"To harmonize the One with the Many, this is indeed a difficult adjustment, perhaps the most difficult of all, and so important, withal, that nations have perished from their failure to achieve it"
About this Quote
Babbitt is smuggling a warning into what sounds like a metaphysical puzzle: the real civilizational drama is not novelty versus tradition, but unity versus plurality. "The One" is the centripetal force - shared moral standards, inherited restraints, a common story that makes sacrifice legible. "The Many" is the messy fact of human difference - interests, classes, sects, appetites, factions. His verb, "harmonize", matters: he is not pleading for domination (the One crushing the Many) or for permanent pluralist free-for-all (the Many dissolving the One), but for a worked-out equilibrium that has to be constantly maintained.
The subtext is an attack on simplifications that were gaining prestige in his era: romantic self-expression, mass politics, and the idea that society can be engineered by sheer sentiment or ideology. Babbitt, a leading voice of the "New Humanism", distrusted both the cold certainties of technocratic progress and the hot certainties of nationalistic myth. He saw modern life accelerating appetite and grievance while weakening the inner check he called moral imagination. Without that internal discipline, the Many becomes a stampede; in response, the One arrives as coercion.
Context sharpens the stakes. Writing in the shadow of industrial capitalism, labor unrest, imperial competition, and the First World War, Babbitt treats political failure as a spiritual failure with a body count. "Nations have perished" is not melodrama; it's historical memory turned into diagnosis. The line works because it refuses comforting binaries: the hardest task is not choosing unity or freedom, but designing a culture sturdy enough to hold both without turning either into its own caricature.
The subtext is an attack on simplifications that were gaining prestige in his era: romantic self-expression, mass politics, and the idea that society can be engineered by sheer sentiment or ideology. Babbitt, a leading voice of the "New Humanism", distrusted both the cold certainties of technocratic progress and the hot certainties of nationalistic myth. He saw modern life accelerating appetite and grievance while weakening the inner check he called moral imagination. Without that internal discipline, the Many becomes a stampede; in response, the One arrives as coercion.
Context sharpens the stakes. Writing in the shadow of industrial capitalism, labor unrest, imperial competition, and the First World War, Babbitt treats political failure as a spiritual failure with a body count. "Nations have perished" is not melodrama; it's historical memory turned into diagnosis. The line works because it refuses comforting binaries: the hardest task is not choosing unity or freedom, but designing a culture sturdy enough to hold both without turning either into its own caricature.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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