06 - Chapter 3 Part 2: Barbarians, Philistines, Populace

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter three, Part two of Culture and Anarchy. This is
the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Nicolny. Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold, Chapter three,
Part two. If our habits make it hard for us

(00:21):
to come at the idea of a high best self,
of a paramount authority in literature or religion, how much
more do they make this hard in the sphere of politics.
In other countries, the governors, not depending so immediately on
the favor of the governed, have everything to urge them
if they know anything of right reason. And it is
at least supposed that governors should know more of this

(00:43):
than the mass of the governed to set it authoritatively
before the community. But our whole scheme of government being representative,
every one of our governors has all possible temptation instead
of setting up before the government to elect him and
on whose favor he depends a high standard of right reason,
to accommodate himself as much as possible to their natural

(01:03):
taste for the bathos, And even if he tries to
go counter to it, to proceed in this with so
much flattering and coaxing, that they shall not suspect their
ignorance and prejudices to be anything very unlike right reason,
or their natural taste for the bathos to differ much
from a relish for the Sublime. Every One is, thus,
in every possible way, encouraged to trust in his own heart.

(01:26):
But he that trusteth in his own heart, says the
wise man is a fool. And at any rate, this
which Bishop Wilson says, is undeniably true. The number of
those who need to be awakened is far greater than
that of those who need comfort. But in our political
system everybody is comforted. Our guides and governors, who have
to be elected by the influence of the barbarians, and

(01:49):
who depend on their favor, sing the praises of the barbarians,
and say all the smooth things that can be said
of them. With mister Tennyson, they celebrate the great, broad shouldered,
genial Englishmen, with his sense of duty, his reverence for
the laws, and his patient force, who saves us from
the revolts republics. Revolutions most no graver than a schoolboy's

(02:12):
barring out which upset other and less broad shouldered nations.
Our guides, who are chosen by the Philistines and who
have to look to their favor, tell the Philistines, how
all the world knows that the great middle class of
this country supplies the mind, the will, and the power
requisite for all the great and good things that have
to be done, and congratulate them on their earnest good sense,

(02:36):
which penetrates through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and gives to conventional
illusions their true value. Our guides, who look to the
favor of the populace, tell them that theirs are the
brightest powers of sympathy and the readiest powers of action.
Harsh things are said, too, no doubt against all the
great classes of the community. But these things so evidently

(02:58):
come from a hostile class, and are so manifestly dictated
by the passions and prepossessions of a hostile class, and
not by right reason, that they make no serious impression
on those at whom they are launched, but slide easily
off their minds. For instance, when the Reform League orators
inveigh against our cruel and bloated aristocracy, these invectives so

(03:20):
evidently show the passions and point of view of the populace,
that they do not sink into the minds of those
at whom they are addressed, or awaken any thought or
self examination in them. Again, when Sir Thomas Bateson describes
the Philistines and the Populace as influenced with a kind
of hideous mania for emasculating the aristocracy, that reproach so

(03:40):
clearly comes from the wrath and excited imagination of the Barbarians,
that it does not much set the Philistines and the
Populace thinking. Oh, in mister Lowe calls the populace drunken
and venal. He so evidently calls them this in an
agony of apprehension for his philistine or middle class parliament,
which has done so many greater and heroics works, and

(04:00):
is now threatened with mixture and debasement, that the populace
do not lay his words seriously to heart. So the
voice which makes a permanent impression on each of our
classes is the voice of its friends, and this is
from the nature of things, as I have said, a
comforting voice. The barbarians remain in the belief that the great,
broad shouldered, genial Englishman may be well satisfied with himself.

(04:22):
The Philistines remain in the belief that the great middle
class of this country, with its earnest common sense, penetrating
through sophisms and ignoring commonplaces, may be well satisfied with itself.
The populace that the working man, with his bright powers
of sympathy and ready powers of action, may be well
satisfied with himself. What hope at this rate of extinguishing

(04:43):
the taste of the bathos implanted by nature itself in
the soul of man, or of inculcating the belief that
excellence dwells among high and steep rocks, and can only
be reached by those who sweat blood to reach her.
But it will be said, perhaps that candidates for political
influence and leadership the us caress the self love of
those who suffrages they desire know quite well that they

(05:04):
are not saying the sheer truth as reason sees it,
but that they are using a sort of conventional language,
or what we call claptrap, which is essential to the
working of representative institutions. And therefore I suppose we ought
rather to say with Figaro, he is contrampissi. Now I
admit that often, but not always, when our governess say
smooth things to the self love of the class whose

