As the reader will soon perceive, the contributors agree in certain broad, fundamental opinions. Without exception they have sought to work their way free of the dogmatic incrustations that threaten to corrode even what is sound in characteristically modern thought. None of them, I think, can be suspect of a secret attraction to those pseudo-scientific and humanitarian short-cuts to truth and morality that lead in fact to pure scepticism and anarchy. All of them perceive that a naturistic humanism is finally a paradox. Some of them might be termed “pure” or “mere” humanists, others are religious humanists. Each has been free to speak his own mind, and is responsible only for what he has himself said. If the reader chances to conceive, as I personally do, that Irving Babbitt is at the centre of the humanistic movement, some of the other authors will appear to be near the periphery, although they too may seem near the centre from some other point of view. The authors of this symposium, in a word, have no desire to form a closed school, or party, or cult, or religion. They would agree that the _ism_ in humanism is at present a necessary evil. They are here temporarily assembled for the sole end of offering suggestions toward that new integration of values which may yet justify modernity. Norman Foerster. _January, 1930._ _Contents_ PAGE PREFACE: _Norman Foerster_ v THE PRETENSIONS OF SCIENCE: _Louis Trenchard More_ 3 HUMANISM: AN ESSAY AT DEFINITION: _Irving Babbitt_ 25 THE HUMILITY OF COMMON SENSE: _Paul Elmer More_ 52 THE PRIDE OF MODERNITY: _G. R. Elliott_ 75 RELIGION WITHOUT HUMANISM: _T. S. Eliot_ 105 THE PLIGHT OF OUR ARTS: _Frank Jewett Mather, Jr._ 113 THE DILEMMA OF MODERN TRAGEDY: _Alan Reynolds Thompson_ 127 AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY: _Robert Shafer_ 149 PANDORA’S BOX IN AMERICAN FICTION: _Harry Hayden Clark_ 170 DIONYSUS IN DISMAY: _Stanley P. Chase_ 205 OUR CRITICAL SPOKESMEN: _Gorham B. Munson_ 231 BEHAVIOUR AND CONTINUITY: _Bernard Bandler II_ 258 THE WELL OF DISCIPLINE: _Sherlock Bronson Gass_ 268 COURAGE AND EDUCATION: _Richard Lindley Brown_ 285 A LIST OF BOOKS 291