THE

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 the purpose of this book.

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,