Matthew Arnold

by George William Erskine Russell

Of all the phrases which Arnold either created or popularized, there is none more closely associated with his memory than this famous conjunction of Hebraism and Hellenism; and in this connexion, it is not out of place to note his abiding interest in, and affection for, the House of Israel. The present writer once delivered a rather long and elaborate lecture on Arnold's genius and writings; and next morning a daily paper gave this masterpiece of condensed and tactful reporting: "The lecturer stated that Mr. Arnold was of Jewish extraction, and proceeded to read passages from his works." It might have been more truly said that the lecturer suggested, as interesting to those who speculate in race and pedigree, the question whether Arnold's remote ancestors had belonged to the Ancient Race, and had emigrated from Germany to Lowestoft, where they dwelt for several generations. There is certainly no proof that so it was; and genealogical researches would in any case be out of keeping with the scope of this book. It is enough to note the fact of his affectionate and grateful feeling towards the Jewish race, and this can best be done in his own words. The present Lord Rothschild, formerly Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild, is the first adherent of the Jewish faith who ever was admitted to the House of Lords, though of course there have been other Peers of Jewish descent. When Mr. Gladstone created this Jewish peerage,[32] Arnold wrote as follows to an admirable lady whose name often appears in his published Letters—

"I have received so much kindness from your family, and I have so sincere a regard for yourself, that I should in any case have been tempted to send you a word of congratulation on Sir Nathaniel's peerage; but I really feel also proud and happy for the British public to have, by this peerage, signally marked the abandonment of its old policy of exclusion, the final and total abandonment of it. What have we not learned and gained from the people whom we have been excluding all these years! And how every one of us will see and say this in the future!"

What, in his view, we had "learned and gained" from the Jewish people, is well expressed in the preface to Culture and Anarchy.

"To walk staunchly by the best light one has, to be strict and sincere with oneself, not to be of the number of those who say and do not, to be in earnest—this is the discipline by which alone man is enabled to rescue his life from thraldom to the passing moment and to his bodily senses, to ennoble it, and to make it eternal. And this discipline has been nowhere so effectively taught as in the School of Hebraism. The intense and convinced energy with which the Hebrew, both of the Old and the New Testament, threw himself upon his ideal of righteousness, and which inspired the incomparable definition of the great Christian virtue, Faith—the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen—this energy of devotion to its ideal has belonged to Hebraism alone. As our idea of perfection widens beyond the narrow limits to which the over-rigour of Hebraising has tended to confine it, we shall yet come again to Hebraism for that devout energy in embracing our ideal, which alone can give to man the happiness of doing what he knows. "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them!"—the last word for human infirmity will always be that. For this word, reiterated with a power now sublime, now affecting, but always admirable, our race will, as long as the world lasts, return to Hebraism."

Having thus described the function of Hebraism, Arnold goes on to define Hellenism as "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, the indomitable impulse to know and adjust them perfectly." These two great forces divide the empire of the world between them; and we call them Hebraism and Hellenism after the two races of men who have most signally illustrated them. "Hebraism and Hellenism—between these two points of influence moves our world." The idea of Hellenism is to see things as they are: the idea of Hebraism is conduct and obedience. Our aim should be to combine the merits of both ideas, and be "evenly and happily balanced between them." Enlarging on this text, he traces the working of the two principles, which ought not to be rivals but have been made such by the perverseness of men, philosophy and history; and then, turning to our own day and its doings, he says that Puritanism, which originally was a reaction of the conscience and moral sense against the indifference and lax conduct of the Renascence, has gone counter, during the last two centuries, to the main stream of human advance; has hindered men from trying to see things as they really are, and has made strictness of conduct the great aim of human life. "It made the secondary the principal at the wrong moment, and the principal it at the wrong moment treated as secondary." Hence have arisen all sorts of confusion and inefficiency. Everywhere we see the signs of anarchy, and the need for 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."

