or less vital field but because its province lies outside the realm of all those puissant aids to cogency and impressiveness that appeal to the sense of beauty and accordingly influence so powerfully not only the intellect but the emotions as well. But of its service to truth there can be no question. Its rôle is not confined to exposition, to interpretation. It is a synthesis of its naturally more or less heterogeneous subject. It is a characterization of art as art is a characterization of nature. And in characterizing, it translates as art itself translates. It is only in criticism that the thought of an era becomes articulate, crystallized, coherently communicated. And real criticism, criticism worthy its officecriticism such as Arnold's-contributes as well as co-ordinates and exhibits. It is itself literature, because it is itself origination as well as comment, and is the direct expression of ideas rather than an expression of ideas at one remove-either chronicling their effect on the critic after the manner of the impressionist or weighing them according to some detached and objective judicial standard.

Culture, of course, is his central theme. His name is popularly and rightly more closely associated with it than with anything else. It is his notable reliance and recommendation in every department of thought and action with which he occupies himself-religious, poetic, critical, political, social-his gospel, in a word. Culture he defines as "a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all matters which most concern us, the best which has been known and thought in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits which we now follow stanchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them stanchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically." He exhibits and illustrates its value eloquently and convincingly, showing, in a dozen ways how it inspires correctness and corrects errors. It is his universal solvent. He applies it in discussing questions of all sorts, the most practical as well as the most abstract. From it he derives a number of general principles which its pursuit of perfection involves. In the first place culture in

volves the ideal of perfection as residing in "an inward condition of the mind and spirit and not in an outward set of circumstances"; then as harmonious, an expansion of all the powers for beauty and for good of human nature; then as a general expansion wholly at variance, for example, with the maxim of "every man for himself." From this he deduces its salutary application to the phenomena of the large mechanical and external element in modern civilization, of our Anglo-Saxon individualism, of our want of flexibility, our concentration upon one aspect of a thing and our blindness to its other sides, our faith in "machinery" as an end in itself the machinery variously known as freedom, population, railroads, wealth, churches, political institutions. It is evident that the idea of culture has endless applications. The chapter titles of "Culture and Anarchy" would suggest them to anyone who had never read the book"Sweetness and Light," Doing as One Likes," "Barbarians, Philistines, Populace," "Hebraism and Hellenism," and so A dozen, a score, of epitomizing sentences from the same work might be cited to show them; for example: No man, who knows nothing else, knows even his Bible," or, "And to be, like our honored and justly honored Faraday, a great natural philosopher with one side of his being and a Sandemanian with the other, would to Archimedes have been impossible." There are delicious pages in "Culture and Anarchy," and its vivacity no longer obscures its soundness, probably, even for readers of the temperament of those in whom when it first appeared it awakened discomfort if not dislike. Everyone nowadays is theoretically a friend of culture— even the strenuous.

on.

IV

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Religion," even of "St. Paul and Protestantism." No one has felt more deeply, and no one has so clearly expressed this essence of religion denuded of dogma and stripped of the husks of its traditionary sanctions. To him religion was as definite a realm as poetry. He distinguished it from ethics in very much the way in which poetry differs from prose, and characterized it as "morality touched by emotion." Religious truth, even, he distinguished from scientific truth in saying that "truth of science does not become truth of religion until it becomes religious." For a time his readers hardly knew what he meant. His gospel was so simple as to be startling. "Literature and Dogma" was taken to be an attack on at least a vital and integral part of Christianity. And it must be confessed that its sprightly rhetoric, through which, however, it got its hearing, gave some color of justification for the grief of the judicious, to whom what he called Aberglaube was inextricably bound up with the most precious verities. The solemn Spectator was betrayed, by temper, probably, into speaking of his ideal as Christianity without God-as Comte's scheme has been satirized as Catholicism minus Christianity. What was curiously called his theology seemed very superficial to the thorough-going, and aroused what, still more curiously, the Editor of his "Letters" has felt justified in calling "some just criticisms." Why "just" ? one is tempted to ask at the present day when nearly the whole thinking world, save that portion of it committed to the defence of dogma, has practically, if insensibly, come to adopt his view that the sanction of religion is its natural truth. And that the natural truth of religion has not lost its hold on the nonclerical thinking world along with its traditionary "confessions" and their philosophy, is due primarily to the spirit that distinguishes between what is and what is not vital in the matter. This spirit inspires much religious writing at the present day. But Arnold's religious writing does more than assay the alloy of popular Christianity. It advocates, commends, exalts the pure metal, points out its worth and its winningness, shows how important a part it plays in the development and discipline of one's highest self, eloquently magnifies mankind's legitimate concern in it, and

convincingly establishes its claims and its rewards.

