ed the
"Liberal Practitioners" for the spirit in which they were
disestablishing and disendowing it. They did not approach the subject in
the spirit of Hellenism: they did not appeal to Right Reason: they did
not attempt to see the problem of religious establishment as it really
was. But they Hebraized about it--that is, they took an uncritical
interpretation of biblical words as their absolute rule of conduct. "It
may," he said, "be all very well for born Hebraizers, like Mr. Spurgeon,
to Hebraize; but for Liberal statesmen to Hebraize is surely unsafe, and
to see poor old Liberal hacks Hebraizing, whose real self belongs to a
kind of negative Hellenism--a state of moral indifference, without
intellectual ardour--is even painful." In the same manner he dealt with
the movement to abolish Primogeniture, strongly urged by John Bright;
the movement to legalize marriage with a wife's sister--"the craving for
forbidden fruit" joined with "the craving for legality"; and the
doctrine, then supposed to be incontrovertible, of Free Trade. In all
these cases, he proposed to "Hellenize a little," to "turn the free
stream of our thought" on the Liberal policy of the moment; and to "see
how this is related to the intelligible law of human life, and to
national well-being and happiness."

And so we were brought to the conclusion of the whole matter. The
stock-beliefs and stock-performances of Liberalism were exhausted,
uninteresting, in some grave respects mischievous. Seekers after truth,
disciples of culture, men bent on trying to see things as they really
are, should lend no hand to these labours of the Philistines. Their
right course was to stand absolutely aloof from the political work which
was going on round them; and to pursue, with undeviating consistency,
"increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased
sympathy."

It is interesting to recall that Charles Kingsley praised _Culture and
Anarchy_ in a letter which greatly pleased Arnold, as showing "the
generous and affectionate side" of Kingsley's disposition. And this is
his answer to Kingsley's praise: "Of my reception by the general public
I have, perhaps, no cause to boast; but from the men who lead in
literature, from men like you, I have met with nothing but kindness and
generosity. The being thrown so much for the last twenty years with
Dissenters, and the observing their great strength and their great
impenetrability--how they seemed to think that in