a Do you think Culture & Anarchy is an appropriate title given by Matthew

Arnold? Substantiate 16A

What is Culture and Anarchy?

First distributed in Cornhill magazine in 1867-68, Culture and anarchy is
a sequence of periodical essays and to a certain extent a controversial
philosophical grind. This piece of writing recognised on his
extraordinary agenda on Victorian culture was a bulbous debated subject
matter from the 1860s till 1950s.
The essay is a thoughtful argument for reconstructing the social beliefs
of England. For Arnold, “doing as one likes, ”was the opposite of
culture, his term for those who act out of self-interest, lacking regard for
the greater good.

he problem identified by Taylor among “primitives,” who displayed

the same incapacity and this is closely associated with the Arnolds
logic “doing as one likes.”

Culture and Anarchy enunciate a theory of culture that tries to

impact thinking about the values of the human race in higher
education. Arnold’s theory differs from its anthropological
equivalent as; in his word defines culture as a touch to struggle
for, and this is in reverence to his idealistic term.

Arnold’s unremitting persuasion of modelling the masses who

were uneducated into hard working and perfection striving
individuals makes culture and anarchy much more interesting.

He also believed that the state administration system of education

should replace the priestly programme leading to free thinking
and more devotion to the community.

Culture and anarchy as a masterpiece of social criticism give a

clear vision of the issues of the Victorian time and its criticism.
 Arnold’s view on
‘CULTURE’

“Culture is properly described, As the love of perfection; It is a

study of Perfection”

-Mathew Arnold

The first thing that Arnold states, that in culture everyone should
be able to see the ethical, communal and other benefactor
individualities. “What culture really is, what good it can do, what
our own special is needed of on which faith in culture both its own
faith of others may rest securely.”

Culture makes humanity perfect.culture has remained within us as

manner that we learn.religion and god has no such role to play in
and around culture, but only some situation they are a part of the
culture.

Culture also promotes the mental growth of an

individual.perfection is conceived in culture.people in the vision of
Arnold are rough and uncultivated and thus demands a proper
system of discipline and law.

The main point on which he focus3s is the necessity of personal

freedom, but not on the shoulder of anarchy. An individual must
think in a proper and the right way.

Song, writings, picture and statuette, plays and film all are in some
way or the other is a part of the culture. Culture basically refers to
these precise doings, from time to time with the addition of
philosophy, learning, and history.
 What is Hebraism and Hellenism in
Culture and Anarchy?
Hebraism and Hellenism equally are connected to social natural
life. Knowing or knowledge is what actually Hellenism is and
Hebraism is the faith in doing and these kept on accelerating. The
chipping in of divine life with knowledge and action is the final
aim.

Arnold refers to that the Bible revealing the truth honours the
armistice of God as well as authority. Hellenism is the easy and
simple idea of getting rid of ignorance, to see the things as it is
and finally searching beauty in them.

As a Hellenic, Socrates circumstances that he who tries to make

himself perfect is the best man and the one who feels that he is
still perfecting himself is the happiest among all of them.

“Hebraism and Hellinism – Between these two points of influence

moves our world. Under this exposition, the views of Arnold states
that in the English nation, there is enough of Hellenism and Arnold
’s emphasizes on Hebraism more for the reason that it is based on
self- conduct and self- control.

At the expiration, we come to know that the inkling of Hebraism

versus Hellenism is the main argument of Arnold.

Those who are unwitting and resistant to the idea of culture

characterises Hebraism.

Those who are strict, narrow-minded method of moral conduct

and self-control thus blocking the explanation of the community
are the Hebraist.
Hellenists are the open-minded ones leading the unprompted
exploration of classical ideas to contemporary society.

An appeal for public order and a sturdy arm for parameter of the
state is made by Arnold since culture is yet to be achieved the
orientation of the internal frames of the individuals and the
inclinations of anarchies are essential to be suppressed.

Arnolds Culture and Anarchy

n 1704 Jonathan Swift wrote of beauty and intelligence as ''the two noblest of things, sweetness
and light.'' In 1869, Matthew Arnold made Swift's latter phrase a touchstone of Victorian
sensibility as the title of the first chapter of his ''Culture and Anarchy.'' The following passage
suggests that he meant more than the cloying gentility with which the words have often been
associated in later years.

Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion
for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater! - the passion for making them prevail. It is
not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few
must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness
and light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither
have I shrunk from saying that we must have a broad basis, must have sweetness and light for as
many as possible. Again and again I have insisted how those are the happy moments of
humanity, how those are the marking epochs of a people's life, how those are the flowering times
for literature and art and all the creative power of genius, when there is a national glow of life and
thought, when the whole of society is in the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible to
beauty, intelligent and alive.

Only it must be real thought and real beauty; real sweetness and real light. Plenty of people will
try to give the masses, as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way
they think proper for the actual condition of the masses. The ordinary popular literature is an
example of this way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the masses
with the set of ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession or party. Our
religious and political organisations give an example of this way of working on the masses.

I condemn neither way; but culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of
inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made
judgments and watchwords. It seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been
thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of
sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely, - nourished, and not
bound by them.

This is the social idea; and 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 making prevail, for carrying from one
end of society to the other , the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time.

