Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Bibliographical note
- Note on the texts and acknowledgements
- DEMOCRACY (1861)
- THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME (1864)
- CULTURE AND ANARCHY: AN ESSAY IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CRITICISM (1867–9)
- Introduction
- 1 Sweetness and Light
- 2 Doing as One Likes
- 3 Barbarians, Philistines, Populace
- 4 Hebraism and Hellenism
- 5 Porro Unum Est Necessarium
- 6 Our Liberal Practitioners
- Conclusion
- Preface to Culture and Anarchy (1869)
- EQUALITY (1878)
- Index
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
3 - Barbarians, Philistines, Populace
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Bibliographical note
- Note on the texts and acknowledgements
- DEMOCRACY (1861)
- THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME (1864)
- CULTURE AND ANARCHY: AN ESSAY IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CRITICISM (1867–9)
- Introduction
- 1 Sweetness and Light
- 2 Doing as One Likes
- 3 Barbarians, Philistines, Populace
- 4 Hebraism and Hellenism
- 5 Porro Unum Est Necessarium
- 6 Our Liberal Practitioners
- Conclusion
- Preface to Culture and Anarchy (1869)
- EQUALITY (1878)
- Index
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Summary
From a man without a philosophy no one can expect philosophical completeness. Therefore I may observe without shame, that in trying to get a distinct notion of our aristocratic, our middle, and our working class, with a view of testing the claims of each of these classes to become a centre of authority, I have omitted, I find, to complete the old-fashioned analysis which I had the fancy of applying, and have not shown in these classes, as well as the virtuous mean and the excess, the defect also. I do not know that the omission very much matters. Still, as clearness is the one merit which a plain, unsystematic writer, without a philosophy, can hope to have, and as our notion of the three great English classes may perhaps be made clearer if we see their distinctive qualities in the defect, as well as in the excess and in the mean, let us try, before proceeding further, to remedy this omission.
It is manifest, if the perfect and virtuous mean of that fine spirit which is the distinctive quality of aristocracies, is to be found in a high, chivalrous style, and its excess in a fierce turn for resistance, that its defect must lie in a spirit not bold and high enough, and in an excessive and pusillanimous unaptness for resistance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Arnold: 'Culture and Anarchy' and Other Writings , pp. 102 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993