Concept of culture according to Matthew Arnold
Name:- chauhan Urvashi N.
Roll no :- 31
Paper no:- 6 Victorian literature
Topic:- concept of culture according to Matthew Arnold
Enrollment no:- 2069108420190008
Email Id:- urvashichauhan157@gmail.com
Class:- sem.2
Batch:- 2018- 2020
Submitted to Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
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Culture and anarchy – Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic.who worked as an inspector of schools. He has been characterized as a Sage writer. a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues and in his “culture and anarchy” he is doing the same. “Culture and Anarchy” is a series of periodicals essays. His essay first published in Cornhill magazine 1867-68. and collected as a book in 1869. The preface was added in 1875. Arnold’s famous piece of writing on culture established his high Victorian cultural agenda. Which remained dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s.
There are six chapters in Arnold’s Essay ‘Culture and Anarchy’ as,
1. Sweetness and Light
2. Doing as one likes
3. Barbarian , Philistine , Populace
4. Hebraism and Hellenism
5. Porro Unum est Necessarium (but one thing is necessary)
6. Our Liberal Practitioners
There understand the essay culture and anarchy one has to know about the concept of culture given by Arnold. so we will see what is the concept of culture according to Mathew Arnold in brief.
According to Matthew Arnold:
Mathew Arnold in this essay on ‘Culture and Anarchy’ sets out to vindicate the true ‘culture’. By Frederic Harrison etc. And news paper like Daily Telegraph and Times. On doing so he resort to Bishop Wilson’s Maxim of poetry & Christianity , Meditation of Marcus Aurelius M.Renan etc. In the introduction to this essay Arnold clearly mention :
The whole scope of the essay is to recommend Culture as the great help out of our present difficulties. Culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know on all the matters which most concern us “the best which has been thought and said in the world”. and through this knowledge turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock nations and habits. which we now follow staunchly but mechanically vainly imaging that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically.
This and this alone is the scope of the following essay. And the culture we recommend is above all an inward operation. To show the importance of culture Arnold has given an example of American culture. The then news daily Times had praised the advancement of America as “America without religious establishment seems to get ahead of us all even in light and the things of mind.” But by not laying the foundation of culture America .“have created intellectual mediocrity their vulgarity of manners their superficial spirit. their lack of general intelligence.
Arnold a believer in culture :- proposes to try and enquire in the simple unsystematic way “what culture really is what good it can do what is our own special need of it . and he shall seeks to find some plain grounds on which a faith in culture both his own faith in it and the faith of others may rest securely.”
Culture as a study in perfection:-
CULTURE which is the study of perfection leads us . as Arnold in the essay have shown “to conceived to true human perfection as harmonious perfection developing all sides of our humanity. and as a general perfection, developing all parts of our society. For if one member suffers the other members must suffer with it. and the fewer there is that follow the true way of salvation the harder that way is to find.” Culture is considered not merely as the endeavour to see and learn this, but as the endeavour also to make it prevail the moral, social, and beneficent character of culture become manifest.
RELIGION says: ‘The Kingdom of God is within you ’and culture in like manner. Places human perfection in an internal condition in the growth and predominance of our humanity proper as distinguished from our animality. It is in making endless additions to itself in the endless expansion of its power in endless growth in wisdom and beauty. that the spirit of the human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal culture is an indispensable aid and that is the true value of culture. ‘Not a having and a resting but a growing and a becoming is the character of perfection as culture conceives it and here too it coincides with religion.
Perfection as culture conceives it is not possible while the individual remains isolated. The individual is required under pain of being stunted (underdevelopment) and enfeebled in his own development if he disobeys to carry others along with him in his march towards perfection.
If culture then is a study of perfection and of harmonious perfection, general perfection and perfection which consists in becoming something rather than in having something in an inward condition of the mind and spirit not in an outward set of circumstances. It is clear that culture instead of being the frivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright and Mr. Frederic Harrison and many other liberals are apt to call it has a very important function to fulfill for mankind.
Arnold mentions that the only purpose of culture is in keeping the mark of human perfection simply and broadly in view and not assigning to his perfection as religion. or utilitarianism assign to it a special and limited character this point of view according to him of culture is best given by these words of Epictetus:- ‘It is a sign of aphuia (without natural talents, dull) says he that is of a nature not finely tempered to give yourselves up to things .which relate to the body to make for instance a great fuss about exercise. a great fuss about eating, a great fuss about drinking, a great fuss about walking, a great fuss about riding. All these things ought to be done merely by the way the formation of the spirit and character must be our real concern. This is admirable and indeed the Greek words aphuis, euphuis (well-grown, shapely, goodly: graceful, of good natural parts: clever, witty also of good disposition a finely tempered nature) gives exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to conceives it: a harmonious perfection a perfection in which the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present which unites ‘the two noblest of things, as swift most happily calls them in his Battle of Books ‘the two noblest of things, sweetness and light.
Culture: - Sweetness & Light
Arnold culture is connected with the idea of Sweetness and Light. He tries to explain this idea with the help of Greek words aphuia & euphuia. The euphyes is the man who tends towards sweetness and Light the aphyes on the other hand is our Philistine .The immense spirituals significance of the Greeks is due to having been inspired with this central and happy idea of the essential character of human perfection and Mr. Bright’s misconception of culture as a smattering of Greek and Latin comes itself after all from this wonderful significance of the Greeks having affected the very machinery of our education, and is in itself a kind of homage to it. In thus making sweetness and light to be characters of perfection culture is of like spirit with poetry follows one law with poetry.
Culture however show its single-minded love of perfection. its desire simply to make reason and the will of God prevail its freedom from fanaticism by its attitude towards all this machinery .even while it insists that it is machinery.
The pursuit of perfection then, perfection then is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery. he who works for hatred works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery. culture hates hatred culture has one great passion the passion for sweetness and light.
What is greatness?
Culture makes us ask- ‘What is Greatness? ’Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excites love interest, and admiration and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration. If England were swallowed up by the sea tomorrow which of the two a hundred years hence would most excite the love, interest and admiration mankind, would most therefore show the evidence of having possessed greatness the England of Elizabeth of a time of splendid spiritual effort . but when our coal, and our industrial operation depending on coal were very little developed? The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich. are just the very people whom we call Philistine. Culture says: - ‘Consider these people then, their voices look at them attentively observe the literature they read the things which give them pleasure the words which come forth out of their mouths the thoughts which make the furniture of their mind would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition . that one was to become just like these people by having it? And thus culture begets a dissatisfaction which is of the highest possible value in stemming the common tide of men’s thought in a wealthy and industrial community and which saves the future as one may hope from being vulgariz even if it cannot save the present.
Conclusion:-
Thus to conclude we may say that the men of culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing for carrying from one end of society to the other the best knowledge the best ideas of their time .who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, difficult, abstract, professional to humanize it to make it efficient outside the circle of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the time and a true sources therefore of sweetness and light. Such a man was Ablerardin the middle Ages are such were Lessing and Herder in Germany- generations will pass and literary monuments will accumulate and works far more perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be produced in Germany and yet the names of these two men will fill a German with enthusiasm.
Sources from reading material
Words :- 1767
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