Professor Ashok K Mohapatra

Class Notes- St Xavier’s University, Kolkata

Matthew Arnold’s Hebraism and Hellenism in Critical Perspective

“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.”
Chapter IV- Culture and Anarchy

Matthew Arnold used the terms Hebraism and Hellenism in a pragmatic

way, without going deep into the theological aspects. In a letter he
wrote to his mother, he defines the terms “strictness of conscience”
and “spontaneity of consciousness” respectively. He says Hebraism
that involves sense of the obligation of duty, self−control, and
work ought to be enlightened by intelligence, spiritedness and inner
joy that are the constituents of what he called Hellenism. The
forces are not rival, but can be perfectly integrated to each other,
since the “final aim of both Hellenism and Hebraism, as of all great
spiritual disciplines, is no doubt the same: man's perfection or
salvation.” This was, indeed, an “august and admirable” aim. For a
nation like England in the later part of the 19th century that was a
parliamentary democracy with a vibrant economy, the Hellenic and
Hebraic forces needed to combine. The political situation of the
mid-186os, the agitation preceding the Second Reform Bill of 1867,
for example, may have provided some of the immediate background of
Culture and Anarchy. Arnold was disenchantment with the alliance
between political liberals and middle-class Protestants that
thwarted efforts at improved education for the masses in the name of
laissez-faire, and stalled any process of reforms in the sector of
mass education that could really transform the society.

Arnold was indebted to Henrich Heine’s basic opposition between the

ideas of Hellenism and Hebraism that signified oscillation between
Hellenic and "Nazarene" impulses, between the desire for artistic,
intellectual, and sensual freedom and the repression of such
desires. The repression that was manifested in the realm of religion
such as Puritanism could also be transformed into political
repression in politics. It is largely on this account that Arnold--a
school inspector by vocation, frustrated by the opposition of the
Puritan-biased middle-class establishment to the spread of
education-joined forces with the brilliant opponent of
"Philistinism" (another of Heine's terms) and borrowed his Hebraism-
Hellenism distinction. He noted that the English middle class
Philistines, drugged with business had lost sensitivity to
everything else except religion – “a religion, narrow,
unintelligent, repulsive” had plenty of Hebraism, but little of
Hellenism, a critical intelligence, a classical aesthetic sense that
are necessary for the holistic and harmonious growth of the human
being.

In his inaugural lecture as Professor of poetry at Oxford (1857),

which was published as "On the Modern Element in Literature" in
1868, Arnold emphasized that the critical spirit and intellectual
freedom that he found in the Hellenistic literary culture of the
Greeks could bring "intellectual deliverance" to the English people
from their petty self-pride, selfishness and narrow view-points, and
help the English nation move forward. and move forward as a nation.
In Arnold believed that Greek culture flourished because of its
inherent freedom of spirit and thoughts and tolerance of diversities
of opinions and characters and for the toleration of "the tastes and
habits of our neighbour”. This intellectual freedom was to be
inculcated in English education and to have a more intellectually
liberal climate, widening of perspectives and cultivation of a
proper individual self.

Arnold noted that while France and Germany were providing an

education for their citizens that prepared them for the future,
instructing them in scientific as well as literary subjects, England
was lagging behind-in large measure, Arnold felt, because of its
resistance to state-supported enterprises. He believed that state-
supported education would produce better results. But the liberal,
utilitarian and the protestant cast of minds that served to thwart a
sense of "larger existence and more sense of public responsibility"
that education was to be. The English middle class, in the absence
of true education that could synthesize Hellenism to Hebraism,
continued to remain opposed to enlightenment. Therefore. Arnold
defined them as the modern-day versions of the biblical Philistines.

He believed that culture comes from Hellenism, while character comes

from Hebraism. But culture without character and character without
culture are both useless. In fact he said in one of his essays
“Popular Education in France” that “character without culture” can
be “something raw, blind, and dangerous. The most interesting, the
most truly glorious peoples, are those in which the alliance of the
two has been effected most successfully, and its result spread most
widely. This is why the spectacle of ancient Athens has such
profound interest for a rational man; that it is the spectacle of
the culture of a people".

Although Arnold has been misjudged as an elitist in his notion of

classical notion of culture, he was in fact a true exponent of
democracy that he discovered in Hellenism. He discovered in ancient
Greece a triumphant democracy, a culture of the people, for whom
things of beauty and the love of knowledge ("sweetness and light")
were cultivated. From the Greek pursuit of "perfection" Arnold
derived the idea of culture as a process, a means of endless growth
and development requiring "harmonious expansion of all the powers
which make the beauty and worth of human nature” in the most
balanced way.
The liberals and Protestants were reformists, no doubt, but their
reforms yielded no true positive results as they did little in the
sector of education. Extension of suffrage to the common masses
without creating provision for their education was misguided. This
is an instance to show how the politicians, policy makers and
reformists drawn from the English middle-classes needed critical
reasoning, intelligence and broader perspectives that could come
from that bent of mind that could be called Hellenistic. After all,
Hellenism signifies a unique flexibility of critical temper that
resists dogmatism, stubbornness and obtuseness.
While talking about the importance of Hellenism as part of the
existing public culture Arnold was also not oblivious to the
importance of Hebraism. Mere intellectual freedom, intelligence,
love for a sense of beauty will be of little help if these are not
accompanied by one’s religious values that foster a sense of
obedience to the religious code, respect for religious values, a
sense of duty, right conduct, temperance and self-knowledge etc.
Even Socrates knew how deficient Hellenism was in absence of all
these values, and had a difficult time in inculcating in the
respectable people of his time these, for which he had to sacrifice
his own life. In his influential work Literature and Dogma (1873),
he alerted the people to the dangers of the hollowness of the
Hellenistic critical spirit of Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, the
famous French literary historian and critic, and the scientism of
Ernest Renan, the French political philosopher. He said, “... Moral
conscience, self-control, seriousness, steadfastness, are not the
whole of human life certainly, but they are by far the greatest part
of it; without them- and this is the very burden of the Hebrew
prophets and a fact of experience as old as the world-nations cannot
stand.”
While Matthew Arnold stressed the importance of religion under the
rubric of Hebraism, he was at the same time conscious of the misuse
of religion at the hands of the dogmatists. He took pains to point
out how the non-conformist priests and Puritans misinterpreted St
Paul’s concepts like “election” and “justification”. He believed
that it was necessary to redeem the middle-class Philistines and
Hebraists from the dogmas of the dissenters.

What is needed is the most flexible combination of Hellenism and

Hebraism for the development of culture a well as moral character of
man. This existed the highest standard of culture in Athens during
the time of Pericles in the 5th century BCE, combining old moral
values and the new intellectual culture of freedom. But Greece fell
when the balance between the two forces was lost.
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