07 - Chapter 4: Hebraism and Hellenism

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter four 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 Nicole Lee. Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold, Chapter four.
This fundamental ground is our preference of doing to thinking. Now,

(00:22):
this preference is a main element in our nature, and
as we study it, we find ourselves opening up a
number of large questions on every side. Let me go
back for a moment to what I have already quoted
from Bishop Wilson. First, never go against the best light
you have. Secondly, take care that your light be not darkness.
I said. We show us a nation laudable energy and

(00:43):
persistence in walking according to the best light we have,
but are not quite careful enough, perhaps to see that
our light be not darkness. This is only another version
of the old story that energy is our strong point
and favorable characteristic, rather than intelligence. But we may give
to this idea a more general form still, in which
it will have a yet larger range of application. We

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may regard this energy driving at practice, this paramount sense
of the obligation of duty, self control, and work this
earnestness in going manfully with the best light we have
as one force. And we may regard the intelligence driving
at those ideas, which are after all the basis of
right practice, the ardent sense for all the new and
changing combinations of them, which man's development brings with it,

(01:28):
the indomitable impulse to know and adjust them perfectly, as
another force. And these two forces we may regard as
in some sense rivals, rivals not by the necessity of
their own nature, but as exhibited in Man and his history,
and rivals dividing the empire of the world between them.
And to give these forces names from the two races
of men who have supplied the most signal and splendid

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manifestations of them, we may call them, respectively, the forces
of Hebrewism and Hellenism. Hebrewism and Hellenism, between these two
points of influence, smoves our world. At one time it
feels more powerfully the attraction of one of them, at
another time of the other, and it ought to be,
though it never is evenly and happily balanced between them.

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The final name of both Hellenism and Hebrewism, as of
all great spiritual disciplines, is no doubt the same man's
perfection or salvation. The very language which they both of
them use in schooling us to reach this aim is
often identical, even when their language indicates by variation, sometimes
a broad variation. Often are but slight and subtle variation

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the different courses of thoughts which are uppermost in each discipline.
Even then, the unity of the final end and aim
is still apparent. To employ the actual words of that
discipline with which we ourselves are all of us most familiar,
and the words of which therefore come most home to us.
That final end and aim is that we might be
partakers of the divine nature. These are the words of

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a Hebrew apostle, but of Hellenism and Hebrewism alike. This is,
I say, the aim. When the two are confronted, as
they very often are confronted, it is nearly always with
what I may call a rhetorical purpose. The speaker's whole
design is to exalt and enthrone one of the two,
and he uses the other only as a foil and
to enable him, the better to give effect to his purpose. Obviously,

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with us it is usually Hellenism which is thus reduced
to minister to the triumph of Hebreism. There is a
sermon on Greece and the Greek Spirit by a man
never to be mentioned without interest and respect Frederick Robertson,
in which this rhetorical use of Greece and the Greek Spirit,
and the inadequate exhibition of them necessarily consequent upon this
is almost ludicrous, and would be censurable if it were

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not to be explained by the exigencies of a sermon.
On the other hand, Heinrich Heiner and other writers of
his sort give us the spectacle of the tables completely turned,
and of Hebrewism brought in just as a foil and
contrast to Hellenism, and to make the superiority of Hellenism
more manifest. In both these cases there is injustice and misrepresentation.

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The aim and end of both Hebrewism and Hellenism is,
as I have said, one and the same, and this
aim and end is august and admirable. Still they pursue
the same by very different causes. The uppermost idea with
Hellenism is to see things as they really are. The
uppermost idea with Hebrewism is conduct and obedience. Nothing can

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do away with this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with
the body and its desires is that they hinder rite thinking.
The Hebrew quarrel with them is that they hinder right acting.
He that keepeth the law happy is he There is
nothing sweeter than to take heed unto the commandments of
the Lord. That is the Hebrew notion of felicity, and
pursued with passion and tenacity, this notion would not let

