Hello, everyone, today we are going to discuss
a chapter from the book, Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold called Sweetness and Light. So this is part of a book, Culture and Anarchy
that Matthew Arnold published in 1869. So you must remember the historical condition
that England was going through at that time. I mean, in 1859, Charles Darwin had published
his ground-breaking book, The Origin of Species. So it was, as Freud calls it, one of those
trademark events in the history of humans that kind of put a stop or question the authority
that humans thought they had upon their own lives and their surroundings. It showed that we were not a part of Gods
creation or something, but that we have evolved over time as any other species and that humans
held no kind of special place in the order of things in society. So, but also in this time, we see that in
the Victorian era, the colonial expeditions of the British Empire had spread a lot and
there was the Industrial Revolution taking place, which had also created a lot of industries
in England and a lot of factories and we see in writings of like Charles Dickens, how this
industry, this faith in machinery kind of brought out a new aspect of civilization. It was one of those trademark events in civilization,
it was one of those events that had changed humanity again forever. So we see that Arnold, Matthew Arnold here
is writing from a very, very poignant time placing times, a spot of time where he has
to make certain very important observations for human society or human culture to continue
as it were. Otherwise he is saying that this certain moves
from the classical values in society that, there are moves happening, he says that capitalism
is slowly coming in. So the values that previously people had of
culture, it is a little waning a little bit while people are running more after money,
more after wealth, more after outside grandeur than inside development. So Arnold wants to hear introduced culture
as a force that helps us to not only express our external riches, not only to express our
external world, but also to cultivate our inner life, inner culture that will help us
to outgrow our affinity for this outward expression of our well-being. And that is where he is coming in. And so if we look at this and in this book,
culture and anarchy, Arnold has divided the English society into three aspects. The upper class were called the barbarians,
who had a lot of money, but did not have the time to think about society, did not have
the time to think what would make it better. The Philistines, the middle class, which he
believed had the actual potential to change society as it were. But they were too enmeshed in other ideological
activities to cultivate culture, to understand what importance culture had in society. And the third were the populace and the populace
were for according the lower rung of society, whom the Philistines had to educate. So here we see that cultures, Arnold’s view
of culture is also a very evangelical, a very proselytizing view. It is almost like a view of a Christian missionary
who believes in the faith or in the supremacy of his own religion so that he can go out
in the world and spread it. But here also, Arnold tries his best to pose
culture as a very secular phenomena as opposed to a religious phenomenon, and as we shall
see through our reading of the text, how Arnold kind of compares and contrasts religion in
contemporary Victorian society and its role in how culture should be perceived. So let us get into the text and how we will
do it? We will read three passages from the text,
and then we will discuss a little bit on them because Arnold is very lucid and his writing
style in this essay is very clear and very entertaining to read. So I would suggest that we actually read Arnold
to see what he says in the interesting parts and then we will add some commentary to it
to elucidate it on further. So the, the sweetness and light the essay
or the chapter starts with reference to what culture was commonly perceived in contemporary
Victorian society. He says that the disparages of culture, post
culture as a thing of a badge of honour, as a badge of value, like it is something that
if I have culture, it sets me apart from other people. It makes me a better person, in a sense that
it is not an effort in elitism not as in an effort in social well-being. So Arnold is first kind of hinting at that
sort of elitism that culture is not a tool of elitism, that culture does not make someone
elite to make them different from the other people in society. Whereas cultures main function is a more social
function. It is a very socialist function that if I
have culture, then I must help others to cultivate it. And it is not something that is very passive. It is not something that comes to us from
outside, it is something that is very active, that we must always cultivate. So that cultivate aspect in culture is very
much highlighted by Arnold in this essay. So he is saying that this is not a culture
that prides itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin. So here we see that the English culture, the
English idea, the English identity, slowly kind of asserting itself more and more. It is coming out of the values that people
have previously placed on Latin and Greek and English as a language, English as a source
of pride, Englishness as a source of pride, it is slowly coming out. And he is saying that no serious man would
call this culture or attach any value to it as culture at all. So, Arnold is talking about serious men, serious
men of culture who are dealing with culture in society. So, here we see another aspect of culture. Here is that he calls it what and we will
keep doing this throughout the essay, we will kind of try to relate Arnold's thinking too
much later thinkers, maybe postmodern thinkers like Foucault, Deleuze and try to see how