In his social essays, of which the most important form the volume entitled 'Culture and
Anarchy,' he continues in his own way the attacks of Carlyle and Ruskin. Contemporary
English life seems to him a moral chaos of physical misery and of the selfish,
unenlightened, violent expression of untrained wills. He too looks with pitying contempt on the
material achievements of science and the Liberal party as being mere 'machinery,' means to
an end, which men mistakenly worship as though it possessed a real value in itself. He
divides English society into three classes:

1. The Aristocracy, whom he nick-names 'The Barbarians,' because, like the

Germanic tribes who overthrew the Roman Empire, they vigorously assert their own
privileges and live in the external life rather than in the life of the spirit.
2. The Middle Class, which includes the bulk of the nation. For them he borrows
from German criticism the name 'Philistines,' enemies of the chosen people, and he
finds their prevailing traits to be intellectual and spiritual narrowness and a fatal
and superficial satisfaction with mere activity and material prosperity.
3. 'The Populace,' the 'vast raw and half-developed residuum.' For them Arnold
had sincere theoretical sympathy ; but their whole environment and conception of life
seemed to him hideous. With his usual uncomplimentary frankness Arnold summarily
described the three groups as 'a materialized upper class, a vulgarized middle class,
and a brutalized lower class.' Commented [as1]: class

Culture as remedy

For the cure of these evils Arnold's proposed remedy was Culture, which he defined as a
knowledge of the best that has been thought and done in the world and a desire to make the
best ideas prevail.

Arnold's Definition of Culture

Arnold spends a lot of space explaining his idea of culture and how it differs from that of his critics'. To
him, culture is a study in perfection, in making things better than they are, moved by the moral and social
passion for doing good. He notes that religion suggests that the kingdom of God is within you, so culture
places perfection in an internal condition. Furthermore, this has to be a collective movement. The system that
Arnold criticized taught, he believed, that a man values himself on how much of a commercial success he could
be, rather than on who he 'is.' To Arnold, culture is 'sweetness and light,' although these terms in themselves
need definition.

Evidently this Culture is not a mere knowledge of books, unrelated to the rest of life. It has
indeed for its basis a very wide range of knowledge, acquired by intellectual processes,
but this knowledge alone Arnold readily admitted to be 'machinery.' The real purpose and
main part of Culture is the training, broadening, and refining of the whole spirit, including the
emotions as well as the intellect, into sympathy with all the highest ideals, and therefore into
inward peace and satisfaction. Thus Culture is not indolently selfish, but is forever exerting
itself to 'make the best ideas'-•which Arnold also defined as 'reason and the will, of God'--
'prevail.'
Arnold felt strongly that a main obstacle to Culture was religious narrowness. He held that the
English people had been too much occupied with the 'Hebraic' ideal of the Old Testament, the
interest in morality or right conduct, and though he agreed that this properly makes three
quarters of life, he insisted that it should be joined with the Hellenic (Greek) ideal of a
perfectly rounded nature. He found the essence of Hellenism expressed in a phrase which he
took from Swift, 'Sweetness and Light,' interpreting Sweetness to mean the love of Beauty,
material and spiritual, and Light, unbiased intelligence; and he urged that these forces be allowed to
have the freest play. He vigorously attacked the Dissenting denominations, because he believed
them to be a conspicuous embodiment of Philistine lack of Sweetness and Light, with
an unlovely insistence on unimportant external details and a fatal blindness to the meaning
of real beauty and real spirituality. Though he himself was without a theological creed, he
was, and held that every Englishman should be, a devoted adherent of the English Church,
as a beautiful, dignified, and national expression of essential religion, and therefore a very
important influence for Culture.
Toward democracy Arnold took, not Carlyle's attitude of definite opposition, but one of
questioning scrutiny. He found that one actual tendency of modem democracy was to 'let
people do as they liked,' which, given the crude violence of the Populace, naturally
resulted in lawlessness and therefore threatened anarchy. Culture, on the other hand,
includes the strict discipline of the will and the sacrifice of one's own impulses for the good
of all, which means respect for Law and devotion to the State. Existing democracy,
therefore, he attacked with unsparing irony, but he did not condemn its principle.

