09 - Chapter 6 Part 1: Our Liberal Practitioners

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter six, Part one 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 an Anarchy by Matthew Arnold, Chapter six,
Part one. But an unpretending writer without a philosophy based

(00:24):
on interdependent, subordinate and coherent principles has not presumed to
indulge himself too much in generalities. But he must keep
close to the level ground of common fact, the only
safe ground for understandings without a scientific equipment. Therefore, I
am bound to take before concluding some of the practical
operations in which my friends and countrymen are at this

(00:45):
moment engaged, and to make these if I can show
the truth of what I have advanced. Probably I could
hardly give a greater proof of my confessed inexpertness in
reasoning and arguing than by taking for my first example
of an operation of this kind, the proceedings for the
disestablishment of the Irish Church which we are now witnessing.
It seems so clear that this is surely one of

(01:07):
those operations for the uprooting of a certain definite evil
in which one's liberal friends engage and have a right
to complain and to get impatient, and to approach one
with delicate conservative skepticism and cultivated inaction, if one does
not lend a hand to help them. This does indeed
seem evident. And yet this operation comes so prominently before

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us just at this moment. It so challenges everybody's regard
that one seems cowardly in blinking it. So let us
venture to try and see whether this conspicuous operation is
one of those round which we need to let our
consciousness play freely and reveal what manner of spirit we
are of in doing it, or whether it is one
which by no means admits the application of this doctrine

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of ours, and one to which we ought to lend
a hand immediately. Now it seems plain that the present
church establishment in Ireland is contrary to reason and justice,
in so far as the church of a very small
minority of the people there takes for itself all the
church property of the Irish people. And one would think
that property assigned for the purpose of providing for people's

(02:09):
religious worship, when that worship was one the state should
when that worship is split into several forms, a portion
between those several forms, with due regard to circumstances, taking
account only of great differences which are likely to be lasting,
and of considerable communions which are likely to represent profound
and widespread religious characteristics, and overlooking petty differences which have

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no serious reason for lasting, and inconsiderable communions which can
hardly be taken to express any broad and necessary religious
lineaments of our common nature. This is just in accordance
with that maxim about the state which we have more
than once used. The state is of the religion of
all its citizens, without the fanaticism of any of them.
Those who deny this either think so poorly of the

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state that they do not like to see religion condescend
to touch the state, or think so poorly of religion
that they do not like to see the state condescend
to touch religion. But no good statesmen will easily think
thus unworthily, either of the state or of religion. And
our statesmen of both parties were inclined, one may say
to follow the natural line of the state's duty and

(03:17):
to make in Ireland some fair apportionment of church property
between large and radically divided religious communions in that country.
But then it was discovered that in Great Britain, the
National Mind, as it is called, is grown averse to
endowments for religion and will make no new ones. And
though this in itself looks general and solemn enough, yet
there were found political philosophers like mister Baxter and mister

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Charles Buxton to give it a look of more generality
and more solemnity still, and to elevate by their dexterous
command of powerful and beautiful language, this supposed edict of
the British National Mind into a sort of formula for
expressing a great law of religious transition and progress for
all the world. But we who having no coherent philosophy,

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must not let ourselves philosophize. Only see that the English
and Scotch nonconformists have a great horror of establishments and
endowments for religion, which they assert we were forbidden by
Christ when he said my Kingdom is not of this world.
And the nonconformists will be delighted to aid statesmen in
disestablishing any church, but will suffer none to be established

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or endowed if they can help it. Then we see
that the nonconformists make the strength of the Liberal majority
in the House of Commons, and that therefore the leading
Liberal statesmen, to get the support of the nonconformists, forsake
the notion of fairly apportioning church property in Ireland among
the chief religious communions, declare that the national mind has
decided against new endowments, and propose simply to disestablish and

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disendow the present establishment in Ireland without establishing or endowing
any other. The actual power, in short, by virtue of
which the Liberal party in the House of Commons is
now trying to disestablish the Irish Church, is not the
power of reason and justice. It is the power of
the non conformists antipathy to church establishments. Clearly, it is

