Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew ArnoldArnold, Matthew
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Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold
Arnold, Matthew
English essays -- 19th century
Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of a system, of
disciples, of a school; with men like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle,
[423] or Mr. Mill.[424] However much it may find to admire in these
personages, or in some of them, it nevertheless remembers the text: "Be
not ye called Rabbi!" and it soon passes on from any Rabbi. But
Jacobinism loves a Rabbi; it does not want to pass on from its Rabbi in
pursuit of a future and still unreached perfection; it wants its Rabbi
and his ideas to stand for perfection, that they may with the more
authority recast the world; and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture,--
eternally passing onwards and seeking,--is an impertinence and an
offence. But culture, just because it resists this tendency of
Jacobinism to impose on us a man with limitations and errors of his own
along with the true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the
world and Jacobinism itself a service.
So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past and of those whom
it makes liable for the sins of the past, cannot away with the
inexhaustible indulgence proper to culture, the consideration of
circumstances, the severe judgment of actions joined to the merciful
judgment of persons. "The man of culture is in politics," cries Mr.
Frederic Harrison, "one of the poorest mortals alive!" Mr. Frederic
Harrison wants to be doing business, and he complains that the man of
culture stops him with a "turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish
ease, and indecision in action." Of what use is culture, he asks, except
for "a critic of new books or a professor of _belles-lettres_?"[425]
Why, it is of use because, in presence of the fierce exasperation which
breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses through the whole production in
which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that question, it reminds us that the
perfection of human nature is sweetness and light. It is of use,
because, like religion,--that other effort after perfection,--it
testifies that, where bitter envying and strife are, there is confusion
and every evil work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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