Arnold's Function of the State

Light, as Arnold defines it, is intelligence as a component of perfection. Arnold is worth quoting directly here,
'Our prevalent notion is . . . that it is a most happy and important thing for a man merely to be able to do as he
likes. On what he is to do when he is thus free to do as he likes, we do not lay so much stress.' Arnold believed
that this philosophy, the assertion of personal liberty, was such an important part of British life and was
bringing society closer, in fact, to anarchy. To fix this problem, he believed the State was necessary. A system of
complete liberty, he argued, could not regulate itself. Therefore, society needs the State to prevent its descent
into anarchy.
The men of culture are the true apostles of equality. Matthew Arnolds famous series of essays, which were first
published in book form under the title Culture and Anarchy in 1869, debate important questions about the nature of
culture and societyMoreThe men of culture are the true apostles of equality. Matthew Arnolds famous series of
essays, which were first published in book form under the title Culture and Anarchy in 1869, debate important
questions about the nature of culture and society that are as relevant now as they have ever been.
Arnold seeks to find out what culture really is, what good it can do, what is our own special need of it in an age of
rapid social change and increasing mechanization. He contrasts culture, the study of perfection, with anarchy, the
mood of unrest and uncertainty that pervaded mid-Victorian England. How can individuals be educated, not
indoctrinated, and what is the role of the state in disseminating sweetness and light?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Culture and Anarchy, an essay in social criticism by Matthew Arnold, first published in 1869.
Its purpose is to define true culture and to show how it may overcome the unintelligent and
anti-social tendencies of English life of the author’s day. Culture he defines as a study of
perfection, that is the harmonious expansion of all the powers of human nature. It is
attained by a knowledge of the best that has been said and thought in the world, by the free
play of the mind over the facts of life, and by a sympathetic attitude towards all that is
beautiful. For a further definition of culture Arnold borrows a phrase from Swift, “Sweetness
and light,” the first word indicating the sense of beauty and the second the active
intelligence. Against this ideal are arrayed all the undisciplined forces of the age—prejudice,
narrowness, the worship of liberty for liberty’s sake, faith in machinery whether
governmental, economic, or religious—in short an unthinking individualism that leads to
anarchy. English society may be divided into three classes—Barbarians, Philistines, and
Populace. The Barbarians or aristocracy have a superficial sweetness and light but are too
much concerned with the maintenance and enjoyment of their privileges to attain a true
sense of beauty and a free mental activity. The Philistines or middle classes are devoted to
money-making and a narrow form of religion and are indifferent or hostile to beauty. The
Populace are violent in their prejudices and brutal in their pleasures. All are agreed that
“doing as one likes” is the chief end of man and all are self-satisfied. In a further analysis of
this English preference of doing to thinking Arnold distinguishes two forces which he names
Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism is concerned with resolute action and strict obedience to
conscience; Hellenism with clear thinking and spontaneity of consciousness. Harmoniously
combined they lead to that perfect balance of our nature which is the end of culture. The
excessive development of one of them results in imperfection. Hebraism with its insistence
on conduct is the more essential and it triumphed in the form of Christianity; but the
reaction from the pagan revival of the sixteenth century led to its over-development into
Puritanism, a discipline intolerant of beauty and free intelligence. The English middle class is
still dominated by Puritanism, despising art and mental cultivation as an end in itself and
adhering to a narrow and unenlightened religious and ethical standard as “the one thing
needful.” By a revival of the best in Hellenism Arnold would bring sweetness and light into
the English middle classes; and he would overcome the unthinking individualism of all
classes by developing the idea of right reason embodied in the State. By its power of telling
phraseology and its pleasing expository method the book stimulated English society to
thought and self-criticism. The evils it attacks and the remedies it proposes are by no means
out of date.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
It did not start out that way. Culture and Anarchy was original in contesting precisely this elitist view
of culture as connoisseurship, or an appreciation of the fine arts. This was the current sense of the
word when Arnold began writing. The word culture originated in the world of farming, as a term for
tending crops or animals, which is where we get the word agriculture (Williams 87-93). From this, it
developed a metaphorical meaning in the eighteenth century for culturing the mind, rather than
crops. And in this latter sense it became associated by the early nineteenth century with a knowledge
of Greek, Latin, and the fine arts. Because these were standard elements of a gentleman’s education,
the acquisition of culture was a sign of one’s elite status.
Arnold objects to this narrow definition of culture, calling it a combination of “vanity and ignorance,”
and attacking its acolytes as people who value culture solely as a form of “class distinction,” a “badge”
that separates them “from other people who have not got it” (Culture 90). Instead, he argues, culture
is a combination of broad intellectual interests with the goal of social improvement. “There is a view
in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire
for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble
aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it,—motives eminently such as are
called social,—come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part” (91).
Culture combines this commitment to “the moral and social passion for doing good” with the ideal of
scientific objectivity, “the sheer desire to see things as they are” (91). Rather than a means to
differentiate the elite from the mass, Arnoldian culture assumes the elite and the mass have a shared
humanity. This was a novel use of the term at the time and was seen then as the most striking aspect
of his new idea, as his well known critic, Frederic Harrison, recognized in his satire on Arnold’s ideas,
“Culture: A Dialogue” (1867).
Both personal and social factors contributed to Arnold’s redefinition. He was the son of a famous
educator, Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), who insisted that, whatever goals one pursued in life, they had
to be socially useful. It was not enough, in other words, to pursue one’s interests for selfish reasons
alone. As a dedicated poet in his early adulthood, Arnold grappled with the problem of reconciling his
love of fine art with the need for social utility, a topic that formed the mainstay of his written
correspondence with his closest friend, the poet Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-61). In this regard,
Arnold was representative of an era in which many artists questioned the relevance of art to society,
even as Victorian Britain underwent a radical social transformation, leaving behind its agricultural
past in the wake of the new industrial economy. In the middle decades of the century, Britain was
particularly turbulent, famously unsettled by the inhumanity of early industrialism and the demands
of a vocal working-class for political representation. In one of the most well known incidents, on
23 July 1866, a large crowd gathered at Hyde Park in London to hear speakers on voting rights. They
were confronted by police when the government declared the meeting an illegal assembly. Soldiers
were called out when 200,000 people entered the park anyway, knocking down fences meant to keep
them out. The incident precipitated Arnold’s thinking, and its violence represents the “Anarchy”
in Culture and Anarchy. While staunchly opposing violence, he nevertheless understood the need for
social change. As one of his biographers notes, Arnold’s job as a School’s Inspector exposed him “to
more working-class children than any other poet who has ever lived” (Honan 218-19). The injection
of social change into his new theory was the formula he sought to combine his own love of fine art
with social utility.
He described Britain as suffering from the conflicting interests of three different classes of people,
and he gave each a new name meant to describe its predominant trait. The land-owning aristocracy
are “Barbarians,” referencing their medieval origin as warriors in ironic contrast to their modern
indulgence in a life of privileged ease. The commercial and industrial middle class of manufacturers,
artisans, shopkeepers, and bankers are “Philistines,” a term that ever since has described a
combination of materialism with a disdain for art and the intellect. Poorly-paid laborers, agricultural
tenants, scavengers, and the unemployed are the “Populace.” This last was by far the largest of the
three classes. To Arnold, its discontent represented the greatest threat of all to British social stability,
and he used the Hyde Park incident to illustrate this. But the central problem was that all three
groups viewed the world differently because the perception of each was limited to its own self
interest. Barbarians want higher prices for the grain that grows on their land to increase their wealth.
But the Populace want lower prices for the loaf of bread made from that grain. And the Philistine
factory owners fear having to increase wages to workers who could no longer afford a loaf of bread.
This historical conflict was enshrined in the political fight over Britain’s “Corn Laws,” marked by
massive demonstrations until their repeal in 1846, and it serves as one example of Arnold’s analysis
of Britain’s central problem: none of the three classes understood or acknowledged the needs of the
others. Without that mutuality, society was hopelessly locked in civil conflict.
He called this class-bound perspective the “ordinary self,” while its opposite was the “best self,” a
transcendent perspective that recognizes the needs of others and puts the greater good ahead of class
interest or personal gain. As he explained, “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” (144). The best self
exemplified his cultural ideal because it reflects the same “moral and social passion for doing good”
that distinguished his theory of culture from others. Furthermore, individuals who are dominated by
the best self, he says, belong to no class, since the best self “always tends to take them out of their
class,” regardless of their actual social position (146). Neither Barbarian, nor Philistine, nor Populace,
such people were “aliens,” as he called them. Where did their detachment come from? The “number
of those who will succeed in 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” (146). Many are born with this propensity, but education and other forms
of social acceptance are needed to bring it out. Increasing the number of aliens in society was a
central concern of Culture and Anarchy, which also argued that the State should restructure
education with this goal in mind. Arnold’s use of aliens entailed a paradox: while defining them as the
essential agents of social reform, he also insisted that they were “out of their class.” Since society is
defined by the three classes, aliens are not “in” society so much as outside it, and yet these outsiders
were the lynchpin of reforming the society to which they do not belong.
If class conflicts divided society in the present, they were not the only cause of civil fractures. Changes
in social values over time divided it as well, and these contributed to the present state of anarchy.
Arnold described social history as alternating between two poles, epitomized by the two cultures of

