Word: babbitts
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...Town" (New Yorker), the New Orleanian's first pages were headed "Uptown-Downtown-Back of Town." Instead of a "Profile" (New Yorker) the New Orleanian presented a biographical sketch called a "Closeup." First subject: Rabbi Louis Binstock, past president of the Rotary Club, but "Rabbi, not Babbitt," "most popular purveyor of religion in New Orleans," whose Friday-night talks on books and such are "the nearest approach to culture this city boasts...
Nothing in Mr. Babbitt's course is so important as Mr. Babbitt himself. Although nominally a professor of French literature, he is really no, longer a teacher; he is the prophet of a philosophy. His philosophy, as nearly everybody knows, is called humanism. This creed has become widely popular lately; the front pages of the newspapers have advertised the worship of its more spectacular disciples. But Mr. Babbitt has his own peculiar brand of humanism, and his writings and lectures all declare its glory and publish its handiwork...
...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...