SOURCE: Eliot, T. S. “Matthew Arnold.” In The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England, pp. 103-19. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1933.

In the following excerpt, Eliot discusses Arnold's limitations as a critic, which he views as traceable to Arnold's belief that poetry could serve as a substitute for religion.

March 3rd, 1933

The rise of the democracy to power in America and Europe is not, as has been hoped, to be a safeguard of peace and civilisation. It is the rise of the uncivilised, whom no school education can suffice to provide with intelligence and reason. It looks as if the world were entering upon a new stage of experience, unlike anything heretofore, in which there must be a new discipline of suffering to fit men for the new conditions.

I have quoted the foregoing words, partly...