Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.

Matthew Arnold uses this formulation in his Victorian-era cultural criticism while arguing against a merely utilitarian or narrowly intellectual view of “culture.” In the debates of the 1860s over education, religion, and social reform in industrial Britain, Arnold sought to define culture as a moral and aesthetic ideal rather than a store of information. The line comes from his essay “Culture and Its Enemies,” later incorporated into *Culture and Anarchy* (1869), where he contrasts “culture” with what he calls “machinery” (institutions and means) and with partisan social types. He presents culture as an inward pursuit aimed at human completeness and “sweetness and light.”

Arnold distinguishes culture from simple inquisitiveness or the accumulation of facts. For him, culture is animated by an ethical-aesthetic aspiration: the “love of perfection,” meaning the desire to develop the whole person and to align life with the best that has been thought and said. Calling it “a study of perfection” frames culture as disciplined self-formation, not mere entertainment or erudition. The claim also implies a critique of modern society’s tendency to prize technical progress and practical “means” over ends—wisdom, character, and humane judgment. Culture, in Arnold’s sense, is a corrective force meant to harmonize intellect, morality, and taste.