Alfred J. Drake, PhD, has graciously shared with readers of the Victorian Web this chapter from Arnold's Culture and Anarchy from his website. He has produced this e-text from the first edition, London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1869.
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rom a man without a philosophy no one can expect philosophical
completeness. Therefore I may observe without shame, that in trying
to get a distinct notion of our aristocratic, our middle, and our
working class, with a view of testing the claims of each of these
classes to become a centre of authority, I have omitted, I find, to
complete the old-fashioned analysis which I had the fancy of
applying, and have not shown in these classes, as well as the
virtuous mean and the excess, the defect also. I do not know that
the omission very much matters; still as clearness is the one merit
which a plain, unsystematic writer, without a philosophy, can hope to
have, and as our notion of the three great English classes may
perhaps be made clearer if we see their distinctive qualities in the
defect, as well as in the excess and in the mean, let us try, before
proceeding further, to remedy this omission.
It is manifest, if the perfect and virtuous mean of that fine spirit which is the distinctive quality [93/94] of aristocracies, is to be found in Lord Elcho's chivalrous style, and its excess in Sir Thomas Bateson's turn for resistance, that its defect must lie in a spirit not bold and high enough, and in an excessive and pusillanimous unaptness for resistance. If, again, the perfect and virtuous mean of that force by which our middle-class has done its great works, and of that self-reliance with which it contemplates itself and them, is to be seen in the performances and speeches of Mr. Bazley, and the excess of that force and that self-reliance in the performances and speeches of the Rev. W. Cattle, then it is manifest that their defect must lie in a helpless inaptitude for the great works of the middle- class, and in a poor and despicable lack of its self-satisfaction. To be chosen to exemplify the happy mean of a good quality, or set of good qualities, is evidently a praise to a man; nay, to be chosen to exemplify even their excess, is a kind of praise. Therefore I could have no hesitation in taking Lord Elcho and Mr. Bazley, the Rev. W. Cattle and Sir Thomas Bateson, to exemplify, respectively, the mean and the excess of aristocratic and middle-class qualities. But perhaps there might [94/95] be a want of urbanity in singling out this or that personage as the representative of defect. Therefore I shall leave the defect of aristocracy unillustrated by any representative man. But with oneself one may always, without impropriety, deal quite freely; and, indeed, this sort of plain-dealing with oneself has in it, as all the moralists tell us, something very wholesome. So I will venture to humbly offer myself as an illustration of defect in those forces and qualities which make our middle-class what it is. The too well-founded reproaches of my opponents declare how little I have lent a hand to the great works of the middle-class; for it is evidently these works, and my slackness at them, which are meant, when I am said to "refuse to lend a hand to the humble operation of uprooting certain definite evils" (such as church-rates and others), and that therefore "the believers in action grow impatient" with me. The line, again, of a still unsatisfied seeker which I have followed, the idea of self-transformation, of growing towards some measure of sweetness and light not yet reached, is evidently at clean variance with the perfect self-satisfaction current in my class, the middle- class, [95/96] and may serve to indicate in me, therefore, the extreme defect of this feeling. But these confessions, though salutary, are bitter and unpleasant.
To pass, then, to the working-class. The defect of this class would be the falling short in what Mr. Frederic Harrison calls those "bright powers of sympathy and ready powers of action," of which we saw in Mr. Odger the virtuous mean, and in Mr. Bradlaugh the excess. The working-class is so fast growing and rising at the present time, that instances of this defect cannot well be now very common. Perhaps Canning's "Needy Knife-grinder" (who is dead, and therefore cannot be pained at my taking him for an illustration) may serve to give us the notion of defect in the essential quality of a working- class; or I might even cite (since, though he is alive in the flesh, he is dead to all heed of criticism) my poor old poaching friend, Zephaniah Diggs, who, between his hare-snaring and his gin-drinking, has got his powers of sympathy quite dulled and his powers of action in any great movement of his class hopelessly impaired. But examples of this defect belong, as I have said, to a bygone age rather than to the present.[96/97]
The same desire for clearness, which has led me thus to extend a little my first analysis of the three great classes of English society, prompts me also to make my nomenclature for them a little fuller, with a view to making it thereby more clear and manageable. It is awkward and tiresome to be always saying the aristocratic class, the middle-class, the working-class. For the middle-class, for that great body which, as we know, "has done all the great things that have been done in all departments," and which is to be conceived as chiefly moving between its two cardinal points of Mr. Bazley and the Rev. W. Cattle, but inclining, in the mass, rather towards the latter than the former — for this class we have a designation which now has become pretty well known, and which we may as well still keep for them, the designation of Philistines. What this term means I have so often explained that I need not repeat it here. For the aristocratic class, conceived mainly as a body moving between the two cardinal points of Lord Elcho and Sir Thomas Bateson, but as a whole nearer to the latter than the former, we have as yet got no special designation. Almost [97/98] all my attention has naturally been concentrated on my own class, the middle-class, with which I am in closest sympathy, and which has been, besides, the great power of our day, and has had its praises sung by all speakers and newspapers. Still the aristocratic class is so important in itself, and the weighty functions which Mr. Carlyle proposes at the present critical time to commit to it must add so much to its importance, that it seems neglectful, and a strong instance of that want of coherent philosophic method for which Mr. Frederic Harrison blames me, to leave the aristocratic class so much without notice and denomination. It may be thought that the characteristic which I have occasionally mentioned as proper to aristocracies, — their natural inaccessibility, as children of the established fact, to ideas, — points to our extending to this class also the designation of Philistines; the Philistine being, as is well known, the enemy of the children of light, or servants of the idea. Nevertheless, there seems to be an inconvenience in thus giving one and the same designation to two very different classes; and besides, if we look into the thing closely, we shall find that the term Philistine conveys a sense which [98/99] makes it more peculiarly appropriate to our middle class than to our aristocratic. For Philistine gives the notion of something particularly stiff-necked and perverse in the resistance to light and its children, and therein it specially suits our middle-class, who not only do not pursue sweetness and light, but who prefer to them that sort of machinery of business, chapels, tea meetings, and addresses from Mr. Murphy and the Rev. W. Cattle, which makes up the dismal and illiberal life on which I have so often touched. But the aristocratic class has actually, as we have seen, in its well-known politeness, a kind of image or shadow of sweetness; and as for light, if it does not pursue light, it is not that it perversely cherishes some dismal and illiberal existence in preference to light, but it is seduced from following light by those mighty and eternal seducers of our race which weave for this class their most irresistible charms, — by worldly splendour, security, power and pleasure. These seducers are exterior goods, but they are goods; and he who is hindered by them from caring for light and ideas, is not so much doing what is perverse as what is natural.
