escribed not as
having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of
perfection; it is _a study of perfection_. It moves by the force, not
merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but
also of the moral and social passion for doing good. As in the first
view of it we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's words, "To render
an intelligent being yet more intelligent!" so in the second view of it
there is no better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop
Wilson: "To make reason and the will of God prevail."

Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be over-hasty in
determining what reason and the will of God say, because its turn is for
acting rather than thinking, and it wants to be beginning to act; and
whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, which proceed from its
own state of development and share in all the imperfections and
immaturities of this, for a basis of action: what distinguishes culture
is, that it is possessed by the scientific passion as well as by the
passion of doing good; that it demands worthy notions of reason and the
will of God, and does not readily suffer its own crude conceptions to
substitute themselves for them. And knowing that no action or
institution can be salutary and stable which is not based on reason and
the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and instituting, even with
the great aim of diminishing human error and misery ever before its
thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and instituting are of
little use, unless we know how and what we ought to act and to
institute....

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will
of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred,
works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates
hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and
light. It has one even yet greater!--the passion for making them
_prevail._ It is not satisfied till we _all_ come to a perfect man; it
knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until
the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and
light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we must work for sweetness
and light, so neither have I shrunk from saying that we must have a
broad basis, must have sweetness and light for as many as possible.
Again