As the millenium ends, a conflict is emerging in the English-speaking world. Commercial interests have seized control of the media, and the result is a virtual war against the side of culture which is meant to improve our minds. In the wake of these rampaging mercenaries, intellectual pursuits such as literature tread upon the brink of enforced obsolescence. Fortunately, literature contains the ideas of authors such as Northrop Frye and Matthew Arnold to help us resist the stagnant wave of cultural conformity.
Literature improves the quality of our lives.
The latter discusses an educational dilemma similar to our own. All of this is part of a cunning attack Arnold was making upon his opponents such as Thomas Huxley. An example of Arnold's subversion is the comparison he makes between Huxley's scientists and the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzer. Arnold's response suggests that it is better to be a Levite than a barbarian who destroys the touchstones of humanity, as Nebuchadnezzar did with the temple of Jerusalem and as Victorian naturalists intended to do with culture itself. And so we at last find, it seems, we find flowing in favor of the humanities the natural and necessary stream of things, which seemed against them when we started.