Keeping this in view, I have in my own mind [99/100] often indulged myself with the fancy of putting side by side with the idea of our aristocratic class, the idea of the Barbarians. The Barbarians, to whom we all owe so much, and who reinvigorated and renewed our worn- out Europe, had, as is well-known, eminent merits; and in this country, where we are for the most part sprung from the Barbarians, we have never had the prejudice against them which prevails among the races of Latin origin. The Barbarians brought with them that staunch individualism, as the modern phrase is, and that passion for doing as one likes, for the assertion of personal liberty, which appears to Mr. Bright the central idea of English life, and of which we have, at any rate, a very rich supply. The stronghold and natural seat of this passion was in the nobles of whom our aristocratic class are the inheritors; and this class, accordingly, have signally manifested it, and have done much by their example to recommend it to the body of the nation, who already, indeed, had it in their blood. The Barbarians, again, had the passion for field-sports; and they have handed it on to our aristocratic class, who of this passion too, as of the passion for asserting one's personal liberty, are the [100/101] great natural stronghold. The care of the Barbarians for the body, and for all manly exercises; the vigour, good looks, and fine complexion which they acquired and perpetuated in their families by these means, — all this may be observed still in our aristocratic class. The chivalry of the Barbarians, with its characteristics of high spirit, choice manners, and distinguished bearing, — what is this but the beautiful commencement of the politeness of our aristocratic class? In some Barbarian noble, no doubt, one would have admired, if one could have been then alive to see it, the rudiments of Lord Elcho. Only, all this culture (to call it by that name) of the Barbarians was an exterior culture mainly: it consisted principally in outward gifts and graces, in looks, manners, accomplishments, prowess; the chief inward gifts which had part in it were the most exterior, so to speak, of inward gifts, those which come nearest to outward ones: they were courage, a high spirit, self-confidence. Far within, and unawakened, lay a whole range of powers of thought and feeling, to which these interesting productions of nature had, from the circumstances of their life, no access. Making allowances for the [101/102] difference of the times, surely we can observe precisely the same thing now in our aristocratic class. In general its culture is exterior chiefly; all the exterior graces and accomplishments, and the more external of the inward virtues, seem to be principally its portion. It now, of course, cannot but be often in contact with those studies by which, from the world of thought and feeling, true culture teaches us to fetch sweetness and light; but its hold upon these very studies appears remarkably external, and unable to exert any deep power upon its spirit. Therefore the one insufficiency which we noted in the perfect mean of this class, Lord Elcho, was an insufficiency of light. And owing to the same causes, does not a subtle criticism lead us to make, even on the good looks and politeness of our aristocratic class, the one qualifying remark, that in these charming gifts there should perhaps be, for ideal perfection, a shade more soul?
I often, therefore, when I want to distinguish clearly the aristocratic class from the Philistines proper, or middle-class, name the former, in my own mind, the Barbarians: and when I go through the country, and see this and that beautiful and [102/103] imposing seat of theirs crowning the landscape, "There," I say to myself, "is a great fortified post of the Barbarians."
It is obvious that that part of the working-class which, working diligently by the light of Mrs. Gooch's Golden Rule, looks forward to the happy day when it will sit on thrones with Mr. Bazley and other middle-class potentates, to survey, as Mr. Bright beautifully says, "the cities it has built, the railroads it has made, the manufactures it has produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest mercantile navy the world has ever seen," — it is obvious, I say, that this part of the working-class is, or is in a fair way to be, one in spirit with the industrial middle-class. It is notorious that our middle-class liberals have long looked forward to this consummation, when the working-class shall join forces with them, aid them heartily to carry forward their great works, go in a body to their tea- meetings, and, in short, enable them to bring about their millennium. That part of the working-class, therefore, which does really seem to lend itself to these great aims, may, with propriety, be numbered by us among the Philistines. That part of it, again, which [103/104] so much occupies the attention of philanthropists at present, — the part which gives all its energies to organising itself, through trades' unions and other means, so as to constitute, first, a great working- class power, independent of the middle and aristocratic classes, and then, by dint of numbers, give the law to them, and itself reign absolutely, — this lively and interesting part must also, according to our definition, go with the Philistines; because it is its class and its class-instinct which it seeks to affirm, its ordinary self not its best self; and it is a machinery, an industrial machinery, and power and pre-eminence and other external goods which fill its thoughts, and not an inward perfection. It is wholly occupied, according to Plato's subtle expression, with the things of itself and not its real self, with the things of the State and not the real State. But that vast portion, lastly, of the working-class which, raw and half-developed, has long lain half-hidden amidst its poverty and squalor, and is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman's heaven-born privilege of doing as he likes, and is beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it likes, bawling what it likes, [104/105] breaking what it likes, — to this vast residuum we may with great propriety give the name of Populace.
