Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/634

 630 Les'sing stratens. Mr. Babbitt's humanism is calvinistic fanaticism with Christianity left out. No wonder that the New Malleus contrives to transform a galaxy of illustrious stars into a sombre morgue rilled with corpses maimed and defiled beyond recogni- tion. Considering the internationality of the victims, the Malleus belongs to a group of abortive contributions to Comparative Literature abortive, because the magnitude of the material outgrows the capacity of the respective author's mind. Mr. Babbitt's wholesale condemnation of French, English, and American celebrities will no doubt meet with competent criti- cism elsewhere. The present reviewer has therefore limited his judgment to the general tendencies of the book and to the dis- cussion of a few points in a field somewhat familiar to him. The way in which Mr. Babbitt applies his theory of the inner check to literary criticism may be illustrated by the follow- ing case. On page 181 Goethe's Faust is quoted as a warning example of the fearful consequences to the man who lacks the inner check. "Faust after all is only consistent when having identified the spirit that says no, which is the true voice of conscience, with the devil, he proceeds to dedicate himself to vertigo (dem Taumel weih' ich mich)." An amazing inter- pretation indeed! Not only does Mr. Babbitt fail to read the lines following the passage quoted, but he ascribes to Goethe a knowledge of Mr. Babbitt's pet phrase "inner check," and argues accordingly: Babbitt's inner check = the true voice of conscience; Goethe's inner check = the devil; ergo: Goethe's god = the devil. The reviewer suggests that Mr. B. read the passage beginning line 1335 "Ein Teil von jener Kraft," etc. to line 1358 with Julius Goebel's commentary. On p. 170 Mr. B. finds fault with Faust for not turning from the Erdgeist "to the spirit that is revelant to man, a spirit that sets bounds to every inordinate craving, including the inordinate craving for knowledge (libido sciendi)"; "Faust gives himself to the devil in what was, in the time of the youthful Goethe, the newest fashion: he becomes a Rousseauist. . . and so definition yields to indiscriminate feeling ('Gefiihl ist alles')". On p. 287 the subject is continued. "Faust breaks down the scruples of Marguerite by proclaiming the supremacy of feeling." After quoting lines 3426 to 3456. . . "Herz! Liebe! Gott! Ich habe keinen Namen daflir! Gefiihl ist alles. . . " Mr. B. remarks: "The upshot of this enthusiasm that overflows all boundaries and spurns definition as mere smoke that veils its heavenly glow is the seduction of a poor peasant girl. Such is the romantic contrast between the ideal and the real." That is to say: our author picks out certain passages from the context in support of his theory of the inner check. He disregards arbitrarily the fact that in the Erdgeist scene (as indeed throughout the whole