02 - Chapter 1 Part 2 Sweetness and Light

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter one, Part two of Culture and Anarchy. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Nicol Lee. Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold,
Chapter one, Part two. But men of culture and poetry,

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it will be said, are again and again failing and
failing conspicuously in the necessary first stage to perfection, in
the subduing of the great obvious faults of our animality,
which it is the glory of these religious organizations to
have helped us to subdue. True, they do often so fail.
They have often been without the virtues as well as

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the faults of the Puritan. It has been one of
their dangers that they so felt the Puritan's faults that
they too much neglected the practice of his virtues. I
will not, however, exculpate them at the Puritan's expense. They
have often failed in morality, and morality is indispensable. They
have been punished for their failure, as the pure has
been rewarded for his performance. They have been punished wherein

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they erred. But the ideal of beauty and sweetness and light,
and a human nature complete on all its sides, remains
the true ideal of perfection still, just as the puritan's
ideal of perfection remains narrow and inadequate, although for what
he did well he has been richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the
mighty results of the pilgrim Father's voyage, they and their
standard of perfection are rightly judged. When we figure to

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ourselves Shakespeare or Virgil, souls in whom sweetness and light
and all that in human natures most humane were eminent
accompanying them on their voyage, and think what intolerable company
Shakespeare Virgil would have found them. In the same way,
let us judge the religious organizations which we see all
around us. Do not let us deny the good and
the happiness which they have accomplished. But do not let

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us fail to see clearly that the idea of human
perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that the dissidence of
dissent and the protestantism of the Protestant religion will never
bring humanity to its true goal. As I said with
regard to wealth, let us look at the life of
those who live in and for it. So I say,
with regard to the religious organizations, look at the life

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imaged in such a newspaper as the nonconformist, a life
of jealousy of the establishment, disputes, tea meetings, openings of chapels, sermons,
and then think of it as an ideal of a
human life completing itself on all sides and aspiring with
all its organs after sweetness, light, and perfection. Another newspaper,
representing like the nonconformist one of the religious organizations of

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this country, was a short time ago giving an account
of the crowd at Epsom on the Derby day, and
of all the vice and hideousness which was to be
seen in that crowd. And then the writer turned suddenly
round upon Professor Huxley and asked him how he proposed
to cure all this vice and hideousness without religion? I
confess I felt disposed to ask the asker this question,

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and how do you propose to cure it with such
a religion as yours? How is the ideal of a
life so unlovely, so unattractive, so narrow, so far removed
from a true and satisfying ideal of human perfection, as
is the life of your religious organization as you yourself
image it, to conquer and transform all this vice and hideousness. Indeed,

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the strongest plea for the study of perfection as pursued
by culture, the clearest proof of the actual inadequacy of
the idea of perfection held by the religious organizations. Expressing
as I have said, the most widespread effort which the
human race has yet made after perfection is to be
found in the state of our life and society. With
these in possession of it, and having been in possession

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of it, I know not how many hundred years we are,
all of us included in some religious organization or other.
We all call ourselves in the sublime and aspiring language
of religion, which I have before noticed, children of God,
Children of God. It is an immense pretension, and how
are we to justify it by the works which we
do and the words which we speak, and the work

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which we collective children of God do. Our grand center
of life, our city which we have builded for us
to dwelling, is London. London, with its unutterable external hideousness
and with its internal canker of public jest us provat
him opulentia to use the words which Sallust puts into
Cato's mouth about Rome unequaled in the world. The word

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again which we children of God speak, the voice which
most hits our collective thought. The newspaper with the largest
circulation in England, nay, with the largest circulation in the
whole world, is the Daily Telegraph. I say that when
our religious organizations, which I admit to express the most
considerable effort after perfection, that our race has yet made

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land us in no better result than this, it is
high time to examine carefully the idea of perfection, to
see whether it does not leave out our account sides
and forces of human nature which he might turn to
great use, whether it would not be more operative if
it were more complete. And I say that the English
reliance on our religious organizations and on their ideas of
human perfection, just as they stand, is like our reliance