he relates to them, how he relates to many contemporary thinkers in helping us understand
our own society better. So this is not as I would like to mention
a very timed essay, this is a very much pertinent essay even for our own times, and as we will
read through it, we will understand the pertinence of the essay that it still holds today. So and he also begins by saying that many
people in the English society have held curiosity to be a very bad virtue, that curiosity is
not a good thing. But he says that this is something that is
very typical of the British that many people from other cultures, they do not think of
curiosity like that. They have two ideas of curiosity. One is just like, the one that probably is
best expressed in the aphorism that curiosity killed the cat. It is a meaningless curiosity. It is a nosiness in others people business
that should not be allowed. But he is saying that curiosity is also a
curiosity for the faculties of the mind for understanding how the mind works. But he is also saying that curiosity, another
kind of curiosity would be a looking into the faculties of the mind, how the mind works,
and how it can, as you mentioned, in the previous page, that Montesquieu mentions how it can
make an intelligent being yet more intelligent. So culture as we see, Arnold will constantly
point to us. It is not a process of being, but a process
of becoming. And here again, as we can see in the writings
of Deleuze and Guattari, that they also say that when they are defining the rhizome, they
say that it is the rhizome more than, it is a process of being, It is a process of becoming,
it is a process of forever growing. So culture for Arnold was a form of like that,
it was not where we stand, but where we should be standing. It is a scope for immense growth, for infinite
growth, a potential. So, here also, we see that he says that culture
is then properly described as not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its
origin in the love of perfection, it is a study of perfection. So we see that Arnold starts giving us descriptions
or definitions of what he thinks of culture at the outset. He thinks that it is love of perfection, it
is a study of perfection. So in this whole writing, we see these terms
coming up, love, beauty. So it is an aesthetic plane where Arnold places
culture, it is not a very utilitarian plane, where in Victorian times we see there are
many utilitarian philosophers coming in. One of them was Bentham and Arnold will come
to Bentham. But for him culture is not a very utilitarian
thing. It is not something that has very outward
use, but inward use, but at the same time, if everyone can practice culture at that level,
then we can have a more grown up society where we can match that outward growth with the
inward goats so that the outward good does not look like a protrusion, does not look
like a monster’s growth. And here also quotes Bishop Wilson to say
that to make reason and the will of God prevail, only whereas the position of doing so good
is apt to be overlooked in determining the reason and the will of God. And he then goes on to critique that freedom
of speech is not freedom of speech unless we have something good to say. If we do not have something good to contribute,
then saying anything will not make a difference and we should not exercise that kind of freedom
of speech. He says that and it can remember that acting
and instituting are of little use, unless we know how and what we ought to act and institute. So he is saying that culture is a form of
pedagogical form. It is a pedagogical Institute, which can teach
us how to act, how to institute and how to carry ourselves better. And so, and here again, we see that even though
Arnold brings in Bishop Wilson and starts to compare culture with religion, he also
starts contrasting culture with religion. So this becomes a very important passage. Why was the hope of making the reason and
the will of God prevail among people who had a routine which they had christened reason
and the will of God in which they were inextricably bound and beyond which they had no power of
looking. So he is saying that at a point of time, religion
and every other social institution had create walls, had created boundaries around us, beyond
which we could not look, where we were forbidden, like do not look at beyond that, do not look
at beyond that person. I mean, we can see that exemplified in the
biblical narrative of eating the apple in the Garden of Eden. So there were many prohibitions in place in
society before which he is saying right now that they are yielding as you mentioned, has
wonderfully yielded the iron force of exclusion of all which is new has wonderfully yielded. So we see that Arnold is already bringing
in the word, iron. So he is saying that the previous modes of
social construction were kind of shackling us, were constraining us into places where
we should not be, where the horizon should open up and, as I have already mentioned,
that the Victorian time was a time of great learning. It was a time of great expansion and Arnold
is not criticizing the expansion, Arnold is not saying that, that expansion should not
happen in learning. And in some senses, we can see that Arnold
does not provide a critique of colonialism either. So we can see that there is a certain amount
of collusion that he might have with the project of colonialism because he is for any sort
of expansion. But what he says is that culture should be
used to kind of give a margin to those expansions, to make us think that where does expansion
is good and where that expansion is bad, and how much faith we should put on that expansion. Now, then, is the movement for culture to
be of service, culture which believes in making reason and the will of God prevail, believes
in perfection, is the study and pursuit of perfection, and is no longer debarred by a
rigid invisible exclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas simply