(05:26):
political support they want, they know very well that they
are overstepping, by a long stride, the bounds of truth
and soberness. And while they talk, they in a manner,
no doubt, put their tongue in their cheek. Not always,
because when a barbarian appeals to his own class to
make him their representative and give him political power, he,
when he pleases their self love by extolling broad shouldered,

(05:48):
genial Englishmen, with their sense of duty, reverence for the laws,
and patient force, pleases his own self love and extols himself,
and is therefore himself ensnared by his own smooth words.
And so too when a Philistine wants to represent his
brother Philistines and extols the earnest good sense which characterizes
Manchester and supplies the mind, the will, and the power,

(06:10):
as the daily News eloquently says, requisite for all the
great and good things that have to be done, he
intoxicates and deludes himself as well as his brother Philistines
who hear him. But it is true that a barbarian
often wants the political support of the Philistines, and he, unquestionably,
when he flatters the self love of Philistinism and extols

(06:31):
in the approved fashion its energy, enterprise and self reliance,
knows that he is talking claptrap, and so to say,
puts his tongue in his cheek on all matters where
nonconformity and its catchwords are concerned. This insincerity of barbarians
needing nonconformist support and therefore flattering the self love of
nonconformity and repeating its catchwords without the least real belief

(06:53):
in them, is very noticeable when the nonconformist in a
transport of blind zeal throughout Sir James Gray's useful education clauses.
In eighteen forty three, one half of their parliamentary representatives,
no doubt, who cried aloud against trampling on the religious
liberty of the dissenters by taking the money of dissenters
to teach the tenets of the Church of England, put

(07:15):
their tongue in their cheek while they so cried out.
And perhaps there is even a sort of motion of
mister Frederic Harrison's tongue towards his cheek when he talks
of the shriek of superstition, and tells the working class
that theirs are the brightest powers of sympathy and the
readiest powers of action. But the point on which I
would insist is that this involuntary tribute to truth and

(07:36):
soberness on the part of certain of our governess and
guides never reach us at all. The mass of us
governed to serve as a lesson to us, to abate
our self love, and to awaken in us a suspicion
that our favorite prejudices may be to a higher reason
all nonsense. Whatever by play goes on among the more
intelligent of our leaders, we do not see it, and

(07:58):
we are left to believe that, not only in our
our own eyes, but in the eyes of our representative
and ruling men, there is nothing more admirable than our
ordinary self, whatever our ordinary self happens to be, barbarian, philistine,
or populace. Thus, everything in our political life tends to
hide from us that there is anything wiser than our
ordinary selves, and to prevent our getting the notion of

(08:19):
a paramount right reason. Royalty itself in its idea, the
expression of the collective nation, and a sort of constituted
witness to its best mind. We try to turn into
a kind of grand advertising van to give publicity and
credit to the inventions, sound or unsound, of the ordinary
self of individuals. I remember when I was in North

(08:40):
Germany having this very strongly brought to my mind in
the matter of schools and their institution. In Prussia, the
best schools are crown patronage schools, as they are called,
schools which have been established and endowed, and new ones
are to this day being established and endowed by the
Sovereign himself out of his own revenues, to be under
the direct country and management of him or of those

(09:02):
representing him, and to serve as types of what schools
should be. The Sovereign, as his position raises him above
many prejudices and littlenesses, and as he can always have
at his disposal, the best advice, has evident advantages over
private founders in well planning and directing a school, while
at the same time his great means and his great
influence secure to a well planned school of his credit

(09:25):
and authority. This is what in North Germany the governors
do in the matter of education for the governed, and
one may say that they thus give the governed a
lesson and draw out in them the idea of a
right reason higher than the suggestions of an ordinary man's
ordinary self. But in England, how different is the part
which in this matter our governess are customed to play.

(09:47):
The license vitlers or the commercial travelers propose to make
a school for their children. And I suppose in the
matter of schools one may call the license vitilers or
the commercial travelers woundery men with their natural taste for
the bathos to strong, and a sovereign with the advice
of men like Wilhelm von Humboldt or Schleiermacher, may in
this matter be a better judge and nearer to right reason,

(10:09):
and it will be allowed probably that right reason would
suggest that to have a sheer school of license vitlis children,
or a sheer school of commercial travelers children, and to
bring them all up not only at home, but at
school too, in a kind of odor of license vitalism
or of bagmenism, is not a wise training to give
to these children. And in Germany I have said, the

(10:30):
action of the national guides or governors is to suggest
and provide a better But in England the action of
the national guides or governess. Is for a royal prince
or a great minister to go down to the opening
of the license fitteness, or of the commercial travelers school
to take the chair, to extol the energy and self
reliance of the license vitilis, or the commercial travelers to

