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        For Arnold, the "eternal objects of poetry" are actions: "human actions; possessing an inherent interest in themselves." Those actions are "most excellent . . . which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections." Arnold believes that there is an elementary and shared part of human nature--"our passions." "That which is great and passionate is eternally interesting . . . A great human action of a thousand years ago is more interesting . . . than a smaller human action of today." In keeping with this necessity to appeal to human passion, the poet must not deal with the outer circumstances of a man's life, but with the "inward man; with [his] feelings and behavior in certain tragic situations." Arnold regarded the classical poets as superior to the moderns in this respect: the classical poets emphasized "the poetical character of the action in itself," while the moderns emphasize "the separate thoughts and images which occur in the treatment of an action." The classical authors "regarded the whole." The moderns "regard the parts." Arnold also prefers the simplicity of classical poetic language to the "overcuriousness of expression" found in Shakespeare, who "appears in his language to have tried all styles except that of simplicity."

Function of Criticism

        Criticism is, for Arnold, a secondary pursuit, inferior to the creative function of writing good poetry. Criticism prepares the way for great poetry (John the Baptist as a voice crying out in the literary wilderness) by "see[ing] the object as in itself it really is." In this way, criticism strips away political agendas and makes "an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail itself." It establishes "an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with that which it displaces; to make the best ideas prevail." (This is now called--in the terminology stolen from Thomas Kuhn--a paradigm shift.) Out of the "stir and growth" of criticism "come the creative epochs of literature. Great literature cannot simply be written by anyone at anytime: "for the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment." Great artists must be nourished by their times in order to produce great art. "The English poetry of the first quarter of the [19th] century . . . did not know enough." The times in England were not conducive to great poetry: "In the England of the first quarter of this century there was neither a national glow of life and thought . . . nor yet a culture and a force of learning and criticism."
        Criticism's primary quality is to be disinterestedness. It is to keep "aloof from what is called the practical view of things" by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to be a "free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches." It is resolutely to avoid political polemics of the sort which dominate criticism in the late 20th century: "Criticism must maintain its independence of the practical spirit and its axioms." The law of criticism's being is "the idea of a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world."

The Study of Poetry

        This is where Arnold apotheosizes poetry:
"More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, so sutain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry."

Arnold outlines three ways in which poems may have importance: 1) they "may count to us historically"; 2) "they may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves"; 3) "they may count to us really." A poem may be regarded as important due to its position in the development of a language--but this does not say anything about its intrinsic merit. A poem may appeal to readers for personal reasons which have nothing to do with intrinsic merit. For a poem to be of real quality, it must possess both a "higher truth" and a "higher seriousness." Chaucer is out.