THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME Matthew Arnold THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME Table of Contents THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME......................................................................... 1 Matthew Arnold............................................................................................................................................. 1 i THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME Matthew Arnold This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online. ttp://www. blackmask. com "Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. "?? BURKE. THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME. MANY objections have been made to a proposition which, in some remarks of mine on translating Homer, I ventured to put forth; a proposition about criticism, and its importance at the present day.
I said: "Of the literature of France and Germany, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years, has been a critical effort; the endeavour, in all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it really is. " I added, that owing to the operation in English litera? ture of certain causes, "almost the last thing for which one would come to English literature is just that very thing which now Europe most desires?? criticism;" and that the power and value of English literature was thereby impaired.
More than one rejoinder declared that the importance I here assigned to criticism was excessive, and asserted the inherent superiority of the creative effort of the human spirit over its critical effort. And the other day, having been led by an excellent notice of Wordsworth published in the North British Review, to turn again to his biography, I found, in the words of this great man, whom I, for one, must always listen to with the profoundest respect, a sentence passed on the critic's business, which seems to justify every possible disparagement of it.
Wordsworth says in one of his letters:?? "The writers in these publications" (the Reviews), "while they prosecute their inglorious employment, can? not be supposed to be in a state of mind very favour? able for being affected by the finer influences of a thing so pure as genuine poetry. " And a trustworthy reporter of his conversation quotes a more elaborate judgment to the same effect:?? "Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, in? initely lower than the inventive and he said to? day that if the quantity of time consumed in writing critiques on the works of others were given to original com? position, of whatever kind it might be, it would be much better employed; it would make a man find out sooner his own level, and it would do infinitely less mischief. A false or malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds of others; a stupid invention, either in prose or verse, is quite harmless. It is almost too much to expect of poor human nature, that a man capable of producing some effect in one line of literature, should, for the greater good of society, voluntarily doom himself to impotence and obscurity in another. THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 1 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME Still less is this to be expected from men addicted to the composition of the "false or malicious criticism," of which Wordsworth speaks. How? ver, everybody would admit that a false or malicious criticism had better never have been written. Every? body, too, would be willing to admit, as a general propo? sition, that the critical faculty is lower than the inventive. But is it true that criticism is really, in itself, a baneful and injurious employment; is it true that all time given to writing critiques on the works of others would be much better employed if it were given to original composition, of whatever kind this may be?
Is it true that Johnson had better have gone on producing more Irenes instead of writing his Lives of the Poets; nay, is it certain that Wordsworth himself was better employed in making his Ecclesiastical Sonnets, than when he made his celebrated Preface, so full of criticism, and criticism of the works of others? Wordsworth was himself a great critic, and it is to be sincerely regretted that he has not left us more criticism; Goethe was one of the greatest of critics, and we may sincerely congratu? late ourselves that he has left us so much criticism.
Without wasting time over the exaggeration which Wordsworth's judgment on criticism clearly contains, or over an attempt to trace the causes,?? not difficult I think to be traced,?? which may have led Wordsworth to this exaggeration, a critic may with advantage seize an occasion for trying his own conscience, and for asking himself of what real service, at any given moment, the practice of criticism either is, or may be made, to his own mind and spirit, and to the minds and spirits of others. The critical power is of lower rank than the creative.
True; but in assenting to this proposition, one or two things are to be kept in mind. It is undeniable that the exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity, is the true function of man; it is proved to be so by man's finding in it his true happiness. But it is un? deniable, also, that men may have the sense of exercising this free creative activity in other ways than in producing great works of literature or art; if it were not so, all but a very few men would be shut out from the true happiness of all men; they may have it in well? oing, they may have it in learning, they may have it even in criticising. This is one thing to be kept in mind. Another is, that the exercise of the creative power in the production of great works of literature or art, however high this exercise of it may rank, is not at all epochs and under all conditions possible; and that therefore labour may be vainly spent in attempting it, which might with more fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering it possible. This creative power works with elements, with materials; what if it has not those materials, those elements, ready for its use?
In that case it must surely wait till they are ready. Now in literature,?? I will limit myself to literature, for it is about literature that the question arises,?? the elements with which the creative power works are ideas; the best ideas, on every matter which literature touches, current at the time; at any rate we may lay it down as certain that in modern literature no manifestation of the creative power not working with these can be very important or fruitful.
And I say current at the time, not merely accessible at the time; for creative literary genius does not principally show itself in discovering new ideas; that is rather the business of the philosopher; the grand work of literary genius is a work of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and discovery; its gift lies in the faculty of being happily inspired by a certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, by a certain order of ideas, when it finds itself in them; of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting them in the most effective and attractive combinations, making beautiful works with them, in short.
But it must have the atmosphere, it must find itself amidst the order of ideas, in order to work freely; and these it is not so easy to command. This is why great creative epochs in literature are so rare; this is why there is so much that is unsatisfactory in the productions of many men of real genius; because for the creation of a master? work of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment; the creative power has, for its happy exercise, appointed elements, and those ele? ents are not in its own control. Nay, they are more within the control of the critical power. It is the business of the critical power, as I said in the words already quoted, "in all branches of know? ledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it really is. " Thus it tends, at last, to make an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail itself.
