Although Matthew Arnold, in his disquisitions on faith and belief, never used the word “myth” as literary criticism defines it today, yet his whole approach to the spiritual crisis of modern times derives from an implicit assumption that man cannot live without myths. In “On the Modern Element in Literature,” he voiced man's need of an adequate intelligence of his situation. To comprehend the collective life of humanity, past and present, in all its complex interrelatedness—such is, to Arnold, the essence of moral and intellectual deliverance, the necessity for an age of “multitudinous” facts.