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on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on population, on coal, on wealth,
mere belief in machinery, and unfruitful, and that it is
wholesomely counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as they
are and on drawing the human race onwards to a
more complete perfection. Culture, however, shows its single minded love

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of perfection, its desires simply to make reason and the
will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its
attitude towards all this machinery, even while it insists that
it is machinery fanatics seeing the mischief men do themselves
by their blind belief in some machinery or other, whether
it is wealth and industrialism, or whether it is the

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cultivation of bodily strength and activity, or whether it is
a political organization, or whether it is a religious organization.
Opposed with might and main the tendency to this or
that political and religious organization, or to gains some athletic exercises,
or to wealth and industrialism, and try violently to stop it.
But the flexibility which sweetness and light give, and which

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is one of the rewards of culture pursued in good faith,
enables a man to see that a tendency may be necessary,
and even as a preparation for something in the future salutary.
And yet that the generations or individuals who obey this
tendency are sacrificed to it, that they fall short of
the hope of perfection by following it, and that its
mischiefs are to be criticized lest it should take too

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firm a hold, and last after it has served its purpose,
Mister Gladstonewell pointed out in a speech at Paris, and
others have pointed out the same thing. How necessary is
the present great movement towards wealth and industrialism in order
to lay broad foundations of material well being for the
society of the future. The worst of these justifications is

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that they are generally addressed to the very people engaged
body and soul in the movement in Christion at all events,
that they are always seized with the greatest avidity by
these people, and taken by them as quite justifying their life,
and that thus they tend to harden them in the now.
Culture admits the necessity of the movement towards fortune making
and exaggerated industrialism, readily allows that the future may derive

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benefit from it, but insists at the same time that
the passing generations of industrialists, forming for the most part
the stout main body of Philistinism, are sacrificed to it.
In the same way, the result of all the games
and sports which occupy the passing generation of boys and
young men may be the establishment of a better and
sounder physical type for the future to work with. Culture

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does not set itself against the games and sports. It
congratulates the future and hopes it will make a good
use of its improved physical basis. But it points out
that our passing generation of boys and young men is
meantime sacrificed. Puritanism was necessary to develop the moral fiber
of the English race, nonconformity, to break the yoke of

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ecclesiastical domination over men's minds, and to prepare the way
for freedom of thought in the distant future. Still, Culture
points out that the harmony is perfection of generations of
Puritans and nonconformists have been in consequence sacrificed. Freedom of
speech is necessary for the society of the future, but
the young lions of the Daily Telegraph in the meanwhile

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are sacrificed. A voice for every man in his country's
government is necessary for the society of the future. But meanwhile,
mister Beale's and mister Bradlaw are sacrificed. Oxford, the Oxford
of the past, has many faults, and she has heavily
paid for them in defeat, in isolation, in want of
hold upon the modern world. Yet we in Oxford brought

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up amidst the beauty and sweetness of that beautiful place,
have not failed to seize one truth, the truth that
beauty and sweetness are essential characters of a complete human perfection.
When I insist on this, I am all in the
faith and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly that this
our sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against hideousness

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and rawness, has been at the bottom of our attachment
to so many beaten cause of our opposition to so
many triumphant movements. And the sentiment is true and has
never been wholly defeated, and has shown its power even
in its defeat. We have not won our political battles.
We have not carried our main points. We have not
stopped our adversaries advance. We have not marched victoriously with

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the modern world. But we have told silently upon the
mind of the country. We have prepared currents of feeling
which sat up our atmospher's position when it seems gained.
We have kept up our own communications with the future.
Look at the course of the great movement which shook
Oxford to its center some thirty years ago. It was
directed as any one who reads doctor Newman's apology may

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see against what, in one word, may be called liberalism.
Liberalism prevailed. It was the appointed force to do the
work of the hour. It was necessary, it was inevitable
that it should prevail. The Oxford Movement was broken. It failed.
Our wrecks are scattered on every shore. Quareggio in tiis
nostri non plain alaboris. But what was it this liberalism,

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as doctor Newman saw it, and as it really broke
the Oxford movement? It was the great middle class liberalism,
which had for the cardinal points of its belief the
Reform Bill of eighteen thirty two and local self government
in politics. In the social sphere, free trade, unrestricted competition
and the making of large industrial fortunes. In the religious sphere,

