Besides the general purpose of humanization, two other considerations guide him: the racial shortcomings of the English people and the needs of his age. The English are less in need of energizing and moralizing than of intellectualizing, refining, and inspiring with the passion for perfection. This need accordingly determines the choice in most cases. So Milton presents an example of "sure and flawless perfection of rhythm and diction"; Joubert is characterized by his intense care of "perfecting himself"; Falkland is "our martyr of sweetness and light, of lucidity of mind and largeness of temper"; George Sand is admirable because of her desire to make the ideal life the normal one; Emerson is "the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit." The belief that poetry is our best instrument for humanization determines Arnold's loyalty to that form of art; that classical art is superior to modern in clarity, harmony, and wholeness of effect, determines his preference for classic, especially for Greek poetry. He thus represents a reaction against the romantic movement, yet has experienced the emotional deepening which that movement brought with it. Accordingly, he finds a shallowness in the pseudo-classicism of Pope and his contemporaries, and turns rather to Sophocles on the one hand and Goethe on the other for his exemplars. He feels "the peculiar charm and aroma of the Middle Age," but retains "a strong sense of the irrationality of that period and of those who take it seriously, and play at restoring it" (letter to Miss Arnold, December 17, 1860); and again: "No one has a stronger and more abiding sense than I have of the 'dæmonic' element--as Goethe called it--which underlies and encompasses our life; but I think, as Goethe thought, that the right thing is while conscious of this element, and of all that there is inexplicable round one, to keep pushing on one's posts into the darkness, and to establish no post that is not perfectly in light and firm" (letter to his mother, March 3, 1865). VI [Sidenote: Criticism of Society, Politics, and Religion]