editions of WOI'dsworth. Mr. Wordsworth (1851).
Shairp's notice might, it seems to Ine, excellently 5. Irene (1749), an unsuccessful neoclassical trag-
serVl'; it is written from the point of view of an edy by SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784), whose
admjrer, nay, of a disciple, Rnd that i~ right; but Live. at. Ihe Poets (1779-81) were a considerable
rhen Ihe disciple must be also, as in thii< case he critica achievement.
js, u critic, a man of letters, not, DoS tuo uften hap- 6. The preface to Lyric,,1 B"llad. (1800,1802; see
1'''"<, some relation or friend with no lluolificHtion above). The 132 "Ecclesiastical Sonnets" (1821-
for his rask except affection for his !luthor [Arnold'. 22), which recount the history of the Church of
IlUll'1. Juhn Campbell Shplrp 0819-1885) was a England, are not considered among Wordsworth's
fri(,l1d "f Arnuld'. at BHlliul C"II"ge. Oxford; the major works.
;criticism of the works of others? Wordsworth was himself a great critic, and
.it is to be sincerely regretted that he has not left us more criticism; Goethe 7
was one of the greatest of critics,.and we may sincerely congratulate ourselves
that he has left us so much criticism. Without wasting time over the exag-
geration which Wordsworth's judgment on criticism clearly contains, ·6r over
an attempt to trace the causes,~not difficult, I think, to bettaced,8-w hich
may have led Wordsworth to this exaggeration; a critic maY.with advantage
seize an occasion for trying his own conscience, and for asking himself of
what real service at any given moment the practice of criticism either is or
may be made to his own mind and spirit, and. to the minds and spirits of
others.
The critical power is of lower rank than the creative .. True; but in assenting
to this proposition, one or two things are to be kept in mind. It is undeniable
that the exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity, is -the high-
est function of man; it is proved. to be so by man's finding: in it . his true
happiness. But it is undeniable, also, that men may have the sense of exer-
cising this free creative· activity in. other ways than in producing great works
of literature or art; if it were I1Pt ·so, .all but a very few men would be shut
out from the true happiness of all men. They may have it.in well~doing, they
may have it in le~lrningj they may have it in criticising. This is one thing to
be kept in mind.. Another is, that the exercise of the. creative power In. the
production of great works of literature or art, .however high this exercise of
it may rank, is not at all epochs and under all conditions possible; and that
therefore labour may be vainly spent in .attempting it, which might with more
fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering it possible. This creative power
Mlorks .with elements, with materials; what if it has not those materials, those
elements, ready for its use? In that case it must surely wait tHIthey are ready.
Now. in Hterature,----I will limit myself to literature, for it is about literature
that the question aris~s,-the elements with' which the·creative power works
are ideas; the best. idells on every· matter which .literature touches, cUrrent
at the time. At any-rate we may lay it down as certain th(lt in modern liter-
ature no manifestation of the creative power" not working with these can be
very important ot fruitful. And I say current at the time, not merely accessible
·at the time; for creativ~ liter~ry genius ;does- not principally show itself. in
discovering new ideas, that is rllther the business of thephilosopher.:The
grand,work of.Jiterary .. genius is a work of synthesis and.exposition, not of
analysis and disc.overy; its gift lies in the faculty of being happily inspired by
a-certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere; by.a certain order.of.ideas,
when it finds itself in them; of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting
them in the most effective and attractive combinations;-making.beautiful
works with them, in short. But it must have the atmosphere, it must find
itself amidst the order of ideas; in order to work freely; a:~d these it is not so
easy to command. This is why great creative epochs in litetat~te are so rare,
this is why there is so much that is unsatisfactory in the productions of many
men of real genius; because, for the creation of a master-work of literature
two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the
moment, and the maD is not ,enough without the moment j 9 the creative
7. Johann Wolfgang von Goeth~.(l749-1832), poetry:·. ' .
German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientlst_ 9_ A reference to Hippolyte Talne's HistOry of
8_ That is, to hostile reviews of Wordsworth's English Literature (3 vols., 1863); In the Introduc-
power has, for its happy exercise, appointed elements, and those elements
are not in its own control.
Nay, they are more within the control of the critical power. It is the busi-
ness of the critical power, as I said in the words already quoted, 'in all
branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the
object as in itself it, really is.' Thus it tends, at last, to make an intellectual
situation of which the creative power can profitably avail.itself. It tends to
establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true; y~t true by comparison
with that which it displaces; to make the best ideas prevail. Presently these
new ideas reach society, the touch of truth is the touch of life, and there is
a stir and growth everywhere; out of this stir ·and:growth come the creative
epochs of literature.
Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considerations of the general
march of genius and of society,-considerations which are Ilptto become
too abstract and impalpable,-every one can ,see that a poet, :for instance,
ought to know life· and the world before dealing with ·them in poetry; and
life and the world ·being in modem times very complex things,' the creation
of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies·a great critical effort behind
it; else it must be a comparatively poor, barren, and;short-Iived affair. This
is why Byron'~J"'poetry had so little endurance in it, and Goethe's so much;
both Byron :an'd ,Goethe had a great productive power, but Goethe's was
nourished by's 'great critical effort providing the true materials for it; and
Byron's was :not;,Goethe knew life and.the world, the· poet's .necessary sub-
jects, much more· comprehensively and thoroughly than Byrom He· knew
a great deal more' of them, and he knew them' m,:,-ch more as' they really
are. .,
It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative activity in our literature,
through the first quarter of this century, had about it in fact something
premature; and that from this cause its. productions are doomed,. most of
them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which accompanied and do still accom-
pany them, to' prove hardly more lasting: than; the productions of far less
splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes from its having proceeded
without having its 'proper data, without sufficient materials to work with.' In
other words, the English poetry of the first quarter of this century; with pkJ;1.ty
of energy, plenty: of creative force, did not know enough. This makes Byrbn
so empty of matter, Shelley2 so incoherentj Wordsworth even, profound as
he is, yet so wanting in completeness and variety. Wordsworth cared little
for books, and disparaged Goethe. I admire Wordsworth, as he is, so much
that I cannot wish him different; and it is vain, no doubt, to imagine such a
man different from what he is, to suppose that he could have been different.
But surely the one thing wanting to make Wordsworth an even greater poet
than he is,-his thought richer, and his influence of wider application,~was
that he should have,read more books, among them, no doubt, those of that
Goethe whom he disparaged without reading him.
But to speak of hooks and reading may easily lead to a misunderstanding
here. It was not really books and reading that lacked to our poetry at this
tion, the French critic and philosopher describes English Romantic poet.
the impact of heredity, environment, and history 2. PERCY BYSSHE SHEU_EY (I792-1822), English
('Ila race, Ie milieu, Ie moment ll ) . poet.
I. George Gordon, Lord Byron (I 788-1824),
epoch; Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge 3 had immense reading. Pin-
dar and Sophocles 4 -as we all say so glibly, and often with so little discern-
ment of the real import of what we are saying-had not many books;
Shakespeare was no deep reader. 'true; but in the Greece of Pindar and
Sophocles, in the England of Shakspeare, the poet lived in a current of ideas
in the highest degree animatin~ and nourishing to the creative power; society
was, in the fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought, intelligent and alive.
And this state of things is the true basis for, the creative power's· exercise, in
this it finds its data, its materials, truly ready for its hand; alI the books and
reading in the world are only valuable. as they are helps to this, Even when
this does not actually exist, books and reading may enable a man to construct
a kind of semblance of it in his own mind, a world of knowledge and .intel-
ligence in which he may live and work. This is by no me~ns an equival~nt to
the artist for the nationally diffused life and thought of ~he epochs of Soph-
ocles or Shakspeare; but, besides that it may be a means of preparation for
such epochs, it does really constitute, if many share in it, a quickening and
sustaining atmosphere of great value. Such an atmosphere the many-sided
learning and the long and widely-combined critical effort of Germany formed
for Goethe, when he lived and worked. There was no national, glow of life
and thought there as in ,the Athens' of Pericles or the England of Elizabeth. 5
That was the poet's weakness. But there was a sort of equivalent for it in the
complete culture and unfettered thinking of a large body of Germans, That
was his strength. In the England of the fir:st quarter of this century there ~as
neither a national glow of lifearid.though,t, such as we had in the age of
Elizabeth, nor yet a culture an~, Ii force of·learning and critiCism such as
were to be found in Germany. Therefore the creative power of poetry wanted,
for success in the highest sense, materiais and a basis; a thorough interpre-
tationof the world was necessarily denied toit.
At first sight it se~ms strange that out of the immense stir of the French
Revolution and its age should not have come a crop of works of genius equal
to that which came out of the stir of the great productive time of Greece, or
out of that of the Renascence, with its powerful episode the H~formation.
But the truth is that the stir of the French Revolution took a character which
essentially distinguished it from such movements as these. T~es~ were, in
the main, disinterestedly intellectual and spiritual move~ents; movements
in which the human spirit looked for its satisfaction in itself and. in the
increased play of its own activity. The French Revolution took a political,
practical character. The movement which went on in France under the old
regime, from 1700 to 1789, was far more really akin than that of the Revo-
lution itself to the movement of the Renascence;. the France of Voltaire and
Rousseau 6 told far more powerfully upon the mind of Europe than the France
of the Revolution. Goethe reproached this last expressly with having 'thrown
quiet culture back.' Nay, and the true key to how much in our Byron, even
3, SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834), military leader, and supporter of the arts. He was
English poet and critic, whose wide reading in the most influential man In Athens during the
German Romantic philosophers led to hi. intro- city's Golden Age.
ducing many of their Ideas to English readers. 6. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (I712-1778), Swlss-
4, Greek tragedian (ca. 496-406 D.C.E.)_ Pindar born French political theorist and philosopher.
(ca. 518-438 D.C.E.), Greek lyric poet. Voltaire: pen name of Fran~ol. Marie ArOliet
5. Elizabeth I (1553-1603; reigned 1558-1603). (1694-1778), French poet, dramatist, historian,
Pericles (ca. 495-429 R.C.E.), Athenian statesman, and satirist. .
THE FUNCTION Of' CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME I 81 1
in our Wordsworth, is this!-that they had their source in a great movement

