Matthew Arnold, Sweetness and Light

Today I picked up the essay collection Culture and Anarchy again, and the time seems ripe for my rant.

Arnold's writing raises doubts about how often he set foot outside his study door to behold the plight of the unwashed British masses in person. His criticism of America is daringly trans-Atlantic. But the last time I read the book I was glad I never published any criticism on those points. Because Matthew Arnold's contemporaries, as he mentions himself, already dissected those points eloquently in the 1800s; and I am late to the party.

As a reasonable person I feel that what Arnold writes is more sensible and well-considered than it seems, but it's sometimes hard to see the evidence.

But this evening I reached an especially badly-thought-through part that — I think — justifies me in abandoning any attempt to make my reactions more reasonable, at present.

It also made me remember these three quotations:

1.

"Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess."

(René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences - his Discours de la méthode [1637] in translation, at Project Gutenberg)

2. 

"Then," observed Elizabeth, "you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished women."

"Yes; I do comprehend a great deal in it."

"Oh! certainly," cried his faithful assistant, "no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved."

"All this she must possess," added Darcy, "and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading."

"I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any."

(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice [1813], at Pemberley.org)

3. Bertrand Russell, on the Confession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar:

"the reader finds with surprise that the voice of nature, when it begins to speak, is uttering a hotch-pot of arguments derived from Aristotle, St Augustine, Descartes, and so on."

(History of Western Philosophy, 1945)

I find it very curious that Matthew Arnold's idea of 'sweetness and light' is the idea that everyone should 'democratically' think exactly as he does, as the one higher truth.