Culture and Anarchy, an essay in social criticism by Matthew Arnold

 Culture and Anarchy

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

Culture and Anarchy, an essay in social criticism by Matthew Arnold, first published in 1869. Its purpose is to define true culture and to show how it may overcome the unintelligent and anti-social tendencies of English life of the author’s day. Culture he defines as a study of perfection, that is the harmonious expansion of all the powers of human nature. It is attained by a knowledge of the best that has been said and thought in the world, by the free play of the mind over the facts of life, and by a sympathetic attitude towards all that is beautiful. For a further definition of culture Arnold borrows a phrase from Swift, “Sweetness and light,” the first word indicating the sense of beauty and the second the active intelligence. Against this ideal are arrayed all the undisciplined forces of the age—prejudice, narrowness, the worship of liberty for liberty’s sake, faith in machinery whether governmental, economic, or religious—in short an unthinking individualism that leads to anarchy. English society may be divided into three classes—Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace. The Barbarians or aristocracy have a superficial sweetness and light but are too much concerned with the maintenance and enjoyment of their privileges to attain a true sense of beauty and a free mental activity. The Philistines or middle classes are devoted to money-making and a narrow form of religion and are indifferent or hostile to beauty. The Populace are violent in their prejudices and brutal in their pleasures. All are agreed that “doing as one likes” is the chief end of man and all are self-satisfied. In a further analysis of this English preference of doing to thinking Arnold distinguishes two forces which he names Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism is concerned with resolute action and strict obedience to conscience; Hellenism with clear thinking and spontaneity of consciousness. Harmoniously combined they lead to that perfect balance of our nature which is the end of culture. The excessive development of one of them results in imperfection. Hebraism with its insistence on conduct is the more essential and it triumphed in the form of Christianity; but the reaction from the pagan revival of the sixteenth century led to its over-development into Puritanism, a discipline intolerant of beauty and free intelligence. The English middle class is still dominated by Puritanism, despising art and mental cultivation as an end in itself and adhering to a narrow and unenlightened religious and ethical standard as “the one thing needful.” By a revival of the best in Hellenism Arnold would bring sweetness and light into the English middle classes; and he would overcome the unthinking individualism of all classes by developing the idea of right reason embodied in the State. By its power of telling phraseology and its pleasing expository method the book stimulated English society to thought and self-criticism. The evils it attacks and the remedies it proposes are by no means out of date.