because they are new. So culture, here was the new culture, once
the new culture is not a study of things that have been from the past, but it is as already
mentioned, it is a process of becoming, it is a process of accepting things that are
new in society and it is a belief in perfection. So as already mentioned that Arnold relates
these keywords that we must remember with relation to culture, perfection. It is the pursuit of perfection. As we said there is not only being but also
becoming. So it is not about being perfect, but always
about the prospect of becoming more and more perfect because perfection is a project that
can never have an end. And here he brings in religion again, and
he says that religion is the greatest and most important of the efforts by which the
human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself. So, Arnold here is not critiquing religion
as an outmoded institution, but he considers it as one of the institutions that has helped
human beings to get to their best, to be their best. I mean, if we look at all the art and all
the architecture that religion has inspired over the years, we will be amazed to find
that it has inspired in human beings a sense of beauty, it has created in human beings
a pursuit of beauty which they have followed and it has manifested itself in beautifully
like, the best religious books are also very good works of poetry, temples, mosques and
churches, they are beautiful works of architecture. So religion has also helped us to hone our
skills for beauty, our aim for beauty. And he says that the kingdom of God is within
you and culture enlightenment places human perfection in internal condition. So we see like, Arnold constantly contrasts
that outward appearance of thing and an inward condition of things. So he again brings that the kingdom of God
is within us that we are the temple of God, and what could be a better way to take care
of this temple than probably indulge in culture a little bit, understand what culture wants
to say to us. He says it is a general harmonious expansion
of those gifts of thought and feeling which make the peculiar dignity, wealth and happiness
of human nature. He says, it is in making endless additions
to itself. I would like to draw your attention to the,
to the way he repeats the term endless here, in the endless expansion of its powers, it
is a growing and becoming. So, here again we see that the word endless
is coming in and we can relate it to the idea of Deleuze and Guattari that they pose off
the body without organs, the body without organs that can expand, that can expand without
boundaries, it is also an endless. And they also compare modern capitalism with
as a body without organs. And here we see that this endlessness that
Arnold brings into culture is already being seen in other aspects of society. So, colonial expansion was an endless expansion. The British had reached, all the corners of
Earth. They had conquered many parts of land and
it was an endless project. They were continuing to grow. It was is not a time when they were shrinking. The shrinking would start only after the modern
period and after the Second World War, but this is a time when it is increasing. The primacy of the British culture is increasing. So he is, at that point he is saying that
culture must also be an endless nature, that culture is also a process of growing and becoming
at all times. It is not something that should stop and he
said that this is where it coincides with religion, because religion has also been with
human beings since almost the beginning of time. And here he brings a very nice point that
perfectionist culture conceives it. It is not possible while the individual remains
isolated, the individual is obliged under pain of being stunted and enfeebled. So, he is saying that culture is not only
a harmonious growth of all our faculties, but harmonious growth of all the faculties
in all the people in society. So the project of culture, the aim of culture
will only succeed, not only when there is a harmonious expansion in the individual,
but when there is, every individual is also in the same way in a similar manner, taken
into a harmonious expansion of this culture. So what he brings forward is a very again
as a point of a socialist idea of culture, that it is not something that is restricted
to the elite. It is not something that is a badge of honour
that separates certain people from other people. But it teaches us to take every person as
equal, every person with equal rights and it teaches us that we must impart this views
of culture to everyone else. Again, but as I said, that this can have some
proselytizing connotations in it, but Arnold kind of tries to (())(17:40) going there,
because he tries to put culture in a secular plane all the time. So here he gives a very beautiful description
of culture. 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. So here also he is undermining the idea of
possession. That possession can be of some importance
to us. In an inward condition of the mind and spirit,
not an outward set of circumstances. So see the binaries it is creating, inward
versus outward, not in an outward set of circumstances it is clear that culture instead of being
the frivolous and useless thing, which Mr. Bright, so he is also critiquing in the essay
some other view, other people in his society who were opposed to the culture and were kind
of proposing that the mechanical aspects of the British society should be taken forward,
it is something that should be taken pride of. And Arnold constantly points to their views
and says that no, this mechanistic expansion is not something that we can take pride of
and as an end to itself, so we will come to that. So Mr. Bright and Mr. Frederick Harrison and
many other liberals are apt to call it as a very important function to full-fill for
mankind. So culture has an important function to full-fill