Nothing is more singular than the reticence with which religion is treated even by the religious. The sense of its being a private, an intimate, and a sacred concern hardly accounts for it. It is true it is a matter of the heart, and about matters of the heart one is instinctively reserved. Then, too, the dread of seeming hypocrisy undoubtedly acts as a restraint. But that one of the greatest forces in the moral world should, merely as a subject of thought and speculation, receive only what may be called professional and esoteric attention is not thus to be explained. Theology is freely considered and discussed, increasingly less so, of course, as its sanctions come generally to seem insubstantial and as, in consequence, it loses interest. Yet dogma is at best limited and disputed formulary, whereas the principles with which it deals or misdeals are universal. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, is a disputed and unverifiable dogma. The influence of the Holy Spirit, exquisitely called the Comforter, is a matter of actual experience, as solid a reality as that of electro-magnetism. But, the pulpit of course aside, the dogma has certainly occupied a more prominent place in the minds of men than the fact. The comparative lack of interest in the more interesting theme is, one would say, inexplicable. Everyone knows that, if he would, he could at once determine with his entire nature to depart from iniquity," that he could, if he would, successfully accomplish this, and that the result would be the happiness, so far as happiness depends upon one's self, of which everyone is in search-"the peace," in a word, "which passeth all understanding." Man's capability of utilizing this force is a matter of consciousness, and the effect of doing so is as demonstrably certain as the effect of combustion. difficult to see why it is not phenomenally as interesting. It is surely quite as important, quite as deserving the attention of the critic, quite as dignified and fruitful a literary theme. And in spite of this, in spite of its interest and its universality, it is relegated to the theologians.

It is

The explanation doubtless is that, owing to various causes-the cathedral infalli

bility of the Church and the tyranny of Protestant " Biblism," for instance-theology and religion, dogma and natural truth, have been so closely and so long associated as to have become amalgamated. The natural history of dogma explains its despotism. The instinctive or empirical perception of truth out of which it is developed is lost sight of in the philosophic form it assumes in final definition. Its devotees come to feel, for example, that, to use Arnold's phrase, "salvation is attached to a right knowledge of the Godhead." On the other hand, those minds on whom it loses its hold as its form gradually discloses its emptiness, forget its origin. Any formulation of the constitution of the "Godhead" seeming absurd when withdrawn from the sphere of logic and brought into that of consciousness, God himself— whom, as Joubert says, it is not hard to know if one does not force one's self to define Him"-is left out of all consideration. Dogma comes to seem, thus, an invention instead of a development, and, to crude minds, an interested invention. Nor is it crudity alone that thus misconceives it. The "liberal" temper itself, exasperated at its perversions, wars against its bases often. Heine speaks of "the fictitious quarrel which Christianity has cooked up between the body and the soul," as if St. Paul's antagonism between the law of the members" and "the law of the mind" were not a matter of universal experience. Of the two tendencies, however, there can be no doubt which is in accord with the Zeit-Geist at the present time. It is dogma that has lost its hold on serious minds, and Arnold's great concern in his religious writings is to save religion from going with it.

He was himself of a deeply religious nature, and his religion was, of course, as any religiousness must be at the present day, actively Christian. People speak of Epictetus and of Marcus Aurelius as if there were something religious in paganism essentially extraneous to Christianity-as if born in later times within the fold of Christianity they would not, dogma aside, have been as formally Christian as Melancthon or Sir Thomas More. Had the "Discourses" been uttered in the thirteenth century Jesus would certainly have

replaced Hercules in the passage in which Epictetus calls Hercules "the Son of God." Other people, who accept the fairy tale of popular religion as the only basis, and metaphysical theology as the only definition, of Christianity, like the London Spectator, accuse Arnold of being essentially an atheist-"just as," says Arnold, in "God and the Bible," "the heathen populace of Asia cried out against Polycarp: Away with the Atheists.'' His own idea of the essence of Christianity he defines, in "St. Paul and Protestantism," as something not very far, at any rate, from this: Grace and peace by the annulment of our ordinary self through the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ." This was the Christianity he sought to extricate from the desuetude into which both its mythology and its metaphysics have indubitably fallen. To anyone who feels with him that religion is "the most lovable of things "-no attempt could be more attractive or more important, be more properly a work of serious literature. He himself considered " Literature and Dogma" his most important work.

