[Illustration:  Oriel College, Oxford

In March, 1845, Matthew Arnold was elected to a Fellowship at Oriel

Photo H.W.  Taunt]

A study of Arnold’s work ought to give something more than a sketch of the prose-book by which he most powerfully affected the thinking of his time, and we will therefore take the contents of Culture and Anarchy chapter by chapter.  The Preface is only a summary of the book, and may therefore be disregarded.  The Introduction briefly points out the foolishness of orators and leader-writers who had assumed that Culture meant “a smattering of Greek and Latin,” and then addresses itself to the task of finding a better definition.  “I propose now to try and enquire, in the simple unsystematic way which best suits both my taste and my powers, what Culture really is, what good it can do, what is our own special need of it; and I shall seek to find some plain grounds on which a faith in Culture—­both my own faith in it and the faith of others—­may rest securely.”

The First Chapter bears the memorable heading—­“Sweetness and Light”; in reference to which Lord Salisbury so happily said that, when he conferred the degree of D.C.L. on Arnold, he ought to have addressed him as “Vir dulcissime et lucidissime.”  In this chapter Arnold lays it down that Culture, as he understands the word, is, in part, “a desire after the things of the mind, simply for their own sakes, and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are.”  But he goes on to say that “there is of Culture another view, in which not solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of it.  There is a view in which all the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it—­motives eminently such as are called social—­come in as part of the grounds of Culture, and the main and pre-eminent part.  Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.  It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing good....  There is no better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson:  “To make reason and the will of God prevail.”  Thus the true disciple of Culture will not be content with merely “learning the truth for his own personal satisfaction”; but will try to make it prevail; and in this endeavour Religion plays a commanding part.  It is “the greatest and most important of the efforts by which the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself”; it is “the voice of the deepest human experience.”  It teaches that “The Kingdom of God is within you,”