of feeling, not in a great movement of mind. The French Revolution, how-
ever,-that object of so much blind hatred,-found undoubtedly its motive-
power in the intelligence of men, and not in their practical sense; this is what
distinguishes it from the English Revolution of Charles the First's time. This
is what makes it a more spiritual event than our Revolution, an event of
much more powerful and worldwide interest, though practically less suc-
cessful; it appeals to an order of ideas which are universal, certain, perma-
nent. 1789 asked of a thing, Is it rational? 1642 asked of a thing, Is it legal?
or, when it went furthest, Is it according to conscience? This is the English
fashion, a fashion to be treated, within its own sphere; with the highest
respect; for its success, within its own sphere, has been prodigious. But what
is law in one place is not law in another; what is law here to-day is not law
even here to-morrow; and as for conscience, what is binding on one man's
conscience is not binding on another's. The old woman who threw her stool
at the head of the surpliced minister in St. Giles's Church a:~ Edinburgh?
obeyed an impulse to which millions of the humah race .may J>e permitted
to remain strangers. But the prescriptions of reason are absohite; un~hang
ing, of universal validity; to count by tens is the easiest way of counting-that
is a proposition of which every one, from hereto the Antipodes, feels the
force; at least I should say so if we did not live in a country where it is not
impossible that any morning we may find a letter in the Times declaring that
a decimal coinage is an absurdity.s That a whole nation shOl-lJd have been
penetrated with an enthusiasm for pure reason, and with an ardent zeal for
making its prescriptions triumph, is a very remarkable thing, when we con-
sider how little of mind, or anything so worthy and quickening as mind,
comes into the motives which alone, in gerieral, impel great masses of men.
In spite of the extravagant direction given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the
crimes and follies in which it lost itself, the French Revoluti"on derives from
the force, truth, and universality of the ideas which it took for its law, and
from the passion with which it could inspire a multitude for these idc:;as; a
unique and still living power; it is-it will probably long remain-the
greatest, the most animating event in history. And as no sincere passion for
the things of the mind, even though it turn out in many respects an unfor-
tunate passion, is ever quite thrown away and quite barren of good, France
has reaped from hers one fruit-the natural and legitimate fruit, though not
precisely the grand fruit she expected: she is the country in Europe where
the people is most alive.
But the mania for giving an immediate political and practical application
to all these fine ideas of the reason was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his
element: on this theme we can all go on for hours. And all we are in the
habit of saying on it has undoubtedly a great deal of truth. Ideas cannot be
too much prized in and for themselves, cannot be too much lived with; but
to transport them abruptly into the world of politics and practice, violently
to revolutionise this world to their bidding,-that is quite another thing.
7. A riot broke out in July 1637 in Sl. Giles·Cathe· him of saying Mas •.
dral in protest against R new Anglican liturgy writ- B. Lett"rs in the London Tim ... in IB63 debated
len by Archbishop Laud. It was said to have begun whether England should change its system of
,,\·hen a woman named Jenny Geddes threw her weights and measures to the metdc system (itself
stool at the dean givinR the service and nccused an outgrowth of the French Revolution).
There is the world of ideas and there is the world of practice; .the 'Ftench are
often for suppressing the one and the· English the other; but neither is to be
suppressed. A member of the- House of Commons said to'me the other day:
IThat a thing is an anomaly; I -considet to be no objection to it whatever.' I
venture to think he was wrong; that a thing is an anomaly is an objection to
it, but absolutely and in the sphere of ideas: it is not necessarilYi·under such
and such Circumstances, or at such and such a moment, an objection to it
in the sphere of politics and practice. Joubert? has said beautifully: 'C'est la
force et Ie droit qui reglent toutes choses dans Ie monde; la force en attendant
Ie droit.' (Force and right are the governors of this world; force till right is
ready.) Force till right is ready; and till right is ready, force, the existing order
of·things, is justified, is the legitimate ruler. But right is something moral,
and implies inward recognition, free assent of the will; we are not ready for
right,-right, so far as we are concerned, is not ready,-until we have attained
this sense of seeing it and willing it. The way in which for us it may change
and· transform force, the existing order of things, and become, in its turn,
the legitimate ruler of the world; should depend on the way in which, when
our times conies; we see it and will it. Therefore for other peoplE! enamoured
of their own newly discerned right, to attempt to impose it upon us 8S ours,
and violently to substitute their right for our force, is an act of tyranny, and
to be resisted. It sets at nought-the second great half of our maxim, force till
right is ready. This was the grand error of the French Revolution; and its
movement of ideas; by quitting the intellectual sphere and rushing furiously
into the political sphere; ran, indeed, a prodigious and memorable course,
but produc.ed no such intellectual fruit as the movement -of ideas of the
Renascence, and created, in opposition to itself, what I may call an epoch of
concentmtion. The. great force of that epoch of concentration was England;
an4 the great voice of the epoch of coricentration was Burke. 1 It is the fashion
to treat Burke's writings on the French Revolution as superannuated and
conquered by the event; as the eloquent but unphilosophical tirades of big-
otry and prejudiee. I will not deny that they are often disfigured by the vio-
lence and passion of the moment,andthat in some directions Burke's view
was·bounded, and his observation therefore at fault. But on the·whole, and
for those who can make the needful corrections; what distinguishes these
writings is their _profound, permanent, fruitful, philosophical truth. They
contain the true philosophy of an epoch of concentration, dissipate the heavy
atJIlosphere which its own nature :is apt to engender round it, and make its
resistance rational instead of mechanical.
But Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings:thought
to bear upon polities, he saturates politics with thought; It is his accident2
that his ideas were at the service of an epoch of concentration, not of an
epoch of expansion; it is his characteristic that he so lived by ideas, and had
such a source of ·them welling up ,within -him, that he could float even an
epoch of concentration andEn~lish Toryp~litics with them. It does not hurt
him that Dr. Price 3 and the Liberals were enraged with him; it does not even
9. Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), French writer 2. Fortune.
an moralist, known for his essays, maxims, and 3. Richard Price (1723-1791), Welsh dissenting
letters: . minister/ moral philosopher, _ supporter: of the
1. EDMUND BURKE (J 729-1797), statesman and American and French 'Revolutlons, and one of
author of Rejlsceions -on ehe French Revol..Uon Burke's opponents. . . ,.
(1790). . .
hurt him that George the Third and the Tories were enchanted with him.
His greatness is that he lived in a world which neither English Liberalism
nor English Toryism is. apt. to enter;-theworld of ideas, not the world of
catchwords and party habits. So far is it from being really true of him that
he 'to party gave up what was meant for trtankind,'4 that at the very end of
his fierce struggle with the French Revolution, after all his -invectives against
its false pretensions, hollowness, and madness, with his sincere conviction
of its mischievousness, he can close amemorandum:on the'best means of
combating it, some of the last pages he everwrotej 5-the Thoughts on French
Affairs, in December 1791 ,-with these striking words:-
'The 'evil is stated; in my opinion, as it exists. The remedy must be where
power, wisdom,. and information, I hope; are more united with good inten-
tions than they can be with me. I have done with this subject, I believe, for
ever. It has given'me many anxious moments for the last two years. If a great
change is to be math·in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it;
the general o~nions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope
will forward it;'"nd then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in
human affairs, will appear rather to resist the decrees of PfYWIdsnce itself; than
the mere designs of men. They will not be. resolute'and firm., but perverse and
obstinate.'
That'return of Burke upon himself has always seemed to me one of the
finest'things' in English literature, or indeed 'in 'any literature. That is what I
call living by ideas: when one side of a question has long had your earnest
support, when all :your feelings are engaged, when you hear all round you no
language but one,when your party talks thh;:language liJte a steam-engine
and can imagine no other,-still to be able to think, still to be h'resistibly
carried, if so it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side of the
question, and, like Balaam',6 to be unable to speak anything but what the
Lord has put lnyour mouth. I' know nothing more striking, and I inust add
that I know nothing more un"English.
For the Englishman in general'is Iik~ my friend the Member of parliame~t,
and believes, point-blank, that for a thing to be an anomaly is absolutely no
objection to it whatever. He is like the 'Lord Auckland 7 of Burke's day, who,
in a memorandum on the French Revolution, -tl:llks' of 'certain miscreants,
assuming the name of philosophers, who'have;presumed themselves caplime
of establishing a new system of society.' The-Englishman has been called a
political animal, and he values what is political. and practical so much that
ideas easily become objects of dislike in his eyes; and thinkers 'miscreants,'
because ideas and thinkers have rashly meddled with politics and practice.
This would be all very well if the dislike and neglect confined themselves to
ideas transported out of their own sphere, and meddling rashly with practice;
but they are inevitably extended to ideas as· such, and to the whole life of
intelligence; practice is everything, a free play' of. the mind is ·nothing. The
notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleasure in itself,
being an object of desire, being an essential provider of elements without
4. An obsel"l(ation about "good Edmund" Burke In 6. Despite being sent by his klng'~o curse the Isra-
Oliver Goldsmith's poem "Retaliation" (1774),line elites, Balaam hlessed them, speaking "the word
32. that God putteth in [his] mouth" (Numbers 22.
5. R. H. Super, the modern editor of Arnold's 38).
prose works, notes that In fact Burke continued tD 7. William Eden, first Baron Auckland (1744-
write until his death in 1797. 1814), stlltesmlm lind diplomat.
which a nation's spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, must,
in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into an Englishman's thoughts.
It is noticeable that the word curiosity, which in other lariguages is used in
a good sense, to mean, as a high and fine quality of man's nature, just this
disinterested love of a free play of the mind on all subjects, for its own sake,-
it is noticeable, I say, that this word has in our language no sense of the
kind, no sense but a rather bad and disparaging one. But criticism, real
criticism, is essentially the exercise of this very quality. It obeys an instinct
prOInpting it to try to know the best that is known and thought in the world,
irrespectively of practice, politics, an~ everything of the kinel; and to value
knowledge and thought as they approa~h this best, without the ~nfrusion of
any other considerations whatev~r. This is an ~p.stinct for which there is, I
think, little original sympathy in the practical English nature, and what there
was of it has undergone a long benumbing period of blight and. suppression
in the epoch of concentration which followed the French Revolution.
But epochs of concentration cannot well endure for ever; epochs of expan~
sion, in the due course of things, follow them. Such an epoch of expan'sion
seems to be opening in this country. In the first place all danger ~f a hostile
forcible pressure of foreign ideas upon our practice has long disappeared;
like the traveller in the fable, therefore, we begin to wear our cloak. a little
more loosely.s Then, with a iongpeace, the ideas of Europe steal gradua~ly
and amicably in, and mingle, though in infinitesimally small quantities at a
time, with our own notions. Then, too, in spite of all that is said about ·the
absorbing and brutalising influence of our passionate material progr~ss, it
seems to me indisputable that this progress is likely, though not certain, to
lead in the end to an apparition 9 of intellectual life; and that man, after he
has made himself perfectly comfortable and has now to determine what to
do with himself next, may begin to reme~ber that he has a mind, an~' that
the mind may be made the source of great pleasure. I grant it is mainly the
privilege of faith, at present, to discern this end to our railways, our busine~s,
and our fortune-making; but we shall see if, here as elsewhere, faith is not
in the end the true prophet. Our ease, our travelling, and our unbqunded
liberty to hold just as hard and securely as we p.ease to the practiee to which
our notions have given birth, all: tend to beget an inclination to deal a little
more freely with these notions themselves, to canvass them a li~tle, tq pen~
etrate a little into their real nature. Flutterings' of curiosity, in the foreign
sense of the word, appear amongst us, and it is in these that criticism must
look to find its account. Criticism first; a time of true creative activitY;'per-
haps,-which, as I have said, must inevitably be preceded amongst 4S by a
time of criticism,-hereafter, when cr~ticism has done it~ work.
It is of the last importance that English criticism should clearly discern
what rule for its course, in order to avail itself of the field now opening to it,
and to produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The rule may be summed
up in one word,--disinterestedness. 1 And how is criticism to show disinter-
estedness'? By keeping aloof from what Is called 'the practical view oE ~hlngs';
by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play
of the mind on all subjects which it touches. By steadily refusing to lend
8. In Aesop's fable of the wind and the sun. the 9. An appearance before the world.
two have a contest (which the sun wins) to see 1. Objectivity. Independence of judgme~t.
which can first make a traveler remove his cloak.
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME / 815
itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas,