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this because liberal statesmen, relying on the power of reason
and justice to help them, proposed something quite different from
what they now propose. And they proposed what they now
propose and talked of the decision of the National Mind
because they had to rely on the English and Scotch nonconformists.
And clearly, the nonconformists are actuated by antipathy to establishments,

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not by antipathy to the injustice and irrationality of the
present appropriation of church property in Ireland, because mister Spurgeon
in his eloquent and memorable letter expressly avowed that he
would sooner leave things as they are in Ireland, that is,
he would sooner let the injustice and irrationality of the
present appropriation continue, than do anything to set up the

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Roman image, that is, than give the Catholics their fair
and reasonable share of church property. Most indisputably, therefore, we
may affirm that the real moving power by which the
Liberal Party are now operating the overthrow of the Irish
establishment is the ant tipathy of the nonconformists to church establishments,
and not the sense of reason or justice, except so

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far as reason and justice may be contained in this antipathy,
and thus the matter stands at present Now, Surely we
must all seem many inconveniences in performing the operation of
uprooting this evil the Irish Church establishment in this particular way,
as was said about industry and freedom and gymnastics. We
shall never awaken love and gratitude by this mode of operation,

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for it is pursued not in view of reason and
justice and human perfection, and all that enkindles the enthusiasm
of men. But it is pursued in view of a
certain stock notion or fetish of the nonconformists, which prescribes
church establishments. And yet evidently one of the main benefits
to be got by operating on the Irish Church is
to win the affections of the Irish people. Besides this,

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an operation performed in virtue of a mechanical rule or fetish,
like the supposed decision of the English National Mind against
new endowments, does not easily inspire respect in its adversaries
and make their opposition feeble and hardly to be persisted in.
As an operation evidently done in virtue of reason and
justice might, for reason and justice have in them something

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persuasive and irresistible. But a fetish or mechanical maxim like
this of the nonconformists has in it nothing at all
to conciliate either the affections or the understanding. Nay, it
provokes the counter employment of other fetishes or mechanical maxims
on the opposite side, by which the confusion and hostility
already prevalent are heightened. Only in this way can be

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explained the apparition of such fetishes as are beginning to
be set up on the conservative side against the fetish
of the nonconformists, the Constitution in danger, the bulocks of
British freedom menaced the lamp of the Reformation, put out
no popery, and so on. To elevate these against an
operation relying on reason and justice to back it is

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not so easy or so tempting to human infirmity as
to elevate them against an operation relying on the nonconformists
antipathy to church establishments to back it. For after all,
no popery is a rallying cry which touches the human
spirit quite as vitally as no church establishments. That is
to say, neither the one nor the other in themselves

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touch the human spirit vitally at all, or the believers
in action. Then to be so impatient with us if
we say that, even for the sake of this operation
of theirs itself and its satisfactory accomplishment, it is more
important to make our consciousness play freely round the stock,
notion or habit on which the operation relies for aid,
than to lend a hand to it straight away. Clearly

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they ought not, because nothing is so effectual for operating
as reason and justice and a free play of thought
will either disengage the reason and justice lying hid in
the nonconformist fetish and make them effectual, or else it
will help to get this fetish out of the way
and to let statesmen go freely where reason and justice
take them. So suppose we take this absolute rule, this

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mechanical maxim of mister Spurgeon and the nonconformists, that church
establishments are bad things, because Christ said, my kingdom is
not of this world. Suppose we try and make our
consciousness bathe and float this piece of petrifaction, for such
it now is, and bring it within the stream of
the vital movement of our thought and into relation with
the whole intelligible law of things. An enemy and a

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disputant might probably say that much machinery which non conforms
themselves employ, the liberation society which exists already, and the
nonconformist union which mister Spurgeon desires to see existing, come
within the scope of Christ's words, as well as church establishments. This, however,
is merely a negative and contentious way of dealing with

