If we peep into the pages of ‘Sweetness and Light’ we
will find that Mathew Arnold fights against the spiritual anarchy of the people
of his time which is revealed in the material prosperity of the land through
industry.
Because he points out that “it is the fashion of
teaching a man to value himself not on what he is, not on his progress in
sweetness and light. But, on the number of the railroads he has constructed or
the bigness of the tabernacle he has built”. He exposes that the people of his
period has the great belief in machinery. They thank that all the national
greatness is due to the machinery and material progress. But Mathew Arnold
impresses on their mind that population, bodily health and vigor considered as
machinery may have a real value but they must be connected with perfect
spiritual condition.
He makes it crystal and clear that out-ward
manifestations of material prosperity is not the cause of greatness of a nation.
But, it is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest and admiration
and it is laid in the spiritual efforts of the nation and measured by spiritual
standard of perfection.
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