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the dissidence of descent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.
I do not say that other and more intelligent forces
than this were not opposed to the Oxford movement. But
this was the force which really beat it. This was
the force which doctor Newman felt himself fighting with. This
was the force which till only the other day, seemed
to be the paramount force in this country, and to
be in possession of the future. This was the force

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whose achievements filled mister Lowe with such inexpressible admiration, and
whose rule he was so horror struck to see threatened.
And where is this great force of philistinism? Now it
is thrust into the second rank. It has become a
power of yesterday. It has lost the future. A new
power has suddenly appeared, a power which it is impossible

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yet to judge fully, but which is certainly a wholly
different force from middle class liberalism. Different in its cardinal
points of belief, different in its tendencies, in every sphere
it loves and admires. Neither the legislation of middle class parliaments,
nor the local self government of middle class vestries, nor
the unrestricted competition of middle class industrialists, nor the distance

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of middle class descent and the protestantism of middle class
Protestant religion. I am not now praising this new force,
or saying that its own ideals are better. All I
say is that they are wholly different. And who will
estimate how much the currents of feeling created by doctor
Newman's movement, the keen desire for beauty and sweetness which
it nourished, the deep aversion it manifested to the hardness

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and vulgarity of middle class liberalism, the strong light it
turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle class Protestantism.
Who will estimate how much all these contributed to swell
the tide of secret dissatisfaction which has mined the ground
under the self confident liberalism of the last thirty years,
and has prepared the way for its sudden collapse and supersession.

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It is in this manner that the sentiment of Oxford
for beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this manner, long
may it continue to conquer. In this manner it works
to the same end as culture, and there is plenty
of work for it yet to do. I have said
that the new and more democratic force which is now
superseding our old middle class liberalism, cannot yet be rightly judged.

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It has its main tendencies still to form. We hear
promises of its giving us administrative reform, law, reform, reform
of education, and I know not what but those promises
come rather from its advocates wishing to make a good
plea for it and to justify it for superseding middle
class liberalism, than from clear tendancies which it has itself
yet developed. But meanwhile it has plenty of well intentioned

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friends against whom culture may, with advantage, continue to uphold
steadily its ideal of human perfection, that this is an
inward spiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness, increased light,
increased life, increased sympathy. Mister Bright, who has a foot
in both worlds, the world of middle class liberalism and
the world of democracy, but who brings most of his

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ideas from the world of middle class liberalism in which
he was bred, always inclines to inculcate that faith in
machinery to which, as we have seen, Englishmen are so prone,
and which has been the bane of middle class liberalism.
He complains with the sorrowful indignation of people who appear
to have no proper estimate of the value of the franchise.
He leads his disciples to believe what the Englishman is

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always too ready to believe, that the having a vote,
like the having a large family, or a large business,
or large muscles, has in itself some edifying and perfecting
effect upon human nature, or else he cries out to
the democracy, the men, as he calls them, upon whose
shoulders the greatness of England rests. He cries out to them,
See you have done. I look over this country and

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see the cities you have built, the railroads you have made,
the manufactures you have produced, the cargoes which freight the
ships of the greatest mercantile navy the world has ever seen.
I see that you are converted by your labors what
was once a wilderness these islands into a fruitful garden.
I know that you have created this wealth and our nation,
whose name is a word of power throughout all the world.

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Why this is just the very style of laudation with
which mister Roebuck or mister Low debauch the minds of
the middle classes and make such philistines of them. It
is the same fashion of teaching a man to value
himself not on what he is, not on his progress
in sweetness and light, but on the number of the
railroads he has constructed, or the bigness of the tabernacle

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he has built. Only the middle classes are told they
have done it all with their energies self reliance and capital.
And the democracy are told they have done it all
with their hands and sinews. But teaching the democracy to
put its trust in achievements of this kind is merely
training them to be philistines, to take the place of
the philistines whom they are superseding. And they, too, like

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the middle class, will be encouraged to sit down at
the banquet of the future without having on a wedding garment.
And nothing excellent can then come from them. Those who
know their besetting faults, those who have watched them and
listened to them, or those who will read the instructive
account recently given of them by one of themselves. The
journeyman engineer will agree that the idea which culture sets