for mankind as he points out here. And he is saying that that, why do we need
culture more than the people of Greece and Rome needed it? Because he is saying the culture of the modern
time, so he is already kind of hinting that the societies have entered modern times. So how we understand modern times and as we
shall see in later literature of Elliott, of Joyce that they are describing, even Virginia
Woolf, the modern writers, they are describing human beings as mechanized. They are describing human functions as being
mechanized. So we see that Arnold had kind of foreseen
that this society is going to change into something like that. And he had already tried to speak against
this mechanization of every faculty in society. But somehow it was like culture probably had
to give a lot of ground to this mechanical expansion, as it still has to do now because
we will see that the value that people place in humanities has receded as opposed to other
kind of vocational arts where production becomes very important. So we see that this is an onslaught that has
been happening for a long time and Arnold in this essay critiques liberalism as one
of the main forces that silence culture and brings this sort of mechanical production
to the front, and we will see that right now we are in a position of neoliberalism, where
in neoliberal societies the humanities are kind of downplayed. The importance of humanities itself is downplayed
and as we see that culture is related to human perfection and to humanities in this essay,
but the flow of history has it happened, has been constantly trying to downplay this, because
only at that cost can the value of outward reaches the value of outward gains can be
promoted. And we see that in todays social media platforms
and everything, there is a sort of exhibitionism that goes on. So that exhibitionism is something that Arnold
these days, even in those days would have been very critical and something that he probably
foresaw before it even came to being. And he is criticizing this terms, this terminology
like every man for himself. We will see that, once the American Independence
was achieved in the North America, the North American idea as propounded by Thoreau Emerson,
they had a very strong idea, a very strong idea of the individual to put forward that
the individual, Emerson has an essay called self-reliance. So, the individual should rely on the self
and there is an infinite scope for growth of the individual, that the individual and
this has this libertarianism, this, liberalism has given rise to modern capitalism, where
we see that 1 percent of the population has access to 99 percent of the wealth. So this every man for himself has created
a society of inequality where people who achieve wealth, who accumulate wealth are not looking
after people who do not have it, are not imparting it and Arnold believes that culture could
have taught us how to create a more just society. And he is saying that the people of culture
even in those days, they will be much oftener be regarded for a great while to come as elegant
or spurious Jeremiahs. And we see that, he is like the Jeremiah image
is very important here. Jeremiah was a prophet. And we see that he is saying that for a great
while to come, people of culture will be regarded as spurious Jeremiah. So we see here that he is making, he is making
a prophecy almost, we see here that he is making a prophecy and not unlike a prophet
and he is saying that will be called Jeremiahs. Now, we see that again this problematic idea
of proselytizing is coming in. But we must see another thing that culture
as opposed to religion as a monolithic religion, Arnold does not say that culture origin is
from some core ideas or some core beliefs or some person or some holy words, culture
is more like to Arnold what Foucault would later call discursive. Discursive, as in, it is not dependent on
a single author or the ethics of a single author, but it is a combination of all that
is written in society, all that is thought in society, all that goes is in currency in
society. So, as we will see, in postmodern times, there
is this idea of Bart says about the death of the author, Foucault questions what is
an author and says an author function any questions for discourse, then an author functions. So, here also, Arnold poses culture as a discursive
field where it is not the sayings of one or two person, it is a saying of all the good
things he mentions that all the good things that all the good people and society have
said. So, culture is a combination of all that. It is not what a monolithic person has said,
but it is all that is being said around the world. And he says that faith in machinery as I said
is our besetting danger and for machinery he gives some example. What is freedom but machinery? What is population but machinery? What is coal but machinery? What are railroads but machinery? What is wealth but machinery? And what are religious organizations but machinery? So here we see that Arnold is already kind
of approaching the criticism that modern times would have against organized religion and
he is kind of cautioning against that kind of organized religion. And his critique of machinery is very important
here because he poses machinery as something that is opposed to culture not because people
are using machinery but people are using machinery as an end to themselves and Arnold is saying
that we must look at machinery as how they are. They are means but they are not the ends themselves. It is a problem when we make the means and
ends in themselves that this issue arises to him. And he is mentioning a Mr Roebuck who says
that may not every man in England say what he likes. Again, we are brought back to the idea of
free speech where Arnold had mentioned that free speech is only valid when we have something
important to contribute to society. Yes, he says unless what men say when they
