Culture and Anarchy

Culture and Anarchy

Matthew Arnold

[iii] My foremost design in writing this Preface is to address a word of exhortation to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. In the essay which follows, the reader will often find Bishop Wilson quoted. To me and to the members of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge his name and writings are still, no doubt, familiar; but the world is fast going away from old-fashioned people of his sort, and I learnt with consternation lately from a brilliant and distinguished votary of the natural sciences, that he had never so much as heard of Bishop Wilson, and that he imagined me to have invented him. At a moment when the Courts of Law have just taken off the embargo from the recreative religion furnished on Sundays by my gifted acquaintance and others, and when St. Martin's Hall [iv] and the Alhambra will soon be beginning again to resound with their pulpit-eloquence, it distresses one to think that the new lights should not only have, in general, a very low opinion of the preachers of the old religion, but that they should have it without knowing the best that these preachers can do. And that they are in this case is owing in part, certainly, to the negligence of the Christian Knowledge Society. In old times they used to print and spread abroad Bishop Wilson's Maxims of Piety and Christianity; the copy of this work which I use is one of their publications, bearing their imprint, and bound in the well-known brown calf which they made familiar to our childhood; but the date of my copy is 1812. I know of no copy besides, and I believe the work is no longer one of those printed and circulated by the Society. Hence the error, flattering, I own, to me personally, yet in itself to be regretted, of the distinguished physicist already mentioned.

But Bishop Wilson's Maxims deserve to be circulated as a religious

at present under this designation, but for their own sake, and even

by comparison with the other works of the same [v] author. Over the

far better known Sacra Privata they have this advantage, that they

were prepared by him for his own private use, while the Sacra Privata

were prepared by him for the use of the public. The Maxims were

never meant to be printed, and have on that account, like a work of,

doubtless, far deeper emotion and power, the Meditations of Marcus

Aurelius, something peculiarly sincere and first-hand about them.

Some of the best things from the Maxims have passed into the Sacra

Privata; still, in the Maxims, we have them as they first arose; and

whereas, too, in the Sacra Privata the writer speaks very often as

one of the clergy, and as addressing the clergy, in the Maxims he

almost always speaks solely as a man. I am not saying a word against

the Sacra Privata, for which I have the highest respect; only the

Maxims seem to me a better and a more edifying book still. They

should be read, as Joubert says Nicole should be read, with a direct

aim at practice. The reader will leave on one side things which,

from the change of time and from the changed point of view which the

change of time inevitably brings with it, no longer suit him; enough

[vi] will remain to serve as a sample of the very best, perhaps,

which our nation and race can do in the way of religious writing.

Monsieur Michelet makes it a reproach to us that, in all the doubt as

to the real author of the Imitation, no one has ever dreamed of

ascribing that work to an Englishman. It is true, the Imitation

could not well have been written by an Englishman; the religious

delicacy and the profound asceticism of that admirable book are

hardly in our nature. This would be more of a reproach to us if in

poetry, which requires, no less than religion, a true delicacy of

spiritual perception, our race had not done such great things; and if

the Imitation, exquisite as it is, did not, as I have elsewhere

remarked, belong to a class of works in which the perfect balance of

human nature is lost, and which have therefore, as spiritual

productions, in their contents something excessive and morbid, in

their form something not thoroughly sound. On a lower range than the

Imitation, and awakening in our nature chords less poetical and

delicate, the Maxims of Bishop Wilson are, as a religious work, far

more solid. To the most sincere ardour and unction, Bishop Wilson

unites, in these Maxims, that downright honesty [vii] and plain good

sense which our English race has so powerfully applied to the divine

impossibilities of religion; by which it has brought religion so much

into practical life, and has done its allotted part in promoting upon

earth the kingdom of God. But with ardour and unction religion, as

we all know, may still be fanatical; with honesty and good sense, it

may still be prosaic; and the fruit of honesty and good sense united

with ardour and unction is often only a prosaic religion held

fanatically. Bishop Wilson's excellence lies in a balance of the

four qualities, and in a fulness and perfection of them, which makes

this untoward result impossible; his unction is so perfect, and in

such happy alliance with his good sense, that it becomes tenderness

and fervent charity; his good sense is so perfect and in such happy

alliance with his unction, that it becomes moderation and insight.

While, therefore, the type of religion exhibited in his Maxims is

English, it is yet a type of a far higher kind than is in general

reached by Bishop Wilson's countrymen; and yet, being English, it is

possible and attainable for them. And so I conclude as I began, by