The little book has often been reprinted; but as "A Bible Reading for Schools" it failed, as, to judge by his own melancholy words about it, he seems to have foreseen that it would fail. People who have charge of Elementary Education in England, whether in Church Schools or in Board Schools, are eminently and rightly suspicious about new views in religion; and The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration gave currency to a view which in 1872 was probably new to most School Managers and School Boards. He carefully disclaimed any intention to decide the authorship of the chapters which he edited. But the fact that they were detached from the earlier ones might perhaps raise questions in enquiring minds; and in the preface he stated his personal belief that "the author of the earlier part of the Book of Isaiah was not the author of these last chapters." He most truly added that "there is nothing to forbid a member of the Church of England, or, for that matter, a member of the Church of Rome either, or a member of the Jewish Synagogue, from holding such a belief"; but probably clergymen and Dissenting ministers and pious laymen of all denominations looked rather askance at it; and the little book never got itself adopted as "A Bible Reading for Schools."
Thus ended his one attempt to improve, positively and by construction, the curriculum of the Elementary Schools; and we return, at the end of this study of his Educational doctrine, to the point at which we began.
"Organize your Elementary, your Secondary, your Superior, Education." This was the burden of his teaching for five-and-thirty years; and, if the community has at length really set its hand to that great task, it is only right that we should remember with honour the Master who first taught us (when the doctrine was unpopular) that the primary duty of a civilized State is to educate its children.
CHAPTER IV
SOCIETY
"Culture seeks to do away with classes and sects; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely; nourished, and not bound, by them. This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality."
The words—social idea—which Arnold himself italicized in the foregoing extract from Culture and Anarchy, will indicate the sense in which "Society" is here intended. We are not thinking of that which Pennialinus[21] means when he writes about "Society gossip" or "a Society function." We are concerned with the thoughts and temper and actions of men, not as isolated units, but as living in an organized community; and, taking "Society" in this sense, we are to examine Arnold's influence on the Society of his time.