Culture and Anarchy | Page 7

They still love the sport of their youth, and mount
the wind with joy." All I meant to say was, that there were
unpleasantnesses in uniting the keeping a boarding-house with teaching,
and dangers in cramming and racing little boys for competitive
examinations, and charlatanism and extravagance in the manufacture
and supply of our school-books. But when Mr. Oscar Browning tells us
that all these have been happily got rid of in his case, and his brother's
case, and Dr. William Smith's case, then I say that this is just what I
wish, and I hope other people will follow their good example. All I
seek is that such blemishes should not through any negligence,
self-love, or want of due self- examination, be suffered to continue.
Natural, as we have said, the sort of misunderstanding just noticed is;
yet our usefulness depends upon our being able to clear it away, and to
convince [xv] those who mechanically serve some stock notion or
operation, and thereby go astray, that it is not culture's work or aim to
give the victory to some rival fetish, but simply to turn a free and fresh
stream of thought upon the whole matter in question. In a thing of more
immediate interest, just now, than either of the two we have mentioned,
the like misunderstanding prevails; and until it is dissipated, culture can
do no good work in the matter. When we criticise the present operation
of disestablishing the Irish Church, not by the power of reason and
justice, but by the power of the antipathy of the Protestant
Nonconformists, English and Scotch, to establishments, we are charged
with being dreamers of dreams, which the national will has rudely
shattered, for endowing the religious sects all round; or we are called
enemies of the Nonconformists, blind partisans of the Anglican

Establishment. More than a few words we must give to showing how
erroneous are these charges; because if they were true, we should be
actually subverting our own design, and playing false to that culture
which it is our very purpose to recommend.
Certainly we are no enemies of the Nonconformists; [xvi] for, on the
contrary, what we aim at is their perfection. Culture, which is the study
of perfection, leads us, as we in the following pages have shown, to
conceive of true human perfection as a harmonious perfection,
developing all sides of our humanity; and as a general perfection,
developing all parts of our society. For if one member suffer, the other
members must suffer with it; and the fewer there are that follow the
true way of salvation the harder that way is to find. And while the
Nonconformists, the successors and representatives of the Puritans, and
like them staunchly walking by the best light they have, make a large
part of what is strongest and most serious in this nation and therefore
attract our respect and interest, yet all that, in what follows, is said
about Hebraism and Hellenism, has for its main result to show how our
Puritans, ancient and modern, have not enough added to their care for
walking staunchly by the best light they have, a care that that light be
not darkness; how they have developed one side of their humanity at
the expense of all others, and have become incomplete and mutilated
men in consequence. Thus falling short of harmonious [xvii] perfection,
they fail to follow the true way of salvation. Therefore that way is made
the harder for others to find, general perfection is put further off out of
our reach, and the confusion and perplexity in which our society now
labours is increased by the Nonconformists rather than diminished by
them. So while we praise and esteem the zeal of the Nonconformists in
walking staunchly by the best light they have, and desire to take no
whit from it, we seek to add to this what we call sweetness and light,
and develope their full humanity more perfectly; and to seek this is
certainly not to be the enemy of the Nonconformists.
But now, with these ideas in our head, we come across the present
operation for disestablishing the Irish Church by the power of the
Nonconformists' antipathy to religious establishments and endowments.
And we see Liberal statesmen, for whose purpose this antipathy
happens to be convenient, flattering it all they can; saying that though
they have no intention of laying hands on an Establishment which is

efficient and popular, like the Anglican Establishment here in England,
yet it is in the abstract a fine and good thing that religion should [xviii]
be left to the voluntary support of its promoters, and should thus gain in
energy and independence; and Mr. Gladstone has no words strong
enough to express his admiration of the refusal of State-aid