2. The Middle Class, which includes the bulk of the nation.
For them he borrows from German criticism the name 'Philistines,' enemies
of the chosen people, and he finds their prevailing traits to be
intellectual and spiritual narrowness and a fatal and superficial
satisfaction with mere activity and material prosperity. 3. 'The Populace,'
the 'vast raw and half-developed residuum.' For them Arnold had sincere
theoretical sympathy (though his temperament made it impossible for him to
enter into the same sort of personal sympathy with them as did Ruskin); but
their whole environment and conception of life seemed to him hideous. With
his usual uncomplimentary frankness Arnold summarily described the three
groups as 'a materialized upper class, a vulgarized middle class, and a
brutalized lower class.'
For the cure of these evils Arnold's proposed remedy was Culture, which he
defined as a knowledge of the best that has been thought and done in the
world and a desire to make the best ideas prevail. Evidently this Culture
is not a mere knowledge of books, unrelated to the rest of life. It has
indeed for its basis a very wide range of knowledge, acquired by
intellectual processes, but this knowledge alone Arnold readily admitted to
be 'machinery.' The real purpose and main part of Culture is the training,
broadening, and refining of the whole spirit, including the emotions as
well as the intellect, into sympathy with all the highest ideals, and
therefore into inward peace and satisfaction.
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