(10:51):
be all of their way of thinking to predict full
success to their schools, and never so much as to
hint to them that they are doing a very foolish thing,
and that the right way to go to work with
their children's education is quite different. And it is the
same in almost every department of affairs. While on the
continent the idea prevails that it is the business of
the heads and representatives of the nation, by virtue of

(11:13):
their superior means, power and information, to set an example
and to provide suggestions of right reason among us. The
idea is that the business of the heads and representatives
of the nation is to do nothing of the kind,
but to applaud the natural taste for the bathos showing
itself vigorously in any part of the community, and to
encourage its works. Now, I do not say that the

(11:35):
political system of foreign countries has not inconveniences which may
outweigh the inconveniences of our own political system. Nor am
I the least proposing to get rid of our own
political system and to adopt theirs. But a sound center
of authority being what in this disquisition we have been
led to seek, and right reason or our best self

(11:56):
appearing alone to offer such a sound center of authority,
it is ness sorry to take note of the chief
impediments which hinder in this country the extrication or recognition
of this right reason as a paramount authority, with a
view to afterwards trying in what way they can best
be removed. This being borne in mind, I proceed to remark,
how not only do we get no suggestion of right reason,

(12:18):
and no rebukes of our ordinary self from our governess,
but a kind of philosophical theories widely spread among us,
to the fact that there is no such thing at
all as a best self and a right reason having
claim to paramount authority, or at any rate, no such
thing as attainable and capable of being made use of,
and that there is nothing but an infinite number of
ideas and works of our ordinary selves, and suggestions of

(12:41):
our natural taste for the bathos, pretty equal in value,
which are doomed either to an irreconcilable conflict or else
to a perpetual give and take. And that wisdom consists
in choosing the give and take rather than a conflict,
and in sticking to our choice with patience and good humor.
And on the other hand, we have another philosoph theory
rife among us, to the effect that without the labor

(13:03):
of perverting ourselves by custom or example to relish right reason,
but by continuing all of us to follow freely our
natural taste for the bathos, we shall, by the mercy
of providence, and by a kind of natural tendency of things,
come in due time to relish and follow right reason.
The great promoters of these philosophical theories are our newspapers,
which no less than our parliamentary representatives may be said

(13:26):
to act the part of guides and governess to us.
And these favorite doctrines of theirs I call, or should
call if the doctrines were not preach by authorities I
so much respect. The first a peculiarly British form of atheism,
the second a peculiarly British form of quietism. The first name.
Melancholy doctrine is preached in the times with great clearness

(13:47):
and force of style. Indeed, it is well known from
the example of the Lucretius and others, what great masters
of style the atheistic doctrine has always counted among its promulgators.
It is of no use, says the Tie, for us
to attempt to force upon our neighbors our several likings
and dislikings. We must take things as they are. Everybody

(14:07):
has his own little vision of religious or civil perfection.
Under the evident impossibility of satisfying everybody, we agree to
take our stand on equal laws and on a system
as open and liberal as is possible. The result is
that everybody has more liberty of action and of speaking
here than anywhere else in the old world. We come
again here upon mister Roebucks's celebrated definition of happiness, on

(14:31):
which I have so often commented. I look around me
and ask what is the state of England? Is not
every man able to say what he likes? I ask
you whether the world over or in past history, there
is anything like it? Nothing. I pray that our unrivaled
happiness may last. This is the old story of our
system of checks, and every Englishman doing as he likes,

(14:52):
which we have already seen to have been convenient enough
so long as there were only the barbarians and the
Philistines to do what they liked, but to be getting
inconvenient and productive of anarchy now that the populace wants
to do what it likes too. But for all that,
I will not at once dismiss this famous doctrine, but
will first quote another passage from The Times, applying the

(15:12):
doctrine to a matter of which we have just been speaking. Education.
The difficulty here in providing a national system of education,
says the Times, does not reside in any removable arrangements.
It is inherent and native in the actual and inveterate
state of things in this country. All these powers and personages,
all these conflicting influences and varieties of character, exist and

(15:36):
have long existed among us. They are fighting it out
and will long continue to fight it out without coming
to that happy consummation when some one element of the
British character is to destroy or to absorb all the rest.
There it is the various promptings of the natural taste
for the bathos in this man and that amongst us
are fighting it out, and the day will never come.

