SOURCE: Buckler, William E. “Facing the Enemy Within: An Examination of the Moralist Mythos in Culture and Anarchy.” In Matthew Arnold's Prose: Three Essays in Literary Enlargement, pp. 67-112. New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1983.

In the following essay, Buckler analyzes Arnold's role as a critical moralist, focusing on the high standard that the author set for himself and the society in which he lived.

In the “Introduction” to Culture and Anarchy,¹ Matthew Arnold said that, in his opinion, “the speech most proper, at present, for a man of culture to make to a body of his fellow-countrymen … is Socrates': Know thyself!” He thus rooted his Essay in Political and Social Criticism, an essay which wears contemporaneousness like an identifying badge and takes on a generation of Liberal social and political advocates in direct, toe-to-toe fashion, quite unmistakably in the classical moralist tradition. Adopting his motto from Jesus, his...