"...one of the few truly important works of political thought." His political views originated from his belief in the supreme importance of moral character. He rejected socio-political activism and sentimentalism as no substitute for individual conscience and character. He put stress on individual responsibility and opposed "everybody's interference in everybody else's business." Criticism, influence and legacy He met with increasing criticism down the years: those provoked into announcing their opposition included R. P. Blackmur, Oscar Cargill, Ernest Hemingway, Harold Laski, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken, Joel Elias Spingarn, Allen Tate, and Edmund Wilson. In the case of Mencken, at least, Babbitt gave as good as he got; he branded Mencken's writing as "intellectual vaudeville." He had an early influence on T. S. Eliot, a student of his at Harvard. Eliot in his 1926 essay The Humanism of Irving Babbitt, a review of Democracy and Leadership, had become equivocal, finding Babbitt's humanism not sufficiently receptive to Christian dogma; his position vis-à-vis religion is still debated. The identifiable figures of the New Humanist movement, besides Babbitt and More, were mostly influenced by Babbitt on a personal level and included G. R. Elliott (1883-1963), Norman Foerster (1887-1972), Frank Jewett Mather (1868-1953), Robert Shafer (1889-1956) and Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881-1926). Of these, Sherman moved away early, and Foerster, a star figure, later reconsidered and veered towards the New Criticism. More peripherally, Yvor Winters and the Great Books movement are supposed to have taken something from New Humanism. Scholars influenced by Babbitt include Milton Hindus, Russell Kirk, Nathan Pusey, Peter Viereck, Richard M. Weaver, Claes G. Ryn, and George Will. A relationship has been traced between Babbitt and Gordon Keith Chalmers, Walter Lippmann, Louis Mercier, and Austin Warren; however, claims of influence where it is not acknowledged are not easy to sustain, and Babbitt was known to advise against public tributes. From a position of high prominence in the 1920s, having the effective but questionable support of The Bookman, New Humanism experienced a drop from fashionable status after Babbitt died in 1933 and modernist and progressive currents became increasingly dominant in American intellectual, cultural and political life. By the 1940s its enemies pronounced it nearly extinct, but Babbitt continued to exercise a partly hidden influence, and a marked revival of interest was seen in the 1980s and ensuing decades. Babbitt is often name-checked in discussions on cultural conservatism. Babbitt's influence in China, which was notable