Arnold’s phrase “sweetness and light” is a little suggestive of a Unitarian sermon, or of some cult of the “higher life.” It is obvious that if a man deliberately set out to drill his soul in the ways of sweetness and light he might become a very lady-like individual; he would not necessarily become an educated person. All such deliberate efforts at self-improvement, if they are not characterized by a sentimental insincerity which is content with imitation and appearance, are at least a little like the effort of Benjamin Franklin to school himself in the moral virtues, who, finding the task too great, decided that he could best gain proficiency by practicing his desired virtues one at a time. You may rest assured that Arnold had nothing of this sort in mind, much as he seems at one time to have admired the wisdom of Franklin. He meant that certain mental traits are sufficiently characteristic of educated minds generally to be the distinguishing marks which differentiate them from the uneducated. To be sure, it is a thankless task to call attention to such traits, and no one who does it may expect to be very popular, but sometimes, when the culture of a nation is in danger, it has to be done. Arnold has in mind characters like Socrates, Erasmus, Montaigne--no muddle-headed, opinionated or narrow-minded men, but men who had attained clarity of thought and the insight which pierces the glamour of things and the follies of men, and yet could speak and write without bitterness or rancor or malice. “Here culture goes beyond religion, as religion is generally conceived by us.