may say what they like, is worth saying, has good in it and more good than bad. So we see that even these days, there is some
flippant comments that are made in social media that are reported and a lot of trouble
comes up because of that. So he is saying that we must enact a sort
of restriction as what we want to say as what we need to say and see if it will have a more
better impact on society than a worse impact. And he is saying that, this man is saying
that greatness lies in coal and railroad but he is saying that Arnold is saying that what
is greatness? He is asking and he is answering that greatness
is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest and admiration and the outward
proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love interest and admiration. Now we might ask the fact that there are different
kinds of people in society who might admire different kinds of people. So why would we get to homogeneity like that? But we must also remember again, Arnolds idea
of culture, there is a very, that must pervade all the aspects of society. That is why he is saying that it must be a
very harmonious growth among all people, because then only when we have a certain understanding
of culture, we will know what to admire and what not to admire and that is very important
in this essay. And he is saying that in a very prophetic
and a doomsday prophet type of way that if England was swallowed by the sea tomorrow,
and it is something that we are saying, as global warming is looming near, as ice caps
are melting, this kind of possibilities are really being enacted in movies already and
people are starting to kind of see that, that the water levels might rise and so here we
see again, a very, very dark prophetic side of hundred that he says that if the seas were
to cover England. And he is saying that what will the historians
of future find more entertaining, more enthralling in England, the England of the Victorian era
or the 20 years around the time that he is writing, or the England of the Elizabethan
era, where coal, railroad were not that important, but a sort of understanding of culture was
more in currencies. So he is more questioning for an Elizabethan
England than a kind of Victorian England where culture has suffered a serious blow. And again, he is criticizing wealth. He is saying that our greatness and welfare
are proved by our being so rich, and here he has a huge problem that being reach to
him has nothing to do with being culturally superior or being a better person. So he would be a very important prophet for
our times also where there is a certain kind of control that the rich exercise in society
in what we should learn, what we should not learn, what learning would have make us more
money. So riches and wealth is kind of dominating
what we should do in society these days, but according to culture that according to Arnold,
that should not be that riches and wealth, they should not be ends, but just means to
something. And he regards wealth as machinery also here. And here he gives the first explanation of
what he means by the Philistines. He is saying that the people who believe most
that our greatness and welfare, approved by our being very rich, and who most give their
lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people we call Philistines. Culture says, consider these people, then
this is a very biblical tone here, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the
very tones of their voice, look at them attentively, observe the literature they read. So he is saying that this Philistines is critiquing
this Philistines, that they are always possessed with the idea of becoming rich, of the idea
of becoming wealthy. And he is saying that look at what they read,
look at what they understand and he is saying that this pursuit of being rich, this pursuit
of being wealthy has kind of hollowed out their internal spiritual lives where there
is no growth but it has kind of, it is like a tumorous growth that is happening on the
outside but there is only deadness inside. And he is saying that 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. It is a dissatisfaction with the wealthy and
industrial community, and which saves the future as one may hope from being vulgarised
even if it cannot save the present. And we see that it has that these problems
have continued into the future and that is why I pointed out that this essay is very
pertinent for our times also where we have this inordinate amount of pursuit of riches,
the pursuit of wealth, where people like Jeff Bezos accumulate a huge amount of money that
that is not even possible for a person to spend. And but what are societies even these days
doing is instead of calling it out as vulgar, instead of calling it out as an inordinate
amount of holding, we are putting those people as ideals, those people as ideals to where
we might must reach. So, the Philistines, the middle class, that
Arnold critiques in this essay is still almost in the same path, they have not diverted from
the path and that is why this essay becomes very important to study. And here he again, calls out bodily health
and vigour and population as machinery, thus things that should not be ends in themselves. And he says that any bodily health and vigour,
it is good to exercise and everything but we must exercise the mind. We should only exercise the body as a place
where a healthy mind can reside. Without a healthy mind only exercising the
body, only building muscles will not help us out. And next we come to a very interesting idea
of in the essay, we will get to it and he is quoting from the Epistle to Timothy. He is saying bodily exercise profited little,
but godliness is profitable. He is saying bodily exercise profited little,
but godliness is profitable unto all things. He is quoting this from the Epistle to Timothy. And in utilitarian, Franklin says, eat and
drink such an exact quantity, as suits the constitution of thy body in reference to the
