Arnold, Matthew, 1822-1888; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
"Perfection is not possible, while the individual remains isolated." "To
promote the Kingdom of God is to increase and hasten one's own
happiness." Finally, Perfection as Culture conceives it, is a harmonious
expansion of _all_ the powers which make the beauty and worth of human
nature: "and here," says Arnold, "Culture goes beyond Religion, as
Religion is generally conceived by us." Stress must be laid upon those
last words; for Religion, according to its full and catholic ideal, is
the perfection and consecration of man's whole nature, intellectual and
physical, as well as moral and spiritual. All that is lovely, splendid,
moving, heroic, even enjoyable, in human life--all health and vigour and
beauty and cleverness and charm--all nature and all art, all science and
all literature--are among the good and perfect gifts which come down
from the Father of Lights. But this is just the conception of Religion
which Puritanism never grasped--nay, rather which Puritanism definitely
rejected." And here probably is the origin of that quarrel with
Puritanism, at least in its more superficial and obvious aspects, which
so coloured and sometimes barbed Arnold's meditations on Religion. "As I
have said with regard to wealth: Let us look at the life of those who
live in and for it--so I say with regard to the religious organizations.
Look at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the _Nonconformist_--a
life of jealousy of the Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings
of chapels, sermons; and then think of it as an ideal of human life
completing itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs after
sweetness, light, and perfection!"
So much then for his definition of Culture; and we must admit that "the
old Liberal hacks," the speakers on Liberal platforms, and the writers
in Liberal papers, were not without excuse when they failed so utterly
to divine what the new Teacher meant by harping on a word which Bacon
and Pope had used in so different a sense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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