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
This comparative indifference to clearness and consistency of thought is visible even in that chief object of our national concern, education.
One should, therefore, in the interests of democracy itself seek to substitute the doctrine of the right man for the doctrine of the rights of man.
One of our federal judges said, not long ago, that what the American people need is ten per cent of thought and ninety per cent of action.
Anyone who thus looks up has some chance of becoming worthy to be looked up to in turn.
Commercialism is laying its great greasy paw upon everything including the irresponsible quest of thrills; so that, whatever democracy may be theoretically, one is sometimes tempted to define it practically as standardized and commercialized melodrama.
A person who has sympathy for mankind in the lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to serve the great cause of this progress, should be called not a humanist, but a humanitarian, and his creed may be designated as humanitarianism.
Robespierre, however, was not the type of leader finally destined to emerge from the Revolution.
If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama.
Perhaps as good a classification as any of the main types is that of the three lusts distinguished by traditional Christianity - the lust of knowledge, the lust of sensation, and the lust of power.
If we are to have such a discipline we must have standards, and to get our standards under existing conditions we must have criticism.
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.