T. S. Eliot on the so-called “Islamic State”

In his 1943 essay Notes toward a Definition of Culture, which was eventually published in book form in 1948 (and which has been a favorite of mine since I first read it back in my teens), T. S. Eliot wasn’t actually discussing ISIS.  But, taken out of context and with their recent demolitions in Mosul and at Nimrud in mind, the last few lines of this passage certainly fit them with uncanny perfection:

For there is no doubt that in our headlong rush to educate everybody, we are lowering our standards, and more and more abandoning the study of those subjects by which the essentials of our culture — of that part of it which is transmissible by education — are transmitted; destroying our ancient edifices to make ready the ground upon which the barbarian nomads of the future will encamp in their mechanized caravans.