Western classical antiquity as Victorians understood them. In Rome, an interest in efficiency,

practicality, and orthodoxy dominated, and thus the Romans were brilliant builders and had a

disciplined military. In classical Greece, innovation and interests in creativity and beauty
predominated, and so Greek sculpture and philosophy were their primary strengths. Calling the
former “Hebraism” (he associated Roman discipline with Jewish dietary prescriptions) and the latter
“Hellenism,” Arnold insisted that both were needed, and that when society was dominated by one or
the other, the job of culture was to advocate for balance. “The governing idea of Hellenism
is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience,” he explained,
referencing creativity on the one hand and discipline on the other (165). And he argued, “between
these two points of influence moves our world. At one time it feels more powerfully the attraction of
one of them, at another time of the other; and it ought to be, though it never is, evenly and happily
balanced between them” (163-64). At present, he argued, Britain is predominantly Hebraic, meaning
that it values business and practicality more than art or beauty; similarly, he thought people adhered
to social conventions and religious laws rather than valuing spontaneity and novelty. Historically, this
pattern began in the period following the Renaissance, he claimed, when Britain was dominated by
the Puritans, and their values continued to define British society in the nineteenth century. Culture
thus should promote an interest in art and beauty as a response to this imbalance, which he called a
“contravention of the natural order” (175). Society needs a strong dose of Hellenism, and so
Arnoldian culture favored originality in thought, creativity in art, and experimentation in science, all
without regard for practical outcomes.
Arnold particularly attacked conventionality and mindless conformity, whether it stemmed from
religion or politics. Instead of thinking for themselves, people accept everything they are told as if it
were infallibly good, without considering it further. The belief in Britain’s industrial might, for
example, is too often seen as proof of Britain’s greatness, and people stop asking whether or not this
industrial might has led to a better life for the British people as a whole. Such beliefs he insisted are
“machinery,” tools to accomplish a goal, but too often people confuse the means with the end. “Faith
in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to
the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in machinery, as if it
has a value in and for itself” (96). Free trade, for example, was thought to be a means to a better
economic life, but when it is treated as a sacred cow, people fail to ask the most basic questions: since

