SOURCE: "Julien Benda," in On Being Creative and Other Essays, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932, pp. 187- 200.

With Paul Elmer More, Babbitt was one of the founders of the New Humanism (or neo-humanism) movement that arose during the twentieth century's second decade. The New Humanists were strict moralists who adhered to traditional conservative values in reaction to an age of scientific and artistic innovation. In regard to literature, they believed that the aesthetic qualities of a work of art should be subordinate to its moral and ethical purpose. In the following essay, Babbitt analyzes what he calls Benda't "sweeping indictment of the modernists. 'a

The present moment in French literature would seem to be unusually confused. As a first step in getting one's bearings in a somewhat chaotic situation, one may perhaps distinguish between the writers who are still in the main modern movement and those who are in more...