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the Hebrew rest till, as is well known, he had
at last got out of the law a network of
prescriptions to unwrap his whole life, to govern every moment
of it, every impulse, every action. The Greek notion of felicity,
on the other hand, is perfectly conveyed in these words
of a great French moralist, say le Bonaud. When when
they abhor that which is evil, no, Or when they

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exercise themselves in the law of the Lord day and night, No,
when they die daily, No, when they walk about the
New Jerusalem with palms in their hands. No, But when
they think aright, when their thought hits con il Prince.
Just at the bottom of both the Greek and the
Hebrew notion is the desire native in man for reason,
and the will of God, the feeling after the universal order,

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in a word, the love of God. But while Hebreism
seizes upon certain plain capital intimations of the universal order
and rivets itself, one may say, with unequal grandeur of
earnestness and intensity on the study and observance of them.
The bent of Hellenism is to follow, with flexible activity
the whole play of the universal order, to be apprehensive

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of missing any part of it, of sacrificing one part
to another, to slip away from resting in this or
that intimation of it. However, capital, an unclouded clearness of mind,
an unimpeded play of thought, is what this bent strives at.
The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness. That
of Hebreism strictness of conscience. Christianity changed nothing in this

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essential bent of Hebreism. To set doing above knowing self, conquest,
self devotion, the following not our own individual will but
the will of God. Obedience is the fundamental idea of
this form, also of the discipline to which we have
attached the general name of Hebreism only as the old
law and the network of prescriptions with which it enveloped

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human life were evidently a motive power not driving and
searching enough to produce the result. Aimed at patient continuance
in well doing self conquest, Christianity substituted for them boundless
devotion to that inspiring and affecting pattern of self conquest
offered by Christ and by the new motive power of
which the essence was this. Though the love and admiration

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of Christian churches have for centuries been employed in varying
and playing and adorning the plain description of it, Christianity,
as Saint Paul truly says, establishes the law, and in
the strength of the ampler power which she has thus
applied to fulfill it has accomplished the miracles which we
all see of her history. So long as we do
not forget that both Hellenism and Hebrewism are profound and

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admirable manifestations of man's life, tendencies, and powers, and that
both of them aim at a like final result, we
can hardly insist too strongly on the divergence of line
and of operation with which they proceed. It is a
diversion so great that it most truly, as the prophet
Zachariah says, has raised up thy son so Zion against
thy sons o Greece. The difference, whether it is by

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doing or by knowing, that we set most store, and
the practical consequences which follow from this difference, leave their
mark on all the history of our race and of
its development. Language may be abundantly quoted from both Hellenism
and Hebrewism to make it seem that one follows the
same current as the other towards the same goal. They
are truly born towards the same goal, but the currents

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which bear them are infinitely different. It is true Solomon
will praise knowing. Understanding is a wellspring of life unto
him that hath it. And in the New Testament again
Christ is alike, and truth makes us free. It is
true Aristotle will undervalue knowing in what concerns Virtue, says he.
Three things are necessary, knowledge, deliberate will, and perseverance. But

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whereas the two last are all important, the first is
a matter of little importance. It is true that with
the same impatience with which Saint James enjoins a man
to be not a forgetful hearer, but a duo of
the work. Epictetus exhorts us to do what we have
demonstrated to ourselves we ought to do. Or he taunts
us with futility for being armed at all points to
prove that lying is wrong, yet all the time continuing

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to lie. It is true. Plato, in words which are
almost the words of the New Testament or the Imitation,
calls life a learning to die. But underneath the superficial agreement,
the fundamental divergence to subsists. The understanding of Solomon is
the walking in the way of the commandments. This is
the way of peace, and it is of this that

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blessedness comes in the New Testament. The truth which gives
us the peace of God and makes us free is
the love of Christ, constraining us to crucify as He did,
and with the like purpose of moral regeneration the flesh
with its affections and lusts, and thus establishing, as we
have seen, the law. To Saint Paul, it appears possible
to hold the truth in unrighteousness, which is just what