It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with that which it displaces; to make the best ideas prevail. Presently these new ideas reach society, the touch of truth is the touch of life, and there is a stir and growth everywhere; out of this stir and growth come the creative epochs of literature. Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considerations of the general march of genius and of society, THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 2
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME considera? tions which are apt to become too abstract and impalp? able,?? every one can see that a poet, for instance, ought to know life and the world before dealing with them in poetry; and life and the world being, in modern times, very complex things, the creation of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies a great critical effort behind it; else it must be a comparatively poor, barren, and short? ived affair. This is why Byron's poetry had so little endurance in it, and Goethe's so much; both Byron and Goethe had a great productive power, but Goethe's was nourished by a great critical effort providing the true materials for it, and Byron's was not; Goethe knew life and the world, the poet's necessary subjects, much more comprehensively and thoroughly than Byron. He knew a great deal more of them, and he knew them much more as they really are.
It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative activity in our literature, through the first quarter of this century, had about it, in fact, something premature; and that from this cause its productions are doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which accompanied and do still accompany them, to prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes from its having proceeded without having its proper data, without sufficient materials to work with.
In other words, the English poetry of the first quarter of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative force, did not know enough. This makes Byron so empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Words? worth even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in com? pleteness and variety. Wordsworth cared little for books, and disparaged Goethe. I admire Wordsworth, as he is, so much that I cannot wish him different; and it is vain, no doubt, to imagine such a man different from what he is, to suppose that he could have been different; but surely the one thing wanting to make Wordsworth an even greater poet than he is,?? is thought richer, and his influence of wider application,?? was that he should have read more books, among them, no doubt, those of that Goethe whom he disparaged without reading him. But to speak of books and reading may easily lead to a misunderstanding here. It was not really books and reading that lacked to our poetry, at this epoch; Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense reading. Pindar and Sophocles,?? as we all say so glibly, and often with so little discernment of the real import of what we are saying,?? had ot many books; Shakspeare was no deep reader. True; but in the Greece of Pindar and Sophocles, in the England of Shakspeare, the poet lived in a current of ideas in the highest degree animating and nourishing to the creative power; society was, in the fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought, intelligent and alive; and this state of things is the true basis for the creative power's exercise, in this it finds its data, its materials, truly ready for its hand; all the books and reading in the world are only valuable as they are helps to this.
Even when this does not actually exist, books and reading may enable a man to construct a kind of semblance of it in his own mind, a world of knowledge and intelligence in which he may live and work; this is by no means an equivalent, to the artist, for the nationally diffused life and thought of the epochs of Sophocles or Shakspeare, but, besides that it may be a means of preparation for such epochs, it does really constitute, if many share in it, a quickening and sustaining atmosphere of great value. Such an atmosphere the many? sided learning and the long and widely? ombined critical effort of Germany formed for Goethe, when he lived and worked. There was no national glow of life and thought there, as in the Athens of Pericles, or the England of Elizabeth. That was the poet's weakness. But there was a sort of equivalent for it in the complete culture and unfettered thinking of a large body of Germans. That was his strength. In the England of the first quarter of this century, there was neither a national glow of life and thought, such as we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor yet a culture and a force of learning and criticism, such as were to be found in Germany.
Therefore the creative power of poetry wanted, for success in the highest sense, materials and a basis; a thorough interpretation of the world was necessarily denied to it. At first sight it seems strange that out of the immense stir of the French Revolution and its age should not have come a crop of works of genius equal to that which came out of the stir of the great productive time of Greece, or out of that of the Renaissance, with its powerful episode the Reformation. But the truth is that the stir of the French Revolution took a character which essentially distinguished it from such movements as these.
These were, in the main, disinterestedly intellectual and spiritual movements; movements in which the human spirit looked for its satisfaction in itself and in the in? creased play of its own activity: the French Revolution took a political, practical character. The movement which went on in France under the old regime, from 1700 to 1789, was far more really akin than that of the Revolution itself to the movement of the Renaissance; the France of Voltaire and THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 3
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME Rousseau told far more powerfully upon the mind of Europe than the France of the Revolution. Goethe reproached this last expressly with having "thrown quiet culture back. " Nay, and the true key to how much in our Byron, even in our Words? worth, is this!?? that they had their source in a great movement of feeling, not in a great movement of mind. The French Revolution, however,?? that object of so much blind love and so much blind hatred,?? found undoubtedly its motive? ower in the intelligence of men and not in their practical sense;?? this is what distinguishes it from the English Revolution of Charles the First's time; this is what makes it a more spiritual event than our Re? volution, an event of much more powerful and world? wide interest, though practically less successful;?? it appeals to an order of ideas which are universal, certain, permanent. 1789 asked of a thing, Is it rational? 1642 asked of a thing, Is it legal? or, when it went furthest, Is it according to conscience?
This is the English fashion; a fashion to be treated, within its own sphere, with the highest respect; for its success, within its own sphere, has been prodigious. But what is law in one place, is not law in another; what is law here to? day, is not law even here tomorrow; and as for conscience, what is binding on one man's conscience is not binding on another's; the old woman who threw her stool at the head of the surpliced minister in St. Giles's Church at Edinburgh obeyed an impulse to which millions of the human race may be permitted to remain strangers. But the pre? criptions of reason are absolute, unchanging, of universal validity; to count by tens is the simplest way of counting,*?? *A writer in the Saturday Review, who has offered me some counsels about style for which I am truly grateful, suggests that this should stand as follows:?? To take as your unit an established base of notation, ten being given as the base of notation, is, except for numbers under twenty, the simplest way of counting. I tried it so, but I assure him, without jealousy, that the more I looked at his improved way of putting the thing, the less I liked it.
It seems to me that the maxim, in this shape, would never make the tour of a world, where most of us are plain easy? spoken people. He forgets that he is a reasoner, a member of a school, a disciple of the great Bentham, and that he naturally talks in the scientific way of his school, with exact accuracy, philosophic propriety; I am a mere solitary wanderer in search of the light, and I talk an artless, un? studied, every? day, familiar language. But, after all, this is the language of the mass of the world.