which plenty of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought
often to be attached to them, which in this country at any rate are certain
to be attached to them quite sufficiently, but which criticism has really noth-
ing to do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is
known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to
create a current of true and fresh ideas. Its business is to do this with inflex-
ible honesty, with due ability; but its business is to do no more, and to leave
alone all questions of practical consequences and applications, questions
which will never fail to have due prominence given to them. Else criticism,
besides being really false to its own nature, merely continues in the old rut
which it has hitherto followed in this country, and will certainly miss the
chance now given to it. For what is at present the bane of criticism in this
country? It is that practical considerations cling to it and stifle it. It subserves
interests not its own. Our organs of criticism are organs of men and parties
having practical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends are the
first thing and the play of mind the second; so, much play of mind as is
compatible with the prosecution of those practical ends is all that is wanted.
An organ like the Revue des Deux Mondes,2 having for its main function to
understand and utter the best that is known and thought in the world, eXist-
ing, it may be said, as just an organ for a free play of the mind, we have not.
But we have the Edinburgh Review, existing as an organ of the old Whigs,
and for as much play of the mind as may suit its being that; we have the
Quarterly Review, existing as an organ of the Tories, and for as much play of
mind as may suit its being that; we have the British Quarterly Review, existing
as an organ of the political Dissenters, and for as much play of mind as may
suit its being that; we have the Ti1'nes, existing as an organ 9f the common,
satisfied, well-to-do Englishman, and for as much play of mind as may suit
its being that. And so on through all the various fractions, political and reli-
gious, of our society; every fraction has, as such, its organ of criticism, but
the notion of combining all fractions in the common pleasure of a free dis-
interested play of mind meets with no favour. Directly this play of mind wants
to have more scope, and to forget the pressure of practical considerations a
little, it is checked, it is made to feel the chain; We saw this the other day
in the extinction, so much to be regretted, of the Ho1'ne and Foreign Revi~>
Pcrhaps in no organ of criticism in this country was there so much knowl-
edge, so much play of mind; but these could not save it. The Dublin Review
subordinates play of mind to the practical business of English and Irish
Catholicism, and lives. It must neeas be that men should act in sects and
parties, that each of these sects and parties should have its organ, and should
make this organ subserve the interests of its action; but it would be well, too,
that there should be a criticism, not the minister of these interests, not their
enemy, but absolutely and entirely independent of them; No other criticism
will ever attain any real authority or make any real way towards its end',-
the creating a current of true and fresh ideas.
It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure intellectual sphere, has
so little detached itself from practice, has been so directly polemical and
2, A highly respected and widely rem( French 3, Liberal Cntholic quarterly in London (1862-
bimonthly review of culture, the arts, pulitics, and 64),
t'('ollumics.
controversial, that it has ,so ill accomplished, in this country, its best,spititual
work; which is to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and
vulgarising, to lead him towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon
what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things. A
polemical practical criticism makes men blind even to the ideal imperfection
of their practice, makes' them willingly assert its ideal perfection,:' in order
th~ better to secure it against attack~ and dearly this is narrowing and baneful
for them. If they were reassured on the practical side, speculativ!'! consid-
erations of ideal perfection they might be brought to entertain, and their
spiritual horizon would thus gradually widen. Sir Charles Adderley" says' to
the Warwickshire farmers:-
'Talk of the improvement of breed! Why, the race we ourselves represent,
the men and women, the old Anglo-Saxon race, are the best breed in the
whole world.' ... The absence of a too enervating climate, too unclouded
skies, and a too luxurious nature, has produced so vigorous a race of people ,
and has rendered us so superior to all the world.'
Mr. Roebuck' to the Sheffield cutlers:-
'I look around me and ask what is the state of England?' Is not property
safe? Is not every man able to say what he likes? Can you not walk from one
end of England to the other in perfect security? I ask you whether, the world
over or in past history, there is anything like it? Nothirig . .I pray that our
unrivalled happiness may last.' ,
Now obviously there is a peril for poor human nature in words and
thoughts of such exuberant self-satisfaction, until We find ourselves safe in
the streets of the Celestial City; ,
'Oss wenige verschvirindet leicht deln Blicke,
Oer'vorwiirts sieht, wie viel riocho.brlg hleibt~'
. . •r ' '. .
says Goeth~;6 'the little that is 40neseems nothing when we lpok forward
and see how much we have yet to 40.' Clearly this is a bett~r line of reflection
for weak humanity, so long as it remains on this earthly field of labour and
t r i a L " " , ·
But neither ,Sir Charles Adderley nor'Mr. Roebuck is l?y nature inacces-
sible to considerations of this sort. They only lose sight of themoviring to the
controversial life we all lead, and the practical form which ,all speculation
takes with us. They have in view opponents whose aim is not ideal, but
practical; and in their zeal to uphold their own practice against these inno-
,vators, they go so far as even to .attribute to this practice an ideal perfection.
Somebody has been w~nting to introduce a six-pound franchise, or to abolish
church-rates,? or to collect agricultural statistics by force, or to diminish local
self-government. How natural, in reply to such ,proposals, very likely
improper or ill-timed, to go a little beyond the mark, and to say stoutly, 'Such
a race of people as we stand, so superior to all the world! The' old Anglo-
Saxon race, the best breed in the whole world I I pray that our, unrivalled
happiness may lastl I ask you whether, the world over or in past history, there
is anything like it?' And so long as criticism answers this dithyramb by insist-
4, Conservative member of Parliament (1814- 7. Taxes legally imposed by the Church of
1905), wealthy holder of a large estate In War- EnRiand. ':Slx-po,und franc!lise": a proposal by rad-
wickshire. leaf. to extend the vote to Ilnrone who own!!d land
5. John Arthur Roebuck (1801-1879), radl~al or'bulldlngs wdrth £6 annua rent (not £10. iii set
member of Parliament. In 1832). " .
6. lphigeniain Ta ..ris (1787),1.2.91-92.
ing t1)at the old Anglo-Saxon race would be still more superior to all others
if it had no church-rates, or that our unrivalled happiness would .last yet
longer with a six-pound franch.ise, so long will the strain, 'The best breed in
the whole world!' swell louder and louder, everything ideal.and refining will
be lost out of sight, and both the assailed and their critics will remain in a
sphere, to say the truth, perfectly unvital, a sphere in which spiritual pro-
gression is impossible. But let criticism leave church-rates and the franchise
alone, and in the most candid spirit, without a single lurking thought of
practical innovation, confront with our dithyramb this paragraph on which
I stumbled in a newspaper immediately after reading Mr. Roebuck:-
'A shocking child murder has just been committed at Nottingham. A girl
named Wragg8 left the workhouse there on Saturday morning with her young
illegitimate child. The child was soon afterwards found dead on Mapperly
Hills, having been strangled. Wragg is in custody.'
Nothing but that: but, in juxtaposition with the absolute eulogies of Sir
Charles Adderley and Mr. Roebuck, how eloquent, how suggestive are those
few linesl 'Our old Anglo-Saxon breed, the best in the whole world!'-how
much that is harsh and ill-favoured there is in this best! Wragg! If we are to
talk of ideal perfection, of 'the best in the whole world,' has anyone reflected
what a touch of grossness in our race,. what an original shortcoming in .the
more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the natural growth amongst
us of such hideous names,-Higginbottom,· 8tiggins, Buggl IIi -Ionia and
Attica 9 they were luckier in this respect than 'the best race in the'world': by
the I1issus 1 there was no Wragg, poor thing! And 'our unrivalled happiness':-
what an element of grimness, bareness, and hideousness mixes with it and
blurs it: the workhouse, the dismal Mapperly Hills,-how dismal those who
have seen them wi]] remember:-the gloom, the smoke, the cold, the stran-
gled illegitimate child I 'I ask you whether, the world over or in past history,
there is anything like it?' Perhaps not, one is inclined to answer: but at any
rate, in that case, the world is very much to be pitied. And the final touch,-
short, bleak, and inhuman: Wragg is in custody. The sex lost in the confusion'
of our unrivalled happiness: or (shall I say?) the superfluous Christian name
lopped off. by' the straightforward vigour of our old Anglo-Saxon breed! There
is profit for the spirit iil such contrasts as this; criticism serves the cause of
perfection by establishing them. By eluding sterile conflict, by refusi~'to
remain in the sphere where alone narrow and relative conceptions have any
worth and validity, criticism may diminish its momentary importance, but
only in this way has it a chance of gaining admittance for those wider and
more perfect conceptions to which all its duty is really owed. Mr. Roebuck
will have a poor opinion of an advers~ry who replies to his defiant songs of
triumph only by murmuring under his breath, Wragg is in custody; but in no
other way will these songs of triumph be induced gradually to moderate
themselves, to get rid of what in them is excessive and offensive, and to fall
into a softer and truer key.
It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect action which I am thus
prescribing for criticism, and that, by embracing in this manner the Indian
virtue of detachment 2 and abandoning the sphere of practical life, it con-
8. Elizabeth Wragg; this crime was committed on i. thought to have lived).

