A PROPHET OF THE REAL

The old and well-worn remark to the effect that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, has more than once gone the way of all good epigrams--to its refutation. And now, exception has once more been taken to it, for, in the current number of The Nineteenth Century and After, appears an article by P. S. Richards which extols, in no uncertain terms, Professor Irving Babbitt as among the foremost, if not the most eminent, of contemporary constructive critics.

Professor Babbitt is indeed more than a mere critic, more than a professor of French literature. If society in its broadest sense had the same nomenclature as political parties, he might well be called the leader of the opposition. Not that Professor Babbitt is in any sense like the much caricatured radical, bomb in hand, "agin' society": rather the opposition--, as the himself is fond of putting it--, is "the opposition of the Real to the welter of the Actual."

It is undeniable that throughout the nineteenth century, in fact even earlier, ever since the influence of Roussean and others of like mind began to make itself felt, the peoples of Western culture have been living in an atmosphere of steadily increasing disregard of the Real--the Real in the sense of that fundamental essence which makes the animal known as Homo sapiens a human being it is now not customary--nor fashionable for a man of letter or an artist, to seek out the essentially human standard by means of his imagination, and then create in accordance with it. Standards are old-fashioned "The Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule," says Bernard Shaw, and the mass of Europe and America applauds, and poetizes and paints and composes, not with the aim of laying hold upon the essentially human elements, but rather with the purpose of exhibiting each one his own little individualities; in a word, expressing himself rather than the humanity in himself. And the result is a million divergences with no central standard, and ensuing cultural chaos.

It is against this chaos that Professor Babbitt has, in the name of Aristotle, definitely taken his stand. By all thoughtful persons his position will be applauded; by all, whether thoughtful or not, the facts which he presents will sooner or later have to be faced.