The mass of Frenchmen who felt the force of that prescription of the reason which my reviewer, in his purified language, states thus: ?? to count by tens has the advantage of taking as your unit the base of an * that is a proposition of which every one, from here to the Antipodes, feels the force; at least, I should say so, if we did not live in a country where it is not impossible that any morning we may find a letter in the Times declaring that a decimal coinage is an absurdity.
That a whole nation should have been pene? trated with an enthusiasm for pure reason, and with an ardent zeal for making its prescriptions triumph, is a very * established system of notation, certainly rendered this, for themselves, in some such loose language as mine. My point is that they felt the force of a prescription of the reason so strongly that they legislated in accordance with it. They may have been wrong in so doing; they may have foolishly omitted to take other prescriptions of reason into account;?? he non? English world does not seem to think so, but let that pass;?? what I say is, that by legislating as they did they showed a keen susceptibility to purely rational, intellectual considerations. On the other hand, does my reviewer say that we keep our mone? tary system unchanged because our nation has grasped the intellec? tual proposition which he puts, in his masterly way, thus : {{"}}to count by twelves has the advantage of taking as your unit a number in itself far more convenient than ten for that purpose? Surely not; but because our system is there, and we are too practical a people to trouble ourselves about its intellectual aspect. To take a second case. The French Revolutionists abolished the sale of offices, because they thought (my reviewer will kindly allow me to put the thing in my imperfect, popular language) the sale of offices a gross anomaly. We still sell commissions in the army. I have no doubt my reviewer, with his scientific powers, can easily invent some beautiful formula to make us appear to be doing this on the purest philosophical principles; the rinciples of Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Mr. Mill, Mr. Bain, and himself, their THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 4 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME worthy disciple. But surely the plain unscientific account of the matter is, that we have the anomalous practice (he will allow it is, in itself, an anomalous practice? ) established, and that (in the words of senatorial wisdom already quoted) "for a thing to be an anomaly we consider to be no objection to it whatever. " emarkable thing, when we consider how little of mind, or anything so worthy and quickening as mind, comes into the motives which alone, in general, impel great masses of men. In spite of the extravagant direction given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes and follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution derives, from the force, truth, and universality of the ideas which it took for its law, and from the passion with which it could inspire a multitude for these ideas, a unique and still living power; it is,?? it will probably long remain,?? he greatest, the most animating event in history. And, as no sincere passion for the things of the mind, even though it turn out in many respects an unfortunate passion, is ever quite thrown away and quite barren of good, France has reaped from hers one fruit, the natural and legitimate fruit, though not precisely the grand fruit she expected; she is the country in Europe where the people is most alive. But the mania for giving an immediate political and practical application to all these fine ideas of the reason was fatal.
Here an Englishman is in his element: on this theme we can all go on for hours. And all we are in the habit of saying on it has undoubtedly a great deal of truth. Ideas cannot be too much prized in and for themselves, cannot be too much lived with; but to transport them abruptly into the world of politics and practice, violently to revolutionise this world to their bidding,?? that is quite another thing. There is the world of ideas and there is the world of practice; the French are often for suppressing the one and the English the other; but neither is to be suppressed.
A member of the House of Commons said to me the other day: "That a thing is an anomaly, I consider to be no objection to it what? ever. " I venture to think he was wrong; that a thing is an anomaly is an objection to it, but absolutely and in the sphere of ideas: it is not necessarily, under such and such circumstances, or at such and such a moment, an objection to it in the sphere of politics and practice. Joubert has said beautifully: "C'est la force et le droit qui reglent toutes choses dans le monde; la force en attendant le droit. " Force and right are the governors of this world; force till right is ready.
Force till right is ready; and till right is ready, force, the existing order of things, is justified, is the legitimate ruler. But right is something moral, and implies inward recognition, free assent of the will; we are not ready for right,?? right, so far as we are concerned, is not ready,?? until we have attained this sense of seeing it and willing it. The way in which for us it may change and transform force, the existing order of things, and become, in its turn, the legitimate ruler of the world, will depend on the way in which, when our time comes, we see it and will it.
Therefore for other people enamoured of their own newly discerned right, to attempt to impose it upon us as ours, and violently to substitute their right for our force, is an act of tyranny, and to be resisted. It sets at nought the second great half of our maxim, force till right is ready. This was the grand error of the French Revolution, and its movement of ideas, by quitting the intellectual sphere and rushing furiously into the political sphere, ran, in? eed, a prodigious and memorable course, but produced no such intellectual fruit as the movement of ideas of the Renaissance, and created, in opposition to itself, what I may call an epoch of concentration. The great force of that epoch of concentration was England; and the great voice of that epoch of concentration was Burke. It is the fashion to treat Burke's writings on the French Revolution as superannuated and conquered by the event; as the eloquent but unphilosophical tirades of bigotry and prejudice.
I will not deny that they are often disfigured by the violence and passion of the moment, and that in some directions Burke's view was bounded, and his observation therefore at fault; but on the whole, and for those who can make the needful corrections, what distinguishes these writings is their profound, permanent, fruitful, philosophical truth; they contain the true philosophy of an epoch of concentration, dissipate the heavy atmosphere which its own nature is apt to engender round it, and make its resistance rational instead of mechanical.
But Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he saturates politics with thought; it is his accident that his ideas were at the service of an epoch of concentration, not of an epoch of expansion; it is his characteristic that he so lived by ideas, and had such a source of them welling up within him, that he could float even an epoch of con? centration and English Tory politics with them. It does not hurt him that Dr. Price and the Liberals were enraged with him; it does not even hurt him that George the Third THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 5
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME and the Tories were enchanted with him. His greatness is that he lived in a world which neither English Liberal? ism nor English Toryism is apt to enter;?? the world of ideas, not the world of catchwords and party habits. So far is it from being really true of him that he "to party gave up what was meant for mankind," that at the very end of his fierce struggle with the French Revolution, after all his invectives against its false pretensions, hollow? ess, and madness, with his sincere conviction of its mischievousness, he can close a memorandum on the best means of combating it, some of the last pages he ever wrote,?? the Thoughts on French Affairs, in December, 1791,?? with these striking words:?? "The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists. The remedy must be where power, wisdom, and information, I hope, are more united with good intentions than they can be with me. I have done with this subject, I believe, for ever. It has given me many anxious moments for the last two years.
If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope will forward it; and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate. " That return of Burke upon himself has always seemed to me one of the finest things in English literature, or indeed, in any literature.
That is what I call living by ideas; when one side of a question has long had your earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when you hear all round you no language but one, when your party talks this language like a steam engine and can imagine no other,?? still to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side of the question, and, like Balaam, to be unable to speak anything but what the Lord has put in your mouth.
I know nothing more striking, and I must add that I know nothing more un? English. For the Englishman in general is like my friend the Member of Parliament, and believes, point? blank, that for a thing to be an anomaly is absolutely no objection to it whatever. He is like the Lord Auckland of Burke's day, who, in a memorandum on the French Revolution, talks of "certain miscreants, assuming the name of philosophers, who have presumed themselves capable of establishing a new system of society. The Englishman has been called a political animal, and he values what is political and practical so much that ideas easily become objects of dislike in his eyes, and thinkers "miscreants," because ideas and thinkers have rashly meddled with politics and practice. This would be all very well if the dislike and neglect confined themselves to ideas transported out of their own sphere, and meddling rashly with practice; but they are inevitably extended to ideas as such, and to the whole life of intelligence; practice is everything, a free play of the mind is nothing.
The notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being an essential provider of elements without which a nation's spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into an Englishman's thoughts. It {{is}} [[[it]]] noticeable that the word curiosity, which in other languages is used in a good sense, to mean, as a high and fine quality of man's nature, just this disinterested love of a free play of the mind on all subjects, for its own sake,?? t is noticeable, I say, that this word has in our language no sense of the kind, no sense but a rather bad and disparaging one. But criticism, real criticism, is essentially the exercise of this very quality; it obeys an instinct prompting it to try to know the best that is known and thought in the world, irrespectively of practice, politics, and everything of the kind; and to value knowledge and thought as they approach this best, without the intrusion of any other considerations whatever.
This is an instinct for which there is, I think, little original sympathy in the practical English nature, and what there was of it has undergone a long benumbing period of blight and suppression in the epoch of concentration which followed the French Revolution. THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 6 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME But epochs of concentration cannot well endure for ever; epochs of expansion, in the due course of things, follow them.
Such an epoch of expansion seems to be opening in this country. In the first place all danger of a hostile forcible pressure of foreign ideas upon our practice has long disappeared; like the traveller in the fable, therefore, we begin to wear our cloak a little more loosely. Then, with a long peace, the ideas of Europe steal gradually and amicably in, and mingle, though in infinitesimally small quantities at a time, with our own notions.
Then, too, in spite of all that is said about the absorbing and brutalising influence of our passionate material progress, it seems to me indisputable that this progress is likely, though not certain, to lead in the end to an apparition of intellectual life; and that man, after he has made himself perfectly comfortable and has now to determine what to do with himself next, may begin to remember that he has a mind, and that the mind may be made the source of great pleasure. I grant it is mainly the privilege of faith, at present, to discern this end to our railways, our business, and our fortune? aking; but we shall see if, here as elsewhere, faith is not in the end the true prophet. Our ease, our travelling, and our un? bounded liberty to hold just as hard and securely as we please to the practice to which our notions have given birth, all tend to beget an inclination to deal a little more freely with these notions themselves, to canvass them a little, to penetrate a little into their real nature. Flutterings of curiosity, in the foreign sense of the word, appear amongst us, and it is in these that criticism must look to find its account.
Criticism first; a time of true creative activity, perhaps,?? which, as I have said, must inevitably be preceded amongst us by a time of criticism, ?? hereafter, when criticism has done its work. It is of the last importance that English criticism should clearly discern what rule for its course, in order to avail itself of the field now opening to it, and to pro? duce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The rule may be summed up in one word,?? disinterestedness. And how is criticism to show disinterestedness?
By keeping aloof from practice; by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches; by steadily refusing to lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical con? siderations about ideas which plenty of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought often to be attached to them, which in this country at any rate are certain to be attached to them quite sufficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to do with. Its busi? ess is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas. Its business is to do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability; but its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of practical consequences and applications, questions which will never fail to have due prominence given to them. Else criticism, besides being really false to its own nature, merely continues in the old rut which it has hitherto followed in this country, and will certainly miss the chance now given to it.
