Paul Elmer More, after a brief experience as teacher of Sanskrit and Classical literature, entered criticism through the avenue of journalism, becoming literary editor of the _Independent_ and the New York _Evening Post_ and editor of the _Nation_. Through his relation with contributors to the _Nation_, in particular, he exerted a powerful influence upon the higher critical activity of the country, an influence extended more widely through his long series of _Shelburne Essays_, beginning in 1904, in which he united in fine balance a profound and far-ranging scholarship, unusual psychological insight, an humanistic point of view, and a gift of firm, luminous, urbane but penetrating writing. Undervalued because of their hostility to the popular tendencies of the epoch, these essays will one day be generally recognised, I believe, as the highest accomplishment in literary criticism in the whole of American literature. The fundamental unity in the work of our two leading humanistic thinkers may be seen by comparing, say, the conclusion of Mr. Babbitt’s _Masters of Modern French Criticism_ and the “Definitions of Dualism” at the close of the eighth series of _Shelburne Essays_, or the introduction to _Democracy and Leadership_ and the first essay in the _New Shelburne Essays_, Volume I. The main difference, perhaps, lies in emphasis; while Mr. Babbitt has been first and last concerned with building up a sound conception of individualism, Mr. More has been progressively absorbed in the study of the duality of human nature. His strong religious bent in this study led, in the years following his retirement from journalism, to the writing of _The Greek Tradition_, in five volumes, on the relation of Platonic and Hellenistic to Christian thought--a monumental work, the full significance of which can scarcely be estimated in its own time.