free trade has not led to a better life for those starving in London’s East End, why should we
continue to insist upon free trade as if it were a magical solution to Britain’s problems? And without
asking such questions, no one would consider ways to modify free trade to gain the desired end of an
improved economic life. The idea of free trade was machinery, but machinery that is fetishized when
people think of it as intrinsically valuable, a goal unto itself, rather than a means to an end. Examples
of machinery included an uncritical faith in the value of population growth, or industrial production,
or railroads, or the accumulation of wealth, or even individual liberty. People idolized the concept of
democracy, he claimed, forgetting that it was a means to social justice, and what we care about is
social justice, not the idol of democracy itself.
Culture’s solution to these problems is “turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock
notions and habits” (233). Intellectual free play is culture’s central value. Without caring about
personal gain or how something might benefit one’s social class, the best self views existing problems
in a disinterested fashion, setting aside all self interest to arrive at new ideas for old problems (see
Anderson). The alien’s ability to think beyond the ordinary self illustrates this intellectual freedom,
and it represents the antidote to the Puritan’s insistence on orthodox conformity. “The Puritan’s great
danger,” noted Arnold, is that he thinks he already knows the rule, and so knows all he needs, and
“then remains satisfied with a very crude conception of what this rule really is and what it tells him,
thinks he has now knowledge and henceforth needs only to act, and, in this dangerous state of
assurance and self-satisfaction, proceeds to give full swing to a number of the instincts of his ordinary
self” (180). There are no pre-packaged solutions in this theory of culture, no given rules, and indeed
such unreflective adherence to conventional ideas is antithetical to the very idea of culture, as Arnold
defined it. At the same time, of course, nonconformity by itself was not a cultural value; such a claim
would simply repeat the pattern of valuing the machinery while forgetting the goal of intellectual free
play.

As we can question the idea that aliens are truly outside their society, so we should question whether
free thought as such is ultimately possible. Can thought exist, like aliens, free of all social influence?
Arnold’s theory of free play not only raised the issue, it also illustrated exactly why it is so difficult to
assert such independence. More than anything else, his theory of free play resembled the laissez faire
ideology of free trade (see Logan 54-61). This of course was the same marketplace ideology Culture
and Anarchy identified as the source of Britain’s social problems. In his classic theory of the
marketplace, The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith argued famously that commodities compete
with one another in the open market, and so long as there are no artificial constrains on that
market—such as monopolies and tariffs—the market value for a commodity will closely resemble its
“natural” value. This logic reappeared in Arnold’s insistence upon the free play of ideas competing
with one another, except that Arnold’s was a marketplace of ideas rather than commodities.
Conventional wisdom and dogmatism were essentially monopolies in intellectual form that must be
eliminated so that ideas can freely circulate to find their natural value in this marketplace of ideas.
Paradoxically, Arnold’s concept of intellectual free play replicated the logic of Adam Smith’s political
economy. His solution to the social problems created by commercial free trade was the same free
trade in another form, that of an intellectual laissez faire promoting the free exchange of ideas. As a
result, Arnold’s interest in free play was itself an example of how ideas can be unconsciously shaped
by the values of the society in which an author lives. In this sense, Arnold was ultimately a product of
his time and his own class, even in asserting the premise of freedom from the contamination of social
influence.
In one of Arnold’s most important poems, “Empedocles on Etna” (1852), he raised the question of
whether or not intellectual free play was actually possible, given all of the unrecognized social
prejudices and emotional responses most people experience. When the philosopher Empedocles asks
whether or not he has been a “slave of thought,” rather than free as he imagined, his answer is
ambivalent: “Who can say,” he asks, admitting, “I cannot” (1.2.391-95). He then cites as reasons his
own emotionalism and conflicts with others. However, he takes consolation in knowing that he has
tried: “But I have not grown easy in these bonds— / But I have not denied what bonds these were”
(1.2.397-98). The philosopher knows that he is not intellectually free, but he does not confuse the
goal of freedom with its absolute realization. This self-awareness lies at the heart of Arnold’s theory of
culture. He knows that he does not know. This is a more honest intellectual position than the claim of
the Puritan conformist, who thinks that he knows the answer, once and for all, and need think no
further about the problem. As Arnold claims in Culture and Anarchy, culture is a process, “Not a
having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming,” and so one is never completely free nor
successful in acquiring culture but rather always unfinished, to one degree or another, and thus still
enmeshed in the social, still to some extent a “slave of thought” (94). In such a predicament, one
must continue pursuing intellectual freedom while simultaneously realizing that one never actually
has it.
This self-awareness matters because it illustrates how far contemporary beliefs about Arnold’s theory
of culture have strayed from his original insistence that culture hinges on the willingness to question
everything, “to try the very ground on which we appear to stand” (181). Today, Arnold’s complex
theory of culture is often reduced to the sound bite of his famous phrase, “the best that is known and
thought in the world,” as if culture itself were contained in a set of specific books (“Function” 283). In
fact, that phrase comes from his definition of criticism, not of culture, and it described an ongoing
process of evaluation. The best was something yet to be determined, not something already known.
Otherwise, there would be no reason for the practice of criticism to exist. Nor would there be a need
for the complex combination of intellectual pursuit with “the moral and social passion for doing
good” that ultimately lay at the heart of his theory of culture.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Background

