Philistinism

“ The philistine is good material for mobs, for mental epidemics, for religious crazes, and for all kinds of hysterical movements in which not reason but emotional automatism is in the foreground. Philistinism, stupidity, and implicit obedience of a monstrous, efficient war machine are intimately interrelated. The individual becomes a private, the nation an army, and the country a camp. ”

“ If Europe is in violent convulsions of war insanity, America suffers from no less serious mental maladies,―speculation frenzies, revival manias, and preparedness plagues. Mental epidemics are ineradicable afflictions of the highly evolved mob spirit characteristic of the philistine. The evolution of the philistine is the involution of genius. Philistinism is social decay. The progress of humanity is from brute to man, from Philistine to Genius. ”

“ If Philistinism be really part of our character we shall be Philistines to the end, let our Carlyles and Newmans or Mills and Arnolds preach never so wisely and never so frequently. And yet their preaching ís not the less useful: more useful, perhaps, than that of the politicians who boast of keeping to the practical and confine their energies to promoting such measures as are likely to catch votes at the next election. ”

“ But it is true that a Barbarian often wants the political support of the Philistines; and he unquestionably, when he flatters the self-love of Philistinism, and extols, in the approved fashion, its energy, enterprise, and self- reliance, knows that he is talking clap-trap, and, so to say, puts his tongue in his cheek. On all matters where Nonconformity and its catchwords are concerned, this insincerity of Barbarians needing Nonconformist support, and, therefore, flattering the self-love of Nonconformity and repeating its catchwords without the least real belief in them, is very noticeable. ”

“ As a matter of fact, is it not the universal experience that the saving remnant, even in America, is small in proportion to the mass of self-seeking Philistinism? And if we turn to China or India, the doctrine of the remnant has very little comfort left for us. ”

“ Now, culture admits the necessity of the movement towards fortune-making and exaggerated industrialism, readily allows that the future may derive benefit from it; but insists, at the same time, that the passing generations of industrialists,—forming, for the most part, the stout main body of Philistinism,—are sacrificed to it. ”

“ As a government employé he belongs to the privileged class in society, to the exclusive brotherhood of cultured Philistinism, but as a working-man, he would stand outside of the castes with whom society affiliates, and be looked upon as a barbarian who did not breath the same mental atmosphere as the cultivated set. ”

“ But it none the less marks an epoch in moral enlightenment; since the bringing of all men up to one level of opportunity and welfare is as essential a part of the good as the cultivation of distinction.
The modern worldliness consists not in a lack of pity, but in a lack of imagination. Philistinism, as Matthew Arnold describes it, is a complacent satisfaction with the kind of good that is praised and sought for in any given time. Such complacency is found in its most extreme form among those reformers or even religious leaders who are {112} devoted to the saving of men ”

“ For anyone can perceive how this honouring of a false ideal, not of intelligence and strenuous virtue, but of wealth and station, pleasure and ease, is as a stone from a sling to kill in our great middle-class, in us who are called Philistines, the desire before spoken of, which by nature for ever carries all men towards that which is lovely ”

“ That part of it, again, which so much occupies the attention of philanthropists at present,—the part which gives all its energies to organising itself, through trades' unions and other means, so as to constitute, first, a great working-class power independent of the middle and aristocratic classes, and then, by dint of numbers, give the law to them and itself reign absolutely,—this lively and promising part must also, according to our definition, go with the Philistines; because it is its class and its class instinct which it seeks to affirm, its ordinary self not its best self ”

“ What species of men must have attained to supremacy in Germany that feelings which are so strong and simple should he denied or prevented from obtaining expression? This power, this species of men, I will name—they are the Philistines of Culture.
As every one knows, the word "Philistine" is borrowed from the vernacular of student-life, and, in its widest and most popular sense, it signifies the reverse of a son of the Muses, of an artist, and of the genuine man of culture. ”

“ The Philistine is the swaggering enemy of the children of light, of the chosen people, of those who love art and ideas disinterestedly. The Philistine cares solely for business, for developing the material resources of the country, for starting companies, building bridges, making railways, and establishing plants. The machinery of life—its material organization—monopolizes all his attention. He judges of life by the outside, and is careless of the things of the spirit. ”

“ Whatever by-play goes on among the more intelligent of our leaders, we do not see it; and we are left to believe that, not only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of our representative and ruling men, there is nothing more admirable than our ordinary self, whatever our ordinary self happens to be, Barbarian, Philistine, or Populace.
Thus everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves, and to prevent our getting the notion of a paramount right reason. ”

“ The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare [20] are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines. Culture says: "Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds ”

“ Our guides who are chosen by the Philistines and who have to look to their favour, tell the Philistines how "all the world knows that the great middle-class of this country supplies the mind, the will, and the power requisite for all the great and good things that have to be done," and congratulate them on their "earnest good sense, which penetrates through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and gives to conventional illusions their [120] true value." Our guides who look to the favour of the Populace, tell them that "theirs are the brightest powers of sympathy, and the readiest powers of action." ”