It is in the first place a constructive attempt. In the words of its secondary title, it is "an essay toward a better apprehension of the Bible," and it was conceived and executed in the interests of the preservation of religion. To this end, it perforce exposed the insubstantiality of the current misapprehension of the Bible

the proof from prophecy, the proof from miracles, and that from metaphysics. Many readers probably got no farther than these luminous chapters which, it is true, were written with a zest calculated to arouse the scepticism of the suspicious. The attack on metaphysics was certainly the least successful of this ground-clearing work. It was continued in "God and the Bible," and elaborated to a degree which may fairly be said to betray a consciousness of not having exactly hit off the matter. It was a depreciation, in deference to his own predilections, which were literary and religious and not scientific, of what a whole order of serious minds rest their firmest convictions upon. In his treatment of the supernatural he professed to part from miracles with regret, from metaphysical proof with pleasThere was something a little Olym

ure.

pian in this.

As he says, miracles do not and never did happen. Metaphysics is at least a pseudo-science which can only be attacked in detail and only through its own terms, just as universal doubt is a self-contradictory affirmation. Nothing can be more salutary, nevertheless, for the many minds whose vice is content with abstractions, than his extremely metaphysical and perhaps not too scientifically successful-attack on the fundamental concept of "being." It does not convince, but it cannot fail to enlighten. No vivacity, it is true, can obscure the fact that it is pure caricature to say: "Descartes could look out of his window at Amsterdam, and see a public place filled with men and women, and say to himself that he had no right to be certain they were men and women, because they might after all be mere lay figures dressed up in hats and cloaks." But after all it is to be borne in mind that the metaphysical proof of a religious system is, like those from prophecy and miracles, merely a part of its apologetics and not of its appeal.

It is its appeal, its constructive side, that, as I say, constitutes the essential part of "Literature and Dogma." Its cardinal proposition is that the Bible is literature and not dogma, and that so to consider it is the preliminary to a right and adequate estimate of it. Having contended for an absolute divorce between religion and theology in the interests of essential Christianity, he proceeds by treating the Bible as literature to draw out, in a positive way, its natural, real, and verifiable value as a religious document. No commentator on the Scriptures has ever accomplished a more cogent and seductive work than his showing of the use to which the truly religious soul may put the book of which it is a commonplace that it is the Book of Books, but which readers who have come to discredit the dogma based upon its misapprehension have come completely to neglect. But aside from this specific service in emphasizing the value as literature, as poetry, as criticism of life, of the Bible, his religious writings are also a rational and eloquent exposition of the attractiveness of religion itself. He made religion a theme, a topic, of literature. He brought out its general interest and rescued it from the hands of the specialist. He treated it

as properly a branch of culture. He awakened in his serious readers inclined to regard it as negligible a certain dissatisfaction and sense of incompleteness.

Even in detail his services to religion are considerable. To take a single instance: No idea of modern times has been more fruitful, in the sense of forwarding the true, that is to say the spiritual, interests of religion than his favorite one that the sole justification of separatism is moral and not doctrinal. Nothing has more successfully warred against "the communion of the saints" than the contrary opinion, which may be said to be native to Protestantism. The Reformation-"the real Reformation, the German Reformation, Luther's Reformation," as he calls it—was, in his words, " a reaction of the moral and spiritual sense against the carnal and pagan sense"; it was "a religious revival like St. Francis's." The Christian Church, he says, is founded "not on a correct speculative knowledge of the ideas of Paul, but on the much surer ground: Let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity'; and holding this to be so, we might change the current strain of doctrinal theology from one end to the other, without, on that account, setting up any new church or bringing in any new religion." His appreciation of the religious value of unity is no doubt largely due to his traditional feelings for the Church of England and his traditional antagonism to Nonconformity. "The Evangelicals," he says, "have not added to their first error of holding this unsound body of opinions the second error of separating for them." for them." Of course his preoccupation with the Church and the Nonconformists in his illustrations and argumentation limits his public. It is all rather aliunde to Americans, for example, even to American Churchmen. But it is easy for any reflecting reader to understand his meaning in saying, for example, "Man worships best in common; he philosophizes best alone." And it is not difficult to seize the significance of his central idea that mere doctrinal differences do not justify a dissolution of that union in which there is strength as much in religious as in other matters with which man's moral nature is mainly concerned― patriotism, for example, or the feeling for the life of the family.

