The teacher of literature may well turn out, in the end, to be the sole means by which society and literature can be raised from their present depression, and then only provided his influence be stricter and more humane. For a materialistic epoch such as ours, the only refuge and the only basis for further progress is in the idealistic humanity of the past; but the search of the past must not be such a frail and self-indulgent one as condemns before it understands. Whether we have outworn the ideals of history or whether they were projected into a realm of life beyond our present power of realisation, in either case they reflect the tendency directing all human achievement,--a tendency to rise to a plane uncircumscribed by the limits of physical existence. Accordingly, the teacher of any branch of our cultural heritage has within his hands the reins of destiny; slackly and half-heartedly he may lose them from his grasp, or by firmly holding them he may guide the future toward a new triumph of the human spirit. There is no sound where there are no ears, nor without the development of the inner mind and segregated human life, of which our literature has been both the motivation and the record, could there again be true community or beauty in the world. FOOTNOTES [74] A Senior paper read at Bowdoin College, Commencement, 1929.--Editor. _A List of Books Published Since 1900_ Note--The following list contains most of the recent books that are humanistic in a strict sense, together with a few books humanistic in a sense more general and indefinite. Magazine articles have been excluded; but illuminating articles dealing with various aspects of humanism may be found in the 1928 and 1929 volumes of _The Forum_, _The Bookman_, _The Hound and Horn_, _The Criterion_, and _The Nineteenth Century and After_. Helpful recent critiques of the work of Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More are those by a young English critic, Philip S. Richards, in _The Nineteenth Century and After_ for April, 1928, May, 1928, and April, 1929, and an article on “Mr. More and the Gentle Reader” by G. R. Elliott in _The Bookman_ for April, 1929. Santayana, George. Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. 1900. Brownell, W. C. French Art, Revised ed. 1901. ---- Victorian Prose Masters. 1901. More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays, First Series. 1904. Chesterton, G. K. Heretics. 1905. Cox, Kenyon. Old Masters and New. 1905. More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays, Second Series. 1905. ---- Shelburne Essays, Third Series. 1905. Woodberry, George Edward. The Torch: Eight Lectures on Race Power in Literature. 1905. More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays, Fourth Series. 1906. Cox, Kenyon. Painters and Sculptors. 1907. Lasserre, Pierre. Le Romantisme français. 1907. Babbitt, Irving. Literature and the American College: Essays in Defence of the Humanities. 1908. Frye, P. H. Literary Reviews and Criticisms. 1908. More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays, Fifth Series. 1908.