Page:Matthew Arnold (IA matthewarnold00harr).pdf/28

 and Religion, unless he have some scheme of dominant ideas. If he cannot range himself under any of the known schemes, if he be neither intuitionist, experimentalist, or eclectic, if he incline neither to authority, nor to freedom, neither to revelation, nor to skepticism, nor to any of the ways of thinking that lie between any of these extremes—then he must have a brand-new, self-originated, dominant scheme of his own. If he tends towards no system of ideas, then he tends to his own system; and this is usually the narrowest and most capricious system that can be invented.

Not that Matthew Arnold's judgments in these things were narrow, however personal. It would be easy to show, if this were the place, what were the schools and orders of thought under which he ranged himself. The idea that he was an Ariel, a 'blessed Glendoveer,' or Mahatma of Light, was a charming bit of playfulness that relieved the tedium of debate. Whether as much as he fancied was gained to the cause of Sweetness by presenting the other side in fantastic costumes and airy caricature, by the iteration of nicknames, and the fustigation of dummy opponents, is now rather open to doubt. The public, and he himself, began to feel that he was carrying a joke too far when he brought the Trinity into the pantominepantomime [sic]. Some of his playmates, it is said, rather enjoyed seeing themselves on the stage, and positively played up to harlequin and his wand. And it was good fun to all of us to see our friends and acquaintances in motley, capering about to so droll a measure.

With his refined and varied learning, his natural acuteness, and his rare gift of poetic insight, Matthew Arnold made some admirable suggestions in general philosophy. How true, how fruitful are his sayings about Hebraism and Hellenism, about Greece and Israel, about the true