Arnold, Matthew, 1822-1888; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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