Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism
"Culture and Anarchy" is Arnold's most famous piece of writing on culture which established his High Victorian cultural agenda and remained dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s. Arnold's often quoted phrase "culture is the best which has been thought and said" comes from the Preface to Culture and Anarchy. The book contains most of the terms–culture, sweetness and light, Barbarian, Philistine, Hebraism, and many others–which are more associated with Arnold's work influence.
Introduction
In one of his speeches a short time ago, that fine speaker and famous Liberal, Mr. Bright, took o...
Chapter I: Sweetness and Light
The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mer...
Chapter II: Doing As One Likes
I have been trying to show that culture is, or ought to be, the study and pursuit of perfection; ...
Chapter III: Barbarians, Philistines, Populace
From a man without a philosophy no one can expect philosophical completeness. Therefore I may obs...
Chapter IV: Hebraism and Hellenism
This fundamental ground is our preference of doing to thinking. Now this preference is a main ele...
Chapter V: Porro Unum est Necessarium
The matter here opened is so large, and the trains of thought to which it gives rise are so manif...
Chapter VI: Our Liberal Practitioners
But an unpretending writer, without a philosophy based on inter-dependent, subordinate, and coher...
Conclusion
And so we bring to an end what we had to say in praise of culture, and in evidence of its special...