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the nonconformist maxim, whereas what we desire is to bring
this maxim within the positive and vital movement of our thought.
We say therefore that Christ's words mean that his religion
is a force of inward persuasion acting on the soul,
and not a force of outward constraint acting on the body.
And if the non conform is maxim against church establishments

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and church endowments has warrant given to it from what
Christ thus meant, then their maxim is good, even though
their own practice in the matter of the liberation society
may be at variance with it. And here we cannot
but remember what we have formerly said about religion, Miss
Copp and the British College of Health. In the New
Road in religion, there are two parts, the part of

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thought and speculation and the part of worship and devotion.
Christ certainly meant his religion as a force of inward
persuasion acting on the soul. To employ both parts as
perfectly as possible. Now, thought and speculation is eminently an
individual matter, and worship and devotion is eminently a collective matter.
It does not help me to think a thing more

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clearly that thousands of other people are thinking the same,
but it does help me to worship with more emotion
that thousands of other people are worshiping with me. The
consecration of common consent, antiquity, public establishment, long used rights,
national edifices is everything for religious worship. Just what makes
worship impressive, says Shubert, is its publicity, its external manifestation,

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its sound, its splendor, its observance universally and visibly, holding
its way through all the details, both of our outward
and of our inward life. Worship therefore should have in
it as little as possible of what divides us, and
should be as much as possible a common and public act.
As Shubert says again, the best prayers are those which

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have nothing distinct about them, and which are thus of
the nature of simple adoration. For the same devotion, as
he says in another place, unites men far more than
the same thought and knowledge. Thought and knowledge, as we
have said before, is eminently something individual and of our own.
The more we possess it as strictly of our own,

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the more power it has on us. Man worship's best. Therefore,
with the community, he philosophies his best alone. So it
seems that whoever would truly give effect to Christ's declaration
that his religion is a force of inward persuasion acting
on the soul would leave our thought on the intellectual
aspects of Christianity as individual as possible, but would make

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Christian worship as collective as possible. Worship then appears to
be eminently a matter for public and national establishment. For
even mister Bright, who, when he stands in mister Spurgeon's
Great Tabernacle, is so ravished with admiration, will hardly say
that the Great Tabernacle and its worship are in themselves
as a temple and service of religion so impressive and

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affecting as the public and national Westminster Abbey or Notre
Dame with their worship. And when very soon after the
Great Tabernacle one comes plumped down to the mass of
private and individual establishments of religious worship, establishments falling like
the British College of Health in the New Road, conspicuously
short of what a public and national establishment might be.

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Then one cannot but feel that Christ's command to make
his religion a force of persuasion to the soul is,
so far as one main source of persuasion is concerned,
learned altogether set at naught. But perhaps the nonconformist worship
so unimpressively because they philosophy so keenly, and one part
of religion, the part of public national worship, they have

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subordinated to the other part, the part of individual thought
and knowledge. This, however, their organization in congregations forbids us
to admit they are members of congregations, not isolated thinkers,
and a true play of individual thought is at least
as much impeded by membership of a small congregation as
by membership of a great church. Thinking by bachess of

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fifties is to the full less fatal to free thought
as thinking by bachels of thousands. Accordingly, we have had
occasion already to notice that nonconformity does not at all
differ from the established Church by having worthier or more
philosophical ideas about God and the ordering of the world
than the established church has. It has very much the
same ideas about these as the established church has, but

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it differs from the established church in that its worship
is a much less collective and national affair. So mister
Spurgeon and the nonconformists seem to have misapprehended the true
meaning of Christ's words, My Kingdom is not of this
world because by these words Christ meant that his religion
was to work on the soul. And of the two
parts of the soul on which religion works, the thinking

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and speculative part and the feeling an imaginative part, nonconformity
satisfies the first no better than the established churches, which Christ,
by these words is supposed to have condemned, satisfy it,
and the second part it satisfies much worse than the
established churches. And thus the balance of advantage seems to
rest with the established churches, and they seem to have

