110 INDOOE STUDIES 



that in art and poetry personal genius is everything, 

 and that "in the great work the great person is al- 

 ways present as the great factor." Arnold seems 

 not to share this feeling; he does not belong to this 

 movement. His books give currency to another 

 order of ideas. He subordinates the individual, and 

 lays the emphasis on culture and the claims of the 

 higher standards. He says the individual has no 

 natural rights, but only duties. We never find him 

 insisting upon originality, self-reliance, character, in- 

 dependence, but, quite the contrary, on conformity 

 and obedience. He says that at the bottom of the 

 trouble of all the English people lies the notion of 

 its being the prime right and happiness for each of 

 us to affirm himself and to be doing as he likes. 

 One of his earliest and most effective essays was to 

 show the value of academies, of a central and au- 

 thoritative standard of taste to a national literature ; 

 and in all his subsequent writings the academic note 

 has been struck and adhered to. With him right, 

 reason, and the authority of the state are one. " In 

 our eyes," he says, "the very framework and exte- 

 rior order of the state, whoever may administer the 

 state, is sacred." "Every one of us," he again 

 says, "has the idea of country, as a sentiment; 

 hardly any one of us has the idea of the state as a 

 working power. And why ? Because we habitually 

 live in our ordinary selves, which do not carry us 

 beyond the ideas and wishes of the class to which 

 we happen to belong." Which is but saying be- 

 cause we are wrapped so closely about by our indi- 