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Socrates judged impossible. The moral virtues, on the other hand,
are with Aristotle, but the portra and access to the
intellectual and with these last is blessedness. That partaking of
the divine life, which both Hellenism and Hebrewism, as we
have said, fixes their crowning aim. Plato expressly denies to
the man of practical virtue merely of self conquest with

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any other motive than that of perfect intellectual vision. He
reserves it for the love of pure knowledge of seeing
things as they really are. The philomaths both Hellenism and
Hebriism arise out of the wants of human nature and
address themselves to satisfying those wants. But their methods are
so different. They lay stress on such different points, and

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call into being by their respective disciplines such different activities
that the face which human nature presents when it passes
from the hands of one of them to those of
the other is no longer the same. To get rid
of one's ignorance to see things as they are, and
by seeing them as they are, to see them in
their beauty is the simple and attractive ideal which Hellenism
holds out before human nature. And from the simplicity and

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charm of this ideal, Hellenism and human life in the
hands of Hellenism is invested with a kind of aerial ease, clearness,
and radiancy. They are full of what we call sweetness
and light. Difficulties are kept out of view, and the
beauty and rationalness of the ideal have all our thoughts.
The best man is he who most tries to perfect himself,
and the happiest man is he who most feels that

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he is perfecting himself. Count of the matter by Socrates,
the true Socrates of the memorabilia, has something so simple, spontaneous,
and unsophisticated about it that it seems to fill us
with clearness and hope when we hear it. But there
is a saying which I have heard attributed to mister
Carlyle about Socrates, a very happy saying, whether it is
really mister Carlyle's or not, which excellently marks the essential

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point in which Hebrism differs from Hellenism. Socrates, this saying goes,
is terribly at ease in Zion. Hebrism, and here is
the source of its wonderful strength, has always been severely
preoccupied with an awful sense of the impossibility of being
at ease in Zion, of the difficulties which oppose themselves
to man's pursuit or attainment of that perfection of which

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Socrates talk so hopefully, and as from this point of
view one might almost say so glibly. It is all
very well to talk of getting rid of one's ignorance,
or seeing things in their reality, seeing them in their beauty.
But how is this to be done when there is
something which thoughts and spoils all our efforts. This something
is sin, And the space which sin fills in Hebrewism,

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as compared with Hellenism, is indeed prodigious. This obstacle to
perfection fills the whole scene, and perfection appears remote and
rising away from Earth in the background under the name
of sin. The difficulties of knowing oneself and conquering oneself,
which impede man's passage to perfection, become for Hebrewism a positive,
active entity hostile to man, a mysterious power which I

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heard doctor Pusey the other day in one of his
impressive sermons, compared to a hideous hunchback seated on our shoulders,
and which it is the main business of our lives
to hate and oppose. The discipline of the Old Testament
may be summed up as a discipline teaching us to
abhor and flee from sin. The discipline of the New
Testament as a discipline teaching us to die to it.

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As Hellenism speaks of thinking clearly, seeing things in their
essence and beauty as a grand and precious feat for
man to achieve, so Hebrism speaks of becoming conscious of sin,
of awakening to a sense of sin, as a feat
of this kind. It is obvious to what wide divergence
these differing tendencies actively followed must lead. As one passes

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and repasses from Hellenism to Hebrism, from Plato to Saint Paul,
one feels inclined to rub one's eyes and ask oneself
whether man is indeed a gentle and simple being showing
the traces of a noble and divine nature, or an unhappy,
chained captive laboring with groanings that cannot be uttered to
free himself from the body of this death, apparently, was

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the Hellenic conception of human nature, which was unsound, for
the world could not live by it. Absolutely. To call
it unsound, however, is to fall into the common error
of its hebrizing enemies. But it was unsound at that
particular moment of man's development. It was premature. The indispensable
basis of conduct and self control, the platform upon which

