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About this quote

What does it mean?
Arnold says that European scholars have spent many years trying to understand things as they truly are, across all fields of knowledge.
In plain terms
Scholars aim to see things as they really are.
What can you take from it?
Seek objective understanding in all disciplines.

Where it applies

  • academic research
  • philosophical debate

Putting it to work

  • read primary sources
  • question assumptions

Questions to consider

  • How can we reduce bias in scholarship?
  • What limits our ability to see things as they are?

Another view

Achieving pure objectivity may be impossible due to bias.

More from Matthew Arnold

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  2. The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.

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  3. Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade, With a free, onward impulse brushing through, By night, the silver'd branches of th…

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