Nineteenth Century Thought (12 page)

*
* * When I began to speak of culture, I insisted on our bondage to machinery
⁹
,
on our proneness to value machinery as an end in itself, without looking beyond
it to the end for which alone, in truth, it is valuable.

ANNOTATIONS

7.
      
Nonconformist:
Another
loaded word. This renders 'conformism' acceptable. The paper
Nonconformist
stood,
of course, for a strong critique of settled norms in the nineteenth century.
Rather than going into the argument, Arnold simply brushes aside the position
of the paper. This ideological sleight of hand is used all through the comment.

8.
      
The Establishment:
The
word largely indicates the State of which 'civil society' also would be a part.
'A life of jealousy' in this sentence cleverly mixes up the precept and the
principle. Obviously, Arnold is impatient with, if not dearly irritated by the
Independents. The comment as such prepares ground for the enunciation of the
theory of culture.

9.
      
Bondage to machinery:
Many
decades before Arnold, Dickens noticed the negative features of machinery and
linked it up with mere utility as also the broader doctrine of utilitarianism.
Such a characterization of machinery goes back to Romanticism. However, Arnold
talks of machinery exclusively in terms of value,' 'end' and 'freedom.' This
makes it appear to be a mixed blessing in the context. Arnold also concedes
that machinery helps humanity to move towards freedom. In fact, in this case,
that is where problems arise. Arnold stands in dear opposition to both Romantics
and Dickens and offers the recipe of self-discipline.

Freedom,
I said, was one of those things which we thus worshipped in itself, without
enough regarding the ends for which freedom is to be desired. In our common notions
and talk about freedom, we eminently show our idolatry of machinery. Our
prevalent notion is-and I quoted a number of instances to prove it-that it is a
most happy and important thing for a man merely to be able to do as he likes.
On what he is to do when he is thus free to do as he likes, we do not lay so
much stress.
 
Our familiar praise of the
British Constitution
¹⁰
under which we live, is that it is a system
of checks-a system which stops and paralyzes any power in interfering with the
free action of individuals. To this effect Mr. Bright, who loves to walk in the
old ways of the Constitution, said forcibly in one of his great speeches, what
many other people are every day saying less forcibly, that the central idea of
English life and politics is the
assertion of personal liberty.
Evidently
this is so; but evidently, also, as feudalism, which with its ideas, and habits
of subordination was for many centuries silently behind the British
Constitution, dies out, and we are left with nothing but our system of checks,
and our motion of its being the great right and happiness of an Englishman to
do as far as possible what he likes, we are in danger of drifting towards
anarchy. We have not the notion, so familiar on the Continent and to antiquity,
of the
State-the
notion in its collective and corporate character,
entrusted with stringent powers
 
for the
general advantage, and controlling individual
 
wills
 
in
 
the
 
name
 
of an
 
interest wider
 
than
 
that
 
of individuals. We say, what
is very true,
 
that
 
this notion
 
is often made
 
instrumental
 
to
 
tyranny; we say that
 
a State
is
 
in
 
reality made
 
up
 
of
 
the
 
individuals
 
who
 
compose
 
it,
 
and
 
that
 
every individual is the best judge of his own
interests.

ANNOTATIONS

10.
   
The British Constitution:
Arnold's
attitude to British Constitution and the State is interesting in that he
recognizes their worth and also sees in their operation a system of checks and
strong authority. Arnold is caught between the challenges of anarchy on the one
hand and denial of freedom on the other. Finally, he reaches the point where
the middle class ("great representative of trade and Dissent") gains
its specific place in the English society. The authoritarian face of the
British Constitution to which strength comes from Aristocracy stands critiqued
in Arnold.

Our
leading class is all aristocracy, and no aristocracy likes the notion of a
State authority greater that itself, with a stringent administrative machinery
superseding the decorative inutilities of lord-lieutenancy, deputy-lieutenancy,
and the
posse comitatus
,
¹¹
which are all in its own hands. Our middle class, the great representative of
trade and Dissent, with its maxims of every man for himself in business, every
man for himself in religion, dreads a powerful administration which might
somehow interfere with it; and besides, it has its own decorative inutilities
of
vestrymanship
and guardianship
¹²
, which
are to this class what lord-lieutenancy and the county magistracy are to the
aristocratic class, and a stringent administration might either take these
functions out of its hands, or prevent its exercising them in its own
comfortable, independent manner, as at present.

Then
as to our working class. This class, pressed constantly by the hard daily
compulsion of material wants, is naturally the very centre and stronghold of
our national idea, that it is man's ideal right and felicity to do as he likes.
I think I have somewhere related how M. Michelet said to me of the people of
France, that it was "a nation of barbarians civilized by the conscription
¹³
”.
We meant that through their military service the idea of public duty and of
discipline was brought to the mind of these masses, in other respects so raw
and uncultivated. Our masses are quite as raw and uncultivated as the French;
and so far from their having the idea of public duty and of discipline,
superior to the individual's self-will, brought to their mind by a universal
obligation of military service, such as that of the conscription-so far from
their having this, the very idea of a conscription is so at variance with our
English notion of the prime right and blessedness of doing as one likes, that I
remember the manager of the Clay Cross works in Derbyshire told me during the
Crimean war, when our want of soldiers was much felt and some people were
talking of a conscription, that sooner than submit to a conscription the
population of that district would flee to the mines, and lead a sort of Robin
Hood life underground.

