RUTHFULLY YOURS

It was by chance that my first reading of Culture and Anarchy with my students coincided with the centenary of its publication. But it was not by chance that I chose to read it then, in 1969, at the height of the culture war. Anticipating that war by more than a century, Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) wrote a passionate defense of culture—high culture, we would now say—against the prevailing low culture that he saw as tantamount to “anarchy.”

His countrymen, unfortunately, were animated by quite the opposite principle: “doing as one likes” and “saying what one likes.” Perhaps out of deference to John Stuart Mill, Arnold did not cite On Liberty to that effect (the book had appeared, to great acclaim, only a decade earlier). Instead, he quoted a Mr. Roebuck, a Liberal member of Parliament who was fond of asking, “May not every man in England say what he likes?”—asserting that this was the source of England’s greatness. To which Arnold replied that culture requires that “what men say, when they may say what they like, is worth saying—has good in it, and more good than bad.” Anything short of that is an invitation to anarchy, for it lacks “the much wanted principle” of authority that governs the culture as well as society.

A century later, my students, in the midst of their culture war, recognized in Arnold’s culture the oppressive great-books mentality they were battling in the university. So far from rejecting the charge of anarchism, the more militant of them accepted it. What Arnold praised as authority, they denounced as authoritarian, and what he decried as anarchy, they took to be liberty at its best—the perfect liberty that was the antithesis of the perfect culture he celebrated.

It is almost with nostalgia that I now reread Culture and Anarchy—nostalgia for the old culture war that had not yet confronted such truly subversive forces as multiculturalism, postmodernism, deconstructionism, and the like. An Arnoldite, like myself, confesses to having lost that war. But a new reading raises the prospect of another war that is more ominous.

If Culture and Anarchy may be read as “culture vs. anarchy,” so “Hebraism and Hellenism” (the title of one chapter) may be read as “Hebraism vs. Hellenism.” The antithesis seems to be unambiguous: “The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience” (italics in original). “The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the uppermost idea with Hebraism is conduct and obedience.” “The Greek quarrel with the body and its desires is that they hinder right thinking; the Hebrew quarrel with them is that they hinder right acting.” Hellenism is comfortable in the “pursuit or attainment of perfection”; Hebraism, obsessed with sin, sees only “the difficulties which oppose themselves” to perfection.

This is a powerful theme, and a disturbing one, especially now, when England is experiencing a recurrence of antisemitism. In this context, even the word “Hebraism” may be suspect, all the more when it is pitted against that worthy cause, Hellenism. Yet a more careful reading may allay that anxiety, for the “Hebraism and Hellenism” of this chapter is not analogous to the “culture and anarchy” of the title. Hebraism may be criticized for being insufficiently appreciative of culture, but not, surely, for being anarchic. A creed whose “uppermost idea” is “conduct and obedience,” “right acting,” and “strictness of conscience” can hardly be accused of “doing and saying what one likes.”

“Hebraism and Hellenism,” it turns out, are just that—not “Hebraism vs. Hellenism” but “Hebraism and Hellenism.” The two are not so much opposed, Arnold points out, as “divergent,” animated by “different principles” but having the “same goal” and “aiming at a like final result.” Both are “contributions to human development—august contributions, invaluable contributions.” Both “arise out of the wants of human nature, and address themselves to satisfying those wants.” The aim of both is the same: “man’s perfection or salvation.” Moreover, it is by alternating the two, “a man’s intellectual and moral impulses,” that “the human spirit proceeds; and each of these two forces has its appointed hours of culmination and seasons of rule.”

The last proviso, about the “appointed hours” and “seasons,” is at the heart of the matter, for this is what made the issue urgent for Arnold. “Now, and for us,” his preface asserts, “it is a time to Hellenise, and to praise knowing; for we have Hebraised too much, and have over-valued doing.” Yet this was followed immediately by the cautionary note: “But the habits and discipline received from Hebraism remain for our race an eternal possession; and as humanity is constituted, one must never assign to them the second rank today, without being prepared to restore them to the first rank tomorrow.”

The final chapter even foresees a time when the two great principles would be in accord.

For is not this the right crown of the long discipline of Hebraism, and the due fruit of mankind’s centuries of painful schooling in self-conquest, .  .  . that when in the fullness of time it has reason and beauty offered to it .  .  . it should at last walk by the true light with the same staunchness and zeal with which it formerly walked by its imperfect light? And thus man’s two great natural forces, Hebraism and Hellenism, will no longer be dissociated and rival, but will be a joint force of right thinking and strong doing to carry him on towards perfection. This is what the lovers of culture may perhaps dare to augur for such a nation as ours.

This is an auspicious conclusion, and a reassuring one. So far from lending itself, as I had feared, to anything like antisemitism, Culture and Anarchy might almost take its place in the annals of philosemitism.

We may also be encouraged, after yet another rereading, to reconsider the culture war itself. Perhaps that war has not been irrevocably lost, perhaps postmodernism has played itself out, and culture, Arnold’s culture, will capture the imagination and enliven the spirit of a new generation.

Gertrude Himmelfarb is the author, most recently, of The People of the Book: Philosemitism in England, from Cromwell to Churchill.