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apprehended and applied Christ's words, if not with perfect adequacy,
at least less inadequately than the nonconformists. Might it not
then be urged with great force that the way to
do good in presence of this operation for approuting the
church establishment in Ireland by the power of the nonconformist
antipathy to publicly establishing or endowing religious worship is not

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by lending a hand straight away to the operation and hebrewizing,
that is, in this case, taking an uncritical interpretation of
certain Bible words as our absolute rule of conduct with
the nonconformists. It may be very well forborn Hebrewizers like
mister Spurgeon to Hebrews. But for liberal statesmen to Hebrewize
is surely unsafe. And to see poor liberal hacks hebrewising,

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whose real self belongs to a kind of negative Hellenism,
a state of moral indifferency without intellectual order, is even painful.
And when by our hebrizing, we neither do what the
better mind of statesmen prompted them to do, nor win
the affections of the people we want to conciliate, nor
yet reduce the opposition of our adversaries, but rather heighten it.

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Surely it may be not unreasonable to hellenize a little,
to let our thought and consciousness play freely about our
proposed operation and its motives. Dissolve these motives if they
are unsound, which certainly they have some appearance at any
rate of being, and create an they are staid, if
they are a set of sounder and more persuasive motives
conducting to a more solid operation. May not the man

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who promotes this be giving the best help towards finding
some lasting truth to minister to the diseased spirit of
his time, And as he really deserve that the believers
in action should grow impatient with him. But now to
take another operation which does not, at this moment so
excite people's feelings as the disestablishment of the Irish Church,
but which I suppose would also be called exactly one

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of those operations of simple, practical, common sense reform, aiming
at the removal of some particular abuse, and rigidly restricted
to that object to which a liberal ought to lend
a hand and deserves that other liberals should grow impatient
with him if he does not. This operation I had
the great advantage of, with my own ears hearing discussed
in the House of Commons, and recommended by a powerful

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speech from that famous speaker, mister Bright, so that the
effeminate horror which it is alleged I have of practical
reforms of this kind was put to a searching test,
and if it survived, it must have one would think
some reason or other to support it, and can hardly
quite merit the stigma of its present name. The operation
I mean was that which the Real Estate Intestacy Bill
aimed at accomplishing, and the discussion on this bill I

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heard in the House of Commons. The bill proposed, as
everyone knows, to prevent the land of a man who
dies intestate from going as it goes now to his
eldest son, and was thought by its friends and by
its enemies to be a step towards abating the now
almost exclusive possession of the land of this country by
the people whom we call the barbarians. Mister Bright and

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other speakers on his side seem to hold that there's
a kind of natural law or fitness of things, which
assigns to all a man's children a right to equal
shares in the enjoyment of his property after his death,
And that if, without depriving a man of an englishman's
prime privilege of doing what he likes by making what will,
he chooses, you provide that when he makes none, his

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land shall be divided among his family. Then you give
the sanction of the law to the natural fitness of things,
and inflict a sort of check on the present violation
of this by the barbarians. It occurred to me, when
I saw mister Bright and his friends proceeding in this way,
to ask myself a question, if the almost exclusive possession
of the land of this country by the barbarians is
a bad thing, is this practical operation of the liberals

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and the stock notion, on which it seems to rest
about the right of children to share equally in the
enjoyment of their father's property after his death. The best
and most effective means of dealing with it, or is
it best dealt with by letting one's thoughts and consciousness
play freely and naturally upon the barbarians this liberal operation
and the stock notion at the bottom of it, and

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trying to get as near as we can to the
intelligible law of things as to each of them. Now
does any one, if he simply or naturally reach his consciousness,
discover that he has any rights at all? For my part,
the deeper I go in my own consciousness, and the
more simply I abandoned myself to it, the more it
seems to tell me that I have no rights at all,
only duties. And that men get this notion of rights