From this short chapter, he passes on to Chapter V, which he heads: "Porro unum est necessarium"; and here he pursues his controversy with modern Puritanism, which imagines that it has, in its special conception of God and religion, the unum necessarium, which can dispense with Sweetness and Light, self-culture and self-discipline. "The Puritan's great danger is that he imagines himself in possession of a rule telling him the unum necessarium, or one thing needful, and that he then remains satisfied with a very crude conception of what this rule really is and what it tells him, thinks he has now knowledge and henceforth needs only to act, and, in this dangerous state of assurance and self-satisfaction, proceeds to give full swing to a number of the instincts of his ordinary self.... What he wants is a larger conception of human nature, showing him the number of other points at which his nature must come to its best, besides the points which he himself knows and thinks of. There is no unum necessarium, or one thing needful, which can free human nature from the obligation of trying to come to its best at all these points. Instead of our 'one thing needful' justifying in us vulgarity, hideousness, ignorance, violence—our vulgarity, hideousness, ignorance, violence are really so many touchstones which try our one thing needful, and which prove that in the state, at any rate, in which we ourselves have it, it is not all we want. And, as the force which encourages us to stand staunch and fast by the rule and ground we have is Hebraism, so the force which encourages us to go back upon this rule, and to try the very ground on which we appear to stand, is Hellenism—a term for giving our consciousness free play, and enlarging its range."

In his Sixth Chapter—headed "Our Liberal Practitioners"—he applies his general doctrine to persons and performances of the year 1869. The Liberal Party was just then busy disestablishing and disendowing the Irish Church. He was in favour of Established Churches, and of Concurrent Endowment. He realized the absurdity of the Irish Church as it then stood; but, true to his critical character, he rebuked the "Liberal Practitioners" for the spirit in which they were disestablishing and disendowing it. They did not approach the subject in the spirit of Hellenism: they did not appeal to Right Reason: they did not attempt to see the problem of religious establishment as it really was. But they Hebraized about it—that is, they took an uncritical interpretation of biblical words as their absolute rule of conduct. "It may," he said, "be all very well for born Hebraizers, like Mr. Spurgeon, to Hebraize; but for Liberal statesmen to Hebraize is surely unsafe, and to see poor old Liberal hacks Hebraizing, whose real self belongs to a kind of negative Hellenism—a state of moral indifference, without intellectual ardour—is even painful." In the same manner he dealt with the movement to abolish Primogeniture, strongly urged by John Bright; the movement to legalize marriage with a wife's sister—"the craving for forbidden fruit" joined with "the craving for legality"; and the doctrine, then supposed to be incontrovertible, of Free Trade. In all these cases, he proposed to "Hellenize a little," to "turn the free stream of our thought" on the Liberal policy of the moment; and to "see how this is related to the intelligible law of human life, and to national well-being and happiness."

And so we were brought to the conclusion of the whole matter. The stock-beliefs and stock-performances of Liberalism were exhausted, uninteresting, in some grave respects mischievous. Seekers after truth, disciples of culture, men bent on trying to see things as they really are, should lend no hand to these labours of the Philistines. Their right course was to stand absolutely aloof from the political work which was going on round them; and to pursue, with undeviating consistency, "increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy."

It is interesting to recall that Charles Kingsley praised Culture and Anarchy in a letter which greatly pleased Arnold, as showing "the generous and affectionate side" of Kingsley's disposition. And this is his answer to Kingsley's praise: "Of my reception by the general public I have, perhaps, no cause to boast; but from the men who lead in literature, from men like you, I have met with nothing but kindness and generosity. The being thrown so much for the last twenty years with Dissenters, and the observing their great strength and their great impenetrability—how they seemed to think that in their 'gospel'—a mere caricature, in truth, of the real Gospel—they had a secret which enabled them to judge all literature and all art and to keep aloof from modern ideas—set me on thinking how they might be got at, and on the use of this parallel of Hebraism and Hellenism. If I was to think only of the Dissenters, or if I were in your position, I should press incessantly for more Hellenism; but, as it is, seeing the tendency of our young poetical litterateur (Swinburne), and, on the other hand, seeing much of Huxley (whom I thoroughly liked and admire, but find very disposed to be tyrannical and unjust), I lean towards Hebraism, and try to prevent the balance from on this side flying up out of sight." Dean Church, also, in writing about the book, expressed "his sense of the importance of the distinction between Hellenism and Hebraism." "This," said Arnold, "showed his width of mind"; for "it is a distinction on which more and more will turn, and on dealing wisely with it everything depends."

I have dwelt at this rather disproportionate length on the structure and teaching of Culture and Anarchy, partly because it was to men who were young in 1869 a landmark in their mental life, and partly because it gives the whole body of Arnold's political and social teaching. He pursued this line of thought for twenty years; Friendship's Garland, with its inimitable fun, appeared in 1871, and was followed by a long series of essays and lectures; but the germ of whatever he subsequently wrote is to be found in Culture and Anarchy. And from that memorable book what did we learn?