Word: babbittism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...endeavor to explain Mr. Babbitt's humanism here would be impertinent. Whoever takes his course may see for himself, if he likes. Suffice it to say that Mr. Babbitt is a preacher of proportion and the golden mean. Like the ancient Greeks, he takes as his motto: "Nothing too much". All external standards, such as religion, he throws overboard, and appeals to the wisdom of human experience as the only rule to order life. He shuns as the plague all the emotional ecstasies that break down the rigid self-discipline which is his prescription for all humanity...
Anyone may guess what happens when the acid of Mr. Babbitt's mind meets the syrup of romanticism. In the history of the romantic movement in the nineteenth century there is plenty of the emotional overtone which grates so harshly on Mr. Babbitt's ear. He goes after it with all his guns. His methods are simple. Beginning with Jean Jacques Rousseau, his arch-enemy, who he appears to believe is responsible for everything that has happened in the last century except the breaking of the halyard on Shamrock V, he makes all the romanticists ridiculous. This is very easy...
Most men take the course because they are led by its title to believe that they will be fed a lot of the kind of literature they love. This stuff is served to them, indeed, but so spiced with the salt and pepper of Mr. Babbitt's with that its taste is strange...
After a few weeks passed listening to the ridicule of every standard a man of college age has ever had or heard of, the student generally goes one of two ways. He many swallow Mr. Babbitt, hook, line and sinker, surrender any ideas he had of writing poetry himself some day, and become a humanist and nuisance to his friends. Of all mistakes, none is more egregious than the undergraduate humanist...
...approve of Mr. Babbitt. He may dig in and fight it out on those lines if it takes all winter. He may come to believe that Mr. Babbitt is not quite bright, and write examination papers as deliberate in perversity as he can make them. Either way, he will prosper in the course. The amateur humanists will get the gracious acknowledgements that fall to those who repeat things agreeably, and the non-conformist will find his carefully-planned papers marked with a creditable grade and a note: "Good argument. You'll get over this after a while...