For what is at present the bane of criticism in this country? It is that practical considerations cling to it and stifle it; it subserves interests not its own; our organs of criticism are organs of men and parties having practical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends are the first thing and the play of mind the second; so much play of mind as is compatible with the prosecution of those prac? tical ends is all that is wanted. An organ like the Revue des Deux Mondes, having for its main function to under? tand and utter the best that is known and thought in the world, existing, it may be said, as just an organ for a` free play of the mind, we have not; but we have the Edinburgh Review, existing as an organ of the old Whigs, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the Quarterly Review, existing as an organ of the Tories, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the British Quarterly Review, exist? ng as an organ of the political Dissenters, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that; we have the Times, existing as an organ of the common, satisfied, well? to? do Englishman, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that. And so on through all the various fractions, political and religious, of our society; every fraction has, as such, its organ of criticism, but the notion of combining all fractions in the common pleasure of a free disinterested play of mind meets with no favour.
Directly this play of mind wants to have more scope, and to forget the pressure of practical considerations a little, it is checked, it is made to feel the chain; we saw this the other day in the extinction, so much to be regretted, of the Home and Foreign Review; perhaps in no organ of criticism in this country was there so much knowledge, so much play of mind; but these could not save it; the Dublin Review subordinates play of mind to the prac? tical business of English and Irish Catholicism, and lives. It must needs be that men should act in sects and par? ies, that each of these sects and parties should have its organ, and should make this organ subserve the interests of its action; but it would be well, too, that there should be a criticism, not the minister of these interests, not their enemy, but absolutely and entirely THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 7 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME independent of them. No other criticism will ever attain any real authority or make any real way towards its end,?? the creating a current of true and fresh ideas.
It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure intellectual sphere, has so little detached itself from practice, has been so directly polemical and controver? sial, that it has so ill accomplished, in this country, its best spiritual work; which is to keep man from a self? satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarising, to lead him towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things. A polemical practical criticism makes men blind even to the ideal imperfection of their prac? ice, makes them willingly assert its ideal perfection, in order the better to secure it against attack; and clearly this is narrowing and baneful for them. If they were reassured on the practical side, speculative considera? tions of ideal perfection they might be brought to entertain, and their spiritual horizon would thus gra? dually widen. Adderley says to the Warwickshire farmers:?? "Talk of the improvement of breed! Why, the race we ourselves represent, the men and women, the old Anglo? Saxon race, are the best breed in the whole world. ...
The absence of a too enervating climate, too un? clouded skies, and a too luxurious nature, has produced so vigorous a race of people, and has rendered us so superior to all the world. " Mr. Roebuck says to the Sheffield cutlers:?? "I look around me and ask what is the state of England? Is not property safe? Is not every man able to say what he likes? Can you not walk from one end of England to the other in perfect security? I ask you whether, the world over or in past history, there is any? thing like it? Nothing. I pray that our unrivalled happiness may last. "
Now obviously there is a peril for poor human nature in words and thoughts of such exuberant self? satisfaction, until we find ourselves safe in the streets of the Celestial City. "Das wenige verschwindet leicht deln Blicke Der vorwarts sieht, wie viel noch ubrig bleibt?? " says Goethe; the little that is done seems nothing when we look forward and see how much we have yet to do. Clearly this is a better line of reflection for weak humanity, so long as it remains on this earthly field of labour and trial. But neither Mr. Adderley nor Mr. Roebuck are by nature inaccessible to considerations of this sort.
They only lose sight of them owing to the controversial life we all lead, and the practical form which all specu? lation takes with us. They have in view opponents whose aim is not ideal, but practical, and in their zeal to uphold their own practice against these innovators, they go so far as even to attribute to this practice an ideal perfection. Somebody has been wanting to introduce a six? pound franchise, or to abolish church? rates, or to collect agricultural statistics by force, or to diminish local self? government. How natural, in reply to such pro? osals, very likely improper or ill? timed, to go a little beyond the mark, and to say stoutly: "Such a race of people as we stand, so superior to all the world! The old Anglo? Saxon race, the best breed in the whole world! I pray that our unrivalled happiness may last! I ask you whether, the world over or in past history, there is anything like it! " And so long as criticism answers this dithyramb by insisting that the old Anglo? Saxon race would be still more superior to all others if it had no church? rates, or that our unrivalled happiness would last yet longer with a six? ound franchise, so long will the strain, "The best breed in the whole world! " swell louder and louder, everything ideal and refining will be lost out of sight, and both the assailed and their critics will remain in a sphere, to say the truth, perfectly unvital, a sphere in which spiritual progression is impossible. But let criticism leave church? rates and the franchise alone, and in the most candid spirit, without a single lurking thought of practical innovation, confront with our dithyramb this paragraph on which I stumbled in a news? paper soon after reading Mr. Roebuck:?? A THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 8 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME shocking child murder has just been committed at Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the workhouse there on Saturday morning with her young illegitimate child. The child was soon afterwards found dead on Mapperly Hills, having been strangled. Wragg is in custody. " Nothing but that; but, in juxtaposition with the absolute eulogies of Mr. Adderley and Mr. Roebuck, how elo? quent, how suggestive are those few lines! " Our old Anglo? Saxon breed, the best in the whole world! ?? how much that is harsh and ill? favoured there is in this best! Wragg! If we are to talk of ideal perfection, of "the best in the whole world," has anyone reflected what a touch of grossness in our race, what an original short? coming in the more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the natural growth amongst us of such hideous names,?? Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg! In Ionia and Attica they were luckier in this respect than "the best race in the world;" by the Ilissus there was no Wragg, poor thing! And "our unrivalled happiness;"?? hat an element of grimness, bareness, and hideousness mixes with it and blurs it; the workhouse, the dismal Map? perly Hills,?? how dismal those who have seen them will remember;?? the gloom, the smoke, the cold, the strangled illegitimate child! " I ask you whether, the world over or in past history, there is anything like it? " Perhaps not, one is inclined to answer; but at any rate, in that case, the world is very much to be pitied. And the final touch,?? short, bleak, and inhuman: Wragg is in custody. The sex lost in the confusion of our unrivalled happiness; or, hall I say? the superfluous Christian name lopped off by the straightforward vigour of our old Anglo? Saxon breed! There is profit for the spirit in such contrasts as this; criticism serves the cause of perfection by esta? blishing them. By eluding sterile conflict, by refusing to remain in the sphere where alone narrow and relative conceptions have any worth and validity, criticism may diminish its momentary importance, but only in this way has it a chance of gaining admittance for those wider and more perfect conceptions to which all its duty is really owed. Mr.