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before us, of perfection and increase spiritual activity, having for
its characters increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increase sympathy,
is an idea which the new democracy needs far more
than the idea of the blessedness of the franchise or
the wonderfulness of their own industrial performances. Other well meaning
friends of this new power are for leading it, not

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in the old ruts of middle class philistinism, but in
ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy.
Though in this country they are novel and untried ways.
I may call them the ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation
with the past, abstract systems of veneration applied wholesale, a
new doctrine drawn up in black and white, for elaborating,
down to the very smallest details, a rational society for

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the future. These are the ways of Jacobinism. Mister Frederick
Harrison and other disciples of Kante. One of them, mister Congreve,
is an old acquaintance of mine, and I am glad
to have an opportunity of publicly expressing my respect for
his talents and character. Are among the friends of democracy
who are for leading it in paths of this kind.
Mister Frederick Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from

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a natural enough motive for culture is the eternal opponent
of the two things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism,
its fierceness and its addiction to an abstract system. Culture
is always assigning to system makers and systems a smaller
share in the bent of human destiny than their friends.
Like a current in people's mind sets towards new ideas.

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People are dissatisfied with the old and narrow stock of
Philistine ideas, Anglo Saxon ideas, or any other. And some man,
some Bentham or Conte, who has the real merit of
having early and strongly felt and helped the new current,
but who brings plenty of narrownesses and mistakes of his
own into his feeling and help of it, is credited
with being the author of the whole current, the fit

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person to be entrusted with its regulation and to guide
the human race. The excellent German historian of the mythology
of Rome Prilla, relating the introduction at Rome under the
Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the god of Light,
healing and reconciliation, observes that it was not so much
the Tarquins who brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo,
as a current in the mind of the Roman people,

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which set powerfully at that time towards a new worship
of this kind and away from the old run of
Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar way, culture
directs our attention to the current in human affairs and
to its continual working, and will not let us rivet
our faith upon any one man and his doings. It
makes us see not only his good side, but also

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how much in him was of necessity limited and transient. Nay,
it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased
freedom and of an ampler future. In so doing, I
remember when I was under the influence of a mind
to which I feel the greatest obligations, the mind of
a man who was the very incarnation of sanity and
clear sense, A man the most considerable, it seems to me,
whom America has yet produced, Benjamin Franklin. I remember the

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relief with which, after long feeling the way of Franklin's
imperturbable common sense, I came upon a project of his
for a new version of the Book of Job, to
replace the old version, the style of which, says Franklin,
has become obsolete and thence less agreeable. I give He
continues a few verses, which may serve as a sample
of the kind of version I would recommend we all

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recollect the famous verse in our translation. Then Satan answered
the Lord and said, doth Job fear God for nought?
Franklin makes this, Does your majesty imagine that Job's good
conduct is the effect of mere personal attachment and affection.
I well, remember how when first I read that, I
drew a deep breath of relief and said to myself,
after all, there is a stretch of humanity beyond Franklin's

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victorious good sense. So, after hearing Bentham cried loudly up
as the renovator of modern society, and Bentham's mind and
ideas proposed as the rulers of our future, I opened
the day Ontology. There I read, while Xenophon was writing
his history, and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato were
talking nonsense under pretense of talking wisdom and morality. This

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morality of theirs consisted in words. This wisdom of theirs
was the denial of matters known to every man's experience.
From the moment of reading that, I am delivered from
the bondage of Bentham. The fanaticism of his adherents can
touch me. No longer I feel the inadequacy of his
mind and ideas for being the rule of human society
for perfection. Culture tends always thus to deal with the

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men of a system of disciples, of a school, with
men like Kant or the late mister Buckle or mister Mill.
However much it may find to admire. In these personages,
or in some of them, it nevertheless remembers the text
be not ye called rabbi, and it soon passes on
from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi. It does
not want to pass on from its Rabbi. In pursuit