September 10, 1864. I. River south of Athens.
9. District of Greece that includes Athens. Ionia: 2. The Ideal of detaching ohi!self from worldly
area of the west coast of Asia Minor (where Homer activity, here associated with Hinduism.
8I8 I MATTHEW ARNOLD
demns itself to a slow and obscure work· Slow and obscure it may be, but it
is the only proper work of criticism. The mass of mankind will never have
any ardent zeal for seeing thirigs as they are; very inadequate ideas will always
satisfy them. 3 On· these inadequate ideas reposes, and must repose, the gen-
eral practice of the world. That is as much as· saying that whoever sets himself
to see things as they are will find himself one of a vetysmall circle; but it is
only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas
will ever get current at all. The nish and roar of practical life will always have
a dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and tend
to draw him into its vortex; most of all will this be the .case where that life is
so powerful as it is in· England. But it is only by remaining collected,· and
refusing to lend himself to the point of view of the practical man; that the
critic can do the practical man any service; and it is only' by the· greatest
sincerity in pursuing his own course, and by at last convincing' even the
practical man of his sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which
perpetually threaten him.
For the praCtical man is not apt for fine distinctions, and yet in these
distinctions, truth and the highest culture greatly find their account. But it
is not easy to lead 'a practical inan,-unlessyou reassure him as to your
practical intentions, you have no chance of leading him,--:-to see that a thing
which he has always been used to look at from one side only, which he greatly
values, and which, looked at from that side,quite deserves, perhaps, all the
prizing and admiring which he bestows upon it,~that this thing, looked at
from another side, may appear much less beneficent and beautiful, and yet
retain all its claims to our practical allegiance. Where shall we find language
innocent enough, how shall we make the spotless purity of our intentions
evident enough, to enable us to say to the political Englishman that the
British Constitution itself, which, seen from the prac'tical side; looks such a
magnificent organ of progress and virtue,. seen: from· the· speculative side,"':""-
with its compromises~ its love of facts, its horrorottheory, its studied avoid-
ance of clear thoughts,-that, seen&om this side, our august Constitution
sometimes looks,-forgive me, shade of Lord Somers!4~a colossal machine
for the manufacture ofPhilistines?5 How is Cobbett6 to· say this· and not be
misunderstood, blackened as he is with the smoke, of a lifelong conflict in
the field of political practice? how is Mr. Carlyle7 to say it and not be mis-
understood, after his furious raid into this field with. his Latter-day Pam-
phlets? how is Mr. Ruskin,S after his pugnacious political economy? I say,
the critic must keep out of the region of immediate practice in the political,
social, humanitarian sphere, if he wants to make a beginning for that more
free speculative treatment of things, which may perhaps one day make its
benefits felt even in this sphere, but in a natural and thence irresistible
manner.
Do what he will, however, the critic will still remain exposed to frequent
3. Arnold takes the terms "adequate" and "inade.- journalist and reformer. . . .
quate" from the Ethics (1677) of the Dutch phi- . 7. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish-born
losopher Benedict de Splnoza. . essayist and historian; he;- expressed bitter antidem-
4. john Somers (1651-1716), English constltu- ocratic views in Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850).
tionallawyer and statesman. 8. John Ruskin (1819-1900), art critic and social
5. The materialist middle classes (a name taken critic. In Unto This Last (1860-62), he challenged
from a biblical people that waged war against the the business and. Industrial practices and materl-
Israelites). alisin of the age. .
6. William Cobbett (1762-1835), English radical
misunderstandings, and nowhere so much as in this country. For here people

