ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that some of the most distinctive features of Arnold's style seek to recreate the tone of Socratic inquiry in another medium and in a wholly different set of circumstances. It shows how the literary form of Arnold's social criticism has a natural propensity to gravitate towards the genre through which Arnold came to know Xenophon's Socrates – the dialogue. Socrates does have a number of positive doctrines, but they are secondary to his method and manner. For Arnold, the human personality is made up of four basic elements: manners, conduct, intellect, and the sense of beauty. Philosophical systems, he thinks, cannot engage the imagination or appeal to the emotions. For neither Arnold nor Socrates is irony simply a verbal trope to he used for polemical purposes; it follows directly from their whole mode of inquiry. Indeed, irony is the final element needed to see the unity of the Socratic personality.
