THERE PREFACE HERE is to-day a cult of Matthew Arnold; it is growing; it must grow. It will grow because many tendencies of the age are in its favour; still more because many influences are opposed to it, and because the healthiest instincts of human nature and the deepest interests of civilisation require that it shall combat these opposing influences, and overcome them. To show what this cult is and why it must prevail is purpose of this book. the Briefly, the cult of Matthew Arnold is the cult of idealism, using the word not, of course, in its philosophical meaning, but as indicating the pursuit of perfection as the worthiest working principle of life. In this sense every poet is an idealist; so, too, every political theorist, every worker in the sphere of social reformation; much more, then, the man who combines with poetic insight the trained judgment of the thinker and the practical sense of the world of affairs. Such a man was Matthew Arnold, whose idealism attracts by virtue of its very soberness and sanity, attracts because it appeals to no phantom of the imagination, presumes no conditions unattainable in the actual life of mankind, but taking human nature as it is, recognising its rigid limitations no less than its vast possibilities, presents for acceptance a discipline of thought and a scheme of conduct both worthy and inspiring, and that the more since they carry the sanction of his own experience. In his essay on Joubert, reprinted in the first series of Essays in Criticism, there occurs a passage which must always return to the mind which speculates upon the duration of Arnold's influence upon English thought. He is speaking of Macaulay, and he exclaims: "But for a spirit of delicacy and dignity, what a fate, if he could foresee it!-to be an oracle for one generation, and then of little or no account for ever. How far better to pass with scant notice through one's own generation; but to be singled out and preserved by the very iconoclasts of the next; and so, like the lamp of life itself, to be handed on from one generation to another in safety." Is it too daring to believe that this better fate will prove to be his own? Already, the censure which divided the praise showered upon him so freely during his lifetime has been forgotten. Another generation has risen up, to which the acuter of the controversies which he provoked appeal with no personal force one way or the other, and which can therefore weigh the issues involved more disinterestedly, more dispassionately, than was possible thirty or even twenty years ago; and this newer generation, accepting the positive thought of Matthew Arnold on its merits, finds it serve indeed, in the obscurity and perplexity of the modern time, as a veritable "lamp of life." The question may yet be asked-Was it, then, necessary to write such a book? Was ever message delivered by apostle of culture plainer than the message of Matthew Arnold? Did ever Voice crying in the wilderness utter its burden more clearly than his voice? It is here, I hope and think, that justification may be found for this endeavour to give unity to Arnold's ideas and theories, to his admonitions and warnings. For the Voice still cries, and it cries in the wilderness. |