Thus we have got three distinct terms, Barbarians, Philistines, Populace, to denote roughly the three great classes into which our society is divided; and though this humble attempt at a scientific nomenclature falls, no doubt, very far short in precision of what might be required from a writer equipped with a complete and coherent philosophy, yet, from a notoriously unsystematic and unpretending writer, it will, I trust, be accepted as sufficient.
But in using this new, and, I hope, convenient division of English
society, two things are to be borne in mind. The first is, that
since, under all our class divisions, there is a common basis of
human nature, therefore, in every one of us, whether we be properly
Barbarians, Philistines, or Populace, there exists, sometimes only in
germ and potentially, sometimes more or less developed, the same
tendencies and passions which have made our fellow-citizens of other
classes what they are. This consideration is very important, because
it has great influence in begetting that spirit of indulgence which
[105/106] is a necessary part of sweetness, and which, indeed, when our
culture is complete, is, as I have said, inexhaustible. Thus, an
English Barbarian who examines himself, will, in general, find
himself to be not so entirely a Barbarian but that he has in him,
also, something of the Philistine, and even something of the Populace
as well. And the same with Englishmen of the two other classes.
This is an experience which we may all verify every day. For
instance, I myself (I again take myself as a sort of corpus vile to
serve for illustration in a matter where serving for illustration may
not by every one be thought agreeable), I myself am properly a
Philistine, — Mr. Swinburne would add, the son of a Philistine, — and
though, through circumstances which will perhaps one day be known, if
ever the affecting history of my conversion comes to be written, I
have, for the most part, broken with the ideas and the tea-meetings
of my own class, yet I have not, on that account, been brought much
the nearer to the ideas and works of the Barbarians or of the
Populace. Nevertheless, I never take a gun or a fishing-rod in my
hands without feeling that I have in the ground of my nature the
self-same seeds which, fostered by [106/107] circumstances, do so much to
make the Barbarian; and that, with the Barbarian's advantages, I
might have rivalled him. Place me in one of his great fortified
posts, with these seeds of a love for field-sports sown in my nature,
With all the means of developing them, with all pleasures at my
command, with most whom I met deferring to me, every one I met
smiling on me, and with every appearance of permanence and security
before me and behind me, — then I too might have grown, I feel, into a
very passable child of the established fact, of commendable spirit
and politeness, and, at the same time, a little inaccessible to ideas
and light; not, of course, with either the eminent fine spirit of
Lord Elcho, or the eminent power of resistance of Sir Thomas Bateson,
but, according to the measure of the common run of mankind, something
between the two. And as to the Populace, who, whether he be
Barbarian or Philistine, can look at them without sympathy, when he
remembers how often, — every time that we snatch up a vehement opinion
in ignorance and passion, every time that we long to crush an
adversary by sheer violence, every time that we are envious, every
time that we are brutal, [107/108] every time that we adore mere power or
success, every time that we add our voice to swell a blind clamour
against some unpopular personage, every time that we trample savagely
on the fallen, — he has found in his own bosom the eternal spirit of
the Populace, and that there needs only a little help from
circumstances to make it triumph in him untameably?
The second thing to be borne in mind I have indicated several times already. It is this. All of us, so far as we are Barbarians, Philistines, or Populace, imagine happiness to consist in doing what one's ordinary self likes. What one's ordinary self likes differs according to the class to which one belongs, and has its severer and its lighter side; always, however, remaining machinery, and nothing more. The graver self of the Barbarian likes honours and consideration; his more relaxed self, field-sports and pleasure. The graver self of one kind of Philistine likes business and money- making; his more relaxed self, comfort and tea-meetings. Of another kind of Philistine, the graver self likes trades' unions; the relaxed self, deputations, or hearing Mr. Odger speak. The sterner self of the [108/109] Populace likes bawling, hustling, and smashing; the lighter self, beer. But in each class there are born a certain number of natures with a curiosity about their best self, with a bent for seeing things as they are, for disentangling themselves from machinery, for simply concerning themselves with reason and the will of God, and doing their best to make these prevail; — for the pursuit, in a word, of perfection. To certain manifestations of this love for perfection mankind have accustomed themselves to give the name of genius; implying, by this name, something original and heaven- bestowed in the passion. But the passion is to be found far beyond those manifestations of it to which the world usually gives the name of genius, and in which there is, for the most part, a talent of some kind or other, a special and striking faculty of execution, informed by the heaven-bestowed ardour, or genius. It is to be found in many manifestations besides these, and may best be called, as we have called it, the love and pursuit of perfection; culture being the true nurse of the pursuing love, and sweetness and light the true character of the pursued perfection. Natures with this bent emerge in all classes, — among the Barbarians, among the Philistines, [109/110] among the Populace. And this bent always tends, as I have said, to take them out of their class, and to make their distinguishing characteristic not their Barbarianism or their Philistinism, but their humanity. They have, in general, a rough time of it in their lives; but they are sown more abundantly than one might think, they appear where and when one least expects it, they set up a fire which enfilades, so to speak, the class with which they are ranked; and, in general, by the extrication of their best self as the self to develope, and by the simplicity of the ends fixed by them as paramount, they hinder the unchecked predominance of that class-life which is the affirmation of our ordinary self, and seasonably disconcert mankind in their worship of machinery.