services of the mind. So the mind must be serviced, the mind should
not be indulged in only a betterment of the body, but the body and the mind. The mind should look after itself. And now we come to Epictetus and this is a
very interesting part of the essay where we go through the ideas of aphuia and euphuia. So Epictetus says that it is a sign of aphuia
that is of a nature not finely tempered, to give yourself up to things which relate to
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. So, we see that in this society also. If you see that there is food that is marked
as for the calorie conscious, there is food that is marked as you should, there is so
many dieticians and nutritionists coming in but what they fail to consider at all times,
it is like the body as an end to itself, where you have all the calories mentioned behind
a food packet. But as much stress we give to the body these
days, we do not give it to the mind. And that is what Epictetus called in Greek
times sign of aphuia and its contrasts is euphuia which is a finely tempered nature
or coarsely tempered nature gives exactly the notion of perfection as sculpture brings
us to conceive of it. A perfection in which the characters of beauty
and intelligence are both present which unites the two noblest things. And what are these two noblest things? As Swift, he is now quoting Swift, Jonathan
Swift. Jonathan Swift in his battle of books makes
two distinctions between the spider and the honeybee. So according to Swift, the spider makes webs
and he eats in his web and there are empty husks of insects lying in that web and it
is a dirty, it is a not a very beautiful thing to see. And here we see that there is a very specific
idea of beauty that is coming up, but contrast it to the bee, the honey bee, who makes wax
and honey. And wax is the source of light and honey is
the source of sweetness. So, swift also poses the honeybee as a more
person of culture than the spider here and Arnolds essay borrows from that. So sweetness and light is actually a reference
to the honeybee. The work of the honeybee that it does all
its life, the gathering of honey and the creation of wax. The wax gives us light and the honey gives
us sweetness and it is from the Battle of the books. And Euphyes is the man who tends towards sweetness
and light and Aphyes is precisely a Philistine. So he is saying that we should be more Euphyestic
than Aphyestic. And he makes an observation that culture is
like of spirit with poetry. We must remember that Arnold was also a very
prominent poet of the Victorian times. So no wonder that he sees in poetry the prospect
that culture, that it can further culture, follows one law with poetry. I have called religion a more important manifestation
of human nature than poetry, because it has worked on a broader scale of perfection and
with greater masses of men. But the idea of beauty and of human nature
perfect on all sides, which is a dominant idea of poetry is a true and invaluable idea. So but if we see that a lot of important books
of religion has also been written with the help of poetry. They engage poetry. So poetry and religion are not some two binary
terms, two distinguishable terms that we can use but oftentimes they are correlated with
each other, entangled with each other. And there is a book by Ellens Curry called
Beauty And Being Just where she addresses the positive aspects of beauty and she also
points out how, in different times of society, beauty as a category has been downgraded,
but she also questions for a re-evaluation of beauty, where we learn to see beauty for
what it is and probably make a finer judgment about it. And he is saying here that inward peace comes
from cultivation of culture. He is saying what I may call about inward
peace and satisfaction, the peace and satisfaction which are reached as we draw near to complete
spiritual perfection, at not merely to moral perfection or rather to relative moral perfection. So the Victorian times were a time of great
moral turbulence, and so the morality of Victorian times is very high. And we see that, so we have a term called
Victorian mortality and Arnold in this essay does not say that morality is not important
that it is something we can discount. But he is saying that it is a spiritual perfection
that goes beyond morality, the confines of morality. So, culture is a point where you will understand
morality on your own, if you have culture than have morality pushed upon you from an
outside authority. And he is saying again the religion itself,
I need hardly say, supplies in abundance, this grand language, the grand language of
poetry and everything of culture, which is really the severest criticism of such an incomplete
perfection as alone we have yet reached through our religious organizations. So again, like Arnold is critiquing, not religion,
but organization of religion, organized religion, and to a certain extent as we shall see later
how Puritanism, Protestantism has failed England in this project. And he is saying that Puritanism has helped
England towards moral development, because Puritanism found so adequate an expression
as in the religious organization of the dependence. And he now mentions a newspaper called the
Non-conformist. The tagline of which is the Dissidence of
Dissent and the Protestantism of Protestant religion. Now, it is very interesting to see that what
we have downplayed these days in society that Arnold brings out a view of culture, where
it has a very important part to play in society where it is not something that is books that
we read when we have leisure, as opposed to worldly activities or important activities,
but culture that shapes how we look at the world, culture that helps us become better
person. So we see here, he has already mentioned the
newspaper, The Nonconformist, and later we will see also he will mention the Daily Telegraph. So he is already talking about the magazines