are particularly indisposed even to comprehend that without this free dis-
interested treatment of things, truth and the highest culture are out of the
question. So immersed are they in practical life, so accustomed to take all
their notions from this life and its processes, that they are apt to think that
truth and culture themselves can be reached by the process of this life, and
that it is an impertinent singularity to think of reaching them in any other.
We are all terrlejilii,'9 cries their eloquent advocate; 'all Philistines together.
Away with the notion of proceeding by any other course than the course dear
to the Philistines; let us have a social movement, let tis organise and combine
a party to pursue truth and new thought, let us call it the liberall'arty, and
let us all stick to each other, and back each other up. Let us have no nonsense
about independent criticism, and intellectual delicacy, and the few and the
many. Don't let us trouble ourselves about foreign thought; we shall invent
the whole thing for ourselves as we go along. If one of us speaks well, applaud
him; if one of us speaks ill, applaud him too; we are all in the same move-
ment, we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of truth.' In this way the pursuit
of truth becomes really a social, practical, pleasurable affair, almost requiring
a chairman, a secretary, and advertisements; with the excitement of an occa-
sional scandal, with a little resistance to give the happy sense of difficulty
overcome; but, in general, plenty of bustle and very little thought. To act is
so easy, as Goethe says; to think is so hardP It is true that the critic has many
temptations to go with the stream, to make one of the party movement, one
of these terrlejilii; it seems ungracious to refuse to be a ter-r;ejilius, when so
many excellent people are; but the critic's duty is to refuse, or, if resistance
is vain, at least to cry with Obermann: Perissons en resistant.2
How serious a matter it is to try and resist, I had ample opportunity of
experiencing when I ventured some time ago to criticise the celebrated first
volume of Bishop Colenso. 3 The echoes of the storm which was then raised
I still, from time to time, hear grumbling round me. That storm arose out of
a misunderstanding almost inevitable. It is a result of no little culture to
attain to a clear perception that science and religion are two wholly different
things. The multitude will for ever confuse them, but happily that is of no
great real importance, for while the multitude imagines itself to live by' its
false science, it does really live by its true religion. Dr. Colen so, howev~in
his first volume did all he could to strengthen the confusion, 4 and to make
9. Sons of the earth (Latin); that is, men of the made re1il/ious.' And I will add: Let us have all the
soil. science there is from the men of science; from the
I. A reference to Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's men of religion let us have religion [Arnold's note).
Appre..ticeship (1795-96). John William Colenso (1814-1883), bishop of
2. Let us die resisting (French). Quoted from Natal In South Africa, whose controversial studies
Obermann (1804), a Romantic epistolary novel by disputed orthodox. theology and the historic .. 1
Etienne de S~nancour. accuracy of biblical texts. In "The Bishop and
3. So sincere Is my dislike to all personal attack the Philosopher" (M ..c ...ill .... '. Magazine, January
and controversy, that I abstain fnun reprinting, at 1863), Arnold sharply criticized Colenso's· schol-
this distance of time from the occasion which arship and failure to address true spiritual need •.
called them forth, the essays in which I criticised 4. It has been said I make it 'a crime against lit-
Dr. Colenso's book; I feel bound, however, after aU erary criticism and the higher culture to attempt
t.hat has passed, to make here a finnl declaration to infonn the Ignorant.' Need I point out that the
of my sincere impenitence for having published ignorant are not informed by being confirmed in a
I h.-on. Nay, I cannot forbear repeating yet once confusion? [Arnold's notel. Quoted from the jurist
more, for his benefit and that 01 his readers, this and essayist Fitzjames Stephen In "Mr. Matthew
sentence from my original remnrl(s upon him: Arnold and His Countrymen," Saturday Review,
'11,ere i.. truth of science and truth of relil/ion; truth December 3, 1864.
of science does not become trutl. of religion till it is
it dangerous. He did this with the best intentions, I ·freely admit, and: with
the most candid ignorance that this was the natural. effect of. what h~ was
doing; but, says Joubert, 'Ignorance, which in matters of morals extenuates
the crime, is itself, in intellectual matters, a crime of the first order.' I criti-
cised Bishop Colenso's speculative confusion~ Immediately there was a cry
raised: What is this? here is a liberal attacking a liberal. Do not you belong
to the movement? are not you a friend of truth? Is not Bishop Colen so in
pursuit of truth? then speak with proper respect of his book Dr. Stanley' is
another friend of truth, and you speak with proper respect of his book; why
make these invidious differences? both books are excellent, admirable, lib-
eral; Bishop Colenso's perhaps the most so, because it is the boldest, and
will have the best practical consequences for the liberal cause. Do you want
to encourage to the attack of a brother liberal his, and your, and our implac-
able enemies, the Church and State Review or the Record,-the High Church
rhinoceros and the Evangelical hYlEna? Be silent, therefore; or rather speak,
speak as loud as ever you can! and go into ecstasies over the eighty and odd
pigeons.'6
But criticism carinot follow this coarse and indiscriminate method. It is
unfortunately possible for a man in pursuit of truth to .write a book which
reposes. upon a false conception. Even the practical consequences of a book
are to genuine. criticism no recommendation of it, if the book 'is, in the
highest sense; blundering. I see that a lady? who herself, too, is in pursuit of
truth, and who writes with great ability, but a little too much; perhaps, under
the influence of the practical spirit of the English liberal movement, classes
Bishop Colen so's book and M. Renan's8 together, ·in hersurv~y of the reli-
gious state of Europe, as facts of the same order, works,both of them, of
'great importance'; 'great ability, power, and skill'; Bishop Colen so's, perhaps,
the most powerful; at least~ Mis~ Cobbe gives special expression to her grat-
itude that to Bishop Colenso 'has been given the strength to grasp, and the
courage to teach, truths of such deep import.' In' the same ·way, more than
one popular writer has compared him to Luther. 9 Now ~t is just this kind of
false estimate which the critical.spirit is, it seems to me;' hound to resist, It
is really the strongest possible proof of the low ebb at which; in England,
the critical spirit is, that while the critical hit in the re'Iigious literature of
Germany is Dr. Strauss's boo~,1 in that of France M. Renan's book, the book
of Bishop Colenso is the critical hit in the religious :lite,ature of England.
Bishop Colenso's book reposes on a total misconception of the essential
'elements of the religious problem, as that problem is, now presented for
solution. To criticism, therefore, which seeks to have the best that is known
and thought on this problem, it is, however well mea:rit, of no importance
whatever. M. Renan's book attempts a new synthesis of the elements fur-
nished to us by the Four Gospe]s. It attempts, in my opinion, a .synthesis,
perhaps premature, perhaps impossible, certainly not successful. Up to the
5. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881), EnaIlsh ken Lights (1864).
biographer of Thomas Arnold, an ecdesiastlcal'his· 8. Ernest Renan (1823-1892), French critic, his·
torian and advocate of religious toleration. ' torian, orientaUst, and author of TIae Lifo of Jesus
6. Colenso used mathematics to cast doubt on the (1863). :,
historical validity of certain passages in Leviticus 9. Martin Luther (1483-1546), German religious
and Numbers. reformer and founder of the Reformation.,
7. Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1908). Irish I. Qavld Friedrich Strauss (1808--1874), German
socia' worker and author ·of books on reform, theologian, author of TIae Life of Jesus (1835-36).
women's rights, and religion. lier I. survey" is Bro-
present time, at any rate, we must, acquiesce in Fleury's sentence on such

recastings of the Gospel-story: Quiconque s'imagi11e la pouvoir mieux ecrire,
ne l'entend pas. 2 M. Renan hael himself passed by anticipation a like sentence
on his own work, when he said: 'If a new presentation of the character of
Jesus were offered to me, I would not have'it; its very clearness would be, in
my opinion, the best proof of its insufficiency.' His friends may with perfect
justice rejoin that\a~ the sight of the Holy Land, and of the actual scene of
the Gospel-story,.all the current of M. Renan's thoughts may have naturally
changed, and a new casting of that story irresistibly suggested itself to him;
and that this is just a case for applying Cicero's maxim: Change of mind is
npt inconsistency-nemo ductus unquam mutatiOnem consilii inconstantiatn
dixit esse. 3 Nevertheless, for criticism, M, Renan's first thought must still be
the truer one, as long as his new casting so fails more fully to commend
itself, more fully (to use Coleridge's happy phrase about the Bible) to find
us. 4 Still M. Renan's attempt is, for criticism, of the most real interest and
importance, since, with all its difficulty, a fresh synthesis of the New Tes-
tament datliJ,-not a making war on thein, ,in Voltaire's fashion, 5 not a leaving
them out of rttind, in the world's fashion, but the putting a new construction
upon them; the taking them from under the old, traditional, conventional
point of view and placing them under a new one,-is the very essence of the
religious problem, as now presented; and only by efforts in tJ:1is direction can
it re'ceive a solution.
Again, in the same spirit in which she judges Bishop Colenso, Miss Cobbe,
like so many earnest liberals of our practical race, both here and in, America,
herself sets vigorously about a positive reconstruction of religion, about mak-
ing a religion of the future out of hand, or at least setting about making it.
We must not,rest, she and they are always thinking and saying, in negative
criticism, we must be creative and constructive; hence we have such works
as her recent Religious DUty,6 and works still more considerable, perhaps by
others, which will be in every one's mind. These works often have much
ability; they often spring out, of sincere convictions, and a sincere wish to do
good; and they sometimes, perhaps, do good. Their fault is (if I maybe
permitted to say.so) one which they have.incommon with the British College
of Health, in the New Road. Every one knows the British College of Health;
it is that building with the lion and the statue of the Goddess Hygeia bt!Fore
it; at least I am sure about the lion, though I am not absolutely certain about
the Goddess Hygeia. 7 This building does credit, perhaps, to the resources of
Dr. Morrison B arid his disciples; but it falls a good deal short of one's idea of
what a British College of Health ought to be. In England, where we hate
public interference and love individual enterprise, we have,a whole crop of
places like the British College of Health; the grand mime without the grand
thing. Unluckily, creditable to individual enterprise as they are, they tend to
2. Whoever Imagines he can write it better doe. me than I have experlent:l!d in all other book.. pLlt
not understand it (French). From the Hisloire together." ..
ecc/t!siasllque (1691-1120), by the French histo- 5. Voltaire'. wor!cs'lnditde a number of attacks on
rian and teacher Claude Fleury (1640-1723). Ca,tholic doctrine and religious intolerance.
3. No educated man has ever said that a change 6. Published in J864.
of opinion i. inconsistency (Latin). From Letters to 7. Greek deity personirylng health.
Atticus, no. 16, by the Roman orator and stalefllman g. James ,Morrison (1770--1840), merchant ond
Cicero (106-43 H.C.E.). vendor, described himself as "the Hrgeiot"; in 1828
4. See Coleridge's COItfessions of an Inquiring he founded the British College of Health. from
Spirit (1840): "In the Bible there is more thatfiHds which he distributed his cure-all patent medicine.
impair our taste by making us forget what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful
character properly belongs to a public institution. The same may be said of
the religions of the future of'Miss Cobbe and others. Creditable; like the
British College of Health, to the resources of theit a:uthors, they yet tend to
make us forget what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character properly
belongs to religious constructions. The historic religions, with all their faults,
have had this; it certainly belongs to the religious sentiment, when it truly
flowers, to have this; and we impoverish our spirit if we allow a religion of
the future without it. What then is the duty of criticism here? To take the
practical point of view, to applaud the liberal movement and all its works,-
its New Road religions of the future into the bargain,-for their general
utility's sake? By no means; but to be perpetually dissatisfied with these
works, while they perpetually fall short of a high and perfect ideal.
For criticism, these are elementary laws; but they never 'can be popular,
and in this country they have been very little followed, and one meets with
immense obstacles in following them. That is a reason for asserting them
again and again. Criticism must· maintain its independence of the 'practical
spirit and its aim. Even with well-meant. efforts of the practicaJ.spirit it must
express dissatisfaction, if in the sphere of the' ideal they seem impoverishing
and limiting. It must not hurry on to the goal because of its practical impor-
tance. It must be patient, and know how to wait; and flexible, and know how
to attach itself to things and how to withdraw from them.' It must be .apt to
study and praise elements that for the fulness of spiritual perfection' are
wanted, even though they belong to a power which in the practical sphere
may be maleficent. It must be apt to discern the spiritual shortcomings or
illusions of powers that in the practical sphere may be beneficent. And this
without any notion of favouring or injuring, in the practical sphere, orte
power or the other; without any notion of playing off, in this sphere,· one
power against the other. When one looks, for instance, at the English Divorce
Court,-an institution which perhaps has its practical conveniences, but
which in the ideal sphere is so hideous; an institution which neither makes
divorce impossible nor makes it decent, which allows a man to get rid of his
wife, or a wife of her husband, but makes them drag one another first, for
the public edification, through a mire of unutterable infamy,-when one
looks at this charming institution; I say, with its crowded trails, its newspaper
reports, and its money compensations, this institution in which the gross
unregenerate British Philistine has indeed stamped an image ofhimself,-
one may be permitted to find the marriage theory of Catholicism 9 refreshing
and elevating. Or when Protestantism, In virtue of its supposed rational and
intellectual origin, gives the law to criticism too magisterially, criticism may
and must remind it ·that its pretensions, in this respect,are illusive and do
it harm; that the Reformation was a moral rather than an intellectual event;
that Luther's theory of grace no more exactly reflects the mind of the spirit
than Bossuet's· philosophy of history reflects it; and that there is no more
antecedent probability of the Bishop of Durham's stock of ideas being agree-
able to perfect reason than of Pope Pius the Ninth's.2 But criticism will not
9. That is, that in Christian marriage, once con· anity and, especially, the Catholic Church.
summated, there can never be an absolute divorce. 2. Pius IX (1792-1878), pope from 1846 to 1878,
\. Jacques B~nigne Bossuet (1627~1704), French was criticized for his conservative views. Bishop of
bishop and moraUsti he maintained that, Provi- Durham: Charles Thomas Baring (1807-1879).
dence guided history in order to establish Christi-
on that account forget the achievements of Protestantism in the practical