Therefore, when we speak of ourselves as divided into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace, we must be understood always to imply that within each of these classes there are a certain number of aliens, if we may so call them, — persons who are mainly led, not by their class spirit, but by a general humane spirit, by the love of human perfection; and that this number is capable of being diminished or augmented. I mean, the number of those who will succeed in [110/111] developing this happy instinct will be greater or smaller, in proportion both to the force of the original instinct within them, and to the hindrance or encouragement which it meets with from without. In almost all who have it, it is mixed with some infusion of the spirit of an ordinary self, some quantity of class-instinct, and even, as has been shown, of more than one class-instinct at the same time; so that, in general, the extrication of the best self, the predominance of the humane instinct, will very much depend upon its meeting, or not, with what is fitted to help and elicit it. At a moment, therefore, when it is agreed that we want a source of authority, and when it seems probable that the right source is our best self, it becomes of vast importance to see whether or not the things around us are, in general, such as to help and elicit our best self, and if they are not, to see why they are not, and the most promising way of mending them.
Now, it is clear that the very absence of any powerful authority amongst us, and the prevalent doctrine of the duty and happiness of doing as one likes, and asserting our personal liberty, must tend to prevent the erection of any very strict standard of [111/112] excellence, the belief in any very paramount authority of right reason, the recognition of our best self as anything very recondite and hard to come at. It may be, as I have said, a proof of our honesty that we do not attempt to give to our ordinary self, as we have it in action, predominant authority, and to impose its rule upon other people; but it is evident, also, that it is not easy, with our style of proceeding, to get beyond the notion of an ordinary self at all, or to get the paramount authority of a commanding best self, or right reason, recognised. The learned Martinus Scriblerus well says: — "The taste of the bathos is implanted by nature itself in the soul of man; till, perverted by custom or example, he is taught, or rather compelled, to relish the sublime." But with us everything seems directed to prevent any such perversion of us by custom or example as might compel us to relish the sublime; by all means we are encouraged to keep our natural taste for the bathos unimpaired. I have formerly pointed out how in literature the absence of any authoritative centre, like an Academy, tends to do this; each section of the public has its own literary organ, and the mass of the public is without any suspicion that [112/113] the value of these organs is relative to their being nearer a certain ideal centre of correct information, taste, and intelligence, or farther away from it. I have said that within certain limits, which any one who is likely to read this will have no difficulty in drawing for himself, my old adversary, the Saturday Review, may, on matters of literature and taste, be fairly enough regarded, relatively to a great number of newspapers which treat these matters, as a kind of organ of reason. But I remember once conversing with a company of Nonconformist admirers of some lecturer who had let off a great fire-work, which the Saturday Review said was all noise and false lights, and feeling my way as tenderly as I could about the effect of this unfavourable judgment upon those with whom I was conversing. "Oh," said one who was their spokesman, with the most tranquil air of conviction, "it is true the Saturday Review abuses the lecture, but the British Banner" (I am not quite sure it was the British Banner, but it was some newspaper of that stamp) "says that the Saturday Review is quite wrong." The speaker had evidently no notion that there was a scale of value for judgments on these topics, and that the judgments of the [113/114] Saturday Review ranked high on this scale, and those of the British Banner low; the taste of the bathos implanted by nature in the literary judgments of man had never, in my friend's case, encountered any let or hindrance.
Just the same in religion as in literature. We have most of us little idea of a high standard to choose our guides by, of a great and profound spirit, which is an authority, while inferior spirits are none; it is enough to give importance to things that this or that person says them decisively, and has a large following of some strong kind when he says them. This habit of ours is very well shown in that able and interesting work of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's, which we were all reading lately, The Mormons, by One of Themselves. Here, again, I am not quite sure that my memory serves me as to the exact title, but I mean the well-known book in which Mr. Hepworth Dixon described the Mormons, and other similar religious bodies in America, with so much detail and such warm sympathy. In this work it seems enough for Mr. Dixon that this or that doctrine has its Rabbi, who talks big to him, has a staunch body of disciples, and, above all, has plenty [114/115] of rifles. That there are any further stricter tests to be applied to a doctrine, before it is pronounced important, never seems to occur to him. "It is easy to say," he writes of the Mormons, "that these saints are dupes and fanatics, to laugh at Joe Smith and his church, but what then? The great facts remain. Young and his people are at Utah; a church of 200,000 souls; an army of 20,000 rifles." But if the followers of a doctrine are really dupes, or worse, and its promulgators are really fanatics, or worse, it gives the doctrine no seriousness or authority the more that there should be found 200,000 souls, — 200,000 of the innumerable multitude with a natural taste for the bathos, — to hold it, and 20,000 rifles to defend it. And again, of another religious organisation in America: "A fair and open field is not to be refused when hosts so mighty throw down wager of battle on behalf of what they hold to be true, however strange their faith may seem." A fair and open field is not to be refused to any speaker; but this solemn way of heralding him is quite out of place unless he has, for the best reason and spirit of man, some significance. "Well, but," says Mr. Hepworth Dixon, [115/116] "a theory which has been accepted by men like Judge Edmonds, Dr. Hare, Elder Frederick, and Professor Bush!" And again: "Such are, in brief, the bases of what Newman Weeks, Sarah Horton, Deborah Butler, and the associated brethren, proclaimed in Rolt's Hall as the new covenant!" If he was summing up an account of the teaching of Plato or St. Paul, Mr. Hepworth Dixon could not be more earnestly reverential. But the question is, have personages like Judge Edmonds, and Newman Weeks, and Elderess Polly, and Elderess Antoinette, and the rest of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's heroes and