Roebuck will have a poor opinion of an adversary who replies to his defiant songs of triumph only by murmuring under his breath, Wragg is in custody; but in no other way will these songs of triumph be induced gradually to moderate themselves, to get rid of what in them is excessive and offensive, and to fall into a softer and truer key. It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect action which I am thus prescribing for criticism, and that by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue of detach? ment and abandoning the sphere of practical life, it condemns itself to a slow and obscure work.
Slow and obscure it may be, but it is the only proper work of criticism. The mass of mankind will never have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are; very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes, and must repose, the general practice of the world. That is as much as saying that whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle; but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.
The rush and roar of practical life will always have a dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex; most of all will this be the case where that life is so powerful as it is in England. But it is only by remaining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the point of view of the practical man, that the critic can do the practical man any service; and it is only by the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and by at last convincing even the practical man of his sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which perpetually threaten him.
For the practical man is not apt for fine distinctions, and yet in these distinctions truth and the highest culture greatly find their account. But it is not easy to lead a practical man,?? unless you reassure him as to your prac? tical intentions you have no chance of leading him,?? to see that a thing which he has always been used to look at from one side only, which he greatly values, and which, looked at from that side, more than deserves, perhaps, all the prizing and admiring which he bestows upon it,?? hat this thing, looked at from another side, may appear much less beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims to our practical allegiance. Where shall we find lan? guage innocent enough, how shall we make the spotless purity of our intentions evident enough, to enable us to say to the political Englishman that the British Constitu? tion itself, which, seen from the practical side, looks such a magnificent organ of progress and virtue, seen from the speculative side,?? with its compromises, its love of facts, its horror of theory, its studied avoidance of clear thoughts,?? hat, seen from this side, our august Consti? tution sometimes looks,?? forgive me, shade of Lord Somers!?? a colossal machine for the manufacture of Philistines? How is Cobbett to say this and not be mis? understood, blackened as he is with the smoke of a life? long conflict in the field of political practice? how is Mr. Carlyle to say it and not be misunderstood, after his THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 9 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME furious raid into this field with his Latter? ay Pamphlets how is Mr. Ruskin, after his pugnacious political economy? I say, the critic must keep out of the region of immediate practice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, if he wants to make a beginning for that more free specu? lative treatment of things, which may perhaps one day make its benefits felt even in this sphere, but in a natural and thence irresistible manner. Do what he will, however, the critic will still remain exposed to frequent misunderstandings, and nowhere so much as in this country.
For here people are particu? larly indisposed even to comprehend that without this free disinterested treatment of things, truth and the highest culture are out of the question. So immersed are they in practical life, so accustomed to take all their notions from this life and its processes, that they are apt to think that truth and culture themselves can be reached by the processes of this life, and that it is an impertinent singularity to think of reaching them in any other. "We are all terr? ilii," cries their eloquent advocate; "all Philistines together. Away with the notion of proceed? ing by any other course than the course dear to the Philistines; let us have a social movement, let us organise and combine a party to pursue truth and new thought, let us call it the liberal party, and let us all stick to each other, and back each other up. Let us have no nonsense about independent criticism, and intellectual delicacy, and the few and the many; don't let us trouble our? elves about foreign thought; we shall invent the whole thing for ourselves as we go along; if one of us speaks well, applaud him; if one of us speaks ill, applaud him too; we are all in the same movement, we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of truth. " In this way the pursuit of truth becomes really a social, practical, pleasureable affair, almost requiring a chairman, a secretary, and advertisements; with the excitement of an occasional scandal, with a little resistance to give the happy sense of difficulty overcome; but, in general, plenty of bustle and very little thought.
To act is so easy, as Goethe says; to think is so hard! It is true that the critic has many temptations to go with the stream, to make one of the party of movement, one of these terr? filii; it seems ungracious to refuse to be a terr? filius, when so many excellent people are; but the critic's duty is to refuse, or, if resistance is vain, at least to cry with Obermann: Perissons en resistant. How serious a matter it is to try and resist, I had ample opportunity of experiencing when I ventured some time ago to criticise the celebrated first volume of Bishop Colenso. The echoes of the storm which was then raised I still, from time to time, hear grumbling round me. That storm arose out of a misunderstanding almost inevitable. It is a result of no little culture to attain to a clear perception that science and religion are two wholly different things; the multitude will for ever con? fuse them, but happily that is of no great real im? portance, for while the multitude imagines itself to live by its false science, it does really live by its true religion.
Dr. Colenso, however, in his first volume did all he could to strengthen the confusion, and to make it dangerous. * So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and controversy, that I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of time from the occasion which called them forth, the essays in which I criticised the Bishop of Natal's book; I feel bound, however, after all that has passed, to make here a final declaration of my sincere impenitence for having published them.