and moral sphere; nor that, even in the intellectual sphere, Protestantism,
though in a blind and stumbling manner, carried forward the Renascence,
while Catholicism threw itself violently across its path.
I lately heard a man of thought and energy contrasting the want of ardor
and movement which he now found amongst young men in this country with
what he remembered in his own youth, twenty years ago. What reformers
we were then!' he exclaimed; 'what a zeal we had! how we canvassed every
institution in Church and State, and were prepared to remodel them all on
first principles!' He was inclined to regret, as a spiritual flagging, the lull
which he saw. I am disposed rather to regard it as a pause in which the turn
to a new mode of spiritual progress is being accomplished. Everything was
long seen, by the young and ardent amongst us, in inseparable connection
with politics and practical life. We have pretty well exhausted the benefits
of seeing things in this connection, we have got all that can be got by so
seeing them. Let us try a more disinterested mode of seeing them; let us
betake ourselves more to the serener life of the mind and spirit. This life,
too, may have its excesses and dangers; but they are not for us at present.
Let us think of quietly enlarging our stock of true and fresh ideas, and not,
as soon as we get an idea or half an idea, be running out with it into the
street, and trying to make it rule there. Our ideas will, in the end, shape the
world all the better for maturing a little. Perhaps in fifty years' time it will in
the English House of Commons be an objection to an institution that it is
an anomaly, and my friend the Member of Parliament Will shudder in his
grave. But let us in the meanwhile rather endeavour that. in twenty years'
a
time it may, in English literature, be an objection to proposition that it is
absurd. That will be a change so vast, that the imagination almost fails to
grasp it. Ab integro srecloru-m nascitur ordo. 3
If I have insisted so much on the course which criticism must take where
politics and religion are concerned, it is because, where these burning mat-
ters are in question, it is most likely to go astray. I have wished, above all, to
insist on the attitude which criticism should adopt toward things in general;
on its right tone and temper of mind. But then comes another question as
1:0 the subject-matter which literary criticism should most seek. Here, in
general, its course is determined for it by the idea which is the law oMts
being; the idea of a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best
that is known and thought in the world, and thus to establish a current of
fresh and true ideas. By the very nature of things, as England is not all the
world, much of the best that is known and thought in the world cannot be
of English growth, must be foreign; by the nature of things, again, it is just
f. his that we are least likely to know, while English thought is streaming in
upon us from all sides, and takes excellent care that we shall not be ignorant
of its existence. The English critic of literature, therefore, must dwell much
on foreign thought, and with particular heed on any part of it, which, while
!;ignificant and fruitful in itself, is for any reason specially likely to escape
him. Again, judging is often spoken of as the critic's one business, and so in
!;ome sense it is; but the judgment which almost insensibly forms itself in a
J. Prom the renewal of the generations a [great] by Christians as predicting the birth of the Mes-
"nl<·,· is born (Latin). From Virgil. Eclogue 4.5 (ca. siah.
:·;7 H.C.E.). This pocln was sOlnelim('s interpreted
:fair and clear mind, along with fresh knowledge, is the valuable one;' and
thus knowledge, and ever fresh knowledge, must be the critic's great concern
for himself. And it is by communicating fresh knowledge, and letting his own
judgment pass along with it,-but insensibly;. and ir the second place,' not
the first, as a sort of companion and clue, riot as ail abstract lawgiver,......,that
the critic will generally do most good to his readers. Sometimes, no doubt,
for the sake of establishing an author's place in literature,: and his relation
to a central standard (and if this is not done, how are we to 'get at our best
in the world?), criticism may have to deal with a subject-matter so familiar
that fresh knowledge is out of the question, and then it must be all judgment;
an enunciation and detailed application of principles. Here the great safe-
guard is never to let oneself become abstract, always to retain an intimate
and lively consciousness of the truth of what one is saying, and, the moment
this fails us; to be sure that something. is wrong. Still, under all circum-
stances, this mere judgment and application of principles is, in itself, not the
most satisfactory work to the critic; like mathematics, it is tautological, and
cannot well give us; like fresh learning, the sense of creative activity.
But stop, some one will say; all this talk is.of no practical use to us. what-
ever; this criticism of yours is not what we have in our minds wheri we speak
of criticism; when we speak of critics and criticism, we mean critics and
criticism of the Current English literature of the day; when you offer.to tell
criticism its function, it is to this criticism that we expect you to address
yourself. I am sorry for it, for I am afraid I must disappoint these expecta-
tions. I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavour
'to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in.the world. How
much of current English literature comes into this 'best that is known and
thought in the world'? Not very much, I fear; certainly less, at this moment,
than of the current literature of France of Germany. Well, then, am I to
·alter my definition of c~iticism, in .order to meet the requirements of a num-
ber. of practising English critics; who, after.all, are free in their choice of a
business? That would be making criticism lend itself just to one of those
alien practical considerations, which, I have said, are so fatal to' it, One may
say, indeed, .to those who have to deal with the mass-so much better.dis-
regarded-"'of current English literature, that they may at all events endeav-
our, in dealing with this, to try it, so far as they can, by the standard of the
best that is known and thought, in the world; one may say, that to get any-
where near this standard, every critic should try and possess one great lit-
..erature, at least, besides his own; and the more unlike his,own, the better.
But, after all, the criticism I am really concerned With,-the criticism which
alone can much help us for the future, the criticism which, throughout
Europe,. is at the present day meant, when so much stress is laid on the
importance of criticism a.nd the critical spirit,-'-is a criticism which regards
Europe as being, for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confed-
eration, bound to a joint action and working to a common result; and whose
members have, for their proper outfit, a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and
Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special, local, and temporary advan-
tages being put out of account, that modern nation will in the intellectual
and spiritual sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly carries out
this programme. And what is that but saying that we too, aU of us, as indi-
viduals, the more thoroughly we carry it out, sball make the more progress~
CULTURE' AND ANARCHY / 825
There is so much inviting us!-what are we to take? what will nourish us

in growth towards perfection? That is the question which, with the immense
field of life and of literature lying before him, the critic has to answer; for
himself first, and afterwards for others. In this idea of the critic's business
the essays brought together in the following pages 4 have had their origin; in
this idea, widely different as are their subjects; they have; perhaps, their
unity.
I conclude with what I said at the beginning: to have the sense of creative
activity is the great happiness and the great proof·of being alive, and it is not
denied to criticism to have it; but then criticism must be sincere, simple,
flexible, ardent, ever widening its knowledge. Then it may have; in no con-
temptible measure, a joyful sense of creative .activity; a sense which a man
of insight and conscience will prefer to what he might derive from a poor,
starved, fragmentary, inadequate creation. And at some epochs no other cre-
ation is possible.
Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity belongs only to genuine
creation; in literature we must never forget that. But what true man of letters
ever can forget it? It is no such common matter for a gifted nature to ·come
into possession of a current of true and living ideas, and to produce amidst
the inspiration of them, that we are likely to underrate it. The epochs of
JEschylus 5 and Shakspeare make us feel their pre-eminence. In an epoch
like those is, no doubt, the true life of literature; there is the promised land,
towards which criticism can only beckon. That prdmised land it wil1 not ,be
ours to enter, and we shall die in the wildemess: 6 -bOt to have desired to enter
it, to have saluted it from afar, is already, perhaps, the best distinction among
contemporaries; it will certainly be the best title to esteem with posterity.
1864, 1875
From Culture an~ Anarchy