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alone the perfection aimed at by Greece can come into bloom,
was not to be reached by our race so easily.
Centuries of probation and discipline were needed to bring us
to it. Therefore, the bright promise of Hellenism faded, and
Hebrewism rule the world. Then was seen that astonishing spectacle
so well marked by the often quoted words of the
prophet Zachariah, when men of all languages of the nations

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took hold of the skirt of him that was a Jew,
saying we will go with you, for we have heard
that Goddess with you. And the Hebrewism, which thus received
and ruled a world all gone out of the way
and altogether become unprofitable, was and could not but be
the latter, the more spiritual, the more attractive development of Hebrewism.
It was Christianity, that is to say, Hebrerism, aiming at self,

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conquest and rescue from the thrall of vile affections, not
by obedience to the letter of a law, but by
conformity to the image of a self sacrificing example to
a world stricken with moral innovation, Christianity offered its spectacle
of an inspired self sacrifice to men who refused themselves nothing.
It showed one who refused himself everything. My Savior banished joy,

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says George Herbert. When the Arma Venus, the life giving
and joy giving power nature so fondly cherished by the
pagan world, could not save her followers from self dissatisfaction
and honor, the severe words of the apostle came bracingly
and refreshingly. Let no man deceive you with vain words,
For because of these things cometh the wrath of God

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upon the children of disobedience. Throughout age after age, and
generation after generation, our race, or all that part of
our race, which was most living and progressive, was baptized
into a death, and endeavored by suffering in the flesh
to cease from sin of this endeavor. The animating labors
and afflictions of early Christianity, the touching asceticism of medieval

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Christianity are the great historical manifestations literary monuments of it,
each in its own way. Incomparable remain in the epistles
of Saint Paul Instant Augustine's Confessions, and in the two
original and simplest books of the Imitation of two disciplines,
laying their main stress, the one on clear intelligence, the

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other on firm obedience, the one on comprehensively knowing the
grounds of one's duty, the other on diligently practicing it,
the one on taking all possible care. To use Bishop
Wilson's words again, that the light we have be not darkness,
the other that according to the best light we have,
we diligently walk. The priority naturally belongs to that discipline

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which braces man's moral powers and found for him an
indispensable basis of character. And therefore it is justly said
of the Jewish people, who are charged with setting party
forth that side of the divine order to which the
words conscience and self conquest point, that they were entrusted
with the oracles of God, as it is justly said
of Christianity, which followed Judaism, and which set forth this

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side with a much deeper effectiveness and a much wider influence,
that the wisdom of the old pagan world was foolishness
compared to it. No words of devotion and admiration can
be too strong to render thanks to these beneficent forces,
which are so borne for humanity in its appointed work
of coming to the knowledge and possession of itself, above

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all in those great moments when their action was the
wholesomest and the most necessary. But the evolution of these forces,
separately and in themselves is not the whole evolution of humanity.
Their single history is not the whole history of man,
whereas their admirers are always apt to make it stand
for the whole history. Hebreism and Hellenism are neither of
them the law of human development, as the admirers are

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prone to make them. They are each of them contributions
to human development, august contributions, invaluable contributions, and each showing
itself to us more august, more invaluable, more preponderant over
the other. According to the moment in which we take
them and the relation in which we stand to them.
The nations of our modern world, children of that immense

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and salutary movement which broke up the pagan world, inevitably
stand to Hellenism in a relation which dwarfs it, and
to Hebrism in a relation which dignifies it. They are
inevitably prone to take Hebreism as the law of human development,
and not as simply a contribution to it, however precious,
and yet the lesson must perforce be learned, that the

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human spirit is wider than the most priceless of the
forces which bear it onward, and that to the whole
development of man, Hebreism itself is like Hellenism, but to contribution.
Perhaps we may help ourselves to see this clearer by
an illustration drawn from the treatment of a single great
idea which has profoundly engaged the human spirit, and has
given it eminent opportunities for showing its nobleness and energy.