In 1848, a year of European revolutions, Matthew Arnold, the eldest son of a celebrated
Victorian headmaster, voiced fears about his society that still seem hauntingly prescient
and topical. “I see a wave of more than American vulgarity, moral, intellectual, and social,
preparing to break over us,” he wrote. Arnold was also a poet, critic and educationist of
great distinction. In Dover Beach, his finest poem, he expressed similar anxieties in some
famous lines:

“And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
Arnold was acutely conscious of the threat of “ignorant armies” during 1866-69, the years
in which he incubated this classic of social and literary criticism. Like many Victorian
masterpieces, Culture and Anarchy began as a magazine series, and an important part of
its appeal is as a tour de force of magazine journalism, a genre Arnold himself defined as
“literature in a hurry”.

The two great events, foreign and domestic, that shaped the writing of Arnold’s
passionate argument for self-improvement through culture were, first, the European
revolutions of 1866-70, especially the rise of Prussia; and second, the great reform bill of
1867, together with the London riots that preceded it.

Initially, however, this is a book inspired by, and dedicated to, literature. Arnold was his
father’s son, a passionate advocate for the civilising effect of words and ideas, after the
classical example of Greece and Rome. Arnold was also influenced by JH Newman’s The
Idea of a University, and was inspired to define culture as the essential means by which
the provincial stupidity and boorishness of English life could be neutralised on behalf of
progress. Arnold’s disdain for what passed as “culture” in Victorian times, is evident from
his opening page:

“The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a
culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued out of sheer
vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its
holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it.”

It caught the public mood and aroused in its Victorian readers a bout of self-
analysis and self-criticism

“True” culture, as Arnold defines it, with reference to the glorious Hellenic past, is simply
“the study of perfection”, the harmonious expansion of all the powers of human nature. In
sentiments that would later be developed and enriched by the more feverish imagination
of Oscar Wilde, for whom “culture” was at once sacrosanct and sublime, Arnold believed
that a full apprehension of its virtues must be attained by a knowledge of the best that has
been said and thought in the world, by the free play of the mind over the facts of life, and
by a sympathetic attitude towards all that is beautiful. In one typical passage, he
expresses his argument thus: perfection; and that of perfection, as pursued by culture,
beauty and intelligence, or, in other words, sweetness and light, are the main characters.”

Arnold’s famous borrowing from Jonathan Swift – “Sweetness and light” – expresses
culture as a dynamic concept: “sweetness” as a mature sense of beauty, and “light” as the
exercise of an alert and active intelligence. Although the overall expression of this belief
reeks of Victorian high-mindedness, Arnold gave both purpose and direction to an
articulate critique of industrial society.

Culture & Anarchy appeared in book form just one year before Forster’s all-
important Education Act of 1870 and it posed questions that still perplex us today: what
kind of life should individuals in mass societies be encouraged to lead? How do such
societies best ensure that our quality of life is not impoverished ? How to preserve an
elevated and exclusive freedom of thought in an age of democratic fervour?

Opposed to this exalted assertion of an ideal version of “the good life”, there was the
vulgarity, vigour and vehemence of Victorian England at its zenith. This, Arnold argues,
was a heedless and exuberant individualism (replete with prejudice, greed, xenophobia,
racism, intolerance and aggression) that would lead to anarchy. He nails this claim by
showing how Victorian barbarism affected all strata of national life.

In some of his wittiest and most entertaining passages, Arnold divided English society
into three classes — the Barbarians, the Philistines, and the Populace. (With an almost
audible sigh, he complains: “It is awkward and tiresome to be always saying the
aristocratic class, the middle class, the working class.”) The Barbarians or aristocracy, he
says, have a superficial “sweetness and light”, but are too concerned with the
maintenance and enjoyment of their privileges to attain a true sense of beauty and a true
liberation of thought:

“The Barbarians had the passion for field-sports; as of the passion for asserting one’s
personal liberty…. The care of the Barbarians for the body, and for all manly exercises;
the chivalry of the Barbarians, with its characteristics of high spirit, choice manners, and
distinguished bearing – what is this but the politeness of our aristocratic class?”

“The Philistines or middle classes are devoted to money-making and a narrow form of
religion; they are indifferent or hostile to beauty; and they are ‘the enemy of the children
of light’, or servants of the idea.”

Finally, the rowdy Populace are violent in their prejudices and brutal in their pleasures.
But all three groups are agreed that “doing as one likes” is the chief end of man, and all
are self-satisfied. As a magazine writer of genius, Arnold dazzles his readers with
entrancing contemporary detail: for instance, the case of the Mr Smith who “feared he
would come to poverty and be eternally lost”, to the great Reform crises, and to the
commercial values to which working people had become enslaved. There are also many
topical jokes in the text (nicely explicated in the Cambridge University Press edition
of Culture and Anarchy, edited by J Dover Wilson), which indicate Arnold’s wry and
subtle sense of humour. He comes across as the kind of man you’d be happily stuck with
on a wet afternoon in the country. His sensibility is supremely English; exquisitely well
read; and exceedingly sophisticated.