ANNOTATIONS

11.
   
Posse
Comitatus
:
'
Power of the country' or administration in the
medieval period.

12.
   
Decorative inutilities of
vestrymanship
and guardianship:
The
part of the State devoted to keeping records and providing minor conveniences.
According to Arnold, this activity isn't exactly useful but, in fact, belongs
to the areas of 'inutility' and notional rendering of service.

13.
   
Conscription:
Forced
recruitment to army in times of war with another country. What Arnold means h
ere is that conscription is the method through which 'raw masses' become civilized.
In this and the next paragraph, Arnold betrays his prejudice against the
working class and the ordinary people who accord in g to him fall outside the
purview of culture.' According to him, ordinary masses are liable to be
anarchic and undisciplined if given freedom. Note the word '
rowdyism
'
in this context. Here, Arnold also lets us know his opposition to "my
friends of the Liberal or progressive parry." Thus, for Arnold neither the
authority of the aristocracy nor the freedom of the Liberal or the progressive
parry is valid. We have to look for the answer in the middle path of culture.
Consider that a few decades later, 'Liberal ' begins indicating the middle path
as it moves away from progressivism.

For
 
a long
 
time,
 
as I
 
have
 
said,
 
the
 
strong feudal
 
habits
 
of subordination
 
and deference continued
 
to tell upon
 
the working class. The modern spirit has now almost entirely dissolved
those habits, and the anarchical tendency of our worship of freedom in and for
itself, of our superstitious faith, as I say, in machinery, is becoming very
manifest. More and more, because of this our blind faith in machinery, because
of our want of light to enable us to look beyond machinery to the end for which
machinery is valuable, this and that man,
 
and this and
 
that body of
men,
 
all over the country, are beginning
to assert and put in practice art Englishman's right to do what he likes; his
right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot
as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes. All this, I say, tends to
anarchy; and though a number of excellent people, and particularly my friends
of the Liberal or progressive party, as they call themselves, are kind enough
to reassure us by saying that these are trifles, that a few transient outbreaks
of
rowdyism
signify nothing, that our system of
liberty is one which
 
itself cures
 
all the evils which
 
it works,
 
that
 
the educated
 
and
 
intelligent
 
classes stand in overwhelming
 
strength and majestic repose, ready, like our
military force in riots, to act at a moment's notice-yet one finds that one's
Liberal friends generally say this because they have such faith in themselves
 
and
 
their nostrums
¹⁴
, when they shall return, as the public
welfare requires, to place and power.

ANNOTATIONS

14.
   
Nostrums:
 
Easy, thoughtless
solutions. "Quack remedy, patent medicine; pet scheme for political or
social reform, panacea" (C.O.D.).

But
this faith of theirs one cannot exactly share, when one has so long had them
and their nostrums at work, and see that they have not prevented our coming to
our present embarrassed condition. And one finds, also, that the outbreaks of
rowdyism
tend to become less and less of trifles, to become
more frequent rather than less frequent; and that meanwhile our educated and
intelligent classes remain in their majestic repose, and somehow or other, whatever
happens, their overwhelming strength, like our military force in riots, never
docs act.

How,
indeed,
should
their overwhelming strength act, when the man who gives
an inflammatory lecture, or breaks down the park railings, or invades a
Secretary of State's office, is only following an Englishman's impulse to do as
he likes; and our own conscience tells us that we ourselves have always
regarded this impulse as something primary and sacred
¹⁵
. Mr.
Murphy's lectures at Birmingham, and showers on the Catholic population of that
town "words," says the Home Secretary, "only fit to be addressed
to thieves or murderers." What then?
 
Mr. Murphy has his own reasons of several kinds. He suspects the Roman
Catholic Church of designs upon Mrs. Murphy; and he says if mayors and
magistrates do not care for their wives and daughters, he does. But, above all,
he is doing as he likes; or, in worthier language, asserting his personal
liberty. "I will carry out my lectures if they walk over my body as a dead
corpse, and I say to the Mayor of Birmingham that he is my servant while I am
in Birmingham, and as my servant he must do his duty and protect me."
Touching and beautiful words, which find a sympathetic chord in every British
bosom! The moment it is plainly put before us that a man is asserting his
personal liberty, we are half disarmed; because we are believers in freedom,
and not in some dream of right reason to which the assertion of our freedom is
to be subordinated
¹⁶
.

ANNOTATIONS

15.
   
How, indeed, should.
.
.sacred! :
From
here begins Arnold's dramatized version of the 'inflammatory lecture"
enacted by Mr. Murphy, the Mayor of Birmingham and the Secretary of State. The
presentation shuns the direct statement and uses instead large number of
exclamations. The supercilious tone behind the imagined dialogues in the
following account should not be missed.

16.
   
A right reason to which
the assertion of our freedom is to be subordinated:
This takes us towards the
Arnoldian
idea of culture. Impulse and right reason
are
counterposed
here. We see also the implication of
‘wrong’ reason pursued as it is by Independents and reformers.