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of a future and still unreached perfection. It wants its
Rabbi and his ideas to stand for perfection, that they may,
with the more authority, recast the world and for Jacobinism. Therefore,
culture eternally passing onwards and seeking is an impertinence and
an offense. But culture, just because it resists this tendency

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of Jacobinism, to impose on us a man with limitations
and errors of his own, along with the true ideas
of which he is the organ, really does the world
and Jacobinism itself a service. So too, Jacobinism, in its
fierce hatred of the past and of those whom it
makes liable for the sins of the past, cannot away
with culture. Culture, with its inexhaustible indulgence, its consideration of circumstances,

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its severe judgment of actions, join to its merciful judgment
of persons. The man of culture is in politics, cries
mister Frederick Harrison, one of the poorest mortals alive. Mister
Frederick Harrison wants to be doing business, and he complains
that the man of culture stops him with a turn
for small fault finding love of selfish, ease and indecision
in action of what use is culture? He asks, except

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for a critic of new books or Professor Boulett, why
it is of use? Because, in presence of the fierce
exasperation which breathes, or rather, I may say, hiss us
through the whole production in which mister Frederick Harrison asked
that question, it reminds us that the perfection of human
nature is sweetness and light. It is of use because,
like religion, that other effort after perfection, it testifies that

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where bitter, envying and strife are, there is confusion, and
every evil work. The pursuit of perfection, then, is the
pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness
works in the end for light. Also. He who works
for light works in the end for sweetness also. But
he who works for sweetness and light united works to

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make reason and the will of God prevail. He who
works for machinery. He who works for hatred works only
for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery. Culture hates hatred. Culture
has but one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. Yes,
it has one yet greater, the passion for making them prevail.

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It is not satisfied till we all come to a
perfect man. It knows that the sweetness and light of
the few must be imperfect, until the raw and unkindled
masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light. If
I have not shrunk from saying that we must work
for sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from
saying that we must have a broad basis, must have
sweetness and light for as many as possible. Again and

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again I have insisted, how those are the happy moments
of humanity, How those are the marking epochs of a
people's life. How those are the flowering times of literature
and art and all the creative power of genius. When
there is a national glow of life and thought, when
the whole of society is in the fullest measure permeated
by thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent and alive, only it

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must be real thought and real beauty, real sweetness, and
real light. Plenty of people will try to give the
masses as they call them, and intellectual food, prepared and
adapted in the way they think proper for the actual
condition of the masses. The orninary popular literature is an
example of this way of working on the masses. Plenty
of people will try to indotrinate the masses with the

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set of ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their
own professional party. Our religious and political organizations give an
example of this way of working on the masses. I
condemn neither way. But culture works differently. It does not
try to teach down to the level of inferior classes.
It does not try to win them for this or
that sect of its own with ready made judgments and

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watch words. It seeks to do away with classes, to
make all live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light,
and use ideas as it uses them itself, freely to
be nourished and not bound by them. This is the
social idea, and the men of culture are the true
apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those
who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail,

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for carrying from one end of society to the other
the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time, who
have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract,
professional exclusive, to humanize it, to make it efficient outside
the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining
the best knowledge and thought of the time, and a

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true source therefore of sweetness and light. Such a man
was Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of all
his imperfections, and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which
Abillard excited. Such were Lessing and Herder in Germany at
the end of the last century, and their services to
Germany were in this way inestimably precious. Generations will pass,

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and literary monument will accumulate, and works far more perfect
than the works of Blessing and Herder will be produced
in Germany. And yet the names of these two men
will fill a German with the reverence and enthusiasm such
as the names that the most gifted masters will hardly awaken.
Because they humanize knowledge, because they broaden the basis of
life and intelligence, because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness

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and light to make reason in the will of God
prevail With Saint Augustine, they said, let us not leave
thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge,
as thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the
division of light from darkness. Let the children of thy spirit,
placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon the earth.

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Mark the division of night and day, and announce the
revolution of the times. For the old orders passed and
the new arises. The night is spent, the days come forth,
and thou shalt crown the year with thy blessing. When
thou shalt send forth laborers into thy harvest sown by
other hands and theirs, when thou shalt send forth new

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laborers to new sea times whereof the harvest shall be
not yet end of Chapter one