SOURCE: "Tales of a Mystic," in The Nation, New York, Vol. CXV, No. 2984, September 13, 1922, pp. 258-59.

Krutch is widely regarded as one of America's most respected literary and drama critics. Noteworthy among his works are The American Drama since 1918 (1939), in which he analyzes the most important plays of the 1920s and 1930s, and "Modernism" in Modern Drama (1953), in which he stresses the need for twentieth-century playwrights to infuse their works with traditional humanistic values. A conservative and idealistic thinker, he was a consistent proponent of human dignity and the preeminence of literary art. His literary criticism is characterized by such concerns: in The Modern Temper (1929), he argues that because scientific thought has denied human worth, tragedy had become obsolete, and in The Measure of Man (1954), he attacks modern culture for depriving humanity of the sense of individual responsibility necessary for making important decisions in an increasingly complex age...