HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM
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[430] The present selection comprises chapter IV, of Culture and Anarchy. In the preceding chapter Arnold has been pointing out the imperfection of the various classes of English society, which he describes as "Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace." For the correction of this imperfection he pleads for "some public recognition and establishment of our best self, or right reason." In chapter III, he has shown how "our habits and practice oppose themselves to such a recognition." He now proposes to find, "beneath our actual habits and practice, the very ground and cause out of which they spring." Then follows the selection here given.
Professor Gates has pointed out the fact that Arnold probably borrows the terms here contrasted from Heine. In Über Ludwig Börne (Werke, ed. Stuttgart, X, 12), Heine says: "All men are either Jews or Hellenes, men ascetic in their instincts, hostile to culture, spiritual fanatics, or men of vigorous good cheer, full of the pride of life, Naturalists." For Heine's own relation to Hebraism and Hellenism, see the present selection, p. 275.
[431] See Sweetness and Light, Selections, Note 1, p. 244. [Transcriber's note: This is Footnote 392 in this e-text.] Maxim 452 reads: "Two things a Christian will never do—never go against the best light he has, this will prove his sincerity, and, 2, to take care that his light be not darkness, i.e., that he mistake not his rule by which he ought to go."
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[432] 2 Pet. I, 4.
[433] ~Frederick William Robertson~ (1816-53) began his famous ministry at Brighton in 1847. He was a man of deep spirituality and great sincerity. The latter part of his life was clouded by opposition roused by his sympathy with the revolutionary ideas of the 1848 epoch and by the mental trouble which eventually resulted in his death. The sermon referred to seems to be the first Advent Lecture on The Greek. Arnold objects to Robertson's rather facile summarizing. Four characteristics are mentioned as marking Grecian life and religion: restlessness, worldliness, worship of the beautiful, and worship of the human. The second of these has three results, disappointment, degradation, disbelief in immortality.
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[434] ~Heinrich Heine~. See Heine, Selections, pp. 112-144. [Transcriber's note: This section begins at the text reference for Footnote 135 in this e-text.]