In a further analysis of this English preference for putting action before thought, Arnold
distinguishes two forces which he describes as “Hebraism” and “Hellenism”. The former
is concerned with resolute action and strict obedience to conscience; the latter with clear
thinking and spontaneity of consciousness.

Favouring both, Arnold says that, when harmoniously combined, they lead to the perfect
balance of an individual’s nature, which is the desirable end of culture. The excessive
development of one quality over the other, he suggests, results in imperfection. Hebraism
with its insistence on conduct is the more essential and it triumphed with Christianity.
However, the reaction that followed the pagan revival of the 16th century led to its over-
development into Puritanism, a discipline intolerant of beauty and free intelligence.

According to Arnold, the English middle-class is still dominated by Puritanism, despising

art and mental cultivation as an end in itself. Through a revival of the best in Hellenism,
in language that anticipates Oscar Wilde, Matthew Arnold would bring “sweetness and
light” to the English middle classes; and he would overcome the unthinking individualism
of all classes by developing the idea of right reason embodied in the state.

By its wit, its pithy definitions and its potent charm, Culture and Anarchy caught the
public mood and aroused in its Victorian readers a mid-season bout of self-analysis, even
 self-criticism, whose influence lingered for decades. As one later commentator observed,
“The evils of English society it attacks and the remedies it proposes are by no means out
of date”.

Arnold might be surprised by that verdict. In his closing paragraph, he notes, ironically,
that “now we go the way the human race is going, while they [the Liberals] abolish the
Irish Church by the power of the Nonconformists’ antipathy to establishments, or they
enable a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister.”

A Signature Sentence
“But, finally, perfection, – as culture, from a thorough disinterested study of human
nature and human experience learns to conceive it, – is a harmonious expansion of all the
powers which make the beauty and worth of human nature, and is not consistent with the
over-development of any one power at the expense of the rest.”

Arnold's doctrine, of course, was not perfectly comprehensive nor free from prejudices; but
none could be essentially more useful for his generation or ours. We may readily grant that it
is, in one sense or another, a doctrine for chosen spirits, but if history makes anything clear
it is that chosen spirits are the necessary instruments of all progress and therefore the chief
hope of society.

summary
Culture and Anarchy

Culture and Anarchy is the major work of criticism. According to Arnold culture is “the study of perfection”. Culture
and Anarchy is a long essay on social issues and culture. There essay is a very critical or very sophist acted of the
way. and Anarchy is, in the words of J. Dover Wilson, “ at once a masterpiece of vivacious prose, a great poet’s
great defense of poetry, a profoundly religious book, and the finest apology for education in the English Language,
and they language is very simple, clear or inheritance of the way. This essay contains six chapters and these
chapters gave us view of Arnold about Political and Social issues. This essay contain to summarized in a Anarchy’s
chapter.
Mathew Arnold

The six part of essay

 Chapter- 1 “Sweetness and Light”
 Chapter- 2 “Doing as One Likes”
 Chapter- 3 “Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace
 Chapter- 4 “Hebraism and Hellenism”
 Chapter -5 “Porro Unum estNecessarium”
 Chapter- 6 “Our Liberal Practitioners”

“Sweetness and Light”

“Sweetness and Light” is a first chapter or they are clarify to a Mathew Arnold. He is English and
Victorian poet or write, who was also an inspector of schools, popularized Swift's phrase as the theme and title of
the first chapter of his celebrated book of cultural criticism,Culture and Anarchy. This age is a very popular by its
material prosperity, political awakening. He wrote a book culture and Anarchy use of a ancient Greek. The main
point of a society or curiocity, and they kind of a very sophisticated of a way According to him a curiocity is desire.

Curiocity is a lead to us a culture, and It is a natural place to a cutiocity. Culture and Anarchy book is a
concept very clearly or simple disaster. They can have a social or political issues to the Sweetness and light is
created to Mathew Arnold. He is a view social aspect of culture.It is a person of culture, and who work in the society
for its betterment. We can the direct the inspire of the man a religious, they can have use of social, political,
religious, poem is a create to a culture anarchy. There society are create to human natural power of a way.

Arnold clarify to a connection between culture and idea of sweetness and light. Arnold is a Greek man of
culture is main character of a essay. The character of a main culture is modally by religion and poetry. Culture has
one great opinion, the passion for sweetness and light. Arnold is a create to a new art, poetry, society construction
or they can have a power full or domestic literature. Culture is a main character of the sweetness and light, culture is
a different form of the way. Marlow is a clearly to the culture is a connected to the light. So, his pursuit of perfection
is sweetness and light.

“Doing As One Like”

Doing as one like is a second chapter in a way.This is considered the most privileged right in
English society. However, what sort of actions can he take? This freedom can result into indulgence, and anarchy
may rear its ugly head. This study is a purification of perfection in culture anarchy, and the perfection character is
very beautiful or intelligent in culture. The obsession of doing as one like is not always welcomed. We need the right
reason, which can guide us and stop such anarchy. Arnold believes three classes, aristocratic, middle class and
working class have too little strength to govern. The thing is they have right proportion of sweetness but what they
lack is light, intelligence. Thus, none class passes the standard put forward by Arnold. It is one’s best friend and,
should be followed in case of anarchy. Chapter 1 or 2 it is very different character or sophisticated of a way.it is very
easy to sit in one’s study and find out with the course of modern society, but the thing is to propose practical
improvements for it.It is baize on the religion culture and there are very different think of people.More and more,
because of this our blind faith in machinery, because of our want of light to enable us to look beyond machinery to
the end for which machinery is valuable, and this and that body of men, all over the country.