heroines, anything of the weight and significance for the best reason and spirit of man that Plato and St. Paul have? Evidently they, at present, have not; and a very small taste of them and their doctrines ought to have convinced Mr. Hepworth Dixon that they never could have. "But," says he, "the magnetic power which Shakerism is exercising on American thought would of itself compel us," — and so on. Now as far as real thought is concerned, — thought which affects the best reason and spirit of man, the scientific thought of the world, the only thought which deserves [116/117] speaking of in this solemn way, — America has up to the present time been hardly more than a province of England, and even now would not herself claim to be more than abreast of England; and of this only real human thought, English thought itself is not just now, as we must all admit, one of the most significant factors. Neither, then, can American thought be; and the magnetic power which Shakerism exercises on American thought is about as important, for the best reason and spirit of man, as the magnetic power which Mr. Murphy exercises on Birmingham Protestantism. And as we shall never get rid of our natural taste for the bathos in religion, — never get access to a best self and right reason which may stand as a serious authority, — by treating Mr. Murphy as his own disciples treat him, seriously, and as if he was as much an authority as any one else: so we shall never get rid of it while our able and popular writers treat their Joe Smiths and Deborah Butlers, with their so many thousand souls and so many thousand rifles, in the like exaggerated and misleading manner, and so do their best to confirm us in a bad mental habit to which we are already too prone. [117/118]
If our habits make it hard for us to come at the idea of a high
best self, of a paramount authority, in literature or religion, how
much more do they make this hard in the sphere of politics! In other
countries, the governors, not depending so immediately on the favour
of the governed, have everything to urge them, if they know anything
of right reason (and it is at least supposed that governors should
know more of this than the mass of the governed), to set it
authoritatively before the community. But our whole scheme of
government being representative, every one of our governors has all
possible temptation, instead of setting up before the governed who
elect him, and on whose favour he depends, a high standard of right
reason, to accommodate himself as much as possible to their natural
taste for the bathos; and even if he tries to go counter to it, to
proceed in this with so much flattering and coaxing, that they shall
not suspect their ignorance and prejudices to be anything very unlike
right reason, or their natural taste for the bathos to differ much
from a relish for the sublime. Every one is thus in every possible
way encouraged to trust in his own heart; but "he that trusteth in
his [118/119] own heart," says the Wise Man, "is a fool;" [Proverbs 28:26: "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool:
but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered." The King James
Bible] and at any
rate this, which Bishop Wilson says, is undeniably true: "The number
of those who need to be awakened is far greater than that of those
who need comfort." But in our political system everybody is
comforted. Our guides and governors who have to be elected by the
influence of the Barbarians, and who depend on their favour, sing the
praises of the Barbarians, and say all the smooth things that can be
said of them. With Mr. Tennyson, they celebrate "the great broad-shouldered genial Englishman," with his "sense of duty," his
"reverence for the laws," and his "patient force," who saves us from
the "revolts, republics, revolutions, most no graver than a
schoolboy's barring out," which upset other and less broad-shouldered
nations. Our guides who are chosen by the Philistines and who have
to look to their favour, tell the Philistines how "all the world
knows that the great middle-class of this country supplies the mind,
the will, and the power requisite for all the great and good things
that have to be done," and congratulate them on their "earnest good
sense, which penetrates through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and
gives to conventional illusions their [119/120] true value." Our guides
who look to the favour of the Populace, tell them that "theirs are
the brightest powers of sympathy, and the readiest powers of action."
Harsh things are said too, no doubt, against all the great classes of
the community; but these things so evidently come from a hostile
class, and are so manifestly dictated by the passions and
prepossessions of a hostile class, and not by right reason, that they
make no serious impression on those at whom they are launched, but
slide easily off their minds. For instance, when the Reform League
orators inveigh against our cruel and bloated aristocracy, these
invectives so evidently show the passions and point of view of the
Populace, that they do not sink into the minds of those at whom they
are addressed, or awaken any thought or self-examination in them.
Again, when Sir Thomas Bateson describes the Philistines and the
Populace as influenced with a kind of hideous mania for emasculating
the aristocracy, that reproach so clearly comes from the wrath and
excited imagination of the Barbarians, that it does not much set the
Philistines and the Populace thinking. Or when Mr. Lowe calls the
Populace drunken and venal, he [120/121] so evidently calls them this in
an agony of apprehension for his Philistine or middle-class
Parliament, which has done so many great and heroic works, and is now
threatened with mixture and debasement, that the Populace do not lay
his words seriously to heart. So the voice which makes a permanent
impression on each of our classes is the voice of its friends, and
this is from the nature of things, as I have said, a comforting
voice. The Barbarians remain in the belief that the great broad-
shouldered genial Englishman may be well satisfied with himself; the
Philistines remain in the belief that the great middle-class of this
country, with its earnest common-sense penetrating through sophisms
and ignoring commonplaces, may be well satisfied with itself: the
Populace, that the working-man with his bright powers of sympathy and
ready powers of action, may be well satisfied with himself. What
hope, at this rate, of extinguishing the taste of the bathos
implanted by nature itself in the soul of man, or of inculcating the
belief that excellence dwells among high and steep rocks, and can
only be reached by those who sweat blood to reach her? But it will
be said, perhaps, that candidates for [121/122] political influence and
leadership, who thus caress the self-love of those whose suffrages
they desire, know quite well that they are not saying the sheer truth
as reason sees it, but that they are using a sort of conventional
language, or what we call clap-trap, which is essential to the
working of representative institutions. And therefore, I suppose, we
ought rather to say with Figaro: Qui est-ce qu'on trompe ici?
