-speaking
America--the writings of Remy de Gourmont would be, if apprehended
in any true measure according to their real content and
significance, the most extreme intellectual and moral outrage that
could be inflicted upon us. Properly understood, or even
superficially understood, they would wound and shock and stagger
and perplex every one of our most sacred prejudices. They would
conflict with the whole method and aim of the education which we
have received, an education of which the professed object is to fit us
for an active, successful and energetic life in the sphere of industrial
or commercial or technical enterprises, and to make of us moral,
socially-minded, conventional and normal persons. Our education, I
mean our American education--for they still teach the classics in a
few schools in England--is, in true pragmatic manner, subordinate to
what is called one's "life work"; to the turning, as profitably to
ourselves as possible, of some well-oiled wheel in the industrial
machine.

Such an education, though it may produce brilliant brokers and
inspired financiers, with an efflorescence of preachers and base-ball
players, certainly cannot produce "humanists" of the old, wise
Epicurean type.

But it is not only our education which is at fault. Our whole spiritual
atmosphere is alien and antagonistic to the spiritual atmosphere of
Remy de Gourmont. He is serious where we are flippant, and we are
serious where he is ironical.

Any young person among us who imbibed the mental and moral
attitude of Remy de Gourmont would cause dismay and consternation
in the hearts of his friends. He would probably have a library.
He might even read Paul Claudel.

I speak lightly enough, but the point at issue is not a light one. It is
indeed nothing less than a parting of the ways between two
civilisations, or, shall we say, between a civilisation which has not
lost touch with Athens and Rome and a commercial barbarism
buttressed up with "modern improvements."

Remy de Gourmont's genius is in its essence an aristocratic one. He
has the reserve of the aristocrat; the aristocratic contempt for the
judgment of the common herd; the aristocrat's haughty indifference
to public opinion. Writing easily, urbanely, plausibly upon every
aspect of human life, he continues the great literary tradition of the
beautifully and appropriately named _"humanism"_ of the "Revival
of Letters."

As Mr. Parker hints, he is one of those who refus