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from a process of abstract reasoning, inferring that the obligations
they are conscious of towards others others must be conscious
of towards them, and not from any direct witness of
consciousness at all. But it is obvious that the notion
of a right arrived at in this way is likely
to stand as a formal and petrified thing, deceiving and
misleading us, And that the notions got directly from our

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consciousness ought to be brought to bear upon it and
to control it. So it is unsafe and misleading to
say that our children have rights against us. What is
true and safe to say is that we have duties
towards our children. But who will find among these natural
duties set forth to us by our consciousness the obligation
to leave to all our children and equal share in

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the enjoyment of our property. Or though consciousness tells us
we ought to provide for our children's welfare, whose consciousness
tells him that the enjoyment of property is in itself welfare.
Whether our children's welfare is best served by their all
sharing equally in our property depends on circumstances and on
the state of the community in which we live. Why
this equal sharing society could not, for example, have organized

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itself afresh out of the chaos left by the fall
of the Roman Empire. And to have an organized society
to live in is more for charles welfare than to
have an equal share of his father's property. So we
see how little convincing force the stock notion on which
the Real Estate Intestacy Bill was based, the notion that
in the nature and fitness of things, all a man's
children have a right to an equal share in the

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enjoyment of what he leaves really has, and how powerless
therefore it must of necessity be to persuade and win
anyone who has habits and interests which disinclined him to it.
On the other hand, the practical operation proposed relies entirely,
if it is to be effectual in altering the present
practice of the barbarians, on the power of truth and

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persuasiveness in the notion which it seeks to consecrate. For
it leaves to the barbarians full liberty to continue their
present practice to which all their habits and interests incline them,
unless the promulgation of a notion which we have seen
to have no vital efficacy in whole upon our consciousness
shall hinder them. Are we really to adorn an operation
of this kind merely because it proposes to do something

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with all the favorable epithets of simple practical common sense,
definite to enlist on its side all the zeal of
the believers in action, and to call indifference to it
a really effeminate horror of useful reforms. It seems to
be quite easy to show that a free, disinterested play
of thought on the barbarians and their land holding is
a thousand times more really practical, a thousand times more

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likely to lead to some effective result than an operation
such as that of which we have been now speaking. For. If,
casting aside the impediments of stock notions and mechanical action,
we try to find the intelligible law of things respecting
a great land owning class such as we have in
this country. Does not our consciousness readily tell us that
whether the perpetuation of such a class is for its

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own real welfare and for the real wealth of the
community depends on the actual circumstances of this class and
of the community. Does it not readily tell us at wealth, power,
and consideration are, and above all, when inherited and not
earned in themselves, trying and dangerous things. As Bishop Wilsen
excellently says, riches are almost always abused without a very

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extraordinary grace. But this extraordinary grace was in great measure
supplied by the circumstances of the feudal epoch, out of
which our land holding class, with its rules of inheritance sprang,
the labor and contentions of a rude, nascent and struggling
society supplied it. These perpetually were trying, chastising, and forming
the class whose predominance was then needed by society to

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give it points of cohesion, and was not so harmful
to themselves because they were thus sharply tried and exercised.
But in a luxurious, settled, and easy society, where wealth
offers the means of enjoyment a thousand times more, and
the temptation to abuse them is thus made a thousand
times greater, the exercising discipline is at the same time
taken away, and the feudal class is left exposed to

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the full operation of the natural law, well put by
the French raorrelist pouvois sensavois a fort donjour. And for
my part, when I regard the young people of this class,
it is above all by the trial and shipwreck made
of their own welfare by the circumstances in which they live,
that I am struck. How far better would it been
for nine out of every ten among them, if they

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had had their own way to make in the world,
and not been tried by a condition for which they
had not the extraordinary grace requisite. This, I say, seems
to be what a man's consciousness, simply consulted, would tell
him about the actual welfare of our barbarians themselves. Then,
as to their actual effect upon the welfare of the community,
how can this be salutary? If a class, which by