[Drake's translation:
"Who is the one getting fooled here?"] Now,
I admit that often, but not always, when our governors say smooth
things to the self-love of the class whose political support they
want, they know very well that they are overstepping, by a long
stride, the bounds of truth and soberness; and while they talk, they
in a manner, no doubt, put their tongue in their cheek. Not always;
because, when a Barbarian appeals to his own class to make him their
representative and give him political power, he, when he pleases
their self-love by extolling broad-shouldered genial Englishmen with
their sense of duty, reverence for the laws, and patient force,
pleases his own self-love and extols himself, and is, therefore,
himself ensnared by his own smooth words. And so, too, when a
Philistine wants to represent his brother Philistines, and [122/123]
extols the earnest good sense which characterises Manchester, and
supplies the mind, the will, and the power, as the Daily News
eloquently says, requisite for all the great and good things that
have to be done, he intoxicates and deludes himself as well as his
brother Philistines who hear him. But it is true that a Barbarian
often wants the political support of the Philistines; and he
unquestionably, when he flatters the self-love of Philistinism, and
extols, in the approved fashion, its energy, enterprise, and self-
reliance, knows that he is talking clap-trap, and, so to say, puts
his tongue in his cheek. On all matters where Nonconformity and its
catchwords are concerned, this insincerity of Barbarians needing
Nonconformist support, and, therefore, flattering the self-love of
Nonconformity and repeating its catchwords without the least real
belief in them, is very noticeable. When the Nonconformists, in a
transport of blind zeal, threw out Sir James Graham's useful
Education Clauses in 1843, one-half of their parliamentary
representatives, no doubt, who cried aloud against "trampling on the
religious liberty of the Dissenters by taking the money of Dissenters
to teach the tenets of the [123/124] Church of England," put their tongue
in their cheek while they so cried out. And perhaps there is even a
sort of motion of Mr. Frederic Harrison's tongue towards his cheek
when he talks of the "shriek of superstition," and tells the working-
class that theirs are the brightest powers of sympathy and the
readiest powers of action. But the point on which I would insist is,
that this involuntary tribute to truth and soberness on the part of
certain of our governors and guides never reaches at all the mass of
us governed, to serve as a lesson to us, to abate our self-love, and
to awaken in us a suspicion that our favourite prejudices may be, to
a higher reason, all nonsense. Whatever by-play goes on among the
more intelligent of our leaders, we do not see it; and we are left to
believe that, not only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of our
representative and ruling men, there is nothing more admirable than
our ordinary self, whatever our ordinary self happens to be, —
Barbarian, Philistine, or Populace.
Thus everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves, and to prevent our getting the notion of a paramount right reason. Royalty itself, [124/125] in its idea the expression of the collective nation, and a sort of constituted witness to its best mind, we try to turn into a kind of grand advertising van, to give publicity and credit to the inventions, sound or unsound, of the ordinary self of individuals. I remember, when I was in North Germany, having this very strongly brought to my mind in the matter of schools and their institution. In Prussia, the best schools are Crown patronage schools, as they are called; schools which have been established and endowed (and new ones are to this day being established and endowed) by the Sovereign himself out of his own revenues, to be under the direct control and management of him or of those representing him, and to serve as types of what schools should be. The Sovereign, as his position raises him above many prejudices and littlenesses, and as he can always have at his disposal the best advice, has evident advantages over private founders in well planning and directing a school; while at the same time his great means and his great influence secure, to a well- planned school of his, credit and authority. This is what, in North Germany, the governors do, in the matter of education, for the [125/126] governed; and one may say that they thus give the governed a lesson, and draw out in them the idea of a right reason higher than the suggestions of an ordinary man's ordinary self. But in England how different is the part which in this matter our governors are accustomed to play! The Licensed Victuallers or the Commercial Travellers propose to make a school for their children; and I suppose, in the matter of schools, one may call the Licensed Victuallers or the Commercial Travellers ordinary men, with their natural taste for the bathos still strong; and a Sovereign with the advice of men like Wilhelm von Humboldt or Schleiermacher may, in this matter, be a better judge, and nearer to right reason. And it will be allowed, probably, that right reason would suggest that, to have a sheer school of Licensed Victuallers' children, or a sheer school of Commercial Travellers' children, and to bring them all up, not only at home but at school too, in a kind of odour of licensed victualism or of bagmanism, is not a wise training to give to these children. And in Germany, I have said, the action of the national guides or governors is to suggest and provide a better. But, in England, the action of the national [126/127] guides or governors is, for a Royal Prince or a great Minister to go down to the opening of the Licensed Victuallers' or of the Commercial Travellers' school, to take the chair, to extol the energy and self-reliance of the Licensed Victuallers or the Commercial Travellers, to be all of their way of thinking, to predict full success to their schools, and never so much as to hint to them that they are doing a very foolish thing, and that the right way to go to work with their children's education is quite different. And it is the same in almost every department of affairs. While, on the Continent, the idea prevails that it is the business of the heads and representatives of the nation, by virtue of their superior means, power, and information, to set an example and to provide suggestions of right reason, among us the idea is that the business of the heads and representatives of the nation is to do nothing of the kind, but to applaud the natural taste for the bathos showing itself vigorously in any part of the community, and to encourage its works.
Now I do not say that the political system of foreign countries has not inconveniences which may outweigh the inconveniences of our own political [127/128] system; nor am I the least proposing to get rid of our own political system and to adopt theirs. But a sound centre of authority being what, in this disquisition, we have been led to seek, and right reason, or our best self, appearing alone to offer such a sound centre of authority, it is necessary to take note of the chief impediments which hinder, in this country, the extrication or recognition of this right reason as a paramount authority, with a view to afterwards trying in what way they can best be removed.
