Some Remarks on Mr. Matthew Arnold [pp. 577-589]

THE
CATHOLtC WORLD.
VOL. XXXVII. AUGUST, 1883. No. 221.
SOME REMARKS ON MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD.
BY AN ENGLISHWOMAN.
IN the course of Mr. Matthew Arnold's most valuable work
upon Popular Education in France he speaks of the particular
danger which besets the American people. He says it has been
educated without ideals. We think there could not be a truer
description of our own day. Everywhere outside the Catholic
Church, in art and music and literature, there is a want of ideals.
Writers and statesmen court the smile of the present hour and
worship the goods which they see. For them posterity is no
more, because they have ceased to think of immortality, and even
the men who would have aspirations, if they were not so cruelly
jostled in the crowd of ambition, raise a stone now where formerly they would have built a temple. Here is the difference
between worldly and Christian endeavor. The one puts forth
all its blossom in one night, fades and dies; the least of seeds,
the mustard-seed, after a season of patient travail in the bosom
of the earth, becomes a great and enduring tree. The genius,
then, of the present time is to found a fashion rather than a tradition, to be more sparkling than solid, and to produce pic'ccs de
cIrconstance in preference to works of intrinsic value; and this is
precisely the result which may be expected from an education
which unduly cultivates the intellectual part and leaves the
moral man to run wild. Its high aims will be good pay and a
lavish pandering to the tastes of the hour, with a parenthesis for
Copyright. REV. 1. T. HEcKER. 1883.