The Bishop of Natal's subsequent volumes are in great measure free from the crying fault of his first; he has at length succeeded in more clearly separating, in his own thoughts, the idea of science from the idea of religion; his mind appears to be opening as he goes along, and he may perhaps end by becoming a useful biblical critic, though never, I think, of the first order. Still, in here taking leave of him at the moment when he is pub? ishing, for popular use, a cheap edition of his work, I cannot forbear repeating yet once more, for his benefit and that of his readers, this sentence from my original remarks upon him: There is truth of science and truth of religion; truth of science does not become truth of religion till it is made religious. And I will add: Let us have all the science there is from the men of science; from the men of religion let us have religion. THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 10
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME It has been said I make it "a crime against literary criticism * He did this with the best intentions, I freely admit, and with the most candid ignorance that this was the natural effect of what he was doing; but, says Joubert, "Igno? ance, which in matters of morals extenuates the crime, in itself, in intellectual matters, a crime of the first order. " I criticised Bishop Colenso's speculative confusion. Im? mediately there was a cry raised: "What is this? here a liberal attacking a liberal. Do not you belong to the movement? are not you a friend of truth?
Is not Bishop Colenso in pursuit of truth? then speak with proper respect of his book. Dr. Stanley is another friend of truth, and you speak with proper respect of his book; why make these invidious differences? both books are excellent, admirable, liberal; Bishop Colenso's perhaps the most so, because it is the boldest, and will have the best practical consequences for the liberal cause. Do you want to encourage to the attack of a brother liberal his, and your, and our implacable enemies, the Church and State Review or the Record,?? the High Church rhinoceros and the Evangelical hy? na?
Be silent, therefore; or rather speak, speak as loud as ever you can, and go into ecstasies over the eighty and odd pigeons. " But criticism cannot follow this coarse and indiscriminate method. It is unfortunately possible for a man in pur? suit of truth to write a book which reposes upon a false conception. Even the practical consequences of a book are to genuine criticism no recommendation of it, if the book is, in the highest sense, blundering. I see that a *and the higher culture to attempt to inform the ignorant. " Need I point out that the ignorant are not informed by being confirmed in a confusion? ady who herself, too, is in pursuit of truth, and who writes with great ability, but a little too much, perhaps, under the influence of the practical spirit of the English liberal movement, classes Bishop Colenso's book and M. Renan's together, in her survey of the religious state of Europe, as facts of the same order, works, both of them, of "great importance;" "great ability, power and skill;" Bishop Colenso's, perhaps, the most powerful; at least, Miss Cobbe gives special expression to her gratitude that to Bishop Colenso "has been given the strength to grasp, and the courage to teach truths of such deep import. In the same way, more than one popular writer has compared him to Luther. Now it is just this kind of false estimate which the critical spirit is, it seems to me, bound to resist. It is really the strongest possible proof of the low ebb at which, in England, the critical spirit is, that while the critical hit in the religious literature of Germany is Dr. Strauss's book, in that of France M. Renan's book, the book of Bishop Colenso is the critical hit in the religious literature of England. Bishop Colenso's book reposes on a total misconcep? ion of the essential elements of the religious problem, as that problem is now presented for solution. To cri? ticism, therefore, which seeks to have the best that is known and thought on this problem, it is, however well meant, of no importance whatever. M. Renan's book attempts a new synthesis of the elements furnished to us by the four Gospels. It attempts, in my opinion, a synthesis, perhaps premature, perhaps impossible, cer? tainly not successful. Up to the present time, at any rate, we must acquiesce in Fleury's sentence on such recastings of the Gospel story : Quiconque s'imagine la pouvoir mieux ecrire, ne l'entend pas.
M. Renan had himself passed by anticipation a like sentence on his own work, when he said: "If a new presentation of the character of Jesus were offered to me, I would not have it; its very clearness would be, in my opinion, the best proof of its insufficiency. " His friends may with perfect justice rejoin that at the sight of the Holy Land, and of the actual scene of the Gospel? story, all the current of M. Renan's thoughts may have naturally changed, and a new casting of that story irresistibly suggested itself to him; and that this is just a case for applying Cicero's maxim: Change of mind is not inconsistency?? emo doctus unquam mutationem consilii inconstantiam dixit esse. Nevertheless, for criticism, M. Renan's first thought must still be the truer one, as long as his new casting so fails more fully to commend itself, more fully (to use Coleridge's happy phrase about the Bible) to find us. Still M. Renan's attempt is, for criticism, of the most real interest and importance, since, with all its difficulty, a fresh synthesis of the New Testament data,?? ot a making war on them, in Voltaire's fashion, not a leaving them out of mind, in the world's fashion, but the putting a new construction upon them, the taking them from under the old, adoptive, traditional, un? spiritual point of view and placing them under a new one,?? is the very essence of the religious problem, as now presented; and only by efforts in this direction can it receive a solution. Again, in the same spirit in which she judges Bishop Colenso, Miss Cobbe, like so many earnest liberals of our THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 11
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME practical race, both here and in America, herself sets vigorously about a positive reconstruction of religion, about making a religion of the future out of hand, or at least setting about making it; we must not rest, she and they are always thinking and saying, in negative criti? cism, we must be creative and constructive; hence we have such works as her recent Religious Duty, and works still more considerable, perhaps, by others, which will be in everyone's mind.
These works often have much ability; they often spring out of sincere convictions, and a sincere wish to do good; and they sometimes, perhaps, do good. Their fault is (if I may be permitted to say so) one which they have in common with the British College of Health, in the New Road. Everyone knows the British College of Health; it is that building with the lion and the statue of the Goddess Hygeia before it; at least, I am sure about the lion, though I am not absolutely certain about the Goddess Hygeia. This building does credit, perhaps, to the resources of Dr.