This being borne in mind, I proceed to remark how not only do we get
no suggestions of right reason, and no rebukes of our ordinary self,
from our governors, but a kind of philosophical theory is widely
spread among us to the effect that there is no such thing at all as a
best self and a right reason having claim to paramount authority, or,
at any rate, no such thing ascertainable and capable of being made
use of; and that there is nothing but an infinite number of ideas and
works of our ordinary selves, and suggestions of our natural taste
for the bathos, pretty equal in value, which are doomed either to an
irreconcileable conflict, or else to a [128/129] perpetual give and take;
and that wisdom consists in choosing the give and take rather than
the conflict, and in sticking to our choice with patience and good
humour. And, on the other hand, we have another philosophical theory
rife among us, to the effect that without the labour of perverting
ourselves by custom or example to relish right reason, but by
continuing all of us to follow freely our natural taste for the
bathos, we shall, by the mercy of Providence, and by a kind of
natural tendency of things, come in due time to relish and follow
right reason. The great promoters of these philosophical theories
are our newspapers, which, no less than our parliamentary
representatives, may be said to act the part of guides and governors
to us; and these favourite doctrines of theirs I call, — or should
call, if the doctrines were not preached by authorities I so much
respect, — the first, a peculiarly British form of Atheism, the
second, a peculiarly British form of Quietism. The first-named
melancholy doctrine is preached in The Times with great clearness and
force of style; indeed, it is well known, from the example of the
poet Lucretius and others, what great masters of style the atheistic
[130] doctrine has always counted among its promulgators. "It is of
no use," says The Times, "for us to attempt to force upon our
neighbours our several likings and dislikings. We must take things
as they are. Everybody has his own little vision of religious or
civil perfection. Under the evident impossibility of satisfying
everybody, we agree to take our stand on equal laws and on a system
as open and liberal as is possible. The result is that everybody has
more liberty of action and of speaking here than anywhere else in the
Old World." We come again here upon Mr. Roebuck's celebrated
definition of happiness, on which I have so often commented: "I look
around me and ask what is the state of England? Is not every man
able to say what he likes? I ask you whether the world over, or in
past history, there is anything like it? Nothing. I pray that our
unrivalled happiness may last." This is the old story of our system
of checks and every Englishman doing as he likes, which we have
already seen to have been convenient enough so long as there were
only the Barbarians and the Philistines to do what they liked, but to
be getting inconvenient, and productive of anarchy, [130/131] now that
the Populace wants to do what it likes too. But for all that, I will
not at once dismiss this famous doctrine, but will first quote
another passage from The Times, applying the doctrine to a matter of
which we have just been speaking, — education. "The difficulty here"
(in providing a national system of education), says The Times, "does
not reside in any removeable arrangements. It is inherent and native
in the actual and inveterate state of things in this country. All
these powers and personages, all these conflicting influences and
varieties of character, exist, and have long existed among us; they
are fighting it out, and will long continue to fight it out, without
coming to that happy consummation when some one element of the
British character is to destroy or to absorb all the rest." There it
is; the various promptings of the natural taste for the bathos in
this man and that amongst us are fighting it out; and the day will
never come (and, indeed, why should we wish it to come?) when one
man's particular sort of taste for the bathos shall tyrannise over
another man's; nor when right reason (if that may be called an
element of the British character) shall absorb and [131/132] rule them
all. "The whole system of this country, like the constitution we
boast to inherit, and are glad to uphold, is made up of established
facts, prescriptive authorities, existing usages, powers that be,
persons in possession, and communities or classes that have won
dominion for themselves, and will hold it against all comers." Every
force in the world, evidently, except the one reconciling force,
right reason! Sir Thomas Bateson here, the Rev. W. Cattle on this
side, Mr. Bradlaugh on that! — pull devil, pull baker! Really,
presented with the mastery of style of our leading journal, the sad
picture, as one gazes upon it, assumes the iron and inexorable
solemnity of tragic Destiny.
After this, the milder doctrine of our other philosophical teacher, the Daily News, has, at first, something very attractive and assuaging. The Daily News begins, indeed, in appearance, to weave the iron web of necessity round us like The Times. "The alternative is between a man's doing what he likes and his doing what some one else, probably not one whit wiser than himself, likes." This points to the tacit compact, mentioned [132/133] in my last paper, between the Barbarians and the Philistines, and into which it is hoped that the Populace will one day enter; the compact, so creditable to English honesty, that no class, if it exercise power, having only the ideas and aims of its ordinary self to give effect to, shall treat its ordinary self too seriously, or attempt to impose it on others; but shall let these others, — the Rev. W. Cattle, for instance, in his Papist-baiting, and Mr. Bradlaugh in his Hyde Park anarchy- mongering, — have their fling. But then the Daily News suddenly lights up the gloom of necessitarianism with bright beams of hope. "No doubt," it says, "the common reason of society ought to check the aberrations of individual eccentricity." This common reason of society looks very like our best self or right reason, to which we want to give authority, by making the action of the State, or nation in its collective character, the expression of it. But of this project of ours, the Daily News, with its subtle dialectics, makes havoc. "Make the State the organ of the common reason?" — it says. "You may make it the organ of something or other, but how can you be certain that [133/134] reason will be the quality which will be embodied in it?" You cannot be certain of it, undoubtedly, if you never try to bring the thing about; but the question is, the action of the State being the action of the collective nation, and the action of the collective nation carrying naturally great publicity, weight, and force of example with it, whether we should not try to put into the action of the State as much as possible of right reason, or our best self, which may, in this manner, come back to us with new force and authority, may have visibility, form, and influence, and help to confirm us, in the many moments when we are tempted to be our ordinary selves merely, in resisting our natural taste of the bathos rather than in giving way to it?