we read, the newspapers that we read, the books that we read, that play such an important
part in how we conceive of society, how we order society. So instead of pushing culture as a background
force in society, he is kind of bringing it into the foreground because it helps us to
think about things, it organizes our thought around things. Again, he says morality is indispensable. So he is never saying that morality should
be let go, because in Victorian times, he understood that morality was a huge thing. So he is never saying that morality should
be abandoned. But he is saying all sorts of Protestantism
slowly gave birth to Puritanism and Puritanism was a very severe, a very ascetic form of
religion. And we see the Americans when they went there,
they followed a high form of Puritanism and he is also criticizing that form of Puritanism,
that form of moral asceticism, that form of very aggressive religiosity and he is saying
that if the pilgrim fathers, so the pilgrim fathers are the people who went from England
to America, and looked around and traced a new, the pilgrim fathers or people who went
from Europe to America and looked around the continent and settled there. And he is saying that if Virgil and Shakespeare
were riding with the pilgrim father, if they were sailing with the pilgrim fathers, they
will find the company of the pilgrim fathers very, very hard to bear. And here we see that he is saying that intolerable
company, Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them. So here we see that Arnold is not proposing
a very ghettoized culture, not a very segregated society, but a society where all kinds of
people come in contact with them that where we must encounter all different kinds of people
and unless we have a certain parity among other people, these encounters can become
very problematic. And he is saying that a newspaper had asked
Professor Huxley that how it had pointed out in the crowd that had that had gathered at
Epsom on Derby Day that how do you propose to make this crowd better? And Arnold asks the reporter back that with
your religion, with your kind of religion or religious aggressiveness, how do you propose
to make society better? How is an ideal of life, so unlovely, so unattractive,
so narrow, so far removed from a true and satisfying ideal of human perfection, as is
the life of your religious organization as you yourself manage it, to conquer and transform
all this vice and hideousness? So he is very critical of religion that is
restrictive, that tells us not to do that, not to do that here. He is more about religion that gives us a
freedom to cultivate culture. And he is saying here, children of God, children
of God, is it a immense pretension. And as we mentioned in the beginning that
this was even 10 years after Darwin's Origin of Species was published. So no wonder that this children of God sounds
more like a pretension to Arnold than ever before. So previously, humans probably have gotten
around with saying these things. But now after Darwin had expounded his origin
of species, it becomes harder and harder to pretend that we come directly from God. And again, he is criticizing London for its
role in its unutterable external hideousness, and with its internal canker of public egestas
and privatum opulentia. So this means private opulence and public
misery. So as individuals are getting richer, the
public in its whole is getting poorer as we already mentioned, that the 1 percent in the
world now pose more than 99 percent of its riches. So and London, this critique of London will
only get worse with time as we shall see in the modern times. As we mentioned that Arnold is kind of anticipating
the modern times already. He is saying that what the problems of modern
times will come, what will cause further disillusionment in people of culture like James Joyce or TS
Eliot or Virginia Woolf. So in at the end of Mrs. Galloway, Virginia
Woolf notes how through the death of Septimus Smith how London is a very, very unsympathetic
city. It has nothing to say about how a beautiful
person like Septimus Smith dies. And in TS Eliot's wasteland, we see London
is accused as an unreal city that has filled the world with unambitious people. Again, he provides us another definition of
culture where he says culture however, shows 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. So here, we see that religion that Arnold
is espousing, that he is for, is without fanaticism, it does not have fanaticism in it. It is a religion of beauty. And here also I would like to take notice
like previously how we saw the word, endless was repeated, here Arnold is again stressing
his point of being sacrificed. So he is saying that many people are getting
sacrificed to this very philistinic attitude to life and this sacrifice here is not the
sacrifice in religious terms or martyrdom. So, religious sacrifice will put a person
at the level of martyrdom. It has a meaning to that sacrifice, but the
sacrifice that Arnold mentioned here, the sacrifice of people is a meaningless sacrifice. It is not some religious one that can elevate
people to the status of martyrdom. And Arnold, next comes to the Oxford movement,
where he is upholding the ideas of Doctor Cardinal Newman and everyone else that the
Oxford movement was associated with. The Oxford movement tried to bring in some
elements of capitalism into the Anglican Church, which they thought would kind of reduce its
rigidity. But he says that the force that broke the
Oxford movement was liberalism. It is about local self-government in politics
and free trade, unrestricted competition. So this free trade is also something that
is continuing today and it continues in the form of neoliberalism. And neoliberalism has kind of privileged certain
first world countries against third world countries. And while it has made the first world countries
