Culture: Relentless Pursuit of Perfection
The overarching definition of culture in the hands of Arnold is the quest for the unity of perfection. Culture is the search for knowledge, but only in concert with the unquestioned and non-rationalized acceptance of the truth of the knowledge as it is, not how one would like to see it. Metaphors are abundant in the text and early on the author makes a concrete image of his governing metaphors:
“The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail.”
Truth Is Equality
That whole learning the truth, but seeing it for what it actually is cannot be underestimated. It is a key component; a core unit in the construction of culture. Otherwise, what passes for culture is merely propaganda. When those carrying the burden of teaching truth to others arrive, they are not propagandists, however. Arnold reserves a much more precisely chosen metaphorical image for them:
“This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality.”
Knowledge Without Truth
Vision and the ability to see clearly is a persistent theme through these essays. The author constantly returns to his motif that it is not enough merely to have gained knowledge; one must see it rationally for what it is and not mistake it for something else. This idea gets canonized into a terrifically accessible metaphor at one point in reference to the specific issue of being British:
“We show, as a nation, laudable energy and persistence in walking according to the best light we have, but are not quite careful enough, perhaps, to see that our light be not darkness.”
No Flies on Culture
It is a testament to the fact that Arnold was really onto something in the section in which he points out that that societies tends to be more aware of what is fatal to culture than what is not without taking into consideration the full consequences of a long illness. Even today, the “death of culture” is still a topic of conversation while the prolonged sickness gets glossed over:
“culture, because of its keen sense of what is really fatal, is all the more disposed to be rather indifferent about what is not fatal.”
Hyperbolic Metaphor in the Service of Thesis
Chapter IV is titled “Hebraism and Hellenism” by which is meant Judaic traditions and ancient Greek traditions. That this is the title of the author and that those two words appear more often than any non-computer could keep track of indicates that they are essential to the governing thesis of the text. This is an important distinction to keep in mind when Arnold comes perilously close to picking up his poet’s feather and ink rather than his essayist’s pen in an effort to link the ancient and utterly foreign Hebrew civilization to modern-day Anglo-Americans:
“no affinity…is more strongly marked than that likeness in the strength and prominence of the moral fibre, which, notwithstanding immense elements of difference, knits in some special sort the genius and history of us English, and our American descendants across the Atlantic, to the genius and history of the Hebrew people.”
But, hey, give him points for creativity and effort, right?