; ,- ': ..
From Chapter 1.
Sweetness and Light l
~.
The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they
make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is sup-
posed to plun:te itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which
is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of
sheer vanity and ignorance or else as an engine .of social and class distinction,
separating its holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not
got it. No serious' man would call this culture, or attach any value to it, as
culture, at all. To find the real ground for the very different estimate which
serious people will set upon culture, we must find some motive for culture
4. In the book. Essays in Criticism; this essay was Enemies," as Arnold's final lecture as Professor of
the lirst in the v'ohJine. Poetry at Oxford University, June 7, 1867, ond
5. Greek tragedian (525-456 B.C.!::.). . published in thO; Cornhill Magazine in July. It
6. Like Moses. who viewed the Promised Land but appeared as chapter I of Culture and Anarchy in
did not live to enter It. See Deuteronomy 32.48- 1869. The text reprinted here is that of the 1882
52, .~4.1-4. third edition, the last that Arnold himselfprepared.
I. First delivered, with the title "Culture and It.
in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a motive the word
curiosity gives us.
I have before riow pOinted out 2 that we English do not, like the foreigners,
use this word in a good sense as well as in a, bad sense. With ,us the word is
always used in a somewhat disapproving sense. A liberal and intelligent
eagerness about the things of the mind may be meant" by a foreigner when
he speaks of curiosity, but with us the word always conveys a certain notion
of frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly Review, some little time
ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve,3 and
a very inadequate estimate it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy con-
sisted chiefly in this: that iri our English way it left out of Sight the double
sense really involved in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to stamp
M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was impelled in his oper-
ations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either to perceive that M. Sainte-
Beuve himself, and many other people with him, would consider that this
was praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out why it,ought really
to be accounted worthy of blame and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity
about intellectual matters which ,is futile, and merely a disease, so there is
certainly a curiosity,-a desire after the things of the mind simply for their
own" sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are,-which is, in an
intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things
as they are implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often
attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind
and" diseased impulse' of mind which is what we mean to' blame -when' we
,blame curiosity. Montesquieu 4 says: 'The first motive which ought to impel
us to study is the desire to augment the excellence'of our nature, and to
render, an intelligent being yet more intelligent.' This is the true ground to
'assign for the genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and for cul-
ture, viewed simplY,as a fruit of this passion; and it is a worthy ground, even
though we let the term curiosity stand to describe it.
But there is of cultur~ 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 gro,und 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 dimin-
ishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world"betteranci
happier than we found it,-motives eminently such as are called social,':"":"
come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main arM 'pre-eminent
part. Culture is then properly'described not as having its ongi~ in ci.irici~itY,
but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study ojperjection: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. As,iii
the first view of it, we took for its worthy motto MOiltesquieuis words: 'To
render an intelligent being yet mote'intelligent!' so, in ~he second. view of
2, In "The Function of Criticism at the Present ciple and states that, the Essays in CriticiMn are
Time" (1864; see above), "graceful but perfectly ,jnsa~l.sfactory,· "
3, Charles Augustin Salnte-Beuve (1804-1869), 4, Charles de Secondat Mcintesquieu (1689-
French literary critic, In the review mentioned 1755), French philosopher and legal and political
(Quarterly Review 119 Uanuary 1866J: 80-108), theorist," "
the author identifies Arnold as Salnte-Beuve's dis-
CULTURE AND ANARCHY I 827
it, there is no better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop
Wilson: 5 'To make reason and the will of God prevail!'
Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be overhasty in deter-
mining what reason and the will of God say, because its turn is for acting
rather than thinking and it wants to be beginning to act; and whereas it is
apt to take its own conceptions, which proceed from its own state of devel-
opment and share in all the imperfections and imrriaturities of this, for a
hasis of action; what distinguishes culture is, that it is possessed by the
scientific passion as well as by the passion of doing good; that it demands
worthy notions of reason and the will of God, and does not readily suffer its
own crude conceptions to substitute themselves for them. And knowing that
no action or institution can be salutary and stable which is not based on
reason and the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and instituting, even
with the great aim of diminishing human error and misery ever before its
thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and instituting are of little
lise, unless we know how and what we ought to act and to institute.
This culture is more interesting and more far-reaching than that other,
which is founded solely on the scientific passion for knowing. But it needs
times of faith and ardour, times when the intellectual horizon is opening and
widening all round us, to flourish in. And is not the close and bounded
inteIlectual horizon within which we have long lived and moved now lifting
up, and are not new lights finding free passage to shine in upon us? For a
long time there was no passage for them to make their way in upon us, and
then it was of no use to think of adapting the world's action to them. Where
was the hope of making reason and the will of God prevail among people
who had a routine which they had christened reason and the will of God, in
which they were inextricably bound, and beyond which they had no power
of looking? But now the iron force of adhesion to the old routine,-social,
political, religious,-has wonderfully yielded; the iron force of exclusion of
all which is new has wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, not that people
should obstinately refuse to allow anything but their old routine to pass for
reason and the will of God, but either that they should allow some novelty
or other to pass for these too easily, or else that they should underrate the
importance of them altogether, and think it enough to follow action for its
own sake, without troubling themselves to make reason and the will of-6'dd
prevail therein. Now, then, is the moment for culture to be of service, culture
which believes in making reason and the will of God prevail, believes in
perfection, is the study and pursuit of perfection, and is no longer debarred,
by a rigid invincible exclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance
for its ideas, simply because they are new.
The moment this view of culture is seized, the moment it is regarded not
solely as the endeavour to see things as they are, to draw towards a knowledge
of the universal order which seems to be intended and aimed at in the world,
and which it is a man's happiness to go along with or his misery to go counter
to,-to learn, in short, the will of God,-the moment, I say, culture is con-
sidered not merely as the endeavour to see and learn this, but as the endeav-
0;. Thomas Wilson ( 1663-1 755). English churchman and author of devotional works. Arnold is condensing
a passage from Wilson's Maxin'u.
our, also, to make it prevail, the moral; social, and beneficent character of
culture becomes manifest. The mere endeavour to see and learn the truth
for our own personal satisfaction is indeed a commencement for making it
prevail, Ii preparing the way for this, which always serves this, and is wrongly,
therefore, stamped .with blame absolutely in itself and not only in its cari-
cature and degeneration. But perhaps it has got stamped with blame, and
disparaged with the dubious title of curiosity, because in comparison with
this wider endeavour of such great and plain utility it looks selfish, petty, and
unprofitable •
. And religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts by which the
human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself,-religion, that voice
of the deepest human experience,-does not only enjoin and sanction the
aim which is the great aim of culture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain
what perfection is and to make it prevail;. but also, in determining generally
in what human perfection consists, religion comes to a conclusion identical
with that which culture,-culture seeking the determination of this question
through all the voices of human experience which have been heard upon it,
of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of religion, in order to
give a greater fulness and certainty to its solution,-likewise' reaches. Reli-
gion says: The kingdom of God is within you;6 and culture, in like manner,
places human perfection in an internal condition, in the growth and predom-
inance of our humanity. proper, as distinguished froin·our animality. It places
it in the ever-increasing efficacy and in the general harmonious expansion
of those gifts of thought and feeling, which make the peculiar dignity; wealth,
and happiness of human nature. As I have said on a former occasion:? 'It is
in making endless additions to itself, in the endless expansion of itS powers,
in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the human race
finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an indispensable aid, and that
is the true value of culture.' Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a
becoming, is the character· of perfection as culture conceives .it; a'nd' here,
too, it coincides with religion.
And because men are all members of one great whole, and the sympathy
which is in human nature will not allow one member to be indifferent to the
rest or to h(lye a perfect welfare independent of the rest, ·the. expansion of
our humanity, to suit the idea of perfection which culture forms, must be a
general expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not· possible while
the individual remains isolated. The individual is required, under pain' of
.being stunted and enfeebled in his own development if he disobeys, to carry
others along with him in his march towards perfection, to be continually
doing all he can to enlarge and increase the volume of the human stream
sweeping thitherward. And here, once more, culture lays on us the same
obligation as religion, which says, as Bishop Wilson has admirably put it,
that 'to promote the kingdom of God is to increase and .hasten one's own
happiness.'
But, finally, perfection,-as culture from a thorough disinterested study
of human nature and human experience learns to conceive it,-is a harmo-
nious expansion of all the powers which make the beauty and worth of
human nature, and is not consistent with the over-development of anyone
6. Luke 17.21. 7. In A French Eton (1864). chapter 3.

