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Page 38
That it was in hopelessly bad taste here and there--in taste so bad
that Mr Arnold himself later cut out the most famous passage of the
book, to which accordingly we need here only allude--can be denied by
nobody except those persons who hold "good form" to be, as somebody or
other puts it, "an insular British delusion of the fifties and
sixties." But this excision of his and, I think, some others, besides
the "citations and illustrations" which he confesses to having
excluded from the popular edition, may give us the welcome leave to
deal very briefly with this side of the matter in other respects also.
We may pass over the fun which Mr Arnold had with Archbishop Thomson
(who, whatsoe'er the failings on his part, was at any rate a logician)
on the theory of causation; with the University of Cambridge about
_hominum divomque voluptas alma Venus_ (I have forgotten what was
the bearing of this joke, and it is probably not worth inquiring
into); with the Bishop of Gloucester about the Personality of God;
with the Athanasian Creed, and its "science got ruffled by fighting."
These things, as "form," class themselves; one mutters something well
known about _risu inepto_, and passes on. Such a tone on such a
subject can only be carried off completely by the gigantic strength of
Swift, though no doubt it is well enough in keeping with the merely
negative and destructive purpose of Voltaire. It would be cruel to
bring _Literature and Dogma_ into competition with _A Tale of a
Tub_; it would be more than unjust to bring it into comparison with
_Le Taureau blanc_. And neither comparison is necessary, because
the great fault of _Literature and Dogma_ appears, not when it is
considered as a piece of doubtful or not doubtful taste, but when it
is regarded as a serious composition.
In the first place, the child-like fashion in which Mr Arnold
swallowed the results of that very remarkable "science," Biblical
criticism, has always struck some readers with astonishment and a kind
of terror. This new La Fontaine asking everybody, "Avez-vous lu
Kuenen?" is a lesson more humbling to the pride of literature than
almost any that can be found. "The prophecy of the details of Peter's
death," we are told in _Literature and Dogma_, "is almost
certainly an addition after the event, _because it is not at all in
the manner of Jesus_." Observe that we have absolutely no details,
no evidence of any sort whatever, outside the Gospels for the "manner
of Jesus." It is not, as in some at least of the more risky exercises
of profane criticism in a similar field, as if we had some absolutely
or almost absolutely authenticated documents, and others to judge by
them. External evidence, except for the mere fact of Christ's
existence and death, we have none. So you must, by the inner light,
pick and choose out of the very same documents, resting on the very
same authority, what, according to your good pleasure, is "in the
manner of Jesus," and then black-mark the rest as being not so. Of
course, when Mr Arnold thus wrote, the method had not been pushed
_ad absurdum_, as it was later by his friend M. Renan in the
_Histoire d'Isra�l_, to the dismay and confusion of no less
intelligent and unorthodox a critic than his other friend, M. Scherer.
But it is more or less the method of all Biblical criticism of this
sort, and Mr Arnold follows it blindly.
Again, the chief bent of the book is to establish that "miracles do
not happen." Alas! it is Mr Arnold's unhappy lot that if miracles
_do_ happen his argument confessedly disappears, while even if
miracles do not happen it is, for his purpose, valueless. Like almost
all critics of his class recently, especially like Professor Huxley in
another division, he appears not to comprehend what, to the believers
in the supernatural, the supernatural means. He applies, as they all
apply, the tests of the natural, and says, "Now really, you know,
these tests are destructive." He says--he cannot prove--that miracles
do not happen now; his adversaries, if they were wise, would simply
answer, "_Apr�s?_" Do any of them pretend to prescribe to their
God that His methods shall be always the same, or that those methods
shall stand the tests of the laboratory and the School of Charters?
that He shall give "a good title," like a man who is selling a house?
Some at least would rather not; they would feel appallingly little
interest in a Divinity after this sworn-attorney and
chartered-accountant fashion, who must produce vouchers for all His
acts. And further (to speak with reverence), the Divinity whom they
_do_ worship would be likely to answer Mr Arnold in the words of
a prophet of Mr Arnold's own--
"Du gleichst dem Geist den du begreifst,
Nicht Mir!"
But this is not all. There is not only begging of the question but
ignoring of the issue. _Literature and Dogma_, to do it strict
justice, is certainly not, in intention at any rate, a destructive
book. It is meant, and meant very seriously, to be constructive--to
provide a substitute for the effete religion of Hooker and Wilson, of
Laud and Pusey, as well as for that of Baxter and Wesley and Mr Miall.
This new religion is to have for its Jachin Literature--that is to
say, a delicate �sthetic appreciation of all that is beautiful in
Christianity and out of it; and for its Boaz Conduct--that is to say,
a morality at least as rigid as that of the purest Judaism, though
more amiable. If dogma is to be banished, so is anything like licence;
and in the very book itself Mr Arnold formulated, against his once
(and still partly) beloved France, something like that denunciation of
her worship of Lubricity which he afterwards put more plainly still.
Even Hellenism, the lauded Hellenism, is told to mend its ways (indeed
there was need for it), and the Literature-without-Dogmatist will have
to behave himself with an almost Pharisaic correctness, though in
point of belief he is to be piously Sadducee.
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