But no! says our teacher: "it is better there should be an infinite variety of experiments in human action, because, as the explorers multiply, the true track is more likely to be discovered. The common reason of society can check the aberrations of individual eccentricity only by acting on the individual reason; and it will do so in the main sufficiently, if left to this natural operation." This is what I call the specially British form of [134/135] Quietism, or a devout, but excessive, reliance on an over-ruling Providence. Providence, as the moralists are careful to tell us, generally works in human affairs by human means; so when we want to make right reason act on individual reason, our best self on our ordinary self, we seek to give it more power of doing so by giving it public recognition and authority, and embodying it, so far as we can, in the State. It seems too much to ask of Providence, that while we, on our part, leave our congenital taste for the bathos to its natural operation and its infinite variety of experiments, Providence should mysteriously guide it into the true track, and compel it to relish the sublime. At any rate, great men and great institutions have hitherto seemed necessary for producing any considerable effect of this kind. No doubt we have an infinite variety of experiments, and an ever-multiplying multitude of explorers; even in this short paper I have enumerated many: the British Banner, Judge Edmonds, Newman Weeks, Deborah Butler, Elderess Polly, Brother Noyes, the Rev. W. Cattle, the Licensed Victuallers, the Commercial Travellers, and I know not how [135/136] many more; and the numbers of this noble army are swelling every day. But what a depth of Quietism, or rather, what an over-bold call on the direct interposition of Providence, to believe that these interesting explorers will discover the true track, or at any rate, "will do so in the main sufficiently" (whatever that may mean) if left to their natural operation; that is, by going on as they are! Philosophers say, indeed, that we learn virtue by performing acts of virtue; but to say that we shall learn virtue by performing any acts to which our natural taste for the bathos carries us, that the Rev. W. Cattle comes at his best self by Papist-baiting, or Newman Weeks and Deborah Butler at right reason by following their noses, this certainly does appear over-sanguine.
It is true, what we want is to make right reason act on individual reason, the reason of individuals; all our search for authority has that for its end and aim. The Daily News says, I observe, that all my argument for authority "has a non-intellectual root;" and from what I know of my own mind and its inertness, I think this so probable, that I should be inclined easily to admit it, if it were not that, in [136/137] the first place, nothing of this kind, perhaps, should be admitted without examination; and, in the second, a way of accounting for this charge being made, in this particular instance, without full grounds, appears to present itself. What seems to me to account here, perhaps, for the charge, is the want of flexibility of our race, on which I have so often remarked. I mean, it being admitted that the conformity of the individual reason of the Rev. W. Cattle or Mr. Bradlaugh with right reason is our true object, and not the mere restraining them, by the strong arm of the State, from Papist-baiting or railing-breaking, — admitting this, we have so little flexibility that we cannot readily perceive that the State's restraining them from these indulgences may yet fix clearly in their minds that, to the collective nation, these indulgences appear irrational and unallowable, may make them pause and reflect, and may contribute to bringing, with time, their individual reason into harmony with right reason. But in no country, owing to the want of intellectual flexibility above mentioned, is the leaning which is our natural one, and, therefore, needs no recommending to us, so sedulously recommended, and the leaning which is [137/138] not our natural one, and, therefore, does not-need dispraising to us, so sedulously dispraised, as in ours. To rely on the individual being, with us, the natural leaning, we will hear of nothing but the good of relying on the individual; to act through the collective nation on the individual being not our natural leaning, we will hear nothing in recommendation of it. But the wise know that we often need to hear most of that to which we are least inclined, and even to learn to employ, in certain circumstances, that which is capable, if employed amiss, of being a danger to us.
Elsewhere this is certainly better understood than here. In a recent number of the Westminster Review, an able writer, but with precisely our national want of flexibility of which I have been speaking, has unearthed, I see, for our present needs, an English translation, published some years ago, of Wilhelm von Humboldt's book, The Sphere and Duties of Government. Humboldt's object in this book is to show that the operation of government ought to be severely limited to what directly and immediately relates to the security of person and property. Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the [138/139] most beautiful and perfect souls that have ever existed, used to say that one's business in life was, first, to perfect oneself by all the means in one's power, and, secondly, to try and create in the world around one an aristocracy, the most numerous that one possibly could, of talents and characters. He saw, of course, that, in the end, everything comes to this, — that the individual must act for himself, and must be perfect in himself; and he lived in a country, Germany, where people were disposed to act too little for themselves, and to rely too much on the Government. But even thus, such was his flexibility, so little was he in bondage to a mere abstract maxim, that he saw very well that for his purpose itself, of enabling the individual to stand perfect on his own foundations and to do without the State, the action of the State would for long, long years be necessary; and soon after he wrote his book on The Sphere and Duties of Government, Wilhelm von Humboldt became Minister of Education in Prussia, and from his ministry all the great reforms which give the control of Prussian education to the State, — the transference of the management of public schools from their old boards of trustees to the [139/140] State, the obligatory State-examination for schools, the obligatory State-examination for schoolmasters, and the foundation of the great State University of Berlin, — take their origin. This his English reviewer says not a word of. But, writing for a people whose dangers lie, as we have seen, on the side of their unchecked and unguided individual action, whose dangers none of them lie on the side of an over-reliance on the State, he quotes just so much of Wilhelm von Humboldt's example as can flatter them in their propensities, and do them no good; and just what might make them think, and be of use to them, he leaves on one side. This precisely recalls the manner, it will be observed, in which we have seen that our royal and noble personages proceed with the Licensed Victuallers.
In France the action of the State on individuals is yet more preponderant than in Germany; and the need which friends of human perfection feel to enable the individual to stand perfect on his own foundations is all the stronger. But what says one of the staunchest of these friends, Monsieur Renan, on State action, and even State action in that very sphere where in France it is most excessive, the sphere [141] of education? Here are his words: — "A liberal believes in liberty, and liberty signifies the non-intervention of the State. But such an ideal is still a long way off from us, and the very means to remove it to an indefinite distance would be precisely the State's withdrawing its action too soon." And this, he adds, is even truer of education than of any other department of public affairs.
We see, then, how indispensable to that human perfection which we seek is, in the opinion of good judges, some public recognition and establishment of our best self, or right reason. We see how our habits and practice oppose themselves to such a recognition, and the many inconveniences which we therefore suffer. But now let us try to go a little deeper, and to find, beneath our actual habits and practice, the very ground and cause out of which they spring.
Last updated December 2001; Thanks to Dr. David Reid of the University of Hull for pointing a bad link.