Studies mid-Victorian society and politics, contending that education and culture (‘sweetness and light’) is a surer path toward human perfection than religion or government. Culture promotes considering social issues from many angles, whereas religion (especially Dissent, preoccupied as it is with disestablishment) trends toward a single, inflexible approach. Hebraism is obedience to authority, Hellenism is independence of thought. Arnold also treats of class (aristocrats, bourgeois, and working) views of political order and governance, which are inevitably self-interested and so again want the leavening of culture. Libertine individualism is the greatest of all ills.