Morrison and his disciples; but it falls a good deal short of one's idea of what a British College of Health ought to be. In England, where we hate public inter? ference and love individual enterprise, we have a whole crop of places like the British College of Health; the grand name without the grand thing. Unluckily, credit? able to individual enterprise as they are, they tend to impair our taste by making us forget what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character properly belongs to a public institution. The same may be said of the religions of the future of Miss Cobbe and others.
Creditable, like the British College of Health, to the resources of their authors, they yet tend to make us forget what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character properly belongs to religious constructions. The historic religions, with all their faults, have had this; it certainly belongs to the religious sentiment, when it truly flowers, to have this; and we impoverish our spirit if we allow a religion of the future without it. What then is the duty of criticism here? To take the practical point of view, to applaud the liberal movement and all its works,?? its New Road religions of the future into the bargain,?? or their general utility's sake? By no means; but to be perpetually dis? satisfied with these works, while they perpetually fall short of a high and perfect ideal. For criticism, these are elementary laws; but they never can be popular, and in this country they have been very little followed, and one meets with immense obstacles in following them. That is a reason for asserting them again and again. Criticism must maintain its independence of the practical spirit and its aims. Even with well? meant efforts of the practical spirit it must express dissatisfaction, if in the sphere of the ideal they seem impoverishing and limiting.
It must not hurry on to the goal because of its practical importance. It must be patient, and know how to wait; and flexible, and know how to attach itself to things and how to withdraw from them. It must be apt to study and praise elements that for the fulness of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though they belong to a power which in the prac? tical sphere may be maleficent. It must be apt to discern the spiritual shortcomings or illusions of powers that in the practical sphere may be beneficent. And this with? ut any notion of favouring or injuring, in the practical sphere, one power or the other; without any notion of playing off, in this sphere, one power against the other. When one looks, for instance, at the English Divorce Court,?? an institution which perhaps has its practical conveniences, but which in the ideal sphere is so hideous;* *A critic, already quoted, says that I have no right, on my own principles, to "object to practical measures on theoretical grounds," and that only "when a man has got a theory which will fully explain all the duties of the legislator on the matter of marriage, will he have a right to abuse the Divorce Court. In short, he wants me to produce a plan for a new and improved Divorce Court, before I call the present one hideous. But God forbid that I should thus enter into competition with the Lord Chancellor! It is just this invasion of the practical sphere which is really against my principles; the taking a practical measure into the world of ideas, and seeing how it looks there, is, on the other hand, just what I am recom? mending. It is because we have not been conversant enough with ideas that our practice now falls so short; it is only by becoming more conversant with them that we shall make it better.
Our present Divorce Court is not the result of any legislator's meditations on the subject of marriage; rich people had an anomalous privilege of getting divorced; privileges are odious, and we said everybody should have the same chance. There was no meditation about THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME 12 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME marriage here; that was just the mischief. If my practical critic will but himself accompany me, for a little while, into the despised world of ideas;?? f, renouncing any attempt to patch hastily up, with a noble disdain for transcendentalists, our present Divorce law, he will but allow his mind to dwell a little, first on the Catholic idea of marriage, which exhibits marriage as indissoluble, and then upon that Protestant idea of marriage, which exhibits it as a union terminable by mutual consent,?? if he will meditate well on these, and afterwards on the thought of what married life, according to its idea, really is, of what family life really is, of what social life really is, and national life, and public morals, ?? he will find, fter a while, I do assure him, the whole state of his* an institution which neither makes divorce impossible nor makes it decent, which allows a man to get rid of his wife, or a wife of her husband, but makes them drag one another first, for the public edification, through a mire of unutterable infamy,?? when one looks at this charming institution, I say, with its crowded benches, its newspaper? reports, and its money? compensations, this institution in which the gross unregenerate British Philis? tine has indeed stamped an image of himself,?? one may be permitted to find the marriage? heory of Catholicism refreshing and elevating. Or when Protestantism, in virtue of its supposed rational and intellectual origin, gives the law to criticism too magisterially, criticism may and must remind it that its pretensions, in this respect, are illusive and do it harm; that the Reformation was a moral rather than an intellectual event; that Luther's theory of grace no more exactly reflects the mind of the spirit than Bossuet's philosophy of history reflects it; and that there is no more antecedent probability of the Bishop of Durham's stock of ideas being agreeable to? erfect reason than of Pope Pius the Ninth's. But criticism will not on that account forget the achievements of Protestantism in the practical and moral sphere; nor that, even in the intellectual sphere, Protestantism, *spirit quite changed; the Divorce Court will then seem to him, if he looks at it, strangely hideous; and he will at the same time discover in himself, as the fruit of his inward discipline, lights and resources for making it better, of which now he does not dream.
He must make haste, though, for the condition of his "practical measure" is getting awkward; even the British Philistine begins to have qualms as he looks at his offspring; even his "thrice? battered God of Palestine" is beginning to roll its eyes convulsively. though in a blind and stumbling manner, carried for? ward the Renaissance, while Catholicism threw itself violently across its path. I lately heard a man of thought and energy contrasting the want of ardour and movement which he now found amongst young men in this country with what he re? membered in his own youth, twenty years ago. "What reformers we were then! he exclaimed; "what a zeal we had! how we canvassed every institution in Church and State, and were prepared to remodel them all on first principles! " He was inclined to regret, as a spiritual flagging, the lull which he saw. I am disposed rather to regard it as a pause in which the turn to a new mode of spiritual progress is being accomplished. Everything was long seen, by the young and ar