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It surely must be perceived that the idea of the
immortality of the soul, as this idea arises in its
generality before the human spirit, is something grander, truer, and
more satisfying than it is in the particular forms by
which Saint Paul in the famous fifteenth chapter of the
Epistle to the Corinthians and Plato in the Fado endeavor
to develop and establish it. Surely we cannot but feel

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that the argumentation with which the Hebrew Apostle goes about
to expound this great idea is after all confused and inconclusive,
and that the reasoning drawn from analogies of likeness and equality,
which is employed upon it by the Greek philosopher is
over subtle and sterile. Above and beyond the inadequate solutions
which Hebrerism and Hellenism here attempt extends the immense and

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august problem itself and the human spirits which gave birth
to it. And this single illustration may suggest to us
how the same thing happens in other cases also. But meanwhile,
by alternations of Hebrism and Hellenism, of man's intellectual and
moral impulses, of the effort to see things as they
really are, and the effort to win peace by self conquest,

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the human spirit proceeds, and each of these two forces
has its appointed hours of culmination and seasons of rule.
As the great movement of Christianity was a triumph of
Hebrism and man's moral impulses, so the great movement which
goes by the name of the Renaissance was an up
rising and reinstatement of man's intellectual impulses and of Hellenism.

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We in England, the devoted children of Protestantism, chiefly know
the Renaissance by its subordinate and secondary side of the Reformation.
The Reformation has been often called a Hebrewising revival, a
return to the ardor and sincereness of primitive Christianity. No one, however,
can study the development of Protestantism and of Protestant churches

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without feeling that into the Reformation, too Hebrewising, child of
the Renaissance, and offspring of its fervor, rather than its intelligence,
as it undoubtedly was, the subtle Hellenic eleven of the
Renaissance found its way, and that the exact respective parts
in the Reformation of Hebrism and of Hellenism are not
easy to separate. But what we may with truth say

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is that all which Protestantism was to itself clearly conscious of,
all which it succeeded in clearly setting forth, in words,
had the characters of Hebrewism rather than of Hellenism. The
Reformation was strong in that it was an urn returned
to the Bible and to doing from the heart the
will of God as their written. It was weak in
that it never consciously grasped or applied the central idea

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of the Renaissance, the Hellenic idea of pursuing in all
lines of activity the law and science, to use Plato's
words of things as they really are. Whatever direct superiority
therefore Protestantism had over Catholicism was a moral superiority, the
superiority arising out of its greatest sincerity and earnestness at

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the moment of its apparition. At any rate in dealing
with the heart and conscience, its pretensions to an intellectual
superiority are in general quite illusory for Hellenism, for the
thinking side in man as distinguished from the acting side.
The attitude of mind of Protestantism towards the Bible in
no respect differs from the attitude of mind of Catholicism

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towards the Church. The mental habit of him who imagines
that balams As spoke, in no respect differs from the
mental habit of him who imagines that a madonna of
wood or stone winked. And the one who says that
God's Church makes him believe what he believes, and the
other he says that God's Word makes him believe what
he believes, are for the philosopher perfectly alike in not

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really and truly knowing when they say God's Church and
God's Word, what is this they say, or where off
they affirm? In the sixteenth century, therefore Hellenism re entered
the world, and against an impresence of Hebrewism, a Hebrewism
renewed and purged. Now it has not been enough observed,
how in the seventeenth century a fate befell Hellenism in

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some respects analogous to that which befell it at the
commencement of our era. The Renaissance, that great reawakening of Hellenism,
that irresistible return of humanity to nature and to seeing
things as they are, which in art, in literature, and
in physics produce such splendid fruits, had, like the anterior
Hellenism of the pagan world, a side of moral weakness

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and of relaxation or insensibility of the moral fiber, which
in Italy showed itself with the most startling plainness, but
which in France, England and other countries was very apparent too. Again,
this loss of spiritual balance, this exclusive preponderance given to
man's perceiving and knowing side, this unnatural defect of his
feeling and acting side, provoked a reaction. Let us trace