“ The coarse Philistine imagines the joys of heaven under the image of a church festival, a wedding, a trip or a ball: the sublimated one turns heaven into a sumptuous church with beautiful music, lots of pomp, with chairs for the common groundling, and chapels and galleries for the distinguished.
The worst of them are the revolutionary Philistines, to which also the dregs of the aimlessly-wandering minds, the greedy race, belongs. Gross self-interest is the necessary result of impoverished narrow-mindedness. The sensation of the moment is the liveliest, the highest one for a wretch. ”

“ Everywhere genius becomes conservative and sterile; art grows self-conscious and measures achievement by technical difficulties; ceremonial binds social life; law protects artificial privilege; religion is refined into theology or materialized into idolatry; hospitality becomes an exchange, and the humanities are buried alive under their own machinery. They who protest, who exalt purpose and measure achievement thereby, are called Philistines.
They realize the finiteness of all created things. They see evolution in all, and hold naught that is finite to be final. ”

“ But the Philistine bourgeoisie became his favourite target, with their narrow intellectual and spiritual outlook, their barren daily treadmill of routine, their absorption in superficial goods, their smug and sordid self-complacency. ”

“ For Philistine gives the notion of something particularly stiff-necked and perverse in the resistance to light and its children; and therein it specially suits our middle class, who not only do not pursue sweetness and light, but who even prefer to them that sort of machinery of business, chapels, tea-meetings, and addresses from Mr. Murphy, which makes up the dismal and illiberal life on which I have so often touched. But the aristocratic class has actually, as we have seen, in its well-known politeness, a kind of image or shadow of sweetness ”

“ But here, as elsewhere, what we seek is the Philistine's perfection, the development of his best self, not mere liberty for his ordinary self. And we no more allow absolute validity to his stock maxim. Liberty is the law of human life, than we allow it to the opposite maxim, which is just as true, Renouncement is the law of human life. For we know that the only perfect freedom is, as our religion says, a service ”

“ Now, the Philistine's great defect being a defect in delicacy of perception, to cultivate in him this delicacy, to render it independent of external and mechanical rule, and a law to itself, is what seems to make most for his perfection, his true humanity. ”

“ The philistine, the product of our home and school, is suggestible and gullible, he is always on the lookout for authority, for a leader whom he should worship, by whose opinions and conviction he is ready to swear, whose command he is ready and proud to follow. ”

“ The stock-beliefs and stock-performances of Liberalism were exhausted, uninteresting, in some grave respects mischievous. Seekers after truth, disciples of culture, men bent on trying to see things as they really are, should lend no hand to these labours of the Philistines. ”

“ Condemned to live and work among the middle-class, while imbued with the ideas in which they were most defective, loving, as he did, the beauty and freshness of Oxford, the logical clearness and belief in ideas of France, the devotion to scientific truth and philosophical thoroughness in Germany, the sight of the dogged British Philistine became to him a perpetual grievance. ”

“ In the following essay it will be seen how our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly. This leaves the Philistines for the great bulk of the nation;—a livelier sort of Philistine than ours, and with the pressure and false ideal of our Barbarians taken away, but left all the more to himself and to have his full swing! ”

“ Philistines are uncritical, unconscious of defects and faults, living in the mire of self-contented stupidity and mediocrity. They cease to grow mentally and morally. Their intellectual and moral capacities become paralyzed, atrophied. Man becomes the equal of the brute.
With a philistine education and training, man is fit to become one of those unfortunate and pitiful European pawns and automata who obey blindly the commands of their superior officers. ”

“ Philistia has come to be thought by us the true Land of Promise, and it is anything but that; the born lover of ideas, the born hater of commonplaces, must feel in this country that the sky over his head is of brass and iron.
Nor is a true devotion more marked in his praise than in the temper with which he answers the critics of his nation's faults ”

“ It is awkward and tiresome to be always saying the aristocratic class, the middle class, the working class. For the middle class, for that great body which, as we know, 'has done all the great things that have been done in all departments,' and which is to be conceived as moving between its two cardinal points of our commercial member of Parliament and our fanatical Protestant Dissenter,—for this class we have a designation which now has become pretty well known, and which we may as well still keep for them, the designation of Philistines. ”

“ The great mistake of modern philanthropy, is, in overlooking, these facts, and in attempting to elevate all the nations of the earth to the same social, political, intellectual and moral level of equality. ”

“ Flung into life in the midst of a revolution that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledge no superior, he commenced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity! With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the list where rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fell from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interest,—he acknowledged no criterion but success,—he worshiped no God but ambition, and with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry. ”

“ Liberal education gave way to technical training. Science served greed. Education became mechanical and military in character. The successful banker, the greedy usurer, the commonplace storekeeper, the mediocre shopkeeper, the philistine patriotic business man became the patterns, the ideals, the guides, and leaders of commercialized nations. Advertising and notoriety became the rage and the bane of society. The thinker gave way to the tinker, the scientist to the mechanic, the artist to the artisan, the genius to the philistine. ”

“ We should bear in mind that the philistine is an insignificant, though exact part of a huge social machine, of a Frankenstein “kultur” before which the philistine prostrates himself in dust, a social monster of which he is proud to form an irresponsible mite. Whether he be an atom of a political organization, of a nation, or of a military kultur-system, the philistine is trained to be content to play the same ignoble, slavish rôle of submission, obedience, and irresponsibility. ”