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· Name: Abulhasan H. Aabedi
· Roll no: 01
· Topic:
What is the concept of culture according to Mathew Arnold
· Paper no.6: The Victorian Age
· Class: Semester 02
· Enrollment
no.:2069108420180001
· Batch:
2017~19
· Submitted to Department of English MK Bhavnagar University
·
Introduction:
MathewArnold (1822-88) was one of the 19th-century England’s most
prominent poets and social commentators. He was for many years and inspector of
school, later becoming professor of poetry at Oxford University. Among his
books, perhaps the best known is ‘culture and Anarchy’(1869), in which he
argues for the role of reading ‘The best that has been thought and said’ as an
antidote to anarchy of materialism, industrialism and individualistic
self-interest. Arnold mounts a case in support of building and teaching a
canonical body of knowledge. ‘Culture and Anarchy’ is a controversial
philosophical work written by the celebrated Victorian Poet and Critic Mathew
Arnold. Composed during a time of unprecedented social and political change,
the essay argues for a restructuring of England’s social ideology. It reflects
Arnold’s passionate conviction that the uneducated English masses could be
molded into conscientious individuals who strive for human perfection through
the harmonious cultivation of all of their skills and talent.
There are six chapters in
Arnold’s Essay ‘Culture and Anarchy’ as,
1. Sweetness
and Light
2. Doing
as one likes
5. Porro
Unum est Necessarium(but one thing is necessary)
6. Our
Liberal Practitioners
To understand the essay culture
and anarchy one has to know about the concept of culture given by Arnold, so we
will see what is the concept of culture according to Mathew Arnold in details.
·
What is
the concept according to Mathew Arnold:
Mathew Arnold in
this essay on ‘Culture and Anarchy’, sets out to vindicate the true ‘culture’
By refutin liberal practitioners like Mr. Bright, Mr. Edward White, Mr. Federic Harrison etc and news papers like daily Telegraph & Times. On doing so he resort to Bishop Wilson’s Maxism of piety and Christianity, Meditation of Marcus Aurelius, M. Renan etc. In the ‘introduction’ to his essay, Arnold clearly mentions that:
“The whole scope
of the essay is to recommend Culture
as the great help out of our present difficulties; Culture being a pursuit of
our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most
concern us, “the best which has been thought and said in the world”; and through this knowledge, turning a stream
of fresh and free thought upon our stock nations and habits, which we now
follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly
imaging that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for
the mischief of following them mechanically.
This, and this
alone, is the scop of the following essay. And the culture we recommend is,
above all, an inward operation. To show the importance of culture Arnold has
given an example of American culture. The then news daily Times had praised the advancement of America as “America, without
religious establishments, seems to get ahead of us all, even in light and the
things of mind.” But by not laying the foundation of culture, America “have
created intellectual mediocrity, their vulgarity of manners, their superficial
spirit, their lack of general intelligence.
Arnold- a believer in culture- proposes
to try and enquire, in the simple unsystematic way, “what culture really is,
what good it can do, what is our own special need of it; and he shall seeks to
find some plain grounds on which a faith in culture, both his own faith in it
and the faith of others, may rest securely.”
·
Culture:
as a study in perfection:
CULTURE, which is the study of perfection, leads us, as Arnold in the
essay have shown, “to conceived to true human perfection as harmonious perfection, developing all
sides of our humanity; and as a general perfection, developing all parts of our
society. For if one member suffers, the other members must suffer with it; and
the fewer there is that follow the true way of salvation, the harder that way is
to find.” Culture is considered not merely as the endeavour to see and learn
this, but as the endeavour , also, to make it prevail, the moral, social, and
beneficent character of culture becomes manifest.
Religion says: The Kingdom of God is within you; and
culture, in like manner. Places human perfection in an internal condition, in
the growth and predominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from our
animality. ‘It is in making endless additions to itself, in the endless
expansion of its power, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit
of the human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an
indispensable aid, and that is the true value of culture. ‘Not a having and a
resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as
culture conceives it; and here, too, it
coincides with religion.