richer, it has made the third world countries poorer. So we can see that Arnold was right in his
critique of free trade of liberalism, that has taken a much worse route now in society. And he is saying that even though the Oxford
movement has failed, Oxford University as a place and the people of Oxford have still
conquered society, because it has the centre, because it is in this manner that the sentiment
of Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers and in his manner long may it continue to
conquer. So Arnold is not disillusioned by losses in
society, but the losses that society suffers at the hand of these liberal forces, this
free trade forces but he says that we will still continue with culture with the love
for beauty and truth that will forever continue. And here again he criticizes a person called
Mr. Bright, who asks the Englishman to take pride over the railroads he has build, the
manufacturing that they have produced and the cargoes they have built. But Arnold is saying that this is a very philistinic
idea again, that railroads, manufacturing and cargoes are not something that you take
pride of. For Arnold also, it is like very adamant in
this way that only culture is something that can be a source of pride. And he comes to call this faith in machines
and this faith that railroads and cargoes that we build are important and they are the
height of human perfection and achievement a Jacobinism. So he is against this sort of jacobinism. And he says that culture is the eternal opponent
of the two things which are the signal marks of jacobinism. Its fierceness and its addiction to the abstract
system. And again, he goes back to the Greek times
and the Roman times to show what culture played in the times of antiquity to show light on
how it can save us now and he says, the excellent German historian of the mythology of Rome,
Paler rewriting the introduction at Rome under the Tarquins, the worship of Apollo, the God
of light, healing. And reconciliation observed that it was not
so much the Tarquins who brought to Rome, the new worship of Apollo as current in the
mind of the Roman people, which set powerfully at the time towards a new worship of this
kind and away from the old run of Latin and saving religious ideas. And it continues with the human affairs. So this is also very Foucaultian an idea of
government. So Foucault later says that power can be snatched
from the hands of government by the people. The people through constituting certain practices
can make sure of that. And Arnold here is also saying that that authority,
we cannot trust authority to always make the changes for the better. If people find that there is something changes
that must be made, people must make them themselves. And he goes to Benjamin Franklin, he criticizes
Franklin. He first hails Franklin a very satiric manner
as one of the best wits of American culture. Then he finds issues with what Franklin says
and then he goes on to criticize Bentham as well for his utilitarianism. And Bentham is a person also we have to remember
that he invented the idea of panopticon, which we can see was a prison of system, which was
a surveillance system that again, Foucault criticizes and if we go to the Cellular Jail
in, so Bentham proposes the idea of panopticon, which Foucault also criticizes later on, and
he talks and we can see it is a prison system, a system of surveillance. And if we go to the cellular jail in Andaman
Islands we can see, the cellular jail is built upon this principle of the panopticon, created
by Bentham. And here, actually Arnold makes the statement
that I am delivered from the bondage of Bentham. So Bentham is an utilitarian, is a builder
of prisons from which Arnold wants to distance himself. It is not the part of colonialism that he
would like to associate himself with, that builds this prisons and everything. He says, Be ye not called a Rabbi. Jacobinism loves a rabbi. So he is asking us to again, like as I mentioned,
that culture for him is a discursive thing than an authoritarian thing. So he is saying, asking us to move away from
having this Rabbistic figures where we have to listen to one person to understand what
is good in society. Culture does not prefer rabbis. And we will conclude now. So let us read this. So he is concluding also that the pursuit
of perfection then is the pursuit of sweetness and light. And we see that these ideas of perfection,
of harmony, of harmonious perfection, of well-rounded development are the ideas that have been brought
up in this essay, time and again. It is way to make reason and God prevail. He works for missionary, he who works for
hatred only works for confusion. Culture looks beyond missionary, culture hates
hatred. So any form of hatred, any form of discrimination
that might be in society, culture hates itself that. So it is here culture can also be a vindictive
force like the Gods but Arnold kind of poses it like that and he says that it is the function
of culture to aim for this sweetness and light. And again as he says that must have sweetness
and light for as many as possible. So it is not again an elitist thing but a
socialist thing. It does not try to teach down to the level
of inferior classes. It does not try to win them for these or that
sect of its own, with ready made judge or watchwords. It seeks to do away with classes. Here we almost see, he is anticipating the
Marxist tenets, that Marx will slowly start writing. To make all live in an atmosphere of sweetness
and light and use ideas as it uses them itself freely, to be nourished and not to be bound
by them. This is again he says, a social idea. Men of culture are the true apostles of equality. So and he concludes the essay by giving some
more examples of people that he considers people of culture. But I hope this lecture will help you to understand
this as a culture and anarchy better. Please let us know in the forum if you have
any questions. Thank you.