CULTURE AND ANARCHY I 829
power at the expense of the rest. Here culture goes beyond religion, as reli-
gion is generally conceived by us.
If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of harmonious perfection,
general perfection, and perfection which consists in becoming something
rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and
spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances,-it is clear that culture,
instead of being the frivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr.
Frederic Harrison,A and many other Liberals are apt to call it, has a very
important function to fulfil for mankind. And this function is particularly
important in our modern world, of which the whole civilisation is, to a much
greater degree than the civilisation of Greece and Rome, mechanical and
external, and tends constantly to become more so. But above all in our own
country has culture a weighty part to perform, because here that mechanical
character, which civilisation tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most
eminent degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of perfection, as culture
teaches us to fix them, meet in this country with some powerful tendency
which thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of perfection as an
inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical
and material civilisation in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so
much in esteem as with us. The idea of-perfection as a general expansion of
the human family is at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred of
all limits to the unrestrained swing of the individual's personality, our maxim
of 'every man for himself.' Above all, the idea of perfection as a harmonious
expansion of human nature is at variance with our want of flexibility, with
our inaptitude for seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense
energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we happen to be following. So
culture has a rough task to achieve.in this country. Its preachers have, and
are likely long to have, a hard time of it, and they will much oftener be
regarded, for a great while to come, as elegant or spuriou.s Jeremiahs than
as friends and benefactors. That, however, will not 'prevent their doing in the
end good service if they persevere. And, meanwhile,. the mode of action they
have to pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight against, ought t9 be
made quite clear for every one to see, who may be willing to look at the
matter attentively and dispassionately.
Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; often in mac~ery
most absurdly disproportioned to the end which this machinery, if it is to do
any good at all, is to serve; but always in machinery, as if it had a value in
and for itself.9 What is freedom but machinery? what is population but
machinery? what is coal but machinery? what are railroads but machinery?
what is wealth but machinery? what are, even, religious organisations but
machinery? Now almost every voice in England is accustomed to speak of
these things as if they were precious ends in themselves, and therefore had
some of the characters of perfection indisputably joined to them. I have
before now noticed Mr. Roebuck'sl stock argument for proving the greatness
8. English Jurist and philosopher (1831-1923), ery, In -every outward and Inward sense of that
and critic of Arnold's.cl,lltural views. John Bright word.II
(I R 11-1889), English political r"former, orlitor, I. John Arthur Roebuck (1801-1879), radical
and member of Parliament. member of Parliament. "Before now": see "The
9. In "Signs of the Times" (1829), Ihe Scottish- Function of Criticism at the Present TimE""
born author Thomas Carlyle had stoted that it was (above).
Ilow"the Mechanical Age. It Is the Age of Machin-
and happiness of England as she is, and for quite stopping the mouths of all
gainsayers. Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reiterating this argument of his,
so I do not know why I should be weary of noticing it. 'May not every man
in England say what he likes?'-Mr. Roebuck perpetually asks; and that, he
thinks, is quite sufficient, and when every mart may say what he likes, our
aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations'of culture, which is,the
study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they may
say what they like, is worth saying,~has good in it, and more good than bad.
In the same way the Times, replying to some foreign strictures on the dress,
looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is
that every one should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture
indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like the rule by
which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is
indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like
that. '
And in the same way with respect to railroads and coal. Every one must
have observed the strange language current during the late discussions as to
the possible failure of 'our supplies of coal. Our coal, thousands of people
were saying, is the real basis of our national greatness; if our coal runs short,
there is an end of the greatness of England. But what is greatness?-culture
makes us ask. Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite·love, inter-
est, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that
we excite love, interest, and admiration. If England were swallowed up by
the sea to-morrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence,.would most
excite the love, interest, and admiration of mankind,-would 'most,
therefore, show the evidences of having possessed greatness,-the England
of the last twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth,2 of $ time of splendid
spiritual effort, but when our coal, and our industrial operations depending
on coal, were very little developed? Well, then, what an unsound habit of
mind it must be which makes us talk of things like coal or iron as constituting
the greatness of England, and how salutary a friend is culture, bent on seeing
things as they arei and thus dissipating delusions of this kind and fixing
standards of perfection that are real!
Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious works for material advan-
tage are directed,-the commonest of commonplaces tells us how men are
always apt to regard wealth as a precious end in itself; and certainly they
have never been so apt thus to regard it as they are in England at the present
time. Never did people believe anything more firmly than nine Englishmen
out of ten at the present day believe that our greatness and welfare are proved
by our being so very rich. Now, the use of culture is that it helps us, by means
of its spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth as but machinery, and
not only to say as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but machinery,
but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for this purging
effect wrought upon our minds by. culture, the whole world, the future as
well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. 3 The people
who believe most that most greatness and welfare are proved by our being
very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becQming rich, are
2.. Elizabeth I (1533-1603; reigned 1558-1603). from a biblical people that waged war against the
3. The materialist middle classes (a name taken Israelites) .
CULTURE AND ANARCHY I 83 I
just the very people whom we call Philistines. Culture says: 'Consider these
people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of
their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the
things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their
mouths, the thoughts which make 'the furniture of their minds: would any
amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become
just like these people by having it?' And thus culture begets a dissatisfac-
tion which is of the highest possible value in stemming the common tide of
mcn's thoughts in a wealthy and industrial community, and which saves the
future, as one may hope, from being vulgarised, even if it cannot save the
present.
, Population, again, and bodily health and vigour, are things which are
nowhere treated in such an unintelligent, misleading, exaggerated way as in
England. Both are really machinery; yet how many people all around us do
we see rest in them and fail to look beyond them! Why, one has heard people,
fresh from reading certain articles of the Times on the Registrar-General's
returns of marriages and births in this country,4 who would talk of our large
English families in quite a solemn strain, as if they had something.in itself
beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in them; as if the British Philistine
would have only to present himself before the Great Judge with his twelve
children, in order to be received among the sheep' as a matter of right!
But bodily health and vigour, it may be said, are not to be classed with
wealth and population as mere machinery; they have a more real and essen-
tial value. True; but only as they are more intimately connected with a perfect
spiritual condition than wealth or population are. The moment we disjoin
them from the idea of a perfect sph'itual condition, and pursue them, as we
do pursue them, for their own sake an~ as ends in themselves, our worship
of them becomes as mere worship of machinery, as our worship of wealth or
population, and as unintelligent and vulgarising a worship as that is. Every
one with anything like an adequate idea of human perfection has distinctly
marked this subordination to higher and spirituul ends of the cultivation of
bodily vigour and activity. 'Bodily exercise profiteth little; but godliness' is
profitable unto all things,' says the author of the Epistle to Timothy/' Arid
the utilitarian Franldin 7 says as explicitly:-'Eat and drink such an exact
quantity as suits the constitution of thy body, in reference to 'the servicdof
the mind.' But the point of view of culture, keeping the mark of human
perfection simply and broadly in view, and not assigning to this perfection,
as religion or utilitarianism assigns to it, a special and limited character, this
point of view, I say, of culture is best given by these words of Epictetus: R-
'It is a sign of aq,vta,' says he,-that is, of a nature not finely tempered,-'to
p;ive yourselves for instance, a great fuss about exercise, a great fuss about
eating, a great fuss about drinking, a great fuss about walking, a great fuss
"bout riding. All these things ought to be done merely by the way: the for-
mation of the spirit and character must be our real concern.' This is admi-
rable; and, indeed, the Greek word Euq,vta, a finely tempered nature, gives
4. "When Marriages arc many and Deaths are few statesman, writer, and scientist. Arnold quotes
it is certain that the people are doing weli (London
ll
Franklin's first recommendation in "Rules of
'/';,nes, Fehruary 3, 1866). Health," from Poor Richard's Almanack (J 732-
3. Thut is, the saved; see Mauhcw 25.31-46. 1757).
(,. J Timothy 4.8. 8. Greek Stoic philosopher (ca. 55-ca. 135 C.E.),
7. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), American who taught in Rome, in EHChiridion 4 I .
exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to conceive it: a har-

monious perfection, a perfection in which the characters ofbekuty and intel-
ligence are both present, which unites "the two noblest of thfngs,'-'-as SWift,9
who of one of the two, at a'ny rate, had himself·all too Iittl~, most happily
calls them in his Battle aftheBooks,-'the two· noblest:Qf things, sweetness
and light.' The ev~~is the htanwho tends towards, sweetness and light; the
a~~, on the other hand,. is our Philistine. The immense spirithalsignifi~
cance of the Greeks is due· to their having been inspired With this central
and happy idea of the essential character of human perfection; and Mr.
Bright's misconception of culture, as a smattering of Greek and Latin, comes
itself, after all, from this wonderful significance of the Greeks having affected
the very machinery of our education; and is in itself a kind ·of homage to it.
In thus making sweetness and 'light to be characters of perfection, culture
is of like 'spirit with poetry. follows one law with poetry. Par mOre than on
our freedom, our population, and our industrialism, many amongst us rely
upon out religious organisations to save us; I. have:called religion a yet more
important manifestation of human nature than poetry, because it has worked
on a broader scale for perfection, and with .gi:eaterri1asses~f men. 'But ·the
idea of beauty and of a human nature perfect on all its sides', which is the
dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it has not yet
had the success that the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our arii-
mality, and of a human nature perfect on ·the moral side,""'-which is the
dominant idea of religion,,-has been enabled to have;· and it is destined,
adding to itselfthe religious idea of a devout energy, to -trimsform'and govern
the other. .
The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which religion and poetry are
one, in which the idea of beauty and of a human nature· perfect on all sides
adds to itself a religious and devout energy, and works in the' strength ofthat,
is on this account. of such surpassing interest and :instru~tiveness for us,
though it was,-'-as, having regard to the human race in general, and, indeed,
having regard· to' the Greeks themselves, we must· own,.:......a premature
attempt, an attempt which for success needed the moral and religious fibre
inhumanity to be more braced and developed than it had yet been. But
Greece did· not err in;having the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete
human perfection, so present and paramount. It is impossible to have this
idea too present and paramount; only, the moral fibre. must be braced too.
And we; because we have braced the moral fibre, are not on that account in
the right way, if at the samt:! time the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete
human perfection,is wanting or misapprehended amongst us; and evidently
it is wanting or inisapprehended at present. And when we rely as we do on
our religious organisations, which in themselves do not and cannot give us
this idea, and think we have done enough if we make them spread and pre-
. ..
vail, then, I say, we fall into our'common fault of overvaluing machinery.
- ..
1867, 1882
9 .. Jonathan Swift (l661-1745),Eriglish satirist, and polsori, ;';'ehaVe radier chos~n tofill oui' hlv,\s
poet, and clergyman. In The Battle OJ tlte Boo"" with honey and ;wax;,thusJ'urnlshlng mankind with
(I704), he recounts why Aesop, judging II contest the two noblest of thh'gs. which are sweetnes. and
between the spider (here representing ~he mod- light. ", ~~ the larger battle th~l Swift describes. the
erns) and the bee (the ancient.), decided I,,' favor outcome Is less certain.
of the bee: "the difference II, that, Inltelld of dirt

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802 I MATTHEW ARNOLD

the practices adopted by women at all times to consolidate and as it were to

The Function of Criticism at the Present Time 1

in our Wordsworth, is this!-that they had their source in a great movement

itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas,

8. Elizabeth Wragg; this crime was committed on i. thought to have lived).

misunderstandings, and nowhere so much as in this country. For here people

present time, at any rate, we must, acquiesce in Fleury's sentence on such

on that account forget the achievements of Protestantism in the practical

There is so much inviting us!-what are we to take? what will nourish us

From Culture an~ Anarchy

6. Luke 17.21. 7. In A French Eton (1864). chapter 3.

exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to conceive it: a har-

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