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that reaction where it most nearly concerns US science has
now made visible to everybody the great and pregnant elements
of difference which lie in race, and in how signal
a manner they make the genius in history of an
Indo European people vary from those of a Semitic people.
Hellenism is of Indo European growth, Hebrewism is of Semitic growth,

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and be English, a nation of Indo European stock, seem
to belong naturally to the movement of Hellenism. But nothing
more strongly marks the essential unity of man than the
affinities we can perceive in this point or that between
members of one family of peoples and members of another.
And no affinity of this kind is more strongly marked
than that likeness in the strength and prominence of the

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moral fiber, which, notwithstanding immense elements of difference, knits in
some special sort the genius and history of US English
and of our American descendants across the Atlantic to the
genius and history of the Hebrew people. Puritanism, which has
been so great a power in the English nation and
in the strongest part of the English nation, was originally

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the reaction in the seventeenth century of the conscience and
moral sense of our race against the moral indifference and
lacks rule of conduct which in the sixteenth century came
in with the Renaissance. It was a reaction of Hebrism
against Hellenism, and it powerfully manifested itself, as was natural
in a people with much of what we call a
hebriwizing turn, with a signal affinity for the bent which

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was the master bent of Hebrew life, eminently into European
by its humor, by the power it shows through this
gift of imaginatively acknowledging the multiform aspects of the problem
of life, and of thus getting itself unfixed from its
own over certainty, of smiling at its own over tenacity.
Our race as yet, and a great part of its

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strength lies here in matters of practical life and moral conduct,
a strong share of the assuredness, the tenacity, the intensity
of the Hebrews. This turn manifested itself in Puritanism, and
has had a great part in shaping our history for
the last two hundred years. Undoubtedly it checked and changed
amongst us that movement of the Renaissance which we see

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producing in the reign of Elizabeth such wonderful fruits. Undoubtedly,
it stopped the prominent rule and direct development of that
order of ideas which we call by the name of Hellenism,
and gave the first rank to a different order of ideas. Apparently, too,
as we said of the former defeat of Hellenism, if
Hellenism was defeated, this shows that Hellenism was imperfect, and

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that its ascendancy at that moment would not have been
for the world's good. Yet, there is a very important
difference between the defeat inflicted on Hellenism by Christianity eighteen
hundred years ago and the check given to the Renaissance
by Puritanism. The greatness of the difference is well measured
by the difference in force, beauty, significance, and usefulness between

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primitive Christianity and Protestantism eighteen hundred years ago. It was
altogether the hour of Hebrewism. Primitive Christianity was legitimately and
truly the ascendant force in the world at that time,
and the way of mankind's progress lay through its full development.
Another r in man's development began in the fifteenth century,
and the main road of his progress then lay for

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a time through Hellenism. Puritanism was no longer the central
current of the world's progress. It was a side stream
crossing the central current and checking it. The cross in
the check may have been necessary and salutary, but that
does not do away with the essential difference between the
main stream of man's advance and a cross or side stream.
For more than two hundred years, the mainstream of man's

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advance has moved towards knowing himself in the world, seeing
things as they are, spontaneity of consciousness, the main impulse
of a great part, and that the strongest part of
our nation, has been towards strictness of conscience. They have
made the secondary the principle at the wrong moment, and
the principle they have, at the wrong moment treated as secondary.

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This contravention of the natural order has produced, as such,
contravention always must produce a certain confusion and false movement,
of which we are now beginning to feel in almost
every direction. The inconvenience. In all directions, our habitual courses
of action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit, and control,
both with others and even with ourselves. Everywhere we see

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the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to
some sound order and authority. This we can only get
by going back upon the actual instincts and forces which
rule our life, seeing them as they really are, connecting
them with other instincts and forces, and enlarging our whole
view and rule of life. End of Chapter four