Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbittwas an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative thought in the period between 1910 and 1930. He was a cultural critic in the tradition of Matthew Arnold and a consistent opponent of romanticism, as represented by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Politically he can, without serious distortion, be called a follower of Aristotle and Edmund Burke. He...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth2 August 1865
CountryUnited States of America
To harmonize the One with the Many, this is indeed a difficult adjustment, perhaps the most difficult of all, and so important, withal, that nations have perished from their failure to achieve it.
We may affirm, then, that the main drift of the later Renaissance was away from a humanism that favored a free expansion toward a humanism that was in the highest degree disciplinary and selective.
According to the new ethics, virtue is not restrictive but expansive, a sentiment and even an intoxication.
We must not, however, be like the leaders of the great romantic revolt who, in their eagerness to get rid of the husk of convention, disregarded also the humane aspiration.
The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards.
Tell him, on the contrary, that he needs, in the interest of his own happiness, to walk in the path of humility and self-control, and he will be indifferent, or even actively resentful.
The human mind, if it is to keep its sanity, must maintain the nicest balance between unity and plurality.
The humanitarian lays stress almost solely upon breadth of knowledge and sympathy.
An American of the present day reading his Sunday newspaper in a state of lazy collapse is one of the most perfect symbols of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen.
The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection.
The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope.
The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.
The papacy again, representing the traditional unity of European civilization, has also shown itself unable to limit effectively the push of nationalism.
Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.