V

THE virtue of all his criticism-literary, social, and religious-is revealed, not to say enhanced, by the limpidity of his style. It is perhaps a matter of personal feeling, but it seems to me that limpidity at least suggests, if it does not express, a shade of more positive quality than is conveyed by clearness. At any rate in noting the limpidity of Arnold's style, what I have in mind is the medium rather than the directness of his expression. We know very well nowadays what is ordinarily meant by clearness of style. It is a quality enabling the writer to convey his thought to the reader without losing any of its energy on the way. Arnold's clearness is felt as an element of technic, and has that quality of density which pleases as the property of a palpable medium. It is pellucid, limpid. One notes it as he does a certain clarity of tone in a painter's technic, a certain explicitness of modelling in a sculptor's touch. It has the air of being not so much instinctive as arrived at. A great Ideal is done with it. It is elaborately limpid, one may say. It has a tincture of virtuosity. He plays with it beautifully, bringing out into relief certain shadings and subduing certain others in contrasting lower toned transparencies as a pianist of distinction not only interprets his composer but exhibits his instrument at the same time. In a word, he makes his lucidity count æsthetically. At times he grows over-fond of it, as is the inherent danger of all exploitation, especially the sincerest; at times it shows excess and runs into a mannerism of iteration at which in another Arnold himself would be the first to wince. The four times repeated "Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners," within the limits of a single paragraph of his consideration of Burns, is "hard to read without a cry of pain," as he said of a distich of Macaulay. Less formally the remorselessly renewed appearances of "The Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester," in the beginning of "Literature and Dogma," are irritating intrusions. These and similar instances are examples of explicitness run to seed. But they are the defect of a quality, and due to an excess of a dilettante spirit of playfulness to which we owe very much

that is acutely charming in Arnold's writings. They are not inherent in his style at its best. At its best in this respect of limpidity a page of his-a page of "Literature and Dogma" itself-reads like a page of the Apology, in its elaborate and elevated Socratic clearness.

To this quality thus æsthetically "handled" he adds an equally positive and sensible beauty of diction. It is not the beautiful liquid flow, rhythmic, cadenced, and prolonged of Newman's. But if less sinuous it has more strength; it has greater poise and an apter precision. Compared, too, with the beauty of such prose as Ruskin's, it has a certain savor of soundness, a sense of conscious subscription to what Ruskin himself, speaking of Venetian architecture, calls "the iron laws of beauty "-that is to say, subscription to the proprieties of prose, without yielding to the solicitations of the spirit of poetry which outside its own domain is sure to be irresponsible and indiscreet. There are, for example, many "passages" in Arnold's writing memorable for their beauty. Everyone remembers the apostrophe to Oxford. The close of the essay on Falkland, the description of the Greek poetry of imaginative reason in the essay

on

Pagan and Medieval Religious Sentiment," the sentences of the essay on Keats: "I think,' said Keats, humbly, ‘I shall be among the English poets after my death.' He is. He is with Shakespeare," are other examples of sobriety surcharged with feeling exquisitely characteristic of the grave discretion proper to the province of prose, mindful of its limits as well as conscious of its capabilities. And they and others like them are beautiful, as prose poetry is not, for the very reason that they are so explicably founded in fitness. But his diction in general is noteworthy for the same quality. It is penetrated with the sentiment of the significance it expresses and never selfhypnotizes. It is too significant to be "musical," but its straightforwardness is very sensitively organized. Its obvious elegance is not the elegance of detachment, but is elegance leavened with personal feeling-now pushed by personal feeling to the point of piquancy, now restrained within the confines of mere suggestion, but informed by it always.