Perfection, as culture conceives
it, is not possible while the individual remains isolated. The individual is
required, under pain of being stunted(underdevelopment) and enfeebled in his
own development if he disobeys, to carry others along with him in his march
towards perfection.
If culture, then, is a study of
perfection, and of harmonious perfection, general perfection, and perfection
which consists in becoming something rather than in having something, in an
inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of
circumstances, it is clear that culture, instead of being the frivolous and
useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr. Frederic Harrison , and many other
liberals are apt to call it, has a very important function to fulfill for
mankind.
Arnold mentions that the only
purpose of culture is in keeping the mark of human perfection simply and broadly
in view, and not assigning to his perfection, as religion or utilitarianism assign to it, a special and
limited character, this point of view, according to him, of culture is best
given by these words of Epictetus:- ‘It is a sign of aphuia(without natural
talents, dull)’ says he, that is, of a nature not finely tempered, to give
yourselves up to things which relate to the body; to make, for instance, a
great fuss about exercise, a great fuss about eating, a great fuss about
drinking, a great fuss about walking, a
great fuss about riding. All these things ought to be done merely by the way:
the formation of the spirit and character must be our real concern.’ This is
admirable; and indeed, the Greek words aphuis, euphuis(well-grown, shapely,
goodly: graceful; of good natural parts:
clever, witty; also ‘of good disposition; a finely tempered nature), gives
exactly the notion of perfection as
culture brings us to conceives it: a harmonious perfection, a perfection in
which the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites
‘the two noblest of things,’ as swift, most happily calls them in his Battle of the two Books, ‘the two
noblest of things, sweetness and light.’
·
Culture:
Sweetness & Light:
For Arnold, culture is connected with the idea of Sweetness and Light.
He tries to explain this idea with the help of Greek words aphuia & euphuia. The euphyes is the man who tends towards sweetness
and Light; the aphyes, on the other hand, is our Phillistine The immense spirituals significance of the
Greeks is due to having been inspired with this central and happy idea of the essential character of human perfection;
and Mr. Bright’s misconception of culture, as a smattering of Greek and Latin,
comes itself, after all, from this wonderful significance of the Greeks having
affected the very machinery of our education, and is in itself a kind of homage
to it. In thus making sweetness and light to be characters of perfection,
culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows one law with poetry.
Culture, however, show its
single-minded love of perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the will
of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its attitude towards all this
machinery, even while it insists that it is machinery. The pursuit of
perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for
sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works
for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks
beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the
passion for sweetness and light.
·
What is
greatness? :-
Culture makes us ask- “What is
Greatness?” Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excites love,
interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that
we excite love, interest, and admiration. If England were swallowed up by the
sea tomorrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite the love, interest, and
admiration mankind, would most, therefore, show the evidence of having
possessed greatness, the England of Elizabeth, of a time of splendid spiritual
effort, but when our coal, and our industrial operation depending on coal, were
very little developed? The people, who believe most that our greatness and
welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and
thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call Philistine.
Culture says: ‘Consider these people, then, their voices; look at them
attentively observe the literature they
read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of
their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any
amount of wealth be worth having with
the condition that one was to become
just like these people by having it? And thus culture begets a dissatisfaction
which is of the highest possible value in stemming the common tide of men’s
thought in a wealthy and industrial community, and which saves the future, as
one may hope, from being vulgarized, even if it cannot save the present.
·
Conclusion:
Thus, to
conclude we may say that the men of culture are the true apostles of equality.
The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for
carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best
ideas of their time, who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was
harsh, difficult, abstract, professional; to humanize it, to make it
efficient outside the circle of the
cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of
the time, and a true sources, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a man was
Ablerard in the middle Ages, such
were Lessing and Herder in Germany-
generations will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and works far
more perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be produced in Germany;
and yet the names of these two men will fill a German with enthusiasm.
·
Sources from Reading materials
·
Pages- 5
·
Words-1,836
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