Now the simple meaning of a very contradict nary or persuaded of the way. Doing as one like is a worship
of the mere freedom to do as one likes is worship of machinery, that the really thing is to like right reason ordains,
and to follow her authority, then we have got a practical benefit out of culture. Character is a perfection are very
good or they related to the machined on the purified of the way, And finally society thought, art and politically in a
change of culture.

''The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.''

“Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace

Barbarians

Arnold is a real and greatest figure of the social culture. Mathew Arnold divided the society of England
into three class, and there are a very different of the other character. He designate class of his time as the
Barbarians, the Philistines and Populace. His three class are very good experience of the critic. This chapter name
his Barbarians because they believe in the personal individualism, liberty and they like passion field sports.
Barbarians style is a very beautiful or individualism. There are politician resemble, accomplishment power and
contrasted of the way. Barbarians is a very simple but they can have a working class, or they society is a real culture
in a domestic of the way.

Philistines

Another class, middle class or Philistines are known for their mundane wisdom, and expertise in
industrialization. This class is a very different or working of the people. Their goal is to develop the cities by building
rails, constructing roads and buildings. In this work, they get help from the working class, and the worker is a very
power full or they are lower cast of the people
.
Populace

The last class is a working class or populace. They are raw and poor, suffered by diseases. It is
heartening to note that now the democratic ideas are emerging in them and they are becoming the conscious of
their rights. They worker are very tired or middle class man. This class is mostly exploited by the Barbarian and
philistines. They have started doing what they like, shouting when they like and breaking what the like. The strong
hold of religious with plenty of energy.

“Hebraism and Hellenism”

Hebraism

“Hebraism is the identification of a usage, trait, or characteristic of

the Hebrew language By sussecive and extencive it is often applied to their faith, national,
idealogy or culture. Hebraism is a very beautiful character or very sophisticated of the way. Culture is a reality, or
they can have expect to the culture anarchy. ”The Hebraism is described quality, character, society, political, thought
or system of religion attributed to the Hebrew people. It is in this sense that Matthew Arnold contrasts Hebraism with
Hellenism.

Hellenism

The “Hellenism” derived from the Greek word. In his essay discuss from Hebraism and Hellenism.
Hebraism and Hellenism are religious disciplines that incorporate similar language in their teaching. Arnold is point
of a Greek philosophy is a use of a Hellenism is a Greek teaching and focuses on seeing the world and reality as it
really is and spontaneity. Arnold said that Hellenism and Hebraism they should be in harmony by the light of reason,
and talksaboury simple or real in domestic of the way. Arnold also discusses further thing that the supreme idea with
Hellenism or the Greek Spirit is to see things as they really are, and the supreme idea of Hebraism or the spirit of
Bible is conduct and obedience. Finally end his part biased on perfection or salvation. And this think are related to
political, religious, society or culture.
“First, never go against the best light you have; secondly, take care that your light be not darkness.

“Porro Unum estNecessarium”

Porrounumestnecessarium is a fifth chapter of the culture and anarchy. There are most important of the
harmonious development of the part of culture. Necessarium conception of our mechanical, more and more unlike
think of originality. Porro is a great work and the Epitasis of the roman condition of the way. Now perfectly to seize
another man, when the man his separated by different of race, time or infinity. The contradictory working and state
of human working of the man. They are related to religion; social, political or working is a power full.The most
important of the harmonious is a very domestic of the way.

“Our Liberal Practitioners”

Mathew Arnold describe to a culture anarchy. Now it seem plain that the present church
establishment in Ireland is contrary to reason and justice, in so far as the church of very small minority of the people
there takes for itself all the church property of the Irish people. They can have a religious Characterization or
different or beautiful. The state is of the religion of all its citizens, without the fanaticism of any of them. The actual
power in the short by virtue the liberty party in house of common in now power of working and establishment. They
can have a opportunity of the Irish man and use of English use of mechanical rules. This character is a related to
most important or regional but political or art is a connecting of ordinary time.

Conclusion

Arnold is a described by a six part of a culture anarchy.The first of a related to a social or political point or they can
have a created to a social culture. Second part of a character perfection or purification. This character is very
intelligent or beautiful or they can connect to literary part. Next part is a create to poor worker or there are middle
class of the people. This part is a very different or they are domestic of the way. Arnold classified English society
into the Barbarians. Hebraism is a use of Greek. There are describing to a character, political, culture or art. Next
part of a create to a harmonious or they a realor connected to religious. The last part of a Ireland country justice.
Church property is a Irish people and can clear to Irish characterization or domesticity art of the way. Culture and
Anarchy is a major work of criticism. Arnold creates culture identity. Then the society is connect to the social,
political, philosophical and then part of culture.