(15:58):
And indeed, why should we wish it to come? When
one man's particular sort of taste for the bathos shall
tyrannize over another man's, Nor when right reason, if that
may be called an element of the British character, shall
absorb and rule them all. The whole system of this country,
like the Constitution we boast to inherit and are glad
to uphold, is made up of established facts, prescriptive authorities,

(16:21):
existing usages, powers that be persons in possession, and communities
or classes that have one dominion for themselves and will
hold it against all comers, every force in the world,
evidently except the one reconciling force right reason, Sir Thomas
bateson here, the Reverend W. Cattle on this side, Mister
Bradlaw on that pull devil pull. Baker really presented with

(16:45):
the master or style of our leading journal, the sad picture,
as one gazes upon it, assumes the iron and inexorable
solemnity of tragic destiny. After this, the milder doctrine of
our other philosophical teacher. The Daily News has at first
something very attractive and assuaging. The daily News begins, indeed,
in appearance, to weave the iron web of necessity round us.

(17:08):
Like the times, the alternative is between a man's doing
what he likes and his doing some one else, probably
not one bit wiser than himself likes. This points to
the tacit compact mentioned in my last paper between the
Barbarians and the Philistines, and into which it is hoped
that the populace will one day enter. The compact so
creditable to English honesty, that no class, if it exercises power,

(17:32):
having only the ideas and aims of its ordinary self
to give effect to, shall treat its ordinary self too seriously,
or attempt to impose it on others, but shall let
these others. The Reverend W. Cattle, for instance, in his
papist Baiting, and mister Bradlaw in his Hyde Park Anarchy mongering,
have their fling. But then the daily News suddenly lights
up the gloom of necessitarianism with bright beams of hope.

(17:55):
No doubt, it says, the common reason of society ought
to check the aberrations of inneri vidual eccentricity. This common
reason of society looks very like our best self or
right reason to which we want to give authority by
making the action of the state or nation in its
collective character the expression of it. But of this project
of ours. The daily news, with its subtle dialectics, makes

(18:17):
havoc make this state the organ of the common reason,
It says, you may make it the organ of something
or other. But how can you be certain that reason
will be the quality which will be embodied in it.
You cannot be certain of it, undoubtedly if you never
try to bring the thing about. But the question is
the action of the state being the action of the
collective nation, and the action of the collective nation carrying

(18:39):
naturally great publicity, weight and force of example with it.
Whether we should not try to put into the action
of the state, as much as possible, of right reason
or our best self, which may in this manner come
back to us with new force and authority, may have visibility,
form and influence, and help to confirm us in the
many moments when we attempt it to be our ordinary selves,

(18:59):
merely in resisting our natural taste of the bathos, rather
than in giving way to it. But no, says our teacher,
it is better there should be an infinite variety of
experiments in human action, because as the explorers multiply, the
true tract is more likely to be discovered. The common
reason of society can check the aberrations of individual eccentricity

(19:19):
only by acting on the individual reason, and it will
do so in the main sufficiently if left to this
natural operation. This is what I call the specially British
form of quietism, or a devout but excessive reliance on
an over ruling providence. Providence, as the moralists are careful
to tell us, generally, works in human affairs by human means.
So when we want to make right reason act on

(19:40):
individual reason, our best self, on our ordinary self, we
seek to give it more power of doing so by
giving it public recognition and authority, and embodying it so
far as we can. In the state. It seems too
much to ask of Providence that, while we, on our part,
leave our congenital taste for the Bathos to its natural
operation and its infinite variety of experiments, Providence should mysteriously

(20:03):
guide it into the true track and compel it to
relish the sublime. At any rate, great men and great
institutions have hitherto seemed necessary for producing any considerable effect
of this kind. No doubt, we have an infinite variety
of experiments and an ever multiplying multitude of explorers. Even
in this short paper I have enumerated many the British Banner,

(20:24):
Judge EDMUNDS. Newman Weeks, Deborah Butler, Elderess, Polly Brother, Noise,
the Reverend W. Cattle, the license Vittulus, the commercial travelers,
and I know not how many more, and the numbers
of this noble army are swelling every day. But what
a depth of quietism, or rather, what an overbold call
on the direct interposition of providence to believe that these
interesting explorers will discover the true track, or at any rate,

(20:47):
will do so in the main sufficiently, whatever that may mean,
if left to their natural operation, that is, by going
on as they are. Philosophers say, indeed that we learn
virtue by performing acts of virtue. But I say that
we shall learn virtue by performing any acts to which
our natural taste for the bathos carries us. That the
Reverend W. Cattle comes at its best self by papist baiting,

(21:09):
or Newman Weeks and Deborah Butler at right reason by
following their noses. This certainly does appear over sanguine. It
is true. What we want is to make right reason
act on individual reason, the reason of individuals. All our
search for authority has that for its end and aim.
The Daily News says, I observe that all my argument
for authority has a non intellectual route, and from what