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the very possession of wealth, power and consideration becomes a
kind of ideal or standard for the rest of the community,
is tried by ease and pleasure more than it can
well bear, and almost irresistibly carried away from excellence and
strenuous virtue. This must certainly be what Solomon meant when
he said, as he who putteth the stone in a sling,
so is he that giveth honor to a fool. For

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any one can perceive how this honoring of a false ideal,
not of intelligence and strenuous virtue, but of wealth and station,
pleasure and ease, is as a stone from a sling
to kill in our great middle class in us were
called philistines. The desire before spoken of which by nature
forever carries all men towards that which is lovely, and

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to leave instead of it only a blind, deteriorating pursuit
for ourselves, also of the false ideal, and in those
among us Philistines whom this desire does not wholly abandon,
yet having no excellent ideals set forth to nourish and
to steady it, it meets with that natural bent for
the bathos, which, together with this desire itself, is implanted
at birth in the breast of man, and is by

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that force twisted awry, and born at random, hither and
thither and at last flung upon those grotesque and hideous
forms of popular religion, which the more respectable part among
us Philistines mistake for the true goal of man's desire,
after all that is lovely, and for the populace, this
false idea is a stone which kills the desire before

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it can even arise. So impossible and unattainable for them
do the conditions of that which is lovely appear, according
to this ideal, to be made so necessary to the
reaching of them by the few, seems the falling short
of them by the many, So that perhaps of the
actual vulgarity of our philistines and brutality of our populace,
the barbarians and their feudal habits of succession enduring out

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of their due time and place. I am voluntarily the
cause in a great degree, and they hurt the welfare
of the rest of the community at the same time that,
as we have seen, they hurt their own. But must
not now the working in our minds of considerations like these,
to which culture, that is, the disinterested and active use
of reading, reflection, and observation carries us, be really much

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more effectual to the dissolution of feudal habits and rules
of succession in Land than an operation like the real
Estate Intestacy Bill and a stock notion like that of
the natural right of all a man's children to an
equal share in the enjoyment of his property. Since we
have seen that this mechanical maxim is unsound, and that
if it is unsound, the operation relying upon it cannot

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possibly be effective. If truth and reason have, as we believe,
any natural irresistible effect on the mind of man, it
must these considerations, when culture has called them forth and
given them free course in our minds, will live and work.
They will work gradually, no doubt and will not bring
us ourselves to the front to sit in high place

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and put them into effect. But so they will be
all the more beneficial. Everything teaches us how gradually nature
would have all profound changes brought about. And we can
even see too where the absolute abrupt stoppage of feudal
habits has worked harm and appealing to the sense of
truth and reason. These considerations will without doubt touch and
move all those of even the barbarians themselves, who are

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as are some of us, feel science also, and some
of the populace beyond their fellows quick of feeling for
truth and reason. For indeed, this is just one of
the advance vantages of sweetness and light over fire and strength.
That sweetness and light make a feudal class quietly and
gradually drop its feudal habits because it sees him at
variance with truth and reason, while fire and strength tear

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them passionately off it because it applauded mister Low when
he called, or was supposed to call, the working class
drunken and venal. But when once we have begun to
recount the practical operations by which our liberal friends work
for the removal of definite evils, and in which if
we do not join them, they are apt to grow
impatient with us. How can we pass over that very

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interesting operation of this kind, the attempt to enable a
man to marry his deceased wife's sister. This operation too,
like that for abating the feudal customs of succession in Land.
I have had the advantage of myself seeing and hearing
my liberal friend's labor at I was lucky enough to
be present when mister Chambers, I think, brought forward in
the House of Commons his bill for enabling a man

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to marry his deceased wife's sister. And I heard the
speech which mister Chambers then made in support of his bill.
His first point was that God's Law, the name he
always gave to the Book of Leviticus, did not really
forbid a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. God's
law not forbidding it. The liberal maxim that a man's
prime right and happiness is to do as he likes
ought at once to come into force and to annowl

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any such check upon the assertion of personal liberty, as
the prohibition to marry one's deceased wife's sister end of
Chapter six, Part one,