(21:31):
I know of my own mind and its inertness, I
think this so probable that I should be inclined easily
to admit it if it were not that, in the
first place, nothing of this kind perhaps should be admitted
without examination, and in the second a way of accounting
for this charge being made in this particular instance without
full grounds, appears to present itself. What seems to me

(21:52):
to account here, perhaps for the charge is the want
of flexibility of our race, on which I have so
often remarked. I mean it being admitted that the conformity
of the individual reason of the Reverend W. Cattle or
mister Bradlaw with right reason is our true object, and
not the mere restraining them by the strong arm of
the state from papist debating or railing breaking. Admitting this,

(22:14):
we have so little flexibility that we cannot readily perceive
that the states restraining them from these indulgences may yet
fix clearly in their minds that to the collective nation
these indulgences appear irrational and unallowable, may make them pause
and reflect, and may contribute to bringing with time their
individual reason into harmony with right reason. But in no country,

(22:35):
owing to the want of intellectual flexibility above mentioned, is
the leaning which has our natural one and therefore needs
no recommending to us so sedulously recommended, And the leaning
which is not our natural one, and therefore does not
need dispraising to us so sedulously dispraised as in ours,
to rely on the individual being with us the natural leaning,
we will hear of nothing but the good of relying

(22:57):
on the individual to act through the collective nation. On
the individual being not our natural leaning, we will hear
nothing in the recommendation of it. But the wise know
that we often need to hear most of that to
which we are least inclined, and even to learn to
employ in certain circumstances that which is capable, if employed,
amiss of being a danger to us elsewhere. This is

(23:17):
certainly better understood than here. In a recent number of
the Westminster Review, an able writer, but with precisely our
national want of flexibility of which I have been speaking,
has on earth I see for our present needs. An
English translation published some years ago of Wilhelm von Humboldt's
book The Sphere and Duties of Government. Humboldt's object in

(23:37):
this book is to show that the operation of government
ought to be severely limited to what directly and immediately
relates to the security of person and property. Wilhelm von Humboldt,
one of the most beautiful and perfect souls that have
ever existed, used to say that one's business in life
was first to perfect oneself by all the means in
one's power, and secondly to try and create in the

(23:59):
world around world an aristocracy the most numerous that one
possibly could, of talents and characters. He saw, of course,
that in the end everything comes to this, that the
individual must act for himself and must be perfect in himself.
And he lived in a country, Germany, where people were
disposed to act too little for themselves and to rely
too much on the government. But even thus such was

(24:21):
his flexibility, so little was he in bondage to a
mere abstract maxim that he saw very well that for
his purpose itself of enabling the individual to stand perfect
on his own foundations and to do without the state.
The action of the state would for long, long years
be necessary. And soon after he wrote his book on
the Sphere and Duties of Government, Wilhelm von Humboldt became

(24:43):
Minister of Education in Prussia, and from his ministry all
the great reforms which give the control of Prussian education
to the state. The transference of the management of public
schools from the old boards of trustees to the state,
the obligatory state examination for schools, the obligatory state examination
for schoolmasters, and the foundation of the great State University
of Berlin take their origin. This. His English reviewer says,

(25:06):
not a word of but writing for people whose dangers lie,
as we have seen, on the side of their unchecked
and unguided individual action, whose dangers none of them, lie
on the side of an overliance on the state. He
quotes just so much of Wilhelm von Humboldt's example as
can flatter them in their propensities and do them no good,
And just what might make them think and be of
use to them, he leaves on one side. This precisely

(25:29):
recalls the manner. It will be observed in which we
have seen that our royal and noble personages proceed with
the license fittless. In France, the action of the state
on individuals is yet more preponderant than in Germany, and
the need which friends of human perfection feel to enable
the individual to stand perfect on his own foundations is
all the stronger. But what says one of the staunchest

(25:51):
of these friends, Monsieur Renan on state action, an even
state action in that very sphere where in France it
is most excessive, the sphere of education. Here are his words.
A liberal believes in liberty, and liberty signifies the non
intervention of the state. But such an ideal is still
a long way off from us, and the very means
to remove it to an indefinite distance would be precisely

(26:13):
the states withdrawing its action too soon. And this, he adds,
is even truer of education than of any other department
of public affairs. We see, then, how indispensable to that
human perfection which we seek is in the opinion of
good judges, some public recognition and establishment of our best
self or right reason. We see how our habits and
practice oppose themselves to such a recognition and the many

(26:37):
inconveniences which we therefore suffer. But now let us try
to go a little deeper, and to find beneath our
actual habits and practice the very ground and cause out
of which they spring. End of Chapter three